Chapter 4
Four
AVERY
My mind was elsewhere during the dinner service.
Which was a bad thing.
No matter what was going on in my personal life—though I hadn’t had one to speak of in years past—the kitchen melted all of that away. There was nothing but the task in front of me, the three other tasks ahead of that and the various elements that had to be started and finished all at the same time in order to create the perfect dish.
Running a kitchen of this caliber, keeping the food up to my standards, was a constant, back-breaking task. It required every shred of my attention and energy. It was not for the fainthearted and not for people who wanted to live with a work-life balance.
Work was my life.
I’d liked it that way.
Until Kane had fucked me thirteen ways from Sunday, and I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head.
Luckily, I was practiced enough at this menu that I could work with my distracted mind. Luckily, I had a staff that I’d handpicked, hand trained and who all could theoretically handle the night should I suddenly drop dead or take a sick day—which I never did.
I seared a wagyu, thinking about the chances of seeing Kane again while also checking on the scallops to my right.
“These are done in three seconds,” I told Ferris, my sous chef.
“Yes, Chef,” he replied dutifully, taking them off exactly three seconds later.
My attention went to where Hallway was plating.
“That quail egg needs to be three centimeters to the right,” I told her.
“Yes, Chef,” she said, taking direction without pause.
I thought of Kane.
He’d taken me to a temporary home, he’d had to leave in the morning, putting me in the cab without asking for my number. The recipe for a one-night stand.
What was I to expect? He was some famous daredevil playboy. He wasn’t going around looking to settle down.
Nor was I.
“A guest wants to come back to compliment the chef,” Michelle, my front of house manager, informed me.
I glanced up from the plate I was garnishing to show her my raised brow.
I did not entertain shit like that. A lot of chefs reveled in the attention, especially if it was from some prominent person or another. I did not.
There was a reason I was back here making the food instead of out there serving it and interfacing with people. I wanted to feed people, give them experiences. I did not want anything else. Not to mention that there was still thirty minutes of service remaining, and I did not have a second to spare. Every moment in my kitchen was precious and accounted for. I expected all of my staff to treat time as the priceless commodity it was, to not waste it. And I did not expect anything of my staff that I wouldn’t expect of myself.
Michelle knew all that, of course. She’d been working with me for years and was excellent at her job.
“I know, I know.” She reached over to grab a linen to start wiping plates before service.
Michelle didn’t have idle hands. No one in my restaurant did.
“But this guest was very insistent and somewhat famous.”
I rolled my eyes as I moved from plate to plate. “They always are.” The restaurant was the best in the city, had a two-year waiting list for a table, and despite my distaste for the practice, celebrities constantly tried to jump that line. It was the game, and I had to play it, though.
“This is different,” she spoke as she wiped. “This is one you want to let compliment you.”
Again, I didn’t stop moving. Stillness for me was death but I did note her tone—somewhat dreamy which was almost unheard of for Michelle. The woman was not prone to emotional outbursts of any kind. She was straight edge, calm and collected under even the most stressful of situations. She was the most valuable person in the restaurant and one of the few people I trusted implicitly.
“Fine,” I sighed.
I didn’t check my appearance, didn’t round to the other side of the kitchen where waiters were expertly and dutifully taking plates and shouting out tickets.
I didn’t look up as the door to the kitchen swung open, and a large body walked through it. A flash of black. Tall. Male. That was all I noticed.
Whichever celebrity or politician or millionaire who wanted to show off to his friends about ‘knowing the chef’ was going to be offended that I didn’t look up to greet him, and I didn’t care. Letting him in my kitchen was all I could do. Using power and influence to gain access to the place I considered my sanctuary pissed me the fuck off.
“I need three more scallops,” I called out, frowning at the sear on the plate in front of me.
Not right.
“Yes, Chef!” Ferris replied.
I pulled a ticket. “Two wagyu, one scallop, one risotto,” I read off. “I need them yesterday; we’re two minutes behind on service.”
Two minutes. An age in my kitchen.
“Yes, Chef!” my team called back.
The clang of pots and the sizzle of pans sounded around me, noises I barely heard anymore, but noises that comforted me with their chaos.
Two minutes behind. My team could make that up. But I was going to be delayed by the person now standing in front of me. He hadn’t spoken. Probably because he expected me to look up, fawn over him.
Still, I worked at plates.
“Impressive.”
The single word had me freezing. For three seconds. Three seconds with my hand hovering over the plate, not doing anything at all.
I’d never frozen for that long in a kitchen.
Not since…
I didn’t think about that.
The deep voice washed those memories away. The tenor of the single word. The way it boomed right through me. It was liquid sex.
Slowly, my eyes moved up.
Kane was standing there, dressed in a black tee and jeans.
