Page 213
“You did excellent work there last time.”
“My performance review mentioned benefits.”
“Probation has ended.” I step close and hook one finger into his waistband. “Benefits are available.”
I take him into the office.
The cot sits against the wall beside the desk, stowed away because I haven’t used it in a while. It is narrow, ugly, and covered with the blanket Priya bought after finding me asleep under a pile of aprons.
Kane looks at it. “That?”
“Do you require a four-poster bed and thousand-thread-count sheets, Your Majesty?”
“I require enough space to turn you over.”
“You’ll have to improvise.”
I pull my sweater over my head, revealing that, oops, I forgot to wear a bra today.
Kane loses interest in furniture.
He kisses me and backs me toward the cot. I relieve him of his sweater, run both hands over his chest, and take my time with his belt. He undresses me from the waist down, then puts me on the mattress and kneels between my legs.
“I’m too impatient for that tonight,” I whine, pulling him up toward me. “I want you inside of me.”
“Greedy little thing,” he sighs as he crawls up my body.
He kisses me again. I pull him over me and wrap my legs around his hips. Kane plants one hand beside my head and begins to shift his knee between mine so I can grind on it while we make out.
But I only get one buck of my hips before the cot collapses.
The metal frame folds inward with a crash, and the mattress dumps both of us against the wall.
Kane takes the impact on his shoulder. I end up beneath him with one leg trapped in the blanket and my bare ass presented to the ceiling.
For one awful second, I am back in every bedroom where I made the first joke before anyone else could.
“Well,” I begin, “my ass finally—”
“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence.”
Kane pushes himself up and frees my leg.
“I was going to say ‘brought you back to earth.’“
“Liar. You were going to blame your body.” He examines the frame. “This hinge buckled.”
“So then the joke is valid.”
“The label says two hundred and fifty pounds.” Kane points at his chest. “I exceed that without you.”
I look at the twisted hinge and laugh until I have to sit on the floor. Kane lowers himself beside me, naked from the waist up with a blanket caught around one ankle.
The laughing goes on long enough that it stops being about the cot.
It’s the sound of a person who hasn’t had a single funny thing happen to her since December. But this? This is funny.
I’m sitting bare-ass naked on the rubber mat in my own office, and Kane Makov, pakhan of whatever, is sprawled next to me with a fleece blanket lassoed around his ankle.
