The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) by Laura Florand Page B

he stand up again yet and lean into her? Would her eyes widen and her head tilt back for him? Could he reach out a hand and pull her between his legs? He flopped back on the bed instead, sinking into it with the ease of a man who had had a very long day. “Mmm.” He smiled at her sideways, his eyes barely open…just enough to see every single reaction she made.
    Her eyes did widen, and she took a breath and bit her lip, looking back at the tea leaves she was spooning out. If he “fell asleep” on this bed, would she wake him and kick him out or let him smile up at her sleepily and pull her down to him as he kissed her? Or would she let him sleep and eventually just have to creep to the bed and tuck herself on the edge of it, too tired to resist, so that she fell asleep and he got to wake her? He knew exactly how bone-tired she must be, how much she must long to curl up in this bed right now. The way he knew he could get her to do things just because she was so used to doing exactly what he told her, to letting him take over her body until she got everything exactly the way he wanted it. Patrick, you are such a fucking bastard. Un vrai enculé.
    But, oh, God, I want her, I want her, I want her. I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t. The ache of it was going to swallow him whole.
    He smiled at her, under drooping eyelashes. “Make me some, too?” And he blew her a long, slow kiss just before he “dozed off.”
    ***
    It would be so easy for him, Sarah thought despairingly, staring at her tea leaves. Making tea wasn’t helping her, and the umbrella had gone off and hid, and she kept wanting to kick off her shoes and just give up.
    If being in a woman’s apartment suddenly put him in the mood, all he would have to do was curl one little finger. And there she would be.
    Easy, automatic sex, at the beck of his fingers. That was probably how it always worked for him. He probably didn’t even know what difficult was.
    No, that can’t be right, Sarah, she reminded herself, not for the first time. He does the same job you do, a million times better. He has to know what hard is. He just never shows it’s hard.
    But still…difficult with women ?What woman could resist that wicked grin of his? If any did, he probably yawned and turned without a second’s thought to the next, non-resisting woman.
    The kettle woke, and she turned it off before it could whistle, pouring water over peppermint leaves, something oddly warming about doing this for two instead of one.
    Wouldn’t her life be wonderful if Patrick really thought she was as special as those winks of his sometimes made her feel, if she made tea for him while he blew her kisses every evening? She would almost be willing to share this minuscule space, to give up her last tiny slice of the introverted time she missed so much, if that person were Patrick.
    She warmed her hands on her cup, as she always did, watching the warm body that cup had always been a substitute for, evening after cold evening. “Patrick,” she said, but he didn’t wake up. “Patrick.”
    Still no movement. Those tawny lashes of his lay so innocently against his cheeks. He should have looked like a tired child, but he didn’t. He looked like a tired man.
    She carried the cup across to him and touched his thigh. “Patrick.” He didn’t move, doubtless exhausted. She was, and he did ten times as much as she did. That perfect, sensual aristocrat’s mouth was relaxed, the cleft in the strong chin somehow like a chink in his armor.
    “Patrick.” She had to crawl onto the bed to reach his shoulder. She kicked her shoes off, because she hated wearing her street shoes in the house, much less letting them come into contact with her actual bed. Her mother had never allowed outdoor shoes on indoor floors. Her socks went with them automatically, as they always did, and then she regretted it, her feet now as vulnerable as the rest of her. She shook his shoulder a little. “Patrick, wake up.”
    Before