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It slams into me like a horse at full gallop. Pleasure tears through me in wave after wave, and I cry out, loud, not caring who hears. My back arches off the bed. My thighs clamp around his hand. And he keeps touching me through all of it, gentle now, coaxing every last shiver out of me.

On and on it goes.

When it finally fades, I collapse back into the pillows, boneless. I can't move. I don't want to move. I'm floating. My whole body is warm and loose and humming.

All these years. All these years, and nobody ever told me I could feel like this.

Zarek slides his hand away, slowly, and smooths the shirt back down over my thighs. And the ache is gone. The terrible, restless itch that's been crawling under my skin all day. The heat. The buzzing. All of it, gone quiet. Ever since the bakery, my body has been screaming at me, and now it's finally hushed.

"Oh my gods," I say to the ceiling. "Oh my gods, that was amazing."

Zarek makes a sound that might be a laugh.

"Truly. Truly amazing. I feel so much better. I feel wonderful. I feel like a whole new woman." I flop my arm out to the side. "I can't believe nobody told me about this. I could've been doing this for years. Years! Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm going to sleep like the dead tonight. I can feel it."

"You're welcome," Zarek says.

His voice sounds very strange. Tight. Like he's speaking through his teeth.

"I mean it. I'm so grateful."

"I'm glad."

He doesn't sound glad. He sounds like a man in pain. But he's looking at me with something almost tender in his face, and I'm too blissful to wonder about it.

"You know," Rhydian says from my other side, sounding like he's barely holding it together, "I'm starting to feel a little left out of all this gratitude."

I laugh. I can't help it. It bubbles right up out of me. "You didn't do anything."

"Trust me, darling," he says. "I suffered."

Even Kaelen speaks up from the far side of the bed. "Sleep well," he says.

Just two words. But his voice is so rough it sounds like gravel.

I'm too relaxed to question any of it. I snuggle down into the blankets with a happy little sigh, feeling better than I have since the moment the heat first struck me in that bakery.

I close my eyes. And the bed lurches. All three of them are sitting up. All at once.

"We're going outside," Zarek announces.

I open my eyes. "What?"

"Outside," Rhydian agrees, already swinging his legs off the bed.

I push up on my elbows and stare at them. "It's the middle of the night."

"Yes."

"There's a blizzard."

"We know."

Kaelen's already halfway to the door. He's moving like a man who has reached the very last scrap of his patience and is clinging to it with his fingernails.

"Everything's fine," Zarek says. "Get some rest."

"We could all just use some fresh air," Rhydian adds. "Very fresh. Extremely fresh."