Zacharias rolled off her. She sobbed, reached for him, and then he was kneeling between her legs, his jeans gone, his body powerful and beautiful as he bent to her, kissed her breasts, her throat, and then he surged forward, penetrated her, filled her, went deep, so deep that for one breathless moment she was afraid she couldn’t take all of him within her but she could, yes, she could, yes, yes, yes…
Zach felt her muscles begin to contract.
He had to let go. Had to come. Had to, had to, had to, but not yet, not yet…
Jaimie cried out, arched against him, and he fought for one final bit of control.
“Look at me,” he said, and she raised her lashes and he saw what he’d needed to see, her hunger, her need, her admission that she wanted this, wanted him, needed him.
She sobbed his name.
It was that—the wild cry, the sound of his name on her lips—that set him free.
A groan tore from his throat, and he threw back his head and gave himself up to the whirlwind, let it sweep them both away.
* * * *
She fell asleep in his arms.
He was the one who usually fell asleep right after sex, but not tonight. He was—hell, what was he? Physically tired, sure. It had been a long, almost an endless day, but sleep was the last thing he wanted.
What he wanted was to hold Jaimie just this way, in the sheltering curve of his arm, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his heart, her leg thrown over his.
Strands of her hair lay across his face. He closed his eyes, turned his head just enough so the strands rubbed lightly over his mouth.
He liked the feel of it. The scent of it. Of her. That combination of the sea and wildflowers, of the night, of woman and, now, the musk of sex.
She sighed in her sleep, shifted her body; he felt the whisper of her breath on his throat.
She was so soft. So delicate and yet, at the same time, strong. Not surprising. Those same words described her as a person. Soft. Delicate. But strong.
He liked that about her. That inner core of determination, the outer layer of femininity.
Zach yawned.
No, he wasn’t tired. He was…relaxed. There were times, after a mission, he’d felt like a coiled spring. Times? Always. He’d come back tightly wound, mind and muscles tense. Over the years, he’d learned how to deal with it. A shower hot enough, long enough to scrub away whatever had happened. Whisky. Sex. Well, at the beginning, sex. More and more, the last couple of years, he’d just wanted to be alone.
Tonight, he’d had it all.
A long, hot shower. Whisky. And sex.
Somehow, it felt different. The sex felt different. Jaimie had been wild in his arms—just thinking about it sent a rush of blood to his loins—but there’d been an innocence to her, as well.
Maybe innocence was the wrong word.
He’d had the sense that she’d never given herself to a man the way she’d given herself to him. Fully. Totally. Nothing held back, not her cries, her pleas, her pleasure.
Foolish, of course.
She just enjoyed sex, and there was nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn’t a woman get pleasure from it? Why shouldn’t she have a talent for making a man feel as if he’d brought her to new peaks?
Zach bit back a groan.
Dammit, he was hard again. So hard that he ached.
He wanted to take her again. Hear her moans again. Feel her legs wrap around his hips. Taste her nipples. Her clitoris.
He shifted his weight. Just a little. Like, yes, like that. He was on his side. She was on her back. He’d kiss her. Nothing more. He wouldn’t wake her, wouldn’t try to make love to her; he’d just kiss her. Lightly. His lips on her hair. Her closed eyelids. Her mouth.
Jesus, her mouth.
“Mmm.”
It was the softest of whispers. He brushed his lips over hers again. This time, her lips parted.
She tasted like honey.
No wonder he’d taken to calling her Honey. The nickname suited her.
Gently, carefully, he fitted his mouth to hers. Kissed her. Stroked the tip of his tongue across the tender flesh on the inside of her bottom lip.
She sighed again, stirred, draped her arms lazily around his neck.
“Zacharias?”
Amazing, what she could do with his name.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.
Liar.
Certainly, he’d meant to wake her. This was what he’d wanted. Needed. Her hands, in his hair. Her body, moving as he came over her and gathered her into his arms. Her legs, wrapping around him.
“Oh,” she sighed, “oh, oh, ohhh…”
Sliding into her was like going home.
She was ready for him. Wet. Hot. Satin. Little sighs whispering into the black night. The stroke of her foot down his leg, then back up. The moan of pleasure as he began to move within her.
“Zacharias.” Her voice broke. “Zacharias. I’ve never—nothing has ever—ohhh. Ohhh…”
The sob tore from her throat. He felt her muscles tighten around him and he slid his hands lower, cupped her bottom, lifted her into the power of his thrusts.
“Never,” she said, “oh, God, never before…”
“No,” he said roughly, “never before. Never like this.”
He drove into her one last time, so deep there was no way to know where he ended and she began. She sank her teeth into his bicep; a long, hot shudder rolled through him. He was close, so close—he felt it happening, the tightening in his scrotum, the rush of adrenaline sweeping through his body.
Hang on, he thought, hang on, hang on…
Her cry rose into the night. He could feel her orgasm taking her, consuming her, and he threw back his head, came apart in her arms as she came apart in his.
She was weeping.
He drew her even closer.
Kissed her tear-filled eyes. Her tender mouth.
She whispered his name and he kissed her again, kissed her with a tenderness he’d never felt before.
