Lips Like Ice

Peggy Barnett

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A woman named Lydia wakes up on an alien world with her memories and emotions stripped away, only to learn she has been given as a living gift—part pet, part potential lover—to a young alien royal known simply as the Prince. As the two are forced into close, unequal proximity, resentment and confusion slowly give way to a complicated, consuming desire that neither can fully control. The story uses its science-fiction setting to dig into questions of consent, gender, and power rather than playing captivity for easy fantasy, and it does not shy away from the uglier consequences of that dynamic before reaching an earned happy ending.