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Leila put down the bottle with a clatter and reached for another bottle. ‘This might be more appropriate, then. It’s got fruity top notes, but a woody, musky base.’
He cocked his head and said consideringly, ‘It’s so hard to know unless you can smell it.’
Leila’s shirt felt too tight. She wanted to undo a top button. What was wrong with her?
She turned back to the counter and took a smelling strip out of a jar, ready to spray it so that he could smell it. And go. She wanted him gone. He was too disturbing to her usually very placid equilibrium.
But before she could spray, a large hand wrapped around her arm, stopping her.
Heat zinged straight to her belly. She looked up at him.
‘Not on a piece of paper. I think you’d agree that a scent has to be on the skin to be best presented?’
Feeling slightly drugged and stupid, Leila said, ‘It’s a woman’s scent.’
He cocked a brow again. ‘So spray some on your wrist and I’ll smell it.’
The shock that reverberated through Leila was as if he’d just said Take off all your clothes, please.
She had to struggle to compose herself, get a grip. She’d often sprayed perfume on her own skin so that someone could get a fuller sense of it. But this man had made the request sound almost indecent.
Praying that her hand wouldn’t shake, Leila took the top off the bottle and pulled up her sleeve to spray some of the scent. When the liquid hit the underside of her wrist she shivered slightly. It felt absurdly sensual all of a sudden.
Alix Saint Croix still had a hand wrapped around her arm and no
w he moved it down to take the back of her hand in his, wrapping long fingers around hers. He moved his head down to smell the perfume, his dark head coming close to her breast.
But he kept his eyes on her, and from this close she could see lighter flecks of grey, like silver mercury. Leila’s breath stopped when she felt his breath feather along her skin. Those lips were far too close to the centre of her palm, which was clammy.
He seemed to consider the scent until Leila’s nerves twanged painfully. Her belly was a contracted ball of nerves.
A movement over his head caught her eye and she saw a sleek, tall blonde emerge from the back of the car with a phone clamped to her ear. She was wearing an indecently tight, slinky dress and a ridiculously ineffectual jacket for the cool autumn weather.
He must have picked up on her distraction and straightened to look out of the window too. Leila noticed a tension come into his body as his girlfriend—mistress—saw him and gesticulated with clear irritation, all while still talking on the phone.
‘Your...er...mistress is waiting for you.’ Leila’s voice felt scratchy.
He still had his hand wrapped around hers and now let her go. Leila tucked it well out of reach.
He morphed before her eyes into someone much cooler, indecipherable. Perversely, it didn’t comfort her.
‘I’ll take it.’
Leila blinked at him.
‘The perfume,’ he expanded, and for a moment a glint of what they’d just shared made his eyes flash.
Leila jerked into action. ‘Of course. It’ll only take me a moment to package it up.’
She moved to get a bag and paper and quickly and inexpertly packaged up the perfume, losing all of her customary cool. When she had it ready she handed it over and avoided his eye. A wad of cash landed on the counter but Leila wasn’t about to check it.
And then, without another word, he turned around and strode out again, catching his...whatever she was...by the arm and hustling her back into the car.
His scent lingered on the air behind him, and in a very delayed reaction Leila assimilated the various components with an expertise that was like a sixth sense—along with the realisation that his scent had impacted on her as soon as he’d walked in, on a level that wasn’t rational. Someplace else. Somewhere she wasn’t used to scents impacting.
It was a visceral reaction. Primal. His scent was clean, with a hint of something very male that most certainly hadn’t come out of a bottle. The kind of evocative scent that would make someone a fortune if they could bottle it: the pure essence of a virile male in his prime. Earthy. Musky.
A pulse between Leila’s legs throbbed and she pressed her thighs together, horrified.
