Hot & Sweet

by Sean Ashcroft

  But Wyatt had promised to play nice.

  He squeezed the bottle of lemon juice into his filling, the force of his hand on the bottle making the top pop off and into the bowl, juice spilling after it. He turned the bottle back up at breakneck speed, but even when he picked the lid out, he could see he’d added at least twice as much lemon juice as he’d meant to.

  Great.

  “That’s… too much lemon,” Wyatt said, dejected. Kai had managed to make him look like an idiot without even doing anything.

  He didn’t have time to start again.

  Kai wanted to make him look like an idiot? Fine. He could fix this, and then he’d only look even more competent. Besides, the people watching at home made mistakes. He could turn this into a teaching moment.

  “Good news is,” he said without missing a beat. “It’s pretty easy to counteract sourness. All you need is sugar, and there’s already sugar in this recipe. So if you do what I just did, don’t panic. Lemme mix this all together so I can taste it.”

  He fitted the bowl back into the stand mixer and turned the dial to ‘fold’, looking up to smile at the audience.

  Once the mixer was working, Wyatt cleared his throat. “That was a long time ago,” he said. “You really must’ve gone deep-diving to find it.”

  “Oh no,” Kai said cheerfully, shaking his frying pan to turn whatever he was cooking in it. “It’s very popular. Almost the first result. Haven’t you ever looked yourself up?”

  Wyatt ignored that remark, instead sticking a finger in his filling to taste it. He’d never even thought to look himself up. He didn’t want to know.

  The filling was the kind of sour that hurt, his face screwing up involuntarily.

  Beside him, Kai chuckled. It wasn’t exactly a cruel sound, but it settled uncomfortably in Wyatt’s gut anyway.

  “Hey, I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” Wyatt said. “You’re the one who has to taste this at the end.”

  Kai’s face fell. If they were keeping score, Wyatt felt as though he’d just clawed a point back.

  Not that he planned on leaving this the way it was. He had enough pride that even for the chance of making Kai taste a painfully-sour roulade, he couldn’t make a bad end-product. His reputation was all he had.

  He poured in a small measure of confectioner’s sugar and turned the mixer back on. “You know, this is okay. Everyone makes mistakes, and while a lot of baking has to be precise, fillings are really up to your imagination,” Wyatt said. “Whatever happens, happens. You can fix anything.”

  “Very Bob Ross of you,” Kai commented from his side of the kitchen.

  “That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me,” Wyatt responded, and he wanted it to come out as sarcastic, but it didn’t.

  If anyone but Kai had said it, he might even have teared up. All he wanted was for people to walk into their kitchens and enjoy themselves. Everyone had to eat, but there was no reason it needed to be a chore.

  “Actually, this is pretty good,” Wyatt said as he tasted the filling again. “I might have to update the amount of lemon juice in this filling. Just enough to make your lips pucker is kinda nice. And the roulade itself is basically just eggs and sugar with a tiny amount of corn flour to give it body, so it’s really sweet.”

  Wyatt paused, then decided he could afford to get his own back. “And I think Kai’s sweet enough.”

  Streaks of pink colored Kai’s razor-sharp cheekbones, and Wyatt grinned. Good. It was his turn to be embarrassed.

  The roulade turned out just fine when Wyatt rolled it up, beautiful even cracks running along the surface. If this was the worst Kai had to offer, then he could survive the next six episodes after this one.

  Some part of him knew that it probably wasn’t the worst, but he could deal with that when the time came. For now, he was pretty sure he’d come out ahead.

  Apart from the fact that Kai had seen him almost completely naked except for a rolling pin.

  Chapter Four

  “Hey, Kai, step into my office for a second?”

  Kai looked up as he entered the building, adjusting the bag slung over his shoulder nervously. Donna was standing in the lobby, phone in one hand and disposable coffee cup in the other, and it looked like she’d been waiting for him.

  What could Donna possibly want to see him for?

