The Chocolate Kiss

CHAPTER 18



Magalie didn’t know exactly what Philippe was up to, but it didn’t feel safe, which was probably why she was doing it.

Philippe Lyonnais, asking her to teach him her recipes? That was a triumph, wasn’t it? He had finally cracked, and she had yet to taste one single thing he had tempted her with. So why did it feel as if she was placing herself in his power?

The stairs were dim as they descended, lit gently by low lights designed to give just enough illumination to see but not intrude under doorways and wake others. Philippe preceded her, his broad back very correctly between her and any fall down the stairs. But it meant she could not see his face. Just a glimpse of his profile when he turned at the landings, looking very primitive in the dimness.

The trip through the dark courtyard blasted her with coldness again. Nights like this were when she most wanted to be curled up in her bed in her apartment. Without invaders. But maybe with a warm, hard, welcome body curling around hers under the covers . . .

Philippe opened the door for her, and when she passed under his arm and looming body, all dark in the darkness, a thrill of something atavistic ran through her.

It was almost a relief when she turned on the kitchen light, a warm golden color that embraced them. But somehow her heartbeat only seemed to speed up, and she struggled to swallow. She could feel every movement he made through every inch of her skin.

Past the archway of the door into the rest of the shop, everything was dark. It seemed to make their space even smaller, a little intimate hollow of light into which darkness walled them. She could just make out the shapes of chocolate trees through the second archway, silhouetted large and black against the lights in the street.

Philippe very courteously moved behind her to help her off her coat.

It was, of course, what any prince with the barest modicum of self-respect would do. But why did it make her feel all silky and vulnerable, as if his hands had slid over her shoulders, when they hadn’t, as if his breath had teased the nape of her neck, when it hadn’t? It brought him close enough that she could smell him. He had been making caramel.

He hung her coat on the empty hook on the courtyard door and slipped off his own. The pressure in the little kitchen seemed to rise too high, as if too much air had been forced into a closed space. It didn’t take much to fill this space. Magalie, small as she was, could command it all by herself. She and her aunts almost never shared the space, taking turns at making recipes rather than driving one another crazy.

To have Philippe in it, at the same time as she, over-filled it. And she was not even trying to battle him out of it but allowing him in. She would have to turn away from him, bend down, stretch up. To allow him to be that close to her without resistance.

“So,” Philippe said, still in that courteous tone. “Which would you rather show me? Your famous chocolat chaud that drives men mad? Or the tarte I”—his voice silked out over the I—“inspired in you?”

“There’s really not much to the hot chocolate,” she said uneasily. Drove men mad? Really? How mad did he feel? “It’s a very simple recipe.”

“Then why not show me both?” He opened a palm in the most chivalrous way imaginable. “I’m in no hurry.”

She tried to work up anger at the fact that he assumed her time was equally at his disposal. But the attempt flitted away like an inconsequential distraction.

No hurry.

And when she turned to pull her pot out from the cabinet under the counter, her bottom brushed his thigh.

That thigh didn’t move away to give her more room.

Her bottom and the back of her thighs seemed to flame, heat spreading from the point of contact and flushing through her sex.

Her hands faltered as she set the pot down, and it bounced and rang against the burner. There was a whirring sound from the clock in the next room, and a witch laughed evilly in the dark.

Philippe shifted, as if to get out of her way, but it put him just in the spot where her butt went the next time she bent down, to get the milk and cream from the under-counter refrigerator. A refrigerator that a kitchen expert like himself surely recognized behind its cabinet front.

She straightened too fast.

“Allow me,” he said, as if the milk might be too heavy for her, and closed his hand around hers on the bottle. The calluses on his palms slid against her knuckles, warmth on one side of her hand, the chill of the bottle on the other, and then the warmth was gone, as he took the bottle and set it down.

“They’re the best dairy,” he confirmed, seeing the name on the bottle. “I use them, too.”

