Emma headed straight for the espresso machine behind the counter. She pulled herself two shots, slammed back the bitter liquid and felt herself slowly coming back to life.
“Hello, sleeping beauty,” said Lexi, peeking her head through the office door. “Your team is already in the kitchen. Come on.”
Emma let out a mighty yawn and followed her business partner into the office. Five years before, Emma and Lexi had opened the wildly successful Poppy Bakery in downtown Los Angeles. Blood, sweat and tears had gone into every detail. This week, they were facing their biggest project yet: catering the bread and desserts for the Governor’s Ball following the Academy Awards. While Lexi would manage the day-to-day operations for the bakery, Emma would oversee the cakes, pastries and bread for the nearly two thousand guests.
“So, what kind of pirate crew do you have for me?” asked Emma as she tied on her apron.
“I got you Akira,” said Lexi.
Trained in Paris and Tokyo, Akira was one of the most meticulous pastry chefs Emma had ever met. “Excellent,” she said.
“And since you’re making bread, I’ve invited an old favorite.” Lexi put on her reading glasses and tied back her curly silver hair. “Lavoie.”
Emma froze. “What?”
“Lucas Lavoie.”
The name alone made Emma’s skin tingle. “Oh,” she said quietly.
Lexi looked sideways at Emma. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing’s the matter,” Emma said. She smoothed back her messy hair as best she could. “Nothing at all,” she added. She smiled brightly at Lexi, even though her stomach had started to take a slow turn.
They walked from the office into the kitchen where Akira and Lucas were standing next to the bread station.
Had she known she was going to see Lucas today, Emma would have spent the night drinking wine and telling herself that she wasn’t the same person she was when she was twenty-two. She would have reminded herself that she was now capable, confident and completely immune to men with an overabundance of French-Canadian handsomeness. She would have practiced her facial expressions in the bathroom mirror.
Lucas! How nice to see you again. Casual surprise.
Hi, Lucas! Thanks for coming to help us out. Friendly professionalism.
Hey, what’s up? Neutral nonchalance.
But she hadn’t had time to prepare. And now Lucas was here, standing in the middle of the kitchen, talking quietly to Akira about the difference between a starter and a leaven.
Emma felt the deep reverberation of his voice before she saw his face. She pursed her lips. How often had she daydreamed about seeing him again?
Lucas turned to face Lexi and Emma. High cheekbones, dark hair, short beard: he was the epitome of a gorgeous lumberjack. “My favorite California girls!” he exclaimed in his sexy accent. His smile was dazzling.
Before she knew what was happening, Emma had been scooped up along with Lexi into a big bear hug. Lucas was tall and crushed them against his broad chest, but what really struck Emma were his arms—sinuous, heavy with muscle and covered with a new brocade of tattoos. His skin was hot where it touched her wrist. The heat spread through her body like wildfire. When he put them down, Emma was trembling in her clogs as he gave both her and Lexi un bec, the Québécois kiss-kiss on each cheek.
Lexi turned to Akira and said, “Akira, this is Lucas Lavoie, owner-operator of Lavoie Boulangerie in Montreal. He is one of our dearest friends. Lucas helped Emma and me when we first opened.”
As Lexi reviewed the menu with Akira, Emma glanced up at Lucas. He was grinning and staring right at her. The intensity of his blue-gray gaze forced her to look away. As she kept her eyes glued on the stainless-steel surface of the worktable, she felt out of control, aroused and embarrassed—everything that Lucas had made her feel the night before he got on a plane five years ago and left her behind without a text, a note or even un bec goodbye.
“So, Emma,” he said quietly. “Ready to begin again?”
As she and Akira prepped the kumquat coulis sauce for the cheesecakes, Emma watched Lucas at the baker’s bench. He threw a thin coating of flour across the steel table and drew out his ratios right on the surface. Then he went to the storage room for flour, salt, sugar and yeast. Simple ingredients, but in the hands of a bread baker—Lucas’s hands—pure magic.
She tried not to stare as he worked. With efficiency and spare grace, he emptied a sack of flour into the mixer. The muscles in his arms swelled and slid beneath his skin. She had a flashback of what he looked like without his clothes on—his abs flexed, his chest covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Akira turned to look at what she was staring at. “So what are you making?” he asked Lucas.
“Ficelles and grissini with bacon and parmesan. But small. Everything small.”
“Bread for a dollhouse,” said Akira.
“Exactly. It’s going to be a pain in the ass.”
They chuckled and Emma felt like the odd man out, overcome with awkwardness and an exasperated longing for Lucas that she couldn’t shake.
