by K D Grace
‘Put emotion into it, yes, I got that, but how exactly do you think we should go about putting emotion into the new scents?’ Paulo asked. Late afternoon sunlight flooded through the window of the break room at the research facility. Paulo stuffed half of a chocolate Milano into his mouth and tossed back the last of his espresso.
‘Scent changes with emotion,’ Liza replied, then she sniffled and reached for a tissue from a nearby box. ‘And certain of those scents added in just the right quantity could really be that little something extra in a fragrance that would transform it from nice to unforgettable, which is what we want. You know, sort of like what happens when chocolatiers add pepper to chocolate. Emotions run high and change fast in, say a club or a bar.’ She sniffled again then sneezed.
‘Are you alright?’ Paulo handed her the tissue box. ‘You’re not getting a cold, are you, because that would be a disaster right now.’
She blew her nose and sneezed again. ‘Your concern is touching,’ she half laughed.
He leaned closer. ‘Well Blain is definitely not here, and if your nose even considers me making you sneeze, I’ll whisk you back to the villa, tie you to the bondage bed, and have my way with you sneezing and all.’
‘Oooh, Mr Delacour, I’m all aflutter.’ She snuffled, then leaned forward and sniffed his throat. ‘Trust me, what I smell radiating off you makes me want to do a lot of things, but sneezing’s not one of them.’ She pulled away and sneezed three more times into the tissue.
‘Maybe it’s something the cleaners are using?’ Paulo said, reaching out to rub her shoulder.
Just then Jim walked into the room with Vera at his side. He looked all professional, but in spite of her sneeze-athon, Liza could smell the lust swirling between the two of them. Though Jim’s herby scent didn’t much turn her on, it certainly had never made her sneeze. Vera’s scent had never made her sneeze either, though her it always made Liza think of overly ripe peaches on the verge of rotting with just a hint of something acidic. Between both of them, she could smell the slight citrus of nerves, but then Paulo was the boss and he was certainly smart enough to know that Vera didn’t really need to be here.
‘I thought I’d give Vera the tour,’ Jim said with an overly enthusiastic smile. ‘She’s never been before, and it’s nice for employees to see how things work. Gives them a vested interest.’ The scent of nervous citrus spiked as they both offered a forced chuckle.
‘And what do you think of the place?’ Paulo asked.
‘Oh, it’s amazing!’ Vera gushed. ‘I’m so excited to finally see where it all happens. A bit disappointed, though, that it took so long to wrangle a tour.’
‘Before Liza came along, even Jim didn’t get here often,’ Paulo said, ‘Martelli didn’t hire him for his nose.’ Liza didn’t need the harsh bronze undertone to tell that Paulo was unhappy with Jim. She wondered what was going on.
‘Yes,’ Vera smiled over at Jim, ‘He had other important skills.’
Jim blushed hard and then tugged at his tie and the nervous citrus scent dominated the air once again. ‘So how’s the research going?’ he asked, suddenly all business.
‘Making great progress,’ Paulo said as Liza sneezed once more.
‘You’re not catching a cold, are you?’ Vera asked, the citrus scent still dominated the olfactory cocktail that she and Jim had brought into the room.
‘Nope.’ Liza spoke into the tissue. ‘Probably just something the cleaners use here that I’m not used to.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Jim asked, pulling out a chair for Vera and sitting down across from the two of them. Liza sneezed again.
‘Liza has something up her sleeve,’ Paulo said before Liza could respond. The smell of nerves clashed with the bronze scent of irritation that rolled off Paulo. Something definitely wasn’t right. Liza certainly understood men thinking with their cocks, but most of them were careful to keep their work out of it. Work involved power and, if anything, the testosterone was even higher where power was concerned than where lust was concerned. Of course the two were pretty closely connected. Surely Paulo wasn’t upset that Jim was fucking Vera, not considering what the two of them were doing. Jim wouldn’t be in the position he was in if he couldn’t be trusted, and Vera, well Vera was an employee in good-standing – as far as Liza knew. Paulo could hardly blame Jim for taking her up on her offer. Though she couldn’t say that the two of them smelled right together, if Jim couldn’t smell her, and he was getting laid on a regular basis, no harm done, Liza figured. She sneezed again.
