Page 52 of Across Time

The Friday before the dance is the first evening Marie has been gone all week. Henri asks if I want to come outside, grinning in a way that makes me suspicious. He heads out and I follow on the crutches. After nearly four weeks with a broken ankle, I’ve almost forgotten there was a time when I could barely manage on them. He spreads a blanket in front of the hay bale and helps me lower myself to the ground. I let him, even though I no longer need help.

The sun is already on its way out, solidifying into a fixed ball of color, far to the west.

"I've brought you a treat—a very large chocolate bar—but you need to earn it."

I glance up at him. "That sounds dirty."

He gets a slow smile on his face. "For a woman who's never been with a man your mind certainly goes in that direction a great deal. Do you want to hear about the very large chocolate bar or not?”

I roll my eyes. “You’re the one making this dirty. Talking about the very large chocolate bar. So how large is it?”

He meets my gaze. “Shockingly large. Far more than you can fit in your greedy little mouth.”

Your greedy little mouth. My stomach clenches, an unexpected spike of want deep in my gut.

“Anyway,” he continues, “do you want to learn how you will earn the chocolate, or do you want to continue to drive this conversation in a very inappropriate direction?"

In truth, I’d like to continue sending this conversation in an inappropriate direction, but I suppose I’ve already passed into the realm of unladylike and shouldn’t push it. "Fine, how do I earn the chocolate?"

"By eating it with me down by the lake." He pulls the bar out of a saddlebag and opens it, letting the smell waft my way. I’ve always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with chocolate, or did until I arrived in 1938, where sweets have been extremely hard to come by. Now I think I might punch a small child to get my hands on it.

I narrow my eyes at him. "I'm not going to the lake."

He shrugs. "Fine. Then I guess the chocolate is mine." He waves it in front of my face and I breathe it in. I can almost taste its scent on my lips.

"Wave that thing in front of me one more time and I will snatch it right out of your hands."

He breaks off a small piece, relishing it as it melts against his tongue. "Such good chocolate too."

“It’s not that big anyhow,” I reply. “I’ve seen much, much larger.”

"Next you’ll tell me size doesn’t matter,” he says, laughing as he breaks off another small piece.

He waves it in front of my face and I’m done. I lunge for it, landing atop him, scrambling, without a thought in the world about whether my dress gets filthy or the weight of my cast bruises his shins. It lasts all of two seconds before I find myself flipped onto my back, his weight pinning me down in the dirt.

He grins, triumphant. "Did you really think that would work, little thief? I'm twice your size." We are both laughing, struggling like children. There's nothing sexual about it, but my pulse is racing and I feel set free, abandoned from my normal restraint. Nothing matters more than winning. Even if I wind up shoving that chocolate bar in the dirt.

My hand snakes out and I pinch his side hard, the way I once did with Steven. Somehow I'm certain he’s as ticklish as my brother once was—and I'm right. His body jerks sideways in surprise and I use the momentum to flip him on his back straddling him with my hands pressed to his chest.

"Give me the chocolate," I demand.

His expression has changed, eyes glittering with something dark and determined I haven't seen there before, mouth slightly ajar.

"No," he says. His voice is rough.

I reach for the chocolate, my face hovering just over his when I feel it. Only his pants and a bit of my bunched-up dress separate us, but there's no denying the size and the status of the thing directly between my legs. His face, an inch below mine, looks tortured and when I shift he flinches, releasing a small sound that contains so many things—pain and restraint and defeat and hunger, all rolled into one.

He uses my surprise to flip me again, and when I'm under him he holds some of his weight off me, but not all of it. His breathing is heavy as his eyes brush over my face, resting on my mouth. I’m fairly certain my breath has stopped entirely.

I want what will come next so badly that I swear I can feel it happening. My lips swell with that future kiss, my body taut and tormented, skin eager for the rough press of his unshaved jaw. I already know how soft his mouth will feel, what it will be like to slide my hands through his thick hair and pull him closer. It’s all I can do not to arch into him to make it happen faster.

He flinches. "You may have the chocolate," he says, removing himself.

His absence feels like rejection, and it is knife-sharp. It makes me want to lash out at him somehow, or merely have a tantrum I can blame on him.

"Too much excitement for you?" I ask.

His eyes lower to my chest, where my nipples are poking against the thin material of the dress. "Not just for me, it would seem," he says, and then he saunters away, completely at ease with the entire exchange while I am left with some combination of furious and confused and so excited it borders on pain.