Chapter 16: Breakfast Dessert
The morning sun stretched across the polished concrete floor, turning Xavier’s pristine kitchen into a landscape of warm gold and sharp, clean shadows. Ava watched him over the rim of her second espresso. He was refilling his cup at the machine, his back to her. The muscles in his shoulders and back shifted under his skin with a fluid, unconscious grace. He was shirtless, the gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. His dark hair was a mess of waves from sleep and her hands, a stark contrast to the impeccable, gelled restraint he wore like armor at L’Éclat.
She had never seen him this casual before. Playful wasn’t a word she would ever have used to describe this man. Yet, there was a looseness to his posture now, a quiet ease as he moved in his own space, that felt utterly new. And it was intoxicating. Every layer peeled back about him—the grief over the photograph, the intensity in bed, this soft, domestic morning-after—was making her fall. The realization landed in her chest, a heavy, warm stone. She felt intimidated by this foreign feeling, actually quite terrified. It was too big, too fast. Seeing him like this, shirtless and mussed, the barrier of his professionalism completely dissolved, was too much. She needed to redirect this terrifying tide of emotion, to transform it into something she could control, something physical and fierce.
She had to distract herself. Time to seduce him.
He turned, leaning against the counter, cradling his cup. A faint, contented smile touched his lips as he watched her watch him. “Still judging my kitchen’s soul, chef?”
“It’s improving,” she said, her voice lighter than she felt. She pushed off her stool and walked towards him. The cool floor beneath her bare feet, the oversized shirt of his she wore, brushing her thighs—it all felt charged, hyper-real. She stopped a breath away from him, tilting her head up. “I have a question.”
“Oh?” One dark eyebrow arched.
“I’ve been very good,” she began, tracing a finger down the center of his chest, feeling the defined ridge of muscle, the scatter of dark hair. “Following your lead. Letting you… conduct your experiments.” Her finger hooked into the waistband of his sweatpants. “I’d like to run one of my own. May I have the freedom to play?”
He studied her, his dark eyes scanning hers. He saw the flicker of challenge there, the edge of nerves she was trying to mask with bravado. He swallowed hard, the muscle in his jaw tightening. Fire ignited in his gaze, a banked heat roaring to life with pure, undisguised desire. He gave a single, slow nod. “Permission granted.”
That was all she needed.
She didn’t kiss him. Instead, her hands went to his waist, fingers slipping beneath the elastic of his sweatpants and his briefs. She pushed them down in one firm motion. His cock sprang free, already half-hard, thickening rapidly under her gaze. She dropped to her knees on the cool floor.
The view from here was devastating. The powerful line of his hips, the coarse dark hair, the heavy, veined length of him. She wrapped her fingers around the base, feeling him jump at her touch. She looked up, meeting his burning eyes. “No touching my head,” she said, her voice a low, commanding rasp she barely recognized. “No directing. Just feel.”
A sharp, almost pained inhalation was his only reply. His hands, which had begun to reach for her, clenched into fists at his sides. He braced them against the counter’s edge behind him, his knuckles whitening.
She leaned forward and took him into her mouth, not tentatively, but with a determined, deep swallow that took him to the back of her throat. He was thick, and she felt the stretch of her lips, the salty, clean taste of him flooding her senses. She moaned around him, the vibration pulling a ragged groan from his lips.
This was her experiment. Her control. She wanted him to come undone today, to lose his famous control and his meticulous mind. Just like he did to her. She began to move, establishing a rhythm that was all her own—deep, sucking pulls followed by slow, torturous drags of her tongue along the underside of his shaft, focusing on the sensitive ridge of his frenulum. She used her hand in tandem, twisting on the upstroke, her thumb smearing the bead of pre-come that leaked from his tip.
“Ava… fuck.” His voice was a broken thing, stripped of all its usual authority.
She increased the pressure, taking him deeper, holding him there until her eyes watered. She pulled back with a wet pop, staring at his glistening cock, then licked a broad stripe from root to tip before swallowing him down again. Her free hand cupped his balls, rolling them gently, then applying a firmer pressure that made his hips jerk forward.
“You’re going to… I’m not going to last,” he gritted out, his head thrown back, the tendons in his neck standing in stark relief.
“Good,” she murmured against his skin, before diving back down. She could feel him trembling, the rigid tension in his thighs. His breath was coming in harsh, sawing gasps. She redoubled her efforts, her own arousal a throbbing, insistent pulse between her legs, a slick heat soaking his shirt where it covered her. She was lost in it, in the power of reducing this controlled, formidable man to a shaking, pleading wreck.
His control snapped. With a guttural curse, one hand fisted in her violet hair, not to guide her, but to anchor himself as his hips began to piston forward, fucking her mouth in short, frantic thrusts. “I’m coming,” he warned, his voice raw.
