Page 65 of Sweet Ruin

I don’t.

I just reach out and take one, too.

The first bite ruins me forever.

It’s hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth, but I couldn’t care less, because I could never taste anything again for the rest of my life and this one bite would still be enough to sustain me.

Sugar cracks. Then the inside gives, soft, warm, and buttery. The texture is perfect. It’s like chewing a cloud.

I have eaten in Paris and Tokyo and Moscow. I have paid the world’s finest chefs to describe food to me while I chewed it.

None of it was this.

Not. Even. Fucking. Close.

There’s only one thing better than enjoying the fruits—or rather, the sweets—of Delilah’s labor.

And that’s watching her enjoy it.

She lets out the tiniest, squeakiest little whimper. Her eyes flutter closed and she licks the sugar-frosted tip of her finger. Her lips open and close, her cheeks ripple with the motion of chewing, and she exhales through her nose.

That aura of ease steals over her again.

A happy woman, with sweetness on her lips.

Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to taste her.

When she swallows, she cracks her eyes open again and squints at me warily.

“Well?” she says.

“It’s good.”

“Wow. Somebody call the newspapers. We’ve got a food critic on our hands.”

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” I clarify as solemnly as I can, so she knows I’m serious.

She preens. “That’s better.”

A moment of silence follows. The popping of the oil has settled down now that the burner’s off, so our mingled breathing and the groan of the walk-in freezer are the only sounds left in this warm little oasis.

The world outside is cold and frosted over. But in here, the swirls of flour and sugar feel like a private snowfall for us and us alone.

And we are definitely alone.

In a sick and twisted sort of way, this is what I came for tonight. I wanted a brief, private audience with Connor Boyd, so I could squeeze him until he crumbled and gave me what I was truly after.

In many ways, this is better. I have direct access to the source. I’m one whispered threat away from getting this woman to sign over her life’s work to me.

A single sentence and a single signature. That’s all it would take, and the last building on this block would finally be mine.

“What?” Delilah asks, suddenly nervous. It’s like she can sense the dark turn my thoughts have taken. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I make a spur-of-the-moment choice:

Not yet.

I won’t rip it all away from her. It’s fucking Christmas Eve, after all. Even I’m not that cruel.