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.