Chapter 14

• Rafe tried to concentrate throughout the presentation, but with Talia seated right next to him, her scent washing over him, it was near impossible. He couldn’t understand why the hell he was reacting so strongly to her—or it. What was it? It wasn’t flowery nor a brand he could easily recognize, but it was very much designed to entice a man. He was reacting way too strongly towards her for it to be anything else. It wasn’t like he was a curious, horny teenage boy. Rafe has always prided himself for being in control, especially of his emotions, and now that control was being threatened and it shook him to the very core. It was that damn scent. Surely she must know that? She must know the effect her perfume had on men? The kind of frenzy it instigated? He was tempted to look at the man seated next to her and ask him if he was having the same problem. It couldn’t possibly be just him getting drugged by that scent.
• And that stupid pen she had in her mouth! He was beyond distracted. Was she baiting him? Rested on the arms of the chair and hidden under the table, he fisted his hands to keep his itching fingers from grabbing for her. From his side view he watched as she turned the ball pen cap at the end of the black pen—twice clockwise, thrice anticlockwise—between her purple painted lips. Her entire focus was on the man standing on the other side of the boardroom pointing at the projected whiteboard as he spoke. He might as well have been speaking alien for all that Rafe could understand. His mind was completely on a different topic—a different galaxy altogether. He couldn’t stop wondering if her tongue was rolling over that ball pen cap as well. Just imagining those lips and that tongue on him had his ears ringing and his head swimming in a lust fog. If the room wasn’t filled with people, he would have pulled her under the table already, sunk himself inside her and exorcised the spell she’d cast on him.
• But Rafe wasn’t completely sure if her attention was on the presenter or something was on her mind too. Her free hand, resting on the arm of the chair, from the way her thumb swiped the tip of her fingers, there was almost a rhythm to it, and he was dying of curiosity to know the tune playing in her mind.