Read The Chocolate Touch for Free Online Page B

and buttery and just delicately chewy, like condensed sunshine.
    He sprang up as if he couldn’t sit still any longer—the man was probably always in motion—and went to the tall columned displays of his current caramel flavors, grabbing several. The fast, hard, graceful enthusiasm of his movements made her whole soul weep a little with thwarted longing. Like being at a party with one of her favorite movie idols, watching him flirt and play and dance in real life.
    She looked at his big hand as he offered the caramels to her and had to lick the inside of her lips. The little things gleamed bright and warm, light shining off the plastic that wrapped their golden colors, held in that hard, large palm. She took one, delicately, and her fingertips brushed his skin.
    Oh, boy.
    This was better even than that time she had run into a favorite sexy movie star and convinced him to autograph her arm in permanent ink, but it might be more than her heart could take. It was beating like mad already.
    The caramel yielded to her teeth, soft, smooth, creamy, while the flavor of it slapped her palate awake. “What is it?” It reminded her of her travels in the tropics, both the good and the bad.
    “Passion fruit mango.” He watched her eagerly, maybe even a little anxiously, which charmed her. Anyone would think if she hadn’t liked it, it would have crushed him. Dominique Richard. Who, according to her sister, was so outrageously arrogant he made Sylvain Marquis and Philippe Lyonnais look mild-mannered and humble. How dearly he must love to have his ego stroked.
    “It’s delicious.” She bit into the other half. Such an intense flavor, such a luscious texture. Tonight she was going to lie awake fantasizing that he was there stretched out beside her, feeding these to her, too.
    Her skin prickled all over, in protest at this torture, in longing. What she wouldn’t give to have those big, rough hands stroke her in real life.
    Uh-oh. With the movie stars and the rock stars, she had never drifted past fantasy into any kind of real life longing.
    “What about this one?” He unwrapped it. Big fingers on that tiny, delicate twist of plastic, opening the sun for her . . .
    Dulcet texture and stinging flavor. She looked up at him helplessly. Maybe if she gave him her rented apartment number, he would be interested in a one-night stand, despite her ordinary looks. She could be his groupie. It might break her heart, but she thought she had proved she could survive being broken.
    “You’re going to kill me, Monsieur. ” She laughed. “An overdose of deliciousness.”
    Displeasure flashed across his eyes. “You can call me Dominique,” he said brusquely. “I’m not very formal.”
    His eyebrows lifted a touch as he looked at her. Waiting either for her to say his name or to give him hers. But it would be so safe and warm to keep him on his stage. “I wouldn’t presume.”
    He frowned. The light in his face faded radically.
    He hesitated a long moment, and then finally nodded and moved away from her. Back to work. Clouds crowded over her moment in the sun, and it was her own fault. He spoke to the elegant young woman who seemed to run the room, glanced back at Jaime, hesitated again, then ran lightly up that gorgeous spiral of stairs, disappearing into the heavens from which he had descended.
    Which was funny, given that he looked much more like a devil than an angel. Maybe, post-fall, Lucifer had discovered he could bribe his way back into heaven with sufficiently good chocolate. It would work with her if she were God. She watched him go, part of her relieved, part of her wistful. As she cradled the cup in her hands near her face, the heat rising off his chocolate seemed to warm her whole body.
    When she was leaving, the elegant young woman gave her a small, very elegantly ribboned bag, inside which a dozen caramels gleamed like captured suns. “From Monsieur Richard. He wanted you to have them.”
    Jaime reached for her wallet