“Of course. In Greece, he was Dionysus.” He paused, eyes on Abby’s. “There are gods for everything.”
“Where I come from, there’s only one.”
His mouth turned down dubiously at the corners as he looked around for a place to set his thief. “I need a table in here,” he muttered.
“You could set an empty barrel on its end,” she said, picturing a row of them down the middle of the room. “You could have people in here, tasting straight from the barrels and—”
“No people.”
She stopped, crushed.
“No people? Oh. I thought with that room out there and the—”
“No people. Here.” He handed her the thief, which she held along with the wineglasses, and disappeared through a door. He returned rolling one of the enormous barrels before tilting it up to stand. It was obviously empty, but goodness, it must have been heavy. He set it upright, and Abby put the thief atop it.
“Which glass did I fill first?”
“This one.” She handed him the one in her right hand.
“This one is native yeast. From my grapes. The yeast helps with fermentation.” Luc pointed to the other glass. “And this is inoculated yeast. Purchased. Proven.” He smiled at the question in her eyes. “The wines should be different. More science. Chemistry.”
She nodded and caught his gaze, feeling something charged between them. Was this what he meant by alchemy? This particular blend of sensation and anticipation?
After a long few seconds, he spoke. “Go on, Abby.” He sounded breathless, his face expectant, almost eager. “Taste.”
* * *
The smile that blossomed across her features made his breath come in hard, hot, heavy. He felt like he was auditioning for something. Interviewing. Passing a test.
She examined the contents of the first glass, eyes alight but unsure.
“This is my first wine.” Her voice was breathy, appealing in its excitement.
He figured. Although in France, children drank wine in church; here, even God’s blood was treated like a sin. Ridiculous people.
“It’s not finished, this wine.”
“Not finished?”
“No. After the barrels, it goes into bottles. And more time before you drink it. But try it,” he urged, hoarse with nerves. Anticipation thrummed through his veins.
Her hands were lovely on the glass, delicate and graceful, her lips pursed in preparation. Luc couldn’t look away, reading clues into every tiny movement: the quirk of a brow, the vibration of her throat as she swallowed. Blinking, she took a second sip, which lingered longer in her mouth. Her tongue moved, testing, and her lips curved into a smile. Did she like it?
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s so…” Another dip of the lips, her features scrunching together as if in search of the right word. “Bright. But dark. Rich. Kind of warm.” Why was she blushing at that? Or was it the wine coloring her skin?
“Try the other.” He held the air in his lungs, waiting.
She tasted. Her expressions were so vivid. Curious, serious. She was trying with all her might, and he loved that.
“Here, let me show you.” Luc’s fingers grazed hers when he reached for the first glass. He lifted it by the stem, swirled its contents, and dipped his face to breathe in the wafting odors. “You sniff, like this. What you’re looking for is the nose. The…perfume, you know?” He handed her the glass and watched closely as she did the same, awaiting her prognosis. “You smell things, yes? Fruit or something else?”
“Cherries maybe?” She bent back to the glass she held, tried again, the movements so unpracticed they were pure. “But there’s also wood. Is that because of the barrels? I smell lots of things, but not really grapes.”
Luc couldn’t help the smile that took over his face. “They’re made of… C’est quoi chêne? Um…oak!” He snapped his fingers as the word came back. “French oak.”
“I can smell that! In the glass!” she announced gleefully, her smile beautiful.
“What else? Anything else?”
“Hold on, hold on. Yes, there’s something mineral to it. Like eating dirt.”
“You’ve eaten dirt?”
“Yes!” She laughed, her golden eyes ablaze with humor. “Haven’t you?”
“No, I…” It came to him—a memory, lost in the gnarled vines of his past. “Maybe? Once? Or once that I recall. I was in the vineyard, with Olivier, my half brother. We were… Oh, I don’t know. I must have been five or six, and he was older. I remember Grandpère always talking about the importance of terroir. The…” At her curious expression, he fumbled the words. “The place. Like here, this mountain and earth, the sun and weather. It’s all the terroir. My family’s is Bordeaux, one of the world’s most important regions. Everything about it is unique: the earth, the plants, the seasons, even the landscape itself. Olivier decided if I truly wanted to understand it, I should eat it.”
“How was it?”
“Honestly? I don’t remember the actual moment I put it in my mouth, but I remember the sensation.”
She cocked her head, listening closely.
Luc continued, enjoying her concentrated attention. “That mineral thing you speak of, it was that, only I remember that it fed a craving in me. In my body, my blood.” Looking up, he realized he’d lost her. “It’s…silly, I know.”
“No. No, I think I get it, because I don’t taste it as much here.” She reached for the other glass, which he handed over with something like intimacy, and took another sip. Her lips were already stained from his wine, and he couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop wondering how his grapes would taste on her skin.
“Taste what?” he mumbled, brain hazy, before forcing himself to stop. He’d die before he took advantage of this woman. With a deep inhale, he stepped back, blinking hard and pretending he didn’t see the way her eyes skipped all over him.
