Embarrassment took a hard swipe at arousal.Shit. Why is it that every other race has super senses and us witches are left to fumble around?
Not only could he see her clearly in the dark, but he could also hear every stuttering heartbeat, every hitched breath. Stricken, Zia stared at her shoes.Does he know?
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Just nervous.”
Mr. Bounds straightened. The movement drew her eyes back up to him involuntarily. His brow furrowed as he looked down his nose at her, but there was no judgment, no laughter there. “Do I make you nervous?”
Zia tried not to fidget. “Ah, well… a little.”
She felt the muscle under her fingers tense. “Don’t be nervous.” Another command.
Daring to glance at him, she noted, “You give a lot of orders, Mr. Bounds. Not so sure that one is going to be easy to follow.”
“Why?”
She raised her eyebrows. Swallowing, she answered, “You’re awfully intimidating.”
He was quiet for a moment before he said, “I don’t want to intimidate you. I want you to be comfortable with me.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to askwhy,but Zia held the word in with a swift bite of her tongue. Whatever the answer was, she wanted to bask in this moment for as long as possible. She didn’t want to know that he only wanted her to be comfortable because he wanted to be a better boss or something. She wanted it to be because helikedher.
Impossible,she thought wistfully,but a girl can dream.
Clearing her throat, she gestured to the flower beds with her free hand. “Should we start?”
Mr. Bounds inclined his head.
Zia gently tugged his arm in the direction of the bed on the right, which was the oldest of them. “Okay, so what do you know about your roses?”
“Nothing other than they came with the property,” he answered, stepping with her. She could feel the heat of him permeating through her coat as he angled his body closer to hers. Only a scant few inches separated them when he leaned over to inspect the last bloom on the first huge rose bush.
When he stood so close, she was forced to come to terms with the fact that her height put her squarely at Mr. Bounds’s collar, and that saidcollar was exposed by the v-cut of his sweater’s neckline, showing off the hard lines of his clavicle and throat.
Desire was a slow drip in her veins.
It would take so little to simply lean forward and press her lips to that delicious, lickable hollow—
Focus, Zia!
Breathless, she asked, “So, my guess is you don’t know how seriously some people take rose cultivation?”
Mr. Bounds slanted a look at her, but he didn’t move back. “I know how important it is toyou.That is all that concerns me.”
If her heart beat any faster, she was pretty sure it was going to crap out on her. Knowing he could hear how every word out of his mouth affected her only made it worse.
Desperate to defuse some of the growing tension in the air, Zia said, “Oh, well you should know that you have some of the rarest varieties of roses in the West Coast in your garden. Some of them — like the one in front of you — were brought over from Europe and the Middle East before the war. I had to track down all the records to verify their provenance, but when I did, I found out two of them were on record as being no longer propagated in their home countries.”
Mr. Bounds flicked his gaze back to the rose bush for just a moment before he turned his eyes back to her. “So they’re rare.”
“Yes, very.” She reached out to brush her fingers over the leathery leaves and felt the plant reach back with a familiarhello.It didn’t physically react to her, but she felt its recognition, its pleasure at being stroked and cared for after so long.
Affection buzzed between them, as real as the magic in her veins.
“It’s a miracle that so many of the bushes survived being abandoned for so long,” she added, quieter, as she skimmed her fingertips over the last pink-streaked bloom. “Roses can be hardy. They grow wild, you know, so it’s not like they don’t know how to make unfortunate conditions work, but…” She shook her head and sent her companion a rueful smile. “They’re precious. I’m extremely grateful so many of them survived long enough for me to bring some life back into this place.”
“That makes two of us.”
Zia flushed to the roots of her hair. “Thank you, Mr. Bounds.”
