The Chocolate Thief

by Laura Florand

  Cade Corey had exited the café in the direction of his apartment. He got to his feet, then turned back. “Don’t follow me,” he told Christophe firmly.

  The food blogger laughed. “Sylvain, I love your chocolate as much as the next man. But I would be following her.”

  “You know damn well that’s what I meant.” Sylvain headed out the door.

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  She had disappeared. Where the hell had she gotten to? He walked up and down the street, checking restaurants and stores and the épicerie.

  “Coucou,” a cheerful voice called. He looked up, startled, from his attempts to peer through a plate glass window into the dark depths of the bar a couple of doors down from his building.

  Chantal waved from the sidewalk in front of his apartment building and came toward him to give him warm bises. “Do you want to grab a drink?”

  “I—not this evening, sorry.” He scanned the street. Maybe he should check the neighboring blocks.

  Chantal curled a hand around his arm, her delicately plucked eyebrows knitted. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He wanted to wrench his arm away from her and keep hunting. Who else was hunting those legs right now? He would bet she had every loose male in the quarter on the prowl. How likely was she to fall for one of those lame tourist lines about her charming smile and let someone buy her a drink?

  She seemed too arrogant and too cool for that type of vulnerability, but then, she sure had been a pushover for him.

  Chantal continued to study him. The easy cheerfulness faded from her face. For a moment, she looked somber. Then she arched her eyebrows and gave him a searching, teasing look. “I read about the Chocolate Thief. Isn’t that outrageous? Is it really Cade Corey? That rich American woman from the restaurant the other night? She’s trying to steal your recipes?”

  “Chantal, pardon,” Sylvain said abruptly, bending down to press a quick, apologetic kiss against each cheek. “Let’s have lunch together in a few days. I’ve got to go.”

  The teasing expression died. She looked at him very seriously, the way she might look at someone going to a funeral. At the last second, as he moved away, she let her hand slide down his arm and caught his hand. “Sylvain.” She tugged him.

  He glanced back, trying hard to be polite to this old friend, to be patient.

  Her eyes pleaded with him. “Don’t get hurt. You know you always do.”

  He never did find Cade. He checked surrounding blocks, peering through windows until finally he felt so ridiculous and so desperate for sleep that he went back to his apartment. There he fell onto his bed in his clothes, not waking up until the next morning.

  Whenever he went to bed without a shower first, his comforter always smelled of cocoa for days.

  He came in late to his laboratoire the next morning and discovered that his employees had left a wide space of marble undisturbed, like a crime scene. On it sat a very strange concoction: two flat brown biscuits, a marshmallow, and a square from a Corey Bar, all sandwiched together. At some point, the marshmallow had been half burned.

  His heart began to beat faster. “What is this?”

  Bernard, nearest it, shook his head. “We don’t know. We found it when we got here this morning.”

  She had been back. Maybe in those leather pants again, or those high boots with those lace leggings. His body temperature rose at least three degrees, and his heart slammed into overdrive.

  And he had missed her. Putain de bordel de merde.

  He picked up the weird sandwich and eyed it doubtfully. Had she poisoned it? Why else would she deliberately leave such a ruined effort for him? “I wonder how she managed to burn a chamallow?” he wondered, half-aloud.

  No one attempted to answer. He wondered where she had even found a marshmallow, or the biscuits, in his laboratoire. She was bringing in her own ingredients now?

  What did that mean? He thought she was supposed to be desperate for his world. A thief who left very strange presents instead of taking anything . . . what was that?

  He bit into it carefully and grimaced as crumbs fell clumsily and the marshmallow clung stickily to his lips. “It’s very sweet,” he said. He looked up to find the whole laboratoire gathered around staring at it, rather as one might a snake. “I guess, points for creativity?”

  He had no desire to take another bite of it, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw it away, either. He took it into his office to set it on his desk, then headed straight across the street and up her stairs.

  She wasn’t there.

  Cade was in Christophe’s apartment, learning how to make the chocolate tarte that he claimed he was going to name after her. La Cade. It made her smile. He made her laugh. His enthusiasm for everything was so unabashed and infectious.

  She spent the morning there, feeling like a child at play, and even let him take a little ten-second video clip of her grinning and tasting his tarte for his blog. Then she caught the TGV up to Brussels. Her father wanted her to feel out the Firenze brothers, off the record, about their attitude toward a shared bid for Devon Candy.

  Devon Candy. One of their candy bars had a bright pink wrapper. The very thought of it depressed her.

  Sylvain, reading the blog post that evening, felt as if the top was going to blow off his head. Christophe had spent the morning cooking with her? He had named something chocolate after her? That was Sylvain’s role. And he could do it a lot better.

  And in that video clip, which he only played ten or twenty times, she looked so sparkling and happy.

  He really might murder the man.

  Cade caught the nine p.m. train back, and it got delayed by a problem on the line that had them stopped over half an hour, so it was close to midnight by the time the taxi dropped her off at her apartment.

  The taxi pulled away before she even got her code entered. When a shadow detached itself from the greater shadows of the doorway across the street, she nearly screamed.