The restaurant had a dress code—something I didn’t approve of as it was classist and elitist, but once again, I had to play the game—and it was famous for enforcing it upon even the most powerful of guests.
A football player had thrown a tantrum last year when he wasn’t let in because he was wearing sneakers.
Expensive, designer sneakers that cost more than the host’s monthly take-home, according to him.
He was not only refused a table but banned indefinitely.
People tended to adhere to the dress code.
Not Kane.
And somehow, he’d been let in without incident.
Maybe it was the electric presence, the cheeky smile, the charisma he had about him that was somehow both effortless and powerful. Warm too.
Hot.
Even though I’d spent my adult life in sweltering kitchens and hadn’t broken a sweat, suddenly my upper lip felt moist.
A few seconds. That’s all I paused in shock for. It might as well have been hours in my world.
“Chef?” Ferris prompted, looking uneasy. I’d never spaced out in my kitchen. My chefs knew to rely on me, and I could tell by the concerned tilt of Ferris’s mouth that he was slightly worried.
Regaining my senses, I stepped back so he could plate the scallops I asked for.
Wordlessly, I finished dressing the plate then tinkered with the placement of the scallops, tweezing on a garnish before a final wipe down.
“Away on fifteen!” I yelled, mentally calculating the amount of scallops we’d plated tonight with how many I’d gotten from the docks this morning.
“We’ve got three orders of scallops left,” I told Angela, our head server.
“Heard, Chef,” she replied, expertly balancing plates before floating toward the restaurant at a brisk pace.
I forced myself to keep working despite Kane watching me.
“I don’t want to interrupt … Chef ,” Kane drawled.
My toes curled at the title I’d been addressed by for years, by countless people. No one had ever made the deferential term sound sultry, dirty and impossibly sexy.
Kane managed all of those things, said in the same tone he’d murmured naughty things to me last night, with the gaze that communicated he knew what it felt like to be inside me.
The clang of the kitchen brought me back to earth, and I jerked, looking back down at my plates.
“You’re busy,” he continued.
“I’ve got twenty-seven minutes left in service,” I informed him. My voice was crisp, cold, not betraying my simmering insides. I felt panicked at being put off-kilter in a kitchen, my kitchen, by a man. My guard was up. It needed to be up.
“Then I’ll be back in twenty-seven minutes,” was his reply, not obviously perturbed by my icy response.
“I have to close down the kitchen after that,” I said, talking to the plates.
“Behind, Chef,” Ferris announced softly. I knew my second was hovering because he was worried, protective, even though he was younger than me. He’d been in my kitchen the longest. We weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination—by design, I wasn’t friends with any of the staff—but there was mutual respect there.
I stepped aside for him to plate my wagyu.
“Well, I’ll be here until the kitchen is closed, then.” Kane’s response was slightly playful, yet with a sensual edge and an iron foundation. He was making it known that I wasn’t going to be able to dismiss him.
“Fine.” Frustrated and secretly excited, I let out a sigh. I said the word as a dismissal, focused on the plates, refusing to look up.
I held my breath for ten seconds, waiting, stealing myself.
When I looked up, Kane was gone.
I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed.
Luckily, I didn’t have time to examine my feelings as the chaos of the kitchen required my full attention.
Not for the first time, I was infinitely glad about that.
I was on edge the remainder of service.
It didn’t help that I heard the murmurs of my usually professional staff about Kane’s appearance. It seemed even the people who worked long hours in my kitchen and weren’t prone to pandering to celebrity diners somehow not only knew of extreme sports stars but were also impressed by them.
That intrigued me. I hadn’t been aware that ‘extreme sports’—whatever that meant—were popular enough to permeate my kitchen.
Again, I didn’t let myself get intrigued. I couldn’t slip. Wouldn’t. Though none of my staff were brave enough to ask questions, I could tell they were curious.
Like the well-oiled machine we were, my staff made quick work of cleaning the kitchen and completing end of day tasks.
I let everyone go, but Ferris still lingered.
“I’m fine, Ferris, go home,” I told him.
He hesitated for a split second, peering at me with his brows knitted together.
“Yes, Chef,” he nodded, turning and leaving me. Alone. In my kitchen. Which was usually my happy place. The quiet, the clean juxtaposing with the rest of the night. I would run through the tasks I needed to do then check over everyone’s stations, even though I knew they’d be spotless.
Sometimes, rarely, I would share a drink with Michelle at the bar once the guests had left.
Tonight, the quiet kitchen did not calm my heartbeat. Anticipation curled up my back like a snake, my palms sweating. Michelle had already cleared it with me that Kane stay and be informed when the kitchen was closed down. She’d assured me she’d send him back. And she’d had a glimmer in her eyes, the slightest teasing, but other than that, she said nothing. The consummate professional.
I held my breath as the doors to the kitchen opened and closed.
