Page 19 of Bound to You

The laugh slips from his lips. “I’m sorry, I just...it’s nice to see you enjoying it,” he says.

I take another chomp of the best chocolate croissant my taste buds have ever had the privilege of touching and have to hold back the orgasmic groan that wants to burst out of me. My focus is solely on the pastry, but I can feel Caio’s gaze hotter than the sun as it burns into me. I lift my eyes to meet his and catch the smile teasing the corner of his mouth.

We just sit there for a moment. I can’t tear my gaze from his, but then he reaches over to me, and the world switches to slow motion as he wipes my cheek and comes away with a smudge of chocolate on the tip of his thumb. I stare at him dumbfounded as he casually puts his thumb in his mouth and sucks the chocolate off.

Fucking hell.

I look around to see if anyone else saw that, but people just pass us by. I look back and I can feel my cheeks heating. My mind is blank for how I’m supposed to act in this situation. His eyes glitter from under his dark lashes as he smirks at me. Mr. Caio, ever the gentleman, just wiped chocolate off my face, sucked it off his thumb, and thensmirkedat me.

He speaks first. “Well, are you going to share?”

I’ve never beena big cheese girl, but I’m suddenly finding myself wishing that I was. I’m sitting at a table with four other girls and Caio is tying a blindfold around the back of my head.

“Okay, so all you need to do is smell the cheese I give you and make a guess as to what it is, okay?” he says as if this is the most normal thing in the world.

Meryll from the cheese stand caught us as we were walking by, insisting she needed another team for the cheese sniffing competition.

Acheesesniffing competition.

May isn’t going to believe me when I tell her about this one.

“Yeah, okay,” I respond. We are so going to lose.

A horn is blown. “Go!”

“Okay, here,” Caio says.

I move my nose around trying to locate the cheese and I knock straight into it. “Ow!” Why did that hurt?

“Don’t move, I’ll bring it to you,” Caio laughs. I almost jump when I feel a hand at the back of my head steadying me in place.

I take a good whiff and it just smells like…cheese. I don’t know. My knowledge of cheeses is extremely basic.

“Cheddar?” I ask.

“No!” I hear Merryl beside me.

I run through the list of cheeses I know in my head.

Blue cheese. Ew.

Parmesan.

Those have distinct smells I feel like I’d be able to identify them easily enough.

Brie, Camembert...does cream cheese count?

“Okay, what about this one?”

I can barely smell anything. “I don’t know. Uhh...Swiss?”

Meryll makes an angry buzzer sound. “Wrong!”

Why the fuck does this feel so serious all of a sudden?

“Okay, you’ve got this one, Isla,” Caio says with false confidence.

I take a sniff while Merryl announces the points the other girls have racked up beside me. Caio should’ve picked a better partner.

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