Page 52 of Things We Burn

“I need to be touched right now,” I told him, kissing his neck. “I need you.”

His eyes lit up. “Tell me what you need from me, Chef.”

I kissed along his jaw, looking up at him. “I need you to bend me over that sink.” I nodded to the sink in question. “Then I need you to fuck me, and I want to watch it in the mirror.”

A groan rumbled from Kane. He took hold of my hair, roughly wrenching it back.

“Oh, Chef, I can do that.”

KANE

It took an hour after Avery went to sleep for her muscles to relax. Even after I fucked her in the bathroom, watched her break apart, there was so much tension coiled up inside her.

She was waiting. For me to … punish her for her admission? For me to look at her differently? Like she was dirty. Weak.

I was only guessing because that’s what I’d been waiting for when I’d told her about my past. She was the only one, beyond a therapist, I’d ever told. I wasn’t ashamed of it, but there was still a little toxic part of me that felt shame. Like I wasn’t a man by admitting I was a victim.

But Avery made me feel like more of a man than I’d ever felt. There was no pity from her. Only fire, burning hot in her hazel gaze, fire she wanted to breathe on my mother, the man who hurt me. I could feel it, her need to avenge me.

It hadn’t emasculated me, my woman wanting to fight for me. Fuck no. It confirmed that I’d chosen the right woman.

I was trying to stop myself from breathing my own kind of fire now. Once I’d been sure Avery was asleep in my arms, relaxed, I’d scrolled until I found every piece of information I could on Gerald DuBois.

Pompous asshole.

There were plenty of bullshit articles praising him, about his contribution to the culinary world. And plenty of those articles mentioned Avery. How he’d ‘discovered her’, ‘turned her into the chef she was today’. I’d wanted to hurl my phone at the fucking wall.

No one had discovered her, and sure as fuck, no one but her made her into the chef she was.

Once I’d calmed my heart rate, I kept looking, learning.

Though I hadn’t jumped on a plane to France … yet. I wanted to know thy enemy.

He was my enemy.

Avery was everything to me.

Fucking everything.

I knew it scared her,wescared her. It scared the fuck out of me too. But I was never one to run away when I got scared. I made a career off that shit.

So once I was done looking up Gerald DuBois, I emailed my jeweler.

Avery was not a flashy diamond kind of woman. I’d need something she could wear in the kitchen.

I’d work on it, we had time.

Because I planned on having a lifetime with Avery Hart.

Ten

AVERY

We hadone more night before Kane left.

One more night after his party, after my unexpected admission. I felt like I’d purged. Like something rotting inside of me had been removed. Kane didn’t look at me differently, didn’t treat me differently, like I was broken.

His last night was the same as any other night. He lingered, eating his duck l’orange with a chocolate cake I’d whipped up earlier—I wasn’t the best pastry chef but I was known for that chocolate cake, and I knew Kane had a sweet tooth, which he’d declared almost as tasty as my pussy.

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