My metal bustier turned warm and pliant, flowing up Snow's wrists and arms, where it formed matching metal gauntlets that warded his forearms.

My talisman was cozying up to my bitter enemy. He was armed while I stood half-naked before him. I felt an absence so intense that it took my breath away. I'd loathed the daily reminder of his meddling, yet felt as if another defensive curtain had been ripped away.

Then… I felt free.

Again.

It was like getting a rotten tooth pulled. I'd gotten used to the daily ache and now glimpsed utter liberty. Yes! I had only to pull away from his fingertips and I'd be free of Snow and his possessive toys. I was moving…shaking him off like a bad dream, of which I'd had plenty.

"Montoya," he reminded me.

We both stood frozen as statues. Some classical subject, a Greek god in human form pursuing unwilling nymph. Me starting to twist away. He starting to tighten his grip on my naked forearms so the pale marble would seem as pliable as bread dough, flesh sinking into flesh, only everything was stone inside.

I shivered from cold or fear or fury, or all three. I felt all three states, holding still to submit when every muscle was poised to twitch with revulsion at being here, doing this.

Ric would say no to my deal with the Devil, with his last breath. I knew he would never submit to the vampires who held him. not the boy who had resisted the human coyotes who had abused him unimaginably time and again. He might be already dead, lost, and this sacrifice was futile.

To save Ric and our love at the price of being mauled and put in thrall to another man's kiss, no matter how supernatural… I knew I was forsaking what I cared for most for the mere chance to save the person I cared for most.

But this was my deal.

I shut my eyes, feeling Snow's cool hands finally closing on my undefended breasts, and shuddered. His thumbs touched my nipples to harden them.

"C-c-cold," I stuttered, an explanation for my apparent arousal.

"You'll be warm soon. Very warm." He pulled me closer. "Open your eyes. You wanted to see."

I batted them open. Looking into his eyes no longer made me blink. The pupils had expanded into black bottomless pools, the gemstone facets a mere ring of glitter around them.

Snow desired this. Snow desired me, my surrender.

Remaining still defied every screaming nerve in my body.

I kept my emotions battened down, dead. I made myself into what I thought a zombie was: a mindless, will-less shell that felt nothing, cared nothing, only shuffled dutifully to do others' bidding…

Snow's hands continued to caress my breasts; harshly would have been deliverance, but his gestures were as delicate as a surgeon's. I felt like Lilith on the autopsy table, mock-dead, or dead, what did it matter in the face of a fatal violation of the flesh?

His face bent towards mine. I kept my eyes open, staring straight ahead, dead ahead. I should have known I wouldn't get by with the sudden, deep, passing Brimstone Kiss of the mosh pit.

"Just one kiss," the pale lips moved.

My freedom! My heart's willing slavery.

I shrugged, but his hands never lost their custodial grip. I lifted my chin and, by default my face, my lips.

He pulled me toward him, bent his head to touch his ivory-cold lips to mine. Kiss Death, while you're at it, Delilah. Embrace a statue, snuggle up to stainless steel, become a body on an autopsy table, motionless, unfeeling, a sex object for the lifeless at heart.

His lips met mine, then his tongue.

It was unexpectedly, shockingly warm. Hot. Feverish. His fingertips on my naked shoulders almost sizzled.

As I'd feared, his kiss was not the hit-and-run lip lock he doled out from the stage, which he'd end like a revivalist minister with a palm to the forehead that pushed the recipient down and away to be borne away on a litter of mosh pit bodies.

It was more like a 132-car pileup on a misty mountain road, a series of domino-falling shocks that just kept on coming. It was a dozen, then a hundred, yet his lips never left mine, just nibbled, teased, probed, stroked, sucked. When his tongue took control it moved like a silver snake, fast, sleek and deep into me, into my very heart and soul, which I felt as a molten drop of forgotten memory, silver mercury, at my center, behind my navel, spiraling out to my every extremity.

I hardly felt it when he pressed my bare chest against his and moved his hands to my throat and the nape of my neck, on shoulders and cheeks, all to position me for endless variations on a kiss.

His breath smelled of frost and he tasted of Albino Vampire. Or maybe that was me.

I could feel the overpowering and inevitable response like a slowly building volcanic eruption from deep within the landscape of my soul.

The tremors made my hands shake so much that I curled them into the edges of the white leather that lay open against his pale chest, hairless, scarred by silver lightning bolts.

My knees were shaking, but his hands were holding me up by the face alone. And still he continued the slow, sensual exploration of my mouth, and now my throat felt the irresistible pull…my throat aching as if it was between my legs, tightening, tautening, so much so that a hoarse moan sought escape.

In a moment all my muscles inward and outward would erupt in spasms of orgasmic abandon.

I would be lost and the deal sealed.

Except… I remained clenched on the brink and did not plunge over.

Did not climax, not in triplicate. Not once.

I screamed anyway and swooned like a damn Snowaholic, then fell into black velvet darkness illuminated by heat lighting strikes and the thunder beat of my overstressed heart. It felt like red-hot death.

Chapter Thirty-one

I became conscious again still pressed to him hip to hip, mouth to mouth, my bare back draped over the upholding bar of his forearm.

Snow suddenly broke the kiss, a curse under his exhausted breath.

I couldn't stand on my own power and my lips remained parted from the Brimstone Kiss.

He cursed again, so softly I couldn't hear the word or what god or devil he invoked.

That arm moved, lifting me tighter against his chest, part bare lukewarm skin, part cool bleached leather. His hands molded me to him, circling on my back, in the tendrils of my hair at my neck. I knew the lassitude that possessed me. I'd met it with Ric. Postcoital stupor. But this had been only a kiss. Hadn't it?

He took advantage. He shifted again until my lax lips became a bezel for his erect nipple. I gritted my teeth. Not reciprocal. Never reciprocal.

But I was so sleepy. So very sated…

And by now, my body was mindlessly stimulated.

I finally stirred, my arms struggling to push him away. His chest rumbled against me, under me. His heartbeat was steady, strong, and rhythmic. Heartbeat. Proof he was not a vampire, although some post-Millennium Revelation vamps could be a different breed abiding by different characteristics and rules.

I shut my eyes. He pressed my head against him, his hand tangled in my hair.

The distant part of my mind I'd deadened for this dreaded moment noted that I was still sleepwalking like a zombie succubus, or some recently killed creature whose nerves and muscles still twitched with counterfeit life.

He seemed somehow uncontrolled as well. He loosened his grip.

I shook my head until I seemed to hear something rattle inside and reared away, pulling my gown shut, pulling my mind and will together.

I'd suffered the Brimstone Kiss. For ages longer than the most frantic mosh-pit groupie.

And I had not climaxed, not even once, and especially not many times.

Good! For once it wasn't Irma talking in my head, only me. Loud and clear. Go suck yourself, Snow! I'm done! It's over. I fulfilled my part of the bargain and I bet you didn't even get off yourself. Too bad.