The Chocolate Touch

by Laura Florand

  Putain, maybe he was completely deluding himself.

  When he’d left her in the dark hours of the morning to go to work, he’d kissed all the fingers curled up on the pillow. “Jaime,” he whispered very softly against those curled fingers, the word shivering through him. He peered hopefully at her face in the dimness, but she didn’t waken, and he finally had to drag himself away.

  The great block of chocolate greeted him in the dark laboratoire. He gazed at it as the lights came on, gleaming gently off the marble, making the windows turn black to the pre-dawn world. He knew suddenly, in incredulous, hopeful fear, what was trying to come out of that chocolate. Changing clothes, he vaulted up onto the counter and got to work.

  At first, he believed in the sculpture the chocolate wanted him to make. But when she didn’t come that morning, his heart sank down until it wasn’t even in his body anymore; it was something lost in the mud. She didn’t come over and over. At 10:01, at 10:02, at 10:03. At 11:14, at 11:15, at 11:16. At 2:03, at 2:04, at 3:19, at 3:20. She didn’t come ever. Minute after minute after minute of ever.

  Bordel de Dieu, not her, too. Surely she hadn’t . . . gotten what she wanted. All she wanted. Already. She liked to linger.

  “Inspiring, was she? So what’s her name?” asked disrespectful Célie, nudging her own boss and one of Paris’s top chocolatiers hard in the ribs with her elbow when he came down from his sculpture to help with the daily work and because the sculpture was starting to terrify him again.

  He hesitated, then smiled shyly, oh, for God’s sake. “Jaime.” He couldn’t say her name the way Jaime herself did, the blunt start. When he said it, every time, it was soft and silky and it hung in the air like an elusive promise, never completed. I love—what? Your hair, your smile, your freckles, the way you look at me, the way you feel in my hands.

  The only thing it couldn’t ever be was I love you, because that would have started differently, Je t’aime, no other meaning possible.

  “It is not!” Célie said incredulously. “She made that up! Jaime?”

  He hesitated, that squooshy feeling inside of him freezing a little. Could she have?

  “If that’s her real name, that is so incredibly sw-e-e-e-et!” Célie caroled ecstatically, dancing off with her pot of ganache toward the cooling room. “Which is hilarious because it’s you! You being sweet! I love it! Are you seeing her again?”

  “Célie, can you get to work maybe and butt out of my private life? Putain.” He growled his way over to save Amand’s caramel. 3:27. He was about to rip that clock off the wall and throw it into the street below. She still hadn’t come.

  He went to the gym as soon as he left his laboratoire. He killed himself with weights first and then went for rounds of boxe in which he annihilated his opponents, punishing them mercilessly for the fact that as soon as he left there he was going to go beg at her apartment door, not at all sure if she would let him in.

  He was coming back into the weight room, when he saw her. The scariest thing was that his heart didn’t stop when he saw her. It started again. He had been doing all that brutal weight workout, all that boxe, without the benefit of his heart.

  She lay on a bench, flushed and sweating, her face wrought with the strain of the weights she was pressing. She was wearing a sleeveless knit blue shirt but separate arm sleeves, so that only her shoulders were bare, which was odd, because she looked very hot. She had closed her eyes briefly in the effort, and she didn’t see him right away.

  He crouched beside her. So close to the straining shoulder muscles and the slender curve of her biceps working with all her might. Close enough he could trace the sheen of sweat on her skin with his fingertips and then lick the taste of it off them. God, why the intermediary? Close enough he could bend forward and place his mouth right on that taut muscle in her shoulder . . .

  “Jaime,” he murmured. How he loved saying her name. It made something tremble inside him, every time.

  Her eyes flared open, her arms wavering, and he reached up and guided the bar into the supporters, taking the weight off her. It wasn’t much. He could handle it one-handed, even from that angle. Odd. He would have thought someone with such a stern expression on her face as she pressed, someone who seemed so determined, would be able to lift a bit more. A recent interest of hers, strength?

