The restraint required not to return Scarlet's embraces with equally sensuous fervor nearly tore Kershov apart. Every primal instinct demanded that the ice-born brute welcome her bleeding caress with aggressive advances of his own. Scarlet Nights knew the hypersensitive triggers that made his nerves rapid-fire, knew which strings to pluck to coax the music of desire from the instrument of Kershov's glacier heart. Damn--she was good at this. The Ice King had never claimed immunity to the charms of beautiful women; he appreciated a fine body and a brilliant mind the same way he appreciated a perfectly honed weapon, and wasn't a brute to deny himself pleasures of the flesh when offered. His dalliances were characteristically dangerous and delicious, but Scarlet Nights--this paragon of female sexuality and confidence--was a delicacy like none other. She threatened to conquer him absolutely. The challenger had beaten her bloody and broken and still the pythoness wrapped herself around her Czar like a spirit of smoke, untouched by pain and the limitations of her lacerations. Kershov wanted to take her as completely as he could. Scarlet's tantalizing body language deserved an equally enthusiastic reply. But the dance Scarlet Nights wanted could only harm her more . . .

Surely this was a sign of Kershov's slipping mind. He had not once refused an offer that benefited himself directly--and now the thought of inadvertently damaging his Queen warred with heated lust and he could feel his guts turning inside out.

Her deep amber eyes transfixed him, feminine voice pouring like the richest wine from her lightly smirking mouth. Kershov felt intoxicated. No--his beast was intoxicated, the thing that felt and raged and reacted so violently to the invitation Scarlet presented him. The line between control and chaos was nothing but a mere silver filament. His paws cut themselves trying to balance on its edge. Silently the ivory warrior wondered if restraining that hurricane of desire was worth it at all. Denying the tyrant within him would insult his Empress and torture his tormented mind. Ungrateful the beast sneered. Since when do you CARE SO MUCH?

A sigh slumped from Kershov's lips, a sound so weary it might have come from a soldier defeated on the field. No. Maintaining his self-mastery wasn't worth it. He was slipping, inevitably, toward a dooming failure this perfect Czarina could not begin to understand. Perhaps the fall of his inner infrastructure of ice wouldn't be so bad . . . perhaps a new era was meant to rise up. Why fight it? For as much as Kershov despised the destructive hatred that called the hollow of his chest home, that hatred was not weak.

"Allow me to help you finish, darling. Only the best for the Alphess." His voice carried the unmistakably husky texture of masculine sex, his smile one of fangs and sweet, dark promises. The discarded carcass of the filthy coyote lay forgotten; Kershov kicked it aside to allow more room for Scarlet Nights to smooth his alabaster canvas with the sleek silk of her own colorful pelt. He lowered his skull so that his chin could trace the line of Scarlet's supple spine as she brushed by. His senses inhaled the mouthwatering notes of her complex perfume, edged with the tang of blood and dirt, thoughts of violence sharpening sensual anticipation into a nearly painful point of beauty. The Queen's poor tail had been shredded, a priceless article mussed by a fool's coarse handling, but Kershov's demon found something inexplicably erotic about the wounds torn into his mate's hide. Each offered a graphic, lovely peak beneath the damsel's skin; Ker fancied himself the peeping tom sneaking glances at his beloved behind the satin curtains of her boudoir. So these are the materials that make a fighting consort. Blood and sinew. Lacy veins and soft flesh.

When Queens of Malignant had seduced Kershov all those months ago, she captured the ruthless tundra gangster that had completely buried his darker half. The thing that lusted for Scarlet Nights right now, the glacial gargoyle positioning his colossal frame to meld into the fae's touch, was something far more unpredictable, far more merciless and terrifying that calculating Kershov could ever be. And he knew with absolute certainty that if anyone could handle this ferocious fiend, it was savage Scarket Nights.