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Jack has always had a sweet tooth.
It’s not something he advertises. It feels juvenile somehow, but it’s always been there, threaded through his life in small, private ways. Homemade chocolate cake made by his mother for every one of his birthdays until he turned 18. Cookies stuffed behind the wall of his dorm bed hidden away from his frat brothers who would pilfer from his stash. Boxes of bulk movie candy from Costco sent by his sisters when he was deployed. He’d ration them carefully. One bar at a time. A reminder that there was a world waiting for him where nothing was scarce.
He still keeps a Snickers (or two) in his go bag. He tells himself it’s for the sugar. Quick calories. Practical. But the truth is simpler: a well-timed sweet steadies him. Even something as simple as a chocolate bar invoked something familiar and indulgent.
Samira is not a sweets person.
Jack knows this because he pays attention. She reaches for chips in the break room, not cookies. His girlfriend prefers cheese boards to dessert menus. When pastries appear after a long shift, she’ll take half, maybe, and forget about it on the counter while she talks through a case. He has watched an ice cream bar melt untouched in her hands.
So, when he comes home and finds her sitting at his kitchen island with a square of dark chocolate resting on her tongue, the visual hits him sideways.
She is perched on the stool like she belongs there—because she does now—one leg tucked under the other, bare feet hooked around the rung. The wrapper is folded neatly beside her, Ghirardelli stamped in gold.
“Patient’s mom,” she says, around the chocolate, before he can ask. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
He grunts in acknowledgment and sets his keys down more carefully than necessary.
The smell hits him then—cocoa and caramel warming against skin. The faint, unmistakable sweetness that has always undone him. Samira closes her eyes as she bites down, and Jack has to look away before the image lodges somewhere dangerous.
“You don’t even like chocolate,” he gruffs.
She shrugs.
“I like gratitude.”
The corner of the square has already softened, glossy where her fingers hold it. There’s caramel at the seam, threatening to spill. She notices too late.
It slides down the side of her index finger, slow and lazy.
Jack feels it in his gut. A sharp, unignorable pull. Hunger, immediate and unhelpful.
He steps closer before he talks himself out of it.
“Samira,” he says, quietly.
She looks up, eyebrows lifting a fraction. Curious. Unafraid.
He reaches for her hand.
She lets him take it.
The caramel is warm. Sticky. He should hand her a napkin. That would be the reasonable thing. The appropriate thing. The thing that preserves distance.
Instead, he lifts her fingers to his mouth.
He doesn’t rush it.
His tongue traces the pad of her finger, slow and deliberate, tasting sugar and salt and her. Samira’s breath catches—not dramatically, just enough that he feels it through her hand. The sound goes straight to his chest.
He hears himself exhale.
She doesn’t pull away.
“Jack,” she murmurs, not as a warning. As recognition, delight in the syllables.
He finishes the caramel. Cleans her fingers with the care of a man who understands restraint because he has practiced it his entire life.
Then he leans in and kisses her.
Not tentative. Not apologetic. His mouth claims hers with the same certainty he brings to everything else; thorough and unyielding once committed. Chocolate and heat and hunger collide. Samira responds instantly, her free hand fisting in his shirt like she’s been waiting for this.
He crowds her against the counter, not rough, just close enough that there’s no space left to pretend this is anything else. Her knees part instinctively, and he slots between them like it was always meant to be this way.
He breaks the kiss only long enough to rest his forehead against hers.
“You are going to finish that,” he warns. “Or I will.”
She laughs softly, breathless, and presses another square to her lips.
“Careful,” she whispers before biting down. “I may develop an even bigger sweet tooth than you.”
He smiles then—really smiles—and kisses her again, deeper this time, chocolate melting between them as he finally allows himself what he’s wanted all along.
Hunger, satisfied.
At least for now.