  He hadn’t exactly stuck to playing nice last week, but… he thought he’d gotten away with it. And she didn’t seem upset with him, either.

  If he’d been in trouble, he would have expected to be told about it earlier. So it made more sense that she wanted something else, but what?

  Only one way to find out, he supposed.

  He nodded, following her through to her office with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets.

  Some part of him expected to see Wyatt in there already, but the office was empty.

  Donna sat down behind her desk, folding one leg over the other. Still unsure about what was going on, Kai remained standing, resisting the urge to cross his arms.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Donna said, which at least confirmed his suspicions that this was about something else.

  “I’m actually bringing you in here to congratulate you. Ratings for the first show are through the roof, especially online. You captured some real magic last week. Especially with your brand new audience of women under 28.”

  Kai blinked. He remembered, mostly, letting his mouth get away from him. He hadn’t intended to tell Wyatt he’d looked him up, or anything else, but it had just come out.

  The problem, really, had been that he’d barely stopped thinking about it once he’d seen the promo shot. And then Wyatt had been right there, and Kai wasn’t about to start pretending he wasn’t really hot, because he was, but normally he had a little more self-control than that.

  And then he’d just said what he was thinking, right in front of a live audience.

  He’d been afraid it’d get him fired, and breathed a sigh of relief when he hadn’t gotten a call the next day.

  And now he was being congratulated for it?

  He raised an eyebrow, sure there was more.

  “They like it when you flirt with Wyatt,” Donna said.

  Kai’s mouth fell open. His ears burned as he blushed to the tips of them.

  He hadn’t been flirting with Wyatt. Not once. He’d been… he’d been…

  “I wasn’t flirting,” he said, not sure what he had been doing, exactly. Everything he’d said had just escaped him, as though he couldn’t stop his tongue from getting him in trouble.

  He still hadn’t managed to stop thinking about that photo of Wyatt. Or about the things people had been saying about him.

  This time, it was Donna’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Sounded like it to me. Sounded like it to all your new fans, who, between you and me, you wanna keep. They’re the loyal, binge-watching kind.”

  Kai wet his lips nervously. He could feel what little control he’d had over this situation slipping through his fingers like sand, and he didn’t know how to stop it.

  “I didn’t… mean it,” Kai said, unsure where this was going.

  Donna chuckled. “Neither does Wyatt with all his guests.” She paused, pushing her heavy-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Well, maybe some of them, but he just does it. And people like it when you do it. You wanna hear the comments we’ve collected?”

  Kai winced at the thought, remembering everything he’d seen about Wyatt when he looked him up. “No,” he said. “What do you want me to do with this information?”

  Donna shrugged. “Ratings like these could save a career. Hell, make a career, even. I can’t make you keep doing it, but… it’s in your own best interest to keep it up.”

  And there it was, the last of his control over the situation sliding out from under him, leaving him sprawling.

  Not that Kai was sure anymore that he’d ever had control. He’d just been telling himself that.

  His options, as he saw them, we
re finish his career on a shared mini series meant to fill a programming gap, or…

  Well, to keep flirting with Wyatt. Or start flirting, because that wasn’t even close to what he’d intended the first time.

  Since they had about five minutes before they started filming, he needed to make a decision now.

  “You don’t have to mean it,” Donna said, not unkindly. “It’s just TV. You’ve gotta learn to act someday.”

  Kai swallowed.

  If Wyatt did it, why shouldn’t he? This was the thing he’d been missing, obviously. Wyatt flirted. Wyatt made people feel like he liked them. Audience included.

  And that was why he was more popular.

  “Fine,” Kai said as he came to a decision. “Okay, fine, I’ll keep it up.”

  “Good.” Donna smiled broadly at him. Sometimes, she reminded Kai a little of a wolf. A wolf in cat-eye glasses and kitten heels. “Now head to the studio before you’re late.”

