The Chocolate Touch

by Laura Florand

  The image gave her just a glimpse of what her family must have felt when they’d seen her bludgeoned body. The vision squeezed at her heart like it was a lemon, spilling acid into all her own wounds, burning. She strongly suspected, increasingly all the time, that Dominique had gone down fighting other times in his life, had fought until he was on the ground and couldn’t get up.

  She lifted their locked hands and pressed a kiss to the scarred knuckles.

  Everyone else flushed to varying degrees, except for Sylvain, who smiled and, as if the act were contagious, carried Cade’s hand to his lips and kissed it, too.

  “I’ll have to wait until I see what you can do with spinach, but you know, I really might end up liking you,” her grandfather told Dominique. “Don’t mind Mack. He’s just coming to terms with the fact that he will always be the only white sheep in the family.”

  Dominique gave her father an incredulous look, clearly not buying that the head of a major international corporation was in any way a white sheep.

  “Hold your hope out for grandchildren,” James Corey told his son. “They’re more likely to turn out the way you wanted than your own kids. Trust me, I know.”

  Mack Corey gave his father a much put-upon look, Dominique looked as if he had just been hit over the head with a mallet, and Sylvain, Cade, and Jaime all just sighed.

  “You really do want to go, don’t you?” Jaime whispered to Dominique.

  “Minou.” His hand lifted and feathered through her hair. “And see real moonlight? And learn what you love? Any time you say the word.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Dom locked his bike just outside his salon door and let Jaime into its darkness. His display windows glowed discreetly out onto the street, so that passersby could crave him at all hours and come back when he was open, but inside, only a soft edge of light fell, hushed, on the empty salon.

  Jaime walked away from him, her heels sounding on the rich wood floor, her hand stroking textures—the rustle of his wrapped caramels, hiding their sun in the darkness; the roughness of the stone arches; the brush of the red velvet curtain; the sleek glass; the tiny exquisite raised form of the white rosebuds.

  Dominique tracked her as she moved, his gaze lingering on each spot she had touched, as if her fingerprints glowed gold there. “About this fantasy . . .”

  She walked back toward him, still trailing textures, and stopped with her fingertips on the glass that shielded dark, patterned squares framed in metal. Her eyes met and held his, trying for a sultry, promising smile. “I wanted to get a box of chocolates.”

  In the dark room, he was something wild and dark, a creature called out of the heart of a forest legend. And he came toward her, as if she were the virgin to his mythical beast, as if he could not possibly resist her lure. “Tell me,” he murmured, placing his hands on either side of her, leaning in a little, letting her feel the closeness of his body, how big it was, how much it dominated hers, “what flavors do you like?”

  Her breath came out in a rush, her brain fogging, chocolate blurring into a background for his mouth held just above hers. “Probably anything of yours,” she confessed.

  One corner of his mouth kicked up. “Adventurous. I like that in a mouth.” His closed over hers then, parting her lips for him, taking his time and taking control, exploring her with heat and slickness and the edge of his teeth until her hands were tangled in the leather jacket she had given him, failing to find the zip.

  He pulled his head away and hung over her for a second, breathing hard. Then he reached past her so that his body pressed hers, briefly, hard against the counter, as he stretched to pull open the display case from the opposite side. The pressure on her body eased, to her disappointment. He pulled back enough to proffer a small square to her lips.

  “Which one is that?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you taste, what you see, what you feel.” He slipped it into her mouth. Her lips closed over the tip of his thumb as he drew it away.

  “Dark silk,” she whispered. “Dark, dark melting silk. That won’t let go. It’s wrapping around my wrists.”

  He scraped the overlong cuffs of his leather jacket, the one she wore, up to close his hands over her wrists against the counter, rubbing his rough calluses against the sensitive skin. “And do you like it, wrapping around your wrists? Or do you want it to let you go?”

  “No, I”—a catch in her voice as his thumb found that sensitive skin inside her wrists and stroked it just right—“like it.”

  “Which one was it?” His lips brushed hers as he spoke. “I didn’t see.” His mouth closed over hers again, tasting the flavor that lingered on her tongue.

  She lost herself in the kiss, but it was all too elusive. He pulled back, resting his forehead on the top of her head. “You like that one, do you?” There was a tiny smile in his voice, thick with so many other things. He drew a hard breath. “I thought we were doing a fantasy of yours.”

  “Don’t worry, we are.”

  He pulled off the leather jacket she wore in one yank of the zip and tossed his own over the counter, letting his body press into hers with those barriers gone. Her hands loved the fresh, exposed feel of his torso in the cotton knit. “Did you really fantasize about this, that day here?”

  “Oh, yes. And with every single bite I took from that box you made for me.”

  “Putain.” He ran his hands up her body, lifting her to set her on the counter. “I should have put my cell phone number in that box.” His mouth took hers again, his hips pressing her thighs apart, settling against her. “I didn’t want to scare you away.”

  “Scare m—?” But his mouth didn’t allow hers the leeway to form words.

  Still kissing, his body crushed hers again, one arm holding her in a hard grip as he forced her backward, forced her weight to depend on that arm. When he eased her back to stability, he had another chocolate in his hand. “Why would you sc—”

  He slipped the chocolate between her parted lips, cutting off the word.

  She closed her eyes, at the dark silk that responded so instantly to her body temperature, melting on her tongue. “I thought you said you had never lived anywhere without light.”

  He shook his head, but his expression said the denial was, in its way, a lie. “I haven’t.”

  “This is a dark that hasn’t seen light. It’s for secrets.”

  “Do you like it?” he whispered, with that old, hard-to-hide vulnerability, that eagerness for praise.

  “Oh, yes. It’s the kind of dark the world was born out of.”

  “If we want a world to be born, I think we need some sex.” He slipped his hands under her tunic and into her leggings, curving them hot against her bottom as he pulled her weight back off the counter onto him, riding his pelvis. “Where do you want me to take you?” he whispered, soft and dark as the center of his chocolate, as he carried her into the center of the room. “In this fantasy of yours.”

  She drew her hand over the rough, exposed stone of the arch. “Right here.”

  He held onto her with one hard arm, pressed his own palm against it behind her. “Minette, that will hurt your skin.”

  “That’s where I want it,” she whispered. “Right here.”

  He gave a hoarse little laugh. “I want it somewhere soft. Where I can take you really hard.”

  “Next time,” she promised into his mouth, her hands threading into his hair. “Next time.”

  He walked them backward, found his old jacket, and slipped it back on her. With her skin protected, he pressed her back against that stone, dragging his hands between the panels of the jacket, up over her ribs, thumbs sliding over her breasts. “What do you like to tell me? That I’m beautiful? Minette, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you.”

  “Dominique, I have a very good idea how beautiful some of the women you’ve slept with are—”

  He shut her up with his mouth, with his thigh thrusting between hers. “You don’t know what the hell
you’re talking about.” His mouth grew more urgent, his arms trying to shield her from the hardness of the wall as his hips pushed harder. He wasn’t kidding, about wanting to take her hard. “Jaime, say I can keep you.”

  “As a matter of fact, I wanted to talk to you about tha—”

  “Just say it!” His hands dove into her leggings and dragged them down, panties and all.

  The sudden exposure made her pant, the lips of her sex flexing against the air—and then against his thumb as he rubbed them roughly apart.

  “Say it.”

  “You can keep me.” She twisted helplessly against his thumb. “Dom—Domini—go slow. Let me just—absorb you.”

  Another rough, despairing laugh. “I’ll try, minette. I might need more practice.”

  He did try. The rock gentled him, the knowledge that he could not thrust too hard while she was literally driven back against stone.

