Turning Up the Heat (A Novella in the Vie en Roses Series)

by Laura Florand

  The three words that always made her whimper in hunger and try to bury herself deeper in him.

  At last, she pulled back, feeling as if the sunburn had spread to her entire body, hot and prickly and in need of healing.

  Daniel was breathing long and deep, his eyes eating up her face, something brilliant in the gray. “All right, then,” he said very softly, lifting a hand to curve around her cheek. “That’s good to know.”

  And he plunged straight into the shoulder-high water, sinking into it, the slightly overlong cut that had become part of his image floating like fine seaweed against his skull, his eyes turned up to hers even through the seawater. She had to reach down a hand to him, because he looked so much as if he was drowning.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kayaking with Daniel was fun, more fun than Léa could possibly have imagined, since she could never have imagined this. Each in a kayak, they could race, splashing and bumping each other, at first by accident, as Léa got the hang of it, and then on purpose. They could wait for each other and point at something, or one or the other of them could drive ahead. The pain of it was constant—the pressure of the low plastic seat on her sunburned back and on the backs of her legs, sweat adding its sting. But Léa never mentioned it.

  They finally stopped at a little beach by a rocky outcrop that had drawn them because every third or fourth wave water blew out of a hole in it, so that from a distance they had been half-convinced it was a whale.

  “If we hike back along this stream, we should find a waterfall,” Daniel said. “According to the man renting the kayaks.”

  “Let’s eat first.” Léa pulled out the bag from the hotel.

  Lots of tropical fruit, freshly picked and freshly cut for them, and cold pork that had been pulled to shreds. Daniel lounged on his side to eat. She sat up, to avoid too much contact between her sunburn and the grating sand, and smiled, watching Daniel taste the food, the way he sank into the flavors and thought about them, about what they did for him and what he would do differently to them.

  He looked up to find her watching him and smiled back, offering her a sliver of mango from his fingers straight to her lips. It sank slow and sweet into her body, and he sucked the juice of it off his thumb as he watched her swallow.

  Heat spread through her, uneasily.

  “You’re so pretty,” he murmured, and the heat grew stronger, tickling her away from something important. It was so impossible to resist it, and yet if she lost herself to it...what chance might she lose? What was she afraid to lose, when they had made love so many times before?

  He drew a finger gently down the back of her hand and then looked back to sea, his expression for a moment softened, as they ate.

  As she ate. After the first few mouthfuls, Daniel mostly contented himself with feeding her. She took some mango and fed him back, and he liked that very much, his smile curving against her thumb and his lips catching her fingers to suck the juice off.

  But he stopped bringing anything to his own mouth.

  “You don’t like it?” she asked at last. Daniel was, God knew, fussy about his food. She had grown up in her father’s kitchens and knew how to cook quite well, even if she would never be a superstar, but so many times he had just picked at what she made him, leaving almost everything on his plate. It hurt her feelings, especially when she would take him out after one of his Top Chef victories to an up-and-coming bistrot and he would eat like a starving man. He infinitely preferred the latest bistrot over other starred restaurants, where he was always on the alert, like a general in a war zone, analyzing everything. And, fine, maybe the latest bistrot’s food was better than hers, but...her food cared. She had kept cooking for years, in the face of his rejection, because she could still remember her mother’s homey meals and how much her father had liked them, and because she had to feed her two younger siblings and she didn’t want to always take them to the restaurant. But now that those siblings had moved out, she rarely bothered.

  He gave her an incredulous look. “The fruit? If only I could get fruit this fresh in the Relais. It makes you realize you spend your whole life trying to bring people something that catches just the faintest hint of this—lying on a beach with a beautiful woman feeding you mango. I guess chefs have to offer all that elegant food to try to make up for the fact that we’re damn well not going to give away the beautiful woman.”