She didn’t pull away. She took him deeper, accepting the final, violent surge as he came with a shout, his release hot and bitter down her throat. She swallowed, working him through the last pulses until he was sensitive and softening. Only then did she release him, sitting back on her heels.
He slumped against the counter, utterly spent, his chest heaving. He looked down at her, his eyes dazed, full of a shattered wonder. Slowly, he slid down the cabinet to kneel on the floor with her. He framed her face with hands that still shook slightly, his thumbs wiping the corners of her mouth.
“Your turn,” he breathed, his voice wrecked.
Before she could respond, he kissed her, deep and possessive, tasting himself on her tongue. He pushed the shirt from her shoulders, his mouth leaving a trail of fire down her neck, over her collarbone, capturing a nipple and suckling hard until she cried out. He laid her back on the cold, unforgiving floor, the contrast of the chill on her skin and the heat of his mouth maddening. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, his gaze locking with hers.
“My experiment,” he said, and his voice had regained a thread of its old command, but it was frayed, wild. He buried his face between her legs, and his tongue was merciless. He licked and sucked at her clit with a focused intensity that had her arching off the floor within seconds, her fingers scrambling against the smooth concrete. He didn’t let up, driving her to a sharp, screaming climax that left her gasping.
Before the waves had fully receded, he was turning her onto her stomach. He lifted her hips, entering her from behind in one relentless thrust. She gasped, stuffed full, the angle impossibly deep. He set a punishing pace, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, each slam of his body jolting through her. The slap of skin on skin, their mingled sounds of pleasure and strain, echoed in the sterile kitchen.
“You unraveled me,” he growled into her ear, leaning over her, his chest plastered to her sweat-slicked back. “Now I return the favor.”
He reached around, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, tight circles as he pounded into her. A second orgasm built, coiling tighter and tighter, a supernova gathering in her core. “Xavier… please…”
“Come for me,” he commanded, his thrusts becoming erratic, desperate. “Now.”
The command shattered her. She came with a broken scream, her inner muscles convulsing around him, milking his own release from him. He followed her over, his body buckling as he emptied himself inside her with a final, shuddering groan.
They collapsed together on the hard floor, a tangled heap of limbs and spent breath. The sun had climbed higher, now blazing directly across them. Xavier gathered her against him, his heart hammering against her back. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, his lips soft against a mark he’d likely left there.
“Your methodology,” he mumbled into her skin, his voice thick with exhaustion and sated lust, “is fucking revolutionary.”
She laughed, a weak, breathless sound, and turned in his arms to face him. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed in a way she had never seen. The terrifying feeling swelled again, but this time, she didn’t push it away. She let it sit there, alongside the soreness and the satisfaction and the strange, new peace.
“We’re a mess,” she whispered.
“A magnificent one,” he replied, not opening his eyes. He held her tighter, as if the floor and the world and the future beyond his sunlit kitchen could wait. For now, there was only this: the two of them, undone and remade, lying in a pool of light on the cold, hard floor.
For now, there was only this: the two of them, undone and remade, lying in a pool of light on the cold, hard floor. Xavier’s mind, usually a chamber of relentless forward motion, was perfectly, profoundly still. The cool concrete against his back, the warm weight of Ava sprawled half on top of him, her violet hair tickling his chin—these were the only facts that mattered. Her audacity, the raw claim of her mouth on him, played on a loop behind his closed eyelids. That power reversal was a first for him. It hadn’t felt like a loss of control, but a surrender into a different, more exhilarating kind of chaos. It was fucking exciting.
“We should probably shower,” Ava mumbled into his chest after a long while. “We smell like sex and your floor is gritty.”
He grunted in agreement, his hand absently stroking the long line of her spine. The domesticity of the statement, the sheer normalcy of it, should have felt jarring. Instead, it settled in his ribs with a quiet warmth. An idea, simple and unbidden, formed. “After,” he said, his voice gravelly. “We should go out. The Saturday market at Place des Vosges is on. We could look for inspiration for the next menu.”
She lifted her head, her green eyes searching his. “Seriously? You want to go… out? Among civilians?”
“The world exists beyond L’Éclat’s pass,” he said, a dry note returning to his voice. He watched her reaction closely. A slow, radiant smile broke across her face, dazzling in its unguarded joy. She clasped her hands under her chin, her entire body vibrating with a sudden, childlike energy.
“Yes! Oh my god, the heirloom carrots from that one vendor! And the wild mushrooms!” she said, already scrambling up. She winced, a hand going to her lower back. “After a very long, very hot shower.”
He followed her up, his own muscles protesting. Their day off, out together. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared his precious, scarce downtime with a woman, let alone planned an ordinary outing. But she wasn’t just anyone, his mind wandered as he watched her pad towards the bathroom, the morning light gilding the curves of her body. This is Ava. The knowledge did something peculiar and tight to his chest, a feeling both alarming and sweet.
