The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) (11 page)

She didn’t answer, her forehead crinkled, but she moved to her tiny stovetop, filling a kettle with water and setting it on the burner, opening a little canister of crumbled leaves whose peppermint scent reached him through the small space. She must do this every evening, he thought. The little ritual she defaulted to even when he was here to disturb it: take off her jacket, make her little herbal tea. Kick off her shoes, curl up in this bed. He bet his presence was all that was keeping her shoes on right now. And his own toes curled with the desire to see her feet bare. Padding toward him.
Oh, sweetheart, you are going to curl up in this bed with me. Yes, you are.

He looked at her feet, just
willing
those little street tennis shoes off with everything in him, and looked up to find her trying not to watch him. Her slightly tilted eyes so very serious, in that way that seemed to just run little fingers everywhere all over his body, tickling him unmercifully.

Could he stand up again yet and lean into her? Would her eyes widen and her head tilt back for him? Could he reach out a hand and pull her between his legs? He flopped back on the bed instead, sinking into it with the ease of a man who had had a very long day. “Mmm.” He smiled at her sideways, his eyes barely open…just enough to see every single reaction she made.

Her eyes did widen, and she took a breath and bit her lip, looking back at the tea leaves she was spooning out. If he “fell asleep” on this bed, would she wake him and kick him out or let him smile up at her sleepily and pull her down to him as he kissed her? Or would she let him sleep and eventually just have to creep to the bed and tuck herself on the edge of it, too tired to resist, so that she fell asleep and he got to wake her? He knew exactly how bone-tired she must be, how much she must long to curl up in this bed right now. The way he knew he could get her to do things just because she was so used to doing exactly what he told her, to letting him take over her body until she got everything exactly the way he wanted it.
Patrick, you are such a fucking bastard. Un vrai enculé.

But, oh, God, I want her, I want her, I want her. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t.
The ache of it was going to swallow him whole.

He smiled at her, under drooping eyelashes. “Make me some, too?” And he blew her a long, slow kiss just before he “dozed off.”

***

It would be so easy for him, Sarah thought despairingly, staring at her tea leaves. Making tea wasn’t helping her, and the umbrella had gone off and hid, and she kept wanting to kick off her shoes and just
give up.

If being in a woman’s apartment suddenly put him in the mood, all he would have to do was curl one little finger. And there she would be.

Easy, automatic sex, at the beck of his fingers. That was probably how it always worked for him. He probably didn’t even know what difficult was.

No, that can’t be right, Sarah,
she reminded herself, not for the first time.
He does the same job you do, a million times better. He has to know what hard is. He just never
shows
it’s hard.

But still…difficult with
women
?
What woman could resist that wicked grin of his? If any did, he probably yawned and turned without a second’s thought to the next, non-resisting woman.

The kettle woke, and she turned it off before it could whistle, pouring water over peppermint leaves, something oddly warming about doing this for two instead of one.

Wouldn’t her life be wonderful if Patrick really thought she was as special as those winks of his sometimes made her feel, if she made tea for him while he blew her kisses every evening? She would almost be willing to share this minuscule space, to give up her last tiny slice of the introverted time she missed so much, if that person were Patrick.

She warmed her hands on her cup, as she always did, watching the warm body that cup had always been a substitute for, evening after cold evening. “Patrick,” she said, but he didn’t wake up. “Patrick.”

Still no movement. Those tawny lashes of his lay so innocently against his cheeks. He should have looked like a tired child, but he didn’t. He looked like a tired man.

She carried the cup across to him and touched his thigh. “Patrick.” He didn’t move, doubtless exhausted. She was, and he did ten times as much as she did. That perfect, sensual aristocrat’s mouth was relaxed, the cleft in the strong chin somehow like a chink in his armor.

“Patrick.” She had to crawl onto the bed to reach his shoulder. She kicked her shoes off, because she
hated
wearing her street shoes in the house, much less letting them come into contact with her actual bed. Her mother had never allowed outdoor shoes on indoor floors. Her socks went with them automatically, as they always did, and then she regretted it, her feet now as vulnerable as the rest of her. She shook his shoulder a little. “Patrick, wake up.”

