Page 25

Like a compass needle finding north.

Like my body and soul recognized him.

I did my best to shake it away, but it was damned near impossible.

And then. . .I wanted to know what he looked like.

What was the face to this cocky voice?

That need scared the shit out of me too.

“What are you doing over there?”

And then. . .like he'd stepped through the wall and was standing right behind me. . .I smelled him.

Old cedar.

The kind that grew in forests that had been forests before there were humans. It was all sap, dark bark, and the deep green hush of those trees.

I sniffed again.

Rain on moss. Cold stone. Smoke from a fire that had been burning for hundreds of years.

And underneath all of it.

Warm skin and wild animalistic passion.

I inhaled again.

Deeper.

Oh no. . .

The scent wasn't in the room.

It was in me.

Coming up from inside my own chest like my ribs had cracked open and let out air from a place I'd never been. Every time I breathed in, I chased it. Every time I breathed out, I lost it. And every time I lost it, my body made a sound in the back of my throat that I didn't authorize.

Oh God no. I have to get the fuck out of Japan.

I'd smelled expensive men before. Cologne men. Cigar men. Whiskey men. Church-incense men. Sweat-and-leather men in New Orleans back rooms who thought they could rattle me.

None of them had ever made my mouth water.

I'd never lost my mind over a scent.

Never.

I'd walked past the best French bakeries in New Orleans without slowing down. I'd stood next to rich men in tuxedos at Delphine's secret parties and felt nothing but bored.

But this?

This ancient, green, breathing, alive smell was crawling down my throat and settling in my very soul like every other scent I'd ever known had just been a placeholder waiting for the real thing to arrive.

Somewhere across Kyoto, in the back of that car, I could have sworn I heard him inhale too. "Mmmm."

I couldn't answer.