PrimalFlavor (20 page)

“What’s the point in working for it if you never have time
to enjoy it?” she’d asked as she licked her spoon clean. “Don’t get me wrong, I
think you need to keep workin’ on makin’ new recipes and stuff, but you’re
gonna kill yourself if you don’t pace yourself.”

He turned to the shifter staring at him as though he’d grown
a second head. “You’re my right hand in the bakery, Emily. You’ve worked for me
without much complaint, putting up with my temper and you’ve proven to be one
hell of a baker. I want you to take over the day-to-day operations at the
bakery.” He smiled, amazed at how much lighter he already felt. “And you’re
getting a ten-percent wage increase as well as a share in the profits at the
end of the year.”

When she hit the floor in a dead faint, Zach rubbed the back
of his neck with a frown. He needed to work on his delivery. But he still
reached for his phone and called down for Dwayne Paulsen, telling the cougar
shifter to make his way upstairs.
May as well dole out the shock all at
once.

The dark, decadent chocolate hit her tongue, followed by
heat that sank into her bones. Colette reached up to grab Zach by his hair,
forgetting he’d tied her hands to the legs of his stainless-steel worktable. He
kissed her, the taste of Zach and bitter chocolate going straight to her head
like a drug. Only his lips touched her, but she swore she felt him all over,
the warmth of his body bathing her naked skin.

When she’d arrived at his apartment, stomach fluttering with
shy excitement and arousal, Zach had swooped down on her like an avenging
angel. She’d barely managed to squeak out a hello before she found herself
pinned against the door, her pants around her ankles and his cock powering into
her. She shivered at the reminder of how he’d thrust into her over and over as
though he wanted to be a part of her. They’d both come loudly and with a wet
rush that made her thankful his apartment was above the now-closed bakery.
Otherwise, everyone would’ve known what they were doing.

They’d eaten at the table, both naked as the day they were
born, but it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. He’d fed her fried alligator and
creamy white beans, spooning the deliciousness into her mouth. The tiger cooked
as well, if not better, than her own mother, a feat very few ever managed. He’d made sure she was nearly full before he
ate. As though her care came first with him. It’d left her feeling shy and a
little breathless, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

Then he surprised her with dessert. Colette had imagined his
infamous Triple Decadence Chocolate cake. What she hadn’t expected was for him
to make
her
the dessert. Which was how she found herself tied to his
table with thick chocolate and caramel swirls all over her body.

“Mm,” he said as he pulled away from the kiss, lapping at
her lips like a lazy cat. “You taste better than anything I’ve ever made.” His
mouth moved down her throat, stopping a moment to suck at her pulse before he
nibbled his way to her left breast. Swirling his tongue around the hard peak,
he gathered the sticky sweet he’d left to warm against her skin. “Delicious.”

Her entire body flushed with pleasure at his compliment even
as she shook her head. “I don’t know. Those apple caramel cookies you make are
pretty damn good,” she blurted the first thing that came to mind. How did you
respond to a man saying you tasted better than his desserts? By deflecting the
attention away from her on to something else.

Except it backfired on her.

His tongue stopped and his lustful face appeared over hers. “Apple
caramel cookies?” he asked with a frown. “I haven’t made those since last year
when they didn’t sell well.”

If there was one thing Colette hadn’t wanted, it was for
Zach to find out exactly how long she’d crushed on him. She hadn’t lied to him
earlier that day when she said she’d wanted him from the moment she saw him,
she just hadn’t wanted him to realize she’d first seen him a year before. So
instead of answering him, she lifted her head and kissed him, tasting caramel
and Zach, which was way better than cookies.

One of his hands found its way to her thigh, where they were
splayed at the edge of the table. Her entire body quivered from that simple
contact. She knew what he was capable of giving her and she needed it like she
needed her next breath. But while his hand slid up the tender length of her
thigh, he didn’t touch her suddenly drenched cunt. His fingers played high on
her leg, the back of his hand tickling the trimmed hair covering her mound,
teasing her.

“Colette,” he said in that deep, rumbling voice. “Have you
been to my shop before? Without your family?”

She opened her mouth to say something along the lines of, “I
really can’t remember,” but the evil man proved himself to be an interrogator
of the sneaky, sexy kind. When she would’ve hedged on the truth, he stroked his
fingers along her slick lips, gathering moisture and skirting her aching clit.
Her breath caught, trapped by his gaze. He stared down at her with all the
patience of a skilled hunter, the tiger obviously determined to know.