This time, when she drifted off to sleep, so did he, still with her held tightly in his embrace.
* * * *
He came awake in a rush, heart racing, pulse pounding, rising out of a disjointed dream of looming mountains, destroyed villages, danger and death.
He was lying on his belly, face buried in the pillows, the linens tangled low on his hips.
Something was wrong. He sensed it. Yeah, but what?
Zach forced himself to remain still. Habits formed by years of waking in places where danger lurked had taught him that there were times survival depended on not making any fast moves.
After a few seconds, he felt his muscles start to uncoil. His heartbeat slowed. Carefully, he opened his eyes, rolled onto his back—
And remembered.
The power outage. The darkness. The woman.
Gone.
He swung his legs to the floor and sat up.
Sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and through the enormous skylight that was centered above the bed. The time display on the clock radio on the nightstand was blinking on and off.
The power was on.
And the bed beside him was empty.
Was Jaimie in the bathroom?
He rose, searched until he found his jeans and stepped into them, zipping up the fly as he padded, barefoot, across the room.
The bathroom was empty. So was his dressing room.
Where was she? Downstairs, in the kitchen? He sighed. Of course. She’d awakened, found that the electricity was on and she’d taken that as an invitation to do what women who spent the night in his bed always did, or at least tried to do. Making breakfast was in the DNA of the female of the species, he thought as he went back into the bathroom, did his thing, washed his hands and, as a last-minute consideration, took a swig of mouthwash, rolled it around his mouth, then spat it into the sink.
Zach turned on the water, looked in the mirror and ran his hands through his hair.
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Too bad that the last thing he ever wanted was that I’m-making-you-bacon-and-eggs bit, that little touch of domesticity that women figured should punctuate a night of sex.
He turned off the water, dried his hands and face and headed for the stairs.
He wasn’t a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of guy. It was just that what women never quite got was that what men wanted after a woman spent the night was either an instant replay and then a short, sweet goodbye, or the short, sweet goodbye all by itself.
A smile curved his lips as he walked down the hall to the kitchen.
Actually, he might just make an exception this morning. Eat whatever Jaimie had put together and then take her back to his bed. It had been a memorable night. Why not add a couple more memories before they said goodbye?
His steps quickened. He could hear her at the sink. Oh, yeah. The typical picture of kitchen-goddess bliss. Glasses rattling. Water running.
Smiling, he walked through the door.
Huh?
The woman at the sink wasn’t a gorgeous, supple blonde. She was a small, overweight brunette wrapped in an apron that damn near swallowed her.
He’d forgotten that his housekeeper would be coming in this morning.
Zach cleared his throat. “Mrs. Halverson?”
Mrs. Halverson swung around, wiping her hands on her apron, beaming at him.
“Welcome back, sir!”
“Thanks. Uh, Mrs. Halverson…”
“What a night, yes? That storm! And then the electric. Poof! But everything is back to normal this morning. Even the subway. It was a little late, yes, but here I am.”
Here she was. And where was Jaimie?
He cleared his throat again. “Ah, Mrs. Halverson. The young lady…”
His housekeeper’s bushy brows rose. “What young lady?”
“There was a—there was a—” Zach frowned. “You haven’t seen anyone since you got here?”
“No, sir. I arrived at seven. A little late because the subway—”
Zach turned, went quickly down the hall and ran up the stairs. This time, he took a better look at the dressing room.
Her clothes—his clothes, actually—were neatly folded, and stacked on a chair.
Her clothes were gone. In their place was a note.
Dear Mr. Castelianos:
I’ll tell Mr. Bengs that you are not interested in selling.
Thank you for everything.
And then initials. JW.
Initials?
His eyes narrowed. It was a note from a stranger to a stranger. She’d spent the better part of the night in his bed and now he was Mr. Castelianos? And what was with that “Thank you for everything?” shit. What was there to thank him for? Shelter? Food?
Sex?
A muscle danced in his cheek.
He read the note again. Big mistake. Two readings only made it twice as bewildering. Bewildering? Forget that. Two readings made it twice as infuriating.
Talk about wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am…
Zach crumpled the note in his hand.
Talk about things that were insulting…
His cellphone beeped. His brows knotted. Where in hell was the effing thing? He patted his pockets. Checked the shelves.
The phone stopped beeping.
Good. He wasn’t in the mood for—
Beep. Beep beep. Beep beep.
“Shit,” he muttered, and strode into the bedroom. Where was it? Not on the dresser, not on the night table.
There it was. On the floor beside the bed. He snatched it up, glared at it, didn’t recognize the number or the caller’s name, and jammed the thing against his ear.
“What?” he barked.
“Mr. Castelianos?”
The voice was male. Smooth. Authoritative.
“Mr. Zacharias Castelianos?”
“Listen, pal, if you’re trying to sell me something—”
“A word to the wise, Mr. Castelianos, and is that not a ridiculous idiom? If you were wise, I would not have to offer you this word.”
Zach took the iPhone from his ear, glared at it, then put it to his ear again.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Steven Young.”
“Well, listen and listen well, Mr. Young. You have the wrong—”
“Jaimie is my fiancée.”
“Huh?”
