He climbs up on top of her and pushes the ice cube up her stomach. "Perhaps if I put you on ice," he says, the deep snarling purr of a lazy tiger, "I could keep you around forever."

"You'd like that." She laughs, shivering a bit as he takes the ice on a spiraling lap or two around the base of her breasts, drawing a figure eight and warming the chilly trail with his tongue. "Keep me in your little cage and thaw me out for a little nookie once in a while."

He reaches between her legs and strokes. She whines a little. "I'd rather," he says against her ear now, "think of you as my ice queen. Frozen and perfect, always beautiful."

"You mean dead."

He feigns hurt. "Never." He pushes the fast-shrinking cube into her mouth and presses his own mouth to hers, sipping cool water from her lips like the fountain of youth. "Dead is a relative term, in any event." His fingers slide into her and she moans, hips rising. "Now that you've seen me live forever, I'm sure you can do it as well."

It doesn't work that way and he knows it. The girl who can do anything and the man who's seen everything. But he's never seen anything like her, and the fact that she can't do this one thing makes him want to stuff his own heart in a block of ice.