The Ice King's Hidden Desire

On my wedding night, my billionaire husband walked me to the guest room and went to sleep down the hall.

The whole city is sure Damon Sinclair can't get it up.

Then the comments started drifting past my face. Glowing, half-see-through, scrolling in the air like a livestream I never signed up for. And the comments disagree.

[Girl. GIRL. He has been standing outside your door for thirty straight minutes. Man is one more minute from becoming a lovesick monument out here.]

[It's not that he can't. It's that he can, way too much. He's petrified he'll lose it on the wedding night and scare you, so he's white-knuckling his way to the study instead.]

[I'm dead. Veins standing up on the backs of his hands, jaw locked, and meanwhile she's in there convinced he's got some medical situation, quietly running the numbers on a divorce.]

[Don't worry, it gets worse. The second Vanessa Whitmore makes her move, our girl gets tossed out on the curb. Then the husband gets "healed" and lives happily, spicily ever after with the real heroine.]

Chapter 1

My wedding night, and I had the whole bed to myself.

Damon Sinclair. My husband on paper, and the cold king of a business empire that could swallow a small country, currently down the hall in his study, keeping to himself the way he always did.

And me. Elise Shaw. The daughter a sinking family married off to buy itself one more year afloat.

I thumbed my phone awake. The wedding was still trending. Sinclair Group CEO Damon Sinclair Marries, and under it, a comment section that felt sorry for me.

Poor Shaw girl. Widowed before she's even old.

Heard he's ice-cold, doesn't go near women. Body probably really doesn't work.

That's rich people for you. Marry some suitable little trophy, park her in a mansion, live separate lives.

I gave my own reflection a crooked little smile.

Fine by me, honestly. The settlement alone could bankroll the rest of my life. If this was going to be a dead-bedroom marriage, then a dead-bedroom marriage it would be. I could live on the resale value of my own low expectations.

I was about to kill the screen when the air in front of me lit up. Rows of it, gold and glowing and see-through.

[Ohhh here we go. Classic disposable-side-character, dead-bedroom-marriage arc.]

[I bet a bag of hot Cheetos she's sitting there calculating her cut of the divorce.]

[Thinking way too small. She's sitting there wondering if the man can even get it up.]

I shot upright and blinked, hard.

A hallucination.

[Not a hallucination, babe! We're the audience, tuning in from a higher dimension. We can read the script of your whole life.]

[You're the disposable side character, sweetie. You misjudge Damon as broken, you cheat on him to spite him, and in the last act he ruins you for it. Ugly, ugly ending.]

My stomach dropped. Every drop of blood in me went still.

Cheat on him. Ruins me.

[Meanwhile the man himself is standing outside your door RIGHT NOW. Half an hour of "do I go in, do I not." That is genuinely his whole evening.]

[He's scared he'll lunge like something half-starved and terrify his delicate little wife, so he's forcing himself away from the master bedroom like a saint.]

[Every muscle in him is locked. Hands corded. Throat working faster than a sewing machine. And people call THIS "can't"?]

My eyes went to the door on their own.

Shut. Solid. Sealing off whatever was on the other side.

Here was the thing the comments didn't understand about me. I came from a family that taught me one skill before any other: when you're going down, you check for the exits yourself. You don't wait to be rescued, and you sure as hell don't wait to be written off.

So I wasn't going to sit on this bed and take their word for it.

I swallowed. Pushed off the covers. Bare feet to the floor, one careful step at a time.

The cold came up through my soles. My pulse did not care. It slammed anyway.

[YES. Ear to the door. You can hear the beast breathing.]

[Don't you dare! What if he opens it and you faceplant straight into his chest? The secondhand death would kill me.]

I pressed my ear to the cold wood anyway.

Nothing. Dead quiet on the other side.

Had he left?

The comments refreshed before I finished the thought.

[He did NOT leave. He's holding his breath. The absolute sneak.]

[His hand. HIS HAND is on the handle.]

[Is he coming in?? Wedding-night brinkmanship, I could watch this forever.]

My heart climbed into my throat.

Click.

Small. Metal. The clean turn of a latch, close enough to feel.

The handle was being pressed down. Slowly. From the outside.

I stumbled back a step before I could think, my whole body shaking with something I couldn't hold still.

Would the door open?

