Nothing Like Love

by Abigail Strom

  His mouth was hard and demanding and his hands were everywhere—in her hair, framing her face, on her shoulders, on her breasts.

  He’d made her come on the plane, but this was the first time he’d touched her breasts. He was rough, palming her and then pinching her nipples until she cried out.

  He dragged his mouth from hers. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Yes. Don’t stop.”

  His eyes burned into hers. “I’m not going to. I’m not stopping for phone calls, jilted brides, or earthquakes.” He moved his hands down to her hips and pulled her against him. “Come upstairs with me.”

  The erection against her stomach was hot and hard and oh, so promising. “Upstairs? What do you mean?”

  “This place isn’t just a pub, it’s a hotel. And I’ve got a room for the night.”

  “But the castle’s just ten minutes away. Why did you get a hotel room?”

  “I needed a break from—” He hesitated.

  She bit her lip. “From me?”

  He shook his head. “Not just you. Everything.”

  “Isabelle?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Do you want me to say you were right about her? Fine. You were right about her.”

  “You sound pissed.”

  His hands on her hips tightened. “I am,” he said in a low voice. “I’m pissed at you for being right about Isabelle, and I’m pissed at you for having a drink with another man. But most of all I’m pissed because I can’t stop thinking about you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for weeks, and if I don’t get you out of my bloody system, I’m going to explode.”

  She closed her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like a good reason to have sex.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Let’s have sex for bad, stupid reasons. I want to wreck you, Simone—and I don’t care if you wreck me.”

  And then, so suddenly she gasped, he scooped her up into his arms and strode away.

  She should protest. She should struggle. She should—she should—

  She gripped his shirt in her hands and buried her face in his chest.

  A door opened and they were going upstairs. Another door opened and slammed shut behind them.

  And then Zach laid her down on a bed and covered her body with his.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He’d never wanted a woman this much. He’d never been this hard. They’d had so many near misses that he started taking off her clothes almost desperately, as though something might happen to snatch her away from him.

  And then, after he’d pulled off her T-shirt and bra and slid her skirt and panties down her legs, he stopped.

  “What is it?” Simone asked, looking up at him. Her face was flushed and she was so beautiful she took his breath away.

  “I just want to look at you.”

  She was naked except for her leather boots, and her body was as perfect as he’d always imagined.

  She was as rare and precious as one of her own works of art. Zach ran his hands down her body from her collarbones to her hips, marveling at the texture of her skin, the subtle geometry of her curves, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

  He unzipped her boots and let them fall to the floor. Then—

  “A minute ago you were ripping my clothes off. Now you’re touching me like I’m made of glass.”

  He looked at her. Her eyes, her face, her smile, felt so much like home that he was shaken. How was it possible they’d only known each other two months?

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and when she shook her head in negation he leaned closer. “You think you can get out of hearing the truth when I’ve finally got you in my bed? Simone Oliver, you’re—”

  She slid her arms around his neck, pulled herself up to meet him, and pressed her mouth to his.

  He knew it was a ploy to avoid hearing the truth about herself, but he was too turned on to care.

  “Clothes. Off,” she said when they came up for air.

  She rose up on her elbows to watch as he pulled off his shirt and shed his pants.

  “Wow,” she said, and there was a catch in her voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . you’re the beautiful one, Zach. You’re so beautiful I’m not sure this is real.”

  He stretched himself out beside her and kissed her neck. “It’s real,” he murmured. “And I’m going to spend the rest of the night convincing you of that fact.”

  But when he started kissing his way down her body, she sat up.

  “No,” she said.

  He sat up, too. “No?”

  “No. We did me on the plane, remember?”

  “I have a vague recollection.”

  “Well, now it’s my turn.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down on the bed. Then she took him in her hand and in her mouth.

  Jesus.

  His hands fisted in the sheets as her tongue swirled around his head. He opened his eyes to watch, and the combination of her ethereal beauty and earthy sexuality was just too damn much.

  He reached down and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  She looked up at him, confused. “You don’t want to come?”

  “Hell, yes. But I want to come inside you.”

  She smiled. “We’ve got all night, Zach. There’ll be time for that, too.”

  Hearing her say they had time made him remember that they really didn’t.

  They only had two weeks. After that, Simone would go back to New York and he would go back to London.

  He pulled Simone down on top of him and then flipped them over. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them against the bed, and even though he was twice as big as she was and had her trapped beneath him, it felt like she was slipping away.

  “You’re mine,” he said, and when he heard the words come out of his mouth—so primal, so possessive, so un-English—he knew he was in trouble.

  Simone’s eyes widened, and for a moment he thought he’d scared her off. But when she smiled it was obvious she thought it was just sex talk.

