Damn it.
He got the cufflinks off and set them on the counter.
“Cash would have been more practical.” He made his voice ironic. His back-up tone.
“I’m not practical,” she said, as stiff as his fingers on his damn watch.
No kidding. So you need me. You really do. I’m exactly the perfect person to protect all your impractical dreams.
Something knotted in his chest, there, just below the hollow of his throat. He tried to swallow past it, and it wouldn’t go away.
He got the watch off and set it beside the cufflinks. Hard and expensive and she could live a year off it, if she had the practical sense.
But then, if she’d had that, she’d have taken a check. Idiot perfumers. All fairytales and whiffs of twenty-thousand-euro absolutes they wanted to play with as if they were free.
It had been laughably easy to take over her little artisan company. Basically, he’d noticed rainmaker Jasmin Bianchi was part owner, raised an eyebrow, and thought, I’ll take that. She might be useful. And a few hours later, he’d had it.
He pulled off his coat.
God, he felt so much more naked doing this at her orders than he had the other morning. No, it wasn’t quite that. He’d felt naked that morning, but powerful in it—pushing her around with his stripping, instead of growing more and more exposed.
She pressed her hand down on his coat as soon as he laid it over the counter, gathering it and the watch and cufflinks to her. “If you try to take these back again, we’re done,” she said, hard. “I’m not playing this game, where you promise part of yourself and then take it back the next minute because your mood changes.”
“You’re not playing that?” he asked incredulously.
She checked, her fingers flexing into his coat, her eyebrows drawing slowly together as she searched his face.
He closed his expression hard, as hard as if he was trying to beat Tristan at poker and Tristan was getting that gleam of too much perception in his eye.
“What do you mean?” she asked, those damn dusk eyes fixed on his face.
“You turned it into a game,” he heard himself say harshly. “Where you pretended to give something, and then you changed your mind and took it back. I wasn’t playing.”
She stood very still on the other side of the counter, blinking slow, great blinks at him.
Fuck this. He threw himself in the chair, stretching out his legs, lounging there, the man in power waiting for his enemy to beg. Yeah, he knew body language and how to use his own. Essential in power plays, every time. “Let’s have it.”
She hesitated another long moment, until he almost started to believe she might actually say something to him, instead of just shutting him out, but instead she pointed wordlessly to his cuffs and his collar.
He had to flip this situation somehow. So he raised his eyebrow at her, lazy and ironic. And slowly rolled back each double cuff, one, two turns. Slowly, holding her eyes, unbuttoned four buttons on his shirt to expose his throat.
She looked down. And suddenly shifted awkwardly and grew five centimeters taller.
Damn, she’d noticed her shoes.
And it really wasn’t fair that she was just a tiny bit awkward in them as she came around the counter toward him, either from unfamiliarity with those particular heels or because he was getting to her.
It got to him, that awkwardness. Made him want to push all this stupid game of rapiers and shields away and pull her into his lap. Say, Shh. Come here. Let’s talk. I’m not as bad as you think.
The instinct ground to a halt, this great, screeching of brakes and rebellion against having to say those last words. Against having to defend himself against her assumption that he was a heartless asshole. Even after he’d held his own heart out to her like…
…like a pitiful bouquet of wildflowers.
Lured into believing that she would see how much more valuable they were than the hothouse flowers. Or diamonds, or whatever the hell he was supposed to have given her instead.
She stepped to the side so that she didn’t have to stand right between his sprawled legs, dipped a strip into a tester, and held it out to him. “What do you think?”
He made sure his hand brushed hers as he took the touche from her. Masochist.
The scent smelled…like his damn titanium watch. Hard, impenetrable elegance and perfection, no softness in it anywhere.
He kept his expression exactly like that scent.
“It’s a bit harsh,” Jess said. “It will need a long maturation period. But this can give me an idea.”
Damn her.
“Remember, you’re just getting the top notes right now,” Jess said uneasily.
His jaw set. “I know how perfume works.”
“Can I try it on your skin?”
He held out his wrist, not looking at her. Fuck, she hadn’t even tried to get at him. None of that evening on the terrace, none of that night was in that perfume at all.
Or was he really just so titanium hard that what had seemed like magical warmth and sweetness to him had seemed this cold and shallow to her?
Granted, his behavior since she’d gotten here probably hadn’t been the best demonstration of the soft side of his character, but…
Just fuck.
A cold spritz of that heartless juice on his wrist. She hesitated. “What about—?” She gestured to his throat.
Merde, he hoped the synthetics she’d put in the thing weren’t the kind that would cling to his skin for days, no matter how hard he tried to scrub them off. He pulled aside his shirt, still not looking at her.
Like exposing his throat to a cobra bite. Another spritz, at the hollow of his throat.
She stepped back.
They stared at each other, her eyes uneasy, his jaw set and hard.
“Are you going to do your, ah, fifty push-ups?” She waved toward the floor.
Oh, sure, hell, why not. He needed something to do.
He stood, and she immediately retreated to the other side of the counter. Rage rode under his skin at how different her reaction was from the last time he’d unbuttoned his shirt in front of her, how she’d been a little shy and a lot wondering and so carefully trusting. Not like she trusted easily. Like she trusted rarely—and yet he had been the recipient of that trust.
