Seduction By Chocolate

by Nina Bangs, Lisa Cach, Thea Devine

  He took the invitation for what it was, his dark head coming down to join his lips with hers, gentle at first, exploring her mouth as he had her hand. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, laying them lightly there, then letting her fingers trace up into the hair at the back of his head, pulling him closer, asking him to take more.

  He would not obey her, setting his own pace as he moved from her mouth to her cheeks, to the corner of her eye and then down to her ear, his breath a gentle taunt and stronger lure, his tongue on her earlobe making her ache for more even as she wanted the light touch to go on forever.

  He took one of his hands from the wall and placed it on her waist, his thumb rubbing over her ribs just beneath her breast as he lowered his mouth to her neck, licking and biting gently. Eliza's arms tightened around his shoulders, everything but her voice telling him to touch her, take her, press her against the wall and have her standing, her thighs about his waist if he wanted.

  His mouth returned to hers as his hand moved up to cup her breast, massaging it in slow circles through the thin cloth as his lips found and parted hers. His tongue came inside her as his hips pressed against her abdomen, her softness giving way to the hard ridge of flesh she felt there. His other hand came down to hold the back of her head, holding her captive as his tongue sought out the secret depths of her mouth.

  When at last the kiss ended and he drew back, it was only with great reluctance that she untwined her fingers from his hair and let her arms slide back down to her sides. Animal passions were raging in her blood, dangerous desires, impulses far more impetuous and foolhardy than the one that had led her to buy the dress.

  Sebastian let out a long, low breath as if he, too, were having trouble returning to earth. He reached out and brushed a wisp of her hair back to the side of her face from where it had fallen across her cheek, his touch tender on her skin.

  "If we don't go now, you might never get your dinner," he said.

  She didn't care, not now, but would not tell him so. Instead she put out her hand, silently asking for his arm and escort. "Then by all means, let us go." Let him take her back into the light, where she might barely manage to keep those animal lusts at bay.

  Even in the dark, she could tell he was slightly surprised by her calm answer, as if he had expected her to have protested his kiss, or at least to have lost her composure. And she had lost it in her way, for those dangerous lusts his touch had aroused were still within her, begging for satisfaction.

  And fool that she was, she knew that she was too close to listening.

  Chapter Seven

  "Can I just lie down right here and not move for three or four hours?" Eliza asked, gesturing to the sidewalk as she and Sebastian climbed the last of the steps up from the basement bicycle rental shop and emerged into the shaded light of the narrow street. "You can direct foot traffic around me."

  "I warned you there were hills in Flanders."

  "You didn't bother to tell me they were invisible, made of wind." The landscape was flat, but the winds swept constantly across it, treating those on bicycles like sailboats on the water. It had pushed against them no matter which direction they rode, making pedaling more difficult than it should have been on the level ground.

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes. It was pulled back in a low ponytail, but the aforementioned wind had pulled much of it free, leaving it snarled about her face. Her skin felt pink with sun and exercise, her muscles slack as unused rubber bands. She was glad she had worn her lavender jumper without the usual T-shirt underneath, the loose rayon tank dress allowing cooling air to flow about her body. She had more than once caught Sebastian's eyes on the neckline, low enough to reveal the tops of the curves of her breasts. That had been the purpose of not wearing the T-shirt, but the coolness factor was a welcome bonus.

  Sebastian glanced at his watch. "It's nearly six. Come, if we hurry we can be at the top of the bell tower when the bells ring."

  Eliza groaned. "Is it far?"

  He laughed. "It's right behind you."

  She turned to look, seeing only the high brick wall of what could have been a warehouse, for all she knew. Bruges was a maze in places, and she was never quite sure where she was until she came to the market square. But if this was part of the building that held the bell tower, then the market square was less than twenty-five yards down the street.

  He took her hand and led her around the corner, past small gift shops and then through a wide opening between two shops, the passage leading into an open courtyard. Three stories rose on each side, and opposite them was a flight of steps leading up into the building. Directly above those steps rose the bell tower.

  "The tower was built in the thirteen hundreds," Sebastian said, pulling her up the stairs. "The building around us was used by the cloth merchants, during Bruges's heydey as a trading center."

  "Fascinating," Eliza said, paying attention only to the protesting muscles in her thighs. They came to the top of the stairs, and he let her stand there and rest while he went to go pay their admission.

  She could not help smiling after him, despite her tired legs. There was something light in his mood today that had not been there before. He was more inclined to laugh, his smiles coming easier. She could swear he was having fun.

  For herself, she could not forget the possibility that last night's kiss in the churchyard had laid open to her. Dinner afterward had been a delight, as romantic as she could have wished, even though there was no dancing. They had talked about their families and their childhoods, and on the drive home listened to one of his grandfather's tapes of 1940s French music.

  He had opened the car door for her and led her to the front step of the B-and-B, and then shared with her a kiss that was more chaste, but no less intense than that in the churchyard. No one peering out a window at them would see his hands where they should not be. It was a consideration she found both touching and frustrating.

