Page 25 of Monster Diner

“I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing. Just set it there.” She pointed to a cardboard box of dairy.

“Sure.” He gingerly placed the boxes down, then they both left the walk-in. She signed the invoice and waved Rowen off.

She went into the kitchen, intent on asking the afternoon line cook, Clyde, to organize the inventory, but the smell of cooking meat hit her along with a cloud of smoke.

The entire flat top was filled with orders, and tickets were churning through the POS. Vivianne and Trudy were hustling about, meaning there was no one else to organize the walk-in. Lizzy sighed, headed back to the freezer, and got to work. She started out by making a path to reach the shelves and checked the expiration dates on what was there. She threw out a few questionable metal bins of prepared food. She separated the produce from the meat from the dairy. Minutes passed, and she’d hardly made a dent in the pile, and her breath was clouding in the chilled air. She shivered a bit. She hadn’t brought a jacket, and the gooseflesh on her arm made her regret it. But once she started something, she couldn’t stop. She’d lose momentum, and it’d never get done.

Then she felt something large and warm drape over her shoulders.

She turned to see Victor filling the door to the walk-in. “For someone who wants nothing to do with the diner, you work harder than anyone else.”

She pulled his jacket tighter around herself. It smelled like him.

“We got a bakery delivery, and I was free so I figured why not…” She gestured to the piles of boxes she’d been sorting through. She wouldn’t admit she was starting to feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of leaving the diner behind. But she didn’t choose this. It had been thrust upon her. She was done pleasing others first.

“I’ve been meaning to get to that. I’ve been a bit distracted lately.” His heated gaze landed on her, and her face flushed.

“You can’t trick me. I know you’re a secret slob,” she teased, recalling his messy locker back in school and the messy office she’d reorganized when she arrived.

“You caught me.” He chuckled. “But still, you don’t need to trouble yourself. I’m the owner.”

“So am I,” she replied.

“But do you really want to be?” he asked, arms crossed.

She avoided replying by reaching down to pick up a box to set on the shelf, but it was heavier than she’d realized and she strained to pick it up. Victor grabbed it from her one-handed and placed it on the top shelf behind her, pinning her between him and it.

She looked up at him, heart racing. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want without someone else telling me who to be?” she said, crossing her arms over her body as she pulled away from Victor.

“I’d say I get it.”

“Do you, though? You were captain of the football team, top of your class, all honors classes.”

“Because I had to. Because my creator expected nothing less.”

He leaned in, his dark eyes searching her face. Her breath hitched.

She wanted him to kiss her so bad it hurt. But he backed away, turned to pick up another box, and placed it on the shelf.

“It’ll go faster if we work together,” he said.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and joined him. As much as he would allow. He did most of the heavy lifting while she explained her organizational system. They were careful not to get too close, as if they were hovering in each other’s orbits, painfully aware but fearing touch.

But no matter how they danced around, they kept drifting closer together, like a pair of magnets. There was a single box left. They both reached for it, hands touching. She didn’t pull away, and then his hand drifted over her arm and lingered on her shoulder before gliding up along her jaw to cup her cheek. Lizzy tilted her head up, staring at his scarred face. He’d been stitched together by his creator. That was all she knew, but she wanted to run her fingers over every seam, map out his body with her hands.

Then he kissed her, pushing her back against the shelves of the walk-in. His searing hot mouth was against hers, parting her lips with a desperate sort of need that had her moaning against him, opening herself wide for him, letting his tongue invade her mouth and claim every part of her.

Victor pulled away, panting, forehead pressed against hers. She could see his cock pushing against his slacks, and her panties were drenched.

“Why am I torturing myself?” he groaned.

“Your superior morals?” She smirked.

“If I had superior morals, I wouldn’t be thinking about bending you over and fucking you here and now.”

The thought sent a thrill through her. Her chest was heaving, and her face was flushed despite the chill of the freezer. “What’s stopping you?”

His breaths were labored, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he grabbed her hands in his, rubbing them together as if to keep them warm. She tilted her head, looking at him as he slowly raised them above her head.