  Later, she sat on his lap at that table that had always been hers, studying the backs of his hands. They were scraped raw. While she had been lost in his mesmerizing efforts to go slow, he had been protecting her head and her bottom from the rough stone with the cup of his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said remorsefully, letting one finger glide just above a scrape, not quite touching, just stirring the hairs on the back of his hand.

  “It’s nothing,” he said roughly. “Really. Nothing. I love you.” He said it hard, like an order: no arguments accepted. His arms tightened around her.

  The most perfect place to be. “Can I stay like this forever?” she asked wistfully.

  His arms tucked her in tighter. “Yes,” he promised the top of her head.

  “I love you,” she whispered into his chest. “But I understand why you don’t like to hear it.”

  His hand tightened a little on her skull. “I doubt it.”

  “It’s too clingy,” she said, wrapping her arms around as much of him as she could and clinging to him harder.

  “Jaime.” He tilted her head back, but she only slipped her face into the hollow of his throat and nuzzled there. He smelled delicious, chocolate and her and his own skin, the warm dangerous darkness of it. “It’s not clingy enough.”

  Now she did pull back her head and stare at him in the lights around the edges of his display windows, which were casting zebra lines into the darkness. The great beast lured out of savage woods to lay his horn in her lap. But no unicorn, something far more predatory and wild.

  “I want you to promise never to leave me.” His fingers flexed tight against her skin and loosened. “But I won’t believe you if you do.”

  “We’re so stupid.” She felt along his shoulder, over his arm, carefully, learning the shape of the strange beast in the dark. “I want you to promise never to let me go. But it’s hard to believe I have the right.”

  “I know.” His hand was rough and gentle on her by turns, as if he kept catching himself stroking her skin too hard and velveted his touch. And then forgot again. “You have to save the youngest first. The people who”—his voice caught oddly—“need it.”

  She buried herself in him again, folding her arms between his chest and her body, so that she was completely wrapped up in him, no part of her exposed. He recognized her need these days, and his arms obligingly adjusted, helping create that sensation of being wrapped in him.

  “I will get stronger than this,” she promised him.

  “I’m sure you will,” he murmured into her hair. “Promise not to leave me when you do. Or promise to come back. If you need to go save people, promise it’s me you come back to when you need more strength.”

  “But you won’t believe me. When I promise.”

  “No,” he admitted. “No, I probably never will.”

  He was facing his worst nightmare, she realized suddenly. For her. The one in which he tried to believe in her when she walked out, tried to believe that she would be back.

  And she had to face hers, but in a different way. To set aside its power over her, that vision of men with sticks. To make a choice that was neither focused on fighting back against that vision nor yielding to it, to make a choice that, for once, was . . . hers. For her.

  “But I might get—stronger.” His voice was darker than the shadows around them but wry. “Not as strong as you will, but someday, I might believe you’re possible at least some of the time.”

  She gave a little laugh and twisted her body just for the pleasure of rubbing it against his, of feeling him in every part of her. “It’s like Lewis Carroll. Well, now that we have seen each other, said the unicorn, if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”

  “Am I the Unicorn or Alice?” he asked, surprising her a little, until she thought of his walls of books.

  “Oh, you’re definitely the fabulous monster.” She stroked her hands over his shoulders. Dark and feral and exactly what she needed. A white unicorn would have been too weak. Or too untouched.

  He laughed a little, too, and laid the palm of one hand along her face, where, as always, it seemed to caress half her head. “All right. You can be my incredible Alice. So human and so real.” He shifted her minutely against him, as if he, too, needed to rub himself with her. “I’ll try to believe in you.”

  Silence fell between them. Maybe they were both trying to believe. Dominique seemed in no hurry to leave. As if he could sit there forever, at that little table in his salon, and . . . absorb her.

  She swallowed. “About that weird question I wanted to ask.”

  He said nothing, waited.

  She looked up at him in the dark, her body held in the cradle of his hard thighs and chest. “Will you marry me?”