  She flushed a little, looking down and then looking up again. She wasn’t beautiful. She was perfectly fine, she didn’t have any qualms about herself. But she was angular and freckle-dusted brown, and her straight, straw-colored hair tended to get all dry at the ends before she remembered to take care of it. Compared to those elegant television women, she was a gawky, overeager student, a good eight years too old to be one. But Daniel was clearly looking at her, when he said the word.

  He sat up, and she felt him watching her under those black lashes of his in that way that had always turned her heart over. At seventeen, she had drawn and painted just his face in secret, over and over, trying to catch that look under those eyelashes and what it did to her heart.

  “Léa. Did you—get bad news, from the doctor?”

  It took her a second to realize he was back on that routine check-up months ago. His time just flew, didn’t it? Months gone by in a minute.

  “That...you couldn’t have a baby? Something like that?”

  She stared at him. “No!”

  “Oh.” One of his arms was looped lazily around his bent knee, in a pose she couldn’t remember seeing since their escapes into the hills as teenagers. When he would lean over her in the grass and kiss her and kiss her, and they would go too far, but try not to go too far, and he would finally roll away, breathing hard, and stare out at the sea far away.

  Now he gazed at the thumb and finger of that casually draped hand. They rubbed together, over and over. “Or...or something really bad...something like”—His face and voice tightened. “Ca-ca...something bad. That you haven’t told me.”

  “No!” Léa said again, and he drew a hard gasp of relief. “Daniel. I just—I really just wanted to do something crazy. Escape to a tropical island. Haven’t you ever dreamed of doing something like that?”

  That hard working of his jaw. His thumb and forefinger pinched together until she saw the knuckles whiten. “I didn’t dream of doing it alone,” he said in that same low, ground voice in which he had said something similar, earlier on her deck.

  She looked away, not knowing what to say. And realized on a breath of surprise that she didn’t feel tired. Just profoundly wary of something she didn’t even know how to name. “Would you have minded? If I had been pregnant? Or not able to get pregnant?”

  His head whipped toward her, gray eyes wide and brilliant with shock. He sat up all the way. “Do you want us to have kids, Léa?”

  Married more than ten years. And they had never once even discussed it before. “Do you?” she said. No. No kids. Please no. The thought of them made her feel like a plastic bag dropped in the middle of the autoroute.

  Something strange and intense happened to his face. “I would have to cut back,” he said flatly, as if she had been arguing with him. He twisted suddenly so that she could only catch part of his profile, his arms gripping his knees. “I won’t miss most of my child’s life, too,” he said, low and viciously. “I won’t.”

  The tone cut through her even more than the words. As if he was fighting her. She scooted on her knees to get a better view of his face. “What?”

  “The damn Top Chef thing, for example. Putain, Léa, I’m famous enough. We don’t need the money. Can’t we let that go?”

  If he had held her out over a cliff, opened his hands, and waved bye-bye, she would have been less shocked. She gaped at him, feeling air sail past her on the fall. “What?”

  “Something has to go if we have kids, Léa,” he said flatly. “I mean it.”

  She was speechless. Sliding closer to him, she slipped her hand under the
hard lock his arms had around himself and rested her hand on his knee. “You don’t like doing Top Chef?” she asked at last, blankly.

  “Putain, Léa. Maybe the first few times, when it was my chance to prove myself to the world, to beat all the people who didn’t believe I could.”

  She was utterly flabbergasted. She had always thought it was part of his relentless drive, the way he never said no when Top Chef called to ask him for another match. He had to beat every challenge thrown out to him, he had to show he was the best. “I thought you loved that.”

  He turned his head at last and looked at her, his eyes oddly hard, as if he was facing an enemy. “Did you?”

  She stared at him. “But—you always have so much grace in there. That little smile on your face. The commentators always talk about it, how much you thrive on it.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment, so long she thought he might actually ask her why she was getting her information about him from television announcers. Given that they had been married for over ten years. But his mouth curved, not too differently from the way it curved when he was on Top Chef, when his hands were flying, his brain fermenting with brilliance as he strove to beat the opposing chef at whatever insane challenge the show threw at them, all while his mouth stayed almost tender in its calm. He makes love to the food, the announcers would say, watch him. “Do you remember the first time you got me a spot on that show? How happy you were?”