  She had lain awake reliving those kisses, feeling the sexual hunger that permeated every cell of her body. Why not? her body asked her. Who will know?

  Beyond even the attraction she felt to Sebastian was the growing, seductive sense that she could do anything she wished here, thousands of miles from anyone who knew her and from her sedate daily life. She was in a foreign land with a foreign man, and it felt as if the old rules did not apply.

  She knew that, like buying the dress, she might— months or even mere weeks from now— regret her impulsive decisions, but she knew as well that she was craving the chance to set aside good sense, and would need only the slightest encouragement to do so.

  And so this morning she had gone out and made purchases at a drugstore. She had come back and showered, shaving her legs and using perfumed soap and shampoo, preparing for an encounter she still was not certain she would allow to happen. She put on the one attractive set of matching bra and panties that she had with her, and tidied her room before she went out to meet Sebastian for lunch and the bike ride along the canals he had suggested.

  Today was her last day in Bruges. Tomorrow she would leave for home. At this moment, she still did not know which memories and regrets she would be taking with her.

  Sebastian gestured to her from in front of the ticket booth, and she went to join him.

  "We have five minutes to make it to the top before the bells start," he said.

  "Okay. Where's the elevator?"

  He grinned at her.

  "Oh, no…"

  "Oh, yes," he said. "Three hundred and sixty-six steps. They counted for you."

  "I don't think I can do it," she said, feeling an intense dread in her muscles.

  "Don't you know I'm much too much of a gentleman to make a woman who was made to eat chocolates climb stairs instead?" he asked, leading her over to where the stairs began their spiral ascent to torturous heights and musical bells.

  "I certainly hope you are."

  Another grin was the only warning he gave before sweeping her up into his arms, making her shriek
and grasp tightly to his neck. He cradled her in front of him like a child being carried to bed, and began to climb the stairs.

  "Sebastian! Don't, you'll drop me! You can't carry me all the way up. I'm too heavy. Sebastian!"

  "I've always wanted to do this," he said, ignoring her. "Ever since I saw the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a kid. I loved that movie. You're my Esmeralda," he said, and nuzzled her.

  "Watch your step!" she protested, growing dizzy as he rapidly climbed, the walls curving around them, her perspective lost as they moved around and around, the bottom of stone steps visible above her head.

  "The bells! The bells!" Sebastian shouted, and laughed.

  "You're not Quasimodo," Eliza cried, clinging to him. "Why would anyone want to be, anyway? Quasimodo est laid."

  "What?" Sebastian asked, broken for a moment from his hunchback spell and stopping on the stairs, leaning against the wall to catch his breath.

  "Quasimodo est laid."

  "Quasimodo is ugly? Says who?" He leered at her.

  She rolled her eyes. "It was a sentence in one of my beginning French courses in school. We all thought it was hilarious."

  "Eh?"

  "Laid. We thought it unlikely, for Quasimodo. Who'd sleep with him?"

  He threw his head back and laughed, making Eliza fear again for their safety on the narrow stairs. "Who indeed?" he finally asked, once he'd gotten control of himself and resumed his climb. "Perhaps you, my pretty one?"

  "Careful!" Eliza said, although it was not clear to her if she meant his footing on the staircase or his joking invitation.

  They came to a small landing next to an open doorway, and he set her on her feet. "There, that's what they use to play the bells," he said, gesturing through the doorway to the machinery inside, including a large wooden barrel-shaped contraption with prongs on it. "They sometimes have concerts and play by hand, but not today."

  "Is this where we listen from?"

  "One more flight."

  She turned to look at where the stairs continued up, much narrower now, made of wood and wide enough for only one person, a rope wrapped loosely around the center column as the only handrail. "I think I'll go on my own two feet this time."

  "I could throw you over my shoulder," Sebastian suggested, sounding a little too eager.

  The thought of going up those rickety, dark stairs upside down was too horrible to contemplate. "I don't think so." She took a deep breath and started to climb, holding her skirts up in one hand, Sebastian right behind her.

  The twisting climb disoriented her, making her dizzy on her feet, and when she reached the top, panting, Sebastian had to steady her or else she would have stumbled upon emerging out onto the viewing floor.

  It was a small room, the windows glassed in, a few tourists at them. As they stepped into it the bells began to ring, the sound vibrating through Eliza's feet on the floor, sending thrumming tremors through her chest. It was Beethoven's Ode to Joy they rang out, the sound loud enough to make her feel that her own head was a bell. She turned wide eyes to Sebastian, unable to speak over the layers of ringing sound.

  He led her to a window, standing close behind her, his body almost touching hers as she looked down at the red tile roofs of Bruges. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she turned beneath them, the view forgotten. The other tourists had their backs turned, but Eliza knew she would not have cared even if they had stared.

  Sebastian raised his hands to the side of her face, bent down, and kissed her tenderly, then turned her around again and wrapped his arms around her waist, his cheek pressed close to her temple as they both gazed out at the medieval town beneath them.

  The bells finished their piece, and when the ringing in Eliza's own ears stopped as well, she spoke. "Tonight is my last night in Bruges."