‘Maybe it’s something someone heated up in the microwave that’s making you sneeze,’ Jim said.
‘I suppose that’s possible,’ Liza replied, blowing her nose. ‘But whatever it is, I need to get out of here or my sense of smell will be worthless.’
She and Paulo said their goodbyes and left the break room to Jim and Vera.
‘The way you’re sneezing, I keep half expecting to run into Blain around the next corner,’ Paulo said once they were in the hall.
She was thinking exactly the same thing, and it was really creeping her out. But by the time they got back to the lab, the sneezing had stopped and the possessive, ozone, and desert heat scent of lust rolling off Paulo made the butterflies low in her belly take flight.
Chapter Twenty-two
‘Can you smell that?’ Liza shouted at Paulo in order to be heard above the music.
He closed his eyes and sniffed hard but all he could smell was watered-down alcohol and sweat overlaid by too much cheap cologne.
She slid her chair around next to his and spoke in his ear. ‘The couple behind us. From him, I smell acidic jealousy, and rusty-metal anger. The woman, she smells like female lust, wet earth and sea wind. She’s flirting with that guy over there.’ She nodded to a man at the bar, who was checking her out. ‘He smells like a predator, all copper-sweet and chlorine sharp,’ she said. ‘He’s on the hunt, and he’s got his eye on the chick behind us.’ She sniffed, then closed her eyes and sniffed again. ‘She doesn’t smell very faithful.’
‘What does faithful smell like?’ Paulo shouted back.
‘Ah, faithful is a difficult scent to catch sometimes because it’s so foundational. It’s almost sweet, but not quite,’ she said. He could tell by the upward twitch of on corner of her mouth and the way she drew her brow that she was trying to find words for the scent. At last she spoke. ‘It’s like vanilla or cinnamon, neither is sweet alone, but they always give that intimation of sweetness, like they should be even if they’re not. Faithful smells basic. Like it just has to be there for things to work. Sort of like the gasoline smell that goes with cars,’ she added, almost as an afterthought. ‘There’s a slight hint of bitterness, you know? Those things that blend best with sweet are often bitter at their root and uncomfortable, but it’s the bitter-sweet anchor that holds them together.’ She looked up into his eyes. ‘I’m not smelling any of that from the chick behind us. I think faithful is not a part of her makeup right now.’
They both watched as the woman whispered into the ear of the man she was with and headed off toward the bathrooms, leaving him staring into his beer. ‘Textbook,’ Liza said. The man at the bar followed her with his eyes, then shot her date a glance, downed his drink, and headed in the same direction.
‘Come on.’ Liza stood and grabbed Paulo’s hand. They weaved their way in and out of the crowd, not to the bathrooms, but out the fire escape and into a narrow side street where several people milled around smoking and chatting. They skirted the white haze of cigarette smoke and slipped into the edge of the alley. There she stopped in her tracks, laying a hand against his arm. Cautiously she pulled him out of the reach of the streetlight and into the shadows against the wall just as the woman stepped out of the back door behind the bathrooms. It wasn’t more than a heartbeat before the man from the bar joined her. With barely a word, the two were at each other’s mouths as though they were starving. The man’s hands roamed over the woman’s breasts, pinching nipples
and kneading flesh like it was bread dough, all the while raking himself against her. Liza had her eyes closed and each breath was subtly drawn out just enough that Paulo could tell she was sniffing. Paulo tried to do the same, but the wet sounds of tongue on tongue and the animal grunts that were getting louder made it impossible for him not to play voyeur.
The man slid his hand up under the woman’s skirt and into miniscule panties, and she gyrated and shifted against his fingers once he found her sweet spot. Paulo’s cock tightened in response as little whimpers and gasps joined the soundtrack. Next to him, Liza seemed agitated. She sniffed hard and shook her head. Then she grabbed him by the wrist and they moved a few mincing steps closer.