  Well—yes. It had been such a coup. She had hugged him and hugged him, so happy with herself to have given him this window to shine. To show the whole world how wonderful he was.

  “And do you remember the first time I won?” He stroked his own cheek, as if he was feeling something there. “You couldn’t stop touching me.”

  She smiled. “Yes.” How they had celebrated. He had been so awesome. Absolument merveilleux. For weeks afterward, some vision of him at a particular moment in the intense battle would flash before her eyes, and if he was anywhere within reach, she would fling her arms around him and kiss him again, just for being so wonderful. Oh, had he ever shown the world.

  He looked away again. “I thrived on that.”

  The meaning was so strange, it had to percolate through her slowly. Like another language, with no Rosetta Stone that could help her pick it apart and make sense of it. “Wait...you didn’t do it for yourself?”

  A sharp gray glance. “You must not understand me. Of course I did it for myself.” He touched his cheek again.

  “Ah.” She relaxed. That was, in fact, what she had always known. He had that drive. He wanted to be the best. She had poured everything of herself into supporting his need to be incredible.

  Everything.

  Something prickled through her at the thought, an almost-awareness, an answer. Was that what—

  “To make you that happy with me? What man wouldn’t do everything, for that?”

  She was so dumbfounded, she thought she might cry. The perspective was so radically different from anything she had ever believed. He did it…he did all that because she kissed him?

  “Léa.” That inexplicable hostility had faded. Daniel touched her cheek. “Don’t.”

  And she realized she was crying. Again. “O purée,” she muttered indignantly, making him smile a little. Probably the only reason her language stayed so clean after a lifetime in the restaurant business was the way he smiled at her polite little swear words. “Not again.”

  “Again?” He rubbed one tear away with a callused thumb that made her hungry for more caresses. Her face curved into his palm before any doubt could override the instinct.

  She shrugged, deeply reluctant to admit to him how weak she felt right now.

  “Léa.” Daniel rolled back, using her wrists to tug her astride him. He had almost no control of her body with her wrists alone, so she had to cooperate, but she had never resisted Daniel. Their teenage fear of crossing lines, of going too far, and Daniel’s romantic urge to treat her like something precious had been all that slowed them down.

  She smiled at him a little tremulously as she settled astride him. But the warmth of his body between her thighs felt utterly perfect, pushing back that wariness she couldn’t explain. Still without a shirt, he lay on the sand beneath her, all flat stomach and defined ribs and lean muscled strength. He made her want to cry again, he was so utterly beautiful.

  Still loosely clasping her wrists, his thumbs stretched high to stroke down the sensitive insides of her forearms. Over and over. A caress that took over her will, melting her to him. “Léa.” His voice deepened. His eyes had gone brilliant again, but nothing hard or angry in them now. He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed the palms. “I love you.”

  She nodded rapidly, me, too, feeling shaky and shivery with hunger and vulnerability and that caution that had driven her to the other side of the world without him.

  He kissed up to the insides of her wrists. “Still love me, Léa?” he whispered.

  Her eyes widened. “Of course!” How could anyone not?

  He stroked her fingertips over his cheeks, petting himself with her, his eyes half closing. “So that’s all right,” he murmured, caressing his cheek into his own strokes.

  “I told you it’s nothing to do with you!”

  His mouth hardened, under her palm. “Don’t feel you have to repeat yourself. You’ve given me plenty of opportunities to grasp the point, if I choose to.” He tugged her hands a little to pull her down closer to him, pressing them to the sand on either side of his head. Her pelvis rocked forward on his. Her face came close enough to his that it would be less effort to kiss him than to hold herself up. Even less effort to curl up against his chest and just stay there. He loosed her hair from its ponytail, combing it forward to brush his face. “There,” he whispered with satisfaction.

