Page 9

Chapter Eight

D av inspects the kitchen’s refurbishment with proprietary interest. Which makes sense, as he did pay for it all.

Everything gleams, but the layout has stayed the same: prep station on the wall to the left of the door, washing station on the far left wall, oven and roaster on the right, and cabinets and industrial fridges framing the second exit on the wall opposite.

St. Paul Street backs onto a ravine, so the rear exit opens onto a dingy deck on stilts, populated by a rusting bistro set.

A stainless steel table takes up most of the remaining floor space in the kitchen. If there's more than two people working, you have to scootch, and you will get flour, or soap bubbles, or coffee dust on your ass.

I show all of this to Dav before we come to the piece de resistance— the old manual roaster.

I trained on this beast, back when Beanevolence first opened.

It's fourth-hand, all Hadi could afford when she started this venture.

And it pretty much takes up the whole table.

It's shaped sort of like a steam train engine.

Except instead of smoke coming out of the big funnel, that's where we pour in the green beans.

The conductor's cabin is a cylindrical drum turned by hand crank, heated from below with a row of flames fed by a camping propane cylinder.

The cow-catcher out front of the train is a basin, where roasted beans are raked out of the cylinder to cool.

Have I mentioned the kitchen is small? Dav is standing so close I can feel the soothing heat coming off him.

So I wasn't hallucinating his warmth in the hospital, even if I was seeing something more there.

I wonder if his human friends fall asleep around him all the time.

It'd be nice to cuddle on a sofa and— whoa, no, time out.

"Ready to get cracking?" I force a laugh at the in-joke before I realize he doesn't get it.

"I thought we were meant to see if I could roast the beans myself instead of using the machine?" Dav asks.

"We can try that after lunch," I say, opening the pantry.

It's already been stocked with fresh, big sacks of beans.

My stupid heart is fluttering in my throat, and I focus on the job instead of the fact that I just implied we'd be having lunch together.

Not a date! "That way, we'll at least have one batch ready for tomorrow if the you-roasting doesn’t work out. Grab that."

Dav hefts up one of the big bags with no visible effort. I swallow hard, absolutely not watching the way his shoulders flex through the silk backing of his waistcoat.

"And now?"

"Uh, a third of the bag, into the funnel.

We need, um, scissors, hold on," I turn in a circle, looking for them.

Behind me there's a quick, delicate ripping noise, then the ping of hard beans dancing inside the copper funnel.

I whip back to catch Dav pulling his finger out of a neat, vertical slice in the bag, already human-shaped again.

"They're sharp."

"I remember," I reply, touching my wounded arm, and before he can apologize again, I jump back into the instructions. "I'll light the pilot."

I'm crouched to peer up under the machine, struggling with the matches, when Dav's face appears through the gap on the other side.

"Where are you meant to be lighting?"

I show him the spot, and move to hand him the box, when he purses his lips. The bone-click is softer this time, but no less startling coming from a human-looking throat. He blows a thin flame at the touchpoint. The propane ignites with a soft fwump , and the rest of the burners pop on gently.

I stop breathing.

Flames in my face, the whoosh of oxygen igniting, the particular brimstone-scent of dragon's fire…

bright orange in the center of my vision, my arm throbbing…

shit ! I fall hip-first against the prep counter behind me, sharp and painful.

I turn and clutch the edge of the counter, squeezing hard to ground myself in the bite of it.

Five things I can see—the wall in front of me, covered in stainless steel shelving, filled with bowls and pans.

My hands, shaking. Fresh bins of flour under the worktop.

A balled up napkin in the corner, where Hadi had missed the garbage.

The inside of the door with its hand-written sign: Knock on the door, don't knock out your coworkers.

Four things I can touch—my feet on the ground, my palms to one another, the napkin as I nudge it into the bin, the smooth steel of the worktop.

I hear the susurrus of the flames, the pop of the drum heating up, the clink of the beans settling.

I smell the first rich aroma of coffee, the spice of my deodorant being put through its paces.

I taste clean air, no trace of oily smoke.

"Colin?" Dav says when I finally release a deep breath and straighten.

"I'm fine. I was just… it surprised me. Um," I swallow hard, pushing through, and turn to face him.

