The Chocolate Touch

by Laura Florand

  “I’ll make it make sense,” he promised the tender space where the muscles of her shoulder stretched under pale freckled skin toward her breasts. “Just give me time.” Don’t leave me.

  She tucked her arms up between them as if she wanted every last centimeter of herself to be in the shelter of his body. Who knew that having her under his protection could be so utterly arousing? “Why do you get to say it, if I’m not supposed to?” she challenged.

  Because he didn’t say it as if he was about to wrench himself away from her. He wanted to keep her safe from him—she must maintain her independence—but if he could manage that safety, he would never leave her. His worst, most sickening fear was that even if he couldn’t manage to keep her safe, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to leave her. That would be up to her. His father had clung desperately to his mother, despite his violence. “Because I mean it,” he made the mistake of saying.

  It was like watching half-melted chocolate get hit with water. That luscious warmth seized, catching her between pleasure and a terrible mess. “You mean it? What am I doing, joking? Or just too weak to know what I’m feeling?”

  Merde, Dom. You, of all people, know that you can ruin the shiniest, most beautiful thing you ever saw with one careless drop of water. Don’t screw up! “Have you ever said it to anyone else?” he asked, proving that no matter how great the treasure he held in his hands, some part of him could persist in destroying it.

  Her eyebrows drew down. Yes, she had come here wanting to crawl into him, and what had he done with that? Managed to piss her off. “I had a boyfriend in college.”

  It should have been the triumph of his argument, but he didn’t want to win his argument. Jealousy curled in him, sick and thick, at the thought of anyone else tracing his fingers over those pixie-dusted cheekbones. Anyone else curling that body in under his protection. “Had,” he forced himself to say. “You told him you loved him, but you aren’t still with him.”

  Her eyes were ice-cold. “He had another girlfriend on the side. The one he was actually attracted to. You know what?” Her body jerked against his arms and for a moment he forgot and held her against her will. “Just let me go. I don’t have to defend myself to you. I said it. You don’t like it. But it’s not an insult.”

  Shit. He lifted an arm enough so she could slide out from under him if she insisted, but he didn’t roll away and make it easy. “Jaime.” Her name flicked over her and held her, mid-slide, as if he had caught her with silk ribbons. “You said the same thing. You said I couldn’t mean it.”

  She hesitated, arrested, her blue eyes catching his again.

  “Why do you think that? That I can’t mean it?” How clumsy was he at this? Get some damn jewelry, Dom. Although he couldn’t imagine what kind of jewelry could convince a woman who had so much money people dated her for that rather than herself. It seemed as if she might want something she couldn’t buy, instead.

  Her body turned back toward the offered shelter of his, pupils dilating, mouth softening, as if he made her entire being fuzzy. Melted. He fought to control the surge of arousal at the thought.

  “Because you’re so beautiful,” she whispered. Her hands lifted to stroke over his shoulders and arms, shaping the muscles. “You’re so wonderful. How could you possibly—” She broke off. “For someone everyone thinks is so arrogant, sometimes you ask the stupidest questions. As if you have no idea how extraordinary you are.”

  He felt light-headed. He had to duck his head and start pressing kisses to her skin almost the way someone might lower his head and breathe through a paper bag. “Can you tell me?” he whispered, hiding his boy’s shamed, longing face between her breasts. “Could you give me an idea?”

  She sank her fingers into his thick, overlong hair as if it was the most beautiful texture in the world. “Your hair is like silk,” she said, and he shivered as she petted it. “It’s so black and it’s so beautiful, and I love the silk here.” Her fingers traced the edge of where his head pressed against her breast. “And the prickles here.” Around the other side, the edge of his jaw against her tender skin. “The two of them together drive me insane.”

  Oh, God. He twisted his head and bit suddenly into the side of her breast, a little too feral, a little too hard, the only thing he could do with the fierce arousal that swept through him. She shuddered and pressed her body up against him.

