Page 43 of Cookbooks and Demons

“The jam goes well with the blue cheese,” Rafferty said while she read. He was already wielding a butter knife through it. As he cut, a strong smell wafted into Helena’s nose. “It’s like Swiss cheese and blue cheese had a baby,” she said, noting the Swiss cheese-like holes.

“It’s blue cheese, made properly.” He held out his prepared offering, the cheese spread on one of the thin slices of bread with a bit of the jam tucked underneath in a similar way to how she had done it with the brieand jam.

Instead of taking it from him, she ducked forward and bit it from his fingers. The second her lips touched his skin, there was an explosion of tangy taste in her mouth, soothed by the calm sweet of the jam. “It’s fig,” she said around her full mouth.

“Yes,” he said, pressing his fingers together a moment torub them.

“Sorry. Did I bite you?” she asked, noting hisgesture.

He cleared his throat. “No, I’m fine. I’m just glad I didn’t accidentally steal the memory from you before you got to taste it,” he muttered and moved to prepare another one.

“Actually, I’ve noticed—” she tried to say, but her mouth wastoo full.

“Do you like it?” Rafferty continued while she chewed.

She nodded. Before he could offer her another one, she used her free hand to redirect it toward his mouth. He barely got it open in time before the redirect upset the morsel, and her fingers continued to follow until they pressed against his lips. She giggled at her trick, but then went still as she felt the sensation moving from his lips into her fingers. Echoes of the tangy cheese and figgy sweet danced through her taste buds along with the electric sensation of his … kiss.

Chapter 23

WithWine

Pairings

“I… sorry,” she said, trying to remove her fingers and sure enough, there was a small kissing smack as she pulled them away.

He didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he closed his eyes as he chewed, but then his eyebrows started to furrow. Blindly, he recaptured her fingers. Only then did his face smooth out and a warm hum leave his throat.

Helena mentally kicked herself for letting go before he had finished chewing, robbing him of his taste. She also realized he wasn’t trying to seduce her and probably didn’t have those kinds of feelings at all. Without realizing it, at some point, she had stopped thinking of him as a demon. He was just a person to her, but in truth, he wasn’t. He was an alien creature that was pretending to be human, whatever he might have been once.

But she was the one who was human. She was the one getting ideas.

“Okay, what’s next?” she asked, refocusing on the plate.

“Take a sip of your wine first,” he insisted, gesturing to it.

“Oh!” Helena followed the instructions. “Hmm, that’s nice.”

“Riesling with the Roquefort.”

“Oh so there is a wine pairing with each cheese?”

“Of course,” he said as if it was obvious. He dug in his pockets and pulled out four little bottles like one would see during a plane flight. “Champagne with the camembert. Pinot Noir with the comte. Riesling with the Roquefort.” He gestured toward her mouth where she had already consumed it.

“And the … Picodon?” she asked, referencing the card just tobe sure.

“They sent a Meursault,” he said, reading the label of one of the tiny bottle.

“Not what you’d choose?” she asked, readinghis tone.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve just never tasted it before,” he said and twisted the cap off the neck like he was wringing out a chicken. He took a long sniff from the bottle, then gave a non-committal grunt.

“Take a sip,” she offered, setting her hand to his arm.

Instead, he extended the bottle to her. “You gotta taste it first, or there is no memory to pull.” A brief flash went through her mind of telling him to drink some first, then kissing him, sharing the wine between them.

She cleared her throat abruptly, then took the wine and sipped it from the bottle. He quickly sliced some of the right cheese off for her. “That’s got a—” and then he popped the cheese into her mouth before she could finishspeaking.

“Oh, oh that’s nice,” she said as soon as she swallowed after a lingering chew. Then he brushed his thumb over the corner of her lips, wiping away some crumbs.

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