THE SCENT OF DANGER ~ Eucris by Geo. F. Trumper

East of Las Vegas, the sky was a sharp steel grey and a tinge of crimson bled across the serrated tops of the western mountains. The windows of the Sands Hotel were hermetically sealed against the approaching furnace of the Nevada sun.  Tiffany languidly rolled over in bed and looked at the man from London sleeping next to her. He wasn’t her type, hard body, forceful, coolly sensual, and hot with a revolver. He was a professional killer. In short he was a man. She had her reasons for not liking men much; men had ruined her and had set her on a path that ultimately put her here beside him. But somehow this man intrigued her. What was it about him that made him different? What made her…like him?  The sex had been hot but that wasn’t it. She pulled the sheet up over her breasts to cut the shiver from the air conditioning and tried to figure him out.

 

Tiffany leaned over to press her nose against his shoulder and breathed in his slightly salty masculine aroma. She closed her eyes and tried to place the fragrance he wore. It wasn’t something she had ever smelled before. There was oakmoss and some currant berries and just a hint of jasmine.  Most of the men she had dealings with from London diamond smugglers  to the pit bosses in Vegas all reeked of cheap cologne. This guy smelled nice. Like a gentleman. She had no dealings in her line of international crime with gentleman. She smiled and thought about how he had silently killed that man in front of her back in Amsterdam. So quick and nearly bloodless it was. He was no gentleman really, just a bloody cold killer.

As she ran her ring finger up his forearm to the forked veins of his bicep it hit her. Only while he slept could you see it in his face. A woman had ruined him. Of course that is what had intrigued her about him. He was just as damaged as she was. Because of the past both of them had shut down their emotions and were on autopilot. Neither of them knew how to land the plane.

He opened his arctic blue eyes.

“Are you hungry?” He said with just the whisper of a smile at the corner of his right eye.

“Ravenous.’ She leaned over him to the night stand on his side of the king-size bed  and picked up the phone receiver. “I’ll order breakfast. What would you like?”

“Orange juice, three eggs slightly scrambled, toast with orange marmalade, a large portion of bacon, and espresso with cream. Got it?”

She smiled. “Got it.”

As she placed the order with room service he looked her up and down and, then very slowly pulled the sheet down to her waist to reveal her appetizing curves. She smiled and pulled the sheet back up.

“Now it’s time for the truth Mister, what is your name really?”

In one panther move he rolled over on top of her and nibbled at her ear and whispered.

“The name’s James……..”

 

(Artist Frank McCarthy)

*******

James Bond most famously wore Eucris by Geo. F. Trumper in Ian Fleming’s “Diamonds Are Forever.”  For Bond fans its being in that book set it apart as a glamorous masculine fragrance from 1956 on.  A masculine scent for sure but guess what? Tiffany Case would smell smashing in this scent too. A splash or two behind the ears and on a décolletage cascading with Cartier ice, a glass of champagne and voilà, magic.

Created in 1912 by the famed London gentleman’s barbers you can bet that at least one bottle went down with the Titanic. It is a classic woody floral musk scent that when worn is sublimely rich and sophisticated in a very old school barbershop manner. That can be a good and refreshing thing in the world of today’s gourmand and oud craze. At over a hundred years old it is still a star in the masculine fragrance firmament.

It opens with the pungent slightly animalic bite of black currant, sweet caraway and earthy coriander. Then up from the bottom right though the mid notes comes the killer beauty of the oakmoss. It grabs the jasmine and lily of the valley in the mid note range and turns them on their ears giving them a toughness they rarely display. These flowers transfigured by the oakmoss are the Bond Girls of the scent, beautiful, tough and slightly dangerous.

The dry down is all creamy sandalwood and musk, clean and sophisticated to the end. The Oakmoss holds on and never lets you forget who is boss in this fragrance.

Eucris lasts around ten hours on my skin and has a respectable silage of about three feet in the fist few hours and then six to twelve inches in the dry down. It isn’t shy but it is discrete in its style and allure.

The wonderful thing about Eucris and many classic old perfumes and colognes it that they carry a history, a life of there own over the decades and many stories along with them. If handled and nurtured with love by the houses that created them they can be as lovely, exciting, sexy and relevant today as the day they were first un-bottled and enjoyed by the public.

 

Eucris by Geo. F. Trumper Five Gold Stars *****

(Please note that the story above is not an excerpt from Ian Fleming’s wonderful “Diamonds Are Forever” but simply a figment of my over active and romantic imagination.) 

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