He notices.
I’m starting to understand that he notices everything.
Damien lets go of the door handle and takes one step toward me.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Certain.
I do not move away. He stops close enough that the front of his shirt nearly brushes my dress. The heat of him reaches mebefore his hands do. His eyes search mine one last time, and whatever he finds there makes his jaw tighten.
“Say it,” he says.
I swallow. “Say what?”
“That you want this,” he says.
The words move through me like a match struck in a dark room. I could make a joke. I could tilt my head and ask if he always requires verbal confirmation in hotel rooms with women whose herbs he tries to steal. I could give him something clever enough to protect the part of me that is already reaching for him. But I don’t want protection tonight.
“I want this,” I say.
His hand comes to my jaw. Not rough, but not gentle enough to be mistaken for uncertainty. His fingers slide beneath my chin, his thumb resting along the side of my face, and the first real touch of him empties every clever thing from my head. His eyes hold mine.
“Good,” he says.
Then he kisses me. The kiss is not tentative. It is not polite. It’s not the careful first kiss of two people trying to decide whether attraction has been exaggerated by wine, weather, or proximity. It’s the kiss of a man who has been waiting since the herb stall, since the wine glass, since the café doorway, since the walk back through Paris with his hand hovering at the edge of restraint and no intention of pretending he is made of anything softer than want…than desire. His mouth takes mine, and my body answers before thought can interfere.
I reach for him. The movement breaks whatever restraint remained. His other hand slides to my waist, and he pulls me against him. My palms land on his chest, and the heat of him burns through the linen. He is solid under my hands, all controlled strength and leashed hunger, and the sound thatleaves me against his mouth is not measured, not careful, not anything I can claim as dignified.
He hears it. He steps into me. I step back. My spine meets the wall beside the door, and his hand moves from my jaw into my hair, careful of the pins for half a second before patience loses whatever argument it was trying to make. One pin slips free. Then another. My hair loosens over his fingers, and he pulls back just enough to look at me.
The way he looks at me steals the room out from under my feet.
Like I’m not a stranger.
Like I’m not a woman he met over herbs and wine and one reckless afternoon.
Like I’m something he has been hungry for longer than the day allows.
“You’re trouble,” I say, because I need words somewhere, even if they come out breathless and almost useless.
His thumb drags over my lower lip.
His eyes stay on my mouth.
“Yes,” he says. “I know.”
Then he kisses me again, and this time I stop trying to keep any part of myself separate from the heat of it. My hands slide to the back of his neck. His body presses into mine. The room turns warmer, smaller, alive with the sounds we are no longer careful enough to swallow. Paris is outside the window, blue and gold and indifferent. My laptop is open on the desk. My notebook waits beside it. The tarragon stands in its glass like a witness.
His hands find my leg and lifts it slowly, his mouth never leaving mine. My body responds before my brain does — my leg wraps around his waist on instinct, pulling him closer, and the contact sends a current straight through me. His hands squeeze the flesh of my thighs, warm and deliberate, and I feel the hem of my dress sliding upward as he gathers the fabric in his grip.
My hands move across his shoulders — I can't help it. I need to feel what's underneath the linen. The tightness of him, the broad span of muscle, the controlled strength that is somehow even more overwhelming up close than it was at a distance. I work my fingers to the bottom of his shirt and slide underneath it, and the skin I find there is warm and taut, his abs rigid under my palms in a way that makes something low in my belly pull tight.
His mouth drags from mine and buries itself in my neck. The sound that leaves me is embarrassing in its honesty.
His lips move across my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my shoulder, and his hands are still moving under my dress — sliding upward, unhurried, deliberate, like a man who has decided exactly where he is going and sees no reason to rush getting there. His fingers graze the fabric of my panties and my breath catches hard enough to make him pause.
