Free A Wish Upon Jasmine by Laura Florand

sexually harass someone who’d taken me on as a client.”
    Not sexually harassher? He wasn’t her employer. She’d quit any possibility of that position just as fast as he’d taken over her company. And they’d already had sex.
    “But I could think about you.” He rolled down his other sleeve. “Just to get in an aroused state.” He gestured downward and…oh, lord.
    He was aroused.
    Like…it was…he was…
    She couldn’t move.
    He—
    “For example…” His gaze traveled over her leisurely, as if he held the mouse’s tail firmly under one paw and could take his time. “I could imagine pushing you back on that counter. You’d probably say no, of course. But this is my imagination. So I could just cover your mouth with my hand until you couldn’t say a word.”
    He rolled down his right sleeve. “Your eyes would be so big just above my hand, and you’d try to grab my arm to push me off, but it would be too late. Because you can’t fight a man off in his imagination. And I’d already have my other hand sliding under that pretty white skirt of yours. And then you wouldn’t want to fight anymore.”
    He buttoned the fourth button of his shirt. “But I’d hold you down anyway. Maybe I’d let go of your mouth to hold your wrists, so I could hear all the sounds you made while I played with you any way I wanted to.”
    He buttoned the third button. “And I’d make you come,” he said softly, viciously, “until you couldn’t take it anymore.” The second button. “Until you begged me to stop.” The last button, the collar snug around his throat. “And I still wouldn’t stop. Until you were so weak from coming that you couldn’t even pull your thighs together when I finally let you come back down. You’d just lie there, with your skirt all up around you and that counter damp with you, while I did this.”
    He picked up his coat and slid it back on.
    “And this.” He picked up his watch while she stood frozen and fastened its armor back around his wrist.
    “And this.” He picked up the cufflinks and neatly threaded them through his cuffs, not even fumbling.
    “And walked out.”
    He turned and walked to the door of the workshop and paused to look back at her. “Want to see what I smell like?”
    She could only stare at him, aroused and slapped and utterly undone.
    “Well.” A crisp tug to adjust his sleeve. “I suppose I could always come up with another fantasy tonight, when you’re ready to test your first blends.”
    “Get out!” she yelled. “And I don’t have to work on a damn thing for you! You just took back all your down payment!” She gestured wildly at his suit coat, watch, cufflinks. Somehow, of everything that had just happened, that hurt the worst of all—that those superficial parts of him that he had given, he’d taken even those back, too.
    “I’ll pay cash,” he said evenly. “It’s cheaper.”
    And he walked out.

Chapter 6
    Damien had barely gone halfway down the street when he met Tristan coming up it.
    Fuck.
    “Are you okay?” Tristan rocked to a stop, brown eyes searching. “You look kind of…emotional.” His voice on the last word was dumbfounded.
    Imagine that. I had an emotion. Don’t have a heart attack.
    “I’m fine,” Damien snapped. He felt hot all over. He wanted to hit someone or something, slam his fist against glass to see it shatter…and here was one of his cousins. So convenient.
    Tristan leaned to the side to peer past Damien up the street. “Did something happen ?” he asked. “I mean, you act…” He waved a hand to try to capture the implausibility of the way Damien was acting. “…upset.”
    “I don’t get upset.” Damien adjusted his cuffs. Tristan, of course, was in a T-shirt on this hot day and eating a damn ice-cream cone. Damien had business meetings. “Don’t you have work to do?”
    “I’m stuck. I need to go windsurfing and clear my head. Want to come?”
    God, it was so hard not to hit Tristan right this