The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) Page 15

  It shafted through her like a knife. The funicular cable might as well have broken and sent them plunging down into a hell below. Something else. Someone else.

  Already, already, already.

  “A cuddle.” He tucked her hair behind her other ear. “Sleep. Something gentle.”

  She held very still against his chest as that pain faded away in surprise and Paris came back into focus, all sparkling in the darkness, and the car settled to a stop and she looked up at him. He was gazing down at her, his hand shifting to cup her face, his expression for a second very tender. As soon as their eyes met, the tenderness hid, and he winked at her: “Which doesn’t mean I can’t make you come fifteen times, though.” The playful leer was just slightly unsettling, because with Patrick – well, she could never quite be sure if that playful look might be just to trick her into not realizing he was capable of trying.

  They left the car and strolled through the cobblestoned streets behind Sacré-Coeur to the Place du Tertre, so packed with artists most daylight hours that at night it seemed to take one great, big gasp of relief: Ahh…air. From this level, the white domes of the Sacré-Coeur, half hidden by buildings, grew more approachable, more alluring, genuinely beautiful. Restaurants released gentle waves of people into the square, their laughter and their footsteps a lullaby fading toward midnight. Medieval churches competed for attention with old restaurants that had hosted Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani. Amid the shadows and light and the gentle, rocking sound of the laughing people heading off to sleep or heading out to dance the night away, Sarah felt as if she was at the center from which everything most beautiful in the world had come.

  Picasso and Matisse were real people who had walked these streets. Which meant that she, too, could be an artist, be amazing, change the way people tasted the world. In her little shop. In her small way.

  Maybe her mother and stepfather were right, that engineering would be a better way, a bigger way. A way that made her solid and real, that her mother could hang her hat on and say, “See? See? I got her right. She makes up for everything.” But this way, this beautiful, luxurious food that would fulfill the hungriest person’s dream, was the way that compelled her. And if impractical art was all right for Picasso and Matisse, and if they were real people who lived and breathed and hung out in bars getting drunk with their friends, then maybe it could be all right for her.

  They sat on the top stair of a great, long staircase street that led down into the rest of Paris, bordered by cobblestones and a wall on which graffiti fought the dominance of old, dead artists, young hands insisting on their right to make their mark. Streetlamps marched simple and golden down into the dark to the humble, welcoming glow of a restaurant at the bottom of the stairs far below. Paris sparkled out before them, but they were sheltered from it, too, by trees and the walls of the stair and the buildings tucking them into a gentle midnight world.

  Patrick shifted off the top stair to kneel in front of her on a lower step, using his hips to nudge her legs apart around him. Her legs, covered in thin sparkles and net, flinched toward his coat when it brushed against them, instinctively seeking more warmth. “You’re cold.” He rubbed his hands strong and warm up her legs. “I don’t think this dress was meant to be out after midnight. Not in January. We should go back soon.”

  “I know.” Leave the magic before she slipped into believing in it, as if it was true.

  It felt true. But it felt true like a fairytale, reaching at some profound verity but impossible to believe it was real. Pumpkins did not turn into coaches, nor rags to a ball gown, and a woman needed to keep that straight in her head.

  It was almost midnight, and she was perched on a flight of stairs, she thought wryly. Maybe she should run away before the clock struck.

  But Patrick’s hands ran firmly down to the top of her carefully polished boots – not likely to fall off on a stair behind her as she ran – and then up again to the edge of her skirt. Up and down, a steady, warming rhythm. He opened his coat and pulled the panels of it around her legs.

  His knees had to be killing him on that stone, she realized suddenly. But he didn’t show it.

  “Happy?” he asked, his voice deep and quiet.

  Too happy. “I’m a little afraid,” she whispered, and then wished she hadn’t admitted that. Not to Patrick, who must ride waves of happiness in easy acceptance of their passing, because wasn’t that what surfers did?

  Patrick didn’t ask her why she was afraid. Like maybe he already knew? Midnight’s really close, and the slipper doesn’t fit, and this could all just really change my life. Brutally. He ran his thumbs over her delicate earrings, toying with the tiny dangles. “I have a present for you, but now I think you might not like it.”

  Uh-oh. She fixed her eyes on him and waited. You just never knew with Patrick. Sometimes watching him and waiting were the only way to deal with him.

  His mouth curved in a soft way, as if his facial muscles couldn’t keep working enough to keep it straight. “I love the way you look at me sometimes. It makes everything about me feel…safe.”

  Patrick’s in a fairytale, too. He never spoke that seriously; he never revealed himself that way. This whole night was getting to him, too.

  “Feel right,” he corrected himself, with a quick, wry grin to undo what he had just said. “Of course I feel safe with you. You’re half my size.”

  There were all kinds of safe, though. Not all of them had anything to do with physical size.

  He thrust a hand into the pocket of his coat and hesitated. “Don’t…worry about this,” he said, as he pulled out a velvet box.

  It was too broad for a ring, and she realized that right away, really, she did, but for just a split second the thought of a ring shocked through her, and she almost did take off running down those stairs. I can’t believe in that much. This is straining my credulity already.