  She drew a long breath. The feel of his sex hardening against hers liquefied her. She could feel her eyes drifting closed, her body growing pliant and helpless. She had never been any good at this position. Arousal melted her muscles, left her too yielding and soft to take control. This position was always for playing, until his body was all one hard need to drive into her, to take her over. Until her body was all one supple need to be taken.

  His hands pulled her long tunic up until he could slip under it, his fingers tracing ever so delicately the line of her bikini bottom. And then teasing over her bikini-clad butt. “I suppose this is the only space of skin where you aren’t sunburned?” he whispered.

  Her hips twisted against his. She nodded, already growing heavy, wanting.

  His fingers followed over the little line of the string bikini. “There’s not even enough space to fit my hands to grasp your hips,” he murmured, twisting up suddenly with his own hips, trying to obtain pressure without gripping her.

  She responded, pressing down because she knew it was what he wanted her to do, but she was shivering and losing strength. She wanted him to grab her now, drag her sex against his, take over her body. But he was bound more strongly than if he had been tied to a bedpost. He couldn’t take her without hurting her.

  He thrust up again with his hips, and his fingers trailed around to tuck into the front of her bikini.

  She shivered again, her sex melting. His eyes glittered like stars as he watched her face, sinking his fingers lower inside her bikini.

  She made a little moaning sound, her head hanging heavily. He lifted his own head off the sand enough to catch her mouth, kissing her like sex, lushly, invasive.His fingertips slipped far enough down to brush her clitoris.

  She gave a little gasp and collapsed on top of him, clinging, her cheek rubbing against him like an animal. His hand got crushed between them, no wiggle room. She moaned a little, rocking her hips against his crushed fingers.

  “Chérie, you have to sit up just a little,” he whispered. “I can’t turn you over, on the sand or on me. Not with your back like that. Allez, bébé.” He pushed her up a little by one shoulder. She tried, but when his freed fingers
flicked again, deftly, all her weight sank back down, hanging against the brace of his hand.

  “I want to hold you,” he breathed. “I want to suck your pretty tétons until you babble my name. But I’ll forget—I’ll grab you too hard, and I’ll hurt you. And you’ll let me.” His hand dove lushly into her parted sex. She whimpered, twisting frantically, unable to stand this position held off him. She never had been able to hold herself separate from him when she came. And yet the pleasure built in her, to be held apart and yet so helpless to him. To be so vulnerable to his deft control.

  “Sit up.” He pushed at her shoulder. “Bébé, let me do this.”

  “No.” She shook her head, because she couldn’t. Emotionally too shy to hold herself so exposed to him while she came, and it was a pure physical impossibility. Her muscles just didn’t work that way, when his hand was in her sex.

  “Yes,” he said fiercely, his fingers thrusting into her while she shook and arched, his other hand flat on her breastbone now, forcing her off him enough to give him room.

  “No, no, no, Daniel,” she said, “no”—And then she was coming, convulsive little frantic waves, clutching at his hand in her, and he kept moving it, pleasure swamping her, the waves building and building and crashing again until she fell on him, kissing him wildly, and then convulsed again in one sharp, high cry and rolled away into the sand.

  The sand scraped against her sunburn. After a moment, he reached and gently rolled her over onto her tummy. She buried her face in her arms.

  “I like it,” he whispered, fingers tracing over her skull. He blew over her shoulder, and sand skittered off her. “I like seeing you come. Don’t be embarrassed.”

  She kept her face buried in her arms, not answering. She was very conscious of how aroused he must be, and her own body still shivered with hunger for him to drive into her. The sunburn wouldn’t hurt that much, she wouldn’t care…and from this position, he wouldn’t have to touch too much sunburn. She arched her butt up just a little, shifting it back and forth in a hint.