31. Bitter Chocolate
BITTER CHOCOLATE
*Buy the best quality. Some flavors linger long after you wish they would fade.
A t first, I thought I’d lost him. Maybe even imagined him.
I stumbled out onto the street in Pigalle, aptly called Rue de Martyrs, and started through the blurred crowds and jeering lights toward Boulevard Clichy, where I would find a taxi to take me back to Louis’s apartment.
With every step, however, the world seemed to close in further.
Every voice seemed louder.
Every car was larger and faster.
People brushed past me, bumping my shoulders, laughing, shouting in French.
I couldn’t seem to process the words even though I spoke the language.
A man with a cigarette barked something in my direction before his laugh bounced off the buildings like a basketball.
A woman in stilettos stepped into the street with careless confidence, jerking back only just before a cyclist almost hit her.
My heart beat too fast. My chest wouldn’t rise. My fingers trembled as I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to hold my body together as I continued down the street, looking for a cab I couldn’t seem to identify.
I just needed to get away. A quiet ride and four solid walls to shut out the noise.
I lifted a wooden arm at a blur of yellow headlights, but the car sped past. Another honk. Another shout. I turned in a slow, clumsy circle, searching for a taxi light, a quiet street, something that would take me away from this noise, this night, him.
I stepped off the curb, trying to flag down the next car—but before I could lift my hand again, something yanked me back with a force that stole my breath.
“What the hell are you doing?” a voice snapped, low and guttural with panic.
Lucas.
I stumbled on the sidewalk, his hands gripping my waist, holding me like he didn’t trust me not to disappear again.
“Marie, please. Just stop and listen, will you?”
“Get off !” I twisted out of his grip and started down an alley that some small part of me knew was a terrible place to escape, but which another one, probably fueled by the remainders of the absinthe, thought was the perfect way to lose someone like Lucas Lyons.
“Marie! Goddamn it—Marie, come back!”
I clipped a trash bin and stumbled farther down the alley until it bent sharply at a crumbling stone wall and turned onto a deserted cobbled road.
Not great for stilettos.
I spun back toward the road, but Lucas was already there, blocking my way.
“Move,” I ordered.
He did not.
“Stay away from me.” I backed away until my spine hit the stone wall. “I know what you did, Lucas. I saw those texts from your stepmother.”
He continued toward me, broad shoulders in a velvety progression, like a panther stalking through the grass. “I figured as much. Just like I know you haven’t listened yet to any kind of explanation.”
“I don’t need an explanation to know you were manipulating me. Seducing me. Doing everything you could to k-keep me away from your brother.”
I was trapped between the stone and the man who’d, well, if not broken my heart, certainly did something increasingly irreparable.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please, just leave me alone.”
Two fingers slid under my chin, tipping my head and forcing my eyes to meet his, fathomless and dark.
“No,” he pronounced clearly.
And then he kissed me.
This wasn’t the playful kiss of Sylvie or Riad. Nor was it the searching kiss of the stranger in the crowd. Lucas’s kiss was forceful, knowing, and familiar, but also riddled with the passion and longing that had been aching in my bones for days. The ache I’d been trying to chase away all night.
To no avail.
I know you , this kiss told me. And you know me .
A strangely calm accompanied the heat that filled my veins. One that made the world recede back to its normal shapes and sounds.
Home , my body chanted as my mouth opened under Lucas’s. Home, home, home .
I shoved him away, gasping, but my fingers weren’t quite willing to loosen their clutch on his shirt.
Lucas looked down at them, then back at me. More specifically, he stared at my mouth.
“Did you miss me, sweet Marie?” he asked in a voice that was both eager and careful.
“No,” I said too quickly.
Something in his eyes sparked. “Liar.”
In the next breath, his mouth claimed mine again, and this time I grabbed his collar to tug him closer. His hands found my ass and lifted me against the wall so he could pin me there, face-to-face, while he devoured me completely.
“I saw you,” he gasped in between kisses that nibbled—no, bit —along the side of my jaw and below my ear. “I saw you with those people. Dancing. Kissing them.”
The hands on my ass squeezed hard enough to hurt. My ankles twined around his back and pulled him closer as if acting of their own accord, even though my conscience screamed for me to shove him away.