  “And here.” Her hands dragged down his shoulders and back. “Your back is so smooth. And just under that smoothness, all those muscles. You’re so strong. I bet you’ve had more women dig their hands into those muscles than you can even count.”

  That was true. He shook his head against her breasts, shaking the memories away. He had worried about bringing her here, but all those sexual encounters didn’t lurk nearly as close to ruining this moment as he had thought. She dominated his focus, pushing his sexual past so far away he could barely recall it. “I can count you,” he whispered against the soft underside of her breast and licked up it to the nipple.

  Her fingernails flexed into his skin. He liked that, that he could make her hurt him just a little, like a caress. He suckled harder, and her fingernails dug harder, and he laughed a little, triumphant and wild, against her skin.

  “You’re so strong,” she said enviously. “I love how strong you are. But so gentle. You probably take care of kittens.”

  Not really, no. Vulnerability in others scared him. He matched himself against the strongest people he could find and kept as far away as possible from the others. His employees didn’t count, right? It wasn’t his fault they kept tucking themselves up under his wing. He might not care for kittens, but he didn’t go kicking them into oncoming traffic, either.

  Jaime’s strange mix of strength and vulnerability terrified him, even while it drew him inexorably. He did want to take care of her, but she didn’t remind him of a kitten in the least. She was a very strong person, and yet she had opened her shields and let him in where he could do untold damage. Wouldn’t that be amazing, if he could deserve that estimation of his worth?

  “You’re so disciplined and determined, you don’t let anything stop you.”

  Yes, it didn’t bear thinking, the life he would have had if he let things stop him. He worked his way downward, teasing with rough jaw and teeth and mouth and tongue across her belly. All that time shaving himself raw, and she liked the prickles.

  “You’re so—I bet every woman you meet craves you.”

  He lifted his head enough to give her a crinkled, funny look. “It might be that you idealize me un tout petit peu.”

  Not that he wanted her to realize how much, but he had some kind of conscience. After all, she had suffered a recent blow to the head. Every woman he met craved him, putain. He did tend to attract a lot of women who craved a good, hard fu—but anyway. He would bet it was not the kind of craving she was talking about.

  “No, I don’t.” She sounded both surprised and slightly offended. “I don’t idealize you at all.”

  Well, no one could say he hadn’t tried. He didn’t have to hammer the point in. He returned to his path down over her belly.

  “And I love—Dominique, what are you doing?” She wrapped her hands in his hair again, trying to drag him back up. “Don’t—”

  “Shhh. Shhh. I love to see you blush. God, your freckles go everywhere,” he said giddily, nipping across her hip, the curve of bone and the way her body grew softer, so much more vulnerable, between the frame of those bones.

  He grabbed a fistful of the comforter and ripped it entirely off them, shoving it onto the floor, so that the light from his window spilled over her, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her body against his white sheet, the fairy dust of freckles that was such a faint pale gold there where her skin rarely saw the sun, but which gilded her everywhere. She was growing less thin, he thought with triumph. Two weeks of his salon were filling her up, softening the ribs and wrist bones, while her Paris walking and gym workouts built back he
r strength.

  Braced on his elbows, he lifted his head, centered there above her hips, and just gazed at her for a long time. And under his gaze, she blushed all over, slow, sweeping, ever darkening, a tide of color that made her freckles brighten from her head to her toes. She twisted uncomfortably, but he had outsmarted her: the curtains were open, the comforter now on the floor, and the full bright sun of a spring afternoon shone all over her.

  “How could anyone not love you?” he asked, puzzled, and bent his head and licked her right up the seam of her sex, finding and tonguing her clitoris.

  She yelped, and her hands yanked in his hair. “Domi—” She couldn’t get his name out all the way, and she tried to knock him away with a twist of her hips.

  “Shhh.” He cupped his hands under her buttocks, holding her there, loving his ability to hold her there, tonguing her again. “You’ll like it. Shhh. And I love to see you blush.”