“I’m going to start on the cheesecakes,” she said to Akira. “Did you see the Valrhona chocolate in the storage room? Is it there?”
“The white chocolate? Yes. It’s there.”
In the cramped storage room, Emma loosened the top button of her chef’s jacket and slid her hand underneath, pressing her palm against her pounding heart. Her nonsense with Lucas was nearly five years ago. She needed to get a grip. As she bent down among the cartons and boxes to search for the white chocolate, she heard the door open.
“Akira, did you say it was in the storage room or the utility room?” she said, scanning the bottom shelves.
“It’s here.”
Lucas’s deep voice was soft, dampened in the enclosed space. He knelt down beside her on the tile and put his hand on her cheek. She could smell the flour on it, the clean, comforting scent of work and bread and home.
She started to move away. “You can’t—”
With a kiss, Lucas made her swallow her words. His lips were full and firm. The nerve endings in her lips fired bright sparkles into her brain. Overcome with surprise and pleasure, she parted her lips slightly, and he did the same. She felt the smooth, wet inner part of his mouth against hers. His short beard was soft against her chin.
Lost, Emma closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his fingers against her neck and throat. She curved into him, her body following the contour of his. His big hand slid underneath her chef’s jacket and she felt it on her chest, pressing down against the fluttering of her heart. With a deep groan, he pulled her in closer.
He teased the inside curve of her lips. With the tip of his tongue, he flicked the point of her top lip like he might flick her clit if he were going down on her. Her pussy—not her brain— remembered what that felt like, and all of a sudden she was in his lap on the floor of the storage room. Still kissing him, she straddled him as he leaned back against the metal shelves, gripping her asscheeks and pressing her down on the enormous erection in his jeans.
This is insane, she thought. But she couldn’t stop.
She dipped her tongue down into the sweet, musky darkness of his mouth like she were dipping a strawberry in chocolate, again and again until nothing but dark sweetness covered the berry, sealing in the juice.
With a groan, he broke their kiss. “I missed you so much, Emma,” he whispered. “If only you knew how much I thought about this. About you.”
She closed her eyes and let the sensations take her. Her hands clutching his rock-hard shoulders, she moved her hips up and down against the hard ridge of his cock.
“Did you find the white chocolate?” called Akira from the kitchen.
Emma’s eyes flew open and she froze, the spell broken. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I found it,” she said loudly. “Thank you.”
Slowly she stood up and steadied herself, buttoning up her jacket.
Lucas got to his feet and ran a hand through his hair.
“Thank god for aprons, huh?” he murmured, adjusting himself. For all his bearded manliness, he was blushing.
“I don’t know why that happened,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“I do,” Lucas whispered, following her out. “And if I survive this shift with you, I want to make it happen again.”
Twelve hours later, the refrigerators were full of tiny cheesecakes. The proofing boxes were full of tiny loaves of bread made from a wild yeast starter that Lucas had brought with him from Canada. Fatigue blurring her vision, Emma locked the front and back doors of the bakery and waved goodbye to Akira as he rode away on his bike. Lexi and the rest of the crew were long gone.
“Back at the boulangerie, I’ve been experimenting with longer proofing times,” Lucas said as he walked Emma back to her loft a few blocks away. The sun was setting. After a steamy kitchen, the cool open air was a welcome change.
“Twelve hours is a long time to proof,” said Emma.
“Some dough just needs more time to rise,” he said with a smirk. “We’ll have a big bake-off tomorrow morning. You’ll see. The flavor will be remarkable.”
Traffic lurched down Spring Street. Loft dwellers, dog walkers, homeless people and patrol cops crowded the sidewalk. Emma and Lucas walked past a sidewalk cafe and a few women sitting at the tables nearly got whiplash checking out Lucas, which made Emma feel both disgusted and perversely smug. A late winter wind kicked up between the buildings. Emma put her hands in the pockets of her hoodie.
“You’re cold?” asked Lucas. “This is nothing.”
“I’m from Southern California. This is cold to me.”
Lucas put his arm around her shoulders and held her close. “I’ll keep you warm, ma mie.”
“Ma mie. What does that mean?” she asked. His body heat seeped through his clothes.
“It’s very old-fashioned. It means ‘my darling.’ Also, it means bread. The soft part. Inside the crust.”
They arrived at her building, an old bank that had been converted into lofts.
“Let me come up with you,” Lucas said.
Emma closed her eyes, trying to pretend that the sound of his voice didn’t send all the blood in her veins rushing straight to her clit. “I don’t know if that would be a good idea.”
