Leander glanced up at her face. His acute hearing had allowed him to overhear every word that dreadful little rat of a man had spoken to her in the kitchen. He had wanted to take Geoffrey’s neck between his hands and squeeze very, very hard.
“I informed him that I plan to dine here every night for the remainder of my...vacation...and simply made clear my expectation that his talented and insightful sommelier would be on hand to assist me with my wine selections.”
He accepted the cork she held out to him without further comment. She watched him stroke a finger up and down the slender stem of the wine glass.
“Shall I decant?”
“No,” he replied, raising his gaze to the poem of her face. “But you should bring another glass.”
“Is someone joining you?”
“Yes. You are.”
He saw how that surprised her. Her slender fingers tightened around the neck of the wine bottle. She shifted her weight to her opposite foot.
“Ah...” She shot a glance toward the kitchen doors. “I don’t really think that would be the best—”
“Come now,” he interrupted with a small smile. “I don’t think your maître d’ would approve of you denying the request of His Holy Dignity, do you?”
It was a provocation—and a deliberate one. He wanted her to be curious, wanted her to wonder how he knew the ridiculous moniker Geoffrey had called him, wanted her to want to get closer—
Jenna slammed the Latour down upon the table with a jarring thump, the wine sloshing in the bottle. Hectic spots of color stained her cheeks.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she said through stiff lips. “Am I on camera or something? How did you hear that?”
Leander made a mental note for future reference that she didn’t like being provoked. Nor did she appear to have any problem being direct. He forced back the smile that wanted to curl his lips.
“Why don’t you sit with me and I’ll tell you?” he murmured, holding her fierce gaze.
A fighter, he thought. Magnificent.
She remained tense and silent at the edge of the table, breathing raggedly with that flushed face, those glittering eyes.
“Please.” He gestured to the empty seat next to him. “I have something I’d like to ask you, at any rate.”
Jenna continued to assess him with a long, measuring look, as if she could pluck the very thoughts from his mind.
He hoped to God she could not.
He was close to conceding defeat when she suddenly bent her knees and elegantly slid into the booth next to him. She reached out, picked up the bottle of Latour, and poured it into his glass. A perfect arc of liquid swirled into a pool of smooth claret within the crystal bowl. The color was dark and rich, ruby fading to amber at the edge.
She set the bottle on the table, grasped the stem between her thumb and forefinger, and slid it smoothly across the tablecloth toward him.
“So,” she said, turning to fix him with her sharp stare. “I’m sitting. What is it you wanted to ask me?”
He did his best to ignore her eyes of frost that seemed able to strip every secret from his soul. Instead he picked up the wine glass, swirled the wine around in the bowl, and lifted it to his nose.
He closed his eyes.
First: the aromas of game, smoky oak, herbs, and vanilla, something indefinable, wild and powerful. Next: truffle, leather, mineral, and sweet, jammy aromatics, viscous texture, cedar, blackberries, currant. Finally: the thick and caressing finish, lingering on his tongue like ambrosia. He tasted the sun and the rain that had nourished the vines, the gravelly soil, the wood barrel it had aged in, harvested from an ancient forest in France.
Tronçais, he thought. No–Jupilles. The toasted vanilla flavors had more finesse than wine aged in Tronçais oak.
It moved him every time, this thing of perfect beauty, this work of art, the glory of nature confined within the shape of the bottle.
His father had had exquisite taste. The ’61 Latour was quite possibly proof of God’s existence.
He felt her shift in the booth next to him, heard the rustle of her silk dress against leather and bare skin as she moved, and handed over the glass without opening his eyes. She took it; he felt the sudden weightlessness in his hand.
“What I wanted to ask you is this,” he said quietly. He opened his eyes to stare with full intensity into her pale and unsmiling face. “What do you taste?”
It had surprised him that she was the sommelier, but it gave him hope. This line of work was not for those with dulled senses. It was a clue, a possibility...
