Bonus Chapter: The New Kitchen

The Bachelor Pad’s Secret Ingredient — by Jace Wilder

⚠️ Spoilers ahead. Read the main novel first. Explicit — 18+.

The apartment smelled like paint and cardboard and possibility.

They’d signed the lease three weeks ago. The movers had come yesterday. And this morning — their first morning — Luca DeLuca woke up in a king-sized bed with his feet fully on the mattress and Owen Park’s body curled against his chest and thought: mine. All of this. Mine.

The bed was new. The sheets were new. The pillows were the expensive kind Owen had insisted on because, in his words, “I am not spending the rest of my life sleeping on whatever came free with the mattress, Luca. We’re adults. Adults have thread counts.”

They had a thread count. They had a bed that fit Luca’s body. They had an apartment with natural light and a shower that accommodated two people without requiring a structural engineering degree.

And they had the kitchen.

Luca got up without waking Owen. He pulled on boxers — his own, from the drawer that was his, in the dresser that was theirs — and walked down the hallway of their apartment in bare feet, and when he turned the corner into the kitchen, he stopped.

The morning light came through the east-facing window and hit the marble counters and the whole room glowed. White-veined marble, cool to the touch, stretching the full length of the island. The double range — commercial-grade, six burners plus griddle — sat against the far wall like a throne. The knife block held eight knives, each one selected by Luca with Mina’s input on handle ergonomics. The copper pans hung from a ceiling rack that caught the light and turned the kitchen amber.

It was perfect. It was theirs.

He cooked.

Because Luca DeLuca could not stand in a kitchen — especially this kitchen, especially on this morning — and not cook. He moved through the space the way he moved through every kitchen: with economy, with precision, with the deep physical satisfaction of a man occupying territory designed for his body. He cracked eggs. He sliced scallions. He rendered guanciale in the new pan and the sizzle filled the apartment and the smell — pork fat, pepper, the clean mineral note of new equipment being seasoned for the first time — was the smell of a life beginning.

He was making cacio e pepe. The dish that started everything.

The pasta water was boiling when Owen appeared.

He was wearing Luca’s T-shirt. The gray one, oversized, the hem hitting mid-thigh. His hair was a catastrophe. His glasses were slightly crooked. He had pillow marks on his left cheek and he looked like he’d been assembled by someone who understood exactly what Luca found devastating and had optimized accordingly.

“You’re cooking,” Owen said from the doorway.

“I’m christening the kitchen.”

“At seven in the morning.”

“The kitchen has been unchristened for twelve hours. That’s unacceptable.”

Owen crossed the kitchen in bare feet and slid onto the island counter — the marble, the beautiful marble, the surface Luca had specified during a post-sex conversation in a brownstone guest room that now felt like a lifetime ago. He sat with his legs dangling and his palms flat on the stone and he looked at Luca with the expression that had started an empire: warm, knowing, slightly dangerous.

“The counter is cold,” Owen said.

“Marble is thermally conductive. It retains ambient temperature.”

“I’m sitting on it in nothing but your T-shirt and boxers and your response is a materials science lecture.”

“My response is that you look incredible on my counter and I’m trying to focus on the guanciale.”

“The guanciale can wait.”

“The guanciale cannot wait. Guanciale waits for no one. That’s the first rule of —”

Owen grabbed the front of Luca’s shirt and pulled him forward. The kiss was morning-flavored — toothpaste and sleep and the particular warmth of a man who’d spent the night in a bed that fit both of them for the first time. Luca’s hands found the counter on either side of Owen’s thighs, bracketing him, the marble cool under his palms and Owen’s body warm between his arms.

“Good morning,” Owen murmured against his mouth.

“Good morning. The pasta water is boiling.”

“Turn it off.”

“Owen —”

“Turn. It. Off.”

Luca reached behind him and turned off the burner without looking. The hiss of the water settling was the sound of a man rearranging his priorities.

“The kitchen,” Owen said, wrapping his legs around Luca’s waist with the practiced ease of a man who’d done this on enough surfaces to consider it a core competency, “needs a proper christening.”

“That’s what the cacio e pepe was for.”

“The cacio e pepe is for after. This is for now.”

He pulled Luca’s shirt over his head. Luca let him — stood between Owen’s thighs in their kitchen in the morning light and let this man undress him with hands that knew exactly where they were going and arrived without hesitation. Owen’s palms mapped his bare chest with unhurried attention. Fingertips tracing the tattoos on his forearms — the recipes in his grandmother’s handwriting, the lemon branch, the kitchen knife. Palms flat against his pectorals, feeling the heartbeat underneath. Thumbs dragging across his hip bones, hooking into his waistband with a directness that made Luca’s breathing shorten.

