The Chocolate Heart

by Laura Florand

  All the tastes she had dreamed of as a child, watching others savor their treasures—it was better than anything she had ever imagined.

  His eyes were very dark, and there was a flush under that matte skin by the time she finished every bite. He made a muted sound when she licked the last of the chocolate off the tip of her finger, as if he had been punched.

  Reaching across the table, he stroked his thumb deeply across her mouth, then slipped that thumb to his own lips and sucked it clean. “Summer. You don’t want coffee, do you?”

  She shook her head mutely.

  He took her hand and pulled her up. “Then come here.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Summer’s breath grew shorter and shorter as he led her up to her room, a scary sensation that she was falling a very long way and had no idea how to stop it. He took her card key, and she turned, caught between him and the door as he slid it into the lock. He was studying her, an unfamiliar curve to his mouth. Just at the corners, a softening or a tenderness. It faded to absolute seriousness.

  This time she remembered about the bises, when he bent his head. She angled her cheek for the first kiss.

  His fingers closed around her chin again. A soft stroke of his thumb along her jaw as he turned her head back and pressed that kiss straight on her mouth.

  She gasped, and he took advantage of the parting of her lips instantly, rubbing them softer and more open with his, tasting her with his tongue as if they had kissed a hundred times, as if he owned her mouth.

  Summer made a little, desperate sound and clutched at the door. It swung away from her, and her hands slid off its smooth surface without purchase, like the frantic heroine sliding off the edge of the cliff, plunging to her death, no superhero to swoop in and catch her mid-fall. But instead of saying one word, just one single no, she let her head fall back.

  Let him have her mouth. As if he owned it.

  Heat and desire thundered through her so suddenly she felt dizzy.

  He took his time. As if he could savor that kiss forever. Touching her with only two points of his body, that hand on her chin. And his mouth.

  His mouth.

  How could any man do that with his mouth? As if there was no flavor of her that he meant to leave unsavored. Focused on every texture, every taste.

  She kissed him back hard suddenly, half-biting at his mouth.

  “Shh.” He closed his mouth against the bite and shook his head so that his lips brushed softly back and forth against hers. “Shh, Summer, it’s all right.”

  No, it wasn’t. How could he, how dared he, say that? It wasn’t all right, it could never be all right. She felt close to weeping with how wrong it was, and yet she couldn’t make herself tell him no.

  She took a frantic breath, and again he took the access offered, and more. His fingers caressed very, very gently, as if he was tracing something fragile, along her cheekbone, circled with the most delicate touch imaginable over her temple, and then threaded into her hair.

  How could he kiss her as if he would own her forever and touch her as if nothing more fragile or more ephemeral existed?

  Don’t do this, don’t do this to me, she wanted to beg him. Not this incredible beautiful thing. You’re going to hurt me. But she couldn’t bring herself to say a word.

  “Shh,” he said, as if he was trying to soothe someone coming out of a nightmare, make her see there was nothing to be afraid of. Such a lie. “Shh, shh. Summer. Ne t’inquiète pas.”

  His fingers circled warm and sure over the nape of her neck. And still he kissed her, gently and mercilessly, as if no end could ever be found to his patience and persistence and care. Don’t worry? How could he say that to her?

  The barest brush of fingertips up and down her nape. He was winning over her mouth. Her trembling tension could not hold. He was stealing all the fight in her, all the bite, all the urgency, slowly reducing her to his rhythm, a leisurely subject of his tasting. “There. There, there. You like that, don’t you?”

  She did. Every brush of his fingers left a fine trembling all through her, waves on waves of it, taking over her whole body. Her whole being. And all it took, from him, was that barest flick.

  He drew a long breath that seemed to pull the air through her mouth right out of her soul and lifted his head just enough to look down at her. The thumb of his other hand came to replace his mouth, rubbing back and forth across her lips, endlessly, sometimes barely grazing, sometimes dragging, as if he could never get enough of that texture. He eased her farther into her room.

  Her hands climbed over his arms, pulling herself up into him. She couldn’t hold herself back. Just the same as at the pool, only worse, much worse.

  He was dragging her down into a vortex, bright light into a swirl of darkness. “Soleil,” he whispered. “Mon soleil. ”

  No, I don’t belong to you. I don’t. I’m not yours. But he was kissing her as if she should belong to him. Everything could be right in her life if she did.

  The silk of his hair against her fingers made her shiver. The muscles of his shoulders made her hungry for more hardness. As Luc kissed her, easing her through the room, the Eiffel Tower started to sparkle again, a dancing glitter all over the shadowy room. No, go away, Summer thought to the Tower. I don’t want you here. But if la Dame de Fer was anything, it was odiously persistent.

  The slowest of slow dances, through those sparkles. He lifted her suddenly, bringing her thighs around his hips, so that he could rub his mouth down her jaw to her throat. Her head fell so far back the arch of her own body in yielding was half pain.

  He slid her down his thigh, finding her zip. The silk of her dress bunched up her body with her downward glide, then, when he pulled his own body back, slid off her to the floor, leaving her in bra and panties and sandals, one toe covered in a pile of blue silk.