Her brows, pale and finely arched, drew together. “Is this some kind of test?”
You’ve no idea, he thought. But he only shook his head no and looked at her.
She licked her lips and swallowed, then let out a long breath through her nose. “After this, you’ll answer my questions.” She lifted her chin, defiant.
He finally allowed his lips to twist into a smile. He nodded.
She raised the glass to her nose and inhaled.
He saw it then, the way it came over her, the way she opened her senses to allow the flavor in. Her eyes fluttered closed, her lips parted. She held the breath on her tongue and stilled, every sense alight, every fiber and nerve attuned with perfect concentration to the bouquet of the wine in front of her.
Ikati, the animal inside him whispered, rising up to strain against his skin. It was a pulsing sting of recognition, hot and strong and uncontained. She is Ikati. Like me.
She took a sip of wine, rolled the liquid over her tongue, paused for one long, silent moment, then swallowed.
“Oh,” she said, letting out a little, astonished breath. “Oh, God.”
“Tell me,” he murmured. He leaned forward on instinct, catching the subtle, feminine perfume of her skin, watching the flush on her cheeks spread down to her neck, her chest.
“I’ve never...it’s...”
She swallowed again and turned to look at him, wonder and reverence evident in every feature of her face. The guarded tension was gone, all the reticence, the quiet melancholy. In its place was amazement, delight, exhilaration. Joy.
He suddenly found it very hard to breathe through the steel band that tightened around his chest.
“It’s magnificent,” she breathed. “After all these years—after all this time it should be faded, it should be...” She shook her head, blinking. “But it’s perfect.”
“Yes,” he murmured, admiring the way the candlelight glowed amber and honey against her hair. Pinned half up, half not, tumbling to her waist, she looked as if she’d just rolled from some very warm bed. “It is. Just at its peak now, I would say. It may even have another ten years ahead of it.”
She set the glass on the table with precise, exaggerated care, then slid it back toward him. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “That was incredible. And very—” She hesitated and swallowed, raised her eyes to his. “Very non-pathetic.” A tiny, wry smile twisted her lips.
Without moving his gaze from her face, he reached for the glass and let his fingers settle over hers, the barest friction between their skin, the slightest pressure possible.
“You haven’t answered my question.” His voice came out just as quiet as before, but now it was shaded somber, almost tense. “What did you taste?”
She held very still, the tiny smile fading as she gazed back at him, and he became abruptly aware of a heat and ache in his groin and the almost overpowering urge to plunge his hands wrist-deep into her hair and pull her hard against him.
“Black currant,” she said. “Toasted oak. Limestone.”
He heard her breathing increase, her heart a growing thrum against her ribs, and wondered what caused it, hoped that maybe, somehow, it had something to do with him.
Jesus, he thought, she is so beautiful. That skin, those lips, that fragile, perfect—
“Easy,” he scoffed quietly, still holding her gaze. He allowed the tip of his index finger to graze the side of her thumb.
She didn’t move or blink, but her pupils dilated a fraction of an inch.
“What else?” he murmured, leaning toward her, inhaling the scent of her skin. The ache in his groin grew to a throbbing, uncomfortable stiffness.
“Spanish cedarwood. Anise. Cinnamon.” She paused. “Woodsmoke.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Woodsmoke?”
The tip of her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips and he almost groaned, it was so erotic. “You won’t believe me,” she said.
He leaned closer and smiled at her. It was a dangerous smile, a hungry smile, he knew by the way her eyes widened when she saw it, but he couldn’t help himself. It took all his willpower just to keep from kissing her. “You would be surprised at what I would believe, Jenna,” he said, low. “Try me.”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip, hesitating, then came to some unspoken decision with the slight lift of one shoulder. “There was a wood fire burning near the vines during the growing season, budbreak to harvest. Flowering prune trees, I think.”
He looked at her. Still and lovely, eyes glowing like green embers, she was clearly afraid of his ridicule, of his disbelief. A tremor passed through him. He inched closer.