  She came up onto one elbow on the bench, panting, her face very much flushed. From the effort? From him? From memories of last night?

  He smiled at her, wanting to lick her all over.

  Maybe he could get her to leave the light on this time, let him check out what happened to those freckles in the wake of his hands. Would she blush all over?

  She smiled back at him, just a tiny, shy smile, and the urge to pick her up and haul her out of there swept through his body, trying to goad his already-engorged muscles into action. He was such a brute. He wondered what she thought of the sight of him, sleeveless, his biceps so engorged from his own workout, the sweat making his hair cling to his temples. “I didn’t know you came to this gym.”

  “Just for two or three weeks now,” she said. He loved the sound of her voice, hoarse, fast, interrupted by her pants, as she tried to get her breathing back to normal. He wanted to do something to her that made it impossible for her to get her breathing back to normal. “I usually come in the morning.”

  But not this morning, he thought with a slow grin. This morning, when he had left her in the early hours to get to work, she had perhaps slept very, very late, lingering in his scent in the sheets.

  His gaze drifted over her body to her mouth. It was all he could do to only look. If they hadn’t been surrounded by clanging metal and grunting bodies, he would already have had his mouth all over her.

  “You didn’t come today,” he murmured, and her color flamed back. “I missed you.”

  Her mouth trembled. She stared at him as if he was the world’s worst liar attempting for the first time ever to tell the truth.

  He found he knew what to do here. He had had her body all night long, and it had taught him something. She needed to be reassured.

  He closed his hand around hers, rubbing it open so that his thumb could lodge securely against her palm, and kissed it. For one thing, his body leaped in silky, hot rejoicing to have some contact with her again. And if there was ever a moment to take advantage of all those stereotypes about Frenchmen, this was it. “Are you almost done?” he asked softly.

  Against the clingy knit of her exercise top, her nipples peaked. Again he had to fight the surge of his body. Public place, Dom. Not even you can jump on top of her here.

  “I’ve—I’ve actually just started,” she said reluctantly.

  He stroked his thumb from her palm up over her wrist. “How long is your workout?”

  “About an hour.” Her eyes kept snagging on parts of his body, his biceps, his shoulders, his mouth, his jaw. He drew the back of his free hand down his jaw involuntarily. Merde, it was already prickly. If he had to start shaving twice a day, he was going to break out in hives. He checked her throat, trying to tell between freckles and a blush whether he had marked her the night before.

  His thumb climbed higher, teasing in little figure eights over the sensitive inside of her arm. “Can I come back for you? Can I take you out to dinner?”

  Dinner? his body howled. Not again, damn it! That will take hours! Hours before he could nibble his way over all those little, straining muscles of hers. Putain, but his body needed to learn some self-discipline. After a workout like this, the last thing she needed to do was skip a meal.

  She stared at him, the blue of her eyes slumberous as she pulled her lower lip in to nibble it with her teeth. “It will only be six o’clock,” she mentioned softly. No restaurant in Paris served before 7:30. A whole hour and a half to fill.

  “It’s a beautiful city to walk around in,” he heard himself say.

  Oh, you bastard! his body wailed. You masochistic bastard.

  But some other part of him poised for
her answer, eager, afraid. “Would you like to walk with me?”

  She blinked rapidly, and really, that crimson blush had to be for him by now; surely she had recovered from the weights. “Yes.”

  You know, you’re a lot better at sex than romantic walks, his body pointed out bitterly. You might have remembered that.

  Shut up, he told his thoroughly undisciplined and overindulged dick.

  Well, what are you going to say to her? Got any scintillating conversation? Don’t you dare bring up your childhood again!

  It’s a romantic walk! Can’t we just hold hands and be quiet?

  His putain de bite sulked. Personally, I think it would be much more romantic to—

  Just shut up already!

  CHAPTER 12

  Maybe he liked the full romantic experience, Jaime thought, looking up at the big man who walked beside her, his hand hard around hers. Maybe he needed all of it, great sex, but also somebody’s whole heart, ripped out of her body by these walks along the Seine. Maybe if Cade had been interested in buying sex in his office, he would have walked her down the Seine in the same way, with that same softness around his mouth.