  “It’s just something I wanted to do.” He pushed the box into her fingers.

  She sat with it a long moment before she opened it. The warm light from the streetlamp caught and winked off the contents, like midnight Paris caught in a box. Earrings. Little diamonds that dangled delicate sapphires on a fine platinum chain, so that they glittered like stars.

  They had probably cost at least three months of her tiny intern’s stipend.

  She stared at them, and the cold of her legs came inside and clutched at her middle, and she wished he hadn’t made that joke about her cuddling up in his lap at the Moulin Rouge, like some Gilded Age rich man’s mistress.

  He wasn’t rich, not like that, although given how essential he was to Luc and to the running of the kitchen, he was probably doing quite well for himself. And she didn’t have to be poor.

  But her toes clenched until the muscles of her legs hurt, and she gripped the box too tightly, wishing she was an engineer again. She never would have met him as an engineer. But if she had met him, he wouldn’t have seen himself as her sugar daddy, either.

  I respect you. I like you.

  “Can I put them on?” Patrick asked, petting her earlobes.

  Her eyes flicked from the starry sapphires to his eyes. Patrick pretended to be eager, all the time, mostly to drive Luc nuts. But just this moment, he seemed actually eager.

  “Patrick, I’m not – this isn’t–”

  “Let’s just see what they look like,” he overrode her, in the calm, firm voice he used to guide her through a bad moment in the kitchens, after something she thought she had finally gotten perfect was sent back as not good enough. That voice that always relaxed her.

  His fingers were little shocks of chill against her ears, still deft despite their cold as he slipped her original earrings free – that prize she had bought herself, when she accepted her first job after college – and traded them for the new ones.

  And she let him. She let him shut her own accomplishments up in a box, she let him replace them with something only he could give her. That she could no longer afford for herself.

 
; His thumbs rubbed gently over the new earrings in her ears, the heels of his palms against her jaw, his long fingers cradling the base of her skull. She looked up from the box to him, and his eyes were brilliant. Even in the dark.

  “Yes,” he muttered, almost strangled, his fingertips flexing a little too hard against her skull. He pulled her torso forward into him, and suddenly there was warmth on her cold earlobe, the heat of his breath. His lips moved over the earring, the lobe of her ear, the slope of her neck, melting them, possessing them, until her head bowed heavily into his hand and shivers ran all up and down her body.

  “You’re so cold.” He pulled her hard into the warmth of his body, nearly off the step, so that not only was he kneeling on stone but he was supporting most of her weight, too. His mouth ran down her neck to the edge of her coat, hot and hungry. “We should go back to your apartment.”

  “No,” she murmured. “Yes.”

  I don’t want the fairytale to end.

  And: Hadn’t he said his apartment was somewhere past hers in the Ninth? It wasn’t, therefore, closer to here? Her inextinguishable brain twisted the little thought through her. She wasn’t welcome there?

  “Yes,” he repeated. “Yes, to both. You are, too, cold, Sarah. Allez.” He drew her up off the stairs. Maybe that was a tiny wince on his face as his knees straightened from the stone, but maybe it wasn’t.

  He really didn’t like to show when things got to him, did he?

  Often in the kitchens, she had just assumed that things didn’t get to him. He was just that much better at handling all of this than she was. But everyone’s knees ached after being pressed into stone.

  “Allez, Sarah.” He closed his hand firmly around hers and led her down the long, beautiful stairs, the lamps glinting off the stars on her legs with every step, and neither of her boots even tried to fall off. Which kind of surprised her.

  Chapter 17

  The warmth of her apartment enveloped them as soon as they stepped inside, making Sarah shiver even before Patrick turned her until she faced the closed door and cupped the back of her head, pressing gently but entirely in control, until her forehead rested against the panel.

  Her shivering grew deeper, goose bumps all over her body. She braced her forearms against the door, and Patrick ran his hands over her arms – thickly protected by the coat – and pulled them back down by her sides, so that her forehead was her only support, her body heavy and floating in that space between the door and him. “Yield to me,” he murmured to her, that low, assured command. Like when he was trying to get her hands to learn the proper shape of a new gesture. Yield to me. Sarah. Relax. An order, not a request.

  And she had done it so many times, in a rush of release of all her tension, just like the rush of release now.

  No, not like. This release was heavier, more vulnerable and more driving, her breasts tightening, her sex softening open and hungry.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he said very softly, a stroke of praise. “I like that, Sarah.” Her coat slid down her arms, off her body, the drag of it rubbing along all her nerve endings like a deep and powerful caress. His voice went very husky. “I like it when all those little muscles yield to me.”

  Her arms weren’t quite ready to be exposed bare, after the cold of the night. They felt shy and vulnerable, as if they wanted to hide against something warm. But his hand settled over the nape of her neck again, firm, holding her still. “For lack of a counter,” he muttered, rough and self-mocking.

  She started to turn her head, to at least see his expression, but his thumb rubbed over her nape, and she shivered in one great collapse of strength, her eyes closing. He laughed very softly, his thumb exploring until the shivers from her nape released in waves and waves down her spine, and her nipples hurt in an unbearable need to rub against something, and her sex was a hot, damp, clingy animal thing she didn’t even recognize. She didn’t even know her sex was capable of acting like that, and now it was taking over her body.