“Windbreaks.”
“I’m sorry?” she said, throaty. Her gaze flickered down to his mouth.
“Prune trees are used as windbreaks around the vineyards in Pauillac,” he said, teetering on the brink of self-control. The way she was looking at him, looking at his mouth...“France had an outbreak of phylloxera that season, thousands of trees were infected.”
She glanced back up at him and he was pinned by the power of that gaze, the beauty and haunting luminosity of those eyes. Not only were they a startling, clear green, the irises rimmed with shimmering gold, but they contained gorgeous deep flecks of amber and citrine embedded within that sparked fire into their cool emerald depths.
He pictured her reclining atop his massive four-poster bed at Sommerley, her curves nestled into the glossy fur coverlet, those lucid eyes mirroring his own desire, her body nude but for the diamonds he wanted to give her: at her throat, around her wrists, on her finger...
“They had to burn all the trees that year to stop the spread of disease,” he whispered.
The desire rising inside him suddenly transformed into a beast, hissing, clawing just under his skin, poised to devour him. His fingers tightened over her own and he parted his lips, letting the flavor of her burn bright against his tongue.
“Windbreaks,” she murmured, leaning into him with a dreamy, half-lidded look. “Oh...that’s...”
Heart pounding, he bent his head. One second more...one inch more and his lips would be on hers...
Then her eyes clouded. She began to blink. Her brows drew together and her eyes focused sharp. “Can you feel that?” She turned her head, searching the restaurant, her gaze moving toward the black sky framed in the windows that lined one wall, a view to the street.
Leander wondered if Jenna somehow smelled his desire for her, so acute was this sense of hers proving to be, but then she turned back to him, grimacing.
“What is that?” She seemed close to being sick. Her fingers began to shake under his.
He was abruptly alert, wary, a sense of peril eating through his chest. “Jenna? Are you unwell? What’s wrong?”
But she was rising from the table already, her face paling, her eyes wide, her gaze flying around the room. Her lips parted and she breathed out a few words as she tried to steady herself with a shaking hand on the banquette.
“That vibration. That—friction—static—”
She gasped and stumbled.
He was next to her before she could fall, pulling her to him with one arm, supporting her body against his chest. Her heart was pumping a violent, staccato beat. She was satin and fire in his arms, the skin of her bare arms prickled with goose bumps, burning with unnatural heat. His heart began to thunder in panic when she gave a low, keening moan and sagged against him, eyes huge and round and staring at nothing.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
Then the shaking began.
7
Morgan had discovered Rodeo Drive.
And not just in a touristy kind of way, gawking in star-struck wonder as she passed by on the top deck of a sightseeing bus. No, she had gone native.
Which wasn’t a precise description for the way she’d spent the past three days, because no one in Beverly Hills seemed to walk anywhere—except for the tourists—and she had walked from Valentino to Prada, from Bulgari to Armani, from Dior to Tiffany.
She loved to walk, having spent her entire life roaming the New Forest, finding all the best spots of damp, wooded earth and soaring vistas glimpsed from the tops of fir trees. Moving her body was second nature. It was easy to walk for miles, carrying packages, the sun on her face, wind playing through her hair. It was being confined within the gilded cage of the Four Seasons Hotel she found difficult.
She hadn’t stayed in human form this long for years.
So, to distract herself from the growing discomfort of denying her animal side, she went shopping.
Her purchases were beginning to take over a rather substantial portion of her suite at the hotel. Square red cardboard boxes, rectangular black paper bags with turquoise tissue peeking out, plain white parcels with logos from the most expensive boutiques, and those perfect, darling little robin’s-egg blue boxes with the white ribbon. Her favorite.
She couldn’t wait to try it all on again.
The fact that she’d charged everything to the credit card Leander had given her—for emergencies only, Morgan—made it all the more satisfying. It appeared his little black card had no purchase limit.
