The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) by Laura Florand

Patrick’s size and confidence next to her at this hour of the night. The adrenaline that kicked up as the space grew more intimate, less visible, was different with him there. More eager for whatever dangerous thing might happen. His clever hands never stopped the massage, even when she stumbled sometimes from the heaviness of her body, the need to become nothing but submission.
    “Here,” she whispered finally, before her blue door darkened by the night. Patrick’s thumb curled around the inside of her elbow and withdrew slowly down the inside of her forearm in a last stroke that seemed to run over her nipples and part her sex, leaving her wide open for him.
    “You don’t have an umbrella I could borrow, do you?” he murmured, leaning over her as she entered her code, sheltering her from the drizzle as it thought about becoming rain. Her heart thudded helplessly at the closeness of his body, the angle of a protective boyfriend or a man who had intentions for the night.
    An umbrella. So he could continue on his way. She swallowed and looked in her little backpack. Odd. She always carried the compact umbrella there, a safeguard against Paris’s winter moods. “I must have left it in my apartment.”
    “I’ll run up with you to get it,” Patrick said easily. “So you don’t have to come back down.”
    Sarah flushed at the thought of him being in her tiny apartment. But what was she supposed to do? Say no?
    ***
    Patrick followed two steps behind Sarah up the stairs, his eyes level with the back of her neck. A coat collar protected that nape. Cute, really. Like a princess hiding from a ravaging dragon behind a spiderweb.
    The narrow, worn staircase had timed buttons for light that had to be pushed at each level so that the two of them winked their way up the floors, like someone signaling smugglers offshore. She lived right under the roof, a tiny apartment with a view out over the slate rooftops and chimneys of Paris that reminded him of his own place at fifteen, down the hall from Luc, the two of them trying to scrape by with each other’s support, their independent poverty far preferable to their foster home. Its angled walls and her bed took up most of the space, a tiny table tucked against one window beside a little kitchenette with only a stovetop, no oven, a refrigerator that wouldn’t even hold enough food to feed him two meals straight.
    He reached to slip off her coat, as if he had been raised with sweet manners, which was kind of funny considering his raising, but he liked giving those gestures to her. It was amazing how many acts of gentlemanly “manners” were really just stamps of possession. I’ll pay your restaurant bill and pour your drink, so that you know that everything you eat, everything you drink, comes through me. I’ll walk behind you up the stairs, to make sure you know that you can’t walk without me. I’ll take your coat; you are mine to dress and undress.
    He put up a hand to grasp one of the beams in the ceiling, to make sure he wouldn’t hit it with his head. Oh, that serious, delicate face of hers, the way her gaze tracked up his body, all the length to the hand that held the beam. Who did you just let into your apartment? Sarabelle, you should be more careful. You don’t know me at all.
    He grinned at her. “I used to have a place just like this when I started out.”
    She tore her gaze away from him, looking around, and for a moment he forgot why. “I can’t find it,” she muttered.
    The umbrella, right. That was because it was in his jacket pocket. Nice and compact, safely hidden, so easy to slip out of her backpack while they were looking at the Opéra Garnier. He would leave it for her in the morning so she didn’t get caught in the rain.
    Hunger rammed in him at his inner statement of intent, this giant, mad hunger, and fear. That precipice he was about to go over was so damn high; could he stand the fall?
    He drew a breath, wishing he was decent enough to focus on