The words settle between us, clear and direct. She’s not asking for permission or approval. She’s setting a boundary, making clear what she needs from me if this is going to work.
“I understand,” I say, and I do. “And I’m sorry. For tonight, for overstepping, for not trusting you to handle it.” I meet her eyes directly. “It won’t be easy for me. Watching you deal with men like Grishnak, knowing what they want, knowing what they’re capable of. But I’ll try. I’ll trust you to handle yourself, to make your own choices, to tell me when you need help instead of assuming you do.”
She nods slowly, apparently satisfied. “That’s all I’m asking.”
We sit in silence for a moment, the weight of the conversation settling around us. Then she picks up her chopsticks again, twirls a bite of beef, and brings it to her lips with careful deliberation. “It’s getting cold,” she says, her voice steady. “Eat.”
It’s not forgiveness. Not quite. But it’s understanding, maybe. An agreement about how we move forward, about what we need from each other if this is going to work.
She’s here. She cooked for me. She’s sitting across the table, eating the food she made, in the kitchen we share.
And for now, that’s enough.
CHAPTER 9
mei
Three weeks of not-quite moments, of evenings that run longer than they should, of his hand at the small of my back as I pass through the kitchen door. A touch that lasts a fraction of a second too long.
Three weeks of watching him from across the bar, of catching his eyes on mine when he thinks I don’t notice, of falling asleep thinking about how he says “Yes, Chef.”
Three weeks of agreeing to nothing, of acknowledging nothing, of pretending that whatever’s happening between us is contained by the four walls of the kitchen and the professional courtesy of “Let me know if I’ve overstepped.”
We’ve become fluent in each other’s silences. The quiet that means he’s thinking through a problem, the breath he takes before delivering bad news, the hum that signals approval. I know the exact moment his focus shifts from inventory to the dumpling I’m pleating, can read his shoulders when he’s three seconds from suggesting we call it a night.
He knows when I’m about to change the menu based on nothing more than a slight adjustment to the wok flame, can tellwhen I’m making an executive decision by how I push my hair back.
One evening that was definitively not nothing: he tastes a spoonful of the new chili oil, closes his eyes, and says “Fuck” with such reverence that I have to turn away.
Another night, he reaches past me for the soy sauce, his chest against my back, and we both freeze for one long, impossible moment before I step sideways with a casual “Watch it, Big Guy.”
A Sunday afternoon when he takes the knife from my hand, says “Like this” with such focused intensity, and for one brief, mad second I think he’s going to kiss me. He doesn’t. I step back. He apologizes for “getting in my space.” I tell him it’s fine. We both know it’s not.
And then comes Thursday.
The bar closed for our weekly deep clean, the front room empty, the kitchen gleaming under the fluorescent lights. We’re working side by side, scrubbing the range top, when my hand brushes his. Not a brief contact but a deliberate slide. My fingers against his palm, our skin warm where it touches. We both freeze, caught in the tension that’s been building since that night with Grishnak, since the beef and the careful neutrality, since the agreement that we’re colleagues who matter to each other but in ways we’re not naming.
I should step back. I should make a joke about the range, about kitchen safety, about anything but the fact that I’ve spent three weeks thinking about the kiss in the closet, about the way he says my name, about how his mouth looks when he’s concentrating. I should remember that this is business, that he’s my boss, that the partnership keeping me afloat is still new enough to shatter.
Instead, I turn my hand, palm up, and say, “I’ve been thinking about the storage closet.”
His eyes meet mine, steady and direct. “Me too,” he says, and there’s that note in his voice. Careful neutrality that doesn’t quite hide the heat underneath. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
The next moments exist in fragments. His hand in my hair, my back against the prep table, his mouth hot on my neck, my name in his mouth like he’s been saving it. His hands are warm. Orcs run hot, he told me once, a casual observation about kitchen temperature. Now they’re everywhere at once, cradling my face, spanning my waist, sliding under my shirt to the warm skin of my back.
“We should stop,” he says, his voice rough against my ear. “We said we wouldn’t?—”
“I don’t care,” I manage, my fingers already working at the buttons of his shirt. “I don’t want to stop. Do you?”
He pauses, looking down at me with those unusual green eyes. “No,” he says finally. “But I need to know you’re sure. This isn’t—we can’t go back from this, Mei.”
Fear tightens in my chest. Or maybe recognition. He’s right. Once we cross this line, once we admit that whatever’s between us is more than professional respect or even friendship, there’s no going back to colleagues, to boss and employee, to the careful distance we’ve been maintaining.
“I’m sure,” I say, and mean it completely. “I want this. I want you.”
Something changes in his expression. Relief, maybe, or wonder. Then his mouth finds mine again, harder this time, almost desperate. His hands slide under my shirt, big enough to span my waist, warm enough to make me shiver despite the heat building under my skin. I push his shirt off his shoulders, exposing the broad expanse of his chest. The pattern of his tribal scars, the dark hair that forms a line down his stomach, the cut muscles that flex as he lifts me onto the prep table.
“There’s so much of you,” I say, running my hands over his chest, feeling the heat of him under my palms. “Everywhere.”