  “No. Please, I don’t—” She was crimson with embarrassment. As she moaned despite herself, she threw both arms up to hide her face. The scar stood out on the right forearm, a jagged white line against the freckles.

  “Of course I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do,” he said soothingly, blowing gently the length of her sex, watching the petals open helplessly to the stream of air. A faint, acutely victorious smile crinkled his eyes as he lingered just above the nub of her sex, letting the stream of air play over her, and her whole body shuddered in his hold. “Can you tell me what you don’t want me to do, minette?”

  “I—don’t—” She bit into her own forearm as he rubbed his rough jaw against her, her hands flexing helplessly open and closed on empty air. “Domi—” She broke off with a moan again.

  “Vas-y, minette,” he told her reassuringly, drawing his jaw over the tender inner skin of her thighs, just shy of her sex, ostensibly giving her time to collect herself. “What don’t you want me to do? You can tell me. It’s not this, is it?” He licked her again, taking his time. Her body shook, her thighs clenching around his shoulders, so that he had to let go of her bottom and force them apart with his hands. He pinned her to the bed with his forearms. “No, it couldn’t be that. Was it this you didn’t want?” Her hips kept trying to arch up, and he kept controlling them, so that the movement transferred to the rest of her body, her back arching, her arms locked over her face in pure desperation. “Non, ça va aussi? And this?”

  She just moaned, her body shaking in sharp pants.

  He laughed in uncontrollable joy and triumph. “Minette, you are so red. Tiens, bébé.” He pressed his mouth to her in earnest, and laughed out loud when she screamed as she came.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jaime climbed all over him afterward, dragging him into her, pulling him on top of her, taking each of his hard thrusts as if it was the deepest and most intimate of caresses. He was going to curdle her soul with embarrassment, but he felt so very, very good.

  She liked even the way he laughed softly afterward, as if he was very, very happy, lying with her tucked into his shoulder, lazily stroking her back. She rather liked the fact that making love to her made him feel exultantly victorious.

  She had forgotten to tell him how much she loved his hands. She drew the one that was stroking her up to her face and curved it around her cheek, so that she vanished in it, kissing it. And she must have fallen briefly asleep.

  When she woke, it was at the slight tugs against her of Dominique’s body, a brush of denim. He must have caught his jeans somehow with his toe without slipping out from under her, because they were now draped partly across his body, and he had the phone that had been in his pocket in one hand, texting. She blinked sleepily, focusing with increasing interest on the books that filled the whole wall beyond his hand, row after row, primarily of the discreet white livres de poche favored by Gallimard for its classics of great literature and poetry. She stirred, trying to make out the titles.

  “Pardon,” he said, when he saw he had woken her. “I was just letting them know I wouldn’t be back in this afternoon.”

  He dropped the phone on top of a book on the night-stand and went back to stroking her gently, lost in thought. After a little while, he took her hand from his chest and kissed the palm and then tucked it back against him.

  Could he really love her? How was it even possible? She wasn’t beautiful, and her days of doing things more valuable than beauty seemed to be at a dead halt. All she had ever done was take from him, take everything he had to give.

  He acted as if that was a reason to love her.

  Something flickered in her brain, an instant of almost comprehension. But then it was gone.

  “Can you do that?” she asked. “Just disappear for the afternoon ?” She didn’t want to be a detriment to his work on top of everything else.

  “Not regularly, no. But I don’t do it regularly.”

  So those other women, the ones he “didn’t date,” had to wait until after hours. She sighed a little, imagining him working his chocolate, knowing some gorgeous woman was waiting for him, and gazed at her still too-thin freckled arm lying across his perfectly sculpted chest, wondering what in the world it was doing there.

  “Do you even like jewelry?” he asked suddenly, and she jumped.

  “No.”

  His brows lifted at her vehemence. “Une aversion?”

