Would he do that? A man who had flirted with her all one morning and then kicked her out into the cold again?
She didn’t really know what he would do, did she? She just liked to imagine....
Heat coursed through her, like and not like the heat she sought from her hot chocolate. She went to the shelves of spices, shadows upon shadows in the dark. She did her work in the thin light that came through the windows from a city night, the City of Lights that was never entirely dark. She did not want to turn on a light inside.
The spice jars felt cold and round under her hand. Hot chocolate should have a touch of vanilla, fresh from Tahiti. A stick of cinnamon from Sri Lanka. Nutmeg from . . . Zanzibar?
She hoped it was. In her opinion, every life should have something in it that came from Zanzibar.
Now what was the French word for nutmeg? She opened jars as she hunted, fingers sliding over peeling paper labels, releasing spice after spice into the air—whole cloves, anise, mace. And here at last the small football-shaped nutmeg. She pulled one out and began searching for a grater.
Her skin would not stop prickling. It was as if the spices themselves were arousing her, or the danger and insanity of what she was doing. Or the pleasure. She felt aware of him in every fiber. She kept fumbling things, as one did when too conscious of eyes watching. She looked through the shadows and saw nothing and tucked her hair back behind one ear and flushed.
She poured milk into a pot, thinking of Sylvain Marquis simmering cream. She dropped in the cinnamon stick and a vanilla bean, then grated nutmeg over it. The scents were heavenly. Or diabolic. Anyone would sin for scents like that, for the promise of life and flavor.
She ran her hand over the cold silk of the marble counter, touched a spoon to the milk and to her tongue, a tiny bit too hot, almost a burn.
And looked toward the embrasure to her left, an alcove that held more sacks and crates and molds.
A shadow moved out of it.
The jolt ran through her. She froze, her heart beating so hard, it seemed to vibrate her whole body.
The sorcerer walked out of the shadows toward the invader of his lair.
He walked straight toward her, a long, menacing stride. Dark cutting through dark and seeming to leave a glitter in his wake of all that knowledge and magic and power he held in him and was denying her.
And danger. She had placed into his hands the ability to destroy her.
He froze her to her place. Just the sight of him. The way he moved through his workshop, such utter mastery. Arousal, burning low in her for hours, even for days, filled her until she could not think. Could only see his hands. The strong, perfect, masculine hands making magic out of raw cacao.
She ached as he walked toward her.
His size and the lean economy of his movement and the darkness of his body in the darkness seemed to close around her, leave her no escape.
He did not speak. Not one word. His hands closed around her hips, and she gasped and shivered, flooded mercilessly with desire. His fingers flexed into her leather-clad bottom, and he lifted her as he might lift a fifty-pound cauldron of chocolate and set her on the counter.
He set her well away from the burner. Even then. Some part of her noted that care. Some part of her might even remember it one day.
He stared down at her, the counter bringing her almost to his height. His eyes glittered. He had caught her, and the thrill of it had taken her over until she couldn’t think, only breathe, long, clean last breaths that lifted her chest and filled her lungs with scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, chocolate, and human.
“So, you thought you could steal me?” Layer upon layer of dark menace in his voice, a bite and a melt of it. And the sudden intimacy of tu, the abrupt abandoning of all the vous and mademoiselle with which he had so correctly kept her distant, even while he played with her in his workshop.
His face was so close to hers that she could feel every breath from his words against her lips. She was just going to lean forward. She was just going to . . .
His fingers flexed into her bottom, shattering her attention. Oh, please, let him do that again. “Are you stealing from anyone else?” he demanded.
No, she started to say, but thought better of it. “From Dominique Richard,” she told him provocatively.
He kissed her for punishment. Ran one hand up her back hard, so that her body molded against his, tangled his fingers in her hair to hold her head, and kissed her.
His kiss. He was kissing her. He was kissing her. The glory of it poured through her. She rose to it, trying to capture every atom of his taste, his texture. Grabbing for his body, trying to pull herself in harder to him.
His wool sweater frustrated her instantly, too rough, too thick. She pushed under it, found cotton knit, and rushed past that, afraid she would lose this chance if she didn’t take it as fast as she could. Ah, there. Skin. Sleek, hot skin.
He shivered as if her hands were icy. Or maybe something else made him shiver.
His skin felt so warm. It shifted under her touch, as if her fingers conveyed impulses that electrified his muscles. She climbed up those lean, hard muscles, her fingers working over ribs to his chest, feeling a soft fuzz of hair. Her arms pushed up his clothes as she went so that his torso was exposed to the air.
One hand rubbed hard over her thigh. He nudged her legs wider apart with his body. Her legs yielded to him; she yielded to him. He pulled her to the edge of the counter and stepped into her so that hips pressed against hips. So he did want her. He wasn’t toying with her now. At least this once, right now, here, she could make him want her.
He pressed her own upper body against his, hard, rubbing her breasts against him with a force he had not shown in all his teasing games with her, that workshop morning full of bare brushes of his hands. His mouth closed over hers, all hot, all force, all silk, lips and tongue and a pull and nip of teeth with no mercy for her.