  Maybe he would have held her hand like that, like someone would have had to chop his arm off to get her away from him.

  Maybe it was just instinct: to lap up all the praise from the latest worshipper fallen at his feet.

  She looked down at his big scarred hand, holding hers so firmly. She looked back up at him.

  He smiled down at her before he looked away. If it had been remotely possible on his hard-boned, bad-boy face, she would have thought that smile shy.

  He didn’t talk, but a man who had Paris in the springtime didn’t need to talk. Better not. Better just to concentrate on the cool breeze off the river, stirring his shaggy black hair, the bridges that stretched away through centuries, that fresh young green on the trees along the quays. Evening was falling later and later. The sun was only starting to set now, easy blurred shades of pink and gold and gray through low strips of clouds. The sky above them was blue, clear, but blurring toward gray. Half the world looked in love, couples strolling hand in hand along the Seine. At the edge of that sunset, in the west, far away along the river that shimmered with pink and gold, the Eiffel Tower rose, gentled by the low haze.

  “You’re the visitor. Is there anywhere you would like to go?” he asked softly.

  She had been here three months now, and in any case, she had visited Paris before, but never walking hand in hand with him. “Just like this. Just like this is fine.”

  His hand flexed on hers.

  He took her as far as the Louvre and the Pont des Arts, and they stood there on the wooden pedestrian bridge, hand in hand, watching the sun set. A group played jazz a little way down the bridge; two lovers huddled into each other against the chain railing, bumpy with lovers’ locks in all colors; a group of students broke out beers and wine, laughing and talking. All around them the life and love of Paris were in full bloom, but their little moment of it seemed utterly sheltered, just the two of them.

  As the pink faded from the sky, the Eiffel Tower burst into sparkles, demanding all the attention, promising a beautiful evening. They watched it without speaking, but Dominique’s hand left hers to circle around her shoulders and pull her in hard against his body. After a minute, he shifted her to stand in front of him, her back tucked against his chest, the panels of his jacket to either side of her, his arms wrapping around her. He still didn’t speak, just held her there on the wooden bridge, watching the effusive Tower. She could feel his arousal, but he didn’t say anything about it or even nudge her with his hips. Just watched the lights with his arms wrapped around her.

  When the sparkle faded, la Tour’s glowing nighttime robes remained, more burnished and more elegant than any star’s red carpet gown. Dominique’s breath left him in a long sigh. For a moment more, he didn’t move. Then, “You must be starving after that workout. Let me feed you.”

  His phrasing did odd things to her middle. Let me. Let me feed you.

  She wanted to question his motives for being with her, but she couldn’t, because they barely knew each other. She could take it or leave it.

  And these days, she was a taker.

  He drew them through the courtyard of the Louvre, past the glowing Pyramide and fountains and the handful of young men trying out wild antics on inline skates in its light. Then he headed into streets north and east of it, until he stopped by a place from which warm light spilled onto the pavement. There was a couple in front of them and the place looked packed, but Dominique had hardly stepped inside when someone coming downstairs from the kitchen spotted him.

  “Mais mon cher Dominique, quel plaisir! I suppose you did not think to reserve? You never do. Non, mais, pour vous, Dominique, pour vous . . .”

  Jaime tried not to worry over that “you never do” while they were seated in a space that hadn’t existed two minutes before and didn’t look entirely as if it could exist now, it was so small and she and Dominique were so close together. There were any number of circumstances in which a man could come to a restaurant without reservations—with friends, with family, by himself even. It didn’t always have to be with a beautiful woman.

  Dominique smiled at her across the tiny table, looking pleased with himself. “Warm enough?” he said. “Is this what you like?”

  And she forgot a little about the “you never do.” He might have eaten here before, but he had picked it out tonight because of her tastes. What he knew of them.