Before she just curled up against his shoulder and went to sleep, too. She was so tired. All the tension in her body seemed to pull toward him, like filings to a magnet, as if he could drain it out of her and turn it into something else. Something golden and warm and easy.

“Sarabelle,” he murmured, and as always the name cascaded over her skin, making her feel so
special.
“It’s my favorite dream.”

What?

Gorgeous blue eyes opened and fixed on her. He gave her a lazy, lap-her-up smile. “Did you know I dream about you every night?”

How could he say these things to her? He couldn’t know how much they would hurt. He couldn’t understand someone like her, could he? Someone to whom things
mattered.

“And most of every day,” he added, with that low, easy, sand-scratched voice of his, as if he was going to tuck her under a palm tree and keep her there for a while, at least until the next big wave.

He always toyed with her heart so damn carelessly. As if his own heart was so impervious, he didn’t realize anyone else’s could be hurt.

“And do you know it always starts like this?” he asked. “With you wearing too many clothes.”

Her heart thudded. Her breasts tightened unbearably. He rolled onto his elbow, and his eyes tracked fast over her body, where she knelt with his tea in one hand, his gaze this
ravenous
thing that ate her all up and then zoomed in on her bare feet tucked under her butt.

“Sarabelle.” His voice went so sandy and low. He reached out as if her body was his to control, curled his hand around her ankle, and pulled her foot out from under her to his face.

She toppled backward and sideways, not being
that
flexible, and he scooped the tea out of her hand before it spilled, just as easily as he had scooped so many things out of her hands just before she ruined them in the kitchens…and kissed her foot. Right under her instep, holding it against his mouth as if it was the palm of her hand. The prickle of his jaw shivered from the sole of her foot up her whole body, everywhere, it wouldn’t stop shivering through her, until her toes curled so hard and her nipples pricked so desperately that she thought she would go
mad.

“Sarabelle,” he said, his voice so sandy. “Sarabelle, your
toes.
”
His thumb traced over the little rounded tips of perfectly manicured red toenails that she fixed again every few evenings, as one thing she could always get exactly right. “I
love
them.” That roughened voice leapt exultantly, as if he really did love them. “Can I have them?”

“I don’t – I don’t–” She didn’t know what she didn’t. Her hands scrambled at the comforter as if it could give her some ballast, while Patrick Chevalier
kissed her foot
, held it to him as if it was precious, oh, God, oh, God. His thumb slipped under her toes now and ran along where they joined the ball of her foot, and she made a little gasping whimper, her body dissolving.

“Sarah, they’re
adorable
,” he said, as if
he
was helpless, and he took her big toe
between his teeth
and
bit it
very gently.

“Oh my God.” Her body arched. Her sex bloomed desperately. She scrambled for anything, any purchase.

His gaze ran over her body, that one quick flicker of blue that saw everything, always, and he brushed the prickles of his jaw back over the sole of her foot, while ripples of pleasure ran back through her entire body from the sensation, like inexorable waves that would wash down her entire citadel of defenses. And then – oh, God, oh, God, that was his
tongue
, twirling hotly against that most sensitive skin at her instep.

She had never, in all the fantasies she had fought not to have, imagined Patrick Chevalier kissing her
foot.
She had never imagined anyone kissing her foot. She had never even imagined anyone
touching
her foot. It was her
foot.
It wasn’t – it wasn’t–

She was dizzy from the pleasure of it. From the arousal and the bliss and the complete confusion.

“Sarah.” His teeth grazed over the inside of her ankle, and she twisted at the merciless, overwhelming pleasure of an erogenous zone she hadn’t even known existed. “Sarah.” The hand not holding her foot rubbed up her calf, strong and sure, heating through her jeans, releasing muscles, all kinds of muscles that didn’t know what to do with themselves when they weren’t tense.

His hand paused to caress under her knee, making her flinch because it tickled, and he rubbed his jaw so very delicately against her foot as he smiled and let his hand ride up to her inner thigh. Where it didn’t tickle at all.