This suggestion of complicity left her feeling oddly warm. Then wary, as if she had caught him sneaking up on her left flank. Since when did His Highness allow anything of hers to be equal to his? She started the burner and poured the milk and cream in, crazily self-conscious, so that she almost couldn’t breathe.

The cinnamon scent rose from the cream as soon as it started to heat.

He tilted his head. “You’ve infused it already.”

She nodded. She had made too much that morning for the bare handful of clients who had showed up, but she wasn’t going to allow him to gloat by admitting that.

“With what?”

“Cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.”

He found all by himself the drawers where the spoons were, showing complete comfort in learning a new kitchen, and pulled out a small spoon. He dipped it into the cream and tasted it, his eyes intent. Seeking out whatever flavors she might not have told him about. He dropped the spoon into the sink without comment.

“The—the chocolate is right behind you.” Her voice didn’t sound quite right. And at that not-quite-right sound, he did a slow scan of her face that then drifted down her and back up, almost gently. As gently as if he had just brushed her bare skin with a feather the entire length of her body. She tried not to shiver, to ask him to brush her again.

There was the subtlest curve to his lower lip, held tightly down by his upper, an intense, triumphant satisfaction he was trying not to show. She realized suddenly that she could see the pulse beating in his throat.

“Where?” he asked, and if he hadn’t turned, she might for a crazy second have told him where she wanted to be brushed with feathers. His thigh brushed against her again as he bent and hesitated before the two cabinets.

She tried to pull herself together. “Here,” she said, automatically reaching under his bent body to the right cabinet.

“Ah.” His fingers closed around the cabinet handle just a fraction of a second after hers did, so that his hand in fact closed around hers. His arm brushed the length of hers. “I’ll get it.”

But when she tried to straighten, she found herself tangled somehow in him, her back running into his chest. “Pardon.” He curled a free hand around her waist to steady her. “I must have—” He gave a slight laugh of apology as she shifted away from him just as he shifted in the same direction. She turned back—just as he turned back. Two more dance steps and twice the steadying hands on her hips before her body finally rubbed free of his. By that time she almost couldn’t get her body to move away; like chocolate held too long, it seemed to want to cling to his skin. “It’s a small kitchen.”

It was, true, but for someone who was used to negotiating kitchens filled with dozens of chefs and assistants, all running around with things like boiling caramel, he seemed inordinately in the way. Maybe the prince of the kitchen had gotten used to everyone else yielding to him.

“Maybe I should call ‘chaud, chaud, chaud!’ every time I move,” she said dryly—the cry of “hot, hot, hot!” his chefs used as they negotiated one another’s space and their pots of dangerous liquids.

That surprised the oddest crack of laughter from him, which he instantly muffled.

She had holes in her vocabulary concerning some of the cruder forms of French slang, but she remembered something suddenly from her last year in high school here. To call a woman chaude was to say that she was sexually in heat, and it was not at all the kind of thing a man would say to or of a woman he respected. She shot him a dark glance.

He held his hands up, palms outward. “I didn’t say it.” His mouth curved wickedly. “Although I wouldn’t object.”

Confused, she concentrated on something she could control, the giant black bag of chocolat couverture, flat, oval pieces of Valrhona chocolate that would melt perfectly into the milk and cream. She dipped her fingers into the bag, coming up with a handful that overflowed.

He slipped his hand under hers, fingers curling up to partly enclose it, before she could toss the chocolate into the cream. “Let me see?”

The rough feel of his palm against her skin was growing so erotically familiar, anyone would think she was Pavlov’s dog and had been trained to associate it with satisfaction. Instead of tormenting, elusive temptation. A pleasure on the other side of a wall of pride.

She stared down at their hands, the chocolate in hers spilling out, a few ovals brushing his palm. She wanted to just stay there, her hand enclosed that way, until the chocolate melted in the warmth of their hands, or until—

She swallowed and upended the chocolate into his palm. But it was too late. Some of it still clung to hers, streaks melted against her skin.

