A Wish Upon Jasmine

by Laura Florand

  She swallowed and took a step back, color deepening.

  Well…well. He removed that second cufflink and set it beside the other with a little click.

  She stared at his wrist. Then her gaze tracked up his torso helplessly until she reached the open collar, when she closed her eyes tightly. She swallowed again.

  At this point, that night, he’d abandoned his cufflinks on the dresser and moved toward her, running his hands down her arms. I’ve got you, you know. Thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your wishing.

  Now he fingered his watch. She could pawn that to buy a car. A nice car. His father had given it to him when he orchestrated his first smooth takeover of a dangerous Rosier SA rival.

  He unfastened the band.

  “Don’t!” she said, strangled.

  “I don’t want to cheat you.” His voice came out silky and a little mean. You’re always the mean one, Damien. Matt, pissed off and growling carelessly that way he did, as if his damn temper bounced off his cousins. Machiavellian.

  “Are you kidding me?” Her breasts were shifting in beautiful little pants, her face flushed and panicked. “That’s worth way more than a bottle of Spoiled Brat! For something like that, I’d have to make you your own custom perfume.”

  His fingers froze on the watch, as the fantasy of it caught him—her making a scent for him, testing it on his skin to see how it blended with his natural scents. The time it took to do something like that properly, as she tested it through top notes, middle notes, bottom notes to make sure it was perfect for him all the way through…time in this shop, under her hands, fulfilling whatever fantasy she made of him.

  And then his gut clenched around the reality. God knew what perfume she’d make to represent him. Something mean. Machiavellian. Some masculine variant of Spoiled Brat, maybe. Maybe she’d call it Assassin. The kind of perfume a woman made for a guy whose apartment she snuck out of while he was still asleep, and to whom she spoke with arch, light, flippant indifference ever after, to make sure he knew that nothing of value had been offered by her that night.

  And nothing of value received by her either.

  He swallowed down the tightness in his throat. And then just ripped the watch off, making himself do it.

  He set the watch down in the middle of the counter by the cufflinks, dark, brushed titanium, a gauntlet thrown down.

  You can’t break me, that watch said.

  Or did it say, I yield.

  ***

  The dark titanium band curled on top of the counter amid those bottles of scents. All the hair on Jess’s body lifted. She couldn’t breathe. Shallow sips of air got stuck in the top of her lungs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Not enough?” His hands shifted to the lapels of his coat. “This is Dior, hand-tailored. Will that be enough?” He held her eyes, his glittering with…anger? Why would he be angry? “How much of me are you worth?”

  All of you, that stupid hope in its bottle tried to whisper. She shoved it back down. Of course he did not think she was worth all of him. That was her fantasy. But she got to decide her own worth, and if he couldn’t pay it that didn’t mean she had to give herself to him cheaply. Not again. She firmed her chin. “More than that.”

  He peeled off the coat, his eyes locked on hers. She couldn’t hold his gaze. Her own wanted to dart all over the place—his chest, his shoulders in that fine white shirt, the lean waist and flat stomach that she remembered touching—

  The coat draped over the counter, beside the watch.

  All the scents in the shop exploded in her brain like fireworks, leaving nothing but colors and longing. “Stop!”

  He reached for his cuff. “Tell me,” that mean, velvet panther’s purr, “when I’ve bid high enough.”

  “None of that’s worth any of me!”

  Deft, tan, masculine fingers rolled up his cuff to reveal half his forearm.

  “Then what’s worth you, Jess?” That dangerously sensual menace, like the soft pad of a panther’s feet as it backed a mouse into a corner.

  “A heart!” she said wildly. His fingers stilled on his cuff. His eyes lifted suddenly to hers, the sea just before dawn.

  Oh, God, what had she just admitted about her romantic, wistful insides? She yanked herself back from the counter. “Nothing you can give!”