“I love this kitchen,” Owen said, pulling the boxers down.

“You love the kitchen.”

“I love the man in the kitchen. The kitchen is a bonus.” He looked down at Luca — openly, appreciatively, with the specific evaluative focus he usually reserved for food that impressed him. Then back up, eyes dark. “And the counter is exactly the right height.”

It was. Luca had measured. He would never admit that he’d measured, but when they’d toured the apartment and the broker had been talking about closet space and subway proximity, Luca had been calculating the distance between the counter’s edge and his hips and arriving at a number that was, architecturally speaking, ideal.

“You measured this counter,” Owen said, because Owen noticed everything and had apparently decided that calling Luca out was one of his primary recreational activities.

“I assessed the spatial dimensions for functional purposes.”

“You measured this counter so you could fuck me on it.”

“I measured this counter for multiple applications including but not limited to meal preparation, recipe development, and —”

“Luca.”

“Yes. I measured this counter so I could fuck you on it.”

“That is the most romantic thing you have ever admitted.”

He pulled Owen’s shirt off — his shirt, technically, the gray one that smelled like both of them now and that Owen had claimed with the territorial decisiveness of a man who understood that wearing your boyfriend’s clothing was a form of psychological warfare. Owen was bare underneath except for boxers, which Luca removed with the efficient one-handed motion he’d perfected across months of practice on various surfaces in two boroughs.

Owen on the marble counter in the morning light was an image Luca was going to carry into every kitchen for the rest of his career. Lean, warm, golden-skinned against white stone. The small hoop earring catching the sun. The rings on his fingers glinting. His cock half-hard against his stomach, his thighs parted around Luca’s hips, his body open and waiting and entirely, unapologetically offered.

“You’re staring,” Owen said.

“I’m appreciating the mise en place.”

“Did you just call me mise en place?”

“Everything in its place.” Luca put his hands on Owen’s thighs and spread them wider. Leaned in. Kissed the hollow beneath Owen’s ear and felt the pulse jump under his lips. “You are exactly where you belong.”

He kissed Owen on the marble counter in their kitchen on their first morning in their apartment and the kiss was everything the first one hadn’t been — unhurried, confident, the deep and practiced fluency of a man who’d spent a year learning this mouth and was nowhere close to finished. Owen’s legs locked around his waist. Luca’s hands slid from his thighs to his hips to the curve of his ass, gripping, pulling him to the edge of the counter so their bodies aligned.

Owen was fully hard now and so was Luca and the contact — bare skin on bare skin, the heat of Owen’s cock trapped between their stomachs — sent a current through Luca’s body that settled in the base of his spine and built.

“I want you,” Luca said against Owen’s mouth. Not a request. A fact. Like salt enhances flavor. Like heat transforms protein. Like Luca DeLuca wanted Owen Park — a constant, a natural law, an irreducible truth of the universe they’d built.

“Then have me.” Owen’s hips rolled against him. Deliberate. Slow. The friction making both of them catch their breath. “I stocked the kitchen drawer.”

“You stocked the —”

“Second drawer. Left of the stove. Behind the spatulas.”

Luca pulled back. He opened the drawer. Behind a set of silicone spatulas still in their packaging, he found a bottle of lube and a strip of condoms arranged with the organizational precision of a man who treated sexual preparedness with the same rigor he applied to production logistics.

“You put lube behind the spatulas.”

“The spatulas provide visual camouflage. Your mother is going to be in this kitchen eventually and I am not explaining the drawer system to a woman who brings tupperware to Michelin restaurants.”

“That is either brilliant or unhinged.”

“Both. Like everything about us. Now stop discussing the drawer and come back here.”

He went back. Owen was where he’d left him — perched on the marble, legs apart, backlit by the morning sun, looking at Luca with an expression that was equal parts command and invitation. The producer and the lover. The man who managed rooms and the man who surrendered in this one.

Luca kissed his throat. His collarbone. The center of his chest where his heartbeat was visible. He worked his way down Owen’s body with the thorough, attentive focus of a chef tasting a dish at every stage of development — checking, adjusting, learning what this specific morning’s version of Owen responded to.

He dropped to his knees on the kitchen floor.

The tile was cold. He didn’t care. Owen’s thighs were warm on either side of his face and Owen’s hand was in his hair and the sound Owen made when Luca’s mouth found him was a sound that belonged in this kitchen — raw, involuntary, echoing off the marble and the copper and the new walls that were learning the acoustics of their life.

Luca took his time. He’d learned Owen’s body with the same dedication he brought to mastering a technique — through repetition, through attention, through the continuous feedback loop of sound and touch and response. He knew the pace that made Owen’s thighs tremble. He knew the pressure that made Owen’s hand tighten in his hair. He knew the exact moment when Owen’s breathing shifted from controlled to abandoned, the threshold where coherent language dissolved into fragments and his name and profanity became interchangeable.

