Recipe for Disaster
After Hours
The Kitchen
The kitchen was dark except for the safety lights, casting everything in silver and shadow. Stainless steel gleamed like water. The space smelled of clean metal and lingering herbs, the ghost of dinner service still hanging in the air.
Marcus led her through the archway, past the pass where he’d watched her all night, deeper into his domain. The prep stations sat empty, surfaces wiped clean. No staff remained. Just the two of them and six months of wanting.
He stopped beside the main prep counter, turned to face her. In the dim light, his expression was open, vulnerable, nothing like the focused intensity she’d observed through service. This was the man from the hotel bar. The one who’d listened when she talked about her grandmother’s forest, who’d asked questions that made her feel seen instead of studied.
“I’ve thought about this,” he said quietly, his thumb still tracing circles on her hand. “Every night in this kitchen, I thought about you.”
Sloane’s breath caught. “Marcus.”
“I’m not trying to rush you. I just need you to know. Six months. Every dish I perfected, every plate I sent out during soft service, I was cooking for your ghost.”
She stepped closer, closing the gap between them until she could smell kitchen smoke on his skin, chocolate and espresso from the soufflé, something underneath that was just him. “I’m not a ghost anymore.”
“No.” His free hand came up, fingers gentle against her jaw. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” she echoed, and kissed him.
The first brush of lips was tentative, testing, like they were both afraid the other might dissolve. Then his mouth opened under hers and everything ignited. Six months collapsed into nothing. His hands slid into her hair, tilting her head back, and she made a sound she’d forgotten she could make. Want and relief and finally.
He tasted like dark chocolate and cardamom, like the dessert they’d shared, and underneath that, the memory of another kiss in another place. But this was better. This time she wasn’t running toward the door in her mind, calculating exits, protecting herself from the aftermath.
This time she was staying.
Marcus walked her backward until her hips met the prep counter, his body pressing into hers, all heat and solid muscle and barely controlled need. His hands found her waist, steadied her, then lifted.
“Up,” he murmured against her mouth, and she let him boost her onto the stainless steel.
The cold metal shocked through her clothes, made her gasp. He stepped between her knees, and suddenly they were eye level, her legs bracketing his hips, her hands finding purchase on his shoulders.
“This is wildly unprofessional,” she managed.
“You already wrote the review in your head.” His mouth found the corner of her jaw, traced down to her throat. “Five stars, you said.”
“The food earned it.” Her fingers curled into his shirt, holding on as his lips mapped her pulse point. “You earned something else.”
He pulled back to look at her, his eyes dark and serious. “What did I earn?”
“This.” She kissed him again, harder this time, pouring six months of missing him into it. “Me. Staying.”
His hands tightened on her waist. “Sloane.”
“Don’t.” She touched his face, made him look at her. “Don’t ask me if I’m sure. Don’t give me room to overthink this. I’ve been thinking for six months. I’m done thinking.”
“What are you doing instead?”
“Feeling.” The word came out rough. Honest. “For the first time in eight years, I’m just feeling.”
He made a sound low in his throat and kissed her like she was the answer to a question he’d been asking since June. His hands slid under her blouse, palms warm against her ribs, thumbs tracing the underside of her breasts through the thin silk of her bra. She arched into the touch, wanting more, wanting everything.
The kitchen counter was cold beneath her, his hands were hot on her skin, and somewhere between those two sensations she stopped cataloging and started drowning. His mouth moved to her throat, her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her neck that made her shiver.
“I thought about this,” he whispered against her skin. “How you’d taste. How you’d sound. Whether you’d let me touch you like this again.”
“Touch me.” Her voice had gone hoarse. “Please.”
His fingers found the buttons of her blouse, worked them open with the same precise care he’d used plating every course tonight. One button. Two. Revealing skin inch by inch while his mouth followed the path his hands made. By the fourth button she was shaking, her hands fisted in his hair, trying to pull him closer while simultaneously trying to remember how to breathe.
“You’re trembling,” he said, pausing.
“Six months,” she managed. “Six months of trying not to think about you. About this. About how you made me feel.”
He looked up at her, his hands stilling on the last button. “How did I make you feel?”
