Kai glanced down at the claw-like hand grasping his forearm and fought the disgust that rolled over him. He was supposed to be escorting Gerda to this elaborate dinner at her parents’ home. He was supposed to be happy for this bit of allowed touching with the woman to whom he was betrothed. So why did it all feel so wrong? Why did being so close to her revolt him?
To most, he allowed, her hand wouldn’t appear claw-like. People raved about how beautiful Gerda was. So lovely in face and figure. So attractive in her fashionable, well-tailored dresses. A catch for a lowly shop boy. “What a lucky man,” they whispered.
Like hell. Gerda was a cage ready to close around him. He was, indeed, a lowly shop boy from a poor family. He had little choice but to marry for their sake. Unless he could come up with some way to wiggle out of the engagement without severe retribution to his kin. His father was beholden to Gerda’s father, Franz. It had been a somewhat ignored debt until Gerda had decided she liked the looks of a certain shop boy with black hair and blue eyes.
“Kai, hurry up. We’re going to be late,” she whined, tugging at his arm. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“Difficult? I’m coming to this party with you when I had other plans for my evening. I’m trying to keep you from slipping on the ice covering this walkway.”
She snorted and tugged his arm harder to pull him along. They appeared to walk “side by side,” but in truth, she was slightly ahead of him. “That’s why you wore these…clothes instead of dressing up?”
“These are my best rags,” he answered drily. The girl needed a spanking, but it wouldn’t do her any good. He enjoyed sliding his hand over a nicely rounded bottom before heating it with a few smacks. His partners had always taken pleasure in that, as well as his other sexual practices. He had a feeling Gerda would just screech and throw a fit. She wouldn’t enjoy any of it. She was a nasty harridan who didn’t possess a softer, submissive side.
Perhaps he’d die young.
“We’ll go to the tailor next week and have you fitted for a suit. I can’t be seen with a beggar.”
Beggar? His clothes might not be the same top-notch quality as hers, but they were still good construction.
“Whatever pleases you,” he replied, looking around. It was a perfect winter night, clear and crisp with glittering stars overhead. The streetlamps threw frozen beams up into the inky sky. On evenings like this, he liked to walk alone, listening to the crunch of snow beneath his boots and looking at the way frost painted the windows. Some nights, he skated on the lake or rode his father’s horse through the shadowy pines.
Not anymore. He suspected Gerda would never allow such freedoms.
Perhaps the ground could open and swallow him and end this all tonight. Better, an avalanche from the surrounding mountains could tumble around him, cocooning him in sweet Gerda-free peace and lulling him into an icy eternal sleep.
As he looked around, he saw a woman across the street knocking on the door to the shop where he worked. Her waist-length white-blonde hair spilled from beneath a fur hat. It brushed the top of her shapely behind, and his interest stirred in a way it hadn’t in months. White fur matching the hat wrapped her shoulders. The dress, a shiny light blue, swept the walkway, hiding her legs from view. Though he’d yet to see her face, he knew he’d never met her. He’d remember this woman.
Her tiny fist raised to knock again on the mercantile door.
He pulled free of Gerda. “I need to go help her.”
“But the dinner!”
“Peter will never forgive me if I don’t attend a customer, after closing or not. I’ll be along shortly.”
She made a perturbed moue and released a huffy sigh. “Fine. Thank goodness you’ll soon be working for my father.”
Yes. Huzzah for that. May the sky fall on me.
Kai made a noncommittal sound and started across the street. Behind him, he heard Gerda stomp off, but he paid her no mind as relief filled him. The woman turned as she heard him approach. He was startled to see she was young, perhaps eighteen. She carried herself as an older, more refined woman. What was such a youthful stranger doing out alone in an unfamiliar town?
A faint smile lifted her pale lips as if she had heard his silent wondering. Even in the moonlight, her light blue eyes shone.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“You are the owner?” she asked with a raised brow.
He shook his head. “No, but I work here.”
Her smile widened a bit more. “You are Kai, then.”
His brow furrowed. How… “Yes.”
“You’re wondering how I know your name.” It was more of a statement than a question.
Kai nodded even as she went on.
“Anyone who loves winter as much as you do is well known to me.”
“Kai!” he heard bellowed across the silent evening. Lord, would his whole life be spent at Gerda’s beckoning? His eyes closed at the humiliation as fury raced through him. A hand stroked along his arm and he looked up at the woman, startled at her touch.
“You need not heed her,” she said in a calm, almost otherworldly tone that raised the hairs on his arms. A chill skated along his skin, inching down the back of his neck and into his collar. Cold, invisible fingers spread over the knots in his shoulders.
His imagination. He shook his head, irritated at himself when he envisioned that the sensation came from the woman touching him, not from an errant breeze.
“She is my…betrothed.” He choked out the last word. He needed to find a way to be free of Gerda. He couldn’t abide her much longer. Saints, he barely abided her now.
“She is nothing,” the woman before him whispered. Sadness seemed to fill her eyes as she regarded him. It was as if she regretted something he’d yet to understand.
Another wind caressed his back, and this time, he felt himself shoved forward. Kai was not a small man. A mere gust could not move him thus. His eyes narrowed on the ethereal creature before him. Was she a witch of some sort? He fisted his fingers rather than cross himself.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Your salvation.”
Or his damnation, he suspected. “Your name?”
She shrugged, the fur of her wrap brushing her snowy-white cheek. “You can call me Wyn.”
Her impertinent blink, accompanied with another faint smile, stoked his desire for her. Here was a woman who could use a spanking and would appreciate it. Whoever she was, he knew he had to know her better, damn Gerda and the consequences for not getting to the party in a timely manner.
“Did you need something from the store?”
Her smile widened, and she leaned coquettishly against the door to the shop, her hands behind her. “You.”
Him? He wished that could be true. He wished he could take her up on the silent offer posed by her stance. She wanted him. He had no doubt.
“I’m already taken,” he sighed. His responsibilities to his family overshadowed any personal desire he might have.
She shook her head and reached to touch his arm once more, but he stepped backward.
“The girl does not have your heart,” she said.
Kai fought back a chuckle. Girl? Wyn appeared to be Gerda’s age, perhaps even younger than his betrothed’s twenty.
“But she has my promise,” he countered.
“Not willingly.” She stepped away from the building and touched his arm. This time, he didn’t shy away. “I hear what you’ve whispered to the wind when you’ve walked through the pines beside the frozen lake. You do not want this, but for your family, you sacrifice yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who told you such things?”
“You did, Kai. You’ve prayed for a way to escape this, and I’m here.”
“Those words for meant for my God, not for a witch!” he protested, anger overriding the fear most men would experience. Anger that this vision before him was evil. Anger that his heart had briefly hoped salvation truly had arrived. Renewed anger that his family had thrust him into a position of having to rescue them.
“Not a witch,” she replied. “Do not fear me, Kai.”
“I’m not afraid,” he ground out, making his ire clear. Without another word, he spun around and headed toward the stupid party. He needed to escape to his refuge in the frozen woods, but it was impossible, barred by both Gerda and the mysterious Wyn.
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