  “I’m yours,” she said. “I’m on the pill and I’m healthy. So what are you going to do with me?”

  I didn’t mean it like that, he wanted to say. I meant that you’re my woman and I’m your man. I meant you’re mine forever.

  But he knew he couldn’t say that.

  So instead, he put her arms over her head and parted her legs with his thigh. When he felt how wet she was, he gripped her wrists hard and thrust inside her to the hilt.

  Simone gasped and threw her head back, and the sight of her writhing beneath him destroyed what little restraint he had left.

  He drove into her like an animal, hard and fast and savage. Simone wrapped her legs around his waist and met him thrust for thrust. He kissed her mouth and bit her neck, and then he felt her tightening around him.

  He almost came then, but he managed to hold back until Simone cried out with her orgasm. Only then did he let himself go, pulsing inside her as she arched up against him.

  “You’re mine,” he grated out, knowing she didn’t understand. “You’re mine.” He shuddered with his release and then collapsed on top of her, feeling her heart thundering against his.

  He knew he was too heavy for her but he couldn’t stand for one inch of his skin to be separated from one inch of hers. He rolled them onto their sides and gathered her close, and when she made a little sound of pleasure against his chest, he held her tighter.

  When Simone woke up, it was dark. She blinked, disoriented, until she registered the warm, masculine body behind her.

  She closed her eyes again, smiled, and snuggled back against Zach.

  “Hey,” he murmured in her ear, running his hand down her bare arm.

  Goosebumps prickled her skin. “Hey.”


  He kissed the back of her neck. “You’re the perfect size for me. You know that?” He wrapped his arms around her. “See how you fit right here?”

  She wriggled around to face him, kissing his chest. “You’re the perfect size for me, too.”

  He slid a hand into her hair. “I never want to get out of this bed.”

  “I know what you mean. But it’s the middle of the night, so—”

  Then she caught a glimpse of pale sky out the window, between the heavy drapes.

  She rolled to the edge of the bed, grabbed her purse from the floor, and took out her phone.

  “It’s seven in the morning,” she said. “How did it get to be seven in the morning?”

  She started to get up and he grabbed her hand.

  “‘Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.

  It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

  That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.

  Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.’”

  Even though he was quoting from Romeo and Juliet, hearing Zach call her love made her shiver.

  To cover her reaction, she spoke the next lines in the scene.

  “‘It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

  No nightingale.’”

  He gave a sharp tug on her hand, and she tumbled back into bed, laughing as he pinned her wrists beside her head.

  “It was the nightingale,” he whispered, and then he gave her the kind of kiss that made a girl forget everything else.

  But life eventually has to go on. After a long and luxurious moment, Simone rolled away from Zach and got out of bed.

  “We have tech rehearsal at nine,” she reminded him. “I have to go back to the castle and change. And if I don’t get a cup of coffee soon, my day and the day of anyone whose life touches mine will go very, very badly.”

  Zach was staying in the east wing while she was in the west. After he drove them back to the castle, they stole a quick good-bye kiss and took separate walks of shame back to their rooms.

  Except for Glen and Bruce, out for a morning stroll, no one saw her. Simone waved at Glen and then hurried inside, grateful for the empty halls as she made her way to her turret room with its still-made bed.

  Tech rehearsal went smoothly, all things considered—and in spite of the fact that it felt like she was wearing a big neon sign announcing that she’d had sex with Zach Hammond last night.

  She might not be wearing a neon sign, but her smile—especially when she looked at Zach—eventually gave her away.

  Norbert confronted her backstage. “If you try to tell me you didn’t hook up with Zach last night, I will never speak to you again.”

  She didn’t have the will to deny it. Norbert had known her too long.

  She pressed cool palms to her hot cheeks. “Has anyone else figured it out?”

  “Probably. The two of you look like an ad for a wedding chapel.”

  Nothing else that day had been able to fade her smile, but that did it.

  “Not a wedding chapel. A dirty weekend, maybe.”

  Norbert frowned at her. “That’s not sex in Zach’s eyes, sweetie. It’s love.”

  She pressed a hand against the sudden knot in her stomach.

  “Come on, Norbert. You and I are supposed to be the last of the unromantics. It might be more than sex, but it’s less than love. Call it an intense like.”

  Norbert looked over at Zach, who was up on a ladder hanging one of the silk screens from the fairy wood set.

  “A director who’s not afraid to work with his hands. I’m telling you, Simone—you and I might be products of the modern world, but he’s not. Zach Hammond is an old-fashioned man. And judging by the way he looks at you, what he’s feeling is old-fashioned, too.”

  After rehearsal, she was about to get into Quentin’s car when Zach caught up with her.

