“That’s complete bullocks. Listen. Why don’t you…” He scooches until our thighs are pressed tightly together, sets a hot hand on my leg and pulls it back fast, as if he’s been bitten. “Sorry. God, I shouldn’t. You’re just so…”
“Sexy, I know.” I giggle. And then hiccup to a shocked stop. What am I doing? Why would I go andsaysomething like that, when there’s nowhere to run? No way to get out of here and hide? Crap, am I drunk? On the whisky or something else?
“Well, you are sexy.” I am? Oh god, what is happening? “But you’re going to freeze to death like that.”
“The flooriscold.” My shoes drop from my ice cube feet with a thud.
“Shit. It’s frigid. Can I… Look, I promise not to do anything. I do. I…” He grunts in apparent frustration, then inhales, slow and deep and so loud I imagine I can feel it. “Look. What if you sat on my lap?”
“Oh, I—”
“Nothing weird from me. I promise. Absolutely.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Look, I promise on on on my…my brother’s grave, all right?”
Between us, silence. Around us, that ticking, a scuffle in a some far off hidey hole. Way, way in the distance a car horn.
My mouth presses tightly shut.
“I mean it. I’m worried you’ll get hurt. Permanently. And the whisky feels good, but it’s not going to get these legs warmed up. This is dangerous. Truly. It’s near zero degrees out there. Come on. No arguing. Up you go.” He slides an arm behind my back and gets me onto his lap with no apparent effort.
The surface of his jeans is cold against my skin, but beneath, the man is pumping out heat. I’m immediately ten degrees warmer.
With a sigh, I lean back, let him wrap his arms around me and pull me in tight to his thick chest. God, he’s big. I mean, I’m short, so everyone towers over me. And the man’s not particularly tall, compared to a lot of guys—Maybe five ten or eleven?—but he’s sturdy in a way that I like. Hefty bones and muscles. Just thinking about it reminds me of that dark happy trail I did my very best not to look at this morning and remember every second of my day in the chocolaterie and, yes, I’ll admit, in the warmth of the apartment earlier tonight.
I squirm a little thinking of the sheer number of times I’ve fantasized about this guy and how wrong that suddenly seems, especially given this new safety-driven seating arrangement.
“Here, turn to the side. Curl up.” He gets me settled so my cheek is against the very object of my daydreams and I can smell him and up close, he smellswonderful. “There.” He runs a hand from the top of my hair down my back, then wraps himself around me so I’m cocooned in his arms. It’s so warm here, I’ve got no choice but to nestle in deeper and sigh. “Good? All right?” With my ear to his chest, his voice is a deep, comforting bass. I love this rumbling sound. A sound from my childhood. A sound from when I had everything I could possibly want and had no idea I’d one day lose it.
It’s probably the booze that brings the prick of tears to my eyes. I don’t know. I’m cold and scared and this is not what I thought I’d be doing tonight, but also, I don’t hate this moment.
I sniffle and he shifts.
“Jules?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, so quiet against him there’s a chance he doesn’t hear.
“I don’t hate you.”
I go absolutely still. “I don’t hate you either, Colin.”
The hand on my shoulder tightens for a second and loosens. His breath warms the top of my head and he says, a smile in his voice, “You don’t smell like cheese anymore.”
My pulse picks up. And then, entirely unable to stop myself, I ask, “What do I smell like?”
CHAPTEREIGHT
Colin
Closing my eyes, I inhale again. There’s a lot to parse through, in the background. Odors I’d not usually notice—metal and rubbish, Madame Christen’s curried lentils, that flowery cleaning product the concierge uses.
I bury my nose in her hair. “Like spun sugar.” I don’t mention the hint of soap, the sweat. The human smells no one likes to be reminded of. Smells that turn me on and make me want to dig deeper, taste, lick.
She lets out a low hum that I feel in my abdomen. And lower. “I’ve been working in a patisserie/chocolaterie.”
I shift back just enough to look down at her, though there’s not much to see. “Yeah? Which one?”