He yanked his shirt off and tossed it on top of his coat.
He felt ridiculous, and then he felt mad, and then he felt mean, as he dropped to the floor and hit those push-ups. One, two, three, four, he couldn’t work his mad out, no matter how many he did, it just built in him, with every breath of that steely scent being woken by the growing heat of his body.
By the time he’d worked up the hint of sweat that she wanted, he was feeling so mean that he shoved himself to his feet in one hard lunge, ready to stride out of there before he did anything else he could regret.
And then he got a look at her face.
The deep pink in her cheeks, the vulnerable plumpness of her lower lip, as if she’d been biting it, the way she’d pulled one lock free of the knot at her nape and was twirling it around her finger, her eyes dark and dilated and locked on his torso…
The mad went right out of him. His mouth curved. But the mean—oh, yes, the mean still held. You think this scent is me? Well, let’s see how you like it.
“What do you think?” He held out his wrist to her.
“It’s really about what you think,” she said, but she leaned across the counter and brought his wrist to her face, her nose brushing his skin as she took a deep breath.
Her eyebrows crinkled together. She shook her head. “Maybe it needs more citrus.”
“What about here?” He touched the base of his throat.
She swallowed.
He waited, increasingly conscious of his pumped muscles, naked torso, and the faint glow of sweat over his skin.
That night, he’d taken off his shirt before he started undressing her at all. Exposing himself first. Making it easier
for her to expose herself in turn, luring her in. And also just because…he’d really liked the look on her face as he took off his shirt. It had made him feel…pretty damn hot, to tell the truth.
Like now.
She came slowly around the counter. He didn’t sit down, and her breath grew shorter and shorter as she came in close to him.
Just for a second, standing a few centimeters from his chest, she looked up at him, so vulnerable that he wanted to soften. It’s all right. Remember? Remember me?
She went up onto her tiptoes and rested her hands on his chest to balance as she took a breath of the hollow of his throat.
And after that he didn’t have a soft cell left in his body.
Everything about him went hard and hungry and determined to get what he wanted.
Chapter 9
“We’ve still got the arousal test,” Damien said, with that dark velveted steel voice of his, like a black panther’s paw just before the claws sprang out.
Jess’s fingers curled into her palm as she stepped back. “Well,” she said sharply, “after whatever hook-up you’ve got set for tonight, send me a text and let me know what you think.”
His teeth snapped. He took a breath.
“I don’t even have a date,” said the man who had a different top model on his arm in every single photo Google had produced of him. He prowled away from her to slouch in that little folded chair, elegant pants and naked, faintly gleaming chest, the muscles of his biceps and chest more sharply defined than ever after the exertion. He smiled at her, a mean curve of his lips. “I’ll have to make do with you.”
“Like you did in New York?” Jess said through a tightness in her throat.
The tension in his body grew palpable. If she stretched out her hand, the air around his body might be too dense to reach his skin. “Is that what you think I was doing?”
She turned away, going to the counter to pretend to take notes.
“Go ahead.” The steel under that velvet was making his voice vibrate at a pitch that buzzed all over her skin. “All those actresses and models, and I…hooked up…with you because…what? I got lazy? Is that the story you’re telling yourself?”
His voice whipped across her. She looked up from her journal and had to brace. His eyes glittered with anger.
“Maybe,” she said defiantly. “Maybe you just wanted to go with what was easy for once. It happens.”
His hand clenched into a fist. “Fuck you,” he said incredulously.
She flinched back.
He dragged his hand over his face. “God damn it.” He stood abruptly and turned toward the door, then grabbed the jamb and held himself there a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said curtly to the doorjamb. “That was out of line.”
She said nothing, the words having shocked her deep enough in her stomach that she still hadn’t swallowed them down.
“I have four male cousins,” he said roughly. “I forgot myself. I shouldn’t talk that way to you.”
Well, she’d lived in New York. She knew perfectly well how easily some people said fuck. But…he hadn’t seemed to have any trouble with manners the night they met. In fact, one of the things that had most enticed her about him was his courtesy—the way he curled his quiet and thoughtfulness around her until she no longer stood cold and alone on that terrace. She stood wrapped up in him.
He turned his head. His lips twisted, his eyes dark. “God forbid I should have done something sincere. Or meaningful. Or real.”
Her heart beat too hard. Everything about that time came back and clogged her throat and pressed stinging against the backs of her eyes: the wish of him amid loneliness and loss, seeing him with that model the next day, walking in Monday morning to discover she’d lost her company and hope of becoming something different to his casual avarice, and all of that, all of it, against the backdrop of her father dying. He’d been dead two weeks later.
Loss and loss and loss and loss.
All her candles blown out and not one single wish come true.
“I’m not good at that kind of thing,” she said through the tightness in her throat.
“Sincerity?”
“No. The…casual hook-up.”
His lips pressed so hard. “Not as good as I am, for example?”
Regret twisted her. “Exactly.”
