Chapter Seven #3
“Yes, and no. Reed just sent me a message and said we could work from your place, and he’d foot anything that didn’t seem excessive.
” Evan looked rather self-satisfied at that, and Miles couldn’t blame him.
He also couldn’t deny that even though a week ago, that smug look would have made him crazy, today, all it did was make him want to wipe it off. With his mouth.
It wasn’t so much a problem as it was . . . complicated.
The timer on his phone went off again, and this time he dragged Evan off his barstool, ignoring the pulse of electricity under his skin when his fingers closed around Evan’s forearm.
He was slender, but he had muscle tone under all that smooth skin, and that was an image that Miles didn’t need to have when he was trying to explain to Evan how to roll out the dough for the final steps.
“A big rectangle, like this-ish,” Miles said, gesturing with his hands.
Evan just stood there, looking at him levelly, his arms crossed across his chest, which might be a way he stood all the time, but right now, only emphasized to Miles that he’d somehow missed that Evan was all lean muscle he desperately wanted to see.
He’d thought this was complicated, but the more he sunk into this new understanding of Evan, the more difficult Miles realized the situation really was. Because he wanted him, much more than he’d ever imagined.
“Maybe you should give me an actual dimension,” Evan retorted frostily.
“We’ll work on that,” Miles coaxed. “It’ll be great, just . . . more flour. Lots of flour. We don’t want the dough to stick to the counter.”
“Not after we’ve spent four hours in this torture chamber,” Evan snarked.
Miles knew it had been frustrating at points, but he thought they’d had a pretty solid morning. He was a little offended that Evan had just referred to the kitchen as a torture chamber. Because that made Miles the head torturer. Yeah, complicated was probably an understatement.
“Just . . . flour the damn counter,” Miles said.
Evan did as instructed, but only after tying the apron back on, which surprised Miles.
That had been a silently acknowledged instrument of torture (apparently) and here Evan was, voluntarily putting it back on.
Of course, he was probably more worried about the state of his clothes than the stupid apron.
The rolling went pretty well; Evan had good technique; he was slow and careful and even with the pressure. Miles stood a little ways behind him, and made all the right encouraging noises and tried not to check out his ass in those pants.
He remembered a point when he’d made fun of those khakis. Now he just wanted to worship them. Or at least what they contained.
“How’s that?” Evan asked, standing back and eyeing the rectangle of dough critically.
Like this was a life-and-death situation.
And baking could be tricky, you often had to be extremely precise, but this was the easy part of the whole thing.
It was tough to fuck this up, but Evan never let up on himself for a single second.
He had the most A-plus personality that Miles had ever encountered.
“It’s fine,” Miles said, and pointed to the knife. “Now trim the edges, and cut into four equal strips.”
Instead of grabbing the knife, Evan turned around and there was fire and brimstone flashing in his eyes.
Miles stood there shocked, because even at the worst, even when they’d been trading insults in the break room and even after Miles had sent him the worst email in the history of emails, Evan hadn’t looked at him like that.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Evan said, voice low and frustrated, “that we’re only getting four croissants out of this?”
Miles knew he should have doubled the recipe. But it had seemed easier at the beginning to keep things small and relatively simpler.
“Uh, yes?” He remembered after answering that Evan was easily within reach of both a knife and a rolling pin. Both of which he could use to extract his revenge on Miles.
“Are you insane?” Evan hissed. “Four fucking hours on four croissants?”
“I thought it was more about the experience and the journey. Besides, you said you don’t even like sweets.” Miles was torn between groveling and also throwing up an arm to protect against the inevitable attack with the rolling pin, which Evan was still gripping.
“I don’t.” Evan was still shooting fire from his eyes. It shouldn’t have been sexy; it was. Miles couldn’t explain that or anything else that had happened today, but logic was overrated. Maybe he should just go with it.
“Right, well, let’s continue cutting the dough then. Four even strips.” Miles wanted to power through this, and maybe then they could finally get them in the oven, and he could see his fantasy come to life. Evan, putting his food in his mouth.
“This is ridiculous,” Evan ground out. But he still turned back to the work surface and began to cut the dough.
“Noted,” Miles retorted. But he knew the difference was stark. This time, he sounded amused and not angry. Not like before. He wondered if Evan was paying close enough attention to care. Or if it even mattered.
Evan didn’t say anything else, just absorbed the instructions on how to roll up the chocolate bar in the middle of each dough strip, and then brush with a beaten egg.
“And now, finally, the oven,” Miles said.
“Why do people even do this?” Evan wondered, and Miles thought it was probably a rhetorical question, but he was going to answer it anyway. At least so Evan might absorb some of why baking was so vital to Miles.
“Because once you’ve tasted the real thing, not the chemical-flavored, soggy, sunken artificial croissant, you won’t want anything else.”
“I thought you were going to feed me some sort of bullshit about pride in your work.”
“That was next.” Miles smiled weakly.
“Right, how long in the oven?” Evan asked, picking up the tray and walking it over to the oven. Miles was only a little ashamed, but the sight of him holding a tray of baked goods was undeniably a turn-on.
“Fifteen minutes,” Miles said.
Evan absorbed that, and then immediately ripped off the apron. “I’ll be right back.”
