Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

“Nothing. It’s just—it’s cool in here.”

It was, a little, but he suspected there was more to it than that. Was she already regretting what they’d done? No way was he going to let that happen. He drew her closer and scooped her into his arms.

“I know exactly how to warm you up.”

“Zacharias.”

No one had called him that in decades. The fact was, nobody but his old man had ever used it, and then only in moments of a kind of biblical fury. Zach had long ago stopped responding to it. The few strangers who made the mistake of using it when addressing him never made the mistake twice.

“It’s Zach,” he’d say coldly. “Zach Castelianos.”

But it sounded different, coming from the woman he was carrying through the kitchen. It was like a code, one known only to him and to her.

“Zacharias?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Where are we going?”

They’d reached the long hall that led to the stairs. The darkness was absolute, especially now that they’d left the candlelight behind, but Zach knew these rooms as only a man who’d spent much of his life in dark places would.

He broke his stride just long enough to kiss her, to feel her lips part beneath his.

“To bed,” he said in a growl he barely recognized as his own, and she made a little hum of pleasure that almost brought him to his knees.

* * * *

The storm had ended.

There was no roar of thunder, no drumming beat of rain. The rooms they walked through—the steps they climbed—were sheathed in ebony darkness

Jaimie wondered why she’d feared darkness.

Darkness was wonderful. Exciting. It meant the heightening of all her other senses. Taste. Touch. Smell.

The salty tang of Zacharias’s throat against her mouth. The feel of his hard arms around her. The smell of him, hot and male and dangerous.

Her breath caught.

This was all dangerous.

Sex with a man who was little more than a stranger. She wasn’t into hookups or whatever you called meeting someone and falling into bed with him. Actually, sex at all could be dangerous. She was an intelligent woman, a woman of the twenty-first century.

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Maybe the danger was part of the excitement.

Doing something she’d never done before, never imagined doing before..

Never wanted to do before.

There was no reason for him to know it. No reason for him to know he was the first man she’d been with in a very long time.

Now was all that mattered.

This man, carrying her through the night. Laying her down on his bed…and if her heart beat any faster, surely it would explode.

He drew back. She heard the rustle of fabric and then he was on the bed beside her, gathering her into his arms and, God, his shirt was gone.