  “How about coming with me, instead? There’s something I’d like to show you.”

  After her unsettling conversation with Norbert, Simone had decided she needed some time away from Zach. Maybe tonight she’d hang out with the cast or wander around the castle grounds on her own.

  But looking up at him now, she realized she was fooling herself. She had two weeks left with this man, and she wasn’t going to spend one minute away from him that she didn’t have to.

  So she told Quentin and Amy she’d see them later and got into Zach’s car instead.

  He wouldn’t tell her their destination, and as they drove farther away from civilization and deeper into the countryside, she couldn’t imagine where they were going. There were no buildings in sight.

  Then he pulled off the narrow lane into a small, empty parking lot.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s go see something that people made six thousand years ago.”

  They walked over a field of limestone rock formations, grass, and wildflowers. The wind blew Simone’s hair into her eyes, and she held it back with one hand, hanging on to Zach with the other.

  When she first caught a glimpse of the tomb, it didn’t seem that spectacular—just two tall portal stones covered by an immense single capstone. But when they were standing close beside it, just outside the rope enclosure, a sudden shiver went through her.

  People six thousand years ago had lived and loved and made things, and built this tomb to bury their dead.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” Zach asked.

  She turned to glance at him, struck by the way the setting sun limned his profile in gold. “Feel what?”

  “The passage of time.”

  She nodded, looking back at the tomb. “I was just thinking that America is a horizontal culture.”

  “Horizontal?”

  She groped for words to explain what she meant. “We’re founded on exploration. Manifest destiny, you know? We’re not rooted where we are; we’re rooted in where we want to go . . . which is always someplace else. But here . . .” She gestured around the wild, beautiful landscape. “If you’re Irish, you know your ancestors have lived here for thousands and thousands of years. So it’s a vertical culture. Any place you go in Ireland there are layers of time and history . . . your own family’s history.”

  Zach nodded thoughtfully. “Horizontal and vertical.” He was still holding her hand, and now he squeezed it. “You have an original mind, Simone. I like the way you think about things.”

  She grinned at him. “You want to know what I like about you?”

  “Sure.”

  She turned to face him and ran her hands down his hard, sculpted chest. “Your body.”

  He looked so impossibly gorgeous as he smiled down at her, his brown hair gilded by the setting sun and his blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. His face was so handsome, his body so perfect . . .

  “So this is just a physical thing for you, huh?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  He caught her hands against his chest. “I don’t believe you. I think you like the whole package. My heart, my mind . . . and my body.”

  She smiled up at him. “It would be disrespectful to kiss you at a burial site. Let’s go back to the car.”

  She did more than kiss him in the car. Overwhelmed by feelings she couldn’t express, kissing was not enough.

  Thank God for skirts.

  She was in his lap in the passenger seat when she felt his erection pressing against her. She broke their kiss, scooched back enough to get at his zipper, and lowered it.

  Zach inhaled sharply. “Jesus.”

  She smiled into his eyes. Then she rose up enough to push her panties to the side and lower herself down on top of him.

  Oh, God.

  She let her head fall against his shoulder, unable to move for a moment. The feel of him inside her was so perfect she became boneless, speechless, defenseless. />
  But it was okay that she couldn’t move, because Zach moved for her. He gripped her hips and lifted her up before letting her fall, lifting her up and letting her fall . . .

  As her excitement built she regained muscle control. That was when Zach started to lose his, his head thrown back against the seat and his face taut with ecstasy.

  He came just before she did and the expression on his face pushed her over the edge. They cried out together as waves of release crashed over them, and then Zach took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  His kiss undid her as much as the orgasm had. When she finally came up for air, she knew the awful truth.

  She was in love.

  It was overflowing inside her and she was terrified it might spill out. So she admitted to the safest part of what she was feeling.

  “I love being in Ireland,” she said, her voice trembling a little.

  Zach kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and her lips.

  “So do I.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next twelve days went by much too quickly, but Zach managed to persuade Simone to stay one more week with him.

  The company flew back to the States after their last performance, and then it was just the two of them. During the day they toured the countryside; at night they made love for hours.

  By the end of the third day Zach could hardly keep the words from coming out of his mouth.

  I love you.

  I love you, Simone.

  Simone, I love you.

  “What?” she asked one night as they lay in bed. The moon, almost full, shone through the open window and onto her face.

  Don’t say it, he told himself.

  “Nothing,” he said out loud.

  But later on, after she’d fallen asleep in his arms, he indulged in the impossible fantasy that had begun to haunt his dreams.

  A life with Simone after next week.

  If the obstacles had only been logistical, he might have seen a way past them. But while he could imagine bridging the ocean that lay between them, emotional distance was harder to cross.