He carried her out of the steam room, cradled against his broad, muscular chest. Nadia had never been carried anywhere by anyone. It was the most incredible feeling, curled up in his arms with her head against his chest.
Nadia thought he’d take her over to the pool, which Nikolai had told her was kept at a cool twenty degrees for this purpose.
Instead, he carried her to an adjoining room. Nadia gave another gasp, but this time from surprise. The small room was filled wall-to-wall with fine, powdery snow. The snow blew in from a vent high up in the ceiling, drifting down like diamond dust.
Nikolai threw her down in the thick, pillowy snowbank and jumped in beside her.
It should have been horribly shocking, going from hot steam to pure snow. But Nadia was so overheated, and the snow was so incredibly fine, that it felt deliciously, fantastically refreshing. She rolled around in the snow, laughing out loud, and Nikolai did the same.
Then he rolled on top of her and he kissed her.
The snow drifted down on their naked skin, but their bodies were on fire. His lips and mouth were aflame. Every inch of his flesh burned against hers.
The tension of the last hour had finally snapped. He was attacking her, devouring her, eating her up. He pinned her arms over her head, and he ran his thousand-degree lips down her neck, her breasts, her navel, licking, biting, and kissing her.
Then he came back up to her mouth, and he crushed it with his own. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and tasted her, sucking and nibbling on her bottom lip.
She could feel his cock, fully hard now and pressing painfully against her body. She reached down and gripped it, shocked by the weight and thickness of it. She guided it between her thighs, and he thrust into her.
Nadia screamed out—from the size of him, and from the intense sensitivity of every nerve in her body, inside and out. She could feel the snow melting beneath them, but she and Nikolai were only getting hotter and hotter by the moment, sweat still streaming off their bodies.
She rolled over on top of Nikolai, their bodies still locked together. She started to ride him, her palms pressed flat against the massive slabs of muscle on his chest. Under her right hand, she saw the snarling wolf. He was the wolf and she was the swan—she meant to tame him, and he meant to devour her. And who knew which of them would succeed.
The snow fell into her dark hair. It landed in her lashes and melted on her steaming skin.
She could feel another climax building up inside her. The first had been sudden, explosive, irresistible. This one swirled and swelled inside her, growing larger and larger by the minute. The longer she waited, the more massive it became. And when she finally let go, it felt more like an act of god than a simple climax. She felt like she was being torn into pieces and put back together again.
When Nikolai had whipped her, he had worked some kind of alchemy to turn pain into pleasure. Now the opposite was occurring. She was experiencing a pleasure so vast and overwhelming that it was nearly intolerable.
She hardly noticed Nikolai roaring and writhing beneath her. While he thrust upward into her, he was gripping her hips so hard that it would probably leave bruises later.
She was cumming, and he was cumming at the same time, both with their fingers dug into each other’s flesh, their heads flung back. Every tendon and muscle on their body strained with the insane rush of pheromones and endorphins and pure liquid pleasure.
She could feel when Nikolai unleashed a rush of molten heat inside of her. Her body responded with one final wave of bliss, clenching tightly around him.
When at last it was over, and they were panting and shaking in each other’s arms, she realized they had melted the snow all the way down to the stone floor. When they stood up, they left a deep imprint in the shape of their bodies.
* * *
19
Nikolai
Nikolai and Nadia dressed in near silence. Nikolai’s head was spinning. He had never experienced anything like that in his life. His attraction to Nadia was all-consuming—but it was so much more than pure lust.
Nikolai was used to taking what he wanted from women. He’d had plenty of satisfying sexual experiences. Yet he’d never had one that was anything more than carnal.
What he’d felt with Nadia was completely foreign to him. He’d felt connected to her, obsessed with her, in awe of her, all at once. And when it was over, instead of the usual apathy—where he lost interest in the woman, and even felt a mild disgust—the exact opposite occurred. He was more drawn to her than ever, by an exponential factor.
He was already longing to tear the clothes off her that she’d only just put on again. Yet he also wanted to take her for dinner, and make her laugh, and show her all his favorite places across the city and ask her a thousand questions.
It was confusing, all these conflicting impulses, fighting for attention.
And above all, the desire to make her his, forever.
To learn everything about her and tell her everything about himself.
But he couldn’t do that.
