Chapter Twelve
“So the trick is that you’re turning the flower nail, instead of trying to turn the piping bag,” Wyatt explained, showing Kai for what felt like the thousandth time how to pipe a simple rosette.
Despite having been shown so many times—which was probably only five or six, but felt like thousands—Kai still didn’t quite get it. Wyatt’s hand moved too fast, but it had to in order to make the technique work. It seemed like something that just took a lot of practice.
At least, Kai hoped it was just a matter of practice, and not that Wyatt had come across a technique he couldn’t master.
He wouldn’t have done that on purpose, would he?
No, Kai doubted that Wyatt would intentionally try to embarrass him. He wasn’t petty enough for that, even if he was upset about Kai kissing him, which he didn’t seem to be.
He’d get this. Every baker and pastry chef in the world could pipe a passable rosette, so it was obviously a learnable skill.
Kai accepted the piping bag and the flower nail—which was a stick with a plastic disc on top of it that he was supposed to pipe the rosette onto—and tried again, holding his tongue between his teeth so the tip of it stuck out.
He could feel Wyatt’s eyes on him, watching closely. That wasn’t making this any easier, but he couldn’t think of a polite way to ask Wyatt to stop watching him. Besides, he’d never know what he was doing wrong if Wyatt didn’t see him do it.
“See? You’re getting it!” Wyatt enthused, despite the fact that Kai could see this latest attempt looked like something a drunken three-year-old could have managed.
It did look slightly more like a flower this time. Kai could see himself improving.
He scraped the attempt back into the bowl, took a deep breath, and steeled himself to try again.
“You just need to be more confident. And faster. Remember, it really doesn’t matter if you screw this up. Buttercream can be piped and re-piped pretty much an unlimited number of times. If it starts to melt, we’ll just put it in the fridge for a few minutes.”
Kai tried again, and Wyatt made a soft noise of approval this time, but he knew it still wasn’t right. It didn’t look at all like the neat little roses Wyatt had made, half a dozen in the space of a minute, in demonstration.
“If it helps, you can eat your mistakes,” Wyatt said, plucking one of the perfect roses off the tray he’d set them on and licking it off the small square of baking paper he’d piped it onto.
“That wasn’t a mistake,” Kai pointed out.
Wyatt shrugged. “It was a little bigger than the others. Whether or not it was a mistake would depend on how many I needed to make. On a cake with like… twelve flowers, consistency matters. On a cake totally covered in them, consistency would look weird.”
“You know, I never imagined you making elaborate three-tier wedding cakes,” Kai said. Everything Wyatt did on television was very… homey. The kind of thing an average person could put together and get acceptable results from, his expertise only showing through in the effortlessness of his work.
“I’ll show you my portfolio sometime,” Wyatt said. “What, did you think I was just a home baker?”
Kai blinked. He had let himself fall into the trap of thinking that Wyatt’s TV persona was the real Wyatt, and he was only realizing that now.
“You seem very comfortable making pies and cakes,” Kai said carefully. “It never occurred to me that you did anything else.”
“My sugar work is pretty good, too,” Wyatt said. “But it’s too much for the average person at home. No one wants to watch a cooking show and walk away feeling inadequate. They want to believe that they could do that, too. So I stick to stuff that they could do.”
“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 caught 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.