Page 111 of The Sinner's Bargain

Thoran barely glanced up from his attempts to pry the lid open on the box. “Hmm?”

He seemed to focused on his task that I just chuckled and shook my head. “Nothing.”

The top lifted and he grinned happily to himself as he turned to face me. “You have to try the chocolate one.”

The bar was held out to my lips right there in the middle of the road with people moving around us. But he looked so delighted by the offering that I found myself leaning in and taking a small nibble.

The chewy taste of gooey chocolate melted across my tongue, and I moaned. “Oh, my goodness!”

Thoran beamed. “The walnut is the best, but I’m saving that for last. Okay, coconut or caramel? Coconut it is,” he decided for me when I could only shrug.

Still delicious, but...

“I like the chocolate better,” I admitted.

Thoran nodded. “Coconut isn’t my favorite, but I thought you might like it.”

I started to tell him he didn’t need to get things just because I might like them, but he was already holding out the caramel.

Chuckling, I took a bite. “No,” I said immediately. “It’s so sticky.”

Without missing a beat, he passed the bar straight to Cyrus.

I gasped, horrified. “Don’t give him that. I put it in my mouth.”

Cyrus had already thrown the thing back and was chewing by the time I finished. “I’m not letting caramel go to waste,” he muttered around his mouthful.

Thoran shrugged. “He’s the only one who likes caramel.”

“What about the coconut?” I asked.

“No one likes coconut,” both men declared in unison.

Amused and still at a loss for words, I said nothing as Thoran held out the walnut.

“This,” he said with a slow inhale, “this is the only bar that should ever exist.”

“Disgusting,” Cyrus mumbled.

“You’re disgusting,” Thoran returned without missing a beat.

He ignored Cyrus’s rolling eyeballs as he waited for me to take a nibble.

It was good, but...

“I don’t know if I like the walnuts,” I murmured hesitantly.

Thoran gasped, outraged.

Cyrus burst out laughing.

“I think I might have to leave you here,” he muttered, turning his body away from me. “That was just uncalled for.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, finding myself chuckling where normally I would have been a basket of anxiety.

Thoran shot me a glower from the corner of his eyes that contradicted the grin on his lips as he ate the rest of the walnut.

We made our way from shop to shop. If I stopped at the window, Thoran made a point of pulling me inside. Somehow, I wound up with a bunch of homemade bath products that smelled of a spring meadow with hints of sweet roses. Thoran had taken one sniff and declared that was the one and we needed everything in that line.

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