  He didn’t move a muscle. Not the fingers on his cuff, not the taut, strong forearm half-revealed, not even a shift of his chest to breathe. And then the fine muscles at the corners of his lips pressed down, revealing again the tiny lines he was too young for, and he dropped his left arm.

  “Well, obviously not if you want a heart,” he said sardonically. “You’re sure you wouldn’t accept a more practical form of currency for one of your perfumes? Hard to deposit a heart in a business account.”

  Oh.

  Oh, they were talking about…a perfume. How had she gotten so confused as to think they were talking about her? About him? Her face flamed.

  Daddy, make me a baby star.

  Daddy, make me a dragon’s call.

  “They are worth that, though,” she murmured wistfully.

  “What?”

  “Somebody’s heart,” she said, hopelessly. “A real perfume is.” A perfume made out of the perfumer’s own heart.

  But that kind of exchange didn’t work, as her poet-perfumer of a father had learned, as work of his art after work of art got eaten up by accountants in the designer houses or floundered and failed to attract any but a niche group of buyers once released. Nobody wanted to give their hearts. They wanted Spoiled Brat—their own scent version of a selfie. Look at me! It’s all about me! Love me, but don’t expect me to ever turn this camera around and point it at you.

  “Well. Since I obviously don’t have one of those,” Damien said with a dark, vicious irony, “perhaps we could agree on some other price.”

  “For…a perfume?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A custom perfume…from me?” She didn’t mean to put that incredulous emphasis on me, but…well, Spoiled Brat had permanently condemned her in the eyes of most perfumers. Like a top chef who launched a frozen food line. The nose who had made Spoiled Brat was not exactly the kind of nose the financial elite of the world went to for their unique, classy, bespoke perfume. Heads of marketing, on the other hand, practically kissed the air every time her name was mentioned.

  Of course, he was the moneyman. And Spoiled Brat made money.

  “Yes.” He rolled up his right cuff.

  God, she wished he would quit undressing. Or maybe just…start on the buttons running down his chest. Undo them, like he had that night, one…by one…by one…

  “To sell?”

  “Oh, no.” The danger and power of him filled the room like a scent that obscured all the others. “Only for me.”

  She blinked down at the cufflinks, watch, and coat on the counter. She didn’t even know what they were worth. Twenty thousand? Probably a fair price for a custom, unique perfume from a top perfumer.

  Which she of course was. Spoiled Brat had hit number two, no matter how much that infuriated the academy of good taste.

  She’d had such a hope of breaking out of the Spoiled Brat role with the start-up niche perfume company she’d helped found with quixotic actress Tara Lee, but then…well, he’d happened to that dream. Just snatched it right up without a single person even needing to talk to her about it, leaving her with ten percent of the shares in a start-up that had just been swallowed whole by one of the major fragrance companies. Exactly what she’d been trying to get away from.

  “Shall I write you a check?” Damien said.

  “No.” She put her hand over the items. “No. I’ll take these.”

  Exactly what she’d gotten from him the last time. The removal of a few items of clothing for the chance to touch him, while she, like an idiot, had thought they were reaching for each other’s hearts.

  Her hand closed around the titanium watch, and she picked it
up. Scratchproof sapphire crystal, a black sapphire for the crown, dark gray titanium case and band. Unbreakable. Impenetrable. Merciless.

  It would be a good reminder to her, when dealing with him.

  “Who gave you this?” she asked ironically. “Your last model girlfriend?” Good God, it was a Cartier. Had her guess for the worth of the items placed on the counter been a full zero too low?

  “My father. On behalf of the family.” He held out his upturned wrist.

  Chapter 5

  That bare wrist made jitters grow in her stomach and then stretch out in leaping pulses through her body as if she’d drunk far too much caffeine. She tried to breathe deep, but she couldn’t get the jitters to calm down. Strong wrist, upturned to offer its most vulnerable point to her. Strong masculine hand, closed against her, in a fist. White sleeve turned back.

  The watch that would have made any attack bounce off that wrist now lay in her hand, abandoned armor.