“It’s a fantastic idea. I assure you.”
“I had a crush on you a long time ago. That’s it,” she said softly. Lucas was the best sex she’d ever had, bar none. No one else had ever come close.
He put his arms around her and whispered in her ear, “That’s not it and you know it. Please, Emma. Let me come upstairs.”
Lips locked in a ravenous kiss, they stumbled into her bedroom. Lucas untied Emma’s ponytail and ran his fingers through her dark hair. He stroked her face, his fingers skimming the burning surface of her skin. Under the spell of his touch, her face became a new erogenous zone. Her nerves pulsed with pure pleasure.
He undressed her in a heartbeat. After she unbuttoned his chef’s jacket and pulled his T-shirt over his head, she looked up at him. He was a fantasy come true, all hard muscle and taut skin. A healthy amount of dark chest hair couldn’t hide his well-defined pecs or the ridges of his abs. His arms were glorious. A full-sleeve tattoo swirled from his wrist to the cap of muscle on his shoulder like the arm guard on a gladiator.
She stared. “What is your tattoo?”
“Lots of things.” As he smiled at her, a lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. He pointed to designs embedded in the tattoo. “These are flowers from the flag of Montreal, a rose and a thistle. Dragon scales here, because I was born in the year of the dragon. And this. Do you recognize this?”
He pointed to a splash of burnt orange on the inside of his forearm.
“No. What is it?” she asked quietly, tracing the design with her fingertip.
“A reminder of your bakery,” he said. “Where I was happy. A California poppy.”
He pushed her gently onto the bed and kissed her until she was breathless. He kneaded her breasts with his big hands and then proceeded to lick and suck on her nipples until her mind went blank, overloaded with sensation.
When he kissed her again, her legs fell open and his hand slid down the center of her body before it stopped at her sex. After he pressed the heel of his palm gently against her soft hair, he curled his fingertips against the achingly hot, slick flesh between her legs. She grabbed his shoulders and shuddered into his kiss.
“You’re so sexy, Emma,” he whispered. “I’m going to devour you.”
As a baker, Lucas did everything by feel. He knew when dough was ready by the way it stretched and pulled between his fingers. His hands were strong and self-assured. Touch was his sharpest sense.
In silence, Emma looked down and watched his fingertips glide over her tender flesh. He placed his thumb and forefinger on either side of her pussy lips and opened her up slowly, revealing hot pink folds that deepened in color toward her center.
Still holding her open, he lowered his lips to her and she felt his warm breath wash over her aching clit. Moisture gathered at the entrance of her pussy and he lapped it up.
“Oh god,” she whispered. She buried her hands in his thick hair and arched her back into the mattress.
His tongue carved through her as he licked up and down the inner lips of her pussy. She could feel his beard brushing against her. He was slow and exacting, each lash of his tongue pulling intense pleasure from her body. Emma could hear her breathing quicken and become raspy.
He besieged her. When the tip of his tongue finally circled her swollen clit, Emma’s long, strangled moan bounced off the bare concrete walls of her loft. At the same time, Lucas sank a thick finger into her pussy, keeping it straight as he pressed deeper and deeper into her heat.
“So tight,” he said. “Yes. Grip me. Like that.”
She did, pulling at him as hard as she could as he began to ravish her clit with his tongue. With his other hand, he reached up and gripped her breast, kneading it hard, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger until rapture slid against the sweet edge of pain.
Still working her with his hot tongue, he pushed a second finger into her, stretching her, pulling back and forth until the friction began to set off deep tremors inside her. The minutes ticked by and Lucas’s constant rhythm summoned layers upon layers of pleasure. Emma dug her hands into the bedsheets and shut her eyes tight, panting, trying to hold back the enormous orgasm that he was building inside her.
“Emma,” he said, breathless. He pulled back. “I feel like I’m going to die.”
Trembling, she sat up and helped him take off his jeans and boxers. His cock sprang up at her, thick and dusky and glistening, the head swollen and purple. She threw him playfully back against the bed. As his legs dangled off the edge of the mattress, she straddled his chest and took him into her mouth, enjoying the feeling of his big cock sliding against her lips.
He grabbed her hips and moved his head between her legs. She slid off his cock and squealed, trying to wiggle away, but he was so much bigger and stronger than her that she had no choice except to endure it when he lifted his hot mouth to her pussy.
“Sixty-nine is so weird,” she said, still struggling. “My ass is right there. In your face.”
“Are you crazy? This is fucking sexy,” he growled. “Suck me. God, I’m begging you.”