  Kai nodded, then turned and left Donna’s office with nervous tension eating at his gut. It sounded so simple when she’d said it, but…

  He wasn’t good at flirting when he meant it, how the hell was he supposed to make it look good when he didn’t?

  Chapter Five

  “What are you doing to that chicken?” Wyatt asked as he looked over at what Kai was working on. He’d been focused on his own recipe, and only just noticed what Kai was working on.

  “Frying it,” Kai said, a tiny smile playing about his lips. “Not like you normally would, I guess,” he added.

  “I wouldn’t fry it at all. Too long and too hard,” he said.

  Kai looked up at him, raising one perfectly-defined eyebrow.

  Wyatt swallowed.

  He’d been like this the entire time—when he hadn’t been outright flinging innuendos at him—and it was making him nervous. Was he trying to get Wyatt to screw up again?

  “Right, so… you’ve cooked it, and now you’re gonna fry it?” he asked, hoping that sounded like an intelligent question.

  “I’ve poached it,” Kai said. “In an aromatic broth. And now I’m going to fry it.”

  “Without batter?” Wyatt double-checked.

  He didn’t understand half of what Kai did, but he understood this even less than usual. Also, he could smell nutmeg, which seemed like a weird thing to pair with chicken.

  If Kai wasn’t so… standoffish, Wyatt would even have been fascinated by him. The way he worked was measured and methodical, his dishes original, his command of flavors pretty damned masterful.

  The thing was, he was also a jerk.

  Wyatt wondered if that was just something he did on TV, or if maybe he genuinely couldn’t help it. Maybe asshole was written all the way down to his bones.

  But now he was flirting, and there was really no other word for it, and Wyatt didn’t get it.

  “Without batter,” Kai confirmed, smirking. “Trust me, and I’ll be gentle with you.”

  Wyatt’s ears burned.

  It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable with being flirted with, exactly…

  Okay, well… maybe he was. But only because it was on internationally-available television, and only because it was Kai.

  He wasn’t out as bisexual, but he didn’t care if people figured it out. The only thing he cared about here was that he felt like he was on the wrong end of a prank someone else was pulling. He was afraid to tease back, in case that was what Kai was angling for.

  Not that Wyatt could figure out why, or what he was hoping to gain by tripping Wyatt up—making him look stupid might have been entertaining, but it wouldn’t have been good for Kai’s long-term career, and Wyatt was pretty sure Kai wasn’t that petty.

  Which left him all the way back at square one—why was he doing this?

  “I’ll trust you,” Wyatt said, hoping that his blush didn’t show up too much on camera. Since he was wearing about half a pound of stage makeup, he figured there was an even chance that no one would notice.

  At least, that was what he was telling himself.

  “So uh,” he began, turning his attention back to his own work. “A good lava cake should be inviting on the outside and warm and gooey on the inside.”

  “Just like you,” Kai commented, not even looking up from where he was patiently frying naked, poached chicken legs.

  If Wyatt thought he’d been blushing before, it was nothing compared to now. No one was going to miss this. Everyone watching was going to see him flustered because of a few teasing lines.

  He was normally good at handling this. Hell, he was kind of known for it, it was part of his overall charm, as far as he was concerned.

  On the other hand, he normally expected it. This was all coming out of nowhere.

  And it was coming from someone who, three weeks ago, had been offended by the idea of having to work with him. That was the part that Wyatt really couldn’t make sense of.

  “Anyway, it only needs a couple of minutes in the oven because you’re really just looking for a crust to form, so I’ll start cleaning up and let Kai explain what he’s doing,” Wyatt said.

  That gave him a few minutes to gather his thoughts, which were still swimming in his head.

  Wyatt carefully avoided looking at Kai in case he said something else, or raised his eyebrow again, or… something.

  He wasn’t used to feeling this off-balance. He was used to being in control of most situations, and at least understanding the rest of them.

  It could have been fun, even, if he’d been expecting it at all.

  Even now, Wyatt could see that Kai was actually pretty funny, his wit as sharp as his cheekbones. Or his knives.