Meanwhile, the man spun the woman around to face the brick wall and she bent forward while he shoved her skirt up over her hips and fingered her open with one hand, the other fumbling with his fly. ‘You want my cock, don’t you, bitch? You want it up your cunt,’ the man said in guttural Italian.
‘It’s not right,’ Liza whispered. ‘It’s not the scent we need.’ Before Paulo could respond, she grabbed his hand and pulled him back out into the street, no longer trying to be quiet.
‘What the fuck?’ The man looked up from his efforts and the woman gave a little gasp of surprise.
‘Sorry,’ Liza said. ‘Didn’t know this place was already taken.’ By the time they stepped out into the glow of the streetlight, the couple’s attention had returned to each other, and Paulo was struggling to walk around his erection.
‘What was it? What was wrong with the way they smelled?’ He shifted his hips in an effort to make his cock set more comfortably in his trousers.
‘There could be a place for jealousy in the fragrance, and definitely for that sense of forbidden excitement that comes from being sneaky, from fucking where you’re not supposed to. We already got that from Ostia Antica. But those two, what they were doing, it’s more the moldy bread scent of boredom I smelled on them. It’s more calculating … more, well like that smell of plastic, you know, the smell of something not genuine.’
There was an element in her words that eased the weight in his trousers. Yes, he wanted to fuck her. He always wanted to fuck her, but there was nothing arousing about what she was expressing.
‘What then?’ He asked.
‘I don’t know, but boredom is definitely not the message you want in a fragrance.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Something’s still missing.’
‘The smell of faithfulness?’ Paulo asked, glancing over his shoulder to the alley they’d just left.
‘It’s not that. It’s something else. Something we’re just not quite catching.’ She stood for a moment, looking up and down the street and biting her lip. Paulo wished he could scent her when she was lost in thought like she was now. It must be an amazing smell. At last she spoke. ‘Take me back to the lab, Paulo. I need to check things again.’
It was well after two in the morning when he finally convinced her to give it a rest. Neither of them had slept the night before after their time in the dungeon with Angelo, and they weren’t going to make any more progress as tired as they were. Though he’d had hopes of having Liza Calendar all to himself and fucking the woman senseless, what they both needed tonight was rest.
Liza answered her BlackBerry without checking who it was. Early morning light was streaming through the window and she was just out of the shower. She figured it was Paulo calling to say good morning, but her smile evaporated at the sound of Carl’s voice on the other end.
‘Thank goodness you finally decided to at least forgive me enough to answer my calls, Liza.’
‘Carl,’ she took a deep breath and hoped he couldn’t hear the nerves in her voice. ‘I already returned your call. I thought we were all sorted.’
‘I’m sorry, Liza, but I can’t just leave things as they are. I need to see you, to apologise face to face. Did you get my flowers?’
‘I got them, and you shouldn’t have sent them.’ When the huge bouquet had arrived, nearly obscuring the deliveryman behind them, she’d torn up the note and had tipped the man to take them to the hospital where he was making his next delivery. She seated herself at the vanity and began toweling her hair. ‘I don’t need you to apologize face to face, Carl. Everything’s fine, it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.’
There was a windy-sounding sigh on the other end of the phone. ‘Look, Liza, I’m here in Rome and I really would like to see you. At least let me down gently over coffee. My treat.’
‘You’re here. In Rome?’ Her heart did a nosedive and her stomach went cold. ‘What are you doing in Rome?’
‘Oh for heaven’s sakes, Liza, I’m here on business. I’m not stalking you or anything.’ The hurt in his voice was palpable, and she kicked herself for the surge of guilt. Why the fuck was she feeling guilty? She wasn’t the one who had been caught bare-assed humping a bimbo on the kitchen counter.
‘Look, all I’m asking is a tiny bit of your time. Give me a chance to apologise properly at least. Come on, Liza, give me a chance to place my head on the block and offer you my neck.’
‘I don’t want your neck, Carl.’
‘Please. Just coffee.’
‘Carl, I don’t –’
‘You’re staying at Bernini Place, aren’t you? I could even come there if you’d like.’
‘No. Carl, look,’ she made a face at herself in the mirror. The one thing she didn’t want is him coming here. ‘All right! I’ll meet you for coffee.’ After he’d given her an address for a coffee shop, she hung up and threw the towel across the room. It had been her plan to spend a couple of hours walking in Central Rome today taking in the sights and the smells. It would have given her a chance to sniff around and maybe figure out just what it was that was missing in the sexy fragrance formulas. They were close. The scents could probably sell and do well even as they were, but they could still be better. Even if no one else knew it, she did. Meeting Carl outside at a street café would hopefully keep her from sneezing too badly and messing up her sense of smell. Oh, she could have lied to him, but the one thing she didn’t want was him showing up at Bernini Place, and she knew him well enough to know that he would.
The coffee shop was near the Piazza del Popolo. When she arrived, Carl was nowhere to be found. She was just ready to leave when her BlackBerry rang.
‘Hi Liza, Carl here. Listen, can you meet me in my suite? I’m just across the way at the Hotel de Russie. I’ve already ordered up the coffee. Sorry about this, but I’ve got an important conference call scheduled and it looks like it’s going to be a late start. I need to be here.’ He gave her a room number, but what he didn’t give her was a chance to say no. Damn the man!’ She looked down at her BlackBerry in disbelief. She was now left with two choices, walk out and wait for him to show up unexpectedly either at Bernini Place or, worse, show up at Martelli, or bite the bullet, go up to his suite and say “fuck off” politely in person. She cursed under her breath, shoved the BlackBerry back in her bag, and headed for the Hotel de Russie.
She’d barely finished knocking on his door before the first sneeze came. She’d thought about stopping by the chemist for some allergy pills, but nixed the idea, knowing she wouldn’t be able to do her job afterward if she did. Besides she thought she’d be meeting him in a garden coffee shop. The minute he opened the door, looking more like he was off for a day at the races than a business meeting, she sneezed again, and there was no disguising the bronze scent of his irritation, even though the look on his air-brushed face was total and complete contrition. ‘Thank you for coming, Liza, for allowing me this one concession, even though I don’t deserve any.’ Though there was contrition on his face, there was certainly none in his scent. In fact there was anything but. The chlorine of arrogance nearly made her eyes water as she sneezed again and pulled in the smell of cold metal and some wet, swampy scent that she felt more as a warning in her stomach rather than anything she could put a name to.
‘Please,’ he step
ped aside, ‘come in. The coffee just arrived.’
She sneezed again. ‘There are tissues in the bathroom,’ he said. He poured coffee for both of them without asking her how she liked it. ‘I took the liberty of ordering some pastries too, since I didn’t know if you’d had breakfast or not.’
‘I have,’ she said, ignoring his offer of tissues and opting for one from her bag. ‘And I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll say what I’ve come to say and then we can both get back to work.’ She didn’t give him a chance to respond. ‘I can think of no reason why you shouldn’t have sex with whomever you want. The two of us weren’t actually in a relationship anyway, and certainly if you felt the need for sex, why shouldn’t you have it, since you weren’t getting it from me.’ She sneezed multiples, and he waited for her to finish.
‘If we’d had a relationship, I wouldn’t have been tempted. It was you I wanted, Liza. I was just so lonely.’
She was surprised at how easily he lied. Deceit was one of the simplest things to smell, like burnt eggs and rancid cooking oil, and it always made her sneeze or at the very least it made her nose run. How could she have not made that connection where he was concerned? ‘But you knew I’d be there in just a few hours, Carl.’ Before he could respond, she raised a hand. ‘Look, there’s no need to lie to me, and believe me, I can tell when someone lies to me. The truth is that it really doesn’t matter. We aren’t now nor will we ever be compatible.’
He snapped. ‘But you’re compatible with Paulo Delacour, nice and quick-like.’ He raised a hand. ‘Oh come on, Liza, word gets around. Delacour is not exactly an unknown around here. What was it rebound? What, were you trying to make me jealous?’
She stepped back toward the door, the hair on the back of her neck rising. ‘Paulo Delacour has nothing to do with you, Carl, and nothing to do with why I’m not giving us another chance.’