“Terrified.” The truth. “Like I could want something that much and maybe, possibly, deserve to have it.”
Something shifted in his expression. Understanding, maybe. He finished with the button, pushed the blouse off her shoulders, let it pool on the counter behind her. Then his hands framed her face, gentle despite the hunger she could see in his eyes.
“You deserve everything,” he said. “Every good thing. Every beautiful thing. And I’m going to spend as long as you’ll let me proving that to you.”
Her breath stopped. “Marcus.”
“Starting now.” He kissed her softly, at odds with the urgency thrumming between them. “Starting with this. With making you understand that staying isn’t something to be afraid of.”
She pulled him closer, wrapped her legs around his waist, felt the hard length of him against her core. “Then stop talking and show me.”
He laughed, low and rough, and the sound went straight through her. “Bossy.”
“You have no idea.”
“I’m learning.” His mouth found hers again, deeper this time, more demanding, while his hands worked the clasp of her bra. The silk fell away and then his palms covered her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples until she gasped into his mouth.
She tugged at his chef’s jacket, then reached for the shirt beneath it, desperate to feel skin, to confirm he was as affected as she was. He helped her, pulling it over his head in one smooth motion, and then there was just him. Lean muscle, kitchen-honed strength, a dusting of dark hair across his chest. She ran her hands over him, relearning the geography she’d tried to forget. The scar on his ribs from a childhood bike accident. The way his breath hitched when she touched the hollow of his throat.
“Sloane.” Her name like a prayer, like a plea.
She kissed his shoulder, his neck, tasted salt and smoke and six months of longing. “Take me upstairs.”
He went still. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She looked at him, let him see everything she was feeling. The want. The fear. The terrifying certainty that this was right. “I’m sure about you. About this. Take me upstairs before I overthink it.”
He kissed her once more, fierce and claiming, then helped her down from the counter. Her legs were unsteady. He steadied her with hands on her waist, then bent to retrieve her blouse.
“Leave it,” she said. “I’ll get it later.”
His eyes went dark. “Later.”
“After.” She took his hand. “Show me where you live.”
Upstairs
The stairs were narrow, tucked behind the kitchen, leading up to what she assumed had been office space before Marcus converted it. He opened the door at the top and pulled her through into darkness, then light as he flicked a switch.
The apartment was small. A living room that flowed into a tiny kitchen, a door that probably led to a bedroom, everything clean and spare and unmistakably his. Cookbooks lined a shelf. A couch faced a window that overlooked the terraces and the river beyond.
“Not much,” he said, suddenly uncertain. “I spend most of my time downstairs.”
“It’s perfect.” She turned to face him, reached for his hand. “You’re perfect.”
“I’m not.” But he was smiling, that small, real smile that made her chest ache.
“You made me a sauce from a wine I mentioned once.” She stepped closer, her hands finding his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath her palm. “You listened when I talked about mushrooms and beets and everything I’ve tried to forget about being young and hopeful. You saw me. You still see me.”
“I do.” His hands settled on her hips, pulled her flush against him. “I see you running scared. I see you trying to protect yourself. I see you being brave enough to stay anyway.”
She kissed him to stop the words, to stop the truth from breaking her open further. But his mouth gentled her, shaped the kiss into something both urgent and reverent, and she let herself fall into it.
They made it to the couch. Barely. His hands worked the zipper of her skirt while hers fumbled with his belt, both of them breathing hard, moving with the desperate coordination of people who’d waited too long for this.
Her skirt hit the floor. His pants followed. He pulled her down onto the couch, his body covering hers, his weight a comfort and a promise. She wrapped her legs around him, felt him hard and ready against her core, separated only by two thin layers of fabric.
“Tell me you want this,” he said, his voice rough against her throat. “Tell me you’re staying.”
“I want this.” Her hands traced the muscles of his back, the curve of his shoulders. “I want you. I’m staying.”
He kissed her like she’d given him everything, his hands mapping her body with the same attention he’d given every plate tonight. Learning her. Memorizing her. When his fingers slipped beneath the edge of her underwear, she arched into the touch, desperate for more.
“Please,” she whispered. “Marcus, please.”