At the market, he was someone else. Ava watched him, stunned, as he chatted easily with the stout woman selling tiny, misshapen strawberries. He listened with genuine interest to an old farmer’s rant about the soil pH for his black garlic. He was charming, actually warm, his smiles reaching his eyes and softening the hard lines of his face. Who was he?
“You’re staring, chef,” he said, turning from a basket of spiky artichokes to catch her gaze. He held out a sliver of ossau-iraty cheese on a knife tip for her to taste.
She took it, the cheese rich and nutty on her tongue. “I’m just cataloging this unprecedented behavioral shift. Is it the sunlight? The pollen?”
He gave her a lopsided grin, a boyish, unselfconscious thing that made her breath catch. “Don’t get used to it,” he said, but the warning lacked all its usual steel. He had a witty humor here, dry and understated. Sometimes he was unintentionally funny, like when he seriously debated the merits of three nearly identical varieties of beetroot with a vendor for ten minutes.
She adored this side of him. The high of the perfect service, the shocking intimacy of the morning, and now this—it was a potent cocktail. She would endure weeklong punishing shifts, she thought, navigating a crush of people to stand beside him at a charcuterie stall, just to see one day a week of this. They sampled plump green olives, shared a still-warm baguette torn between them, laughed when a persistent bee followed her, obsessed with the honey stain on her thumb. They strolled, their shoulders brushing, their hands laden with bags of fragrant herbs, lumpy truffles wrapped in paper, and a bundle of asparagus so vibrant it looked photoshopped.
It was the most perfect day she could remember. She didn’t want it to end. Ever. The thought, bright and terrifying, lodged behind her sternum.
As afternoon bled into evening, their bags full, he stopped at a flower stall. Without a word, he selected a single, deep purple anemone, its heart almost black. He paid and handed it to her. The gesture was so simple, so uncalculated, it undid her. “For the chaos,” he said quietly.
She took it, the stem cool and green against her fingers. The fear in her chest blossomed alongside a wild, reckless hope. She couldn’t speak. Instead, she rose on her toes and kissed him, there in the middle of the bustling square, surrounded by the ghosts of future meals. He kissed her back, one hand coming to rest on the small of her back, possessive and tender.
Back in the penthouse elevator, the mundane plastic bags at their feet, the mood shifted. The purity of the day crystallized into a sharper, more urgent want. He pinned her against the mirrored wall as the numbers climbed, his mouth hungry on hers. “I need you,” he growled, the words vibrating into her mouth. “Now. Not in some bed. Here.”
Her answer was to wrench his shirt open, buttons pinging against the metal walls. The elevator chimed for his floor. The doors slid open onto the private foyer. He didn’t guide her towards the bedroom. He kicked their market haul inside, slammed the front door shut with his foot, and pushed her against it.
His hands were under her dress, shoving her underwear down her thighs. She fumbled with his belt, her fingers clumsy with haste. He freed himself, his cock hard and heavy in his hand. He hooked one of her legs over his hip, not bothering with further preamble. The head of his cock pressed against her, finding her wet and ready from the day’s sustained, aching want.
He drove into her with a single, deep stroke that stole the air from her lungs. The door rattled against her back with the force. “Fuck, Ava,” he choked out, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. She was tight, hot, clenching around him immediately. He set a brutal, immediate pace, each thrust a deliberate punctuation to the day’s unspoken conversations. This was not the controlled, experimental fervor of the kitchen floor. This was raw claiming.
“You looked… today…,” he gasped, pounding into her, “…so fucking happy.” His words were fractured, driven by his hips. “It was all I could think about.” He gripped her ass, lifting her, changing the angle, grinding deeper. A broken cry tore from her throat. “I want to be the reason,” he snarled, his mouth against her ear. “Every goddamn time.”
His words unlocked something violent in her. She raked her nails down his back, feeling the muscles cord and release. “You are,” she groaned, meeting his thrusts with her own. “You fucker. You are.”
The coiling tension in her core snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, blinding convulsion that clamped down on him like a vise. He swore, his rhythm faltering, and with three final, jagged thrusts, he followed her, his release hot and pulsing inside her. He collapsed against her, his weight pinning her to the door, both of them slick with sweat and breathless.
After a long moment, he carefully lowered her leg. They stood there, still joined, his breath hot on her neck. The purple anemone, forgotten, lay crushed on the foyer floor beside the scattered groceries. He pressed a kiss, surprisingly soft, to the hinge of her jaw. “We made a mess,” he murmured.
She looked at the crushed flower, the spilled cherries rolling like misplaced garnishes across the polished concrete. She thought of her own heart, equally trampled and bursting. “Yeah,” she whispered, her voice raw. “We really did.”
“We really did.”