“Luca — fuck — your mouth — I can’t —”

He pulled back. Owen made a sound of protest that was closer to a whine than anything the co-creator of a nationally trending cooking show should admit to producing.

“Not yet,” Luca said. His voice was rough. His jaw ached pleasantly. “Not like this. I want to be inside you when you come.”

“Then get up here and —”

“Turn around.”

Owen’s eyes widened. Then darkened. Then he smiled — the dangerous one, the one with intent — and slid off the counter and turned.

He braced his forearms on the marble. The position put the line of his back on display — the ridge of his spine, the dimples above his hips, the lean muscle that flexed when he shifted his weight. He looked over his shoulder at Luca with an expression that was pure, weaponized trust.

“Like this?” Owen asked. His voice had dropped into the register that only existed in these moments — low, rough, stripped of performance.

“Exactly like this.”

Luca prepared him with patience that contradicted every urgency in his body. He worked Owen open with slick fingers, one hand on his hip, the other drawing sounds from him that the marble amplified — gasps, moans, Owen’s forehead dropping to his folded arms, his back arching, his hips pressing back against Luca’s hand seeking more.

“More,” Owen confirmed, because Owen always said what he needed, always had, always would, and Luca would spend the rest of his life being grateful for the clarity of a man who refused to make desire a guessing game. “Luca, I’m ready. Please.”

He pressed inside Owen and the kitchen disappeared.

Not literally — the marble was still under Owen’s arms, the morning light was still pouring through the window, the copper pans were still catching the sun overhead. But everything that wasn’t the two of them ceased to register. There was only this. The tight, encompassing heat of Owen’s body. The sound of Owen’s breath leaving him in a rush. The grip of Luca’s hands on his hips — hard enough to anchor, gentle enough to release at a word.

“God,” Owen breathed. “You feel —”

“Tell me.”

“Perfect. You always feel perfect. Move.”

Luca moved.

The counter was exactly the right height. He’d measured it and the measurement had been correct and the mathematics of their bodies — Luca’s height, Owen’s height, the distance between the floor and the marble surface — produced an angle that was, to use a culinary term, optimal. Each thrust was deep and precise and Owen responded with the full-body honesty that Luca had come to crave more than any flavor or technique or professional accolade.

Owen was loud. He’d always been loud — vocal, verbal, the running narration of pleasure that Luca had become addicted to during their first night and that had only intensified in the months since. But this morning, in this kitchen, with the acoustic properties of marble and tile and copper amplifying every sound, Owen was something beyond loud. He was a symphony of his own unraveling.

“Right there — Luca, right there — don’t stop — harder — yes, like that — fuck, your hands —”

Luca gripped Owen’s hip with one hand and slid the other up his spine, over his shoulder, around his throat. Not squeezing — cradling. His fingers wrapped the column of Owen’s neck with the careful, comprehensive grip of a man holding something irreplaceable. Owen’s head fell back against Luca’s shoulder and the angle opened him further and the sound he made was broken and beautiful and Luca’s.

“You’re mine,” Luca said against his ear. The words that had started as a revelation in a brownstone kitchen and had become a daily practice, a morning prayer, the first thing his body knew upon waking. “This kitchen is ours. This counter is ours. This life is ours. And you —” a thrust that made Owen gasp and arch “— you are mine.”

“Yours,” Owen managed. “Always — Luca —”

He reached around Owen’s body and wrapped his hand around his cock and Owen nearly buckled. Luca held him — one arm around his waist, the other working him with the steady, attentive rhythm he’d learned through months of studying Owen’s responses the way he studied a developing dish: through feedback, through adjustment, through the relentless pursuit of the exact right combination.

The combination was: the angle of his hips hitting the spot that made Owen stop breathing, plus the pressure of his hand, plus the words — always the words, the verbal intimacy that Owen had taught him was not decoration but architecture, the load-bearing structure of their sexual language.

“You’re perfect,” Luca said, and the word had changed meaning over the course of their relationship. It had started as a revelation — a man hearing it for the first time and shattering. Now it was a foundation. A fact. The ground they built on. “You’re perfect and you’re mine and I am going to fuck you on every surface in this apartment and make you breakfast on every one afterward.”

Owen laughed and moaned simultaneously — a sound that should not have been possible and that was, Luca had learned, uniquely Owen. The ability to find something genuinely funny while being genuinely destroyed.

“Every surface?” Owen gasped.

“Every surface. The counter. The island. The table we haven’t assembled. The shower — the shower that fits both of us, Owen, the shower that I chose because I was tired of getting hypothermia in your Williamsburg coffin —”

“My shower was — fuck — my shower was character building —”

“Your shower was a health violation. Our shower has dual heads and a bench and I intend to use both.”