Kane was in here.
There were not dozens of other people coming in and out, no one shouting tickets, no plates to distract me. Just him and me.
And he looked as good as he had when he first came in. Better. His forearms were defined and sinewy, peppered with tattoos. His hair was ruffled, messy. There was a large shadow of dark stubble on his angular jaw, making him look all the more rugged. His eyes… They were what captivated me. They were zeroed in on me with a different intensity than before. Heavier. He’d seen me in the kitchen. Seen me as a powerful woman and it hadn’t scared him away.
No. If I was reading him correctly, it excited him.
His eyes ran up and down me. I wasn’t brave enough to hold his gaze and just let him look at me, so I kept wiping at surfaces that were already gleaming.
He settled on a stool in front of the plating counter, lazily leaning against it as he cradled his chin in his hands, watching me.
“Your food is good,” he said.
The compliment was simple. Too simple, my ego would say. My food was not just good. It was fucking great. Extraordinary. Some of the best food to be plated on the planet.
It was that way because food was my life. I’d spent years honing my skills. Hours upon hours tweaking singular elements on each dish, traveling the world to pick up flavor profiles and cooking techniques.
My food was not merely good .
People had said many great things about my food over the years.
Yet somehow, Kane’s simple, unadorned compliment meant the most.
He said it with a kind of concrete intensity that glued me to the floor. That made my insides do somersaults.
“Thank you,” I replied, my voice wispy.
I was glad I had the act of polishing the stainless steel countertops, or else I might’ve felt awkward.
Awkward.
Like I was a pimply teen at a dance, and my date’s hand was on my lower back.
“I figured you’d have people to do that.” He gestured to where I was polishing. “You doin’ this for our benefit?” he asked.
Our.
A single word. Our. Intimate somehow.
I tried to remain emotionless, knowing the counters were pristine, and all my jobs for the night were done.
Never someone to put off the difficult things, I abandoned the basket of soiled kitchen linens and faced Kane without anything to occupy my body.
His attention was squarely on me. As it had been since the moment he walked through the doors to my kitchen. Before, though, I was busy. I stole glances at him, of course, but there was never the opportunity to just stand under his gaze.
My palms were sweaty, heartbeat thrashing.
“No,” I said, my voice even … ish. “I finish out the night myself.”
He tilted his head. “Every night? You? Alone?”
I nodded once. “I don’t do anything in this kitchen I don’t expect my staff to do.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Something hot and hungry.
He got up from his stool. “We’re going to revisit you bein’ here past midnight alone at a later date.”
My cheeks heated at the possessive lilt to his tone and the gist of what he was saying.
I was about to tell him that we were not going to revisit anything of the sort because this was my kitchen, and I called the shots here.
But I stopped myself. It was second nature to put on my ice queen persona, to establish that I was not going to be ordered around or dominated.
A part of me, one that Kane had awakened, wanted to let go of that persona, wanted to try something different. I wanted to submit.
So I tried something different. I didn’t lash out with my ice-tipped words. I let the first thing come to my head, then I said it.
“I googled you,” I blurted.
Kane merely blinked in response. To be fair, I didn’t give him much of an opportunity to respond since I launched into my next sentence within seconds.
“It is kind of a douchey thing to do,” I clasped the back of my neck. “Googling someone. But I did it. And I figured it may make me somewhat less douchey if I informed you that I googled you.”
I wiped my palms on my pants. They were sweating. I did not get sweaty palms. Sweaty palms meant nerves. Nerves meant you were second-guessing yourself. Your ability. There was no room for that in my kitchen.
Yet there I was. Sweating.
Nervous.
Kane, the handsome prick, did not seem nervous in the slightest. His body was relaxed, his expression lazy yet aware at the same time, his eyes sparkling as the side of his lip turned up in a smirk that made my panties damp.
Not from sweat.
“What did you find out?” he asked, seemingly unbothered about my googling.
I studied my fingernails for a moment, scrambling to find my cool. “That you have two Olympic medals.”
He shrugged. Shrugged at the mention of Olympic medals.
“One, technically,” he corrected.
I frowned. My brain might not have been firing on all cylinders right then, but I’d eaten up any and all information about this man with ravenous hunger and good recall. I was sure it was two. I’d even fact-checked my original source. One couldn’t always trust Wikipedia.
“Silver doesn’t count.” He casually thrummed his fingers against the stainless steel.
I regarded him. Though he still had a mischievous glint in his eye, he was being serious about the medal thing.
I pursed my lips. Most people would try to argue with him on the point. Merely getting to the Olympics was kind of a big deal, let alone coming in second. At least that’s what mos t people would think.
But most people hadn’t competed at the utmost levels. Only the 1 percent of the 1 percent had. Most people didn’t do that because you had to drive yourself half crazy to get there. You had to sacrifice a lot. You had to be brutal with yourself. And you had to have one pursuit: to get to the top.
