The Scent of Mimosa

False start

 Bon Dieu! What was happening? Cassandra's mind ran riot as she felt Vince's breath, hot and increasingly heavy in the cleft between her neck and shoulder. This had been the last thing she had expected when she woke him only a few minutes ago.

The past few weeks had seemed to alleviate all of the unspoken tensions between the two of them, in fact, they had been pleasantly companionable. Although Vincent was the last person she would have thought she wanted to have hanging around her home, she had really enjoyed the time he had been spending at the Maison Guipard.

There was a chasm of difference in their backgrounds, but through working together and sharing their space - and to some extent their thoughts - they had managed to bridge the gap. She was finding that they could communicate, connect even. Although she could hardly believe it, in her heart of hearts she was beginning to cherish the friendship that was burgeoning between them.

She could not imagine what would become of that friendship now.

She knew that she had roused him from a particularly deep sleep. She knew too that he had not been entirely lucid when she had held out her arm to him with her first draft of Imogen's perfume. Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing? she wondered. Perhaps he was still half asleep?

And for all these reasons she knew that she should pull back, draw herself away from him. She should stop what was happening before anything actually happened. It's not too late, her consciousness whispered. This whole thing can be reversed, corrected, forgotten. But even as she thought it, she knew that she would do nothing of the sort because despite what protestations her mind may offer, despite what arguments her sense of reason threw down before her, she was already lost in the barrage of intoxicating sensations that spiraled through her at the simple contact of Vince's skin on upon her own.

And then he kissed her. His lips opened gently against the sensitive skin of neck, the light stubble from his unshaven cheeks grazing softly against her jawline. It was pleasure and it was agony.

Cassandra felt her eyes close and her head drop involuntarily backwards, exposing herself further. Vince brought one hand up towards her face, cupping her cheek as his lips trailed up her neck and over her chin, working their way purposefully towards her mouth.

''Vincent. We... we shouldn't...,'' Cassandra murmured between kisses, but her words were drowned by her own labored breath and the deafening thump of her heartbeat.

Vince's hand was moving from her face now, sliding across her collarbone, dipping into the v of her neckline, and gliding over the valley of her waist. With a quick tug he released the knot that secured her velvet wrap blouse, pushing the fabric aside and fumbling for the catch on her lace demi cup.

He was clearly awake now. He sat up straight, taking his weight off of the one hand that had remained on the daybed so that both were free to caress her. With two fingers he traced a delicate line from the apex of her shoulder to the tip of one breast, sending an almost painfully acute charge through Cassandra's extremities.

She was lost.

Her hands sought blindly for the buttons of the formal shirt she knew Vince was, as always, wearing. Catching one between her fingers she slid the pearly disk desperately through the fabric, and then another, and another, until the light cotton fell open as it had been that night in Vince's hotel room.

With eyes still closed, she reached for him, finally able to touch what she had seen so many times over in her mind's eye. Her palm met the flat plane of his abdomen and traced upwards across warm skin and a light haze of hair to the wall of his chest. He was exactly as she had imagined him. He had the kind of body that inspired sculpture and photography. She was captivated: her every nerve tuned to the frequency of his touch.