I somehow coaxed myself into letting go of the knife before I whipped it up and threw it at Zane's chest. He did have a nice chest, and his shirt was new and fancy, and it'd be a shame to rip through it.

Though if that meant seeing him naked...

My drunken mind was going to get me in trouble.

"Did you follow me?" I glared at him as he stood across the kitchen, arms crossed, studying me as if I were a rabid animal rattling inside a cage. I must have looked a little nuts to him, but it wasn't like he was supposed to see this side of me.

"Follow you?" he asked, his voice so simple, so calm.

"Are you stalking me? Waiting for everyone to leave so you can come harass me without witnesses?" I was surprised my words didn't slur out, because they made no sense in my head.

"No stalking or harassing," he said, raising his arms, palms facing me. The massive kitchen was between us, in case he'd planned to stride over and get into my space; but he didn't budge. "I did follow you, though. I was worried about you."

I snorted. "That's hilarious."

"It's the truth." He finally made a move forward, but I set my hand on the knife again. He noticed and raised his arms higher. "Seriously, I'm not here to harass you, Béatrice."

Don't say my name, you sexy bastard.

"You followed me." I squinted at him; at one of him, because I couldn't tell if there were several silhouettes in front of me or not. "You were worried about me? Yet you waited until now to come find me, hm? I ditched you hours ago. Where were you, chilling in your car in the parking lot? Like a creep?"

Zane grimaced as he lowered his arms to his sides. "Yeah, I waited. You needed to cool off." I snorted again, but he didn't flinch. "I was worried about you, yes. Because of what I said."

While I was happy the thick counter resided between us, I had half a mind to climb over it to reach him and shake him. To take hold of his pristine shirt collar and look him in the eye and demand that he say that again, and mean it.

"Oh, yeah?" I set one hand on my hip, poking out like a model posing on a runway. This was my runway—my kitchen, my rules. Zane had no right to barge in and pretend like he gave a shit. "Worried about how you might have destroyed my entire career? And ruined my ethic, my beliefs, my goddamn empire with three sentences? Well," I waved vaguely at the door, "I'm fine, thanks. You can go now."

"Clearly," said Zane, obvious mockery in his tone as he gestured at the red wine bottle in my free hand, then at how my other hand kept hovering near the large knife I'd envisioned myself stabbing him with. "Absolutely fine." His eyes roved over the ingredients covering the counter—the cheeses and vegetables, the dairy products, all the cakes and tarts and pastries I'd drunkenly craved.

"Shut up." I shifted the bottle behind my back, my cheeks growing hot.

"You're drinking," he strode closer to the counter, "and ingredients are strewn all over the place. And," his eyes found the knife again, "you're considering killing me and putting morsels of my flesh in one of your new dishes? I wouldn't call that fine."

It took everything in me to not brandish the knife at his face, up close and personal.

What stopped me was that sly smirk of victory, those lips so tight, but so delicious, that I remembered without meaning to summon the image.

What stopped me was that torso turned towards me, and the faint scent of his musk hitting my nostrils as he got closer.

Thank fuck the counter was still between us.

"I'd never kill you the way you killed my profession, my pride and joy." I gagged. "Nor would I ever eat you, ew. You'd taste acidic and foul, so no, thanks."

His lack of a reaction to my insult boiled me on the inside, but I couldn't move. I was too fixated on his biceps, which I imagined bulging under his sleeves. Too absorbed in his carefree posture as he continued to stare at me like I was the crazy one.

He was crazy for following me and checking in on me. He had no right.

"All I wanted was to loosen you up."

I blinked at him. "Loosen me up? You...you massacred me."

He flinched. "And I never meant to...it wasn't supposed to..."

Gosh, he was almost adorable when he was flustered. A flush spread from one side of his face to the other, and he peered down at his shoes. Suddenly he wasn't a menacing chef who was out to destroy my reputation, but the boy who accidentally pushed me on the playground.

"The shit I said, it was..."

"Cruel?" I folded my arms. "Unfair? Untrue?"

He whipped his neck up so fast it made me nearly stumble backwards. "Triggering."

I arched an eyebrow. "Triggering? Yeah, it was triggering." I angled over the counter, glaring at him. "It triggered me into storming out, coming here, and pulling apart everything I've ever cooked, wondering about everything I ever wrote, ever shared with my fans."

He rubbed one of his arms. "Well, then it worked. I wanted to get a reaction out of you." His eyes narrowed, then returned to normal. "I wanted to see you, deep down. Not the surface-level picky girl you portray."

