Page 80 of At Your Mercy

I wanted to fix that. I wanted Wes to know them, even if that was never truly possible. And so when I decided that I wanted to cook for the two of us tonight, my first instinct was “something German.”

Maybe that was dumb, but the idea had lodged in my head.

I pulled up a recipe on my phone—something about bratwurst and onions in beer sauce—and squinted at the instructions.

“Okay,” I muttered, glancing toward the stove. “How hard can it be?”

Very.

Within ten minutes, the kitchen smelled vaguely of onions and panic. Which was kind of what I imagined a men’s locker room would smell like. Not the most appetizing scent.

I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to brown the sausages before the beer went in, but it was too late to fix it now.

Still, there was a weird kind of satisfaction in it.

Cooking for someone. Thinking about Wes walking through the door, the soft sound of his laugh when he realized I’d tried to make something for him.

I caught myself smiling.

It was ridiculous, but the thought made my chest warm.

I stirred the pan, humming under my breath, glancing every few minutes at my phone on the counter. Still nothing.

“Busy,” I told myself. “If he doesn’t like German food, it’ll be his fault for not texting back in time. I’ll shove it down his throat if he says he doesn’t want to eat it.”

The sizzling of the pan filled the silence, and I tried to focus on that instead of the building anxiety in my chest. I plated the food—if you could call it that—and was just reaching for a towel to wipe down the counter when my phone started to ring.

I smiled, thinking it was Wes finally calling.

Then I saw the name on the screen.

Elias.

Fuck, of course it was. Because only he would somehow sense that I was beginning to spiral and rush to bank in on it.

I clutched the edge of the counter and took a steadying breath, hoping that I could put on a calm and collected front. I didn’t want him to smell my anxiety and get tipped off that something was up.

My hand shook as I reached for the phone.

“…Hello?”

The silence on the other end was brief, then came that voice—smooth as glass, warm as honey, and sharper than a knife.

“Ronan,” Elias said softly. “How is my favorite little toy?”

I swallowed hard, forcing a laugh that sounded too thin. “Just, uh… cooking dinner.”

“Dinner?” Elias repeated, sounding amused. “Howdomesticof you. I didn’t think you knew how to make anything edible.”

His tone made my skin crawl. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if he already knew what I was doing, or if he was baiting me into confessing it. With him, it was always both.

There was a pause, filled with the faint crackle of static.

“Tell me, Ronan,” he murmured, “do you ever think of me when you’re in that little kitchen of yours? Or are your hands busy for someone else these days?”

My throat closed.

“Why are you calling?” I managed.