Page 64 of Things We Burn

“Chef.”

I was coated in a thin layer of perspiration, riding Kane.

He was right. My body had been desperate for this. Aching. Yes, I’d been ready and happy to forgo my own needs for Kane, but I was selfishly elated to know that he’d needed this. Us.

I’d realized we hadn’t done this since before he left. Since before I’d watched him tumble through the air, since I’d spent time thinking I was going to lose him.

I rode him harder, desperate for the fullness of him inside me, the friction, the aliveness and the free fall of another orgasm.

“Chef,” Kane repeated in a low grunt.

I stared down at him. He was clutching my neck, eyes on me.

They were clouded with desire, cords in his neck protruding, telling me he was close to finishing. But the ferocity of his arousal was something else. That same intensity as before, only deeper. Unending, it seemed.

“I love you,” he murmured, low and deep.

My body twitched as the words branded me.

“I love you,” I panted.

He hauled me down for a kiss.

“Milk my cock, then.”

And I did as requested.

After we were done, I cooked Kane lunch. It was the first time I’d cooked for him in my apartment. It felt … odd. Domestic, somehow. When I was in my kitchen at Inferno, I’d cooked him versions of the dishes we made there—heartier, with much bigger portions, but they were still sophisticated dishes. I’d been hiding behind techniques and fanfare.

No longer feeling the need to hide, I didn’t do that this time. Kiera had already stocked my fridge before we got back, so it was overflowing with all the things I’d requested and many I had not.

Champagne, beer, caviar and also packaged snacks that a third-grader might eat. I’d shaken my head with a smile, thinking of my friend as I began making something.

It wasn’t from any of my recipe books. It wasn’t something I learned to cook in professional kitchens.

No, it was my mother’s chicken soup.

“It’s a well-worn cliché, but it’s true,” she told me, chopping celery. “Chicken soup, the kind full of nourishing and warm ingredients, helps soothe illnesses and injuries, and it warms the soul.”

I didn’t know why I made it, serving it with crusty French bread. Maybe because I wanted to take care of Kane, which didn’t come natural to me, so I borrowed from my mother.

Or because I was practicing some kind of therapy on myself since these past few days had made me think of her more than I had in years.

I’d served up a heaping bowl of soup with bread for Kane and given myself a much smaller portion. My stomach was still churning from everything that had happened the past few days.

“You’re not eating enough.” He frowned as his eyes shifted between our bowls.

“I’m not recovering from a ruptured spleen and broken bones,” I informed him snippily. “Eat your lunch.”

He grinned. “Heard, Chef.”

I smiled into my bowl.

We were in the living room after I cleaned up and forced him onto the sofa with an old paperback from my bookshelves, since he didn’t watch TV. A benign fact about him that I found incredibly charming.

“Babe, you gotta get to the restaurant,” Kane said, glancing up at the clock and shifting in a careful way that told me he was in pain.

“I’m not going to the restaurant.” I looked at the clock too, to calculate how long it had been since his last dosage.

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