Page 40 of The Perfect Ingredient
He grins at me like I’ve handed him a prize pig at a fair. Then he leans in, head turned just slightly toward me.
“I feel strange.”
“Good strange or bad strange?”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowed in thought, pupils wide.
“Like… everything’s floating. Like I could fall sideways and never stop.”
“That’s the green fairy.”
“She’s fond of you,” Hessou says, amused.
Jean laughs for the first time all night. A warm, flushed sound from deep in his chest.
“She’s better than the opium.”
He means last night, in Hessou’s rooms, with velvet music playing and thick smoke all around us. The three of us melted across his fainting couch, bare feet on thick rugs, limbs loose from the heat and the opium. Absinthe isn’t like that. Absinthe is a green fire instead of drifting fog.
Jean drags a hand through his hair and releases a breath. “That made me feel heavy. This makes me feel… beautiful.”
He does look beautiful. Glowing, even under the haze. Face flushed, pink mouth, collar loose, tie askew. There’s a softness to his expression now that wasn’t there when we walked in.
“You are,” I whisper, and lean in until my nose brushes his temple.
He blinks slowly, then looks between me and Hessou.
“Both of you are,” he murmurs.
His face reddens right after, as if the words escaped too honestly. He buries his cheek against my shoulder in embarrassment, and I feel his smile where his mouth touches my shirt.
Hessou shifts beside me and leans across, lips brushing the side of Jean’s neck with a kiss so deliberate it stills the breath in Jean’s chest. Hessou lingers for a second—then pulls away to sip his absinthe, eyes flicking lazily around the room.
Somewhere near the entrance, a man strips to applause. His nipples are painted rouge, garters snapped high, glitter caught on the curve of his hipbone. He twirls a glove between his fingers before tossing it into the crowd, laughter breaking around him.
Hessou’s hand lifts again, fingers sliding along Jean’s jaw to guide his gaze toward the show.
“You could do that. You’d make a fortune.”
Jean blushes. “No.”
But his hand grips my thigh tighter.
I lean into his ear. “I think you’d look beautiful like that. Bare under lights. In a room full of people who want you, knowing you belong to us.”
Jean inhales sharply. His mouth opens, then closes, like he doesn’t know what to do with the ache blooming behind his ribs.
Then he turns and kisses me.
It isn’t shy.
It’s clumsy, wet, a little too much tongue, but full of want and hunger. His big hands are suddenly in my hair, holding me in place. I groan into it, fingers digging into his shoulder, and when I break the kiss to breathe, Hessou’s mouth is already on my neck.
The room fades.
It’s just us—mouth to mouth, hand to thigh, pulse to pulse. A triangle of breath, sweat and shared permission. I don’t know whose hand is on my chest. I don’t know whose tongue flicks into my ear. I don’t care. My knees are weak under the table. My cock is hard against my pants. And both of them are watching me like I’m dessert and they’ve just remembered their hunger.
“You boys,” I whisper. “You’re going to ruin me.”