"I'm not surface level," I used air-quotes, "and I'm not portraying anyone." I clicked my tongue. "This?" I roamed my hands down my waist, putting myself on display for him as I twirled on my heel; which I instantly regretted when I was too dizzy to stand straight. "This is me. One hundred percent, pure, real me. I don't play games, I don't portray people."

He sucked his lips in and his eyes narrowed again, but stayed that way. He was scrutinizing me. "Are you sure?"

I slammed a hand onto the counter, and knew I'd find a bruise on my skin tomorrow, when I woke up. "Is that how you get to know people?" Zane didn't jump backwards or make any attempts to run off. He stood his ground, and though he watched me with widened, worried eyes, he showed no other signs of concern. "By insulting them?"

"Sometimes." I noticed his Adam's apple bobbing as he relaxed his shoulders. Why wasn't he tense? Why wasn't he more concerned? Something about my demeanor had allowed him to feel safe?

No. He's not allowed to feel safe here.

"That's it?" My voice pitched higher than I'd meant it to, making me wince. "No explanation? Gee, you're great at that mystery vibe."

"I sometimes insult people I'm attracted to and admire, okay?" He said it fast, as if he expected me not to pick up on the words. As if he believed I was too inebriated to understand him.

The joke was on him, then—I was mentally sharper after a bottle of red wine.

"I do it to push them to their limits. To get their heads out of their asses, to see what they're capable of."

I was still captivated by his other words; attraction, admiration.

I'd found a weak spot, but it wasn't what I'd anticipated.

"You're attracted to me?" You," I scoffed, feigning utter shock, "admire me?" Or maybe it was real shock; I never thought he'd say anything that nice to me, no matter how back-handed it was. "You have a shitty way of showing it."

And then it hit me—what that bombshell French chick Clara said in Paris. Little boys and little girls on a playground; hitting each other to show attention, insulting to pretend like they didn't care.

Zane was like that—throwing mental punches to conceal the fact that deep down, he liked me. He berated me because he didn't want me to know he admired me.

But he'd taken it too far. Lying about our encounters, lying about our one-night-stand, about our accidental second time. Making me out to be a villain when in fact, we were both fairly neutral.

Why do that to someone you're interested in? Why take it to that level and watch this person you supposedly admire as they burst into flames?

I wasn't doing well. Not that my mental health was ever excellent to begin with, but Zane waltzed in and smashed through all my careful facades. He broke me down brick by brick, and grinned the whole time.

No, he was lying now, too. There was no way he was attracted to me, no way he admired me. This was another of his schemes to fool me and write an even worse opus about me later.

Out of nowhere, and on some weird reflex I attributed to booze, I grabbed a tomato and tossed it at him.

He somehow dodged it in time, and instead it splattered onto the wall behind him, near the door.

"Whoa," he said, his voice rising, seemingly torn between shock and amusement. "Next time warn me and I can catch it."

"You can't catch anything," I said, taking hold of a hard-boiled egg and hurling it at him.

I missed, again, as he ducked.

He chuckled as he straightened up, tugging on his lapels to readjust his jacket. "You can't aim for shit."

"Oh, yeah?" I snatched the closest thing to me—another tomato—and didn't bother to try aiming, because in truth, he was right. "Well, I'm not a baseball player, I'm a chef!"

He chortled as he crouched, avoided the tomato—that went on to smash against the wall again, proving I had strength if not aim. He then snagged something from the counter while I was busy searching for my next weapon.

Next I knew, threads of leftover pasta came dashing at me. I barely moved aside in time before a good glob of it hit me in the shoulder, so heavy it knocked me back.

"Hey!" I took hold of an arugula kale mix from a bowl and flung it at him. It didn't get far; salad mixes didn't hold enough weight to launch in someone's face.

"What, only you can throw food at me?" Zane dodged again—fuck, he was proficient at this—and retaliated with shredded carrots. I side-stepped, but a few landed in my hair. "Snob!"

"It's my," I launched a missile of nuts in his direction, "kitchen! My food to throw!"

The nuts got him in the chest, and while they were tiny, the force of them still made him stumble a little.

While he stumbled, I sighted the best weapons of all—the pastries. The cakes.

I had a thought for Francis, who'd have to re-bake everything from scratch tomorrow, but I'd earn his forgiveness somehow. A mention in an article, an online post about his cake prowess—I'd figure something out when I was sober.

But drunk me wanted to throw cake at Zane.

I dug my hands right into the carrot cake I'd been about to eat, and threw a large slice at him.