They disentangled themselves, bodies slick and cooling in the penthouse’s climate-controlled air. Xavier retrieved the bruised purple anemone from the floor, its stem bent. He didn’t throw it away. He placed it gently on the counter. Ava silently gathered the scattered cherries, the asparagus, the cloth bag of mushrooms. The domestic silence felt louder than any words.
“Hungry?” he asked, his voice still rough.
“Starving,” she admitted, her own throat raw.
“Then let’s not waste the haul.” He began unpacking bags with a chef’s economy of motion. The kitchen, so recently a backdrop for frantic sex, transformed into a different kind of arena.
It was the first time they truly cooked together. No brigade, no tickets, no critics. Just ingredients and space. He washed the dirt from the carrots, their vibrant orange glowing under the tap. She unwrapped the black garlic, its complex, fermented scent filling the air between them. She reached for a knife from his magnetic block—a heavy, sharpened chef’s knife. Their fingers brushed on the handle. A current, subtle and warm, passed between them.
“I’ll start a risotto,” he said, filling a pot with broth. “You with the vegetables?”
“Yeah,” she said, pulling a cutting board. “A roast. High heat. Herbs.”
They moved without discussion. He diced a shallot, the knife clicking against the board in a rapid, precise rhythm. She sliced the carrots on a brutal bias, their edges caramelizing immediately in her mind. He toasted the rice, the grains sizzling in hot butter, releasing a nutty perfume. She stripped thyme leaves, the tiny green flecks sticking to her fingers. When she needed the roasting pan, he was already sliding it from a lower cabinet, his hand grazing her hip as he passed it over. He poured her a glass of the bold red they’d opened the night before. She took a sip and, without looking, held it out to him. He leaned in, his lips on the rim where hers had been, and drank.
It was a duet composed in real time. He stirred the simmering rice, his movements focused and calm. She tossed the vegetables in oil, salt, and the wild thyme, her method more flamboyant, a shower of seasoning from a height. The kitchen filled with layered scents: the earthy rice, the sweet roasting carrots, the pungent black garlic she was carefully confiting in a small pan.
“My grandmother,” Xavier said, not looking up from the pot, “the one with the pálinka, she taught me to cook. It was survival first. Then it became… everything.”
Ava glanced at him. His profile was soft in the kitchen light. “My Nonna Rosa did the same,” she said, sliding the pan of vegetables into the oven. “Sunday gravy. A whole day’s event. My dad would try to help and she’d swat him with a wooden spoon. ‘Not your job, Anthony!’”
He smiled, a genuine, unguarded curve of his lips. “What would your last meal be? If you had to choose.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Her braciole. Stuffed with pine nuts, raisins, the works. With a piece of her awful, burnt garlic bread.” Her voice caught. “Yours?”
He stirred the risotto, his gaze far away. “A simple omelette. The way my father made them. Just eggs, a little cream, chives. He’d let me whisk. I was terrible at it. Shell fragments everywhere.” He blinked, returning to the present. “He’d serve it with buttered toast soldiers.”
Ava felt her chest tighten. The intimacy of the question, the vulnerability of his answer, was more naked than anything they’d done against the door. She walked over to his risotto, dipped a spoon in, and tasted. It was perfect—creamy, the rice still al dente. She held the spoon to his mouth. “It needs nothing.”
He tasted, his eyes never leaving hers. He nodded. “It’s ready.”
They plated not for presentation, but for hunger. A mound of saffron-hued risotto, a tumble of glossy, roasted carrots and asparagus spears, a dollop of the unctuous black garlic confit. They ate at the island, elbows brushing.
It felt like they had done this a thousand times before. The passing of a salt mill, the shared taste from a single spoon, the unspoken agreement to clean as they went—it was all effortless. A deep, resonant echo. Ava watched his hands, competent and sure, as he grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over her portion. Her heart ached with a hope so sharp it felt like grief. She didn’t dare name it, this feeling that they were two parts of a single engine, finally meshing. She wondered, desperately, if he felt the same tectonic shift.
He did. Xavier watched her lick a spot of black garlic oil from her thumb, her eyes closed in pleasure. He didn’t cook with other people. It was a solitary act, a meditation. But this? This was collaboration. A true partnership. Her creative leaps tempered by his restraint, his precision elevated by her boldness. Every time she passed him a taste and his eyes met hers in silent, perfect approval, a brutal certainty solidified in his gut. She was his. She always had been, in some other lifetime where they’d stood over different fires, sharing different spoons.
He just had to make her see it. He had to build something so undeniable, so magnificent, that she would never want to leave.
“So,” Ava said, swirling her wine. “Tomorrow. We plan the spring menu?”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed. His hand covered hers on the countertop, his thumb stroking her knuckles. The touch was simple, profound. “Tonight… we enjoy this.”