She hadn’t even put on an apron, and the box of tissues was on the far side of him. She brought her hand up and sucked the most obvious streak from the heel of her thumb.

When she looked up, Philippe hadn’t moved, but his presence filled the kitchen like a physical force. A physical force that was lifting her up and pressing her back against a wall. His gaze was fixed on her mouth. Slowly he tilted his hand over the pot so that the dark ovals slid one by one, gently, into the milk and cream.

A drop of hot milk splattered up onto his thumb. On the inside of his palm, traces of chocolate clung to the heat of his skin. Her stomach clenched as she waited for him to bring it to his mouth, but he reached behind him for a tissue, gave it a rather exasperated look, and wiped his hand clean with it.

She reached toward the bag for a second handful.

He caught her wrist. “You should wash your hands.”

It cut across her increasingly dazed senses. She frowned.

He dropped her wrist and cursed, low. She could swear he was cursing himself. “Pardon. I’m used to professional kitchens.”

Implying this was what? Her eyebrows drew closer together.

“And this isn’t a professional kitchen, of course,” he hurried to excuse himself. “But you do serve people.”

He considered her so insignificant, so far beneath him, so unconsciously. While she . . . she was practically melting all over him. Like the damn chocolate that he had wiped off with a Kleenex. And given a disgusted look to.

She pressed her lips together, her eyes startling her by stinging as she turned to wash her hands. She took her time washing them, until that stinging was entirely under control. “Just exactly how would you describe this kitchen, if it’s not ‘professional’?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then he moved in close behind her, his body brushing hers. His words stirred the hair on the top of her head: “Magical. Outside time. Outside anybody else’s control. You probably turn health inspectors into toads.”

She turned her head, tilted up to try to see his face, surprised and warmed all through. But he was too exactly behind her. To see his face, she had to turn around. She had to be willing to turn around, knowing that, as close as he was, her breasts would brush his chest, that they would be standing face-to-face, impossibly, intimately close.

She felt his breath stir over her temple and the top of her head, as he waited for her to do that.

If she did . . . if she did . . . Terror and hunger stirred in equal parts. Did he respect her, as the “magical” description implied? Or did he dismiss her value, as it had seemed with his comment on the unprofessional kitchen?

And if she knew for certain that he respected her, would she still be as terrified? Or even more so?

“I think my aunts handle the health inspectors,” she said vaguely. Not turning. Very much not turning. “I’ve never seen one.”

A little laugh. “Maybe I should up our diplomatic negotiations. I wouldn’t mind being under the umbrella of that protection.”

When was he going to move? Never? Her back flexed involuntarily, as if he had just drawn his finger slowly down the length of her spine.

But he hadn’t touched her. She twisted just enough to catch a glimpse of his face, her shoulder bumping his chest.

He lifted his gaze from the small of her back. His eyes were dilated, leaving only a narrow rim of blue. She could see the faint growth on his chin since that morning’s shave, and the tiny scar that could be the result of anything from a kitchen accident to a boyhood escapade.

His head started to dip toward hers.

She twisted fast, as if to meet an attack, and just for a second they were chest to chest, and her breasts burned from the contact.

“Le chocolat.” She dipped sideways and felt his frustrated breath over the nape of her neck as he turned after her. It felt like the graze of a bullet.

But when he slipped back beside her, he didn’t seem frustrated at all. She glanced up at him, puzzled and feeling . . . hunted.

What an exquisite and limitless amount of patience and persistence it must take, not to mention control of both himself and everything around him, to produce the desserts he did.

His hand slipped into the three-kilogram sack beside hers, brushing down her arm until he could bury it in the chocolat couverture, his fingers tangling a little with hers through the rounded, hard chocolate. “Let me,” he said, as if his goal really was just to learn her recipe.

But that hadn’t been his goal. Her mind fragmented under the flex of his fingers as she tried to remember exactly what he had said just before they came down here.

