by Rose Raven
That Lingering Scent
Sent to Paris to turn around an ailing brokerage firm, expat trader John Winters is haunted by the mystery of Alicia Durand, the representative of a local firm who seems to hate him, until he discovers otherwise.
Winters tries to satisfy his need for her in sexual encounters with other women but fails. As the story moves from Paris to London and the death of Alicia's mother occurs, the childhood secret that has driven Alicia into a string of lesbian relationships is uncovered.
It is up to Winters to show her how to accept the love of the man she wants.
Sensuality Rating: STEAMY
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F)/Multiple Partners
Length: 20,000 words
THAT LINGERING SCENT
Rose Raven
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
ABOUT THE E-BOOK VERSION: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to one LEGAL copy for your own personal use. It is ILLEGAL to send your copy to someone who did not pay for it. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book.
THAT LINGERING SCENT
Copyright © 2008 by Rose Raven
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-060-3
First E-book Publication: August 2008
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2008 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
THAT LINGERING SCENT
Rose Raven
Copyright © 2008
Chapter 1
John Winters didn't really know what to make of the young woman from the agency. An expat bond trader from a New York-based brokerage firm, he knew the rules: Never smile at a female client or employee unless you're shaking hands on a deal. And never ever make a personal remark, or you'd have a lawsuit on your hands for gender discrimination and more damages to pay than your job was worth.
They had to have similar rules over in Europe. But Paris was a strange city in many ways. It certainly deserved its nickname as the city of romance. The women were dressed to kill and allowed themselves to be kissed and fondled by their men without raising an eyebrow among the passersby.
The young saleswoman—a girl, really, he thought from the superiority of his thirty-six years—smiled again as these thoughts went through his mind. The trouble with women was that they didn't stick to the rules. They were illogical creatures that would do anything to get you on your knees and then look shocked when you behaved, well, like a male.
He decided to keep his face in neutral until he could talk it over with some of his new French colleagues. Or was he being silly? The French had a reputation for being sexual devils. He could hear them guffaw if he asked what he should have done when the pretty girl from the realtor’s gazed wide-eyed at him and did not seem to mind his occasional glances at the breasts nuzzling cozily inside her red woolen tank top.
Then again, even if his new teammates told him it was all right to flirt, he had a demanding assignment ahead, so he had better concentrate his attention on the things the agency girl was telling him about the furnished apartment instead of looking at her behind and sniffing her perfume as he followed her from room to room.
The place seemed to be in excellent order. He tested the taps, checked the empty fridge, tried the doors and windows, and finally signed the piece of paper she held out.
The girl smiled again as she handed over the keys.
"Your English is excellent," he said.
She dropped the keys in his hand and laughed. Its sound was hard to resist, throaty and full, quite unlike the silly noises made by so many girls when you gave them a compliment. Everything about her told you this was a mature woman despite her obvious youth, someone with experience of life. And something in her eyes told him that her experience had probably included hard times. This was not some girl to have a casual flirt with, but your equal in all respects.
"That's normal," she said with a barely noticeable accent, giving it just that touch of spice. "My mother is English."
"So's mine!" He smiled, pleased to have something in common. "Only I ended up on the other side of the Atlantic."
There was a moment of silence as they appraised each other.
For a fleeting instant, she seemed to want to say something but apparently thought better of it.
"Well, I'd better go take a nap," he said finally. "I haven't slept since I came off the plane, and the staff introductions at the office were enough to put anybody to sleep."
He opened the front door of the apartment, standing aside to let her out. She turned on the landing.
"If you need anything, you'll let me know, won't you? We try to make expats as comfortable as possible in Paris. That's the job of our agency. You need tourist information, train schedules—well, my card is on the table."
He looked at the name on her visiting card.
"Alicia Durand," he said hesitantly, looking from the card to the girl's curvy figure, self-assured hips, and creamy décolleté.
He thought he could fall for this girl if he didn't watch it. It would probably come as a shock to his friends to hear him gush over a woman.
"I'm going to need a guide around town," he said. "My colleagues seem to be family men, and I haven't got any friends over here. If you could send someone who can show me the sights, that would be great."
What he really meant to say, of course, was: Why don't you be my escort? I'm about to go over the Niagara Falls without a barrel for you.
He knew he ought to be concentrating on the job he had been sent out to do. His mission was difficult enough as it was. Profits at the Paris office had been falling dramatically, and it was his responsibility to turn them around. Either jet lag was playing hell with him or he had seen too many romantic French movies. It wouldn't be the first of his assignments to be complicated by women. But this girl gave him a different feeling. Even at first glance, her face gave you that feeling of familiarity you sometimes had in dreams, when you said hello to a complete stranger and you just knew she was the right one, almost as if you'd met before. She broke into his thoughts.
