Chapter 9
QUINN
Istand under the cold spray of the fire sprinklers, watching Lanek's shoulders shake with laughter, and I want to simultaneously kiss him again and also murder him with a rolling pin.
"This isn't funny!"
"It is a little funny," he rumbles, his deep voice cutting through the shrieking alarm.
Water streams off his massive frame, his ruined dress shirt clinging to every ridiculous muscle.
He's still grinning like an absolute menace, completely unbothered by the fact that we're both soaked and half-dressed and my entire bakery is actively flooding.
I shove at his chest, which is about as effective as shoving a brick wall. "Get off me! The fire department is going to be here any second and we need to—"
"Quinn, breathe."
"Don't tell me to breathe! You just—we just—on my prep counter!"
His grin widens. "I remember."
"Oh my god." I wriggle out from under him, my bare feet hitting the wet tile floor with a slap.
My dress is absolutely destroyed, clinging to me in ways that would be deeply embarrassing if I had any dignity left, which I don't, because I just had sex with my business rival on a stainless steel surface meant for kneading dough.
I'm frantically scanning the flooded floor for my underwear, my eyes darting between overturned mixing bowls and scattered utensils, when the distant wail of sirens cuts through the chaos. My heart drops straight into my stomach.
"Lanek, you need to leave. Right now." My voice comes out higher than I intend, edged with panic that has nothing to do with the sprinklers still raining down on us.
He's crouched near the prep counter, retrieving his boots from where they'd been kicked aside in our... enthusiasm. His head snaps up at my tone. "I'm not leaving you alone with—"
"I can handle the fire department by myself! Go!" I'm hopping on one foot now, trying to wrestle my soaked dress down over my thighs while simultaneously searching for anything resembling my missing undergarments. This is a nightmare. This is an actual, living nightmare.
He straightens to his full, towering height, water cascading off those impossibly broad shoulders, and reaches for me.
His expression shifts in a heartbeat, the smugness draining away, replaced by something that looks genuinely, almost tenderly concerned.
It catches me completely off guard. "Quinn—"
The pounding on the front door makes the decision for us. I hear a deep, authoritative voice shouting through the glass, demanding entry, and I make an executive decision. I grab Lanek by his soaked shirt collar, yank him toward the back exit, and shove him bodily out into the alley.
"Go home. Please. I will handle this."
He opens his mouth to argue.
"Lanek. If you care about me even a little bit, you will leave right now and let me save face with the fire marshal."
Something complicated flickers across his brutally handsome face, but he nods once and disappears into the pre-dawn darkness, moving with surprising silence for someone his size.
I slam the door, throw the deadbolt, and turn around just as the fire department breaks through my front entrance.
The fire marshal is a no-nonsense woman in her fifties who takes one look at my soaked, disheveled state and the smoking oven and makes absolutely zero comment about my lack of pants.
I explain the electrical malfunction in the calmest, most professional voice I can manage while dripping all over my own floor, and she takes notes with the grim efficiency of someone who has seen much worse.
They shut off the sprinklers. They ventilate the smoke. They red-tag my oven and inform me I can't use it until a licensed electrician certifies the wiring is safe.
By the time they leave, it's seven in the morning, I'm wrapped in a flour-dusted emergency blanket, and my bakery looks like a disaster zone.
I sit down on the wet floor and put my head in my hands.
What the hell did I just do?
I don't sleep.
I can't.
Every time I close my eyes, I feel Lanek's hands on my skin, his voice rumbling praise in my ear, the unbearable fullness of him inside me. My body aches in places I didn't know could ache. I'm pretty sure I have a bruise on my hip in the exact shape of his thumb.
I spend the rest of the day battling the aftermath of the fire sprinklers.
Anyone who thinks sprinklers release clean, clear rain has never dealt with a commercial system.
It’s years of stagnant, foul-smelling, rust-colored sludge.
I rent an industrial wet-vac, scrub every single surface with heavy-duty bleach three times over, haul heavy garbage bags of ruined, soaked ingredients to the alley, and obsessively check my phone
He doesn't text.
Which is good. I don't want him to text. We need to pretend this never happened and go back to being professional neighbors who occasionally argue about noise ordinances.
