Sweet Distraction ✔︎

[12] 𝑻𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆

“Swirl the wine in your glass,” the vintner said. “Swirl it.”

Isabelle sloshed the wine around in her glass, hoping that was the same as swirling. She enjoyed wine as much as the next person, but she’d never understood all the hype about terroir and tannins.

“Now sniff,” Mr. Benson ordered. With his neatly trimmed white beard and bushy white hair, the vintner was perfectly suited to this sprawling stone villa with its acres of flourishing vineyards.

Obediently all ten people crowded around the wooden table lowered their noses into their wineglasses and inhaled a series of sniffs that made it sound as if they all needed a tissue.

“I sense a strong grassy flavor,” one woman remarked.

“Mmm,” said another. “I’m getting mushrooms.”

“I smell dampness and leather,” a man announced.

“Now sip and savor,” Mr. Benson said.

Isabellewasn’t sure she wanted to drink something that smelled like old leather, but she took a small mouthful.

“You should taste hints of oak and blackberries,” the vintner said. “And perhaps a bit of raspberry as well.”

The other wine-tasters murmured and nodded. Beside Isabelle, Evan took another sip of the burgundy. She sipped again, attempting to pick out blackberries and oak. As she’d been told, she sucked the wine noisily through her teeth to aerate the flavors. She ignored Mr. Benson’s dictate to spit the wine into a bucket and swallowed it instead.

Evan picked up the bottle and poured more into her glass. “Are you getting the blackberries?”

What she was getting was a bit tipsy, but she didn’t bother telling him that. Instead she nodded.

“Oak and raspberry, too. It’s like a wooden fruit basket in my mouth.”

She took another sip of wine. Evan’s gaze went to her mouth as she pursed her lips and shifted them from side to side, then sucked the wine through her teeth. She swallowed the mouthful, enjoying the taste as it slid down her throat.

“You’re supposed to spit,” Evan admonished.

“I always swallow after I suck.” She shot him a sideways look.

His eyes darkened. “Bad girl.”

“Yes.”

Evan breathed out a curse, turning his attention back to the bottles. Isabelle grinned to herself, even as she told herself to be careful. Emboldened by the wine though she might be, she couldn’t lead him on after they’d come to an agreement about this being a platonic weekend. A rather weak agreement, truth be told, but an agreement nonetheless.

Not that Evan was making it easy on either one of them the way he kept touching her. At first, she’d thought it was accidental brushes of his body against hers, but when she’d felt his hand on her ass as she’d climbed into the hot-air balloon, she’d realized he was deliberately touching her.

And she’d let him. Because Evan’s touches were like fireflies, inciting bursts of heat in her blood. His hand on her back. His bare forearm grazing hers. The quick stroke of his fingers against her wrist.

And him. Even if he wasn’t touching her, Isabelle felt his presence with every fiber of her being. She caught herself staring at him multiple times throughout the day—the length of his muscular legs beneath his cargo shorts, the sheer breadth of his chest and shoulders in his short-sleeved shirt. The hollow of his throat. Every time she got close to him, she caught a whiff of his delicious scent of maleness and spice.