“But you’re making me do something elaborate?” Kai asked, surprised by that logic.
“You’re up to the challenge.” Wyatt shrugged. “Besides, might give some people the encouragement to push themselves.”
Something in Kai’s chest tightened at the thought that Wyatt believed he was up to the challenge. Wyatt was showing him something just a little more complicated than usual, still within reach of the average person, but just enough to stretch his limits.
And he was confident Kai could do it. He hadn’t even implied one time that not doing it was an option.
Wyatt treated him better than most other people in his life ever had, and he had no idea what to do with that.
It was why he’d wanted to kiss him in the first place. Why he wanted to kiss him again, though he was trying not to even consider the possibility right now.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Kai said, wiping his latest attempt off into the bowl.
Wyatt plucked it out and ate it, beaming at him.
“If you keep eating them we’ll run out of buttercream before I get this,” Kai complained, though he couldn’t quite pretend to himself that he wasn’t enjoying the way Wyatt hummed softly as he licked butter and sugar off his fingers.
If Wyatt really had just been a pretty idiot, this would have been easy. Kai could have admired the way he looked for a little while, and then completely shrugged him off.
Unfortunately, pretty as he was, Wyatt wasn’t an idiot. He was kind, and warm, and he smiled a lot, but none of that meant he wasn’t smart, too. Kai had a lot of expertise in his own area, but Wyatt was just as much of an expert when it came to breads and pastries.
And that was hot. For Kai, looks only went so far, but brains? Brains, he couldn’t resist.
Wyatt had both, which made him even more dangerous.
“I can make more,” Wyatt responded, shrugging. “I don’t care how long this takes, if you wanna learn.”
Kai wet his lips. In the beginning, he hadn’t particularly wanted to learn, because he’d thought it’d be easy. Now that it was proving to be a challenge, he wanted to get it right.
His next attempt was much, much better. Perfect, almost, though still sloppy compared to Wyatt’s.
All the same, Wyatt actually clapped for him when he finished. “That’s a keeper,” he said, his voice warm and kind. “The last three were fine, too.”
“Now you tell me,” Kai said. He was too thrilled to have Wyatt’s approval to really care that he’d been getting it right for a while and Wyatt had been teasing him.
This one was better, though. It was up to his own standards, not just Wyatt’s standards for him.
“How many more do I need to make?” Kai asked.
“Well, I’d have an apprentice make a hundred a day,” Wyatt said.
Kai looked at him and didn’t see even a hint that he was joking. He pouted before he could stop himself, horrified at the idea that he’d have to do this ninety-nine more times.
He changed tactics, giving Wyatt his best puppy eyes and hoping it’d be enough to get a more manageable number out of him.
Wyatt wet his lips, his eyes searching Kai’s face. He stayed like that for a few heartbeats, just looking at him. Then, to Kai’s surprise, he leaned in.
Kai made a startled noise as their lips connected, but it turned into a happy, needy moan as Wyatt pushed his body up against Kai’s, trapping him against the counter, reaching out to curl a hand around the back of his neck.
A hot surge of arousal pushed Kai to part his lips, his tongue darting out to taste the butter and sugar on Wyatt’s lips, the clean salt of his skin, all the other notes that were him, that Kai hadn’t had the chance to memorize yet, but hadn’t forgotten, either.
He could have done this for hours, let Wyatt kiss him breathless over and over. He wanted this, even though he knew it was a terrible idea.
Almost all of the best sex of Kai’s life had been a terrible idea at the time.
Kai hummed eagerly into the kiss, savoring the warmth of arousal welling up in the depths of his gut, the way tension was building in his stomach and thighs, his cock starting to show an interest.
Wyatt moved both hands to the counter on either side of Kai, pressing closer as he finally parted his own lips, a soft moan escaping him. He ground against Kai’s hips, and oh, fuck, he was already hard and—
Kai was suddenly cold, and not being kissed anymore.
He opened his eyes and saw that Wyatt had retreated to the other side of the kitchen, blushing darkly. Kai held still, fear gripping his chest. Fear that Wyatt would be mad, even though he started it this time and it wasn’t Kai’s fault at all.
He knew he must have looked ridiculous, with his cheeks flushed and his lips swollen, a few strands of hair having escaped his perpetual ponytail and flopped over his face, tickling the suddenly oversensitive skin there.
Wyatt stared at him for a few moments, then blinked, and then looked firmly away without actually turning his head.
“Sorry about that,” he said, his voice still thick with arousal.
If he was sorry, it wasn’t about kissing Kai. Not exactly.
Probably more about how awkward this was starting to make their working relationship.
It was, at least, a softer rejection than last time. This was Wyatt backing off, after kissing Kai, because he wasn’t sure this was a path he wanted to go down. Not because of Kai, but because… they worked together, and they had a job to do, and this would make it harder.
Kai really didn’t need to be thinking about making things harder right now.
But this rejection didn’t sting nearly as much, and it took some of the sting out of last time, too.
Not that it stopped Kai being disappointed, because he’d been more than ready to make a bad decision. He hadn’t made one of those in a while.
Wyatt would have been a great person to have inadvisable sex with. It was a shame they weren’t about to do that.