She did. She sucked hard on the head of his cock and kneaded the rigid base of his shaft with both hands. He tasted clean, of salt and pure sex, and she couldn’t get enough. His flavor and scent existed in the deepest part of her memory, and as she went down on him, memories of their one wild night came flooding back to her along with years of pent-up longing and regret. At the same time, he feasted on her. The wet, clicking sound of his tongue on her clit drove her insane. His superior sense of touch seemed to tell him when to back off and when to push harder. The dark shadow of her orgasm grew more powerful, but still Lucas wouldn’t let her come.
When she began to tongue his balls, he hissed at last and pulled away, gasping for breath. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and Emma pointed to her nightstand. Lucas took out a condom and rolled it on as she watched. The latex strained around his thick shaft.
He picked her up and placed her head carefully on her pillow. Their eyes still locked together, she spread her legs wide open for him. He took his cock in his hand and slid his glans up and down her delicate flesh, smearing her arousal over them both.
“You are the best lover I’ve ever had, Emma,” he whispered. He leaned forward and the pink lips of her pussy crowned the head of his cock.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she replied, pressing her hands against his rigid pecs. Her fingers looked slim and delicate against his chest. She lifted her hips upward to meet him, and he moaned, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to keep his composure.
“I’m here now,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He raised himself up on his arms, showing off the beautiful sinews in his shoulders and biceps. He flexed his ass and slid into her inch by inch, raising himself up and back each time so that she could feel her pussy stretching around him. He gave her more and more with each thrust until she thought she was going to die of ecstasy, here on the end of Lucas Lavoie’s glorious cock. She had to admit it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
When he was halfway in, he reached down and drew circles on her tender, aching clit. Slick with moisture, the pad of his thumb slid over the tiny button and she began to shiver around him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
He kissed her once more, closed his eyes and slammed home. He pulled out nearly all the way and rammed into her again, crushing her body beneath his.
“Yes,” she said again, gripping his asscheeks. “Like that.”
Lucas began to fuck her hard. Her pussy, stretched to its limit around his shaft, was stuffed so tightly that she couldn’t move as he thrust into her, again and again, smacking his balls against her. His hair grew damp with sweat. Lips parted, he panted and grunted above her, fighting for breath. Outside, a winter wind rattled the windows. Inside, she and Lucas were hot and sweaty, fucking like animals, pushing the bed sideways across the floor.
With muscles built up from years of hauling flour and kneading dough, Lucas picked her up off the bed and, still buried inside her, carried her to the concrete wall by her bed. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Pinned against a cold wall and Lucas’s searing hot body, she began to lose herself: where she was, what she was doing, even her name until Lucas leaned down and whispered it in her ear along with sexy filth in two languages.
“Emma. I love your sweet little pussy, ma chère.”
She couldn’t remember the night she’d spent with Lucas five years ago. The old impressions that flashed through her mind— the taste of him, the feeling of coming hard against his tongue, the shame of losing control—became erased the moment he began to pound into her, pushing the air in and out of her lungs as he pinned her against the wall.
Then he pressed his thumb against her clit, and she was lost.
She came at once. Her screams bounced against the high ceilings of the loft and she convulsed violently around him, again and again, milking him with long, agonizing spasms.
When her climax finally subsided, Lucas, wild-eyed, pulled out of her carefully and turned her around. Panting and dripping, she placed her hands flat against the concrete. He pushed down on the center of her back and bent her forward until her ass was in the air.
He kneaded her asscheeks and pulled them apart just far enough to make her squirm. She was almost a foot shorter than him, so he had to bend his knees as he fed his cock back into her. The smell of sweat and sex and latex filled the room and Emma drank it in the way she drank him in, all of her senses hungry for more.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded.
She slid a hand down between her legs and rubbed her clit as Lucas slid deeper. He gathered her hair in his fist and pulled her head back. The pain coaxed fresh spurts of arousal from her pussy and Emma felt the improbable stirrings of a second orgasm at the base of her spine.
Holding on to her hip, he began to ride her hard, smacking into her ass with the rigid muscles of his abs. He changed his angle and the head of his cock dug against the front wall of her pussy, hitting her G-spot with laser precision.
“There,” he whispered. He quickly found his rhythm. Holding her in a lock that she couldn’t—and didn’t want to— escape from, Lucas pounded her until she began to feel herself losing control again.
He pulled her hair again, harder this time, putting a deep bend in her spine like the curve of a bow.
“Now, Emma. Come now,” he growled.
Her pussy exploded again, crushing him in another series of merciless convulsions. Lucas climaxed in silence, his hand grasping her hip, his cock thickening and pulsing inside her. Blood rushed in her ears as they took the long, sweet ride together.