  He’d taken it off once before for her. Forgotten on his wrist, it had caught in her hair, and he’d disentangled it and tossed it to the side of the bed as if it was worthless, compared to the moment he was caught in. He’d stroked his fingers through her hair to ease the sting from the pull of the watch, and kissed her in this tender, intense apology that had felt so…precious…

  She swallowed, setting her jaw against the urge to sink her head into her hands and cry. Exactly as she had done after she had seen him with that model, after she had learned of his takeover of her dream company, after she’d wanted to confide in her father that she’d met a guy but was afraid of getting hurt…and hadn’t been able to confide in him, because he was dying. Her wish had failed, and all the stars in all the world were winking out, leaving nothing but the harsh lights of the city and her standing looking down at them, all alone.

  God, it had been such a bad time.

  “What, do you expect me to come up with something perfect for you on the spot?” she demanded.

  “You did before.”

  Her gaze flew to his. Unbelievably, his lashes lowered, black veiling his eyes. His jaw was so hard.

  He couldn’t possibly be talking about a perfume, since she’d never worked for Rosier SA.

  She didn’t know what else he could be talking about. Not…well, not her. That didn’t make any sense at all.

  Even if he had felt perfect to her. Utterly, vulnerably, heartbreakingly perfect, so perfect she’d been scared of how brutal the morning after might be and run away.

  You didn’t want the prince to wake up and be, well…the vice president and official assassin of one of the major fragrance companies of the world, in charge of expanding empire and cutting down opposition at any cost, so entitled and so hardened that he hooked up with a new model or actress at every event he went to. In short, she definitely didn’t want to wake up to find out her night prince was him.

  Leaving him sleeping had let her keep her illusions for, oh, nearly twelve hours more.

  Like letting a doctor’s call go to voicemail because if she could just not answer, she could pretend for a few more hours that the world was what she wanted it to be.

  “You’re the nose,” Damien said dryly. “I’m just the man who makes money off people like you. What do you think the first step should be?”

  Her first step should…should probably be to touch that wrist. To smell his skin. To close her eyes and relax her brain and let herself sink into him—into who he was and who he wanted to be to the world. To understand both the deepest heart of him and the face of himself he preferred to show, and to make from that understanding the perfect blend that would allow him both to be true to himself and yet only give what he chose of himself to the whole wide world.

  God, that sounded dangerous.

  “Put your wrist down,” she snapped. “You make me feel like a damn vampire.” Except…not. He made her want to lower her mouth to his wrist and…not bite. Not take. Instead of fangs, she wanted to stroke that vulnerable, strong wrist with the softness of her lips, wanted to close her eyes into the sensation of his skin against hers, wanted to steal a little taste with her tongue…

  Heat burned in her cheeks and in her breasts.

  “You don’t need to revisit my scent, then?” Damien lowered his hand. Ruthless eyes locked with hers. “You can work with it from memory?”

  She glared at him. “No.” Yes. Her face was so pitifully hot, exposing all her vulnerability to him. “It’s not as if you’re going to wear it on your wrist and wave it around for everyone to smell.” Women did that, so desperate to change what the world thought of them by the perfume they sprayed on their wrists.

  “Suit yourself.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. And she felt bereft, as if she’d just lost a precious chance. “I want you to fail.”

  What? Her spine straightened against the words, and she didn’t even know what he was talking about yet.

  His mouth curved faintly, a smile that could strip a woman naked and toss her out in the snow. “You think you deserve this shop? In my family since the Renaissance? Where one of the greatest fragrance dynasties on the planet was founded? Just because your father told you poor-pitiful-me stories about how tough it is to make it in our world? Then you’d better show me what you can do. Before I have you kicked out of this shop and out of this town so fast your head will spin.”

  His tone froze her skin. Her heart panicked, as if she’d just broken through ice and plunged into the deathly cold beneath the surface. When she’d just been twirling in her skates across the surface. Oh, yes, that was why he didn’t have ice-blue eyes. Because that gray-green water under the ice was much, much more deadly.