  There was no response from Sebastian for a long moment, and then his arms loosened and he pulled slightly away from her.

  Eliza turned within his loose hold. "Sebastian?"

  The frozen look on his face gave way after a moment, melted by a halfhearted smile. "If it's your last night, then we shall have to have mussels and French fries for dinner. You cannot come to Bruges and not eat mussels."

  Was that all he was going to say? She tried to hide her disappointment. "I hope there's not a law about that, forcing tourists to eat mussels," she said.

  "They won't let you on the train if you haven't tried them."

  She thought she sensed a tension beneath his words, however lightly said. She wished she knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling— if anything— but there seemed no way she could ask.

  Which made no sense, in view of what she was considering doing with him tonight. Asking how he felt about her impending departure should have been a piece of cake.

  It took some effort, but she managed to hold her tongue, recognizing that no man would appreciate such a question on the third day of his acquaintance with a woman. But still, she wished she knew if he felt those first pangs of approaching loss that she did, pangs that told her she might not have been as careful of her heart as she had intended.

  "Then by all means, let us dine on mussels," she said instead, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and to bring him back from wherever his own thoughts had gone.

  Chapter Eight

  "Would you like to come up? I have some pictures of home in my bag."

  The invitation took Sebastian by surprise. They were standing outside the front door of her B-and-B. He had been seeking a way to extend the evening, but Eliza had made it clear she wanted to return to her lodging. He had assumed she wanted to bring the night to an end.

  The assumption had left him again with a sense of incompletion. It was getting to be a familiar sensation.

  And now an invitation to her room?

  "You can see where I've been staying," she added, as if she needed to sweeten the bait.

  If any other woman were inviting him to her room, he would have known exactly what to think. But Eliza? He couldn't be entirely sure. She probably did have photos of home to show him. "I'd like that," he finally answered.

  She opened the door and led the way up, both of them stopping at the top of the second flight of stairs as she caught her breath.

  "You can go first," she said, gesturing to the final, blond wood flight.

  "Wouldn't you like me to carry you again?"

  "On those?" She gasped. "Are you crazy?"

  Crazy? He'd been suspecting that was the case since she had told him she was leaving tomorrow. It should not be bothering him like this, itching at his skin like a wool sweater. The timing was off, events were not in order… there was something unfinished.

  Eliza was a sweet, attractive companion he had known for three days. He was not looking for more. He should not care that she was leaving.

  "As you wish," he said, and climbed the stairs ahead of her. He turned at the top to see her crawling her way up, using the staircase as a ladder, and he had to laugh.

  "It's not funny," Eliza said grouchily, as he helped her to her feet at the top.

  "It isn't?" He realized that she was funny, to him. He laughed with her in a way he did not with other women, or with most other people. Her reactions were always unexpected, and he found himself constantly watching her face to see what emotions would play out when he made a statement or showed her something new.

  He followed her into her room, waiting to close the door until she had turned on the small lamp beside the bed. It cast a low, golden light. Intimate. Far more so than the fixture hanging from the ceiling would have been. He took in the details of the room, the dormer window, the small table, the print spread on the bed with the dip in the middle.

  Eliza was beginning to look nervous, her movements growing jerky, digging in her backpack for the promised pictures. He sat down on the side of the bed and caught her peeking at him from the corners of her eyes, flighty and tense. His lioness did not seem certain what to do with him now that she had him in her lair. />
  She found her photos and then came over to him, standing for a moment in front of him, indecisive, before sitting at his side.

  "These are my parents," she said, handing him a photo. Her thigh was pressed against his, and he could smell the traces of floral soap on her skin as she leaned close, looking at the picture with him.

  "You look like your mother. She's quite beautiful."

  "Thank you. I've always hoped I will look like her when I grow old."

  She handed him another photo, one of herself with her sister and brother, a lit-up Christmas tree in the background. "I'm the eldest. Abby and Mike still complain about how bossy I was growing up."

  He smiled at that, then set the photos on the nightstand and turned back to her. She was watching him, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. What she wanted was written there for any man who knew how to read the silent language of women, and what she wanted was too close to his own desires for him to think of saying no.

  He reached up and gently worked the hair elastic from her ponytail, then ran his fingers through the tresses, spreading them over her shoulders in silken waves.

  "There's protection," she said quietly. "In the nightstand drawer."

  He felt a jolt of shock, and turned to the nightstand to cover it. His little nun had protection? He took the unopened box out of the drawer, noting the print in three languages.

  "You planned this," he said. "Last night or this morning. You bought this here in Bruges."

  "Yes." And after a moment, "Are you surprised?"

  "A little, yes." He looked at her, and the mix of innocence and knowing willingness he saw in her face made him want to protect her from men like himself, men who would find such an expression an irresistible invitation to plunder. "Are you sure about this?" He asked it before his body had a chance to stop him.

  She put her hand on his chest, over his heart, and held it there, as if listening with her palm to the beating within. "These three days with you have been as a dream," she said. "Tomorrow I wake. Let me wake with the whole story, and not a sense of something left undone, a dream interrupted before its conclusion, never to be finished."