Afterward, he collapsed against her, his solid chest pressed against her back, his arms wrapped around her waist.
“God,” he gasped. “Oh god.”
They stood together for a full minute as they caught their breath. Slowly, he slid out of her and turned her around in his arms.
She looked up at him as he held her. “I missed you,” she whispered.
He brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “I missed you, too,” he said.
At four in the morning, Emma’s alarm clock went off. She reached up and hit the snooze button. As she rolled back over, Lucas took her again in his arms, pinning her to the mattress and pressing his insistent early morning hard-on against her belly.
“Good morning, ma mie,” he whispered, gently biting her earlobe.
He reached down and brushed his fingertips against her hypersensitive clit. At the command of his touch, her body began to well up again. In less than a minute, she was slick and hot and ready.
“I want you,” Lucas said. “Then and now.”
His words brought her mind into sharp focus. She reached down and took his wrist, pulling his hand away from her.
He opened his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. “I always regretted sleeping with you. I thought you didn’t want me.”
“What?” Lucas said. “No, my god. That is not it at all.” He sat up.
“Then what?”
He brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. “I was so in love with you. But I had nothing, Emma. A temporary visa that was about to expire. No money in my pocket. What could I offer you?”
She looked down at his hand in hers. “Yourself. A text. A note. Something.”
“I thought you would be better off without me. But I was wrong to treat you that way.” He brought her hand to his lips. “It’s been five years and I can’t get you out of my mind. I told myself when I got on the plane, if you weren’t seeing anyone, I would try to make things right between us. Emma, I want you. Let me prove it to you.”
“How can this possibly end well? You live in Montreal. I live in Los Angeles.”
He gave a little Gallic shrug. “There’s an old saying. ‘L’absence est à l’amour ce qu’est au feu le vent; il éteint le petit, il allume le grand.’ It means that absence in love is like wind on fire. It blows out small fires, but it makes big fires grow bigger.”
She sighed. “That’s stupid. Just because you make it sound pretty by saying it in French doesn’t make it less stupid.”
He took her hand and wrapped it around the shaft of his cock. “Well,” he said with a wink, “I myself am stupid in both English and French. At least you can’t accuse me of misrepresentation.”
Two hours later, flushed and smiling, they staggered into the bakery and fired up the ovens. The elemental smell of fresh bread filled Emma’s nose as she began to assemble the white-chocolate petals for the cheesecakes. When the first tiny loaf came out of the oven, Lucas tore it open and fed it to her. Its crackling crust gave way to a hot, elastic center. They shared bites of bread, cups of espresso and more kisses until the morning crew came in.
At noon, the catering truck came to pick up the bread and desserts for the Governor’s Ball. Akira, Emma and Lucas celebrated with sparkling wine and ham and butter sandwiches made with Lucas’s amazing bread.
That afternoon, Emma drove Lucas across town to Santa Monica where he was staying. On Ocean Drive, the fresh sea air kissed her face as Lucas ran his hand through her hair. The bittersweet happiness of being close to him again filled her veins like a drug.
“I’m in love with you,” he said.
“You can’t be serious. You’re just visiting.”
“Who said I was just visiting?” he said. He pointed to a busy street corner. “This is me. Stop here.”
She pulled up to the curb in front of an empty storefront whose windows were covered with brown paper.
“You want proof that I’m serious about us?” Lucas asked. “Look up, ma mie.”
“What?”
Emma looked through the windshield. Above the store window hung a sign, done up in blue and white. Emma gasped as she read it.
Lucas smiled. “They told me Americans can’t pronounce boulangerie. So I settled on ‘Lavoie Bakery.’ I don’t think it has the same ring, but what do I know? Whatever the case, we open in July.”
She was confused. “So…you’re opening…another branch?”
“No, ma mie. I sold the one in Montreal. This is home now.” He took her hand and kissed it. “It’s been a long time for us, Emma. Tell me. Will you be my girlfriend?”
She was quiet for a moment, too overcome with emotion to respond.
“What do you think?” he asked. The vulnerability in his eyes made her heart ache.
This is insane, she thought.
“Yes,” she said.
Their kiss outlasted the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. By the time they made it out of the car and upstairs into his apartment, the sky was deep blue and aching for stars.
“You know,” she said, unbuckling his belt as he walked backward into the bedroom. “‘Lavoie’ is no walk in the park for Americans to pronounce either.”
“Too bad,” he said with a smile. “The sign’s already paid for. Everyone will just have to learn.”