The Chocolate Touch (9 page)

“But I did summer internships even during college, so I guess you could say longer.”

He massaged the back of his neck and didn’t say anything. It was as he suspected. He didn’t have much to offer her but great chocolate and great sex. Why she kept sitting in his
salon
acting as if she could absorb something more from him was a mystery.

Well, no, it wasn’t a mystery. It was a testament to his own ability to construct illusions. She had never suggested she wanted anything else.

The best he could do was delay her realizing her mistake as long as he could. Or was that how his father had gotten his mother? By hiding his real self just long enough? “Odd,” he said without meaning to. “I lost my mother when I was ten, too.”

Her fingers squeezed over the hand that still held hers. He instantly dropped his hand from his neck to recoup her other hand. If there was squeezing going on, both his hands wanted some. “It’s tough,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. Was it an accident or did she get sick?”

He shouldn’t have brought this up. “A boyfriend,” he said dryly. Dryness was about the best tone he could manage about this event, and that had taken a lot of practice.

Her eyes widened, shocked. “A boyfriend
killed
her?”

He flinched. “No.” Well, God, now that she suggested it, he realized he couldn’t know. They said women repeated cycles, so she might very well have run off with someone who treated her the same way his father had. “She ran off with him. Would you like a red wine, do you think? This Médoc is supposed to be good.”

Was his mother all right? He had bitterly hated her for so long, and now suddenly he felt a desperate urge to track her down and make sure she was hale and happy. Something she had never made sure of about
him.

His Still Nameless Date was staring at him with her lips parted, her eyes uncomprehending. See, and her parents had loved her, too. The knowledge squeezed his heart with anguish. He didn’t deserve her. He shouldn’t be sitting here, luring her into his clutches.

“Whatever you want,” she said absently of the wine, blinking, trying without success to stop staring.

He flicked a hand at Axel, the waiter, and ordered her a glass. She raised her eyebrows when she realized hers was the only one being poured. “I said whatever you want.”

Here it came. “I don’t drink.”

She blinked a couple of times, and then burst out laughing.

Well, that hadn’t hurt as much as he’d thought. He raised one eyebrow, waiting, while her laugh twisted and tumbled in his middle, doing all kinds of unethical things to him.

“You really don’t? But—you’re French!” she burbled. “Oh, I love it. You must love saying that to people.”

He hadn’t, actually, ever loved saying it before. People looked at him as if he had grown two heads, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to explain the reason. But—he found himself smiling, his thumbs gently stroking the back of her hands.

“Is chocolate your only vice?” she suggested cheerfully.

“Well—not my only,” he had to admit.

She looked down at their joined hands, and her mouth curved in a way that made that tsunami of warmth and arousal beat through him. She could have been looking right through the table, straight at his currently most pressing vice, which was surging at the imagined attention.

Her lashes lifted suddenly, and from under them, she gave him a long look. His hands squeezed slowly tighter.

“So, did your father raise you on his own or did he remarry?” she asked randomly. Probably grabbing at topics to make the sexual tension halfway bearable.

“Mmm.” This was what he got for taking a woman out to dinner. Conversation, for God’s sake. He did much, much better just going straight to sex, before, during, and after which no woman ever looked at him with the slightest hint of pity. “He didn’t remarry. This is really good.” He pointed to the healthiest first course on the menu, trying to make up for all that sugar he was pouring into her body. “The chef sautés the chèvre very quickly over high heat, and then lays it over a bed of mâche, with balsamic caramelized figs—”

He stopped, because her eyes had flicked from his finger on the menu back to his face, and they were narrowed, a little annoyed.

What had he said? Damn it, the whole sex-and-that’s-it policy had been working so well for him. What had inspired him to change it?

Her hands shifted in his as if she might be wanting to free them, and he couldn’t help it that his fingers tightened a little. It was instinct. He looked down at her hands caught in his as the twitch stilled and she changed her mind, then up to the freckles over her cheekbones, her wide mouth, her blue gaze back on their hands, the blush that had never entirely faded from her cheeks that evening. That warmth washed through him, beating his helpless body. Oh, that. That had inspired him to change his policy.

“You want me to be quiet so you can concentrate on the menu?” he hazarded.

She shook her head, gazing at their hands. “No. No, whatever you said sounds good.”

 

It wasn’t until the first course arrived that he realized one of the worst aspects of this dinner idea, that he had to let go of her hands, too. He angled his legs under the small table so that they kept brushing against hers instead. And she looked up at him with those skydiving eyes of hers and that sunset blush and let him do it. And she ate all of her salad and only a third of the steak, but then she kept soaking up that Roquefort sauce with fries and nibbling one more from time to time while he ate
his
steak, until her whole rich concoction of pure cream and Roquefort was gone, so he felt he had accomplished something. Plus, he had the brilliant idea to talk about the best places to visit in Paris instead of family history, so his own enjoyment of the conversation improved radically. Her eyes sparkled as she talked about what she had seen, asked him about what he liked. He was a little embarrassed to realize she had visited more of the cultural monuments of his city than he had.

He draped his jacket around her shoulders as they left the restaurant, entirely smug about his forethought in wearing one and her lack of forethought in not. They didn’t say a word as they walked through the streets. He knew he should keep up conversation, not let her start having second thoughts, but his heart was beating so hard, he didn’t dare open his mouth. He knew his words would come out choppy; she would hear his struggle to breathe.

What was the matter with him? How could he be nervous about
sex
?

At the door to her building, she turned and looked up at him, her hands burying in the pockets of his jacket, her eyes very wide.

He leaned into her, bracing his arms on either side of her head.

