His thumb ran across my lips like he was testing if I would bite him. I didn’t. I even let him push it slightly into my mouth. The low sound in his throat invaded the chill in the air, warming the water a few degrees, and at that moment, all I wanted was heat. Even if it came in the form of hellfire. I closed my mouth around his thumb, so he had to pull it free against the hot glide of my tongue and lips. Flames were started by less than the look in his eyes, and the full weight of his approval settled an ache between my legs. The warmth inside conflicted the cold torture on my skin in such a way I felt dizzy. High. Drunk on a tumbler of ten-thousand-dollar vodka twenty stories in the air, and I could do nothing but yield to the touch when his thumb pulled my bottom lip down as it left me. Wrists wrapped in leather, trickles of icy water pouring over my skin and down parted lips, time slowed beneath the thick pull between us that felt like half-lidded eyes and moonless nights. Ivory skin and goose bumps. Soaked Brioni and tattoos. Selflessness and greed. The visceral need to close the distance stole the air from me, and I couldn’t find enough oxygen that wasn’t tainted by his heat and the intoxicating smell of the forest. My head was above water, but I was drowning; panting for the breath I knew this sin wouldn’t satiate. “Please, let me out of here.” We both seemed to know my words held two different desires: to be released from this glacial punishment and my internal cage. My beating heart and the patter of water filled a moment of dense silence. “You want your freedom, you have to earn it.” The demeaning, suggestive statement should break the spell between us, though the sound of his voice—cultured but tainted by a thicker accent than usual—slid down the back of my neck like a caress. I wanted to lean into it. “Pm on my period,” I said dumbly, in the hope he would find it as unpleasant as Carter did, and I’d be saved from the immoral moment. I should have known that wouldn’t be the case. A smile touched his lips. “A little blood has never scared me off.” I swallowed. “What do you want me to do?” “Get creative.”