Except I can still smell him on my skin.
I take three showers.
It doesn't help.
The next morning, I'm elbow-deep in a batch of emergency croissants—baked in my backup countertop convection oven because my main oven is still tagged—when I hear the familiar rumble of his voice through the wall.
My entire body reacts. My pulse jumps. My face flushes. I drop an entire stick of butter on the floor.
"Get it together, Quinn," I mutter to myself.
The back door opens.
I freeze.
Lanek fills the doorway, holding two paper coffee cups and a white bakery box that I know for a fact did not come from my shop. He's wearing his usual black t-shirt and heavy denim, his leather apron conspicuously absent, and he looks infuriatingly well-rested.
"Good morning, little baker."
"What are you doing here?"
"Bringing you breakfast." He sets the coffee and the box on my, thoroughly sanitized, prep counter and leans against it like he owns the place. "You didn't eat yesterday."
"How would you possibly know that?"
"I was watching."
"That's—" I sputter. "That's creepy!"
"That's protective." He nudges the coffee cup toward me. "Drink. You look exhausted."
I want to throw the coffee in his smug face. Instead, I pick it up and take a sip. It's perfect. Oat milk, two pumps of vanilla, the exact way I like it. Which means he's been paying attention, which means this is a problem.
"Lanek, about last night—" I start, forcing myself to look at him even though my stomach is twisting itself into elaborate knots.
"Best night of my life," he says immediately, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that makes my entire nervous system short-circuit. There's no hesitation, no uncertainty. Just absolute, unwavering conviction.
I swallow hard, my fingers tightening around the coffee cup. "It was a mistake."
The effect is instantaneous and devastating.
His expression shutters completely, the warmth draining from his features like someone's pulled a curtain across a window.
The easy, satisfied smile that had been playing at the corners of his mouth vanishes entirely, replaced by something hard and impenetrable. His dark eyes go flat, unreadable.
"A mistake," he repeats slowly, as if testing the weight of the word on his tongue.
"Yes. We were both running on adrenaline and stress and it just, it happened. But it can't happen again. We're business neighbors. We need to keep things professional."
He's silent for a long, terrible moment, his dark eyes searching my face. I hold his gaze, to project confidence I absolutely do not feel.
Finally, he straightens to his full, towering height. "Professional."
"Exactly."
"So when I had you pinned to that counter, begging for my cock, that was professional?"
My face ignites. "That's not—you can't just—"
"When you came so hard you nearly broke my fingers, was that professional, Quinn?"
"Stop it."
"When I was buried so deep inside you I could feel your heartbeat, was that—"
"Lanek, stop!" I'm shaking, my hands clenched into fists. "It was a mistake. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I don't—I can't—"
He moves so fast I don't have time to react. One second he's across the kitchen, the next he's right in front of me, his hand cupping my jaw, tilting my face up to his.
"Liar," he says softly, the word barely more than a breath against my skin.
His thumb brushes once across my cheekbone so achingly gentle.
Then he releases me, his warmth disappears so abruptly.
He picks up the untouched bakery box from where it still sits on the counter, pristine pink cardboard filled with pastries I'd spent all morning perfecting.
He holds it carefully, reverently, as if it's something precious.
He doesn't say another word. Doesn't argue, doesn't push, doesn't use that devastating directness that cuts through every defence I try to build. He just walks to the door with measured, deliberate steps that echo too loud in the sudden silence of my kitchen.
The door clicks shut behind him with devastating finality. Not a slam, not even a firm closure. Just a quiet, controlled click that somehow feels worse than if he'd torn it off the hinges.
I stand there in my kitchen, surrounded by the lingering scent of cardamom and his woodsmoke cologne, trembling like I've just run a marathon.
My legs feel unsteady. My hands won't stop shaking.
I press my palms flat against the cool marble of my work counter, trying to ground myself, trying to remember why I just did that.
I tell myself I made the right choice. The only choice. The professional, sensible, self-preserving choice.
I'm still telling myself that, repeating it like a mantra, when the first hot tear spills down my cheek. Then another. Then I'm crying in earnest, my carefully constructed composure crumbling into nothing.
The neighborhood block party is my personal circle of hell.