The Chocolate Kiss

CHAPTER 36



There were five scarves in the box. Which—she counted back, blushing deeply with each mental tally mark. Right. Five. And all this time, she had thought the scarves were rewards for his orgasms.

“He doesn’t have any other ideas for gifts?” Aunt Geneviève asked. “Do you look cold to him or something?”

Aunt Aja stroked a discreet, shushing hand down Geneviève’s forearm. “I think this present was meant to be opened in private.”

Great. Now her aunts were imagining her being tied up naked and spread-eagled with scarves up there several floors above them. Now she was getting a mental image of herself tied up, and . . . oh, for God’s sake. Magalie bundled up all the scarves quickly and hurried into the courtyard to take them up to her room.





“Stop sending me scarves, you pervert,” she told Philippe that afternoon in the blue kitchen.

He caressed the hot cup subtly and brought it to his mouth, gold-tipped dark lashes drifting downward a little as he drank the rich chocolate. “What do you want me to send you instead? A ring?”

Her eyes flew to his. His lips were curled, his eyes teasing, but under the humor, all that focus was there. And he just waited. Waited to see what she would do with the question.

She looked down at her hand, her thumb curling over the base of her ring finger as if testing its emptiness. She looked back up at him.

One of his eyebrows had arched. His focus had grown more intent, the kitchen smaller, all his muscles gathering for a spring.

She cleared her throat. She was supposed to be saying something repressive right now. She looked back at her bare ring finger again.

Philippe was starting to smile. Not in humor but in pure, glowing happiness. The lion’s muscles were all bunched now. A breath, and he would leap.

She stared at him, wanting to save him the jump, wanting to walk right up to him and press herself against him.

Well, why didn’t she? Hadn’t she already found out that if she stopped letting him make all the moves, she felt much more in control?

It only took her two steps.

“This is nice,” she whispered against his chest. “You feel really good. What have you been making today? You smell like lime zest.”

The chocolate cup clicked on the counter. His arms folded around her. “I will never leave Paris,” he mentioned. “I love it on the Île Saint-Louis. I come from a very happy family where people seem to have normally annoying relationships that last forever. I only ever pulled my sister’s hair once when we were little, and it was because she knocked over this beautiful, three-tiered pièce montée I was making for our father’s birthday. Fine, and I did kidnap her Barbie when we were playing cowboys and Indians and tie it up to an anthill, but anyone would think she would have gotten over that by now.”

She tilted her head back and kissed him, feeling his response run through his whole body. What had been wrong with her, to let him do all the driving in their relationship so far? Things seemed to seesaw in her as she drew the kiss out, finding at last a sense of center that had him in it.

His fingers sank into her hair. “Every afternoon, I could come have a tiny cup of chocolate. Or you could come see me,” he coaxed, “and sit on one of my counters, and let me feed little things to you while I work.”

She kneaded her fingers into his chest muscles happily. This was a very nice place to be.

“And we could—well, I don’t know if I could ever afford a family-size apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, but you know, it might be that your sense of place is too small. Maybe this whole city is your place. Paris.”

Hmm. She hesitated. She really, really liked her apartment high above the island. Although le Marais was nice. But . . . She hesitated, the need to never move again clutching at her one more time.

“You’re thinking about it, right?” Philippe said into her hair.

She nodded against his chest.

“That’s all right, then.” He lifted her hands from his chest and kissed the inside of each wrist, the way he liked to do. Then he slipped away just as her Aunt Aja came in from the courtyard.

At the door, he paused and glanced back. “What did you wish on me this time?”

To love her forever. She drew her eyebrows together, concentrating on him very hard. As if she could develop magic vision that would show her the chocolate running through his veins, taking over his body, making him hers.

He smiled. The smile seemed to grow in his whole body, pressing out from it for lack of space, filling the kitchen. “I don’t feel any different.”