  “You’ve probably heard of the chef,” he said, and when he told her, she had. In fact, she had eaten at Daniel Faure’s more famous restaurant only a few days before with Cade, Sylvain, Philippe, and Magalie. “I got my start under him. He’s one of the best men in the world.” He said it firmly, brooking no dispute. “But I don’t know if it’s as widely known that he has three restaurants. He calls the most famous one his place for the aristos, then there’s his bourgeois one, and this one”—he grinned—“is for the proletariat. Poulet roti, steak, frites . . . but his style.”

  I love you. The need to tell him swelled through her like some giant balloon, bigger and bigger, pressing everything else out of her, until she was afraid if she opened her mouth, that was the only thing she would be able to say.

  On the bridge, between his body and the stretch of Paris’s gleaming nightfall, she had wanted to turn and rub her face all over his chest, bury herself in him. Wasn’t that a terrible thing to do to a strong man? Have nothing to offer him, but wrap the burden of I love you around him after two dates, like a clinging vine. Not hard to guess that she had been born to be a parasite, she thought bitterly. To use the earth and other people to her own ends.

  She looked down at the table, trying to breathe slowly, trying to control herself. Words on the paper placemat blurred before her:

  Je suis comme je suis . . .

  J’aime celui qui m’aime

  Est-ce ma faute à moi

  Si ce n’est pas le même . . .

  Je suis faite pour plaire . . .

  I am how I am . . . I love the one who loves me, is it my fault if that one is not always the same? I’m made to please. What more do you want from me? Jacques Prévert. The chef apparently liked poetry on his placemats.

  “Are you all right?” Dominique asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said. Perfectly fine. If she could get through that wall, if she could become again the woman who saved the world, could she keep him? Could a privileged princess, who had played at saving the world but was now curled into a fetal ball at the first hard shock of that world, ever deserve a man who had been given over to a slaughterhouse when he was twelve and still become—that grin, those hands over her body, those rosebuds and rough stone and wildness of flavors and delight. “Stupid poem.” She pushed the placemat away from her.

  “I’ve always rather liked that one,” Dominique said slowly, as if he might be rethinking his tastes.

  Of course. I
t might have been written for him: I am who I am and it’s not my fault you like me. What more could you want from me? She smiled, with an effort. “You come here enough to know all the poems on the placemats?”

  He opened his mouth, hesitated, and closed it, catching back whatever he had been about to say. “We can trade.” He slid his across to her.

  Cet amour

  Si violent

  Si fragile

  Si tendre . . .

  She looked up at him. This love so violent, so fragile, so tender . . . He was gazing back at her, his eyes intense, very dark.

  “Vous avez choisi?” a cheerful young woman asked above them. Have you chosen?

  Dominique rubbed the nape of his neck and looked away. Anyone would have thought the waitress had just asked him a terribly rude question.

  “No,” Jaime said. She hadn’t even looked at the menu. “No, I still need time to consider.”

  His mouth twisted. He shook himself and smiled. “You’re not going to take anything blindly. Smart woman. Let me see if I can talk you into something.”

  This time it was easier to go slow. One night, he was just someone’s erotic fantasy, her need to let off a pressure cooker of sexual steam. But two nights—there was no pressure left. He had made love to her all night long just the night before. Now, if she lifted her head to him when he kissed her, if her eyes closed, if her muscles grew soft and yielding in his arms, it was because . . . she liked having him there. He wondered if she might even have let him in if he didn’t have great sex to offer in return, if all he had wanted to do was climb upstairs and curl up in her bed around her and fall asleep.

  That wasn’t something he wanted to put to the test tonight. His spoiled dick would freaking kill him.

  He liked this, oh, he liked this, the slow. He had never done it, touched someone as if she was precious, and as if . . . by some strange chance . . . his big, rough touch might even be precious to her. Not just a quick, hard way to get off. He liked it, that she let him back into her apartment building with that blush all over her body. He liked kissing her for it. He liked stroking her so gently, everywhere, kissing her on the stairs leisurely and thorough, as if he had all the time in the world with her. As if it wouldn’t end.