  “I don’t like things in general, except sometimes when they’re special, when people give them to me.” She was thinking of the little treasures grandmothers might weave for her to say thank you, the miniature dugout canoe carved by a grateful father . . .

  He held her eyes in a long, steady look. He didn’t say anything.

  She started to flush, delicately, her eyes widening. “I’m not—collecting souvenirs here.”

  “Souvenirs.” Just like that, the bliss was gone. “Something you could pack up in your luggage when you leave?”

  Her heart began to pound sickeningly. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave. Please don’t let me leave you.

  “When your solar panels are fully charged, so to speak,” Dominique said grimly. “What are you going to do? How long do you think it will take before you’ll have to come back and charge up some more? Or do you seek out different suns each time?”

  From the cuddling bliss of a few moments ago to this was a stark, spiraling plunge. Something ugly raged in his voice, trying to break free. Don’t leave me, he had said, when she told him she loved him. Oh, God, don’t say that, don’t leave me.

  She looked at the slim freckled arm that she thought had no force. And that was pretty scrawny and unattractive right now, to tell the truth. She tightened it around him, and he almost didn’t breathe. What if the worst thing she could possibly do to him was get strong enough to leave him?

  “I was—I was actually thinking about ways I might be able to continue to accomplish some good from Paris,” she said carefully.

  “Oh, fuck.” He left the bed so fast, his watch left a long scratch on her back as he yanked his arm out from under her. He moved naked to the casement window, pressing one elbow into its frame above his head, staring out. His other arm was wrapped around his middle.

  Jaime tried hard to breathe. Her eyes were stinging. Think. Think. This doesn’t make sense.

  “You’re not married, are you?” she said suddenly. Why would he beg her not to leave him and then react like that when she suggested she might stay?

  He jerked. As if the question was the slap that kept someone from fainting. “What?” He shook himself, managed to turn his head enough to look at her. One corner of his mouth turned up reluctantly. “Have you ever dated anyone with morals and sense?”

  Her own mouth curved with almost the same reluctance. “I take it I am now?”

  “No.” He dropped his arm and turned to face her, back pressed against the window frame now, both arms folded over his middle. “No. You’re not.”

  The blow took her in the belly. Don’t be ridiculous, you know what belly blows fee
l like. If Cade hadn’t found such an amazing surgeon, you would have lost your spleen to them. “Not dating you?”

  “Not dating someone with morals and sense. But I’m not married, no. Merde, Jaime.”

  It was true, she should never have had that moment of doubt. Cade would definitely have told her if he was married. As a statement of faith, mentioning her sister’s investigative teams might lack something, though. “You asked me.”

  He shook his head, that shaggy hair of his even wilder than usual after her hands had been all through it. “I was just trying to figure out how you were using me. I never said I was using you.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, in what seemed to be mutual terror of something. Dominique looked so big, so hard, so dangerous. What could scare him?

  “I won’t leave you,” he said suddenly, the words so hard they could have chopped through the air and split some great ancient oak stump. Even he could hear it resonate, echoing in the air between them while he drew a breath and stared at her.

  Her brows crinkled. “That’s—I’ve never heard anyone promise not to leave a woman like a warning before.”

  Dom said nothing for a moment, very grim. “I’ve never heard anyone promise not to leave me. So it may be I’ve got the tone wrong.” He forced himself to hold her gaze. “You need to be aware of that, Jaime. I’m not going to be able to leave you, even if I should, so if you need to get away from me, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

  Liar that he was, Dom thought. He had intended a warning, he just hadn’t been able to carry it through. Please let me keep her. How could he do anything but take the most precious care of her?

  But God knew for a long time his father had acted like they were precious between bouts of violence, until he just started blaming them all the time so he could avoid the guilt. Dom wouldn’t hurt her. He knew he wouldn’t. He could be everything she needed him to be. But . . . he kept feeling he should warn her what she was dealing with.