I try to look nonchalant, not like I just fended off a panic attack in front of him.

Again. "I… had a sense memory moment. Fire in my face.

But it's passed!" I add when his fussy eyebrows do that complicated wiggle of guilt.

Dav growls at himself, hands jammed into his pockets. "I can never seem to get it right—"

"Just a bit of warning next time." I dare myself to mean it. My heart twists to see how hard on himself he is. "You didn't mess up anything."

"I will , though," He chuckles, but it's a dry, cruel sound. "I do. Every time."

Whoa, now. Who told this kind, smart, hot man that he was a fuck up?

"You haven’t, though," I assure him. "Except for the part where we're burning the beans."

"And now we're burning the beans!" Dav throws his hands up into the air and rolls his eyes, distraught.

"Turn the crank, drama queen," I deadpan. "No, slower. They need to settle against the side a bit. Yeah. See? Crisis averted."

Dav gives one of those growling, self-deprecating scoffs.

I'm not used to being the one who reassures people.

That's usually Hadi. And she's usually reassuring me .

Still. I reach out, making sure he can see it coming this time.

I pause with my palm just above his shoulder, giving him the space to pull back if he doesn't want me to touch him. He stays where he is, so I let it land.

"You haven't screwed anything up, Dav," I tell him again, earnestly. Those sunflower eyes search my face. I don't know what he's looking for, but I keep my expression as reassuring as possible.

He straightens, confidence restored. "Now what?" he asks.

I let him go. "Now you keep at that until your arm gets sore. We want the beans at about two hundred degrees. We'll do the light roast first."

"Light roast at two hundred degrees" Dav repeats determinedly, like he's memorizing for an exam. The muscles of his bicep press and release against the fabric bouquets, and that shit should not be allowed in public. It's obscene. "Is roasting time the only difference between light and dark?"

"Light roasts sort of taste like spring, and dark roasts like autumn."

Dav crinkles a grin at me. "A poet as well as a barista."

My mouth goes dry. "Uh, hardly. I just… like words. Like stories."

"I recall," he says meaningfully.

"Yeah, uh… It'll take about twenty minutes for the first crack." I wrench my brain back on topic. "Decant the beans right away so they don’t keep cooking."

"First crack?"

"They crack open when they're done, let out the CO2."

"Which is important because…?"

"No one wants carbonated coffee."

"Ah! No, I suppose not," he says with an almost-dimple.

"Then the beans cool for a day, over here." I show him the big metal bowls stacked on a wire rack in the corner. "And then they go out to the front whole. They go stale if you grind 'em more than ten minutes before using them."

"What an art," Dav says, appreciatively. "As delicate as wine-making."

"Pretty similar!" I laugh, insides fizzy with his flattery. "You even get better coffee if you aerate it." I mime pouring from high.

"Oh! I thought you were just being showy."

"I do like all the cute boys looking at me." I punctuate it with a flirty wink and then immediately regret it. "So, uh, call me when you hear the first crack, okay?"

"Yes," he murmurs, his own head lowered and his face made unreadable by the angle. I've made him uncomfortable. Fuck. "And what will you be doing?"

"Restocking."

"Perhaps I ought to—your arm. That will be quite a lot of lifting."

I arch an eyebrow at him. "Oh, so you know where everything goes, eh?"

"Ah," he catches himself. "Not as such, no."

"Just cause you're here every day doesn't mean you know how this place works." I say it lightly, but his shoulders still hunch up like I've landed a physical blow. Even coming at the topic from the side has him squirrelly. "I can stop asking."

Dav takes a moment to consider this, forked tongue flickering out to wet his lower lip. A surge of lust drops directly into my pants like an overheated cannon ball.

Stand down.

"I do owe you an answer," Dav says at length. "But not just now?"

It's a request, and one I'm happy to honor. "Sure thing. Now, keep cranking, bean-wench."

We have a quick lunch of to-go sandwiches. I was curious what Dav would pick —something stereotypically meat-on-bone? Instead he gets the turkey sandwich, same as me. That's not very dragon-y, I decide. We eat out back, sunlight burning away the earlier awkwardness.