He lifted out a handful of chocolate. “About this much?”

She couldn’t tell. His hand was such a differently sized measuring cup than hers. She held her hand, palm up, and he poured the chocolate ovals into her palm. They slid over her skin, too much for her to hold. His other hand came up fast, just under hers, catching the overflow. And sandwiching hers, not quite touching, shielded by ovals of chocolate, between his.

She felt a kiss on her wrist above the chocolate, another on her temple. She looked up fast, but his face wasn’t bent anywhere close enough for his lips to have actually touched her. Why did she keep imagining these touches? Was she so desperate for them, forcing wish-fulfillment into his glances? Or was that maybe what he was thinking, when his glance touched her wrist, touched her temple?

He smiled down at her, but there, lancing clearly through that smile, despite his best efforts, was the carnivorous edge of his teeth, the lion scenting triumph.

She dumped his big handful of chocolate into the milk and cream, equal to almost two of hers. This might be her darkest chocolate ever. The scents, in abeyance when they arrived, filled the kitchen now, overwhelming his caramel, making the world one breath of chocolate, wisped with cinnamon and nutmeg.

It took the chocolate only a few minutes to melt. She whisked it gently until the milk and cream turned a deep brown color.

“And that’s it?” he said silkily, his body in too close to hers, dominating hers, like a spy trying to worm out her last secrets. “That’s almost exactly what I do, Magalie. Except my chocolate comes from the finest plantation in the world and is sold to only a select few of us who have earned the right to buy it through our reputations. And I bring it to room temp correctly by itself and let the milk cool back down to match it the way you’re supposed to and then whisk them together so that they’re as smooth as silk. But all my chefs drink your chocolate. Are you sure you didn’t leave anything out?”

He had just told her four different ways her chocolate-making wasn’t up to his standards. And probably even she couldn’t just dump the chocolate on his head. “Well. Usually there’s a smile,” she said.

“What?”

“When you stir it. There’s a smile.” She pressed her hand vaguely on her belly, that place from which the smile seemed to grow.

“A smile.” He slid his hand over hers on the whisk, and warmth engulfed her before he took it away. “Like this?” He stirred the chocolate slowly, looking down at it, a little smile on that fine, sensual mouth that seemed to burn in her breasts and raise the hair on the nape of her neck.

“And . . . and the wishes,” Magalie admitted.

His gaze rose from the chocolate and held hers. “What wishes would those be, Magalie? Wishes to humble a man? Wishes for him to fall in love with a woman who would torment him?”

“You didn’t drink it,” she protested quickly. How had he even realized she had tried that?

His body brushed hers so that she could feel the tiny change in pressure with every breath he took. “Maybe you’re underestimating the power of the scent.”

“Oh.” She tried to pull back, but his arm shot around her and stopped her, protecting her from the burner. “So who do you think I’ve made you fall in love with?” she demanded hostilely.

He shot her a startled, confounded look, his eyebrows pulling together. “Someone . . . completely reprehensible,” he said slowly, as if trying to digest something very strange. His arm tightened around her, and he spun them suddenly, so that she was pushed back against the sink, out of danger of the burner.

Her body kicked with delight at being pressed between him and the sink again, but before she could make another choice—to melt or resist—he had released her and was turning back to the chocolate. And she stood there feeling deprived to have that choice taken away from her.

“A smile and wishes,” he said softly, stirring the pot three times slowly with a very dangerous smile. He dipped a spoon into the mixture and blew on it gently, his lips so faintly pursed.

Her whole body seemed to dissolve in desire. She wrapped her hands around the edge of the sink. “Shall you try it, Magalie?” He proffered the warm but no longer burning spoon right to her lips, so that she had to fold them in to keep from tasting it involuntarily. “See if I’ve gotten it right?”