His eyes blazed once and then went so chilly she felt plunged into that water under the ice again. “Well. As fun as this is, I’d better get moving if I want to find someone more comfortable with my style in time for dinner. Fortunately, modern technology has gone so far beyond the little black book these days. I can actually rate potential women for ease, looks, and availability, all right here at the touch of a finger.” He held up his phone.
She gaped at the shock of it, sick to her stomach. Oh, God, what was she on that phone? A one star?
The glitter in his eyes cut like being abraded with emeralds. “You know what? I take back that apology. Fuck you.” He grabbed up his shirt and strode to the door and pivoted back. “And no one who produces this shit”—he touched his wrist—“is getting to keep this perfume shop, so try again.”
***
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tristan sought a grip in the rock. “Damien, you can’t take this attitude up rock. You need to calm down before you get yourself hurt.”
“Or somebody else hurts you,” Matt growled from the other side of Tristan.
“Any time you want to try, Matt,” Damien snapped.
Tristan closed his eyes briefly. “You don’t know how much I love being in the middle of these discussions.”
They clung halfway up the limestone cliff at the end of the valley, spread out, Matt on one end, then Tristan, then Damien. The cliff face offered multiple possible routes to the top, from easy to challenging. They’d cut their climbing teeth on it, as kids.
“Can I just climb the damn rock already?” Damien asked tightly. He hadn’t asked for company. He’d just acquired it somehow, because he had to drive through the valley to get to the cliffs, and his cousins, of course, noticed his car and didn’t want to miss out on a good climb. Or else they lived to give him headaches.
“Fine,” Tristan said. “Don’t fall on your head.”
So they climbed, and it did help. You had to focus on rock, Tristan was right. You couldn’t fling yourself up it mad. Eventually you had to slow down, put yourself into the moment—suspended between limestone and sky, over the valley that had nurtured his family for centuries and that now he defended.
At the top, quieted—Matt’s growling, Damien’s temper, Tristan’s frustration with them all worn out—they sat on limestone and dirt, gazing out over the valley.
The steeple of the church stood above their little village of Pont-le-Loup. Beyond it lay hazy hints of the Mediterranean and the great mass of populace and land development that crouched between this valley and the sea, ready to swarm up into the valley and devour it, if ever they lost their battle to defend it.
If Damien lost.
Because that was the fact of the matter. It was all up to him.
His grandfather had lined Matt up as their future patriarch. Matt got to growl and act bossy as if the whole heart of his existence wasn’t as vulnerable as those ephemeral rose and jasmine petals. Tristan, as the youngest, got to pretend none of these issues even existed—he was an artiste. Lucien and Raoul got to run off and be the adventurers.
But Damien defended the ramparts.
He went out into that brutal, cynical, dog-eat-dog world beyond this valley, where every man who ever tried to cut a deal with you might have a knife ready for your back. Out there where every woman who smiled at you was calculating your income or ability to advance her career. Or possibly had her own knife ready for your back.
Or couldn’t believe in him at all.
He’d been in the thick of that world since he finished at the London School of Business seven years ago. Expanding their empire, conquering their enemies, building Rosier SA into somethi
ng nobody could ever take out. Giving this family their next five hundred years.
Making sure Matt could keep this valley which Damien’s own children would never even inherit, and—
His brooding hiccupped. His eyebrows drew slowly together, and he glanced at Matt. Matt had his arms loosely around his knees and was gazing out at his valley with that hungry pride of his. My valley. On me. All mine.
But…Matt had said that he wanted to make it into a trust. That he wanted to make sure this valley was all of theirs, and their children’s. All by himself he had said that, two months ago, without anybody forcing him, as if…Damien rubbed his fingers over limestone, the callused tips of a climber.
As if Damien belonged here, too.
Inside the valley with its sweetness, inside this heart of their family that still beat true.
He took a deep breath that expanded his lungs and let it slowly out. Tension wanted to release out of his neck when he did that, and he didn’t like to let it. He might need that tension. It was a mistake to relax when someone else could see him.
A flashing memory of the long, slow drift of his body into sleep, his arm over the waist of a woman who had lured him into wishing upon a star, the blissful fall of peace…
Fuck.
“Do you ever relax anymore?” Tristan said suddenly from his left, and he looked over to find Tristan not watching him at all. Just gazing out over the valley as if all was right with his world.
“I’m fine,” Damien said, as if all was right with his world, too.
As if there wasn’t an emptiness the size of this valley inside him. And no matter how much he tightened himself, vice-like around his head and heart, no matter how much he squeezed that emptiness, it just compacted, got denser and heavier and yet still somehow empty.
“Are you just so damn empty inside that you have to buy up everything that matters to other people to try to fill yourself up? Like some damn vampire, sucking all the blood out of everyone else to see if you can find out what life tastes like?”
Was that what he was doing when he agreed to take on Laboratoire Lambert? It had felt…different, on his end. Like doing something good. But the artists couldn’t see that, ever. Maybe nobody could. Maybe he really had gone over to the dark side, his notion of what was good and warm and special so divorced from reality that he got sucked into his belief in it while no one else even noticed it at all.
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