She looks up at me.
Her eyes are bright. Wet. The candle flame reflects in both of them, twin points of gold, and her chin is set at that stubborn angle I know so well, but her mouth is doing something different. Something I've never seen it do in my direction.
It's trembling.
"How long did this take you?"
I open my mouth to answer. The number sits right there on my tongue. Eleven days. Eleven days of burned batches and sliced fingers and reading her cookbooks in the dead hours between lunch and dinner, spine cracked on the bar counter, pages splattered with failed sauces.
"Boris."
She breaks the word in half. She stands. The chair scrapes backward across the stone floor. She doesn't walk around the table.
She reaches across it.
Her good hand closes on my left suspender strap and pulls.
The oak table is four inches thick. Weighs more than most humans. Doesn't matter. My body goes where she tells it to. I pitch forward, catching myself on the edge with both palms, and her mouth finds mine over the wreckage of five empty skillets.
She tastes like chocolate.
Like balsamic and black garlic and the bright green snap of pistachio. Like every single thing I made for her, layered and complex and devastating. Her fingers twist in the leather strap, knuckles white, hauling me closer. The table digs into my ribs. A skillet grinds sideways. I don't care. I get my hand behind herneck, fingers threading into that severe French twist, and the pins give way like they've been waiting for permission.
Her hair spills down. Dark. Cool against my overheated skin.
She yanks the suspender again, harder, and the message is clear. Get over here. I shove a skillet out of the way with my forearm. It clatters to the floor and rings like a bell against the stone. The chocolate cake spoon follows. I plant one knee on the table, then the other, and the ancient oak groans but holds.
"The table," she whispers against my mouth.
"It's built for Orcs. It'll hold."
She pulls me down.
My weight pins her between the rough wood and me, and her spine arches off the surface. The remaining skillets scatter. Cast iron crashes to the floor on both sides, a percussion symphony, and she flinches at the noise but doesn't let go. Her hand comes up to grip the collar of my shirt, cotton bunching in her wrapped fingers, and I freeze.
"Your hand."
"Don't you dare stop."
Her teeth catch my lower lip. Sharp. Intentional. The brief sting of it races down my spine and detonates somewhere behind my navel. I groan into her mouth, deep enough that the sound vibrates through the table, and her hips press up against mine in answer.
The apron has to go. She finds the knot behind my back with her good hand, working it loose with the same focused precision she uses to brunoise shallots. The leather falls away. Her palm flattens against my stomach, fingers spread wide, and the span of her hand barely covers one section of muscle. Her breath hitches.
"You're ridiculous."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
Her fingers drag upward. Each rib. The hollow of my throat. She maps the terrain with a cook's attention to detail. Thorough. Systematic. Missing nothing. When she reaches my jaw, she grips it and angles my face down to hers.
The kiss goes deep.
Slow this time. No urgency. She explores the way she eats. Layer by layer. Her tongue traces the seam of my lips, and I open for her, and the sound she makes vibrates through my sternum.
I slide one arm under the small of her back and lift her off the table. She weighs nothing. Her legs wrap around my waist, and the position change puts her above me, looking down, her loose hair curtaining both our faces. In the dim candlelight, she's all sharp angles and soft mouth and those bright, wet eyes that won't look away from mine.
I sit back on the table's edge with her in my lap. The wood creaks. Holds.