He was close. The pleasure was building at the base of his spine with the steady, inevitable force of a reduction reaching its concentration point — thickening, intensifying, approaching the moment where everything transformed.

Owen was closer. Luca could tell from the way his body had gone tight, the way his hands were gripping the marble edge, the way his breathing had shifted from rhythmic to erratic and his voice had climbed from its low register to something higher and more desperate.

“Come for me,” Luca said. The instruction that Owen had taught him to give and that Luca had discovered was the most erotic sentence in any language — not because of the words themselves but because of what they represented. Trust. Authority. The absolute confidence of a man who knew his partner’s body well enough to decide the timing.

Owen came with a sound that echoed off every surface in their new kitchen. His body locked around Luca — clenching, shuddering, his hand slamming flat on the marble as if he needed to confirm the surface was still solid. Luca felt it — felt every pulse, every contraction, every tremor — and the sensation dragged him over the edge with a force that emptied him of everything except Owen’s name and the percussive certainty of a man arriving at exactly the place he was supposed to be.

He came buried inside Owen on the marble counter he’d measured during a real estate tour while a broker discussed subway access. He came with his mouth on Owen’s shoulder and his arms around Owen’s body and the morning light making everything gold. He came in the kitchen that was theirs, in the apartment that was theirs, in the life that was theirs, and the pleasure was so intertwined with the joy of belonging that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

They stood there for a long time. Luca still inside Owen. Owen’s arms on the marble, holding both of them up. Their breathing the only sound in the kitchen, gradually slowing, syncing, the way their breathing always synced — in bed, in the kitchen, in the brownstone during late shoots, in every space they’d shared since the night Luca had made midnight cacio e pepe and discovered that feeding Owen Park was the most honest thing his body knew how to do.

Eventually, carefully, he eased out. Owen turned around and collapsed against his chest and Luca held him — arms wrapped, chin on his head, the full weight of Owen leaning into him with the complete, boneless trust of a man who had just been thoroughly wrecked and was not interested in supporting his own skeleton.

“The counter is christened,” Owen said. His voice was destroyed.

“The counter is christened. The kitchen has additional surfaces.”

“Luca. We cannot christen every surface in one morning. I need to walk today. I have a production meeting.”

“The meeting isn’t until two.”

“That’s seven hours.”

“I’m efficient.”

Owen pulled back and looked at him. His face was flushed. His glasses — which he hadn’t removed, which was a detail Luca filed under things he found unreasonably attractive — were fogged.

“You’re going to kill me,” Owen said.

“I’m going to make you breakfast first. Then we’ll discuss mortality.”

He turned the burner back on. He boiled fresh water. He finished the cacio e pepe with hands that were slightly unsteady and a body that was still humming with the residual electricity of what they’d just done. The guanciale had cooled but the fat was still rendered and he crisped it again and bloomed the pepper and built the emulsion with pasta water and pecorino and tossed the noodles with the wrist-flick that Owen had once called obscene and that had, in retrospect, started the entire chain reaction that led to this kitchen, this apartment, this life.

Owen sat on the counter. Still naked. Watching Luca cook with the attentive, reverent focus he brought to every meal, compounded by the post-orgasmic softness that made his eyes warmer and his smile slower and his entire body radiate the particular contentment of a man who’d been thoroughly loved and thoroughly fed and couldn’t decide which one he was more grateful for.

Luca plated the pasta. He handed Owen a fork. He leaned against the counter opposite him — also still naked, because clothing had not yet presented itself as a priority — and they ate cacio e pepe at eight in the morning in their kitchen in their apartment, the marble cool under their skin, the copper catching the light, the first meal in their new life tasting exactly the way a first meal should taste: like everything that came before it, and like nothing that would ever be the same.

“First morning,” Owen said, twirling pasta.

“First morning.”

“How many more do you think we get?”

Luca looked at him. On the counter. Naked. Eating his pasta. In their kitchen. The lemon branch tattoo on his forearm catching the light. Owen’s ring catching the light. Everything in this room that mattered — illuminated.

“All of them,” Luca said. “We get all of them.”

Owen smiled. The real one. The one that had started everything and would, if Luca had anything to say about it, never stop.

They ate pasta on their counter on their first morning in their kitchen, and outside the window Brooklyn was waking up, and inside the apartment the coffee was brewing and the boxes were waiting and the shower with the dual heads and the bench was going to get its turn before the production meeting at two.

The cacio e pepe, like everything Luca DeLuca made for Owen Park, was perfect.

And the kitchen — their kitchen, measured and chosen and christened — was home.

← Back to the book