Chapter 48
ROWAN
The smell hits first. Warm sugar. Melted cocoa. That familiar, sinful scent that clings to everything in this building.
Bella’s eyes are wide, darting across the polished copper vats and marble counters as she follows me through the glass doors.
“Holy shit,” she whispers. “This is what heaven smells like.”
I grin. “You haven’t even tasted anything yet, sweetness.”
She looks up at me, and there’s that spark, the one that drives me fucking insane.
“Are you going to make me?”
“Depends.” I lean in close enough that my breath brushes her ear. “Are you going to behave?”
She laughs, shoving at my chest lightly. “Define behave.”
I swear my chest tightens just hearing her laugh again. After the other night, I didn’t think she’d even look at me, let alone tease me. But here she is, still mine in the smallest ways.
“Come on,” I say, leading her to the back tasting room. I had some of our men set this up, and I’m hoping they didn’t fuck it up with such short notice.
On the table in the center is a bouquet of pink roses and four jars of melted chocolate, each labeled with names that sound more like sins than flavors. Inferno. Sin. Obsidian. Decadence.
Her fingers trace one of the glass jars. “So I’m actually living in a chocolate factory?”
I chuckle.
“Yeah, the perfect front for the mafia, huh?”
She nods but stares right at me, picking up the roses and smelling them.
“And these are for me?”
I glance around the empty room. “Can’t see any other beautiful woman here?”
She giggles and sets them back down. “You’re sweet,” she whispers.
“No. There’s a reason I call you sweetness.”
She tilts her head. “You know, I’ve never been a fan of a guy giving me a nickname.”
She blinks slowly and stares off at the wall.
“You ain’t ever been treated right, have you?”
She shakes her head, locking her gaze on me.
“No. Well, there was this one guy recently who actually made me feel special. Respected even,” she says with a menacing grin, tapping her chin.
I smirk. “I’m breaking the cycle, hmm?”
She rolls her eyes. “You should be a therapist.”
“I tried. They said I talk too much about licking things.”
Her laughter fills the room. It’s a sound that heals something ugly in me.
I dip a silver spoon into one of the jars and hold it out to her. “Taste.”
She leans forward, her lips wrapping around the spoon. Her lashes flutter. “Oh my god.”
“Good?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“It’s like—sex and therapy had a baby.”
I chuckle. “You should write our ad copy, I’ll email the team later.”
She opens her eyes, and for a second, the humor fades. There’s that look again, completely raw and unguarded. The one that wrecks me.
“I missed this,” she says softly. “Us being... normal.”
“Sweetheart, nothing about us is normal, and it’s literally been two days.”
“I know.” She sighs, and it’s like her shoulders drop under the weight of something heavy. “I can’t stop thinking about you, even when I’m really not supposed to, and then I remember how much I shouldn’t want this, that I can’t have you, not how I want you.”
I set the spoon down and take her hand, guiding it to the next jar. “Then have it. Just for today. No titles. No brothers. No bullshit. Just taste.”
Her throat bobs as she nods. I dip her finger into the jar and bring it to my mouth, sucking the chocolate off slowly. Her breath hitches.
“Rowan…”
“Mm?” I hum against her skin.
“This doesn’t feel very business appropriate.”
“Good thing I’m not professional.”
She laughs again, quiet and breathy, before I do it again, but slower this time, dragging my tongue along her fingertip. Her other hand grips the counter behind her.
“What does that taste like?” she whispers.
I swallow hard. “Like it breaks rules.”
“Exactly.”
I move closer, pressing her back into the counter, my voice low. “Tell me which flavor you want next.”
Her eyes dart to the labels, then back to me. “Sin.”
Of course she picks that one. She is sin.
I open the jar, dip two fingers in, and smear a streak of dark chocolate along her bottom lip.
“Lick.”
She does, eyes locked on mine, and my cock springs to life. My chest tightens. Everything in me screams to stop. Reggie’s name already echoing somewhere between us. But then she leans in, brushing her lips against my jaw, whispering,
“Still think you’re the sweet one, Rowan?”
I laugh softly, a sound that’s half pain, half hunger.
“I’m not sweet for anyone but you, precious.”
Her giggle breaks the tension again. When her gaze flicks down to my mouth again, the air changes.
I take her chin gently, thumb smudging the last of the chocolate from her lip.
“Careful,” I warn, my tone softer now. “You keep looking at me like that, and I’m going to forget the promise I made myself.”
She chews on her lip, tempting me.
“You made me a promise too. One you really shouldn’t break.”
I lightly wrap my hand around her throat, and her breath catches. “And what promise was that?”
The silence after that is electric. Charged. Dangerous.
“That it wouldn’t be the end of us…”
I lean in, voice a whisper against her mouth.
“You still want that? I can break the promise, it’ll fucking rip me apart, but I can let you go if that makes you happier in the long run.”
Relief washes over me when she shakes her head.
“You make me happy,” she breathes out.
My stomach twists. My head and my heart battling. But she owns both.
“But so does my brother,” I say flatly.
“Is that a deal breaker for you? You said you two shared women before. Why not me?”
I let out a breath. Squeezing my hand around her neck tighter, nudging open her thighs with my knee.
“Because, Bella King. They weren’t you. Because not one woman has ever made me envision my future with them. For keeps.”
My lips hover over hers.
“I can’t have you both?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I don’t know. I really don’t fucking know. But, for me? If that makes her smile and keeps her in my life, then yes. A thousand times yes.
Because her picking between one of us is doing more harm than good.