She was spilled back on the bed, hands clenching in the comforter in the vainest effort to find purchase, as if that would help her against a tsunami that had swept up on her right here in the middle of landlocked Paris. He had sat up at some point during his sweeping takeover of her foot and leg, and he looked down at her sprawled body, for a moment that blue of his eyes all she could see in the room. Their color was so vivid, the hungry triumph so bright.

“Sarah,” he breathed into her foot, and she shivered everywhere. “I’ve had so many fantasies about the first time, my brain is clogged. I can’t decide which one to actually do.”

That just split her own brain into little parts of atoms, as if she’d been pulled straight into the sun’s core. She couldn’t process the thought of
him
running through so many fantasies about
her
that his mind got over-packed with them.

“Which one would you like best?” That sand-in-the-sun voice of his went so low, running its warm texture all over her body. “This one?” She found herself on her stomach, not flipped there, somehow it just…happened. Gentle and controlled. A second’s pause, when her back and bottom just seemed to burn up from an imagined gaze alone, and then his hand curved over her bottom, caressing it thoroughly, one luxuriating claim of possession, before his fingers slid under the hem of her shirt and stroked up her spine.

Oh, that felt so good, so good, the callused hand on her spine, her tense, tense back. She arched out of the bed into it.

“Mmm.” The rough grain of his approval, all over her skin. His hand curved over her bottom again, thoroughly, and he turned her back over, cradling her to his hips as he brought himself against her. “Or this one?” he murmured, so low, rising over her.

She stared up at him, her eyes enormous, her mouth so hungry.

“Or this one?” Now he had them on their sides, his hand running over her ribs, the intimacy of his eyes, only inches from hers, unbearable.

“Patrick–” She had to tell him that this wasn’t something she could handle, that she would get hurt. Oh, but then he might stop. He was a
nice
guy. So many times he had swooped in to save her, so easily, without even paying attention. The casual, gallant Galahad to her clumsy peasant.

“
Merde, qu’est-ce que tu es jolie
,” he said, and kissed her.
How pretty you are.
“So-so-so-so pretty,” he breathed hotly into her mouth, and a hand rubbed hard up her back to the clasp in her hair, releasing it to spill over their faces. “Oh, God.” He stroked it away from their mouths and held her with it, his hand fisting locks of it as he kissed her some more.

She was completely overwhelmed. She couldn’t do anything but open her mouth and let it beg for him, her body one rushing collapse. Her hips pressed hard against his, involuntarily, and good God, but he was aroused. He was
really
aroused, his own hips driving back into hers in response, and one of his hands sliding down to grip her butt and press her harder against him.

Sometimes, back before she knew she had to hate him, she used to imagine kissing Patrick. For all the shy, carefully guarded dreams of it, in her bed at night, she had always thought that if she ever got a chance in real life, it would be like her dreams of beautiful desserts: so perfect in her head and so awkwardly mangled by her when she tried to make them come true.

And instead it was so stunningly, starvingly beautiful, his mouth so hungry and so hot, and it didn’t even matter if her mouth didn’t know the perfect thing to do, it all just melded into something so
fine.
His mouth was still bruised from that fight over another woman. It must
hurt.
And yet he moved it on hers, in hers, with hers, as if he couldn’t feel a thing but pleasure.

“Or there’s this one.” He rolled onto his back, lifting her above him, and she jerked a little as her weight settled down onto his arousal. And bit her lip, purely panicked by the position. Oh, no, she couldn’t take charge of this. She couldn’t. It was like asking her to take charge of a sun storm. Or the kitchens in full swing for a banquet of a thousand.
He
could do it. She was lost.

His eyes fixed on her pleated eyebrows, and he shivered voluptuously and threw an arm over his face. “Maybe – maybe not the first time,” he said, his voice strained.

“I need a
shower
,” she said, distressed. “I can’t, I–” Not
Patrick
. Not her sweaty, kitchen-stinking body. She wanted to be
pretty.

Si, si, si, si jolie. Do you know you’re one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen?