by K D Grace
His hand came down hard on the table, sloshing coffee onto the white linen cloth, making her jump. ‘Then why? What’s your reason?’
She snapped back. ‘You make me sneeze, Carl, and I should have listened to my nose.’
‘I make you sneeze? What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I make you sneeze, what like you’re allergic to me? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s bullshit. How could I make you sneeze?’
‘This was a bad idea.’ Her heart hammered in her chest as she fought back another wave of sneezing. ‘I’m asking you to leave me alone. Don’t call again. Don’t come to my place. Let’s just call it even, all right. I’m going now.’
She pulled open the door, but he was in her personal space before she could breathe, shoving it shut hard and pressing her up against the frame. ‘You’re not exactly a catch, you know? I can have anyone I want. And just how long do you think Delacour will put up with you sneezing all over him? Hmm? How long?’
‘Get off me, Carl.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and she could barely hear it over her heart. The room was a tsunami of metallic rage and her cold acidic fear.
‘Or what? You’ll sneeze at me?’
And that’s exactly what she did. Repeatedly. When he backed away in disgust, she threw open the door and fled.
Jim watched breathless while Liza Calendar fled for the elevator looking way too nervous for someone who was supposed to be at the Hotel de Russie. Before he could duck back into the room Vera had treated the two of them to as a surprise, he saw Carl Blain disappear back into the suite Liza had just come from and shut the door. ‘Fuck me,’ he said a little louder than he intended.
‘What is it?’ Vera called, sitting up in the bed with the sheet pulled over her breasts.
‘I just saw Liza Calendar heading down the hall like she was on her way to a fire.’
‘What? You think she was here with Mr Delacour?’ she asked.
‘Oh no, it wasn’t Mr Delacour she was with, and that’s what worries me.’ Immediately he had the feeling he’d probably said more than he should have. He’d certainly seen more than he should have. He had really hoped he’d been wrong about the connection between Liza Calendar and Carl Blain, but seeing was believing. He’d have to tell Paulo. If Liza was not only in cahoots with Blain, but Blain was here in Rome, then something was going down, and it couldn’t be anything very good for Martelli.’
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he dug through his pocket for his BlackBerry. ‘Come back to bed. Business can wait.’
‘Just give me a second.’ He texted a message to Paulo with shaky fingers.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Jim, darling, what’s going on? Who was Liza with?’
‘Carl Blain,’ he said, absently. ‘I knew the two of them had something going on, and I tried to warn Paulo not to trust her, but I’d hoped I was wrong.’
She moved close and looked over his shoulder as he texted. ‘That’s too bad. I had suspicions myself, though.’
He stopped texting. ‘Oh?’
She shrugged and the duvet dropped to reveal a luscious erect nipple. ‘Not anything I could put my finger on. You know, just a gut feeling. Some people I don’t trust from the beginning, and I’m usually right.’
‘Funny,’ Jim said, ‘I’m usually a good judge of character too, and I didn’t pick up on anything until she got a phone call from Blain the other day when we were out at Ostia Antica.’ He finished his text and sent it, then he tossed the BlackBerry onto the nightstand and slid under the duvet and in between her open thighs. ‘Tell you what,’ he reached down between them to rake her clit with his thumb, ‘once you and I finish our little business meeting, you can go with me back to the research facility. I have to go there anyway, and this time, I’ve got permission to take you into the labs.’
Chapter Twenty-three
On the street, it took a while for the sneezing to subside, and even then for a good time longer all Liza could smell was her own fear and anger. How stupid could she be? Why had it not entered her mind that Carl would manipulate her into doing what he wanted her to? Ever since she’d caught him in mid-fuck, he had been trying to manipulate her. In fact, he’d been manipulating her all along. But the bastard was really good at it. And anyway, he was right, she was a nobody. So why did he think it so important to see her in person – just so he could humiliate her and have the last word? How he found out about her and Paulo was beyond her, but still, if he knew, then he knew he was dealing with someone not to be taken lightly. At the end of the day, it was over, and she was pretty sure he’d leave her alone now.