“You were trying them all on, weren’t you?” Lucas’s teeth found my earlobe and nipped along the rim. “But none of them fit, did they, baby? Because only one person can kiss you the way you want. Only one man knows exactly what makes this body fall apart.”
The next kiss stole my breath to the point where I was nearly distracted from the heavy length of him grinding at my core. Or was it the way he maneuvered me back down so I was straddling his thigh? Maybe how his knee started to work calmly, purposefully under my skirt?
“Lucas,” I gasped. A shudder rolled through me like thunder on the horizon.
Lucas groaned, low and rough, his hands gripping my hips as he rocked his thigh in slow, devastating rubs. “God, look at you, already so close. You did miss me. Your body missed me.”
“Shut up.” My forehead dropped to his shoulder, and my fingers dug into his shirt and the lean muscles under the soft linen. “Just—don’t stop.”
He stilled then, just enough to make me whimper at the sudden absence of movement.
His lips brushed my ear. “You think I didn’t see you? That transparent shirt? That microscopic skirt?” His voice cracked with heat and fury. “Letting the whole damn club see what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours,” I panted weakly—breathless and shaking as I rocked once, desperate, against the unmoving muscle.
My breath caught as he ground me against his thigh again in a motion that was controlled and brutal. I cried out, so close I couldn’t see straight. Even here, just steps away from one of the busiest areas of Paris, I was almost completely undone.
His thigh flexed, but as I surged forward, chasing the edge, he stepped back and let me drop to the ground, still caged by his tall form, but no longer touching.
“I—what are you doing?” I demanded. “Don’t stop now.”
He ripped a hand through his hair. “Not like this. Not in a fucking alley while I punish you for being beautiful.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” My breath was stolen from me as I realized what had just happened.
That he had done it again. Used his mind, his mouth, his utterly effective magic to spin me into a frenzy and manipulate me into doing whatever he wanted.
Lucas didn’t answer, but I could see the truth in the way those dark eyes sparked.
Tears pricked at my eyes. I could not believe I was this stupid. Again.
“I hate you,” I said, ducking under his arm to step away and right my clothes.
Lucas turned, his shoulders a shaking silhouette against the streetlamps behind him. “I don’t think that’s true.” His voice was a soft growl, as dangerous as any predator’s. “I think you like me, and you hate yourself for it.”
He reached for me again, but when he touched my arm, I spun around and shoved him away with all my strength, sending him stumbling backward.
“I never liked you ,” I seethed. “I was in love with your brother. I’ve been in love with Daniel for ten years, and you got a little crush and couldn’t handle it!”
“Are you kidding?” Lucas looked like I’d punched him in the face. “You are not in love with Daniel. You told me so yourself!”
“Right before I discovered all the lies you fed me to stay away from him! You had no right getting in the way of my happy ending!”
“Happy ending? My brother is a drunk and a disaster, Marie, and he would never be able to give you what you deserve. Do you hear me? Never !”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, because you won. I did stay away from him. So why are you here at all? What do you want ?”
“YOU!” Lucas bellowed so loudly that the whole city must have heard him. “I want you. Only you. Always you. Are you happy?”
I stumbled backward. Happy? Was I happy ? I was many things at the moment. Tired. Confused. Turned on. A little drunk. Furious. Happy wasn’t any of those things.
He took my silence as a sign to make another grab, and I slapped his hands away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Why? You were all but begging for it moments ago. I only stopped because you deserve more than a quick fuck in a back alley.”
“And why is that?” I seethed. “You already proved I mean nothing to you. Why bother to make love? Why not just fuck me that way too? At least it would be consistent.”
Before I knew it, my back was against the wall all over again, my legs around his waist, my whole body pinned to the wall by his much bigger one.
Exactly where it wanted to be, the traitor.
“You want a quick fuck, baby?” Lucas demanded as he shoved up the hem of my skirt. “Say it now, and I’ll give it to you. But I can promise you won’t be able to walk away after.”
“I—no— yes !” Unable to stop myself, I grabbed his head and yanked it to me for a kiss that was more bite than anything else.
Lucas groaned into my mouth, low and deep, the sound vibrating straight through my chest. “You drive me fucking insane.”
“Just do it.” I ripped at his collar. “I want you to fuck me. And I’m not going to beg.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
With a muttered curse, he pulled back enough to reach into his pocket, then tore open a foil packet with his teeth and used one hand to slide the condom over his cock, the other to hold me in place.