Would the man made of ice really come through it like something on a leash, the way the comments swore he would?

The handle turned. Halfway.

It stopped.

And then, slow, with a restraint that had actual weight to it, it eased back into place.

[NGGH. He folded. Paper tiger. Damon Sinclair you COWARD.]

[No no, he's scared. Scared he'll lose control and hurt his wife. That's why he stepped back.]

[He's turning around. Shoulders down. Walking off like a golden retriever locked out of the house.]

Then footsteps, soft, going away.

Whatever had been holding me up let go all at once. I slid down the door to the floor and sat there, dragging in air.

So the comments were telling the truth.

He wasn't broken. He didn't hate me.

He wanted me so badly he couldn't make himself walk through the door.

He'd rather stand out there and ache than risk one wrong move with me.

Chapter 2

I came downstairs the next morning wearing two very impressive dark circles.

Damon was already at the head of the table, dressed to the last button, turning the pages of a financial paper like he had all the time in the world.

Morning light edged his face through the glass and somehow only made a too-beautiful man colder. Untouchable.

Black suit, cut close. Tie exact. Every line of him saying stay back.

This was the sad, locked-out golden retriever from last night?

No. This was something lower to the ground. Elegant. A predator resting under all that ice.

[I retract the golden retriever. This man is radiating hormones.]

[LOOK at him. He's got the paper up, but his ears are red. He's been tracking your footsteps this whole time.]

[Go. Execute. Manufacture an accident. Get him to catch you.]

I pulled in a breath and picked up a glass of milk.

All night I'd swung back and forth between the comments and twenty-some years of knowing better. Somewhere near dawn, the part of me that wanted to survive won the argument.

If they were right, then the cannon-fodder ending was mine to rewrite. Step one was simple: find out what this man actually felt when he looked at me. And I wasn't going to guess it from across a room.

So I'd take the dumb, direct route. I'd fall.

I walked to his side, rolled my ankle on purpose, and let myself go sideways into him.

A small cry got out of me. The glass left my hand.

[HERE WE GO. Textbook damsel into the arms.]

[Watch his reaction. It's gonna be too fast to]

I was still bracing to land on him in a wash of milk when an arm came around my waist, fast as a snapped wire.

Then I was against him. Solid. Burning. The whole clean scent of cedar closing over me.

The muscle under the suit was drawn tight. Heat came off him through the thin fabric, more than a body should give off.

His other hand had already caught the glass in midair. Not one drop on the floor.

The tail end of the motion was all I caught.

[HOLD ON. That reaction time. That core. Everybody who said he can't is legally blind.]

[His hand is still on her waist. He physically cannot make himself let go.]

[His heart is going nuclear in there. Can you feel it?? CAN YOU.]

I could feel it.

His chest scalded against my back. Under it, his heartbeat came steady and heavy and landed against my eardrum, once, and again, and again.

The arm across my waist sat like a bar pulled straight off a forge. My skin buzzed where it touched.

I held perfectly still. I didn't dare move.

"Careful."

Low, over the top of my head. Rough at the edges, with a thread pulled tight through it that he almost hid.

I opened my mouth to thank him and he let go like he'd touched a live wire. Stepped back. Put a clean stretch of air between us.

Same cold face. But the comments had called it: the red climbing up the backs of his ears gave the whole thing away.

[HAHA there it is, the cool-guy reset. Innocent big bad wolf.]

[He can't meet her eyes. He's shy. He's SHY.]

Watching him rebuild the ice with his ears on fire, I almost laughed.

God help me. I was starting to believe them.

Right then the butler came over and bent slightly at the waist.

"Sir. Madam. Miss Whitmore is here."

Miss Whitmore?

Vanessa Whitmore?

The one the comments had named. The one who was supposed to heal him, who got the happily-spicily-ever-after. The heroine this story was originally written for.

Why was she here?

[OH. Oh, the plot's ahead of schedule. Mean girl's making a house call.]

[Battle stations. DEFCON 1. This is not a drill. Your very first rival just walked in.]

My eyes went to Damon before I decided to look.

Whatever had thawed in his face a second ago dropped straight back to zero the instant he heard her name, his brow tightening a fraction he would never admit to.