  Damien Rosier.

  She’d bought that reputation of his. She’d believed it. She’d pulled back from him and his business takeovers and different-model-a-night life, and she’d thrown up every barrier she could to protect herself. But she hadn’t realized that somewhere, deep down, she still believed in that dream of his gentleness and sweetness.

  Because that was all that she herself had truly known.

  “You think I can’t come up with a scent for you?” she asked between her teeth. “That’s why you asked? So you could set me up?”

  His eyes were so cold, uninterested. He ran his gaze over her, checking for weak spots and finding so many she bored him. It was barely worth his time to take her out.

  “I made the number two perfume when I was only twenty-four years old. And it’s still at number three!”

  He shrugged, this panther’s move of God, this mouse is dull. “That’s why I bought out your little start-up. So I could have you and you could make that kind of fortune for us.”

  Yeah. Shutting off her bright, daydreaming path away from her reputation, ending her great, financial gamble that was supposed to allow her to make art again, perfumes that made her proud, that made her happy. Baby stars.

  He’d stolen that from her.

  And hell. Was it really her name that had attracted the sharks like blood would and brought that dream of theirs down?

  “I sold my shares! You don’t own me!”

  “So you got away.” He opened one hand, a glimpse of calluses through the elegance. “And now you’re right here.” He didn’t have to add what rang through every street in the town and echoed in the valleys all around: In Grasse. In the heart of my power.

  Her fists clenched. Ghosts of her father danced in her head—how he’d had to leave Grasse to even have a chance of finding a place in the perfume world when he wasn’t part of a family like the Rosiers, how he’d always felt like an exile.

  “And if you want to stay here,” Damien said, with the bored ease of a man who knew she didn’t stand a chance against him, “then you have to make a scent that I would wear.” His lips curled faintly, pure disdain. “When you don’t even know your art well enough to smell my skin.”

  She reached across the counter to grab his wrist in both hands and yank it to her.

  He locked his arm, makin
g it clear that if he didn’t want to give her a second chance at his wrist, then she wouldn’t get one. And then he relaxed his muscles and let her pull his hand out of his pocket to her.

  The counter lay between them. Thank God.

  When she bent her face to his wrist, her heart beat so hard in her head that she could barely even smell. His palm was right there, big and warm as it had been that night. With the slightest move of her head or his hand, he could cup her cheek.

  But he didn’t.

  And she didn’t.

  She closed her eyes and took a slow breath of his wrist. “Cheap citrus. You must have washed your hands last at a restaurant or something. You can’t tell me Rosier SA stocks that in their restrooms.”

  He said nothing.

  The back of her head, where his gaze must rest, burned. The whole line of her back burned. Her butt even burned, and he couldn’t possibly see that from his angle.

  “Lavender,” she said curiously, turning his hand over to follow it to his knuckle. “Under the citrus. A nice lavender, too bad you had to wash most of it off.”

  “It’s good for bee stings,” he said, and she opened her eyes to note the red swelling over one knuckle. Ow. That must have hurt.

  A sudden urge swept through her to kiss that spot to help make it feel better.

  She turned his hand back over quickly, to hide the sting from her lips, and angled her head up his wrist, away from the distraction of that soap. A smile wanted to cross her lips at the faintest wisp of scent that she caught, that scent of happiness, and she fought it back. “A little almond, still.”

  A vision of him in the shower, quick and indifferent to himself, in and out so fast that he hadn’t really soaped his arms, so that the scent of almonds from the day before still clung wherever he hadn’t rubbed.

  Oh, damn, that vision of him in the shower. All that lean, hard body of his…

  She swallowed and angled her head up the veins and tendons of his forearm. Such a strong forearm, and yet if she cut him there, he could bleed his heart out just like any other human. A leap of sensual curiosity. “Jasmine?”

  He wore jasmine?