Page 6 of Things We Burn

Our reservation list was booked two years in advance. No amount of social cachet or fame could help you jump that list.

Kane’s eyes were still on me. I could feel them. It was a surprise I wasn’t just melting to a puddle at his feet.

“A chef.” His voice tickled my skin. “I consider it a crime that I haven’t eaten your … food, Avery Hart.”

My body might’ve twitched, had I not had exquisite control over my reflexes.

He’d paused on purpose, to make the not so vague sexual innuendo. If any other man had uttered that sentence, it would’ve come off as sleazy and gross.

With Kane, it was only riveting and charming.

I forced myself to straighten my back, my brain battling against the reaction of my body. Over how easily this stranger had power over it. The lack of control was what snapped me back into my usual façade. I cleared my expression and stared at Kane, forcing myself to ignore the heat in his eyes.

Ensuring that my hand didn’t shake, I reached out and took my glass back, maintaining his gaze as I took a long sip.

He didn’t speak, just watched me drink, his eyes traveling to my throat as I swallowed.

“You won’t eat it for another two years,” I told him after I swallowed. “That’s if you call the restaurant right now and ask for a reservation. Sorry to disappoint.”

“I have an inkling you are many things, Avery Hart, but I know you’ll never be disappointing,” he snickered without missing a beat.

I opened my mouth to sling a cold retort, even with my body close to spontaneous combustion, but Kane didn’t give me the opportunity.

“Kiera Graves, you strike me as a woman who can handle herself,” Kane stated playfully, eyes still darting from her to me.

Every time that azure gaze zeroed in on me, my knees quivered, and my stomach felt like it was bottoming out.

“Oh, I can take care of myself,” Kiera countered with a gleam in her eyes. One that usually signaled trouble.

“So you wouldn’t be cast adrift if I were to take Avery away with me.” He stepped even closer, our arms no longer brushing. They were now pressed together, and I could feel the warmth of his body, smell the depth of his cologne mixed with a scent that couldn’t possibly be mixed in any laboratory. A scent that was only biological.

I had a nose—part of the job description. Taste was arguably the most important, but every sense was part of the cooking andconsuming experience. So maybe my nose was more sensitive than the layperson's.

Or maybe it was something utterly and wholly innate that made my entire body jerk when his smell hit my nose.

Or maybe it was the warmth of his body, the sheer size of it, big, powerful and all-consuming.

Maybe it was the words he said, the words that it took a second to process.

“I would have toinsistyou take Avery away with you,” Kiera answered. “This isn’t really her scene.” She waved her hand at the party.

“Avery walks and talks and has an opinion of her very own,” I informed the both of them, my voice sharp, cold despite the fire in my veins.

I was the ‘Ice Queen,’ after all. A title coined by some disgruntled staff in my kitchen. Or maybe it had been an old lover; I didn’t know. But the title stuck.

The Ice Queen of Inferno.

A rather tacky title some second-rate newspaper had run, cobbling together quotes from the scant amount of interviews I’d done to create a ‘profile’ on me. They’d also interviewed people who I’d fired from my kitchen, all of which did not have nice things to say about me.

Neither of the people in front of me blanched at the tone that sent grown men running away from me in the kitchen. Both of them just grinned. Kiera’s playfully and knowingly, and Kane … with pure lust.

The man in question turned to face me fully, the front of our bodies mirror inches apart. Much too close for people who had only learned each other’s names … minutes? ago.

My breathing turned shallow at the closeness that should’ve been far too intimate for strangers, yet I leaned into it.

“Do you, Avery Hart, want to leave this godforsaken party full of vapid idiots—present company excluded—and come home with me?” Kane asked, eyes twinkling with sensual promise and mischief.

There it was. Plainly. Come home with him. No bullshit. No, he was saying exactly what he planned. Desire was threaded into his gaze, into his proximity and in the chemistry between our bodies that didn’t make a lick of sense.

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