He'd hardly recovered from the nuts—and was sweeping them out of the way with his foot so he wouldn't trip—when the frosting smooshed into his pretty jacket with a squelch.

He looked up, his gaze finding mine, burning. I anticipated a growl, a grimace that would put me in my place. I prepared for him to tell me what the jacket cost and demand that I cover his dry-cleaning—

But all I got was a sly, sexy smile spreading over his lips. "Oh, is it cake time?" He rubbed his hands together, salivating over the array of cakes and tarts to choose from. "You're on."

He dipped into a chocolate cake, his fingers coating with the gooey substance before he hurled it at me. I swung sideways, narrowly avoiding getting chocolate all over me; but he was fast, and had another shot coming my way, which I couldn't avoid. The crumbly, moist mixture smashed into my dress, right between my breasts.

I wanted to snarl and throw myself over the counter to strangle him, but my adrenaline had spiked. My imagination ran wild. The only thing I wanted to do was lather Zane in buttercream and frosting until I could no longer see his stupidly sexy face.

We tore apart the three cakes on the counter before smashing together tarts and berry pastries and targeting every inch of our clothes. We avoided the heads—an unspoken agreement, because I had no doubt we'd both gotten food in our eyes while cooking and it wasn't pleasant—and aimed for chests, butts, arms.

We were running low on supplies when I remembered there were cheese cakes and flans in a different fridge. So I begged for a brief ceasefire while I ran off to get them. The floor was slippery with cream and fruit syrup and cake crumbs, so I was careful not to slip, despite my drunkenness. I'd ended up removing my shoes at one point while Zane was loading up on frosting.

I slid the cheesecake and flans to the middle of the table, where they were fair game for both of us. But to my surprise, Zane grabbed a glob of cheesecake and didn't toss it. He instead walked around the counter, massaging the cake in his palm, getting it all over his skin.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I seethed, glowering at him as he breached into my territory. Though we hadn't discussed borders, I'd assumed that behind the counter was my zone, and he was to stay out of it.

But he continued his approach, his eyes shifting as they met mine. There was that sparkle of amusement still there, the ghost of laughter on his lips—he was having a blast—but something else, too. Something more serious, more sensual than I'd been prepared for.

He stopped in front of me, and I gasped as he lifted his arm, smirked—then lathered the cheesecake all over my face.

"Oh!" My jaw dropped, and along with it so did a few lumps of cream as they melted off my face. "You...you dare!"

He licked his lips as he dipped his hand into the cheesecake again. "Try it. It's cathartic."

I scowled at him, but even as I did, my hand joined his inside the cheesecake, rummaging around for a suitable chunk to splatter all over his face. Our fingers touched, and a jolt ran up my arm.

This wasn't going to end well. We had the counter between us before, preventing us from taking this too far, from bringing it into a territory we needed to avoid. But now...now he perched in front of me, too close. I felt his breath on my cheeks, even with the thick layer of cheesecake still smothered over my skin.

I sensed his very essence, his intoxicating musk drawing me closer. I couldn't help it, couldn't fight it—I had to get nearer, to exact my revenge. To have my turn at smearing the cake all over his face and see how he liked it.

He didn't resist me. He stood still, allowing me to smack my palm to his cheek and spread the cheesecake all over. I didn't miss a single spot, avoiding his eyes, trailing up to his temples then down to his chin. And when I came to his lips, as I slowly passed my fingers over them, I shuddered.

Fuck.

I'd expected him to whip out his tongue and lick my finger, but he didn't. And that restraint...aroused me.

He attacked me with another round of cheesecake, but this time going slow, purposely dragging his hand down my face, lingering. And when he came to my lips, he teased them with a finger, pried under them to get into my mouth.

When the tip of his finger met my tongue, a burst of strawberry cheesecake shot through me, as well as a sharp tingle of desire.

Fuck, fuck.

"Béatrice," he breathed, licking his cheesecake coated lips. The simple flash of his tongue made me shiver once more, and I knew it was already too late to turn things around.

"Zane," I whispered, unable to pry my gaze from his lips, curious how they'd taste lathered in cheesecake.

"Is this what you want?" He took my hand and pressed my fingers to his mouth.

I couldn't answer, not directly. Of course I wanted this, I wanted him; but to admit it would be admitting he won.

He couldn't win.

"I fucking hate you."

"And I fucking hate you," he said, trembling as he set his hand under my chin, cupping it, tilting it up. "But you're pretty sexy when stained with food.

"And you," I gulped, "do look hot covered in cheesecake."

Our lips crashed together before either of us could say another word.

◘