Page 35 of Scent of Desire
“You own those fields, Lily.” A sardonic smile slipped free from his lips as he made the apple travel between his fingers.
“You can’t buy flowers.” I shook my head, not believing my nose that he had done that.
“You can when you’re a flower queen or goddess.” He finally stepped out from the shadow, dropping the apple on the ground. He hid the sun from us, towering over me with all his strength and mystery. “I said I’d burn the world to find you and spare only a field of flowers—”
“Because that’s the only place you’ll ever find me,” I continued, feeling my breath being sucked out from my lungs. “Here.”
He had given me not only a crown but a court of royal subjects.
“Those fields are yours.” With one of his fingers, he grazed my skin, trailing a strand of my hair away from my face to tuck it behind my ear. Soft and possessive, that touch was a promise. “You can come here as much as you’d like. If what Delange told me is true, these fields are supposed to be the best in Grasse.”
“I can’t believe this.”
I had broken the few inches separating us to throw myself against his hard body. I stood on my tiptoes and let his arms capture me, keeping me locked in with him, safe and secure. My lips met his with lust and need. The type of kiss that could open portals, where you’re drinking the other’s soul and never being satiated. The one that consumes you like the most enthralling of poison.
The Devil in his eyes plummeted me back to his dark, burning world. His pomegranate taste bound me with the damned. The seal of our lips was an unsaid contract written in blood. And yet, despite all of that, that kiss was beautiful and hopeful. One where you know where you belong.
The kiss disappeared into the past when I stumbled backward, hearing the sound of an animal passing through the foliage. My eyes darted to the forest, then to the fields, until stopping a few meters in front of us.
It was a doe.
Her ears were pulled back as her gaze shifted between us and the apple Radcliff had dropped on the grass. She bowed her head to it, not moving forward nor backward.
“She’s not afraid,” I whispered and crouched, advancing slowly in front of her.
Behind me, Radcliff remained immobile. Through the doe’s eyes, I believed she could hold moments of the past like a crystal ball. Magic. Those same eyes were the color of the oldest tree, a symbol of wisdom and faith. They traveled back and forth to the apple once more, before she retreated one step.
I leaned toward the fruit and seized it inside my palm. The apple was a burning red color, apart from a slight part that had turned to a dark crimson color as if enchanted.
“This is what you want?” I held out the apple to her, stretching out my arm, but the doe’s gaze was fixed on Radcliff.
I slowly turned my head behind me to see that Radcliff too had a firm gaze with the animal. Neither of them flinched. They locked eyes in a staring contest. Long seconds passed, and it felt like nature had stopped its course for both of them to communicate.
Life seemed to have started again when the doe walked slowly to him. She was still mistrustful, but she remained hypnotized by the man bound to hell. She passed in front of me, ignoring my presence.
“The apple,” Radcliff commanded, his mouth not moving as if it was a thought he had conveyed to me.
I gave back the apple to Radcliff, being careful not to frighten the doe. He held it by the stem, and in response, the animal opened her nostrils to smell it, angling her head to bite the apple.
I sat on the grass, watching two opposites becoming attracted. “How are you doing that?”
“Purity craves the most of evil. Sins. It’s all about balance. The yin and the yang.” With a turn of his hand, the apple was now inside his palm. “Eat,” he ordered the doe.
The doe bit the apple and seized it in her mouth before running back in the direction of the forest.
“Perhaps you’re just good with animals.” I rose up, raising an eyebrow at him. That doe had just made my point. “She didn’t come to you because you’re evil, but perhaps because her purity allowed her to see the true color of your heart.”
A scowl slanted his lips. “Then she must be blind.”
It was one of Radcliff’s tricks, to hide the better part of his humanity behind the Devil’s mask. But I wouldn’t give up on him. Through the immensity of the trees inside the fairy forest, my eyes landed on the doe. She was still there, hiding between the branches, and this time, she had her gaze fixed on me.
“The view is not the most relatable of sense.” I smiled. “The scent is—with intuition if you believe in the seven senses.”
“You do have an answer for everything, little witch.”
“Says the Devil,” I quipped back, drifting my eyes back to him.
But something in the background distracted me. My eyebrows knitted inward when men in black costumes traveled back and forth with golf carts through my flower fields. Some of them held umbrellas and stayed rigid like royal guards.
