AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Dark chocolate.” My answer came with no hesitation.
“By itself? Or do you want truffles with other flavors?”
“They’ve even got chocolate-covered bacon,” Jesse said, practically hyperventilating up ahead of us by a few steps. “Honey, I’m going to drool over this.”
“No need to drool. We’ll buy you some chocolate-covered bacon,” Anthony replied.
“What about you?” Levi asked. By some unspoken agreement, the two of us held back a bit, allowing the others to go on without us. “Do you want chocolate-covered bacon?”
I wrinkled my nose in response.
He laughed. “Because we could get you some. Might be good to try it at least once. Expand your horizons or something.”
“That’s a horizon I don’t need expanded, thanks.”
“So in general, you’re not much of a risk taker, then?”
“I never said that. I just don’t think I need to risk having a heart attack and getting diabetes all in one fell swoop.”
“Fair enough.” His hand kept brushing against mine, and then he curled his pinky finger around to lock with my pinky—not holding hands, exactly, but close.
Painfully close.
Heart-leaping-to-my-throat close.
Too close? I couldn’t decide. I kind of liked it, but wasn’t I supposed to be keeping some physical distance between us while I decided whether or not I could trust him? That was one of the aspects of courting that I’d latched on to when Wendy had suggested it.
The truth was, I liked the bit of contact too much to want to let go.
“So you never told me that Anthony’s fiancé was a man,” Levi said after a bit of wandering aimlessly through the crowd.
“Does it matter?”
He shrugged. “Not really. It only means I don’t have to dream about throat punching Anthony every time I see him grabbing your ass anymore.”
This time, I laughed out loud. “He has to touch my butt if he’s going to hold me in some of the lifts we do, you know.”
“I know. And it makes me all kinds of jealous.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I bit the inside of my lower lip.
Levi strolled up to one counter where they had dozens of handcrafted specialty chocolates. He scanned the case for a moment. He turned to me, grinning. “Do you trust me?”
I wasn’t so sure I was ready to go that far in general, but I supposed there wasn’t any real harm in trusting him to make this decision. “Sure,” I said. “You pick.”
When he’d found the ones he wanted, he flagged down a worker. “Two of those,” he said. “And do you have any coffee instead of wine?”
“Espresso would go well with them.”
“Perfect. Two espressos, too.” He dug out his wallet and selected a few bills to pay.
“Coffee’s an interesting choice, when it’s all about chocolate and wine,” I noted.
“Figured we should pace ourselves. There’s a lot of wine to be had, but no reason we need to plow through it all at the beginning. We won’t even be able to taste the chocolate after a while if we have too much wine.”
The worker handed over our selections and Levi’s change, and we carried them to an area with tables and chairs. He held out a chair for me and helped ease me into it. I glanced around and found Anthony and Jesse a few aisles over but still within my line of sight. Good thing they were both tall. Their heads bobbed above the sea of other people crowding the area.
“So you trust me enough to pick out your chocolate, but not enough to be alone with me,” Levi said as he took his seat across from me.
