She could probably dominate in jeans, but she made sure to dress well for business. Perhaps it was an expression of her own pride. Perhaps it was a little bit like his insistence on wearing professional attire even in his own laboratoire, even when he would rather come slouching in after a late night.
Besides, she did like to look good, he thought with a smile, remembering some of her sexier outfits. She liked clothes.
One of these days she would probably get around to hitting the designers on Faubourg St-Honoré, like most wealthy women did. It charmed him how incidental clothes shopping was in her priorities, well below the important things like chocolate. But one day she would do it, and he was looking forward to seeing what she came home with.
He fisted a hand in his coat pocket, schooling himself to caution with that vision, because it involved her coming in through his apartment door with her arms laden with frivolity, dumping it onto his living room floor, showing the purchases off to him. The home she came to, in other words, was his.
The problem was that whenever he imagined her doing something in the future, he wanted to be somehow part of it—whether he heard about it at the end of the day or was with her when she did it. In his favorite view of the future, she was there with him.
In his view of what he wanted from the world, there were an infinity of moments that were beautiful, as this one was beautiful, with the light from the town hall gilding her jawline and shining off her hair in the cold northern night that made him want to pull her in and warm them both.
“And you know what else?” she said, her voice wobbling just a second, as if it was the last straw. “It’s Thanksgiving. And the Firenze brothers don’t even know what a damn pumpkin pie is.”
“Thanks-gi-ving. That’s a big day for you, right? The only day of the year Americans eat a real meal, or something like that?”
“Sylvain. You’re not helping.” But she sounded as if he was helping, a certain frustrated humor steadying the wobble.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Where’s your hotel?”
“I’m going to fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed,” she warned him ruefully.
“A vulnerable victim. That’s what I like.”
She was indeed luxuriously sleepy, smiling and pliant, as if every touch of his hand stroked the last bit of tension out of her and with it all her energy. She was almost his own doll, but more human, warmer, yielding with soft sounds to every touch.
That, too, was erotic. When she came, it was as if the waves of her orgasm rocked her to sleep. By the time he came, only a few seconds later, he thought she might already be asleep, receiving him in her dreams.
He eased onto his side, still inside her, propped on one elbow watching her, one hand lightly caressing her back and bottom.
Her body felt small against his, fragile, although he knew she wasn’t, very soft, very, very fine. Her straight brown hair, free now of its chignon, slid and caressed her skin and his with his every breath. In that moment, she was all his, but she was already slipping away from him, her dreams taking her to places of which he had no idea.
She had once asked him if he had ever tried to reach a woman’s heart. He supposed that, like his final smooth chocolates, it was good she couldn’t see the effort behind it.
* * *
Chapter 29
Three weeks later ...
In the windows of SYLVAIN MARQUIS, Chocolatier, grew great rustic fir trees of chocolate, branches rough-hewn as if chiseled from a solid block, dusted with white. The suggested primitiveness of the way in which they had been carved, the depth of field, the quantity, and the lighting made them dramatic, mysterious, as if the viewer hovered on the edge of some vast, ancient, snow-hushed forest. It was beautiful, alluring, and just slightly dangerous, like a snow-filled night; it made one long to step forward and get lost among those trees. Tucked in the forest was a cabin, the chocolate shaped into something old, worn, a little lopsided, a shape at its peak that might have been a star. It could have been a place for le Père Noël to stop, or a subtle nod to a starlit stable, or it could have been just a cabin in the woods on a snowy evening. Despite its primitive appearance, the detail, when one looked closely, was exquisitely fine—a candle, a bird’s footprint on the windowsill.
And everywhere, everywhere, were signs of passage, signs that could mean gift or theft. Someone had left a footprint in the powdered sugar “snow.” A chocolate nut had rolled from a hollow in a tree, as if someone had snuck into a squirrel’s nest for his stash. Sleigh marks traced the rooftop of the cabin hidden in the trees. In extraordinary miniature, on the table in that cabin, lay a box of Sylvain Marquis’s chocolates—the tiny box itself made from tinted white chocolate. Its lid was open and one chocolate missing.
The eye looked and looked through the scene for the person or the creature who had passed, whose trace had been left. But she or he was nowhere in it, only a mystery.
Cade stood a long time in front of that window, one hand loosely clasping the handle of her carry-on. It had been a tough week. A tough month. They had failed. Total Foods had beaten their bid, and they had lost Devon Candy.
Lost Europe. Lost her right to it.
Out of excuses, she had had a very long talk with her father, who was still grappling with the additional loss she had dumped on him.
She had not seen Sylvain for any of that week. The demands of the Christmas chocolate season on him, and the Devon Candy bid on her, had made trips from Paris to Brussels scattered and difficult to manage. She always knew when Sylvain woke up, because he texted her first thing every morning, something funny or sexy or just tu me manques (miss you), and he called last thing at night or she called him. She hadn’t, though, told him she was coming back to Paris tonight. She hadn’t really done anything or talked to anyone but her father and family since the Devon Candy failure crystallized.
She needed the scents and tastes of Sylvain’s chocolaterie around her.