  “A-ny-thing I wanted,” Patrick murmured just behind her ear, the warmth of his breath caressing the curve of it while her fingers curled damply into her palms. Hanging by her sides, his voice in her ear all that held her upright. That same voice that made her want to melt into something boneless and his. “Right, Sarah?”

  She shut her eyes tightly and tried so hard not to whimper.

  “Just from this,” he murmured roughly, that soft roughness, like the callus of his thumb was rough and delicate both against that entirely vulnerable command center of every nerve in her body. “You would let me do anything, wouldn’t you?”

  Yes. It feels so good.

  “Wouldn’t you, Sarah?” The maddening hand on her nape when all those nerve endings were begging it to trail everywhere. To find spots that were far softer and more vulnerable than that and push hard into them, taking them over.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he repeated again. That firm, insistent tone, trying to make her answer.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and managed to hold that whimper back, managed not to collapse against the door in her need for pressure and texture against her nipples.

  “You know, I kind of like it that you can’t tell me.” His fingers trailed delicately down her spine, all the way over the crease of her buttocks, right to a point so sensitive that she flinched and clutched her buttocks together even at the hint of a graze through the raw silk. “As long as you let me do it.”

  Do what? she wanted to know, except she didn’t want to ask, she didn’t want to think ahead or decide what to do or how. She didn’t want to choose.

  “Whatever I want,” he explained in that hot breath against her nape, as if she had asked the question.

  “Right now, for example” – his hands rubbed up her bare arms, slow and thorough and so very warm after that night cold – “I want to watch this pretty, pretty body” – his hands slid down her torso, rubbing the silk back and forth against her skin – “in this pretty, pretty dress” – his hands caressed over her bottom, bunching the edge of the dress up so that her sex clenched in hope that he was going to touch it, and then instead sliding down the back of her thighs – “in these pretty, sparkly stockings” – he played with one of the crystals, over and over, driving her mad with the way his hand got stuck there, lingering, not touching the rest of her – “be entirely mine.”

  One hand stroked back up her thigh, and this time he did slide between her legs and caress lightly, a gentle, teasing pressure that made her inner muscles clutch for more, and instead of that more get only the friction of her panties, unable to find pressure. “Do you like that idea, too, Sarah?”

  She pressed her forehead into the door, her eyes and lips and hands and sex squeezing so hard. She never cried, for anything. And yet she wanted to sob for this. Her body wept, such desperate, eager sobs that he must feel them through panties and tights both.

  “Now, I don’t want to rip these pretty stockings. Yet.” His fingers found their way up over her butt to the waistband. “So you’ll just have to be patient, Sarah.” Again, that hint of firmness that made her just writhe with need. “And stand still.”

  “Patrick,” she whispered, her head turning sideways against the door. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say to him. See, the problem is, I think I fell in love with you the first day I met you, in that workshop, and…I want this so much more than I can handle.

  He bent and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. The sweetness of the sensation rippled through her, even as he dragged her stockings delicately against her legs, inexorably exposing heat, heat, heat. And cold. She shivered for him, in need of his warmth.

  His jaw traveled up the line of hers, sandpaper so lightly wielded. His lips lingered a moment over the earring he had given her, pressing it against her skin, and then he trailed softness of lips and the abrasion of his jaw down the nape of her neck. A smile pressed there when she made a little sound and shivered for him, and then his mouth opened, and his hand slid up from her hal
f-bared thighs to cup her sex.

  “I’m probably a bad person,” he whispered against her neck. “But I could do this to you all night.”

  “I’m cold,” she whispered. Don’t make me stand here all night separated from you.

  Oh, but – the rushing, heavy sobbing of her sex to his hand – do whatever you want. Don’t let me do anything else but what you want.

  “I want to live somewhere hot with you.” He rubbed his other hand up and down one bare arm, chasing goose bumps. “Where we don’t have these problems.” He brought his body in closer to hers, lending her warmth without giving it to her. “And with counters.” His thumb slid sure and lazy between the folds of her sex, gliding up and down between them while she bit her lip, and then that lip fell soft away from her teeth, and she did, indeed, start to whimper. “Definitely with counters. Mmm, Sarah, can you imagine the feel of cold marble against your bare nipples while I do this?”

  I don’t need to imagine anything else kinkier or more vulnerable than this! her brain tried to shout out. But his fantasies nevertheless worked their way through the moment, too, everything twining in her to release her mind to him, to release her body to him.

  “It will be just a little too cold,” he whispered, finding her clitoris with as light and careful a touch as he might use to handle an arc of sugar placed as the final glory on a dessert. “And I won’t let you up off it until I’ve got you so hot down here you beg for the cold.”

  “Patrick,” she whispered. But she couldn’t beg. Weren’t they imbalanced enough already? She had to work with him after this – surrounded by marble counters.

  “Chérie.” That tender, possessive voice stroked her far more intimately than his hands ever could. “Of course,” he said, as if his name alone was a plea, and he was answering it. He pressed those most private lips of hers together and then rubbed them open again. Lazily.