Morgan stood barefoot in the middle of the plush butter crème carpet, surveying the damage, feeling rather proud of herself. She’d ordered breakfast again from the fabulous French café just down the street—another luxury thanks to the wonderful little black card—and the remains of what was once a fat, smoked bacon, gruyere, and apple omelet lay on the dining table in the master suite, next to a pot of steaming hot coffee and pastries.
She probably couldn’t get out onto the balcony if she wanted to: the glass sliding door was hidden behind a chin-high stack of Ralph Lauren boxes. She briefly wondered how she was going to get it all back to Sommerley, but then shrugged her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. Leander would figure something out for her, he always did.
He was the Alpha. That was his job.
A delighted smile lit up her face.
It was in exactly this posture Leander found her when he came crashing through the door.
“I need you,” he growled, curt and tense. A stack of parcels on the glass console table in the foyer toppled over as he shouldered past them, spilling a four-thousand-dollar Hermès crocodile-skin handbag to the white marble floor.
“Don’t you knock?” Morgan complained, turning to shoot him a flinty stare.
“My suite. Now.”
His body was tense in a way she had never seen. He normally moved with a dark grace, stealthy, all poise and menace and feral-eyed vigilance. But now he was visibly distracted—taut as a bowstring, grim-faced, and unshaven—so Morgan only pursed her lips and swallowed the retort on her tongue.
“What is it?”
Without another word, he yanked the door open in one swift, hard motion and disappeared through it. His hair swung in a loose, handsome ruff around his shoulders, black as midnight against the rumpled white silk of his shirt.
Morgan sighed and turned to gaze again, with more than a hint of melancholy, on the piles of expensive plunder. It looked as if her plan for the morning had been derailed.
Trying everything on again would have to wait.
Leander had watched Jenna all night, crouching silent and still in the gloom of her bedroom as she slept, tensed to vanish as vapor into the air if she awoke, waiting for any sign she might not be as fine as she repeatedly told the EMT she was.
They’d been called to Mélisse because of the injuries. Paramedics and firemen and police had been dispatched all over the city to care for the wounded. They were mostly minor things: cuts from shattered glass, scrapes from falling down, contusions, a few cases of shock in the elderly.
No major damage had been reported to any structures, though many buildings—like the one Mélisse was located in—suffered a few broken windows, some cracked plaster, damage to the façade. He’d been told it was one of the milder earthquakes to hit Los Angeles in recent years.
No matter how mild the quake, it caused a major upheaval for him.
At the first ripple in the bedrock, as Jenna sagged against him in that half-faint that made his heart climb into his throat, his animal instincts went into overdrive.
He lifted her up against him—her knees crooked over his left arm, her head lolling against his right—and swept her out the back door of the restaurant to the middle of the wide, brick-paved patio. It was a deserted place, a safe place, cloaked in darkness, free from anything that could fall on them from above.
Amid the dark enclosure of the cypress and oak trees that encircled them like an open-air cathedral, the sky above them smoke and ebony-blue, Leander stood braced against the shaking, his legs open wide, his arms wrapped around her hard.
The boughs of the trees swayed and thrashed above while the eerie groans and creaks of the buildings around them—stressed to their foundations with the earth bucking like a creature alive—tightened his stomach into a fist.
If it weren’t for Jenna, lush and passive in his arms, he would have Shifted to panther, climbed the nearest tree, and roared down in fury at the insanity below.
Her face was very clear in the moonlight, pale and beautiful like something forged from marble, her long lashes a dark smudge against the satin perfection of her ivory cheek. He knew she hadn’t fainted, though her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. He knew because she kept a hand pressed firm against his chest.
The heat of her palm burned straight through the fabric of his shirt.
He didn’t know if she was seeking reassurance in the steady beat of his heart, or trying to keep him from getting any closer. Could she sense how he longed to touch his lips to her forehead, her hair, her cheek?
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