She broke into the laboratoire with the copied key that Sylvain had never asked back from her and the code he had never changed. Inside the laboratoire, the scents made all the hair on the nape of her neck prickle and a shiver of release run through her, like the first touch of heat when coming in from the cold. She stood still for a moment, her eyes closed, just breathing.
Then she walked through the empty laboratoire and into the shop, studying the display windows from behind. The signs of passing could be seen from this side, too. Inside the shop, she was immersed in the winter forest; customers would be touched by something magic that was gone now, that they could not find. In the display cases, “her” chocolate was on sale, the dark bitter one he had offered at her doorstep.
He had called it Amour.
Oh. She felt the name like a blow against her solar plexus, driving out breath. Dark, rich, bitter, melting-smooth love.
In his office, his laptop was closed and the desk cleared, everything neatly filed. But a Corey Bar lay in front of the laptop, where it might be if it was the last thing fingered before the person sitting at the desk got up.
She reached out to run her fingers over the wrapping, tracing the letters of her name.
“So, you’re back,” a voice from behind her said.
Cade felt the hair shiver on her arms and the nape of her neck. The way it always did when the sorcerer surprised her in the dark. “You know I couldn’t stay away.”
He came up behind her, until her body was trapped between his and the desk. The nape of her neck felt very exposed. “I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I’m looking for a new apprentice.”
Sorcerer’s apprentice. His voice, rich and dark as the night and his art, made it sound as if she was bartering for body and soul. The scent of his chocolate was everywhere, flooding into his office from the laboratoire.
“Are you in need of a . . . maître?” Very deliberately, he drew pauses and shadows around that last word. Very deliberately, he did not say maître chocolatier. Only maître.
Her body arc
hed involuntarily. Her head fell back to touch his chest. He took her hips, refusing to allow her whole weight back against him.
“Tu es cruel, Sylvain,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“I know,” he said. “I can’t help myself.” He wrapped her hair around his hand and pulled her head back farther, arching her body from him like a bow. A bow to his arrow. His other hand ran up the body he had thus stretched to it, from between her thighs to cup her breast. “Come let me be cruel to you.”
Fire bloomed everywhere under the stroke of his hand. “Oh, God,” she whispered, barely audible. “I love it when you’re merciless to me.”
“And I love having you à mon merci,” he whispered into her ear. Still holding her head bent with his hand in her hair, he pulled her hips back, arching the bow of her still further. He used the pressure of his hand between her legs to force her fesses against his sex. His breath was barely a sound against her earlobe. “Because I am at yours.”
She was trembling with desire. The disaster of their loss to Total Foods, her last conversation with her father before she came back to Paris—all that was pushed far away, fleeing from the deep shadows and the brightness of this moment. “Shouldn’t an apprentice have to please the master?” she whispered.
His hips jerked and pushed hard against her bottom, his palm holding her prisoner by his pressure against her sex. She shivered all over. “You do,” he said, low, guttural. “Already.”
She twisted away from him and pushed him back against his desk.
He gripped the edge of it, watching her, his eyes a black burning.
She reached for his jeans.
His hands tightened on the edge of the desk. “Cade. Don’t do this to me. Do you know how long a real apprenticeship lasts? Don’t play with the idea unless you’re planning on staying at least that long.”
“I’ll do what I want to you.” She freed him from his jeans. His head tilted back until she could see all the strong muscles of his throat. “You do to me.”
He closed his eyes. “Cade. Ne me touche pas. Bordel. Cade. Arrête.” But he did not grab her and stop her. “If you can’t promise you’re going to stay, let go now. Putain.” His hips thrust helplessly. It was so strange to see every muscle in his body taut, to know exactly how much stronger he was than she, and yet to feel so much power.
“You’re not used to it,” she said wonderingly. Were other women insane?
He made a sound. It couldn’t really be understood as a whole word.
“You’re not used to having someone seduce you.”
“More subtly,” he managed hoarsely. “A lot more subtly. More like—pouty lips subtly. Are you really going to stay?”
“I can do pouty lips,” Cade said, sinking to her knees.
“Ah, putain.” Sylvain’s breathing was so labored. He was so helpless to her. She was giddy with her sense of power.
“I know I love you,” she said and tasted him.
“Ca—ade.”
“Do you want me to stay?” It was a trick question, to ask it right at that moment, she knew.
He gripped her shoulders so hard, those strong fingers hurt her, finally holding her back. His eyes were open again, blazing far hotter than chocolate ever could. “Cade. Every dream I have has you in my apartment, has you in my laboratoire, has you with my babies, has me making supper for us on a cold night, has us laughing, and dancing, and . . . together. Every chocolate I’ve made since I met you, I’ve made for you. I’ve seen your gaze on my hands while I did it; I’ve thought of the way it would melt on your tongue. Don’t—you—toy—with—me. I can’t take it.”
She stared up at him, no longer giddy with her own power but helpless in wonder at it. “Really? You want that, too?”
He gave a sudden, exultant laugh and pulled her up his body with one easy surge of strength. “You can even have my name,” he said into her mouth, between kisses, wrapping her legs around him, wrenching at her clothes. “But please don’t put it on Corey Bars.”