Chapter 3

Vanessa Whitmore came in wearing white. A soft white dress, hair loose down her back, makeup done to look like she wasn't wearing any. Innocent. Harmless. The whole package.

She found Damon first and gave him a smile like they had a history.

"Damon. I heard you got married. I had to come meet the new wife."

Then her eyes slid to me. Somewhere under the sweetness sat a slow, measuring look.

"So this is her? She's lovely." Warm mouth. Eyes like a needle dipped in something.

[And there it is. The mean-girl opening line, textbook.]

[Translation of her face: hm, a pretty little trophy, how is THAT good enough for my Damon.]

[Brace yourself. She's about to start the fake-concern act. Watch her go after your husband's "health."]

I hadn't gotten a word out before she turned to Damon, her voice going soft with worry.

"Damon, have you not been resting again? You have to be careful with your body. Didn't the doctors say you can't push yourself, that you can't let your emotions run too high?"

She said it so tenderly. Like there was no one on earth who cared about his health the way she did.

Around the room, the staff's eyes changed.

Everyone caught the thing living under the words. Damon Sinclair is fragile. He can't take much.

There is exactly one thing a newly married man cannot survive being called, and she'd found it.

She was standing in front of every servant in the house and painting it onto me: the wife of a man who couldn't.

[Okay the fake-concern game is IMMACULATE. She's a professional.]

[She wants the whole staff whispering that he can't, so Elise can't hold her head up in this house.]

[FIGHT BACK. Wife, do NOT let her land this one.]

I looked at that face of hers, all I'm only saying this because I care, and something wicked lit up in me.

I didn't get angry.

I did the opposite. I pulled on a look of deep, tender worry to match hers, and I reached out and slid my arm through Damon's.

His whole body went rigid.

The muscle under my hand pulled tight and hot, like a cable winched to snapping.

I held on anyway. I tipped my face up at him, wide-eyed, innocent as anything, and pitched my voice soft enough to wring out.

"Baby, Miss Whitmore's so worried about your health."

"Last night... was I too much for you? Did I not let you rest?"

I leaned on last night. Let the end of it go a little shy, a little pouty.

[HOLD. ON. WIFE. WIFE.]

["was I too much for you." Ma'am, that is the most unhinged sentence I have ever heard, I am deceased.]

[She went feral. Is this free? Am I allowed to witness this for FREE??]

[Look at his face. He's broken. He's a statue. His whole brain just blue-screened.]

I stole a look at him out of the corner of my eye.

He'd locked up completely. The shock on that beautiful face was something brand new. Behind his eyes a storm was pulling itself together, and the red was climbing his ears faster than before, going from pink to a deep, bleeding scarlet.

Across from us, Vanessa's smile had cracked straight down the middle.

She had not planned for the timid little trophy wife to say something that... explicit. In front of everyone.

Her face ran through a whole spectrum of colors. It was a lot to watch.

I pressed on. Leaned a fraction closer to him, dropped my voice to just the three of us, shy and scolding at once.

"It's your fault, you know. You just had to..."

I let the rest hang there. The pause did more than any finished sentence could.

[AAAH HAD TO WHAT. HAD TO WHAT. FINISH THE SENTENCE.]

[Someone help me, my mind went somewhere it had no business going.]

[Her face is GREEN. I'm cackling. This is everything to me.]

"Elise!" Vanessa's voice cut in, sharp, an octave off her practiced coo.

I turned to her, all concern. "Miss Whitmore? What's wrong? You look awful. Are you feeling okay?"

That was when Damon, frozen this whole time, finally moved.

He didn't push me off. He caught my wrist backhanded and drew me in against him.

His palm ran hot. The grip had a shocking amount of strength in it.

His eyes went to Vanessa like two knives thrown at once, and his voice came out with nothing warm left in it.

"Whether my body works is something my wife knows better than anyone."

"Miss Whitmore. My wife embarrasses easily. She doesn't like this kind of talk. So don't make it again."

He didn't spare Vanessa another glance. He closed his hand around my wrist and turned to go.

"Come with me."

Something enormous was pushing up under his voice, pinned down by force, one second from breaking loose.

He towed me forward so fast I tripped and had to half-run to keep up.

Behind us, Vanessa's face was a knot of jealousy and fury.

[THE DRAMA. This is peak, top-tier drama.]