  Knives were probably a better comparison, but it wasn’t easy to miss how damned pretty Kai was. He looked like one of the beautiful elves out of a fantasy movie, lithe and long-limbed and with high cheekbones and haunting eyes.

  Not that Wyatt was thinking about any of that. It was just…

  Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have necessarily knocked him back if he was flirting for real. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

  “Are you close?” Kai asked once he was done working, and Wyatt couldn’t even tell anymore if that was supposed to sound filthy, or if it was just Kai’s voice.

  “Uh.” Wyatt forced himself to swallow past a lump in his throat. “Yeah, nearly done,” he said, peering into the oven.

  The timer went off as he looked down, making him jump. He managed to laugh at the last moment, and that made him feel just a little better.

  They were almost done, and he could find out what the hell was going on in just a few minutes. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this.

  He took the lava cake out of the oven and turned it onto a plate with appropriate oohs and ahhs from the small studio audience. This part made him smile.

  The cake smelled rich and chocolatey and looked as perfect as he’d ever managed, so if Kai’s intention was to make Wyatt screw up, he’d failed. He’d made a mistake last week, but he wasn’t going to repeat that.

  “Now, you can’t tell if a lava cake came out right until you crack into it, so I’m gonna dust this with sugar and then leave it to Kai for judgement.”

  “Perfect timing,” Kai said, arranging his chicken artfully on a cutting board, a tiny bowl of sauce provided next to it. “Be careful with the vinaigrette, it’s mostly chili.”

  Wyatt wasn’t entirely sure there was supposed to be any chili in a vinaigrette, but he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t been watching with interest as Kai worked. Besides, he was starving.

  Once Wyatt was done dusting the lava cake with confectioners’ sugar, he swapped places with Kai.

  “How do you want me to eat these?” Wyatt asked.

  “Don’t be afraid to use your fingers,” Kai said cheerfully, and Wyatt instantly regretted asking. It was a normal, reasonable answer, but it felt like there were other layers to it.

  Probably because Kai had spent the whole episode laying all the groundw
ork to make Wyatt think of the filthiest possible meaning to everything without it even needing to be intentional.

  He focused on the chicken, which looked weird as hell but smelled really good. Rather than taking the whole leg to his mouth, he broke one of the coolest ones apart with his fingers and dipped the meat into the vinaigrette he’d been left.

  A soft, happy noise escaped him automatically, even as his lips started tingling from the chili. Kai hadn’t been kidding about that, but it worked, and it tasted fruity and bright against silky, juicy chicken, and…

  If nothing else, Wyatt had to admit that Kai knew what he was doing. He would have eaten this voluntarily and probably asked for more after.

  A borderline-orgasmic moan from the other end of the counter made Wyatt look up just in time to see Kai licking chocolate off his lips.

  “Good?” Wyatt asked nervously.

  Kai made another happy sound in the back of his throat, low and desperate, as though he’d never experienced more pleasure at once in his entire life.

  It was enough to make Wyatt blush all over again, just when he thought he’d gotten a handle on things.

  “I need to be alone with this,” Kai said, picking the plate up. Wyatt stared at him as he walked past, digging his spoon into the cake again, and walked right off the set.

  Luckily, they were done, so it didn’t really matter.

  “So uh… Kai’s gone, so I guess it’s up to me to remind you guys that the recipes are on the website, we’ve got social media for the show if you’ve got questions or comments, and we’ll be back next week,” Wyatt said, not sure he’d gotten everything, but sure he was finished.

  He beamed at the camera as earnestly as he could, and then breathed a sigh of relief once they were done.

  Donna grinned back at him from the audience, giving him both thumbs up. Wyatt wasn’t sure the episode had gone that well, but maybe he hadn’t looked as confused as he felt.

  Kai was standing off to the side, still eating the lava cake. Obviously, he hadn’t entirely been kidding about enjoying it. That felt good, though it was overshadowed by everything else that had been going on for the last half hour.