What would he wish on her? She wanted to open her lips around that spoon so badly that in pure terror, she put up a hand and knocked the spoon away, the chocolate spilling from it onto the counter by the sink and spattering on her sleeve.

“No?” He flicked off the burner and shifted back to stand very close to her, so that his thighs brushed her hips. The barest sway would bring his weight against her. “Have you figured out yet, Magalie, the real reason I wouldn’t let Christophe spend any time at all in this kitchen with you?”

The reminder flicked through her, bringing her eyebrows together. “It’s not your kitchen.”

He took her hand.

She shivered all over. Embarrassed at how visible that reaction had been, she bowed her head, angling it away. She wished desperately that the war of pride between them was over, that they could just ball it up like a wad of paper and toss it away. If he wasn’t who he was, she could melt against him now. But if he wasn’t who he was, she wouldn’t want to so badly.

He spread her fingers and closed them around his wrist. It took her a second to realize he had placed the tip of her thumb directly over his pulse.

Just where he had held her that morning, reading her every helpless reaction to him. Now he gave that knowledge to her. His pulse was racing out of control.

She rubbed her thumb, just grazingly, the same thing he had done to her.

He made a soft sound, and his body swayed into hers.

She looked up, pulled out of her own shame. That vulnerability—open, admitted, handed to her like a trust—undid her. She stretched up without even conscious volition, seeking the scent of caramel that must be hiding under all that chocolate, somewhere, there, in the hollow of his throat.

She, who loved chocolate so much, found herself burying her nose in the caramel scent like a warm and golden refuge.

He brought his free hand up, cradling her there, holding her face against him, his head arching back so that she could feel the muscles of his throat taut against her. The pulse under her fingers raced madly. The way he gave that to her, let her have that proof of his vulnerability . . . that crumpled the walls of pride between them like paper and dropped them at their feet.

She sank more deeply into him, boneless, relieved beyond bearing. How had she stood that hardness between them before? How had she kept fighting?

Her fingers climbed up his chest, flexing and exploring, digging into him, and it felt so good. As if he had been made for her to explore. As if his heat could take away every cold night that ever was.

He made a low sound that vibrated against her ear and buried his hand in her hair, trying to pull her head back as his own head bent. But she had the advantage of size. While he was all exposed to her, she could hide her face in him . . . and try to taste that caramel off his skin.

Both his hands tightened spasmodically on her at the flick of her tongue. He lifted her and whirled her, suddenly, her body pressed the length of his, to the one spot they could fit in that warmly lit kitchen and be completely out of sight of the street—against the courtyard door.

“Magalie.” Her name was as rough along her skin as his hands, sliding up under the silk of her top. She shivered as they ran hot along her ribs.

He tasted warm and golden but not like caramel at all, something much more alive. He tried again to her head back, and again she resisted. She liked this spot. She liked being buried in him, wrapped in his heat and shadow, the feel of his muscles contracting under her touch, the way his body tightened all around her, his head bending over her, his arms wrapping around her.

He didn’t use strength to force her head up. Instead, he pulled her kneading left hand from his chest and stretched it over her head against the door. Holding her prisoner, his hand wrapped around hers and his body pressing into her, he brought his mouth to her wrist.

And then he did things to her there that she hadn’t even known the world contained.

Rough prickle of beard, silk of lips, graze of teeth, and the delicate tasting of his tongue . . .

Her muscles gave way.

“Let me,” he murmured with prickle and silk against the sensitive skin. “Let me in.”

Limp, she slid down the door until the only thing holding her up was his hand pinning hers to the wood, her body dragging on her arm. He could have supported her with the crush of his body, but he didn’t. He pushed her sleeve up her forearm and tasted and prickled and petted her wrist until there was nothing left of her. No strength anywhere.

She was mindless, her fingers curling in and out of her palm. He caught them in his mouth, suckled them lightly. Those that were neglected curled against the prickle and hardness of his jaw, against the edge of his lips. He breathed into the center of her palm and scraped it tenderly and then gentled that scrape with his tongue.

