Free The Chocolate Temptation (Amour et Chocolat) by Laura Florand

doubt – people were so stupid about that – because he nodded and put on his coat.
    Train people to follow your every command in top kitchens for years, and they were amazingly open to suggestion, Patrick thought.
    It made for a nice, safe way to get what he wanted.

Chapter 9
    When Sarah got back from the restroom, she blinked, confused, from the empty table to Patrick at the bar, pocketing his wallet.
    “Everyone decided to call it a night.” He gave her a lazy grin, her coat, and her little backpack.
    Some part of her sank in disappointment that he didn’t put the coat on for her. Damn it, she was so pathetic. “My drinks.” She knew what he would say, but she still fumbled stubbornly in her backpack for her wallet, coat bunching awkwardly under one arm.
    “Don’t worry about it.” Patrick caught the coat back before it slipped to the floor, picked up her wrist as if her whole arm belonged to him, and slipped it into one of the sleeves. Then he removed her other hand from her pack, zipped the pack back up, and slipped that arm through the sleeve. He took her over exactly as if they were still in the kitchens and he had the right to direct her body any way he wanted to. It was ten times more intimate than if he had just held her coat for her to put her arms in it. “Consider it my small apology for making you hate me so much. Where do you live, Sarabelle?”
    He didn’t even know? Had he ever even bothered to look at her CV?
    A pinch grew between her eyebrows as she looked up at him. Sometimes her whole forehead hurt at night, and she lay in bed massaging it the way she massaged her own hands, wishing she could relax. “The Ninth,” she said finally.
    “Well, that’s convenient,” Patrick said without specifying why. “Would you rather walk or shall I get us a taxi?”
    Her lips parted. He might as well have just slipped his hand between her thighs and picked her up by her crotch, his easy assumption hit her so hard. He quirked his eyebrows at her as he buttoned her jacket over her breasts with those deft, controlling fingers.
    “I – I usually walk,” she said. “If it’s too late to catch the Métro.”
    “Yes, you mentioned that habit last night.” Something hard happened to his mouth, so astonishing and unbelievable on his face and gone so quickly that she must have imagined it. “Not that I want to criticize your taste for being in the streets by yourself at one in the morning, Sarah, but why don’t I walk with you tonight?” He fished her gloves out of her coat pocket, picked up her left hand, and slipped the first glove over her fingers.
    She got her act together enough to jerk her right glove out of his hold and put it on herself. “We’re not in the kitchens,” she told him dryly.
    “I know .” He beamed at her as he held the door open for them to step out into the cold night. Lights gleamed off the dark, wet pavement. “Isn’t it refreshing?”
    She hated him so damn much. It was as if those clever fingers were playing tickles straight over her sex every second she was near him. That grin of his, the thought of walking down this beautiful late-night avenue with him, of not walking home alone through the most romantic streets in the world again, made her chest tighten until the longing pressed into her nipples and hurt . “About the taxi for us ,” she made herself say firmly.
    “Oh, let’s walk!” He grinned at her. “It’s stopped raining. It’s at least one degree above freezing.” He threw out both arms as they came out onto the Champs, taking in the huge, sweeping avenue, from the glowing, triumphant Arc above them to the lodestone promise of the Obélisque on the far end at the Place de la Concorde. “The night is ours. ”
    “I’m not inviting you back to my apartment,” Sarah said, stiff and clumsy.
    Car lights shifted across the paving stones in soft, golden ribbons and caught his eyes so that they gleamed like falling angels. “Sarabelle,” he said