“I remember my kitchen assistant talking about some of our
regular internet customers,” he remarked casually, although his fingers were
very deliberate as they played at her entrance, teasing her with the promise of
penetration. “And she always wondered why someone from Bayou Ange would have
desserts shipped to them instead of picking it up themselves.” He slid one lean
finger inside her tight entrance, curling it to tap her G-spot. Colette
twitched, muscles tight with the need to clamp her legs together, holding his
hand to her. But there was no moving. He’d tied her down too well. “I never
thought of it much until now,” he mused as he pumped his finger inside her,
adding a second one when her channel relaxed. “I bet if I pulled up the
database, I’d see your address, wouldn’t I?”

He did something, stroked harder, or was it softer? She
couldn’t even tell and didn’t care as long as he continued. Her back arched off
the table, her limbs straining the limits of her tethers, head thrashing as
tortuous pleasure tore through her, stealing her breath, the buildup almost
more than she could bear.

And then it stopped.

Colette’s mouth opened in shock as she was left hanging.
Zach stared down at her, a smile playing around his sensuous lips as though he
knew exactly what he was doing. “
Fils de putain
,” she snapped at him,
the insult bouncing off him as though it meant nothing. He even beamed at her.

“Now that wasn’t very nice,” he teased. “Would I find your
address in my database, Colette? I’ll finish what I started if you tell me.”

She squirmed, embarrassed and turned-on and frustrated, but
she knew she wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Not until he let her go. Her
heart leapt at the thought, her body going liquid with the realization that she
was at his mercy. And the dark, dangerous glint to his eyes suggested he had
none.

She bit her lip to keep from responding. God, was she sick?
Did she actually want him to torture her with pleasure? Yes, yes she did. She
loved everything he did to her, even when it was this, her body soaking up
every ounce of pleasure he gave her like the soil after a drought.

And he didn’t disappoint. He went to work on her again, his
face disappearing from view, but a peek downward showed Zach pulling a chair up
to the table, seating himself right between her spread legs. Her heart hopped
up her esophagus when he looked at her, gold eyes gleaming with dangerous
mischief.

“No,” she breathed even as her pussy grew slick at the
implied threat. “You wouldn’t.”

The smile he sent her was lethal and then she couldn’t see
it at all because he proved he would. Very well.

Colette’s cries echoed in his ears, her harsh breathing
rasped along his nerve endings. And still he didn’t stop. He wouldn’t until she
told him what he wanted to know, what his heart told him was fact. In his mind,
he remembered her talking smack about his cakes, his desserts. The tiger
rumbled with barely suppressed humor. It liked how sassy she was, enjoyed the
thought of pleasuring her until she confessed. The sweet scent of her arousal
and the salty tang of her cream told him how much she enjoyed it as well.

He lapped at her cunt, burrowing through her slit until he
reached her clit. And purposely bypassed it. She twitched, the muscles of her
legs straining. She babbled in Cajun French, curses and pleas, but she didn’t tell
him what he wanted to know. Zach smiled against her soaked sex, eyes closing as
he toyed with her, fucking her with his tongue. It wouldn’t be enough to make
her come, but it would make her hotter, wetter. And he was proved correct when
his forays were met with more moisture.

“Tell me you liked my desserts,” he rumbled against her
pussy, knowing the vibration of his voice would add to her torment. “Tell me
you want me to cook for you again, Colette.”

She panted, strained some more, her beautiful body gracing
his table like the finest of desserts. “No.”

“Tell me,” he insisted, wrapping his lips around her hard
clit and suckling just enough to make her screech. “Tell me.”

She shook her head, her body glistening with sweat. If
anyone had told Zach he’d purposely tie a woman to his worktable, one of his
sacred, sterile surfaces and torment her there, he would’ve looked at them as
though they were crazy. But the minute he’d tempted her with the ties, had seen
the shy excitement on her face at the thought of being helpless, he’d shrugged
and tossed her on top of his table. It could be cleaned and since she was the
only woman who’d ever graced it, he didn’t mind at all.

He twisted his fingers in her tight sheath, pumping them as
he worked her clit, scraping it with the edge of his fangs. And she went tense
around him.

“Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes, I do, yes. Now please let me come.”

He didn’t waste time with a triumphant grin. His balls hurt
too much for that. Instead, he grabbed one of the condoms he’d thrown on the counter
after dinner and tore it open. He rolled it down his length and plunged into
his mate’s tight body with one strong thrust. Zach barely had time to enjoy the
way her muscles opened around him before those same muscles clenched on his
cock hard enough to leave him gasping. Colette cried out, singing out her
pleasure as she came, urging Zach and his tiger into a frenzy of pumping as he
followed her into bliss.

And it was full-on bliss, not the abbreviated kind he’d had
with other females in the past. Colette turned him inside out, upside down and
he loved it. Loved her with every fiber of his being.

* * * * *

His bed wasn’t as comfortable as hers. Colette stretched her
back, causing Zach to tighten his arms around her. As if she were going
anywhere. Yet. She cracked open one eye to look at the clock. It was just after
midnight and she wasn’t ready to leave even though she’d have to. Snuggling
deeper in his embrace, Colette enjoyed the moment. It amazed her how
comfortable he made her feel with her body, with her sexuality. There was
nothing embarrassing when they were together. After he’d tortured her into
telling her dirty little secret, he hadn’t lorded it over her. Much.

She grinned into the darkness because that was a flat-out
lie. When he let her go, limp and panting for breath, he’d picked her up and
strutted to his shower where he proceeded to clean her from head to toe. And he
hadn’t been able to keep from smiling, like the cat that got the cream. And
then some.

“I knew you wanted me for my baked goods,” he told her as he
scrubbed his hair, looking as smug as any man could possibly be. “No one can
resist those.”

In that moment, he looked completely carefree in a way she’d
never noticed before. It was as though she were seeing him for the first time. She’d
fallen for his sexy smile and his charm, but that love solidified when she saw
his boyish grin and pride in his accomplishments. As if her opinion really
mattered to him. If that didn’t make a girl feel special, Colette didn’t know
what would. And she wanted to see more of that part of him, wanted to know
everything about him, but unlike a lot of women, she wasn’t the best
conversationalist. More often than not, she put her foot in her mouth, which
was why she spent more time with her male relatives and Kanda than her
cousins-in-law.

But her curiosity urged her to ask him something. They were
both relaxed and sated from their climaxes. She wet her lips and cleared her
throat.
Ease into it, ask something everyone could talk about.
Family
was good. She loved talking about her family. And he’d seemed receptive to the
chatting they’d done in her boat after the last time they made love. Except, he
never spoke about them. Never mentioned them, or any funny stories he might
have. She knew his grandmother had raised him, had taught him the business, but
he never really talked about her other than as a teacher.

“Zach?”

“Hm?” he hummed into her hair, his embrace still tight.

“What’s your family like?”

If he hadn’t been holding her so close, she probably
wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong. His breathing didn’t change and she
couldn’t see his face, but his entire body stiffened slightly and his purring
stopped. Not enough to be a flinch, but enough that she felt it. And it worried
her because she felt as though she’d inadvertently hurt him.

Colette twisted in his hold until she faced him. His face
was in shadows, the streetlights streaming through the window doing little to
alleviate the darkness in his bedroom. Still, she could see the glitter of his
eyes. “You don’t have to answer that,” she said, suddenly desperate to hear him
purr again, to feel his contentment. “I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

One of his arms fell away from her, his hand reaching up to
tuck her hair behind her ear and almost petting her as though the movement
soothed him. “No, you have every right to ask me,” he said after he spent a
long time smoothing down her hair to his satisfaction. “I just don’t have the
kind of family you do.” He huffed out a laugh, relaxing slightly. “Probably a
good thing too.”

“You’re always welcome at my parents’ house,” she said
shyly. “My mama liked you.” She held her breath because this was when he should
start backpedalling. There was no way he could mistake her feelings if she was
inviting him to come back to meet her family, especially her mother.

“She’s a great cook,” was all he said.

This was not going the way she’d wanted it to, but she
persisted, even though it was obviously a sore subject. “What about your
family? Were they all good cooks?” she asked instead, thinking that had to be a
safer subject. His lip curled, not in a smile, but in a frown and her heart
sank. She was worse at this after-sex talk than she’d thought.