No one ever in her life had done anything like this to her. Not ever. Taken one part of her body and rendered her mindless. Or rendered her precious? He made love to her wrist until they both knew exactly how helpless she was, her body dragging so heavily against the hand that held her that anyone would have thought she was past consciousness.

Then he pulled her up at last. Grabbing her hips and dragging her up on his thigh, dragging hard so that her sex rubbed against his leg. Her head fell back now, no muscles left to resist, and he took her mouth the same way he had taken her wrist—with prickle of beard, silk of lips, graze of teeth, the questing of his tongue.

The scents from their coats rose around her, hers, his, and the cold city scent the coats still carried from outside. The clasp at the back of her head hurt, pressed too hard against coats and door, and she pulled it out.

His mouth was open against hers, his tongue tangling with hers when she did it. She felt his gasp steal air from her as her hair spilled down.

His hands were occupied, on her torso: rubbing the silk over her skin, kneading it into her muscles and breasts and bone, slipping his hands under it, sliding everywhere. His hands taken, he pulled his mouth free from hers long enough for a gesture that entirely undid her: he pressed his face into her freed hair and stroked once the length of it to her shoulders, like an animal.

She buried her hands in the pelt of his hair, shivering.

He pushed her top up all the way to her shoulders and drew back enough to meet her eyes. A question.

She closed hers and lifted her arms above her head.

That gesture, waiting in the dark of her own eyelids for him to draw the silk over her head, was even more her undoing than his face stroking her hair or his mouth on her wrist. The moment of choice and the choice she had made—to agree to this, to all of this—left her hot and damp and fragile with arousal.

“Yes,” he breathed, a growling purr. “Yes. I knew—” He broke off, his thumbs tracing the edge of her black lace bra, pressing gently into the soft skin, slipping under it, his palms cupping her nipples. They rubbed, and then rubbed harder as she arched.

“Knew what?” Still she had a trace of challenge left. How dare he know?

“Nothing.” He gave a rough, strange laugh, as if there was so much tension in him, it squeezed the laugh almost to nothing. “I just dream really well.”

She arched again helplessly, pressing her sex into his thigh as his hands grew greedier on her breasts. “Dreamed—me?”

“God, yes.”

“Like this?” The coats burred against her bare back.

“It’s one of the ways.” He helped her with that ache in her sex, gripping her hips, dragging her hard up and down his thigh and then grinding her against his sex through his jeans.

Her thighs wrapped around his waist. Need pressed through her, frantic, relentless. Midnight-dark eyes, heavy-lidded, fixed on her face at that, and he ground her against his sex again, rotating this time, rocking her.

Her eyes widened desperately. She clutched at him, almost afraid.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Yes, yes, yes. Let me in.” His hand found the side zip on her pants so fast that he must have located it sometime before and kept track of it just for this chance. He pressed his hand in through the tight fit of the panel over her pelvis, slipping his hand down to find the folds of her sex.

The silver doorbell chimed.

Philippe jerked his head up. Cold horror shot through her.

He tried. Cursing, yanking his hand away, wrenching at the coat behind her, he tried his best to get her at least covered.

But Geneviève and Aja blew straight back into the kitchen before he could even get the coat free of the hook.

Philippe was the only one who didn’t freeze in petrified embarrassment. Cursing viciously, he kept his body between Magalie and them, slipping her paralyzed arms into the overlarge sleeves, zipping it up over her bare skin. One of her breasts was spilled lopsided out of her bra, the nipple rubbing against his jacket lining. Oh, God, oh, God . . . Philippe looked into her face and cursed again. “All right, go,” he said, in furious resignation, easing back enough to pull the door open and push her through it, his body still her shield.

“What kind of poetry does your friend write, exactly?” he snapped at the aunts as the cold froze her bones and she fled. In all the times she had heard him angry, she had never heard him this angry. Wild with it. “Haiku?”