“The woman with whom you spent the night, sir. My fiancée.”
“I don’t know what in hell you’re talking—” Zach caught his breath. “What?”
“She and I are engaged to be married.”
“Engaged to be—”
“I love her very much. And she loves me. But…” The other man cleared his throat. “But, she has a problem. She is—there is no polite way to say this—she has issues. Sexual issues.”
Zach sank down on the side of the bed.
“Have you taken your meds today, Stevie?”
“I am not going to ask you what you and my fiancée did last night, Mr. Castelianos. What I will ask is your assurance that you will not see her again.”
Zach unfolded the note. Read it a third time.
Thank you for everything.
“You are undoubtedly puzzled, Mr. Castelianos.”
Zach barked a laugh.
“I know, I know. She gives the appearance of being, how shall I put this? Of being sexually unsophisticated. You see, she is in treatment. She has come a long way, with the help of her psychotherapist and me. I am not saying anything happened between you last night, sir, but if anything did… Well, she is surely trying to put it out of her head this morning.” A long, gusty sigh. “My Jaimie is very good at denial.”
Denial.
Zach put his hand to his forehead. He’d slept with a woman who had psychosexual problems. Holy shit.
“How did you get this number, Mister…Mister…”
“Young. Steven Young.” Another gusty sigh. “My beloved Jaimie gave it to me, of course. She phoned me early this morning. You must have been sleeping. She told me she’d made a terrible mistake and asked me to forgive her. She said she was on her way home and—”
Zach disconnected.
He fell back on the bed and stared at the skylight.
Years ago, he’d slept with a Thai hooker. He hadn’t known she was a hooker; he’d been painfully young, a long way from home, lonely as only a man, a boy, really, in a strange land among strange customs can be.
The girl—pretty and sweet—had come up to him in a crowded club. She’d spoken very little English, but that was more than he could speak in Thai. She’d let him hold her hand; after a while, she’d let him kiss her. Then she’d taken him with her to what he’d thought was her home.
“Must be very quiet,” she’d whispered, and he’d made love to her there, in a tiny room that smelled of incense and fish, and it was only afterward, when she held out her hand and he looked baffled and she spat what even he knew was an ugly word, that he’d realized he’d been with a whore.
The woman he’d been with last night was not a whore.
She was a liar.
An actress.
She’d played the scene well, convinced him she’d been overcome by passion, passion for him, for him…
“Fuck,” he snarled, and shot to his feet.
The bed smelled of sex. Of her. Of a man made to look like a fool.
Zach grabbed the pillows. Stripped off the cases. Threw them on the floor. Tore off the blanket. The sheets. Bundled everything together and carried them down the stairs to the laundry room just off the kitchen.
Mrs. Halverson looked at him in surprise.
“Here, sir,” she said. “I’ll take care of—“
He motioned her aside, tossed everything in the washer, slapped open cupboard doors until he found the detergent, poured some into the machine and turned it on.
Then he went back upstairs, showered and scrubbed until his skin felt raw.
And told himself, as he pulled on clean clothes,
that he was an asshole for letting something like this bother him.
The other guy, Young, was the one who’d been made a fool of, not him.
Hell, when you came down to it, he’d had a great night. A terrific night. Fantastic sex, not once, not twice, but three times.
Nothing about this should bother him.
Except, it did.
He tucked his wallet into his jeans. Scooped up his keys. Headed down the stairs. Called the garage, told them to have his the Porsche ready.
“Sir,” Mrs. Halverson said, as he headed for the elevator. She had a small, cream-colored card in her outstretched hand. “I found this business card in the—”
“Toss it,” Zach said, and stepped into the elevator.
Five minutes later, a kid who looked no more than fifteen delivered the car. Zach handed him a fifty, climbed behind the wheel and took off.
Three hours and a couple of hundred miles later, he headed back to the city across the George Washington Bridge.
He was calm. Collected. Cool. Why wouldn’t he be? Jaimie Something Or Other was nothing but a memory.
Or she would be, Zach thought, as he took out his iPhone and clicked through his contact list. The day was still young—and women were as plentiful as the autumn leaves falling from the trees in Central Park, especially when you were a rich, powerful bachelor with the entire city as your canvas.
There was only one problem.
Almost a month later, Zach had gone through nearly a dozen women listed in his cell phone, gone through them in the sense that he’d taken them to dinner, to the theater, to the dull-as-dishwater openings of art gallery showings in Soho and uptown museum exhibits.
The women were bright. Beautiful. And, ultimately, completely bewildered when he took them to their doors, politely refused coffee or brandy, dropped chaste kisses on their expectant faces…
And went home.
He was living a life as celibate as a monk’s.
Except in the middle of the night when he lay in his bed, alone, and dreamed of the hours he’d spent with a stranger named Jaimie in his arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Indian summer gave way, inevitably, to fall.
Jaimie had always been what her sisters teasingly called a Fall Fan, but it was true. Even as a kid, she’d loved autumn. The brilliance of the falling leaves, the crisp mornings and clear, star-shot nights—it was, she’d always thought, the most perfect time of year, culminating in that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving.
Jaimie: Fire and Ice Page 9