"Mr. Winters, that's no problem." Her tone was crisp. "It's two o'clock now. If you like, I can send someone with a car after you've slept. Say around nine tonight? You'll enjoy Paris by night."
"That's fine," he replied, disappointed despite himself. She hadn't got the hint after all. Her easy attitude had been nothing more than the relaxed approach of an adult at home in her own world. Perhaps he should tell her not to make the effort to send him someone and simply sleep the night through. He did not really want to see Paris with some unknown and probably highly impersonal escort, possibly even a male. He wanted to see it with her, hear her throaty voice telling him all kinds of useless facts about uninteresting monuments while he sat watching her sip a drink on one of those cruise boats. But before he could tell her he had changed his mind, she had already stepped into the elevator and, with a last
smile, disappeared behind the closing doors.
For a moment, he stood listening to the whine of the machinery, thinking that he was behaving like a teenager with a crush. He couldn't remember ever having fallen this quickly for a woman. It was insane. It was jetlag. It was weeks of abstinence.
The whining noise stopped, and an elevator door slammed several floors below. With a sigh, he closed the apartment door and walked into the bedroom, suddenly realizing how tired he was.
He undressed and fell immediately asleep.
He awoke with a shock. It was dark. He had not drawn the curtains, and the stars cast a cold light in the room. The Eiffel Tower was blinking in the distance and far out on the left rose a white dome which must be the Sacré-Coeur, if he remembered correctly from previous visits to Paris.
But it wasn't the light that had awoken him.
There was someone in the apartment. He could hear the old floorboards creaking in the hall.
He was instantly alert, pumped up by the first shot of adrenaline.
Now the house was silent again.
He smiled at the irony of fate. He had never been burgled in his entire life and now, on his first day in Paris, someone had managed to pick the lock and was going through his flat to take what they could. Well, they would be disappointed because the place did not contain anything of value except for the few personal belongings in the suitcases in his bedroom.
He listened carefully. The burglar had to be good at his job. Not only was he silent, it was remarkable that he had managed to break into this flat at all, located in an expensive neighborhood and equipped with high-tech locks and burglar alarms.
John Winters thought he'd have to be careful. He was not afraid of danger, but a professional burglar was likely to be armed and obviously ready for trouble.
Silently he slipped out of bed, glancing approvingly at his naked body in the mirror. His muscles looked finely chiseled in the moonlight, the product of years of martial arts training. His condition would give him an edge in the minutes to come.
He reflected briefly on the situation. It would be dangerous to attack the burglar directly. A naked body has very little defense against a knife, let alone a gun. And news reports told you that burglars were increasingly heavily armed these days. It would be better to remain concealed and to jump him when he walked into the bedroom.
John could faintly hear the creaking noises of the ageing parquet under the intruder's feet. The burglar made more noise now, probably convinced he was alone in the place. He must be disappointed to find so little of value, but he would want to check every room before leaving to try the neighbors.
The bedroom was apparently next on the burglar's list. John could hear the soft sound of footsteps approaching the half-open bedroom door. Slowly the gap widened.
John held his breath, his muscles tense at the first glimpse of the intruder.
For a moment, the shadow behind the door remained still. John guessed he was staring at the bed to check whether anyone was sleeping in it. Finally, satisfied he was alone, the thief stepped into the room. He was hard to make out from John's concealed position behind the door, but John decided not to wait. Surprise was on his side, and he better use it.
The adrenalin kicked in full throttle, turning John's mind into a primitive control center of attack as it raced through his body. He uncoiled his muscular strength in one smooth movement and chopped the back of the burglar's neck with the flat of his hand—without thinking, without hesitation, as he had been trained to do in his self-defense classes.
The intruder's unconscious body sagged soundlessly onto the carpet.
For a moment, John stood breathing deeply with closed eyes to let the adrenalin rush wear off and bring his body under control.
"Damn, I'm good," he whispered to himself while his muscles relaxed.
He opened his eyes to examine the limp figure on the floor.
"Damn!" he said again, bending over. He took a deep breath and cursed once more, but this time in a different tone of voice.
Later, John would explain to himself that jet lag had made him slow or he would have known immediately that something was wrong.
The burglar was a woman.
"Damn, damn, damn!" he cursed again as he recognized her face.
It was the girl from the agency, Alicia Durand, the realtor who had not minded him devouring her with his eyes. And now, he reflected wryly, he could devour her all he wanted. Her thin black evening dress had bunched around her neck when she fell, leaving nothing to the imagination, for she was not wearing either a bra or a slip.
