"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 deeplyembarrassing 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 marshalis 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, clearrain 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.