She wandered the streets surreptitiously sniffing and observing, but the unpleasant encounter with Carl had ruined her concentration, so after an hour she gave up and headed back to the lab. Perhaps a revisiting of some of the scents they’d already collected and some of the notes and observations she had taken would give her some ideas. Liza never had problems with olfactory fatigue. That meant she was able to work with and detect subtle differences in scent long after most people no longer could. After a visit to the break room for the much-needed coffee she didn’t get with Carl, she headed into the lab with her laptop in tow and settled in to sniffing as the day wore on.
‘Any luck with the walk?’
Paulo’s voice made her jump with a little gasp of surprise. ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ she said.
‘Clearly.’ He gave her ponytail a gentle tug. She could sense the smile in his voice, the affection, and she smiled back.
‘No luck. I gave up after a couple of hours.’ She didn’t mention her little run-in with Carl. It was embarrassing, actually. It made her feel stupid and ugly, and a good dose of Paulo was just what she needed for a cure. She leaned back against him where he stood behind her, feeling the hard ridges of his belly tighten beneath his open jacket. ‘Just can’t figure out what it is we’re missing.’
‘They all smell amazing to me. I can’t believe you’re not ready to send them off for Coraline’s blessing.’ He leaned down and kissed her behind the ear and a shiver of pleasure crawled up her spine as she breathed in his fabulous scent.
‘They smell OK, but not as good as they can. Trust me.’
‘I do trust you,’ he said, pulling up a stool and sitting down next to her. ‘How about a trip out to The Mount this evening? It seems to me if it’s sexual scents your looking for, maybe we should revisit the place.’
‘Maybe. But I can’t help but feel what we need is already here. I’m just missing it.’
‘All right,’ he stood, pulled off his jacket, and hung it on the back of another chair. ‘What can I do to help?’
For the next two and a half hours they went over every sample that they’d collected and the list of corresponding essences that had been associated with those scents. It astounded her that Paulo could be such an incredible distraction on the one hand and yet be as drawn into their efforts as she was on the other. She liked that they could work together side by side and stay focused. She loved the way they smelled when they worked together, like clean sheets and strong tea. Most of all she loved that the power of his nose, was as important to him as hers was to her.
‘Can you smell the differences in the two dungeon experiences, I mean other than the obvious that the first one incorporated a lot of voyeurism?’ she said.’
‘I can,’ he replied, sniffing one and then the other, ‘though I’m not sure what the smell of voyeurism is.’
‘It’s curiosity mixed with lust, butter, and cinnamon, but there’s also a tiny tang of the forbidden, even a little bit of shame at seeing what normally you know you shouldn’t be seeing, like watching that couple at the bar. I don’t know, shame is sort of a dairy smell, I think, a little bit sour, a little bit metallic, a little bit muddy.’ She could feel his gaze on her as she closed her eyes thinking about the scents that made up the sexual interaction in her inadvertent first visit to the dungeon.
‘It does smell … I don’t know �
�� more muddy, I’d say.’ He laughed, ‘probably more dirty because Angelo was running the show.’
‘At least until you came into the room,’ she said with a little chuckle. ‘And then the smell changed, and I’m glad you had the presence of mind to have David bag up samples because you overpowered everything.’
‘Thanks, I think.’
For a few moments they worked in silence, then she just had to ask. ‘How do you know Angelo?’ She added quickly, ‘it’s pretty clear the two of you have a history.’