“Oh!” Even at that second, as he pushed her jeans off her, Cade was distracted by a sudden, beautiful idea. “Cade Marquis bars!”
He drove into her hard, vengeance for the idea mixed with desire. “Non,” he said hoarsely and firmly. “Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que je t’aime.”
“Moi, aussi.” She wrapped her arms around the lean, taut muscles of his back. “Moi, aussi.”
* * *
Chapter 30
If Cade kept finding his chocolaterie such a turn-on, he might have to start looking for an apartment closer to it, Sylvain thought a little later. Or maybe install a bed in his office. Two blocks from his apartment to his laboratoire was all very well when he was just walking to work and back, but on a freezing December midnight, it seemed a long way to go post-sex for a cuddle.
And the apartment Cade had rented to spy on him left a lot to be desired in the comfortable, cozy bed department, he thought, squeezing in on its stiff mattress beside her. But for now it would do. It had a memorable staircase, and a delicious tight squeeze of an elevator, he had just discovered.
Maybe Cade could buy the entire top floor and turn it into a penthouse, or something. He would design the kitchen.
The light they had turned on when they came in the door shone now too brightly into the bedroom area. He pulled her comforter over them completely like a tent, like children at play. He did feel as excited as a child, but he had never felt so intensely, joyously adult.
His finger traced over her shoulder and down her arm. “My name on you,” he said wonderingly. “Really? Did you mean that?”
She, too, looked wondering and puzzled. “Do you know, we’ve known each other less than two months? And I haven’t even dated anyone that long since high school.”
His heart sank like stone. “You mean you want to wait longer, test this out.” Putain de bordel de merde. Why couldn’t she feel as absolutely certain as he did?
“No.” Blue eyes met his, that straight look that charged him with electricity. “I’ve tested everything that needs to be tested. I know what I want.”
Sylvain stared back into those blue eyes, so wide and dilated in the shadows under the covers. “And that’s me.”
She reached out a hand to touch just her fingertips to his bare chest, in possession. He could feel his heart thudding against them. It might be possible to die of pride at this woman’s claiming of him. “And that’s you.”
“Dieu.” He pulled her hard into his arms. “How could any man be so lucky?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
“Of all the chocolateries in Paris, you walked into mine.”
“The last thing I would have thought you of all people would credit to luck is me walking into your chocolaterie. Who else’s would I walk into?”
He pressed his forehead against hers. “You misunderstood. I know what’s to my credit, Cade. I know why you walked into my chocolaterie. And I know exactly how much effort I put into getting you to want something besides my chocolate, too.”
“Good. It would confuse me if you suddenly started being humble.”
He did feel humbled, though. Not humble about his accomplishments—quite the contrary—but humbled before God, or fate, or destiny, whatever force it was that had brought her into it. “My luck is that of all the people who could have walked into my chocolaterie, you walked into it. You.”
Her smile bloomed. “I’m special, then?”
“Cade.” He squeezed her helplessly. Women’s hearts were inexplicable things. “How could you not know that?”
She did not answer, moving her fingertips in tiny, stroking motions through the hair on his chest.
“Did you mean it about becoming my apprentice?”
She smiled a tiny, impudent smile, seemingly focused on his chest.
“My chocolate apprentice,” Sylvain clarified. “In the laboratoire .”
She looked up brightly. “Will you have me?”
This was t
rickier ground by far than marriage. He felt entirely, one hundred percent sure about the marriage. “Will you sign a contract not to use what you learn in Corey Chocolate?”
“Yes. I quit, anyway.”
He just stared at her. No, gaped at her, caught completely off guard.
“I’m still available for consultation, something my father is sure to take far too much advantage of, and I’ve still got the same amount of shares, which leaves me a very interested party, but we’re going to have to hire someone to take over my day-to-day roles. It’s a blow to my father.” Grief shadowed her face. That blow to her father was a blow to her, too. That, too, humbled him, the choice she had made. “And to my grandfather. But the competition for top executive positions is pretty cutthroat. I’m sure we’ll find someone who will excel at the job.”
He continued to stare at her. “You’ve had a hard week.”
“A little bit, yes.” He felt the rise and fall of her long breath against his body. “But”—she opened her hand with simple finality—“I knew what I wanted.”
He framed her face in both his hands and just stared at her in amazement. She had known, without a shadow of a doubt, what she wanted—him.
“The most,” she corrected herself after a moment. “I knew what I wanted the most.”
“So you will be my chocolate apprentice,” he said when he could speak again, thoroughly charmed by the idea.
“Part-time,” she agreed. “Part-time, I might do some small-time venture-capital work. Working with individuals who want to succeed with their own chocolateries, their own pâtis-series .”
He tugged one lock of hair reproachfully. “You just couldn’t manage to give up all sense of responsibility to the rest of the world, could you?”
“Existential guilt.” She shrugged self-deprecatingly.
He rolled onto his back, pulling her to pillow on his chest, stroking her hair, dreaming dreams of a life like this. “You know, I may make a Cade Marquis bar, after all. We’ll call it an engagement present. A special, artisanal Cade Marquis bar we sell only in my shop.”
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