“Tell me your name.” He tried to keep his voice coaxing, but he was pretty sure he didn’t succeed. Damn it, he was
not
going to be her wild one-time nameless fuck, her little visit to a porn shop. His whole being rose up in rebellion against that role he had embraced for so long.

Bordel de cul,
she wasn’t going to tell him. She looked away, her face growing thoughtful and distant. Braced over her, his body surged with ways he could wring it out of her, and she shot a glance up at him, a wistful, hungry smile.

“J’aime,”
she said, with that choppy English J of hers, and his whole body jerked.

And then went still, more still than in that last second before they got to the Rs when the
Meilleur Ouvrier de France
award was announced and even his peers finally agreed that, yes, he was one of the best of the best chocolatiers in the world. He forgot all about her name. “What do you love?” he whispered. His—chocolate? His body? Being with him?

Her eyes widened, and she stared at him as if trapped, which she was: he had his arms braced on either side of her and his body looming over her, and there was no way he was going to let her go. Her face turned so crimson he could tell even in the silver-gold night lights of the city. “That’s my name.” Her voice came out a strangled whisper.

He blinked a moment, while his insides scrambled and congealed and tried to be reasonable and didn’t know what to do. “Your name is
Jaime
?” He couldn’t say the hard J; his English training consisted of the swear words he had picked up from films and all the marketing vocabulary for his chocolates, practical things like
oats
and
black heart of the ganache with its virile notes of olive oil.
He silked it out, her name, and her head tilted back as if he had just petted her with it.

He sank one too-big hand into that short hair, curling halfway around her skull, and then drew it down over her neck, over her shoulder, down her arm, heavily, petting her for real.

She sighed and sank back against the door.

His body kicked into overdrive.
That was a yes.

He pressed his hand low over her belly between the sheltering panels of his jacket and rubbed it up over her ribs, a slow drag, until it was just below her breasts, and her eyes were closed, and her lips were parted. “Jaime,” he whispered, her name sounding so much like something else that fear and desire knocked through him, some strange wild harmony.

She shivered and turned her head a little to the side, the line of her chin and throat all exposed to him. So he took the offer, brushed his lips very gently from the corner of her mouth, over the line of her jaw, down her throat.

“Jaime,” he whispered, and his heart tried to stop in pure terror at the word, but his body kept it going. “What’s your code?”

Her hands sank into his hair. He had to force himself enough away from her that she could turn in the tight shelter of his body, her shoulder rubbing against his chest, and tap it in.

Don’t be stupid,
some voice from his teenage past wanted to tell her.
Don’t let me see your code. Don’t let me in.
He quelled it ruthlessly.

When the door released, he pushed it open instantly and herded her inside, letting the door close behind them, shutting out the street, shutting them into darkness. In that darkness, he lifted her up, riding her on his thigh so he could free a hand, running it up to cup the breast he had just resisted on the public street. His mouth closed over hers, and this time her lips were already parted for him.

A door—to something of value—that was
open
for him. That welcomed him in.

She liked to eat things in slow bites, he reminded himself. She liked to sit there for hours. She liked to take her time. So he gave himself to her in slow bites, a flicker of his tongue, a taste of hers, a nibble of her lips, an elusive slide of his. It was so hard his body shook with it. His forearms corded against the door on either side of her head with the effort to keep himself off her. Her arms clutching his back were all that were holding her up on his thigh.

He loved that. He loved the way she clung to him.

He had to force his mouth away from hers again, panting. “Tell me where to go.” He must sound like a savage. A man who had no control.

She showed him the stairs, and he picked her up so that her legs were wrapped around his hips and carried her up them.

He had to stop a few times because his breath was too short, and not from the stairs or the weight. He had to stop and kiss her, grabbing onto the banister so he kept some purchase in the world of her kisses and didn’t send them tumbling down the stairs.

She liked this. She liked it. She liked the taste of
him.

He had to take the key from her at her door because she seemed so lost in kisses, she could let him kiss her against her door forever. But if there was one door in his life he was going to get open, it was that one, by God.

He got them in, then threw the deadbolt on the whole damn world outside.

Bed,
he reminded himself as he looked around, managing a blurred vision of a small space, of hardwood floors and red curtains.
No walls, no floors. Bed.
Or maybe a couch, because one was right there and—
Bed!

The suitcase on the floor of her bedroom made his heart flinch, curling from a blow. The lid was propped up against the wall, and it was fully packed, with a few clothes folded loosely on top of a dresser. She hadn’t even put her clothes in the drawers in the room. She was living out of her suitcase, ready to go.

He ignored his heart. No one in his life had ever dealt with it with much patience, including himself, and he wasn’t about to start now.

He turned on the nearest lamp, and she stiffened against him and pulled away.

“I don’t—turn it off,” she entreated.

He paused with his hand on the switch. “Really?” he asked, disappointed. She stood there in that midnight blue tunic that didn’t even show the mark of his hands where he had slid them on her body, but her face was so flushed, her mouth so full and bruised looking, her eyes so dark and hungry. He wouldn’t be able to see whether the rest of her body blushed in the dark, or where her freckles went, or what happened to them under his hands.

Her mouth grew stubborn. She started to fold her arms around herself.

He turned the lamp off.

In the light from the street, he could still see her, but more as a lighter form in shadow. He couldn’t make out those pale freckles or shades of blush.
Next time,
he promised as he reached for her, alarming himself with his continual attempts to make this long-term.

She knelt suddenly on the high bed, bringing her face level with his, and when his mouth closed on hers this time, her hands slid under his shirt and found the T-shirt underneath. Damn it, he had worn too many clothes. But she pushed that barrier away, too, slid the knit up his skin.

He pushed his jacket off her, which drove her hands away from him, then grabbed them back and brought them to the buttons on his shirt.