If you got second to the top, you weren’t satisfied. Because what you turned yourself into to come in second meant you only mattered if you came in first.
Or maybe that wasn’t everyone.
I, at least, understood the sentiment of what Kane said, so I didn’t argue with him.
His lips quirked ever so slightly in response to my silence, and I wondered if he’d received the predictable response when he’d said similar things to people in the past.
“What else did you find out?”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. “More accolades and wins for various extreme sports, along with multiple disciplines, which I understand isn’t common.”
He shrugged. “I learn fast and get bored easily.”
There was no arrogance in his tone. But there was a confidence. One that was supremely sexy instead of annoying.
“Anything else?” He slid off the stool then stepped toward me. Prowled toward me would be a better description. “Because if not, I’m gonna do something in this kitchen that none of your staff are gonna do. Ever.”
My heart was now in my throat.
“Gonna fuck you on that counter you just polished so good.”
“That’s a health violation,” I informed him lamely after realizing my mouth had dropped open. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Well, there were plenty of things to say. There were people in the front of the house, finishing up. They could come through the door at any moment. They weren’t likely to, but it was a possibility. I was a professional. This restaurant was my life. Doing something like fucking a patron, a celebrity, in my kitchen could ruin everything.
I could’ve said any of those things. Instead, I mentioned a health violation.
“I don’t give a fuck.” Kane bared his teeth.
Then he kissed me.
I melted into the kiss. Immediately. Every single reservation I had about his plans drifted away. It was right, impossibly right, for him to take me right here in the place I held most sacred.
He worked at my chefs’ whites. Tore at them.
I helped him get off my shirt, giving him access to my bra, my nipples.
I gasped as his lip fastened around one, my hands tangling in his hair.
“You okay with this, Chef?” he paused to look up at me. His voice was thick and guttural.
“Yes,” I panted down at him without hesitation.
His hand went below the waistband of my pants, inside my panties. “You okay with this?” His fingers worked at where I was wet. Soaking.
“Fuck yes.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head.
He leaned in to nibble on my ear while he rubbed at my clit. “You okay if I bend you over that same counter you were so carefully using tweezers to garnish an hour ago?”
No reservations. “Yes.”
In one blink, one ragged breath, I was whirled around. My hands found the stainless steel before Kane’s palms were on my hips, pulling them back, lifting my ass upward. He kicked at my ankles to spread my legs then hurriedly dragged down my pants. I stepped out of them automatically, feeling euphoric at being naked. In my kitchen.
Kane had one hand on my hip, holding me in place as I heard the telltale crinkle of foil.
His palm found my pussy, circling my clit so my knees buckled.
Then his finger was gone. His cock was there. Filling me. To the brim.
I opened my mouth to cry out, despite knowing people were within yelling distance.
Kane’s palm covered my mouth, muffling my scream.
Clean enough so I could see Kane’s distorted reflection in the surface, I stared at the stainless steel as he pounded into me.
“You’re the boss in here, Chef,” he grunted in my ear as he fucked me. “Got me so fucking hard, seeing you command this kitchen.”
My body coiled, ready to come in seconds as him bending to whisper in my ear changed the angle, getting him deeper.
“I like to know that you’re the boss here, and that you’ll think of me taking you.” He reached around to find my clit. “Want you to plate every dish and remember this. ” He found the perfect spot, and I exploded.
My teeth bit into his palm on reflex as I hurtled into the abyss.
He continued pumping, grunting in pain or a release of his own—I didn’t know, I was too far gone.
By the time he stopped, I was ready to collapse against the counter.
Covered in sweat, I was gasping so heavily, my breath was fogging up the surface.
Kane’s lips latched on to my neck, kissing me there, licking at the perspiration.
I shivered in delight.
Carefully, with the utmost gentleness, he pulled out of me. Still, I whimpered.
He held on to me, bracing me as he, presumably, took care of the condom then buttoned his jeans.
“Step in, Chef,” he said quietly.
I looked back to where he was crouched, at my ankles, holding my pants and panties, ready to put them on for me.
“I can do it,” I protested, even though my limbs were lead.
“You can,” he agreed. “But let me.”
I relented without a fight, stepping into my pants and panties before letting him pull them up. After pulling my body upright, he put on my shirt again, buttoning with steady, tattooed fingers.
I watched, still trying to catch my breath.
One of those fingers went under my chin, tilting it upward.
His ice-blue gaze smoldered with intensity.
“Chef, that was indescribable,” he murmured before he gently laid his lips on mine. “I’ll wipe down the counters, ensure you don’t get a health violation. Then you’re gonna come home with me.”
Even though this was my kitchen and I called the shots, all I did was say, “’Kay.”