Ice Queen

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Ice Queen

ISBN # 1-4199-0572-4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Ice Queen Copyright© 2006 Joey W. Hill

Edited by Briana St. James.

Cover art by Syneca.

Electronic book Publication: March 2006

This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Warning:

The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated X-treme by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (Erotic), and X (X-treme).

S-
ensuous
love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

E-
rotic
love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as

“fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

X-
treme
titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

ICE QUEEN

Joey W. Hill

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: BMW : Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft Corporation Cadillac : General Motors Corporation

Chapstick : Wyeth Corporation

Chippendales : Chippendales, USA, Inc.

Coalport : Coalport China Limited Corporation

Desert Eagle : TAAS - Israel Industries Limited Corporation Golden Globe : Hollywood Foreign Press Association Corporation Lincoln: Ford Motor Company Corporation

NASCAR: National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc Sig Sauer: SIG Swiss Industrial Company Corporation . S.A.T. Swiss Arms Technology AG Corporation

Taser : Taser International, Inc.

Tinkertoys : Registrant, Playskool, Inc. ; Last Listed Owner, Hasbro, Inc.

Velcro : Velcro Industries B.V. Ltd Liab Co

Viagra : Pfizer, Inc. Corporation

Wal-Mart : Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

White Diamonds : Conopco, Inc. DBA Elizabeth Arden Co.

Ice Queen

“Catch a tiger by the toe, eeny, meeny, miny, mo.” Marguerite glanced up from her purchase order as her hostess, Chloe Marcel, came into the kitchen area. Genevieve Wisner, her other waitstaff person, slid by in front of her with a tray of teacups as Chloe propped a hip on the doorframe. Fortunately, Gen was a tall woman, whereas Chloe was a tiny thing not even five feet tall and committed by genetics to look fourteen years old though she was nearly twenty-eight. Marguerite had discovered her working a kiosk at the mall that sold a wide variety of body-piercing jewelry. She’d liked the woman’s easy manner that drew customers to her side like old friends, the selection of high-quality jewelry and the fact that Chloe, while passionate about piercings, only had one. A navel piercing that she rarely revealed by her clothing choices without having to manually turn up the edge of her blouse or tug down her waistband. Marguerite had also liked the simmering mischief in her eyes.

However, since hiring her as hostess for Tea Leaves, informally known in the Tampa area as the Tea Room, she’d learned to be wary of it.

“What are you going on about, Chloe?”

“I’m thinking about better parts of a tiger than his toes.” Genevieve rolled her eyes, setting down the tray. “She’s in one of
those
moods, M.” She used her favorite nickname for their boss, having pointed out more than once that Marguerite’s cool reserve and authoritative presence would qualify her to head up the MI-6 of the James Bond movies. “She’s comparing men to animals again.”

“It’s not like we get many here, you know.”

“Men, or animals?”

Chloe grimaced at her. “This is a terrific, lovely place, Marguerite, but we do need to figure out a way to market it to men of marriageable age. Or at least the age of sexual interest.”

“Got it.” Gen nodded. “Age twelve to ninety.”

“I’ll plan a construction workers’ convention here just for you, Chloe.” Marguerite tapped her pen on the desk, considering the matter from her side office while Gen grinned, placing the teacups from the Coalport set carefully in the sink water to handwash them, as they did with all the porcelain sets. “Do you think they’d prefer something manly, one of our strong black teas served up in a reproduction YiXing? If clay was good enough for the samurai, it should be good enough for them. Of course, since the samurai left their swords outside the teahouse, we might ask our guests to leave their tool belts at the door.”

5

Joey W. Hill

“Maybe everything else but the tool belts.” Chloe grinned wickedly. “Here, take him today’s sample.” She took away the dish towel and pressed a tiny cup into Gen’s hand. “You go take a look and tell me if I’m right or not. Money isn’t the only thing oozing off this guy. I’d have given him a lap dance if he’d said another word in that voice, or kept looking at me with those tiger eyes.” Genevieve made a resigned face but obediently went back out the swinging door.

Chloe looked toward Marguerite. “Even more intriguing, he says he’s here to meet with you. And that you’re expecting him.”

Though the apprehension curling in Marguerite’s stomach at Chloe’s description had already raised her suspicion, the hostess’s words confirmed it. He was an hour early. Marguerite suppressed a surge of resentment, laced with a bit of uncomfortable panic. She’d wanted time to close up the shop. While she’d wanted the strong foundation of meeting on her own turf, he’d taken that edge by coming when she would have to be something different from what he knew, revealing a side of herself she’d not intended to give to him.