“It’s fine,” Kai said after another handful of heartbeats, because that seemed like the kind of thing he was supposed to say.
And it was fine. He could respect Wyatt’s decision, even if he didn’t particularly like it. He was an asshole to a point, but not to that point. Not to the point of being mad that someone wouldn’t screw him.
A little let down, sure, but he’d been getting along just fine with his own right hand for a while now. Also, it probably was a terrible idea to fuck his co-worker.
Wyatt was being sensible, and Kai should have been grateful for that.
If he’d been thinking with his brain instead of his cock, he probably would have been.
“Right, yeah.” Wyatt scratched the back of his neck. “I think this is a great idea for a show, but I think we should save it for the last one. You know. Cap the series off.”
Kai nodded. It was a good idea, and leaving it until the end was logical, too, but he could tell Wyatt was just looking for a way not to have to discuss it anytime soon.
Not that he was going to argue. If Wyatt didn’t want to stick around, there was no point in trying to force him. That really would ruin their working relationship, and the way it was…
Well, it was working, for the most part, which was a huge improvement. They both might get through this without losing their jobs. But it was also fragile, and Kai didn’t want to take the risk of breaking it any more than Wyatt did.
Maybe a little more than Wyatt did. It’d been a while since he’d gotten laid, and Wyatt was becoming more and more interesting every time they were in the same room together.
“I have to go,” Wyatt said, apparently done with making even the flimsiest of excuses. “I’ll see you next week?”
“Of course,” Kai said, trying not to let his disappointment show through too badly. He didn’t even want to want this, but… all the same, he would have liked Wyatt to stay. Maybe that was selfish.
Hell, maybe Wyatt really didn’t like him, and had just gotten ca
ught up in the moment.
“I’ll walk myself out,” Wyatt said, and Kai watched him go—since he could see the front door from the kitchen, anyway. An open-plan apartment had seemed like such a good idea until this moment.
The sound of the door shutting—not slamming, just closing normally—behind Wyatt made his knees buckle, and he was forced to grab the countertop to stay upright.
Twice. Twice now he’d kissed Wyatt, and Wyatt had run away like he’d been burned.
Was he that repulsive? Maybe he was, and Wyatt was just too polite to say so.
Kai sighed, turning his attention back to the rest of the buttercream. He still had a piping technique to perfect.
Chapter Thirteen
Wyatt had forgotten all about insisting that Kai would be in a t-shirt next week until he’d actually shown up in one. A black one that had clearly been a size too small when he bought it and had shrunk in the wash since. Wyatt could see where the dip of Kai’s navel was by the way the fabric clung to him.
Not that Wyatt was thinking about how soft Kai’s t-shirt looked.
Not that his fingers itched to touch the fabric, splayed over the center of Kai’s chest, feeling his heartbeat speed up with anticipation.
He definitely didn’t want to kiss Kai again. That had just been the heat of the moment.
Right?
Definitely. It was just that as predicted, Kai looked amazing in a plain black tee tucked into the waistband of his jeans and nothing else.
Wyatt knew Kai was hot. That absolutely didn’t mean he wanted to do anything other than work with him. Hell, a few weeks ago, he hadn’t even wanted to work with him.
He’d gotten used to it, and aside from the two awkward kisses they’d shared, he was enjoying it now.
Except for the part where Kai was suddenly being incredibly distracting, even without trying. Wyatt kept looking over at him, watching him work with his knife at terrifying speeds and still not ever cut himself.
It was nearly impossible, looking at his hands, not to imagine them trailing patterns over Wyatt’s skin, tickling and teasing, curling around his cock…
Why could he smell burning?
“Dammit,” Wyatt said as he looked down at the churro batter he’d been halfway through cooking, the bottom of the pan scorched because he’d been listening to Kai explain about toasting cardamom pods before using them to bring out the oils.
Okay, so that wasn’t the reason. He had been listening to Kai, but mostly he’d been watching his lips. And thinking about his hands.
It was mostly the hands, although now that Kai’s lips had come to his attention…
Crap. How was he supposed to focus when Kai was right there?
“Everything okay over there?” Kai asked, not looking away from his work for a second.
Maybe he knew how distracting he was being. Maybe he was doing it on purpose.
Although some part of Wyatt doubted it. He was serious when it came to his job, and he wasn’t intentionally making Wyatt’s harder than it needed to be.
He was, unfortunately, making other things harder than they needed to be. But still probably not intentionally.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said defeatedly. “Just taught everyone an important lesson about paying attention to what you’re doing, because you can burn this mixture and then there’s really no option other than starting again.”
Thankfully, he had time. He’d been planning to finish up early today and demonstrate a little sugar work, since Kai had inspired him to show off, but he could scrap that to give himself the extra time he needed and turn the extra ingredients into a caramel sauce to go along with the dark chocolate one he’d been planning to make.
For Kai, obviously. Because he felt like he owed Kai an apology for running away from him, twice.
It wasn’t that Wyatt wasn’t interested, or that Kai wasn’t his type. It was that screwing him was a terrible idea and he didn’t want to make a mess of their working relationship for the sake of an orgasm or two.