A tight, smile played at the corner of his mouth, as though it didn’t quite feel comfortable making its presence known. ‘Coraline took us both under her wing when we were not much more than boys.’ This time the smile moved right in and made itself at home, and his gazed settled on the middle distance as though he were looking into the past. ‘Coraline has enormous wings, and to be sheltered under those wings was, well for both of us, probably the difference between life and death. Certainly it was for Angelo. I was more than my mother could handle after my father died. I acted out. I was always getting in trouble. My mother worked for Martelli. Coraline gave me a job when no one else was interested – actually when I was really too young to do very much. But her iron hand was just what I needed. She recognized early on that I had the nose, and clearly Rita wasn’t interested. Angelo, well Angelo was living on the streets. He was a runaway. I don’t know about his parents. He never said anything. When he speaks English, I’ve never decided if the American accent is faked or if it’s real. He never talks about his past. Maybe Coraline knows. There’s not much she doesn’t know. Anyway while I had the nose, Angelo had the tech skills. I don’t know how he got them. But Coraline saw his gift and put it to good use.’ Paulo took her hand where it rested next to her laptop and chafed it with his thumb. His scent changes slightly and she could smell nutmeg and anise. ‘We were lovers for a while, as I said earlier.’
Though it hadn’t surprise her, she had a sense what he’d shared wasn’t common knowledge. ‘We were young. Rita had just slapped him down. She wanted nothing to do with anything that was Martelli back then. Me, I was more like a brother to her, so there was never anything between us. But Angelo had a crush on her for a long time. When she made it clear she wasn’t interested, he came to me to commiserate after Rita left for Seattle. We got a little drunk and we ended up having sex. We realized we liked it. We were comfortable with it, and emotionally, it was a safe place for us to be at the time. Martelli kept us both way too busy to even think about relationships. That was before either of us joined The Mount. It was good for us then. Later Angelo started doing some work on the side. He invented a bit of very interesting software and before anyone knew it, the man was independently wealthy. He works for himself now, but he’s still Coraline’s bratty older son in her eyes, and I think in his too.’
‘That must be weird, being in the same sex cult with your adopted mother.’
‘Not really. Coraline goes elsewhere for sex. She keeps her private life private, and I think it’s been a very long time since she’s taken a sexually active role in the Roman Mount.’
‘And the tension between you and Angelo?’ Liza said. ‘Over a woman?’
The smile he offered was more of a brief twitch of the lips. ‘That obvious?’
‘Yup.’
He heaved a sigh and shifted on his chair. ‘Angelo took to The Mount much more readily than I did. I’ve not been an active member very long. When Fidelia became head of security for Martelli and brought in that … little extra you saw, we both went after her. I wanted to date her. Angelo wanted to fuck her.’ He grunted. ‘Afraid I don’t share very well. But like Angelo, Fidelia likes to play with everyone, and Angelo lost interest when I walked away.’
‘And that’s what the problem is?’
‘There’s not really a problem. We normally get along fine, but we have too much history between us, and Angelo knows exactly what buttons to push with me, so we enjoy each other in small doses. We haven’t been lovers in a long time, and … well I’ve never seen him react to anyone the way he reacted to you. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.’
She squeezed his hand where it still curled around hers. ‘All you would have had to do was tell me you weren’t comfortable with what happened.’
He turned to face her and ran a finger down her cheek. ‘But I wanted it too. Even though I wasn’t comfortable. In some ways, I think I needed what happened between the three of us more than either of you did. I guess I’ve just got a lot more relationship issues to work through than Angelo does. And really, what happened made me feel good, made me feel almost like … I don’t know, like I’d given you a gift.’
She leaned over and brushed a kiss across his lips. ‘You did. You did give me a gift, and it was amazing. And I think Angelo and you gave each other a gift as well.’
He pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s make some coffee, have a biscuit, and give it a little rest. Then we can come back fresh and figure out just what the problem is.’
As they stood to leave the room she breathed in the summer rainstorm scent of his perspiration, clean and sharp-edged and felt her own scent darken, thicken, and rise up to meet his. As he reached to open the door, she shoved his hand away and flipped the lock. Then holding his gaze, she turned out the light and lifted her arms around his neck. ‘I don’t want biscuits and I don’t want coffee.’ She took his mouth, her tongue moving lazily, leisurely against his lips until they yielded, and his scent spiked with ozone and desert heat.