While Dav stays pretty mum about his professional life—and I don't poke, like I said I wouldn't, which is hard , I am curious —he's happy to tell me other stories. When he compared the art of coffee to winemaking, it turns out he knows what he’s talking about.

He owns a small vineyard, and soon has me snorting all the way through a story about his horse, and the mess it caused when it decided that the Crushing Room seemed like a good place for a stroll when it had slipped its paddock.

The horse, formerly white, was purple up to its gaskin, somehow inside the tub, and chomping merrily away at the grapes.

They had to throw away the whole batch out of fear the horse had 'contaminated' it. By which Dav meant, pissed in the vat. He doesn’t provide a firm date for when this happened, and Dav has to explain to me what part of the animal the gaskin is, but I get the sense that it was more than a few decades ago.

When was the last time people rode horses as their main form of transportation?

If I'd known I would one day befriend a dragon, I would have paid attention in those hated history classes.

Are Dav and I friends?

We can be friends.

I'm cool with that.

His grin while I return the favor fills me with warmth.

I offer a story of the time my university buddies had gone to the Goth nightclub with a bunch of Drama kids.

One had convinced me to wear her blood-red corset, but it was a real one, with steel boning.

Trying to be macho, I'd told them to lace it as tight as they liked, and I'd fainted after one Jaeger bomb.

Dav makes noises about knowing how tight corsets can get, and I decide he means because he's old enough to remember women wearing them every day, and not because he’s worn them himself.

Ooof.

I have a sudden vision of Dav, with his freckly, creamy skin and strong shoulders on display, waist nipped in by a shiny black leather corset and tiny lacy panties barely covering his dragon-hood.

Jesus.

This is getting ridiculous.

"Coffee, " I croak, balling up my sandwich wrapper.

"Please," Dav says, following me back inside.

Hadi keeps an emergency stash of whole roasted beans in the back of the freezer.

Thank god it survived the fire, because I refuse to go down the street for a franchise latte on principle.

I show Dav how to work the electric grinder, and we fill two mason jars with first the coarser drip-coffee grind, and then I demonstrate the trick of using short bursts to make the powdery espresso grind. Dav stands right over my shoulder.

If I turned around fast enough, I bet I could kiss him , I think, and shake my head to knock that thought loose. No, no, no, kissing coworkers is gauche.

I hip check him to get him to take a step back, and he snorts and hip checks me back. We scuffle like schoolchildren and I'm not gonna lie, I kind of love watching Dav get all flustered and giggly.

His laugh is a breathy eh-eh-eh noise that hisses out between his teeth.

Even his joy is careful and small.

Out front, I show him how to load the porta-filter wand and tamp down the grounds, and in a few minutes we're java'd up.

"Time to set fire to some beans?" I ask, loving the way his eyelids flutter in pleasure as he sips his tobio. His spun-copper lashes are pretty .

"Indeed!" He's excited and his butt looks so good in those pants as he heads back into the kitchen, and it occurs to me with the speed and impact of getting unexpectedly smashed in the head with a frying pan, I am fucked.

So fucked.

He moves the roaster to the pastry table (he's so strong, damn, don't think about him heaving you up against the wall, about wrapping your legs around his waist, shit ). I unearth a large cauldron with a thick base, leftover from Hadi's failed attempt to serve soup and panini.

We spend the next hour testing the usefulness of Dav's firebreath.

Dav has the ability to change the stream-width, but not the heat, according to the thermometer he keeps spitting on.

We eventually decide a thin stream, hissed out between pursed lips like a whistle, is best. He can dance that over the beans, while shifting them around with his own fire-proof hand, making sure they get touched evenly.

The experimenting is fun as hell. It reminds me of everything I liked best about my environmental bio labs.

And watching him actually do it is fucking gorgeous.

I want to press my cheek between his shoulder blades, put my arms around his chest, feel him inhale, hear the click of the firelighter bones deep in his throat, feel the steady surge of his exhale.

I don't touch him because first, I already know that he startles easily, and frankly, we're not burning down this kitchen again. And second, No, Colin.

Eventually the beans crack, and we crowd around the bowl like proud parents, cooing at the perfect color and the intense, smoky aroma. It's a shame we have to wait until tomorrow to taste it.