But then, it wasn’t the first time Tyler Winterman had unsettled her. Why had she decided to approach him to help her resolve her dilemma, knowing that about him?

Pride, in a simple word. If she had to do this—and she’d been told it was required—she wouldn’t do it paired with someone whose skills were less than her own.

Her hope was that she wouldn’t have to embrace the task at all, which was the less galling reason she’d invited Tyler here. He might agree with her plan and go along with it. If he didn’t… Well, she preferred not to address that at the moment, especially when a flush swept her skin like the brush of a heron’s wings at the thought, making her heart flutter strangely and the muscles in her thighs tighten.

This was a mistake. One she could not gracefully undo.

Genevieve re-entered, a smile playing around her mouth. “Beware the day Chloe comes in here and compares a customer to a bull. We’ll have to run out there and collect all the china cups before the metaphor becomes reality. She’s right. That one’s a tiger. I feel ten times prettier, just having talked to him.” Gen didn’t know the half of it. Tyler was a Southern gentleman, always rising when a woman entered the room. She’d seen him kiss a woman’s hand as naturally as an English duke. When he was with a woman, he saw to her welfare with the easy authority of a man who believed it was his responsibility to look after her. That essence was what Gen had picked up. Anything female felt enormously delicate in his presence, as if his sweeping glance put her in skirts, corset, décolletage, piled-up hair. Marguerite knew all of that. Felt it and so much more that disturbed her about Tyler.

“Marguerite?” Chloe spoke. “Is this guy some kind of trouble you need me to get rid of? I could tell him you had to leave early, let you slip out the back.” There was no running from this. Maybe that was good. Yes, she decided. It
was
good. Time to face up to it. Destroy the illusion her mind had created that had made her avoid him for nearly two years. Maybe that was her true motive in inviting him here.

6

Ice Queen

Facing this task would uncover the man behind the myth, and then she could firmly place him on the shelf with other bedtime stories.

“This isn’t one of your extreme tests for yourself, is it? Marguerite, you’ve actually gotten paler.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a man, not a leap from an airplane at ten thousand feet.” Though suddenly, the first time she had done the latter seemed less daunting than this situation.

“Need a chair or a whip to face your tiger, then?” Genevieve dispelled the moment with a twinkle in her eyes.

Marguerite rose. “With my two circus clowns in the wings, I feel fully protected from any wild beast.”

“Cute.” Chloe did smile then, though Marguerite felt their attention follow her closely as she moved to the kitchen door.

She looked back at them, summoning the cool, tranquil expression they knew. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Courtesy demanded she acknowledge his presence, even if she couldn’t meet with him for the next thirty minutes. But perhaps courtesy was not what was called for here.

She didn’t notice men the way Chloe did. When she allowed herself to notice them as sexual beings, it was in the boundaries of The Zone, the BDSM club she frequented. It was a part of her life Chloe and Gen knew nothing about. When she chose her submissive for the night, she focused on his eyes, looking for signs of a need that she could not describe in words. And they recognized her as the Mistress that could fill that need. She never lacked for a partner.

But Tyler she noticed, despite the fact he was not a submissive. He was well acknowledged as one of the most powerful and sought-after Masters at The Zone by the female submissives.

Whenever she was close enough to feel the heat of his energy, which seemed to be whenever they were under the same roof, even at a club as large as The Zone, she felt his dangerous edge. The ruthlessness and resolution moved like an intriguing shadow just beneath the surface. Something in his eyes made her feel she could need
him
, and he would take care of those needs, of anything she needed.

As she moved out onto the floor, she saw him right away. He wore tan slacks and a perfectly ironed and fitted cream-colored Oxford shirt, open at the throat. His jacket was hooked on the point of the chair, and he wore brown, polished dress shoes, the casual elegance suiting Tea Leaves.

He didn’t blend though. Instead, he looked like an intrigued, benevolent god who walked among men. He emanated difference and yet something so familiar, as if she knew him like the touch of the sun.

She had tried to describe him in her mind before, as if using words would sculpt a definitive closed boundary around him, keeping the essence of him from touching her 7

Joey W. Hill

identity and altering it somehow. Her failure to do so forced her to acknowledge she was captivated by more than his physical attributes. Her body reacted to his presence, the sound of his voice, his scent. There were times she would pass an area at The Zone, catch that scent, and know he had been there only a moment before.