His hands flexed into her thighs, pushing them wider still apart, pressing his hips against her, so that she had to slide her hands under his arms to his shoulders to find purchase, to hold herself against the force of his kiss, to fight into it, back at it, and not be toppled over by it.
He made a sound that thrummed through his body. She knew she made one, too, a tiny shiver of a moan.
He could do anything to her, anything he wanted.
He wrenched his mouth free and pulled his head back, staring at her, as if he couldn’t believe she was real.
She was and she wasn’t, that was the thing. That was what she liked about this Paris night and the swirl of scents and possibilities.
Some part of her knew this could not be happening, not in any life she had ever known. But it was. And she had made it happen.
Hanging on to his shoulders, arched up to him, she stared back at him, not moving. He took a hard breath and brought his mouth back to hers.
Sylvain had walked toward her with a certainty he had never felt in his life before. This woman was his. This night was his. Any fantasy he caught in his laboratoire was his to keep.
À moi, he thought. À moi.
She had hunted him. She had tethered herself out there like some kid goat to his Tyrannosaurus rex. She had tapped the entry code to his own laboratoire over and over right in front of him, telling him with every press of that perfectly manicured little finger against a metal button where she would be that night and what she would be doing.
She had placed her chocolate thumbprint on his papers like some wordless signature on a contract with his body. She had lit a fire in his laboratoire to taunt him when he did not catch her fast enough, and made something with what was his, and did not even leave him a taste.
She had plunged her hands into his sacks of pistachios and coffee beans and let the textures roll over her skin; she had breathed in his scents and left the traces all over her body; she had tasted his chocolates and let them melt on her tongue. And with every trace he saw of her passing each morning, she had driven him one deg
ree crazier, until he could not think beyond what pistachios felt like against the back of a hand plunged into a sack, what his vanilla and orange peel and almond oil would smell like against her skin, the scents she stole from his workshop every night and with which she was marking herself his territory.
He could not think beyond what it would feel like to melt on her tongue. Him. Not just the chocolate he made to seduce her, but him.
It seemed as if every classy, pretty girl he had ever lusted after in high school or since had been condensed into her, with her arrogance, and her raspberry tarts for breakfast, and her brown hair flying into her lip gloss, and her blue eyes looking up at him as if defying him to reach out and touch that hair and free her mouth for other things. Her sense of her own right to own the world was so bone-deep, she didn’t even know she had it, but her attempts at masks of cold indifference toward others were so flawed, she couldn’t sit at a restaurant table by herself without making him want to scoop her up and bring her to his table, looking so determined and alone.
She lusted after everything he produced and owned so intensely and sinfully. Surely she must lust after him.
Never in his life had he felt so positive of that. And yet, driven by some old, stupid weakness of his, he had still held back far too long, just in case she wanted to escape.
But she arched up to him. Her hands gripped his shoulders with that strange, feminine strength. Nothing like his strength. Nothing even approaching his strength. And yet he was the one who could not break away.
She could. She could yet. You could never trust a woman’s desire. It was something you had to constantly seduce.
But she could have wrapped one strand of her hair around his littlest finger and held him with it.
Her fesses were supple and perfect under his fingers, and she was wearing black leather over them at midnight, sitting on the marble of his counter. He brought his mouth down to hers again and closed that window of opportunity for rejection and didn’t open it even a fraction of a millimeter again.
She felt so gloriously perfect against him, the silk-cashmere of her sweater sliding under his hands as he found her skin, and the way her eyes closed at his touch in more bliss even than the way they closed when she bit into a raspberry tartelette or ravioles du Royan or even . . . maybe . . . one of his chocolates.
Leather . . . silk-cashmere . . . his hands pushed her sweater up . . . a texture that felt like nothing else—not rose petals, not silk; all of these were just pale similes for the fineness and the humanness of a woman’s skin. Lace. Lace covered her breasts, a faint, raw rub between her soft fullness and his hands.
She opened her eyes again and stared up at him.
Thinking—what? Feeling—what?
But she was his fantasy. His to keep. Caught brown-handed. So he didn’t try to guess what she wanted; he just did what he wanted: he dragged his thumbs over that faint prickle of lace, pressing into the softness underneath, rubbing her nipples hard, letting his fingers flex into her ribs.
Her body rippled in his hands, her lips parting as if begging.
But she didn’t have to beg for him, his perfect fantasy. He would be glad to give her everything.
He kissed her again, delving into her, pouring himself into the moment. Not trying to calculate his next step in seduction. Just enjoying every atom of her being.
There in his arms. Yielding to him. Pulling at him. Yielding. Her mouth, her tongue, her body that flexed to him and grew softer and softer, as if all strength failed her, even as he grew stronger and stronger, too hard, hard to bursting with himself and his power over her.
He pulled the cashmere over her head and pushed it away, revealing pale skin and black lace in the shadows lit just enough by the city night that came through the windows. She shivered at the touch of the cold air against her body, and he felt an instant’s guilt that they were here and not in some bed with down comforters where he could keep her warm.
