37. Delilah
DELILAH
ME: Meet me at the bakery’s back door at ten.
His reply arrives before I set down the phone.
KANE: Naked?
ME: As if I’d let you in any other way.
This is our life now.
I ask for him when I want him. He comes to Sheepshead Bay and leaves before my 3:30 A.M. alarm, or I sleep at his brownstone and wake beneath sheets that have no business feeling that good against bare skin.
One afternoon, I meet him in the back of the sedan between supplier meetings.
Technically speaking, they’re not “holidays.”
But there are plenty of fireworks nonetheless.
The first unscheduled invitation took me an eternity to send. I typed Are you busy? and deleted it because that’s how you talk to colleagues, not fuck buddies.
I tried Want to come over? and decided that was too forward.
In the end, I figured clarity was the best option.
ME: I want you tonight. This is separate from the debt. Come at nine if you want me, too.
Kane arrived at 8:58 with no gift and asked what I wanted. I pointed upstairs and he proceeded to make me incapable of walking for a few days.
After that, asking became easier.
Tonight, I want him in my bakery.
By 9:45, every employee is gone. I finish the deposit, check the ovens, set the alarm for the front, and lock both entrances. The workday is complete before I turn off the kitchen lights and leave one lamp burning in the office.
I also move tomorrow’s croissant dough into the refrigerator, verify the flour delivery, and leave Priya a note on the dry-erase board about the new wholesale order.
There will be no frantic cleanup after Kane arrives. If I lose awareness of time or get fucked into oblivion, the bakery can still open without disaster.
On the desk, I put two glasses of water, condoms, and a clean towel. Kane knocks right as I finish setting everything out.
I let him in through the rear entrance.
“You’re overdressed,” I tell him.
He wears black trousers and a dark sweater beneath his coat. “You are fully dressed.”
“I own the building. The rules are different for management.”
I lock the door behind him. Kane removes his coat and reaches for me.
“Hands to yourself.”
He stops.
“You summoned me here to stand by the dishwasher?”
“You did excellent work there last time.”
“My performance review mentioned benefits.”
“Probation has ended.” I step close and hook one finger into his waistband. “Benefits are available.”
I take him into the office.
The cot sits against the wall beside the desk, stowed away because I haven’t used it in a while. It is narrow, ugly, and covered with the blanket Priya bought after finding me asleep under a pile of aprons.
Kane looks at it. “That?”
“Do you require a four-poster bed and thousand-thread-count sheets, Your Majesty?”
“I require enough space to turn you over.”
“You’ll have to improvise.”
I pull my sweater over my head, revealing that, oops, I forgot to wear a bra today.
Kane loses interest in furniture.
He kisses me and backs me toward the cot. I relieve him of his sweater, run both hands over his chest, and take my time with his belt. He undresses me from the waist down, then puts me on the mattress and kneels between my legs.
“I’m too impatient for that tonight,” I whine, pulling him up toward me. “I want you inside of me.”
“Greedy little thing,” he sighs as he crawls up my body.
He kisses me again. I pull him over me and wrap my legs around his hips. Kane plants one hand beside my head and begins to shift his knee between mine so I can grind on it while we make out.
But I only get one buck of my hips before the cot collapses.
The metal frame folds inward with a crash, and the mattress dumps both of us against the wall.
Kane takes the impact on his shoulder. I end up beneath him with one leg trapped in the blanket and my bare ass presented to the ceiling.
For one awful second, I am back in every bedroom where I made the first joke before anyone else could.
“Well,” I begin, “my ass finally—”
“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence.”
Kane pushes himself up and frees my leg.
“I was going to say ‘brought you back to earth.’“
“Liar. You were going to blame your body.” He examines the frame. “This hinge buckled.”
“So then the joke is valid.”
“The label says two hundred and fifty pounds.” Kane points at his chest. “I exceed that without you.”
I look at the twisted hinge and laugh until I have to sit on the floor. Kane lowers himself beside me, naked from the waist up with a blanket caught around one ankle.
The laughing goes on long enough that it stops being about the cot.
It’s the sound of a person who hasn’t had a single funny thing happen to her since December. But this? This is funny.
I’m sitting bare-ass naked on the rubber mat in my own office, and Kane Makov, pakhan of whatever, is sprawled next to me with a fleece blanket lassoed around his ankle.
“You alright?” he asks.
“I’m grieving. That cot and I have been through things.”
He reaches over and pulls me across the floor toward him by the back of my thigh. Not gently. My hip skids on the mat and I end up half in his lap, and the laughing dies in my throat because his hand stays exactly where it landed.
“We don’t need a bed,” he says, “for what I have in mind.”
I open my mouth to say something, I’m not even sure what. But he kisses me instead, one hand cradling the back of my skull so my head doesn’t crack against the desk drawer.
The vibe in the room has changed.
On the cot, he was being careful with me. Down here, with the frame collapsed and my careful little arrangement of water glasses and towel abandoned up on the desk, he stops being careful.
He takes my wrists and puts them above my head, pinned against the drawer handles, and kisses down my throat to my chest. His mouth closes over one nipple and I moan.
“Nobody’s here,” he says against my skin, reading me perfectly. “Be as loud as you want.”
“There’s a guard on my back door.”
“Josef can’t hear for shit.”
“Kane—”
“Hush, sladkaya. The only thing I want to hear out of your mouth is what you want me to do to you.”
“I want you to fuck me on the floor of my own office,” I gush at once, “because I’ve been thinking about it since the second I woke up.”
If he was a nice man, he’d do exactly that.
Since Kane Makov is the exact opposite of nice, what he does instead is torture me with his mouth and fingers for three consecutive orgasms until there are tears drying on my cheeks.
Only then does he give me what I asked for.
He fucks me from behind with long, slow strokes while he plays with my clit.
Then he flips me onto my back, hikes my legs over his shoulders, and drives into me from his knees.
In the chair.
Bent over the desk.
Wedged into the corner at an angle that’s definitely gonna hurt tomorrow.
I come apart with my cheek pressed against the cinderblock wall. He’s not far behind me, palming my ass as he empties with his cock buried as deep as it’ll go.
When we come back to our senses and start to reassemble ourselves, I look over to see Kane frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Your chair’s broken now, too.” He pushes it with one finger, but two of the wheels refuse to budge.
“Cheap furniture,” I sigh. “The whole industry’s rotten.”
Kane looks up at me and grins. “Anything else you’d like to break?”
The next morning, I order a steel-frame cot rated for six hundred pounds. I text Kane a picture of the shipping confirmation.
ME: Management has addressed the equipment issue.
KANE: Six hundred pounds?
ME: Your ego required a significant safety margin.
KANE: But it won’t be delivered until next week. That simply won’t do.
ME: You’ll just have to keep it in your pants until then.
KANE: Fuck that. I have a better idea.
KANE: Come to my place tonight. I’ve got bedroom equipment that could use some testing.