His physical features were nothing to scoff at, however. Dark hair kept cropped smoothly short on his nape and around his ears. Just enough feathering on top to draw attention to the way it scattered carelessly across his high forehead. He was in his forties, so she suspected if he let it grow longer, the peppering of gray would become silver streaks. A tall man, probably six foot five, his shoulders coaxed a woman’s fingertips to trace their breadth. And then those fingertips might tremble off the edge, slide down the curve of hard biceps, linger on a forearm, find themselves captured by a large hand that looked capable and confident of handling something fragile without damaging it, much as he handled the whimsical sample cup now.

In short, he exuded the confidence of a man in the prime of his life, where the physical and mental abilities were at once together, a man who understood what he wanted. And whatever that was, it created a restless force to him that had the ability to reach out and physically touch her whenever they had the slightest proximity to one another, like now.

She’d never had to deal with him out of The Zone. As she crossed the floor, it suddenly felt as if they were all alone. Her heart rate sped up, choking her with its throb of panic.

Stop. It’s bad enough you have this reaction to him. You don’t know why, which makes it
irrational. Stupid, even. You invited him here. Remember?

With the expression of the pleasant proprietress firmly in place, she moved toward him, giving him a slight nod to let him know she was on her way, a courtesy. However, she stopped to pay attention to her customers, an unspoken reprimand to him for coming before the closing time she’d specified.

“Mrs. Allen.” The lady she addressed was approaching eighty. It was an age at which Marguerite expected a woman could safely allow one’s looks and appearance to lapse but most of her senior citizen clientele were better put together than women half their age. They came to Tea Leaves wearing silk blouses, suits with a tasteful pin on the lapel and sturdy but stylish shoes. Their nails neatly manicured and legs always, always clad in silky hose, never a run to be seen. Sometimes the perfume might be a bit overdone but Marguerite found it comfortable. The smell of older Southern women, the scents of their powder and papery skin mingling with White Diamonds or Chanel #5.

Mrs. Allen smiled at her and clasped her hand, and Marguerite immediately covered it with her other one, savoring the contact with someone she genuinely liked, who eased rather than disturbed, the familiar rather than the unknown. She realized at once her grip might be a bit desperate, for Mrs. Allen looked startled. Marguerite loosened her hold and gave the woman’s knuckles a gentle pat. “After your friends treated you to the Staffordshire set for your birthday, I thought you’d never go back to Brown Betty.”

8

Ice Queen

She nodded at the little brown ball of a teapot, its surface polished to a shine that allowed her to see the impression of her own reflection, distorted and distant. The connection of their hands was magnified, as if it was the truly important part of the picture, and she supposed it was.

“Miss M, you know that was the prettiest thing. And you were right. The same tea could taste entirely different in it. I’m so glad you had us try that new brand of Earl Grey. But me and the Brown Betty…” Mrs. Allen gazed fondly at the squat ball of a teapot. “We have ourselves a standing date each week. We’re a sturdy pair of practical birds is all.”

“Stolid classics,” one of her two friends at the table put in.

This incited a chatter of notes and laughter among the three women that made music in her tearoom. It would join with a similar composition at the next table, then another, the different conversations weaving into a complex arrangement that was a song of sanctuary. Marguerite imagined its energy filling and surrounding her tearoom every day, even spilling onto the street and bringing in new people, those seeking tranquility. She fed off it, used it now, absorbing it in a deep breath as she gave them one last smile and released Mrs. Allen to face the less tranquil element who had entered her domain.

As she passed the last table, he rose, that Southern gentleman she expected. Her height of five ten with an added two inches of heels to bring her to a willowy six feet didn’t faze him. That centered element to him made him perfectly in sync with the atmosphere she strove to provide. It was how he affected her that sent a ripple through the composition, that warning note that a transition in the symphony was about to occur.

He didn’t smile, utter polished platitudes or flash a smile to throw up the barricades of acquaintances. His gaze passed over her leisurely. She was sure he had thoroughly inspected her when she came out from the back, as sure as she was that he was doing it now to be certain she was aware of his scrutiny.

It made no sense at all. Tyler was a sexual Dominant. She was a Dominant. There should be the attraction of mutual admiration but why this? This indefinable, overwhelming feeling?

“Our meeting was for six-fifteen,” she said.

If he was taken aback by her lack of greeting, he did not show it. He remained standing, studying her, and then he did the most remarkable thing, because men did not touch her. Not without her expressed permission, and usually only after they had begged for the privilege.

He reached out and touched the hair she’d artfully arranged along her temple. “I’ve never seen you with a curl.” Inserting his finger into the coil, he caught it with his thumb to stroke it with his forefinger, stretching it out straighter as he did so, then letting it go, watching it bounce back into place. It caused a pleased and warm look on 9