  She felt a carved surface against her spine, wood against one shoulder, cold glass against another, and opened her eyes. Sparkles danced over his face as if he had been transformed into some creature from another world. The tower must form the backdrop to her body.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “No, not here.”

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, trailing his hands from her bare shoulders down over her lace-veiled breasts, like a blind person learning her by feel. But he saw everything, the way her breath hitched and her bottom rubbed involuntarily against the frame. “You’re perfect here. Just perfect.”

  “But—” The sense of that so-hated symbol at her naked back was . . .

  “I love the way you look against that glow,” he whispered. “Everything sparkling around you. God, Summer.” His hands cupped her breasts. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “I know,” she said uneasily. “But—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “You have no idea what I’m talking about. You always think you do, but you don’t. Belle comme le jour.”

  “Look, you’re not the first man to tell me I’m beautiful.” She forced impatience, trying to find an edge to cling to in this sweet swirl of darkness. Why did she want to drown herself in it? Why did she feel she would come out of it shinier, truer, more whole?

  “Oh, Summer.” Luc stopped her by running one hand from her breast, straight and sure and hard down her body, to cup her sex as if he knew exactly where she wanted his hand to be. She gasped and arched into him—oh, yes, he knew exactly—and forgot thought. “That was so exactly the wrong thing to say. What am I going to do with you?”

  His thumb moved as if he knew precisely what he wanted to do with her. She gasped again as she slid off the frame so that she was entirely against the glass.

  The cold of it shocked her shoulder blades. He pressed until her bottom settled against the glass as well, her sex sandwiched between cold and heat.

  “God, I need you.” His thumb moved again, and she twisted frantically between the glass, with the cursed iron form that looked down on her, and the clever heat of his hand. “You have no idea how much. I can make you need me as much.”


  He needed her?

  “I can make you feel how perfect you are. Soleil, don’t you feel perfect now?” His eyes, glowing the copper color of the tower, ran over her body like a hot touch. She felt naked in her midnight-blue lace bra, the tiny matching thong under which his hand so easily slipped, and sandals.

  “Don’t you?” His thumb insisted, as her body went helpless to it and her mind struggled. Not here, not so completely, not so easily, not . . .

  Black eyes gleamed hot copper as she came. He held her only with the hand against her sex as she shattered uncontrollably, her bare arms pressed helpless for purchase against the glass. “God, so beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely.

  She fell forward against him as the convulsions peaked and slowly released her. “I’m not—I’m not—oh, God.” She shuddered against his chest as he forced the peaks to keep coming, forced the words to break into nothing.

  He pulled her against him as snugly as if he was soothing her after a nightmare, but this was something more dangerous than a nightmare, a whirl of chaos that might re-form her. Tension rippled through his muscles.

  “Oh, yes, you are.” He turned her against his body, pulling her back against his chest. His arms shook with hardness restrained. “Look. Summer, look at you.”

  He walked them backward just enough that she could see herself in the glass, reflected like a whisper against the Tour Eiffel. Behind her loomed his harder, bigger form, more difficult to see, the black of his hair blending with the glass, the shape of him coming out of darkness to grab her from behind. He was completely clothed.

  “Watch,” he breathed. “See what I see.”

  Her eyes met her own in the glass, begging her not to lose herself, this self held slender and fragile and naked for her own display in his arms. And then his two fingers slipped deeply inside her, possessing her as his thumb moved again over flesh already so sensitive that she shattered for him again unbearably. Her eyes closed, the Eiffel playing over her face until she couldn’t tell anymore where the sparkles inside her ended and the tower began.

  As she sank out of it at last, her weight heavy against the brace of his body, her breasts crushed against his arm, half sobbing in pleasure and despair, the Eiffel Tower, too, stopped glittering.

  Oh, God. The sparkle only lasted ten minutes. He had made her come twice in less than ten minutes.

  “Do you feel perfect yet?” he asked the nape of her neck, her body bowed over his arm.

  All of her was flowing out, like a receding sea, as the waves eased, fell back. Flowing into him. Leaving her quiet, and weak, and oddly at peace.

  “Not yet, soleil?” He lifted her in his arms, like a rescued princess. Which was entirely false. She had rescued herself, years ago. He was carrying her off from herself.

  The room felt gentler, somehow, without the sparkles. As if Summer had just been offered as a sacrifice to the Tower, there against the window, and so the Iron Lady was appeased.

  Luc lowered her onto the opulent bed, nestling her among pillows. “I half imagined you sleeping in a sheet hung hammock style between two chairs.”

  “Did you really?” she asked, because she couldn’t stop that hunger to know that she had been in his thoughts, however indifferent he had seemed. He was stroking back the hair that had gotten tangled over her face, shifting into gentle, long caresses of her body that settled her more deeply into silk and softness and pillows. It would be a lie to say she had never felt such a hard hunger in a man’s body before, but she had never felt such hard hunger combined with such gentleness and control; she had never had such tension held back while her own was released by him, over and over. “Imagine me?”

  “Not usually here.” Something grim invaded his tone. “Usually in sand and sun and sea and very, very far away.” He lowered his head and kissed her again, and anyone would have thought it was a first kiss, that he was starting the seduction from scratch, his mouth was so thorough, claiming hers, so tender.