He wouldn’t mind down comforters instead of marble and leather with his fantasy.
Dieu, but that could be beautiful, luxuriating in the softest white cotton on a cold November day, nothing but coziness and pleasure and smiles, and no fear of waking to second guesses driving one or the other of them out into the cold.
Beautiful, too. He would concentrate on the beautiful moment he had right here in his hands.
He ran his hands up her back, warming her, pressing her into his chest. She pushed his sweater and shirt up, insistent, until he had to pause long enough in touching her to take them off, and she buried herself against the warmth so exposed to her.
He grinned, hard and fierce, because he had that warmth to give her. He had that strength to hold her. He had that world of scents and tastes to lure her. He knew how to make her happy. Tomorrow, who knew, because women changed too much from night to day to say. But this woman—this thief here in his arms—he knew exactly how to make her happy.
That certainty filled his kiss, the way he molded her body to his. Her hands slid over and gripped his back, every tightening, releasing pressure built up over a hard day’s work, every soft stroke making him feel stronger, surer, more wanted.
He kissed her and kissed her, unable to get enough of her mouth, the miracle of her skin under his hands, her breasts. He pulled off her bra and threw it toward the sweater.
Her breasts were so peaked and urgent for him. As urgent as her hips, twisting against his, lifting and subsiding. As urgent as her mouth, returning his kiss with so much passion, it soon became impossible to call it his kiss or to tell who had begun it, only that neither wanted to end it.
But she did, gasping for breath, melting instead onto his shoulders, his biceps, her lips pressing over and over against his skin.
With each touch of her lips, he felt bigger, harder, until he could do nothing but find the zipper hidden on the hip of her pants and push that exquisitely enjoyable leather down over her hips.
But skin . . . skin bared from leather . . . oh, that was exquisite, too.
And the way her hips jumped and jerked against him when her bottom touched the cold marble. And the way he slid his hands under her fesses and picked her up, protecting her from the cold and sinking his fingers into her roundness all at the same time.
She slid her arms around his waist and held on to him hard, her whole body trembling.
He pulled their sweaters back, spreading them where her body would lie on the marble, and eased her backward onto them.
She resisted. She did not want to let him go.
But he was the master here. He took her wrists and forced her down. As soon as his hands locked around her wrists, she stopped fighting him, her eyes huge, her breasts so peaked, her body so pliant.
He forced her down on the sweaters and brought her wrists together to hold them with one hand. She shivered and shivered, her body stretched out to him pale in the dark. Her sex, when he began to play with it, was already so moist.
It took her . . . almost too soon to come. He was enjoying his power to make her body buck and melt and moan. He could have kept doing that for hours.
But when she came so helplessly, her wrists twisting in the hold of his hand, her hips jolting against the heel of his palm, her body shivering and shivering in some offering to him . . . then he couldn’t keep doing this. Then he couldn’t wait even another second.
He pulled his jeans open one-handed and pulled her onto him while he could still feel the aftershocks rippling through her body, squeezing him helplessly, in a rhythm beyond her control.
It was astonishing that even with that, he managed to rein himself in a little longer, not to come at once, but to press into her over and over, watch her eyes shut, feel her muscles again begin to clutch at him uncontrollably, as he made her helpless with his thumb, with his sex. She was so amazing, lying there across his marble, half in leather, all slim and white and his. He couldn’t bear to end that quickly.
But she was so incredible. He couldn’t make it last nearly as
long as he would like, either. When she came again, he did, too, driving into her in an explosion of feeling.
It took a long time for Cade to figure out what to do next. You couldn’t really cuddle on a marble counter. Especially not with a man who despised you and had used tu for the first time only a few minutes before, and that only because he was on the brink of having sex with her. For all she knew, he was going to kick her out at any second.
He was still standing, or rather sagging over her, letting his arms take his weight. His face, so hard and intent a few minutes before, looked utterly relaxed now, almost sleepy. But he didn’t close his eyes. She would almost rather he had closed his eyes, but no, his gaze kept tracking up and down her body. Those French lips of his, usually so tight and precise from all those vowels he had to say, had softened into a curve.
He looked pretty happy with his life, in fact.
Of course, you would, if you were a man and had women throwing themselves at you or stripping naked and stretching themselves out the second you touched them. What was there not to be happy about?
She closed her eyes. His hands had felt exactly as she had imagined. So strong and sure and . . . delicate, when they needed to be.
They knew her melting temperature, that was for sure.
And now she was being tempered much too fast. The cold from the marble was seeping into her bones.
He shifted his weight to one arm and brought the other hand to rest on her tummy, fingers stroking idly.
That helped, a little.
She stopped feeling quite so isolated and awkward.
But it got cold. And she didn’t know what to say. And he sure didn’t bring up any ideas.
And then, from the slow trickling at her thighs, she realized with a shock that for the first time in her life she had had unprotected sex.
Oh, good Lord. She took the pill, but . . . he might even have a girlfriend, that Chantal. And who knew how many women he slept with, considering that supersexy mouth and hands and dark eyes and arrogance and all that chocolate.
The Chocolate Thief Page 12