Thirteen minutes later—Miles totally didn’t time Evan on his watch or anything, because that would be creepy—he returned, holding two cups of coffee. From the good coffee place that was a block further than the Starbucks in the first floor of the building.
“I figured if we were having first class pain au chocolat, we might as well indulge in better coffee.” Evan handed Miles his cup with a shrug, like he was trying to downplay his gesture. Maybe he was just trying to downplay that it meant anything deeper.
But Miles already believed it went deeper.
“Thank you,” he said, right as the timer went off.
The pain au chocolat came out of the oven a beautiful burnished golden brown, crisp edges, with the scent of butter and chocolate wafting through the air.
Evan stared at the tray and seemed to be fighting himself.
“Don’t you want to have one?” Miles asked innocently.
He’d been sure Evan would be on the pan before they even cooled, desperate and eager to prove to Miles that he was wrong.
That it wasn’t worth the time and effort to bake a pain au chocolat from scratch.
“Maybe we should wait for them to cool a minute,” Evan said.
“They’re perfect just like this,” Miles argued. Reached over and deposited one in Evan’s palm.
“Hot,” Evan complained, but he still lifted the pastry to his mouth and took a single bite. In Miles’ fantasy he’d been feeding him in tantalizing little bites, waiting until Evan begged him for more. But this was good too.
Evan’s eyes drifted over the first bite, and the expression on his face as he chewed and swallowed was very good. There was undeniable bliss, and Miles knew if he’d been able to hold it back, he would have. It made the success even sweeter.
“Good?” Miles asked innocently.
Setting the pastry on the counter with careful, deliberate movements, Evan turned towards Miles. There was something conflicted in his face, like he was doing all of this against his better judgement.
Miles understood that feeling far too well.
“How do you do that?” Evan asked plaintively.
“Do what?”
Evan threw his hands up. “Be so damn good at this. Win me over to your side when I know just how much I want you to be wrong and I know just how stubborn I am.”
Miles took a step closer even though Evan’s expression was telling him he’d better stay right where he was. “You wanted the best,” he said, and his voice was shaky. “Why are you so disappointed you got it?”
“I’m not, I’m not,” Evan tried to protest, but he’d already said enough and the green light was flashing in Miles’ head.
Evan might pretend to be aloof and uninterested, and might fight this every inch of the way, but he felt the exact same pull Miles did.
And this time, Miles wasn’t going to fuck it up by being angry.
It wasn’t going to go away; in fact, it was only getting stronger. Miles usually acted on instinct, and he did now. There were only three steps between him and Evan, and he crossed them in a blink but he still hesitated when he’d reached his destination.
Evan’s eyes were huge in his face, wide and shocked as Miles slid a hand around the back of his collar. But he didn’t pull away and he didn’t say no. Miles had been sure he’d need to argue his case harder, spend longer trying to erase the memory of their first kiss and then the email.
But instead Evan held his ground and held Miles’ gaze and waited for him to close the distance between them.
Miles kissed him. It took an achingly long moment for Evan to respond, to reciprocate. A heart-stopping moment when Miles thought that maybe he’d judged everything wrong and that hadn’t been the green light he’d secretly been dying for.
Then Evan’s mouth moved against his, sluggish and hesitant at first, and then his tongue was slipping between his lips and he tasted just as he’d expected—like chocolate and coffee and butter—and like nothing he’d ever anticipated—sharp and charged, like the red wine that grew high up in the hills of Mount Veeder at the edge of the valley.
It was fierce and hot and the power of it blew out every fuse in his head, giving Miles no time to get his kissing shit together.
His hands had just drifted up Evan’s arms, and he was wondering if it was too soon to go for his cock, when Evan suddenly pulled away.
His face was flushed, his eyes on the floor.
But he was breathing hard, the rhythm an echo of the ricochet of Miles’ heartbeat.
The only thing Miles could think was that he needed another chance, another shot, because that couldn’t be the last time it ever happened between them. A week ago he hadn’t even liked this man, and now he couldn’t get enough of him.
Had Evan changed or was it Miles who was irrevocably altered? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure it mattered.
“This isn’t happening,” Evan said resolutely before Miles could catch up and make sure that he knew everything he’d done was definitely okay. More than okay. Actually, perfectly fucking splendid.
“It just happened,” Miles said frankly. “Come back over here, and it’ll happen again.” This was more the reaction he’d been expecting after the first kiss, and for it to happen now, after the mind-exploding second kiss, was unexpected and frustrating.
Evan shook his head emphatically. “This is the worst idea in the history of ideas. You don’t even like me. I don’t know why you decided to flirt with me, but apparently I can only take so much before I fold.”
“I do like you,” Miles said, even though it sounded stupid.
Evan shot him a look that said loud and clear that he definitely thought it sounded stupid.
“Okay,” he said, clearly not convinced. “But it’s still not happening again.
This is a major distraction that we don’t need.
And I don’t really like you either. Or your face.
” His expression grew downright challenging.
The problem was that Miles didn’t believe him at all. The other problem was that Evan still believed he’d meant that email.
“Fine,” Miles said, unconcerned. Evan might be talking big right now, but Miles knew what it felt like when someone wanted him, and Evan wanted him.
Miles just had to wait until Evan was done fighting with himself.
It wouldn’t matter how long it took, because Miles knew he was going to get what they both wanted.