Free The Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand

someone like him. Even right up close, she didn’t penetrate his concentration.
    What was it with her? After three damn years of celibacy, of getting her act together, how had she possibly, on pure instinct alone, looked around a lobby of strangers and picked out the one man who could ignore her as completely and utterly as her father had? How had she let herself be reduced so instantly to that little girl begging for attention again?
    Another step.
    Look at me. See how pretty I am. At least look.
    She needed a therapist.
    Luc didn’t even glance at her. Long, lean, controlled hands flecked the heart with gold leaf.
    Her own heart hurt so much, so suddenly. Her own heart wanted to ask, Why do you take so much better care of that one than me?
    And then she did a bad thing. The kind of thing she used to do to her father, when she was still little and brave enough, or to boyfriends, in the early days of hope, only then it was usually a computer mouse she jiggled. This time she just reached out and touched his wrist.
    The chocolate net shattered, pieces spilling to either side of the golden heart. Summer jerked back and ran into someone who steadied her with a light touch on her shoulder before disappearing in the fluid dance of bodies around her.
    I didn’t mean to ruin it. She almost yielded to the urge to turn tail and run. Instead, she set her shoulders, lifted her chin, and waited for his anger to burst over her. And at last he looked at her.
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    Luc had known the instant she stepped into the kitchens, from the shift in activity, and his teeth sharpened, a lion for a gazelle. Oh, so she didn’t like sweets, did she? Watch this.
    Because he had figured out that dessert for her. It wasn’t something melting and gold held in a palm of darkness. It was something melting and gold entirely surrounded, a sphere of darkness that held it prisoner, that wouldn’t let it get away. And the mousse of the melting heart would be—passion fruit. Tropical, delicate, unforgettable. Saying, Take me, oh, no, sorry, you can’t, I’m only his. Held in this embrace of darkness.
    He lured her in step by step. Knowing exactly what was happening to her, the way her mouth was watering, her body melting, the way temptation was rising in her until she was ready to beg for a taste. He would grant that taste with a smile and watch her get lost in him. Unable to find her way back out. You think I want a pathetic yacht? When I could have you?
    That elusive sunshine gilded over him. His chest tightened in hunger. I’ve got her. She’s mine. Maybe no one else could catch sunshine, but these days he could do even that. It was what, after all, he had worked so hard to learn how to do.
    Control. It was all about control. The only way he could share his soul and turn it into a form no one could resist. This is the sublime. This is who I am. Don’t you ever drop money carelessly in my hand. But when you drop yourself—see how well my hands will take care of you?
    Rich, feral satisfaction surged through him as she took that last step. As she reached, uncontrollably, for that chocolate sphere.
    And then her touch on his wrist ripped his soul right out of its firm seating and lodged it under those two fingers, pulsing madly against them like a caught human heart. The chocolate shattered. She jerked back.
    And his whole world swirled dizzily. No. No, don’t go, come back, I think you have my heart stuck to your fingers.
    She rubbed her thumb over the two fingertips that had touched his pulse, as if she felt something unfamiliar there. Something unfamiliar and a little sticky that she needed to wash off.
    â€œI’m sorry.” Her eyes flicked from the mess to him. “I didn’t mean to—”
    â€œIt’s all right,” he said, cursing himself for that flash of fear in her eyes, and even more for the mess of chocolate. What a wasted chance to utterly subjugate her. Control, you fool. You