Chapter 1: Frost and Ember
The cold was the first thing she felt, a deep, familiar chill that seeped into her bones even through the heavy blankets. Then came the weight—a delicious, claiming pressure across her hips, pinning her to the mattress.
Ember opened her eyes to silvered darkness and a silhouette of pale hair haloed by moonlight. Frost’s face was inches from hers, those wide blue eyes dark with a hunger that had nothing to do with the waking world.“Mine,” Frost whispered, the word a cloud of frost in the air between them. Her voice was a low, silk-wrapped threat, nothing like Elsa’s careful cadence.Ember’s lips curved into a slow, wicked smile. “Prove it.”
It was all the invitation Frost needed. Her mouth came down on Ember’s, not a kiss but a claiming, teeth sharp against a yielding lip. Ember gasped into it, her back arching off the bed, hands flying up to tangle in that impossibly soft, platinum hair. She pulled, hard, and Frost groaned, the sound vibrating deep in her throat.
Frost’s hands were everywhere, impatient. She shoved the duvet aside, the cool air raising goosebumps on Ember’s skin. Her fingers, always so shockingly cold, found the hem of Ember’s thin sleep shirt and pushed it up, up, over her head. It was tossed somewhere into the shadows.
“Fuck, you’re so warm,” Frost breathed, her palms skating up Ember’s ribs, cupping the full weight of her breasts. Her thumbs brushed over nipples already pebbled tight, and Ember jerked, a sharp cry escaping her.
“Colder,” Ember begged, writhing.“Use your mouth. Please.”
Frost didn’t need to be asked twice. She dipped her head, her tongue a flat, icy stripe over one peak before closing her lips around it. Ember’s hips bucked off the bed, a ragged sob torn from her. The contrast was everything—the searing heat of her own need, the shocking, perfect chill of Frost’s touch.It was a madness only they understood.
Frost switched her attention to the other breast, biting just shy of pain, and Ember’s fingers clenched in her hair, holding her there. “Yes, just like that, god, just like that—”
But Frost was already moving lower, her kisses a trail of frostfire down the quivering plane of Ember’s stomach. She hooked her fingers in the waistband of Ember’s shorts and underwear, yanking them down her legs in one rough motion. Ember kicked them free, her breath coming in short, visible puffs.
Frost settled between her thighs, her gaze raking up Ember’s body like a physical touch. In the moonlit gloom, her eyes were almost feral. “Soaked for me already,” she murmured, pressing a single, icy finger against Ember’s core.Ember cried out, her head thrashing back against the pillow. “You dreamt of this, didn’t you?All day. Wrapped in your boring little duties, thinking of my tongue right here.”
“Frost, please—”
“Say it.”
“I dreamt of you,” Ember whimpered, spreading her legs wider in blatant invitation. “I always dream of you.”
Frost’s answering smile was a predator’s.She lowered her head.
Her tongue was a flat, cold stroke that made Ember see stars.It was crude, intense, lacking all art and filled with a desperate, greedy hunger. Frost lapped at her, drank her in, her nose pressed against Ember’s skin as her hands clamped around trembling thighs, holding her open.
“Oh, god, oh fuck,” Ember chanted, her heels digging into the small of Frost’s back. The coil in her stomach tightened with alarming speed; Frost knew her body better than she did, knew exactly how to wind her up and push her over. The scratch of Frost’s nails, the unrelenting cold of her mouth, the obscene, wet sounds filling the quiet chamber—it was too much. Ember’s breaths became short, sharp gasps.
Frost pushed a finger inside her, then another, the sudden fullness wringing a broken scream from Ember’s throat. Frost fucked her with her hand, her tongue circling that one relentless spot, and the world narrowed to slick heat and freezing pleasure.
“Come for me,” Frost commanded, her voice muffled against Ember’s skin.“I want to taste it.”
It shattered her. Ember’s body bowed off the bed, a silent scream locked in her lungs as wave after wave of violent pleasure crashed through her. Frost rode it out with her, not gentling, but driving her deeper, swallowing every twitch and pulse until Ember was a wrung-out, shuddering heap.
Before the last tremor had even faded, Frost was crawling back up her body, kissing her deeply, letting her taste herself on Frost’s cold lips. Ember could feel the hard line of Frost’s ice manefactuted desire pressed against her thigh through the silk of her own sleepwear.
“My turn,” Ember slurred, her hands pushing at Frost’s shoulders, trying to roll her.
“No.” Frost caught her wrists, pinning them above her head with one strong, cold hand.“Tonight is for me. For what I need.”
Her free hand worked between them, shoving her own trousers down just enough. Ember felt the slick, cold press of her against her thigh, then a shift, and then—
Frost sank into her in one deep, relentless stroke.
Ember’s mouth fell open in a soundless cry. She was so sensitive, so overfull, the stretch a perfect, burning ache. And oh so very cold az you might expect from a frozen dildo. Frost went still, buried to the hilt, her forehead dropped to Ember’s shoulder, her breath ragged.
“You feel… you feel like home,” Frost gasped, the raw confession so unlike her it made Ember’s heart clench.Then she began to move.
It was not making love.It was a claiming. Frost’s hips pistoned against her, each drive deep and punishing, the bedframe knocking a soft, rhythmic protest against the stone wall. Ember wrapped her legs around Frost’s waist, taking it, urging her on with hitched breaths and bitten-off curses.“Harder,” Ember pleaded, her nails scoring down Frost’s back. “Don’t you dare hold back.”
Frost snarled, a sound of pure need, and obliged. Her pace turned frantic, her movements losing all rhythm in the sheer desperation to get closer, to fuse them together.Every thrust carved Ember’s name into the air. Her cold skin was sheened with a phantom sweat, glowing in the weak light.
“I can’t… I can’t keep doing this,” Frost moaned into the crook of Ember’s neck, even as her body betrayed her words, seeking its own brutal release.“Hiding. I want her to know. I want her to wake up with the feel of you on her lips.”
The words, soaked in truth and danger, pushed Ember over the edge again. This second peak was a shockwave, a convulsive tightening that pulled a ragged shout from Frost’s throat. Frost’s rhythm broke, her body stiffening, a low, continuous groan tearing from her as she fell apart inside Ember, her own release a pulse of deep, shuddering cold.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their breathing, mingling in the frosty air.
Slowly, the world seeped back in.The blue luminescence of the walls. The familiar contours of the royal bedchamber.The dangerous, diminishing dark.
Frost lifted her head, her expression suddenly sharp, clear-eyed with a panic that was entirely new. She pulled out, the loss a physical ache, and scrambled off the bed.“Shit. The light.”
A faint, grey tinge was bleeding into the high windows.Dawn.
“We stayed too long,” Frost hissed, snatching her trousers from the floor, her movements frantic.“You have to go. Now.”
Ember sat up, her body throbbing with the echoes of Frost. She felt languid, sated.“It’s fine. We have minutes.”
“It’s not fine!” Frost snapped, pulling her own sleep shirt back on. She looked at Ember, her eyes wide with a fear that had nothing to do with their parents or the kingdom.It was the fear of loss. “If she wakes while you’re still here… if I wake…”
The implication hung in the air, colder than any magic. The careful fiction of their separate lives, the unspoken truce of daylight, would vaporize. Before either coukd move,
The day began