  Relief rushed through her when she realized who it was, but not just relief from that first primal fear. It was relief that he was there, that she was there, that they had not missed each other again. That she didn’t have to try to figure out what she should do—break into his laboratoire, stay in her apartment, or do something normal and call him.

  Her body could just . . . melt into another dark, intense night, no questions asked. It was melting already as he crossed the street.

  Without a word, he put his hand over hers and entered her code for her. Cade just wanted to turn to him and bury her head in his shoulder in overwhelming gratitude that he was there. She didn’t want to have to resist him another night by staying out late. She didn’t want to have to break into his laboratoire and have him never show. She didn’t want to wonder or doubt or hope. She just wanted to do.

  And be done to.

  Over her shoulder, he pushed the door open, his arm and body holding her captive. “You shouldn’t be out so late alone,” he murmured, voice dark and rough. “This is a big city. There have been several break-ins across the street.”

  “Why don’t you set a trap to catch the thief?”

  “I did once. But I think I made a mistake by not putting her in handcuffs at the time.”

  His voice blended frustration, humor, and sincerity so darkly and perfectly that she couldn’t be sure he didn’t have velvet handcuffs in his back pocket, ready for use.

  She felt disoriented. She had been working twelve hours straight now: facts, figures, decisions, e-mailing on the train. She was so used to working like that, it had seemed to set her back into her own world, an ocean’s width from a sorcerer’s lair in Paris.

  Finding it still there, a world not completely shut to her, she wanted to sink into it completely. She backed up, tentatively, trying to make sure she didn’t open any sudden gap between them to discourage his pursuit.

  He came with her, into the dark foyer of the apartment building, his body staying so close, she could not ha
ve broken free. He let the door close behind him, its blackness shutting out the pale city light. Only a tiny orange spot of light indicated the button they could push to light the stairs.

  She reached for it automatically. He caught her hand. “Just a minute.” He pulled her into his arms, turned and pressed her back against the door, and kissed her.

  Her whole body responded to him instantly, tightening, lifting. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, gripping the leather coat. He took a breath and kissed her harder. His pleasure responded to her pleasure, and hers fed his, while the kiss deepened, lightened, changed. Kisses learned each other.

  “I can’t believe you’re real,” he breathed, his fingers rubbing over her back and ribs, where her skin yielded to his hands and where it didn’t. It surprised her that there was any point it didn’t; she felt as if her very bones were melting. “And yet you are.”

  That was good to know. She hadn’t been sure the last time. But she wanted to be real here. She felt very, very real.

  She felt so soaringly, intensely real, it was as if the person she had been until she got on that plane for Paris was some poor ghost finally invested with a life.

  And able to taste and feel and touch and breathe and hurt and hate and live.

  The feel and touch and taste of him, and sometimes even the spitting, furious hate of him, was so heady that once again she forgot everything but him immediately. His lean waist, the muscles of his back and torso under her fingers. His thigh pressing between hers. His hair brushing her cheeks. His mouth. His hands.

  God, his hands were extraordinary. She had been right to have a crush on them before she even met him.

  Today he smelled of chocolate, of course, and rum, and fleetingly, on the fingertips that stroked past her cheeks and pushed her hair back, vanilla.

  She rose to his mouth, seeking him passionately, seeking all of him, seeking to absorb him into her in every way she could. He made a rough sound and obliged that need, everything escalating out of control.

  She loved the feel of his breaths going deeper and faster, as he pressed her against his chest. She loved the way his fingers flexed and tensed and rubbed as if they could make their winter layers of clothes disappear. She loved—but maybe hated—the fact that he could keep just enough respect for her, or control, to pull his head away at last and look around. Now that her eyes had adjusted, the small windows at the stair landings allowed in just enough dim light from the city to make out, barely, the line of his chin, the shadow of his shoulders against deeper shadow.

  He didn’t say anything. He just lifted her up in one easy motion as if she weighed, well . . . no more than a giant pot of chocolate . . . and set her down on the first stair.

  Cade leaned into him, liking this new height that made his mouth, his face, more accessible to hers, that brought her hips right on level with his, that . . .

  He grasped her hips and rotated her, until she faced up the stairs, his hips now rubbing against her bottom. When she didn’t immediately grasp the message, he nudged her with his hips and his aroused sex. “Monte,” he whispered. “Go up.”

  She grasped the banister for support, feeling her way up the dark stairs slowly.

  As she climbed, his hands began to slide. Over her hips, her legs, as he let her get steps above him. He allowed the distance between them to grow, letting himself get several steps below her, as his hands drifted downward to the very edge of her boots, one finger slipping in, tracing her calf, and then back up. Then he came closer again. She could hear his tread on the stairs, in the dark an even darker presence behind her. He slid under the neat, knee-length pencil skirt and pushed it up, his hands tantalizing the sensitive insides of her thighs.

  Cade tightened her hand on the rail and stopped, incapable of forming enough coherent force in her body to go forward. One finger teased just one split second against the crotch of her tights and then withdrew to push her bottom. Push her up, toward her apartment.