  It made no sense, that tenderness matched with the hunger that shivered over his skin, drawing his muscles taut. But she responded to it with craving, dying for tenderness for so long she could gorge herself sick on it.

  Her arms stroked up and down his silk-smooth back under his shirt. She fought his clothes off, running her hands over the lean hard strength of his chest.

  He stilled for her touch, muscles rigid. It delighted her to please him, to have him focus so intensely on her slightest movement.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered again. “Summer, how can you not know?”

  “I do know,” she said, a little aggravated. It was bigheaded of her, perhaps, but she could hardly be ignorant of the effect her looks had on men. Men had been falling for her all her life. It was her own fault, really, that she only fell in return for the ones for whom beauty was never enough.

  She pushed that thought away. Right now his body was too wonderful under her hands. She had forgotten to fight the hook. Now she only wanted to plunge in deeper.

  Have him plunge in deeper.

  Why wouldn’t he plunge in deeper?

  She pulled herself up to press kisses over one strong shoulder, all the kisses in her, a soft, hot rain, over muscle and bone, the join of his neck, the hollow of his throat.

  “Soleil.” He wrapped one arm around her, holding her tight up against him, while the other arm held up their combined weight. “That’s what’s so strange. You don’t even understand what I’m talking about.” He sank down onto her, slowly, the control of that one arm never faltering, until they were lost in pillows and silk, his body the only hard thing to hold on to.

  She kept kissing him, everywhere, stroking him while he stroked her. A great feast of each other. She wanted to layer him in sunshine thick as honey, to coat herself all over him. Wild urges shimmered through her, to tell him she loved him, to beg him again to run away with her, and she buried them all in kisses. Kisses carried no failure. Did they?

  He, too, seemed to want to dip her entirely in him. As each tried to kiss right down to the other’s toes, they ended up lower and lower on the bed, until they were about to fall off the bottom. Luc laughed and hauled her back up the bed again, dragging her body the length of the silk, and they started over.

  I love you. It almost slipped out again, as she laughed with him, breathless at how wonderful his body felt. It seemed to fit just right, to say it.

  She kissed it to the muscles of his biceps instead.

  “Summer—” He slipped his thigh between hers to press hard against her sex as he explored her breasts. “God, it’s not fair.”

  What wasn’t fair? That he could shatter her over and over and still not break? No, damn it, it wasn’t. She had wanted some power here.

  But when she slid her hands down to his sex he caught her wrists and drew them to his mouth, kissing them over and over until he laid them gently on a pillow and held them there. “You do like this,” he whispered. “You need this.” The way his gaze ran down her body made her feel so small and exposed and his. And utterly and profoundly beautiful. Not intellectually aware she was beautiful, but from deep within her all the way to the last layer of her skin, actually beautiful.

  “I can make you—you can learn to need me,” he breathed, and suckled her breast deeply into his mouth at the same time as his hand slipped where his thigh had been.

  This time, when she shattered, he took everything out of her. He wouldn’t let her come down, his hand rocking her gently, keeping the convulsions coming until she was wiped out.

  She curled away from him at last, crossing her thigh over to dislodge his hand, since he still held her wrists. “Too much,” she murmured. “I can’t anymore.”

  And he laughed, caressing the most loving kisses all along the line of her throat. “You can if I want you to.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Control. Wildness beat in Luc, maddened. Control.

  Of all the raw elements he had ever touched—only the purest, only the finest—she
was the most beautiful. The most exquisite. And look how she responds to my hands. Arching, stretching, glowing, as he took that luminous beauty of hers and let it bloom into something no one could even imagine. No one could resist.

  She’s so . . . sweet. As long as I keep control, she’s all mine.

  Apparently she could. Do whatever he wanted her to. But after the fourth time, Summer pulled pillows over her sex and face, as limp and exhausted as a pretty piece of silk, littering the street at the end of a long, wild Carnival. All around her his strength and darkness, and he could do what he wanted with it. Nothing she could do could break him. But he made her beautiful. Ragged beyond coherence.

  And helpless. Completely without power.

  “Mmm,” she mumbled when he nudged her yet again. Her sense of beauty was receding, growing impotent and hopeless, battered against iron control. And she didn’t know what else she had. Certainly not the strength to pull a comforter over her and hide. He had taken even that. “I’m going to sleep.”

  He pulled the pillow off her face and gave her an indignant look. “I beg your pardon?”

  It took her a second. Then she laughed, relief and pleasure penetrating her exhaustion. “Oops. I forgot.” She sleepily stroked that beautiful tight ass of his, calling up her warm, inviting smile. “Go ahead.” She might not have another orgasm in her, but she would be more than happy to take him inside her while he let himself go. It might even make right that something that had been shifting wrong ever since her first orgasm, when she had reached for him, and instead of coming to her, he had set about giving her another one.

  But he stiffened, staring at her smile.

  “Oh, no,” he said low, hard. “Oh, no, by God, I won’t.”

  What? Something painful shafted through her, worry solidifying, throwing everything out of kilter. She was just his thing to manipulate. He would not lose his control to her.