Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 141(@200wpm)___ 113(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
“Yes, chef,” she whispers, humor dancing in her eyes.
I almost scrap this whole experiment due to her being so adorable and start kissing her again, but no. Just hold on another minute or you’ll always wonder.
I keep the spoon in her mouth long after she’s finished tasting, turning it over and around, bringing it away glistening with the taste of her. And Claire watches with surprise as I dip that spoon back into the sauce, stirring it around and around, counterclockwise.
A ripple goes across the surface, purple sparks teasing along the edges of the concoction. We both see it. I know this, because she gasps.
Right before my very eyes, the burgundy color deepens to a hue I can’t even name.
I’ve never seen this rich type of red in my life.
Anticipation brewing in my gut, I spoon the new version of the sauce into my mouth…
The perfection of it almost drops me to my knees.
It’s a flavor with no name, no classification…but the origin is clear.
It’s Claire.
She’s been my missing ingredient all along.
Chapter Five
Claire
Draven bundles me up in my coat and carries me out the back door of Tartine in his arms, as if I’m made of glass. I don’t fully comprehend what just happened back in the kitchen, but what I saw happen with Draven’s sauce…it was extraordinary. A phenomenon that felt real and dreamlike, at the same time.
All I did was allow the spoon into my mouth.
When he dipped that spoon back into the pot, it changed. I saw it.
And I tasted it, too.
I’ve never been so overcome by a flavor in my life.
Could I really have had something to do with creating it?
My feet don’t touch the ground once on the way to Draven’s car. I’m expecting him to drive something big and expensive, considering Tartine is such a successful restaurant and he’s a nationally recognized chef. But no, he drives a modest gray BMW that looks like it was manufactured in the nineties.
“It belonged to my mother,” Draven explains as I’m buckled into the passenger seat. Once that task is done, he pulls back reluctantly, his eyes skimming my face, his fingertips tracing the curve of my cheekbone. “What happened in the kitchen…it was real. I’m not crazy, right?”
“You’re not crazy,” I whisper. “It really happened.”
A muscle shifts in his cheek, his knuckle tracing down the front of my body, between my breasts, which are still bare beneath my coat. He slips a hand inside the wool and teases my nipple into a point, making my breath come faster, the possessiveness in his golden eyes causing my pulse to scatter. “Is it crazy that I don’t want anyone to consume that sauce but me now?”
“Yes, that is crazy,” I manage. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
“You are the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life, Claire.” He stares at my mouth like a thirsty man regards an ice-cold pint of water. “I don’t want anyone else to know your flavor.”
I reach out and run my fingers through his hair, the dark strands in a tousle from being beneath his chef cap all day. “Why don’t we worry about it tomorrow?”
“Yes.” His chest dips and rises dramatically, his attention traveling down the front of my body where a sliver of my belly and lap are showing beneath the parted coat. “The only thing I should worry about tonight is how deep you can stand me.” Cursing, Draven pulls my coat back together with unsteady hands. “It’ll be a miracle if I make it one thrust.”
Thrust.
I’m still marveling over that word and the image it conjures when Draven stands abruptly and closes the passenger side door. Keeping his eyes on me through the windshield the whole time, he crosses in front of the bumper and climbs into the driver’s side, his body almost too large to fit, the bottom of the steering wheel cutting into the tops of his powerful thighs.
Thrust.
That word continues to dance in my head. Is Draven going to get on top of me as soon as we’re inside his apartment and…thrust inside of me? It’s such an aggressive word that helps paint the picture of what’s to come. Draven’s thick and mighty body on top of my younger one, his appendage squeezed inside of me. Will it hurt too badly? Or will it feel as extraordinary as his kisses?
Beneath the coat, my body shows signs of excitement, the wool chafing my sensitive nipples and turning my thighs restless inside the stockings.
“Where are you staying, Claire?” Draven asks me now, dragging me out of the fantasy.
“The Dixie Motel.”
His head turns slowly, disbelief etched into his masculine features. “Excuse me?”
“The Dixie Motel,” I say, digging into the pocket of my coat for the key and presenting it to him. “That’s the name.”
“That motel is a dive,” he blusters. “It rents by the hour.”