The chocolate melted on her tongue. When she bit down, the flavour of the sultana exploded through her. She groaned and closed her eyes in ecstasy.
When he took her hand and poured the sultanas into them, she made no protest. She ate them, savoured them.
He watched her devour them. The gleam had left his eyes, replaced with something she couldn’t read and was too cowardly to decipher.
‘You really do love them.’ His voice was low.
‘They’re my favourite food on earth.’
‘Then why deny yourself? Especially today?’
The pile he’d tipped into her hand had gone. She’d eaten them all. And she wanted more. Lots more.
Are you going to be a complete glutton, Nicola Ann?
With a gulp, she seized the lid and tried to put it back on the jar, only Cade wouldn’t let her. He captured her hand, his grip tightening until she looked at him. ‘Why deny yourself?’
Her pulse throbbed at the contact. She tried to shrug. ‘Once I start eating them, I can’t stop.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
He couldn’t be serious? ‘If I keep eating them, I will get fat. Fatter,’ she amended. ‘How on earth will I lose weight if I keep indulging?’
‘So you won’t even allow yourself the occasional indulgence?’
‘It’s dangerous to indulge a weakness.’
His eyes narrowed. He poured more sultanas into his hand and held one out to her. She swallowed. She tried to say no, but his eyes urged her to throw caution to the winds, to live in the moment.
She opened her mouth, helpless to resist either Cade or the sweet, and savoured every delicious moment of the morsel.
‘It’s ludicrous to deny yourself such a simple pleasure.’
It wasn’t simple, though. She couldn’t help but feel this lack of self-control was somehow tied into being treated so badly by Diane and Brad...and all her friends thinking her a doormat. Slimming down, brightening herself up and not allowing herself to be taken for granted would prove to them all that she wasn’t a doormat. Or a failure.
He held another sultana up, she opened her mouth and he slipped it between her lips. The inherent sensuality of the gesture was as delicious as the chocolate and sultana combination. ‘Would you be happier if you were thin?’
She blinked. ‘Well, hello, yes!’ Any woman would say yes to that.
He slammed the jar of sultanas onto the coffee table. ‘Why the hell is that so? What the hell is wrong with your body? I love your body. I can’t stand that you hate it.’ He ground his teeth together and then poured more sultanas into her hand. ‘Your worth is not measured by your weight or your waistline. Eat!’
He loved her body? With tears prickling the backs of her eyes, she ate.
Finally she had to lean back with a groan and shake her head. ‘If I have any more I’ll be ill.’
Only then did Cade replace the lid on the jar. He turned back to her. ‘What do you think losing weight will prove to Diane and Brad...or your mother?’
His perception froze her.
‘That you have worth?’
If she said yes, would he yell at her again?
‘It’s not your weight that’s the problem, Nicola, it’s your attitude. Until you learn to embrace your body, to love it as you should love it because it’s beautiful, then nobody else is going to give you the respect you deserve.’
He reached out and cupped her cheek. His hand smelled of chocolate. She wanted to close her eyes and breathe him in. ‘We teach people how to treat us. You don’t need to lose weight. You need to learn to walk tall—with pride and confidence.’
She thought about that, and about the way Verity and Dee carried themselves. The way Cade carried himself. They walked with pride and confidence, as if they were sure of who they were and their place in the world.
Growing up with her mother’s constant stream of criticism had eroded her confidence and sense of self-worth, but she wasn’t a child any longer. She was an adult, able to make her own value judgements, and there were a lot of things she could do well. She was a good teacher and a good friend. She could ride a horse as if it were second nature. When she sang, people stopped to listen. She believed in the values of compassion, kindness and justice.
‘Well?’
She stared into his eyes and realised she couldn’t believe those values held true for other people and not for herself too. Values didn’t work that way.
She blinked, stunned by the revelation. ‘I think,’ she started slowly, ‘that you might be right. I mean, it’s such a simple truth but...’ She’d never seen it before.
Finally he smiled and it was like Christmas all over again. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you.’
He stilled. His gaze lowered to her lips and his eyes darkened. Heat threaded through her...and temptation.
‘You should go to bed.’
The words growled out of him, but his gaze remained on her lips, the hunger in them identical to her hunger for the chocolate sultanas. It was then she realised there was something she craved more than those—Cade. She wanted him with an elemental savagery that shook her bones.
She should move away and go to bed like he’d ordered, but Cade had set something free in her tonight when he’d tempted her with those sultanas and told her he loved her body. He’d made her face temptation head-on. He’d forced her to indulge it. Now she had no hope of resisting the greater temptation he presented. She had no desire to do so.
She slipped her hands either side of his face and, leaning forward, placed her lips on his. She tasted of chocolate, he tasted of whisky, and the combination of flavours was as heady as anything she had ever experienced.
He held himself still beneath her touch, but he didn’t pull away and, emboldened, she moved in closer to deepen the kiss and taste him more fully.
A breath shuddered out of him. Her hands explored the angle of his jaw, the strong line of his neck and shoulders. One of her hands snaked around his head to anchor her more firmly against him while her other splayed across his chest, revelling in the male strength of him.
With that movement it was as if she had released some check or restraint in him. With a groan, he gathered her close and claimed her lips with a potent mastery that had her trembling and reeling both at the same time.
His hand moved to the hem of her shirt, and then under it. The skin on skin contact made her gasp as a delicious new energy and a brand new greed fired through her. He pressed her back against the sofa, angling her beneath him as his lips and tongue teased her lips and tongue, and all she could do was cling to him. One powerful thigh insinuated its way between her legs. She arched against it, wanting to feel him pressed against all of her, gripped by a need bigger than herself.
He’d fed her chocolate sultanas. He’d told her he loved her body. He kissed her exactly how she’d always needed to be kissed but had never been kissed before. The man was perfect!
With a growl, she reached up and tore the buttons from his shirt, raked her fingernails down his bare chest. He hissed in a breath and she revelled in the freedom of touching him. She pressed her palms to his hot skin and breathed him in. He was hard and as smooth as satin.
Perfect!
Slowly, deliciously, she moved her hands down to his stomach. He trembled. Had she done that? She did it again. He trembled again and she revelled in the knowledge that she could affect all of this superb masculinity so easily, with just a touch.
Beneath her shirt, his hand moved to cover one breast. Beneath