“I don’t taste the dirt as much in this one.”
Needing to clear his head, he turned back to the tasting room. “Come with me,” he said, picking everything up and setting it on the bar before taking a few steps away from her. He needed space or he’d do something stupid.
“Why won’t you open this up, Luc? To outside people?”
“It’s not for me.”
“What isn’t?”
“You know. People.” He almost smiled. “I don’t like them and they…generally don’t like me.”
Instead of smiling, Abby looked sad.
“I like you. I think you’re lovely.”
His hands tingled. His face heated, and he looked away. “Yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. You’re so…good. To me.” Why did that disappoint him?
“I’m not good, Abby.”
“You are,” she said with a wobbly nod. “I’m the bad one.”
“You’re bad?” He could almost laugh. “How?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, looking devastated.
He shook his head in disagreement, slowly like the air’d gone thick, like he’d bathed in syrup or in the moût—the must. That dense mix of juice and skins and seeds and stems that gives the wine its color, its body.
“I’m sorry that you’re unhappy here.”
“No. It’s not that. I’m here to work.” She looked distressed. “I didn’t come here for me. I’m not supposed to be doing all these new things.”
“What new things?” he asked, frantic at the notion that she’d never come back.
“Things like drinking coffee or eating ham and butter sandwiches. Like today. I came here to work, and instead, I’m tasting wine.” With her accent, the word came out almost as a long and fluid waaaa, so much better than the tiny, pathetic, one-syllabled vin of his native tongue.
But her expression was angry or frustrated, and Luc wanted to ma
ke that go away. “This wasn’t at all the plan. This and all the other things I shouldn’t have done.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips, and he heard the words she didn’t say about a stolen kiss in the vineyard. It had been his fault, all of it. He’d been the one to press the food on her—and the kiss and everything else.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said, wracked with shame.
“Why are you sorry?” she asked, looking truly puzzled.
“For making you do th—”
“Making me?” Abby put down the glass and moved toward him, her eyes not even close to accusatory. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? I want more, Luc, now that I’ve had a taste. I know that I shouldn’t, but it’s all I can think about, and I do. I do.”
8
Luc swallowed, his eyes glazing over.
“We shouldn’t have kissed,” he said, looking angry.
“No. We shouldn’t have.”
“You’ve never done it before?”
“Not really,” she whispered, knowing full well it was time to walk away. But I don’t want to. “I want another one, Luc.”
“Another what?” he asked, looking truly puzzled for a few seconds.
“Another kiss.”
He shook his head, only instead of the refusal she expected, he said, “I can’t stop thinking of your mouth.”
She pressed her lips together subconsciously. Her body was glued in place, but her mind raced ahead. How would it feel, in here, with no eyes to see them? No weather to disrupt them? Would the wrath of God reach in through that enormous window and strike her down?
What if it didn’t? What if…
It didn’t matter. Let Him punish her. It was too late anyway. What was a little kiss after the thoughts she’d denied since the first time she’d seen this man?
Slowly, she stepped forward, eyes on Luc.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, full of the knowledge that this could well be the end. What if he doesn’t want this?
She watched as he reached out to graze her dress with his fingers. Just the fabric, not the body beneath, but even that was heady, different. New.
“You want this.” It wasn’t a question. If anything, the words came out disbelieving.
“I want you.”
That did it. Whatever it was. Like they’d busted through their shell, only it was more like a dam had blown, and the man she’d known until this moment—quiet, contained, restrained—transformed into something wild. Unleashed.
A couple feet away one moment, the next, they collided. It was like falling, inside and out, a fatalistic succumbing. She could barely contain a sob when his skin finally touched hers, his lips moved to her neck, his hands on her shoulders. One hand went to her nape, cupping, cradling, but firm as well. And his face, as it made its way from the hollow beneath her ear, up and over her jaw, her cheek, to her mouth… Gracious, the man was drinking her in, learning her, smelling her.
And she wanted to do the same to him.
By the time his lips made it to hers, she thought she’d be ready for it. She was wet between her legs like she’d never been in her life, and heavy, too heavy to move. Only somehow, her hips were doing a dance all on their own, tilting toward him.
He stopped right before her mouth. “You want this, Abby?” His whispered words felt wrenched from his massive frame, each one a small, hot brand against her face.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered in his ear.
He stilled. “Of me?”
“Goodness, no.” She almost laughed. “I’m afraid of what God’ll think.”
“Of this?” He pulled back and frowned. “A kiss?”
It might sound absurd when he said it like that, but they couldn’t all be wrong, could they? Mama and Isaiah, Hamish and the other folks?
And was this really just a kiss? That hardly seemed possible.
She couldn’t think straight with the smell of him so close. Like nothing she’d experienced, it was heady and intriguing, and all she could think was This is what a real man smells like.
“What happens, over there, if you do something sinful?”
“You’re punished.”
“By who? God or the man who leads the Church?”