‘Make love to me, Paulo,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tired of waiting to have you to myself, and it’s Saturday. We’re here alone, and I want you so damn bad.’
His fingers clenched in her hair and he released a long sigh that passed over her lips with the delicious taste of him. ‘We’ll muddy the waters, you know? If we make love here. Your scent will be all over me, and mine on you and …’ he stopped speaking when her hand slid down to stroke his growing erection through his trousers.
‘And right now, I don’t give a fuck,’ she said, biting his lip as she pulled back. ‘Everything’s bagged, everything’s sealed, and the preliminary scents aren’t even in this room. It’s you I want to smell, Paulo, you and me together and no one else.’ Her words came in staccato gasps with her efforts to breathe in the thickening and changing dance of their scents. ‘No one else.’ She rubbed herself against him and he sucked a deep breath. He gave a quick look around, then ran both hands down to cup her bottom, lifting her. Her flip skirt slid up her bare thighs as she wrapped both legs around his waist and went back to eating his mouth.
The apricots on toast smell of anticipation washed over the bloom of heat as he settled her ass onto the high stainless steel table at the back of the room, shoving bagged shirts and underclothing off onto the floor in a rustle of plastic on plastic.
‘I need to smell you, I need to smell you, I need to smell you,’ the words came out like a desperate chant as she ripped open his shirt and shoved it off his shoulders, burying her nose in the striations between his pecs. Then she trailed kisses across a taut nipple and around until she nuzzled into the soft down of his left armpit, making him squirm and scrunch, trapped in the shirt, struggling to unbutton the sleeves. Being trapped at the mercy of her sense of smell made his cock even more anxious in his trousers, sharpening his scent to a black pepper and ozone edge.
She shoved and pushed and slid her way off the table, practically falling on her ass before she grabbed onto his belt to steady herself, nearly pulling him over on top of her. Then she undid the buckle and went to work on his fly, sniffing and nuzzling as she went.
‘Liza … Christ, Liza …’ He finally managed to shrug free of his shirt and then went to work helping her with the trousers, shoving down his boxers until his cock bounced free. She didn’t immediately take it in her mouth. Instead, she rubbed her face over his cock, then over his heavy sac and his pubic curls, and again he was squirmy and ticklish, resting one hand on
the top of her head while the other shoved his trousers and boxers down over his hips.
‘Oh God, Paulo, if I could only just bottle your scent, then I’d never get out of bed, never stop touching myself, never stop being right on the edge of coming every time I smelled you.’
He dropped to his knees onto the floor and pushed her back, his hands sliding up her thighs until he could grab her panties. With a finger hooked in each side he yanked them off. She didn’t protest as he shoved into her without foreplay. Her growl matched his at penetration, and she wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his kidneys. ‘I have to have you, Liza,’ he gasped against her ear. ‘Surely you can smell how badly I need to have you. I’ve wanted you all day long. I’ve needed to come so badly,’ he thrust hard and they both slid on the tiled floor, and she cried out and cursed. ‘I’ve needed to come so badly, but I’ve held it, Liza, I’ve held it for you because I want there to be plenty for you to smell when I unload, when we come together and rub our scent all over each other.’
Her body quaked beneath him, the scent of honey and butter and seashore pressed against desert heat and ozone, and the spiced, hot pepper scent of their desperation spread over it all. As she drew breath after heavy breath of their scent, dragging it into her sinuses, into her lungs, into her belly. She wasn’t exactly sure when the orgasm started, but she had the feeling it might have begun as a tremor of soft fruit anticipation the moment she scented him, the moment she pulled him into the first kiss. And all this time it had been building with the rub of his cock against her clit, the rake and press of his balls against her perineum, the friction of his skin against hers, flint and steel igniting the spark until her whole body shook with it and then rose to a smell that she could barely take in. It was opium, it was strong wine, it was every drug at its sweetest, when the ride was most euphoric. It was that and more, and still she came.