The far-off sound of the elevator reminded him to check that the front door was closed. He stepped quickly into the corridor. Turning on the overhead light in the hall, he saw the high-heeled shoes standing beside the entrance, the fine lingerie dropped carelessly on the floor beside them, the keys on the hall table. No wonder she had been able to get in. He whistled admiringly at the pretty underwear and returned to the bedroom.
Black stockings, a thin black dress, and high heels to go out in. So she had got his hint after all and had sent someone to show him the sights—herself. The sights of the city and her own very, very private sights because the discarded clothes clearly said that she had sex in mind for an appetizer.
And what an appetizer! Lying there limply on the floor beside his bed, legs and arms outstretched, hair undone and fanned out around her pretty face, she was all woman, from the full breasts with the perfect nipples down to the sweet flesh of her belly and her sex, intriguingly hidden in shadow from where he stood.
A crease of worry furrowed his forehead at the sudden realization of what his primitive hunter instincts had done. She was still unconscious. He had chopped hard, without thinking. Had he done any permanent damage? He knelt beside her and put a hand on her throat. Her heart was beating slowly but regularly. She'd be all right, but that was about all he could expect. So much for the romantic love affair he had briefly envisioned when she had shown him the apartment. He thought about the things she'd be telling him when he revived her. He groaned at the explanation he would have to give. She was a thoroughly French girl and would not take kindly to rough treatment at the hands of a male.
He cursed again. What the hell had he been doing taking her for a burglar? How could you take a gorgeous thing like this for a thief?
He sat down on the bed to have a better look at her, lying there on the floor. She was a helluva girl, he thought, her long legs gently curving inwards at the thighs and her full breasts exposed to the pale light of the night. Everything confirmed what he had seen earlier in the day, when those smooth, pink nipples had been pushing straight against their woolen top without assistance from a bra. Even with the girl on her back, her breasts managed to defy gravity and to rise upward, topped by wonderful nipples which simply begged to be taken into the mouth. One of her legs lay bent, disclosing the lips of her vagina from where he sat, plump and closed and shaved with the barest hint of the clitoris between, making her look like a virgin ready for plucking instead of a naughty girl with man-plans on her mind.
His image in the mirror told him what he knew already: he was hard and ready for her. He sighed. He wanted the girl badly, but a girl he had just knocked unconscious?
Something to brag about to your grandchildren, he thought wryly.
Another wave of anxiety hit him, and he bent over again to feel the bump in her neck. It didn't seem too bad, he thought with relief.
He could smell her perfume, mingled with the sweet scent of her freshly bathed flesh and the faintest whiff of intimacy from her pubis.
He allowed his fingers to trace the circle of her nipples, to find their way down to her belly. His fingertips felt the smooth skin where she had shaven, just above the little nick where the lips of her sex disappeared between her legs. She must have an elegantly small bush when she doesn't shave, he thought, as his fingers slid down and pried open her lips, slipping the length of her womanhood.
He raised
his fingers to his nose, her scent filling his nostrils. By now, the lust which was feeding his erection was pulling his balls so tight against his crotch it was almost painful. His belly was crying for relief. He ought to go ahead and take her. She was his by rights. She ought not to have come into his home. She sure as hell had wanted to go to bed with him or why sneak in like that? There she was, naked, accessible, inviting. It was the law of the jungle.
His gaze traveled up the parted legs.
He wondered how it would be if he lowered himself and let his tongue lightly brush the flesh of her oval. He imagined how the flesh between her hips would flush and glisten in response to his caresses. She might be unconscious, but her body would know. Gradually she would spread her legs wider. She would begin whispering sweet nothings, urging him on, half unconscious still. Her eyelids trembling over her eyes, she would lift her hips from the floor in an effort to stretch even wider and to offer her pink womanhood to his mouth. He imagined her coming—wet, perhaps gushing, screaming for him to fill her. Even unconscious like this, she looked wanton, savage, a woman-girl ready to mate, ready to give herself to her man. He had never wanted to take a woman this badly in his life.
And he was about to give in to his lust and lower himself into her when she opened her mouth, a flutter of tongue darting over her lips, a small moan escaping from her throat. Her eyes opened lazily, unfocused.
"John?" she whispered hoarsely. "John? What happened?"
John Winters looked at her in silence, his desire briefly forgotten. How could he possibly explain to her what had happened, what he had done to her? And why was she calling him by his first name? During the tour of the apartment it had been Mr. Winters all the way, as was only natural for a realtor with a client. But then her behavior had been unusual from first to last, from the hot glances she had given him to her stealing into his apartment at night as if they were established lovers instead of complete strangers. Was she some kind of nymphomaniac who wanted to try out all the customers?