Weren’t they one and the same? “Guess I’m not sure anymore.”
“We shouldn’t do this, then,” he said, running the back of his hand over her cheek and behind her ear, where his fingers sifted through her hair. She couldn’t help but lean into his touch. “I don’t want to hurt you, Abby.” He sounded tortured. Was this the punishment—this strange, frenzied fluttering, this agony of need? “I’ve never…I’ve never been with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Innocente.” The word, his accent, the strain of his voice—all of it built and built until she could barely breathe. Her lungs were so full, she’d die if something didn’t ease the pressure.
Tell me it’s wrong, she prayed. Show me a sign.
“Just ’cause I haven’t done things doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of them,” she admitted.
With a growl, he dipped his head and kissed her, and Abby didn’t stand a chance against that kiss. No, it was so much more than a kiss, drawing at parts of her body that shouldn’t be connected to her lips. And not just her lips, but her tongue and teeth, her nose, her face, all of it prey to that mouth and those callused hands. It came together in a mixed-up cloud of confusing sensation she’d never even fathomed. She’d never been so aware of herself before, of her own skin and the sensations, explicit, right, and lush.
I’m going to die, Abby thought. This is going to kill me.
She’d had no idea before. None. She’d seen people kiss when she’d worked in the market—had watched surreptitiously, entranced, as a couple in the alley went way beyond just mouths into certain sin—and she’d wondered what pushed them to act like that. Lord, now she knew.
He muttered something against her cheek before biting her jaw gently—not enough to mark, although suddenly, she wanted him to with something close to compulsion.
Never had she pictured this…this overwhelming wave of need. Goodness, the things she needed right now.
To be touched. Her skin ached with it. This body that had never had eyes upon it. She wanted him to eat her up with his gaze.
He stepped away instead, backing into the bar, looking agonized.
“I can’t,” he gasped.
“Why not?”
“I’ll hurt you. I’m no good at…” His eyes closed as he searched for the word, the color high on his cheeks, making those freckles disappear. Her hand suddenly tentative, she reached out and brushed back the lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead.
“Restraint?” she whispered.
He met her gaze. “Exactly. I want to—” Biting his lip, he turned away, but she cupped his jaw and turned him back to look at her.
“What?” she asked, desire like lightning in her veins.
“Abby…” His voice was a dire warning.
“Please tell me.”
“I want to do things to you, Abby.”
“Like what?” she asked urgently. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too vulgar.”
Those words lit her fuse. Because hadn’t her whole life been about keeping herself at bay? Protecting herself from the vulgarity of her own body and the pull of natural instinct? And where had that left her? Not innocent, but ignorant. Stupid rather than pure. It had robbed her of the very essence of her humanity—her freedom to choose.
“Tell me,” she demanded in a voice forged of steel.
After a pause, where he looked lost and young and a bit guilty, his eyes shifted back to hers, and he said the words. Every one of them pierced her like a dart. But instead of poison
, they injected her with lust, filling her until she couldn’t help but squirm.
“I want to lift up your dress and look at you, smell you. I want to run my tongue over every centimeter of your body before…” He paused and cleared his throat. He couldn’t stop now. Not with the way her breath had gone wild with the shock of those images, her body overripe and ready to explode. “I’m not a poet.” How could he be so sure when everything he said lit her on fire?
“I don’t care. Tell me more.”
She leaned back, and his eyes tracked her, his breath ragged and desperate.
Slowly, as if waiting for her to stop him, he lifted his hand to stroke her lip, an echo of that moment in the vineyard, so gently she couldn’t be sure he’d even touched her.
“I can’t stop thinking of your lips, Abby, and your—” He opened his mouth as if to say something and seemed to reconsider. The slide of his eyes down her body was palpable, solid and so real she knew he was imagining his hands on her. “Down there,” he whispered. And at that, his gaze raced up to clash with hers. She ate up his words, the images, their unholy union. Wallowing in the sins he blanketed her with. The wrongs he fed her. The many, many transgressions they shared. “I want to slide into you. To fill you and fuck you. I want to make you feel good.”
He stroked her cheek now, and letting her body lead, she turned her head and took his finger in her mouth. With a groan, he leaned in to kiss her again, only it was different this time. Deeper and more explicit, but playful, too. His tongue teased hers, his caresses asking for as much as he gave.
This was what she wanted. A man who sought her pleasure along with his own. No more fumbling in the dark, but rather a give-and-take between their bodies. He tasted good, smelled right, and felt like desire. Abby couldn’t stop replaying the image his words had conjured—of her lifting her dress, baring herself to him, inviting him in. Her breath came out in shuddery gasps.
From somewhere close by, the dog barked, startling her and sending her out of his arms, where she teetered, blinking blindly in the light of the setting sun, one hand pressed to her mouth. Finally, once she’d caught her breath and stopped her head spinning, she turned to Luc. With his cheeks bright red and his eyes hungry and vague, he looked as flustered as she felt.
In His Hands Page 9