[The wife just steamrolled her. He's hauling Elise off and he won't even LOOK at little miss innocent.]

[Wait. Where is he taking her. The study? The bedroom?? It is broad daylight, what is he about to DO]

My heart was slamming all over again.

Chapter 4

The study door slammed shut behind us, loud as a shot.

Then my back was against the cold wood and he was over me, all of him, a wall of heat with no way around it.

No lights on. The room sat in half-dark, and the only bright thing in it was his eyes, lit from somewhere I couldn't name, fixed on me and not letting go.

[Uh oh. Uh oh. She poked the bear and the bear is UP.]

[That's not annoyed. That man is one breath from a villain origin story.]

[His breathing, wife, LISTEN to it. He wants to eat you alive.]

I could hear it.

His breath came down heavy against the top of my head, hot enough to feel.

My palms had gone damp. My breath had gone shallow and quick.

Had I said too much?

"Elise."

He got the word out low and wrecked, like he'd ground it up somewhere deep before it reached his mouth.

"Do you have any idea what you just said?"

He braced a hand on the door beside my ear and closed me in between his arms and his chest, no gap anywhere.

The cedar was stronger here, and under it something sharp and male, aimed straight at whatever was holding my knees up.

"I..." I looked up, straight into the dark current moving behind his eyes, and lost the rest of the sentence.

"Last night?" He bent down. That beautiful face kept getting closer until the tip of his nose nearly touched mine. "What did we do last night?"

His voice dropped even lower, dangerous, a pull in it that went right past the good sense in my head.

[HE'S GOING FOR IT. HE'S GOING FOR IT.]

[He's turning it back on you. He's flirting BACK. Answer him, wife!]

[Just say you misremembered! Play dumb! Wriggle out of it!]

My mind was a blank page.

The comments were right. Playing dumb was the smart move, the safe move, the one that got me out of this room in one piece.

But I was this close to his eyes, and there was something in them I hadn't planned for. Under the barely-leashed want, under all that heat, ran a thin thread of something raw. Something afraid.

And I did not take the safe move.

I lifted a hand that wasn't quite steady, and instead of talking my way loose, I pressed one fingertip, light, testing, to the hard plane of his chest.

"I... I was just talking. Buying you some cover." My voice came out barely there. "She had no business saying that about you."

The second my finger touched his shirt, his whole body jolted like a current had run through it.

The hand on the door corded up, veins standing, the muscle in his arm turning to stone.

He stared at me. His throat dragged up and down, once, hard.

The look in his eyes wasn't the cold interrogation anymore. It was bare, and it was starving, and it wanted to take me apart.

[HE BROKE. One tiny move from the wife and the man came completely undone.]

[He's holding on. He is using every muscle he has to hold on. One more inch and he's gone.]

[That look? That's not a man about to kill you. That's a man about to love you.]

My scalp prickled. My hand started to draw back on its own.

Then something in him pulled taut, like the touch had cut him. He shoved off the door, straightened, and turned away from me, fast, giving me his back.

He planted both hands on the desk. The broad line of his shoulders was heaving, like he was hauling something back inside by sheer force.

"Get out."

Two words, forced through his teeth, his voice in pieces.

"Now. Right now."

I didn't move.

[Don't go! He's protecting you! He's scared he'll lose control and hurt you!]

[He's calling himself an animal in his head right now. Go comfort him!]

[Look at his hands. He's about to snap the edge off that desk.]

I followed the comments' eyes, and there it was, his hand clamped on the rim of the desk, every knuckle drained white with the force of it.

Something reckless climbed up in me.

I didn't leave. I took a step closer instead.

And that was when it caught my eye, the thing on the corner of his desk.

Small, silver, half-tucked under a stack of files. A photo frame.

A girl's photo, inside it.

[!!! THE FRAME. Wife, LOOK!]

[That's the one. The photo he's kept for eight years. The one he took of you without you knowing.]

Something jumped in my chest. I leaned in to see it clearer.

He caught where my eyes had gone and turned almost before I finished the motion, putting his body between me and the frame, fast, like he was covering a secret the size of the sky.

"I told you to get OUT!" His voice broke up and out of him, and under it ran something new. Panic. Fury.

The harder he tried to hide it, the more I had to know.

Whose face was in that photo?

Chapter 5