The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand Read Free Book Online Page A

himself was never going to face off against Dominique.
    Dom watched them a second, to make sure they didn’t return with reinforcements, then took his inconnue out of the crowd, still with a hand on her shoulder, guiding her far enough down one of the boulevards to be out of the mob. “Pardon,” he said to her, when they were far enough away from the noise to hear each other. “Ça va?”
    She had recovered from that instant of relief and now looked—and felt, her shoulder in his hand—tense and brooding.
    “I’m fine,” she said roughly. “Perfectly fine.” She hesitated and then looked up at him. That brooding anger got confused, distracted; fascinatingly, she blushed.
    That—had to be promising. All the hardness in him melted like chocolate too close to a flame, and he smiled down at her, helplessly enthralled.
    “That was very nice of you, though,” she said. “Thank you.”
    Nice. He could have let her save herself, walking toward the riot police or into the nearest bar; it was not as if the men could have done anything but harass her with a few crude words in this spot. He could have walked up, smiled at her, and put his arm around her shoulders, ignoring the men altogether, which would have made them instantly turn their attention elsewhere, with no chance of violence. Instead, he had just nearly started a fight, in circumstances that could have turned a peaceful protest into a tear-gassed mob scene. If that was her idea of nice, they might actually suit each other.
    “My pleasure,” he said, which was unfortunately all too true. Violence must be like nicotine; you never quite got over the addiction. He still felt the powerful desire to go back into the crowd, haul both those men out of it, and drive his fists into their faces. “I hope I didn’t scare you.”
    She shook her head minutely. “Startled me, for a second.” Which was a lie if he ever heard one; for a split second, her reaction had been pure terror. But that terror had been so instantly, so oddly, so completely allayed. An odd, faraway look came over her. “You smelled like chocolate,” she murmured. He remembered that instant when she had relaxed against his chest, before she had even looked up and seen his face.
    Desire surged and fisted around him. He wanted nothing in life but to strip them both naked, to wrap her in his scent. It made his breath ragged with the effort not to say it, not to lean into her, aggressive and guttural, and say, Come smell me all over.
    His scalp prickled with the struggle not to be as crude and direct as the two strangers he had just driven away. He cleared his throat and forced himself a couple of steps back out of her personal space, before he violated every centimeter of it. “It’s better in the middle than at the edges,” he said, trying to focus on practical advice because he didn’t want her getting in trouble on her own some day while he was up in his laboratoire and had no idea. “The troublemakers always hang out on the edges.”
    She made a little face. “I hate being in the middle of a crowd, though. I used to enjoy it, but these days, it feels as if I can’t get out.”
    Hunh. It must be odd to be so small. He could shove his way through most masses of people. Crowds didn’t trap him. They just made him want to hit people. “I don’t like being in the middle, either.” He was adamantly against hitting people who didn’t deserve it. “You could just avoid protests. Tear gas is no fun.”
    She grimaced. “I know.”
    “You do ?” She was American, right? He had gotten the vague idea that Americans were too passive for protests, but maybe that was just one of those media stereotypes.
    She shrugged oddly. After a second, she held up three fingers.
    “That’s exactly how many times I’ve gotten tear-gassed,” he said, considerably startled.
    “Most of mine were as a student.” She sounded so stiffly defensive, she must be talking to someone else in her head. He wasn’t