  He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Then slowly his hands tightened harder and harder on her thighs until she made a little sound at the pressure. “Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”

  He shoved her off his lap, striding away from her toward the red velvet curtain. Jaime stumbled and straightened, staring after him, dumbfounded. Her marriage proposal made him sick?

  He reached out a hand to press it against the white wall of rosebuds, leaning into it. One breath ran through his big body. Another.

  He turned his head to look at her over his arm. “Do you mean that? You want to—you—Jaime.” His eyes were starting to glitter with the most intense emotion. “Don’t say that unless you’re sure—unless you couldn’t possibly ever, ever leave me at the altar. What am I saying? How could you be sure? We’ve only known each other ten days.”

  “A month,” Jaime corrected. “I’ve known you a month.”

  The corners of his lips kicked up, involuntarily. He glanced at the little table she had always sat at and then up, to the top of his spiral staircase.

  “I’m sure,” Jaime said. “Dominique. Now that we have seen each other. If you’ll believe in me . . .”

  “Jaime.” He shook his head slowly, as if it hurt every muscle in his body to do it. “I don’t know if you should believe in me.”

  She rocked a step back. Thinking of all the beautiful brunettes and blondes and, yes, probably redheads he must see every day.

  “I’ve been pretending, Jaime.” Dom rubbed his hand over the little white rosebuds wistfully. “I’ve been pretending. So I could keep you. I’m such a bad bet.”

  Her eyebrows scrunched together. She stared at him as if he was speaking some language she didn’t know.

  Dom couldn’t bring himself to hold her gaze. He let go of his damn rosebuds and walked over to the rough stone. The stone against which they had just made love. He put his palms flat on the warmth there, where the heat of her body pressed there by his had sunk into the stone.

  “But you know that, don’t you?” he said low. “All this time I thought you thought I was perfect. You knew.”

  “Perfect?” she said, startled.

  “Yeah.” His mouth twisted. He hit the side of his fist against the stone. “I guess you never did think that.”

  “I didn’t mean you were flawless.” She
sounded taken aback. “I mean, Jesus, Dominique, you have a really dirty mouth. For example. And in some spots that thick hide of yours turns into such thin skin you can see your whole soul through it. What you are is wonderful.”

  He pressed one hand over his chest, widening his fingers as much as he could to cover himself. “Don’t look at my soul.”

  “I’ll look at whatever the hell I want. It’s beautiful.”

  He looked at her helplessly. Any minute he was going to sink down and just sob into her lap like she was his missing mommy. And she didn’t resemble his mother at all . . . he didn’t want her for his mother, it was just . . . she loved him. Every time she looked at him as if he was the moon and the stars, it made every part of him okay. Except he had to remember he wasn’t. Okay. “Jaime. I spent six years in a slaughterhouse. My father beat the crap out of me and my mother both.”

  She made a little low sound and flinched. Oh, merde, so maybe she hadn’t known that. Maybe he could have kept it hidden longer.

  He forged on anyway. “My mother didn’t even try to take me with her when she left. I don’t know how to do any of these things, like be calm and reliable and love you; I just try. I’m a really, really, really bad bet.”

  “It depends on what you’re betting on. If you want someone bigger than the whole damn world, I would say you’re the best bet out there.”

  She washed over him, every time, like a balm for his soul. “Jaime. How did you ever walk into my life?”

  “Let’s see.” She gestured around her. “Because it’s beautiful. And strong. And I could just soak all that beauty and strength up into me. I walked into your life because you made it a life anyone would want to be inside. And”—she smiled a little, her gaze drifting over his face, his mouth, his body—“it tastes delicious.”

  Desire and delight ran through him the way they always did, beyond his control. She thought he was beautiful. She thought his life was beautiful. She thought his damn soul was beautiful. And, putain, but he could not get enough of her little mouth tasting him, all over. “Jaime. I want to believe in you. I want to believe in me. You have no idea how much I want to believe it. It’s just so hard.”