  She started forward again, and his hands rose for a few steps to unbutton her jacket, to find their way under her sweater, to stroke and stroke her breasts until she was almost in tears of desire for him to do more. To take her on the stairs—she didn’t care.

  He did care, though, apparently, because a lightly stinging slap against her bottom made her realize she had stopped moving again, lost in desire. The slap on top of it drove her almost frantic. She wanted nothing so much as to double over the banister, let him spank her mad, do anything to her, as long as his hands returned between her legs, as long as he took her.

  And then his hands were gone. Nothing of him touched her at all. She breathed in a gasp of frantic air, as if she had been knifed.

  “Continue,” he whispered. “Or I’ll stop.”

  Oh, cruel. She was nothing but desire. Nothing. Touch me, take me, feel me, make me, do anything to me, please.

  But he kept to his word, not touching her. She stumbled forward.

  They were halfway up the second flight now, and three more flights to go.

  He rewarded her. His hands stroked and teased up her inner thighs again, promising to touch her sex but then retreating, stroking up again closer, retreating again.

  She made a little sound that was no words, just begging, and stopped.

  He took a step downward again, breaking all contact.

  Again, a little sound from her, wordless pleading. She forced herself forward, craving the reward and loathing the punishment.

  His hand came all the way up to the crotch of her tights this time and played with her for a full five steps, pressing and rubbing the lips of her sex through tights and panties, telling her what a good girl she had been.

  “Sssy . . .” She thought she started to say his name. She just couldn’t get her mouth to function for anything as coherent as a word.

  As if to reward her for the effort, he began to ease her tights and panties down, an inch per step. She learned the rhythm quickly, that for each step she took, a little more of her skin was bared under her skirt. And his fingers, his beautiful, deft, masterful fingers that could take the raw elements of the earth and turn them into something wonderful, brushed against that skin.

  They were halfway up the fourth flight of stairs, one more flight to go, when his fingers finally slipped around to her naked, madly damp sex. He made a low, approving sound when she clenched around his hand so frantically, and the sound itself made her clench again.

  She was almost insane, on the edge of coming at that point. When his thumb pressed hard against her clitoris, she bit into the arm of her jacket and began to shake. As a last cruel torture, he tried to pull his thumb back as he realized, to make her wait still longer, but she grabbed his hand and forced it back against her, wave after wave engulfing her.

  She came uncontrollably, body shattering in a dark, narrow staircase, his palm against her clitoris, his other arm holding her up as she fell against it, her own arm stuffed against her mouth to keep in her cries.

  He held her until she finished coming, pulling her in tightly against him.

  Then he picked her up, holding her in his arms as he took the last stairs swiftly. She fumbled, limp, mindless, for her key. He took it from her and opened the door, not fumbling at all. The apartment was small. It took him no time to find the bed. He dropped her onto it and fell onto her, one thumb driving her helplessly into waves of pleasure again as he took her, hard and fast.

  He came almost immediately, hard, wrapping his arm under her shoulders and pulling her into him as he did so. His arm flexed around her until, just for a second, she could not breathe as his climax shook him.

  He held her, held her tight, his faced buried in her hair, as his body slowly relaxed.

  They both fell asleep together, Sylvain with one hand curled gently on her waist.

  It was still dark when they woke. Sylvain made a low, pleased sound, as if drifting up from a dream to realize it was true. He stroked her clothes off, all of them, left her naked among her sheets, completel
y naked to him for the first time. So she did the same to him. She couldn’t help it. His long, naked body was so beautiful. Stroking her hands over his bare skin and finding nothing, anywhere, to impede her, was such sensual pleasure.

  He stroked one hand leisurely up her body, starting at the foot from which he had just removed the tights, all the way up the naked length of her, over her hip, her ribs, her arm, which he stretched above her head, linking his fingers with hers to imprison her hand. Light from the city came clearly through her windows. His eyes seemed to glitter in it.

  “You can do anything to me you want to,” she whispered.

  “I will,” he promised.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  When she woke in the morning, her bed smelled of chocolate. It smelled, in fact, of home, of Corey, where the very air smelled of chocolate, always. She came out of sleep smiling a little, nuzzling at the smell, whose source eluded her.

  Bright daylight burned through the room. That disoriented her and combined with the achiness of her body to make her wonder if she had been ill. She never slept late. Not even when she was traveling.

  By degrees, she became aware that she was very, very far from home, naked and completely exposed on her bed, under a thin sheet. And sticky. And the night . . .

  She blushed all over, from head to feet, and fought against opening her eyes but finally had to.

  Despite all the training of her hook-up period in college, she expected to see Sylvain standing there. She expected to have to face him, naked and crimson.

  But the small apartment was mercilessly, brightly empty in the late-morning sun.

  And outside her apartment door, the stairs were creaking as someone descended away from her. The sound that had awoken her had been her closing door.

  “Cade,” Mack Corey said reproachfully. Over his shoulder, her grandfather studied her. With gleaming eyes, knowing her grandfather, but it was hard to tell via Webcam.