That particular resolve was starting to crumble, but he figured that he’d blown his chance by now. Kai wouldn’t want to give him another one.
“Distracted?” Kai asked innocently.
Dammit.
He knew what he was doing.
Or at least, he was sure Wyatt would play along, which amounted to the same thing.
“Maybe a little,” Wyatt admitted, because at this point, he knew his best option was to let the audience believe he was screwing Kai. They wanted to believe that, after all.
“You’re the one who demanded the t-shirt,” Kai said.
“The audience demanded the t-shirt,” Wyatt responded, measuring out flour and sugar again.
A ripple of agreement ran through the studio audience, all of whom seemed happy with Kai’s decision to dress down for the day.
“How could I forget.” Kai smirked, clearly not about to let Wyatt get away with that. “And you promised to undress me for them. Which was very noble of you.”
The thing was, Wyatt deserved this. He’d kissed Kai last week, even if Kai had done it first. It’d been a moment of weakness, but it had come after he’d let him down gently, and it wasn’t a fair thing to do to the guy.
A little on-air torture wasn’t the worst punishment he could imagine for doing that to him.
“I’m self-sacrificing like that,” Wyatt said, bringing his second batch of churro dough together with a spatula.
He hadn’t lost too much time, after all.
This time, he kept his eyes on his work, ignoring Kai’s commentary about what he was making. It smelled amazing, the scent of cumin hanging heavy in the air, and Wyatt’s mouth was watering already.
He’d stopped eating lunch on filming days just so he could really appreciate Kai’s cooking. It was always incredible, and he didn’t see any point in hiding that.
The dough came together this time without incident, and Wyatt focused on getting it into a piping bag and piping strips into the hot oil he had on the stove.
“You can test your oil with a little chunk of bread,” he explained. “You want it to be golden-brown within about ten seconds. That’s how you know your oil’s hot enough. Or, you can use a thermometer.”
“Or you can have done this enough times to be able to wave your hand over the pan and tell by the way the oil shimmers in it?” Kai suggested.
Wyatt was glad they were apparently speaking again. “Well, yeah, that’s always an option,” he said. “I’m not gonna stop anyone frying stuff until they can tell how hot oil is by looking at it.”
Kai chuckled in response, which felt good. Maybe he was starting to forgive Wyatt.
Once his churros were cooked and draining, Wyatt got out the dark chocolate he’d had ordered in specially. This was the good stuff, because ever since he’d learned that Kai was into chocolate, it’d seemed like a good way to impress him.
At first, Wyatt had wanted to impress him to prove that he wasn’t actually an idiot, that he knew what he was doing, and that he had every right to share kitchen space with Kai.
Now, he was glad he’d had that impulse, because this was the best apology he could think of.
“What are you unwrapping?” Kai asked as soon as Wyatt opened the paper.
“Chocolate,” Wyatt responded, smiling to himself. Kai had already smelled it, and he was clearly interested.
“Good chocolate,” Kai said. “Very good chocolate.”
“Yeah, well, when the only thing in your chocolate sauce is chocolate and cream, it pays to use something you’d eat. Also, I figure chocolate’s meant to be a treat, right? So why would you eat the crappy stuff? Save those calories for something worth putting in your mouth.”
He wished, immediately, that he hadn’t said anything about putting things in mouths, but it was too late now.
He could feel Kai smirking at him without even having to look.
Rather than bother to measure anything out, Wyatt broke up the entire bar of chocolate be
fore realizing that would leave him with enough sauce to drown someone in.
Well, at least they wouldn’t run out. And at least this time, it wasn’t going to screw up the entire recipe.
“The amount of cream you add to this depends on you,” he explained. “You really can’t screw it up, but remember it’ll thicken as it cools if you’re planning on serving it cold.”
“It’s common courtesy to warm it up first,” Kai added. “Or so I’m told.”
The image that flashed through Wyatt’s mind had nothing to do with cooking, and everything to do with a naked, eager Kai under him, insisting that he warmed the lube up first. It wasn’t quite the first time Wyatt had imagined something like that.
Which was probably what Kai intended. So he wasn’t done torturing Wyatt after all.
Thankfully, though, it really didn’t matter that he’d just poured the whole bottle of cream into the chocolate. He’d needed all of it to make the sauce thin enough for dipping.
“So I’m gonna microwave this for about thirty seconds and then stir it until the residual heat melts the chocolate,” he explained. “If you’re doing this at home and it’s not quite melting after you stir it for a while, it’s okay to microwave it again, but maybe in ten-second bursts.”
He was amazed by how coherent all that had sounded, and without a single innuendo for Kai to pick up on.
Kai’s silence in response almost felt like sulking.
Wyatt didn’t realize his real mistake until it came time for them to taste each other’s dishes.
Kai had presented him with gorgeous fragrant rice topped with tender, perfectly-grilled chicken that tasted of lime and chili, and it was amazing, but it wasn’t quite good enough to distract him from the way Kai was eating his churros.
He dipped them in the chocolate sauce, then held them above his mouth to let it drip onto his tongue, licking the excess off the end before shoving the whole thing in his mouth, closing his eyes, and making a satisfied sigh.
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