“As you might have noticed,” Chef Maryam Peretz said in her well-ordered kitchen with staff quietly bustling about as they made the basics of the bread she featured in her restaurant, Yael, “I purposely don’t use the word civilization when referring to anything historical. I like to use the word culture or some variant like that.” She waved her hands around, looking slightly nervous as she glanced at Rose who was staring as if mesmerized.
Jac, though, was having a hard time paying attention to anything. Except Rose.
Yesterday, he’d accidentally fallen asleep with her. Not that unusual anymore, yes. Only, he’d woken himself from a sex dream where she’d been having the time of her life riding him. She’d been nude, slick from sweat, and smiling widely, undulating her hips with him so deep inside her. Complete fantasy, oh yeah. He knew his subconscious was a miserable asshole who liked torturing him because sleeping with a woman he considered the epitome of everything he’d ever wanted and knowing there was no way in hell she would ever think of him as anything other than a friend was agony enough. But add a sex dream too, and he was in pure hell.
He hadn’t had one of those dreams in…god knew how long. At this point, his sex dreams were vague things of fuzzy women mixed with memories of past lovers—his first girlfriend who liked to twine her ankles behind him while he’d thrust into her. His third girlfriend who was rather flexible and could do the splits while on him (truly cool but not that great for friction.) The woman he’d hooked up with once who had called him Ben over and over again. Strange memories that might not have been his best sexual experiences, but they got mired in his subconscious and he’d come, waking and feeling confused and lonely.
But this newest dream with Rose had at first been filled with kissing. He’d kissed her all over but especially her warm, wet mouth, her tongue darting in, turning the fire inside him into a smoldering inferno. He’d had his lips on her breasts, and even in his dream, he knew it was a reverie because he wasn’t sure what she would feel like. But his subconscious made things up and his dream version of Rose had felt damned good, her nipple hard and she’d moaned when he’d flicked his tongue against it. He’d had his head between her legs, licking her until she shook and called out his name. Then he’d been inside her. She was on top. God, the way she’d moved, the way she arched her back, the way she held her hair in her hands then let it fall back to her shoulders and down her chest. He’d woken before he came, so glad he hadn’t while next to the real her.
He’d been laying on his side, facing her, while her head was on one of his arms. He pulled away and turned around, but she reached an arm around him, stopping him from leaving the bed. He’d been so hard. So hot. And she had unconsciously pressed her breasts against his back, holding him in place.
He currently felt like a complete bastard for the dream, for being erect while she slept and had been sleeping so deeply because she’d been crying from her grief. What the hell was wrong with him?
Chef Peretz gazed in his direction, her hazel eyes gauging to see if he was listening. Oh, he was trying really fucking hard to.
“Right.” Rose nodded. “Is that because you find the word civilization problematic?”
“I do.” Peretz nodded herself. She wasn’t wearing a chef’s hat, which Jac would have loved to see. Her reddish-brown curls were strapped down in a tight bun where only a few strands dared to pop out and twirl a wave at him. “I find it incredibly problematic the way it has been used. So when I talk about the people who first developed wheat, I’m merely talking about the people of that region. You know, an academic has said that agriculture, specifically the development of wheat, was one of the worst mistakes made in human history.”
Rose cocked her head to the side, reminding Jac of his dream, of how she’d arched her neck as she’d moaned while she slid down his cock. Something thick and too warm scuttled down his spine and landed between his legs. He cleared his throat, and both women looked at him expectantly. So not what he wanted at that minute. He merely smiled, hoping one of his goofy grins made them think he was paying attention.
Rose returned her gaze to Peretz. “I believe that was Jared Diamond.”
The chef smiled but bit down hard on her lip like she was disappointed not to have dropped his name herself. “That’s right.”
She was obviously trying to impress Rose, and Jac understood why. Rose was not exactly a well-known name like her friend Charli, the first Formula One female champion. But Rose was known in elite circles and being named in Forbes hundreds of times didn’t hurt. She was notorious for her impeccable taste, hiring contractors who, usually marginalized and underpaid by previous developers, would shine with projects she hired them to do, making her investment that much more financially beneficial.
And no one knew that Rose was giving all her wealth away. Well, obviously not the money for this trip. But she would make most philanthropists look like schmucks. And he’d just had a very vivid sex dream about her that he couldn’t stop remembering.
“Diamond,” Rose continued, “was referring to how some…peoples who had developed wheat into flour also had a culture of slavery, wars, land usurpation, hierarchies that benefited very few, oppression of women, and more, right?”
“That’s right.” The chef inhaled. “But I find that view a little limited.”
Rose nodded encouragingly. Jac tried to smile once more when the chef’s gaze flicked over him as if for support which he gave by leaning closer. But that made him that much closer to Rose, and he could smell her—a rich scent of peonies and lilies and, yes, roses. So much floral. So pretty that Jac often associated the smell with a rich pink color, though Rose never wore anything remotely like that. Just black, and with her grief, a lot of black.
He stepped away because her scent made him remember when she’d been on him and he’d been inside her, how slick, how tight, and how she’d smiled like she wanted him.
Fantasy. Just a damned fantasy!
The chef’s brows knitted for a second, probably assessing why the hell he’d leaned forward just to step back, but she returned her gaze to Rose. “I guess,” she smiled and shyly looked down, “maybe this sounds naive, but perhaps certain cultures were already oppressive—”
“And the making of flour wasn’t necessarily the causeway to the oppression?” Rose said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Chef Peretz nodded. “Further, I think of my grandmother when I think of bread. She was fourteen when abducted and taken to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. She didn’t know what happened to her mother or father or little brother, but she was to walk almost three kilometers every day to a bakery to bake bread for the SS, then walk those same three kilometers back. She did this and survived the war. She told me of how she had to steal little bits of bread and eat without anyone catching on. How it took her forty years to unlearn how to stop eating like that, like she was a thief.”
Rose clutched a hand over her heart. “Heartbreaking. What a story. I’m so honored you’d share that with us.”
The chef might have blushed at that. “Thank you. I’m honored to share it with you.” She shook her head slightly. “I think of my grandmother, but I also think of my toddler nephew and how one of his favorite foods is bread with a little butter. In other words, and this is drastically over simplifying things, but the history of bread is very complicated because the history of people is very complicated.”
She then gave Rose an excited little grin. “But there’s new discoveries in archeology that are changing the way we think of bread, specifically baking. In 2018, an archeologist found burnt bread that carbon dated to 4,000 years before most historians estimate that people were farming. In other words, we were baking bread before we were farmers. Not settling down and farming and then baking as previously thought. We were processing our food long before the advent of what some call civilization—the word I’ve tried to avoid because of its association with oppression. What academics used to mean about civilization is that a specific people settled in one place and became farmers. But with this recent discovery, we now know that we were nomadic and bakers. So the old, outdated, and racist notion of civilization—settling down to cultivate the land—doesn’t stand the test of time because that’s not how people evolved. I find that fascinating.”
Rose nodded and smiled. Jac did too but then caught sight of her bare arms, the silky, gold skin unbearably beautiful—she was unbearably beautiful in her black linen sleeveless blouse.
“So with that in mind,” the chef continued, “I’ve been working with archeologists on what some of the first breads made 14,000 years ago would have tasted like.”
Rose made a happy humming noise. “Riveting.”
The chef turned and walked over to a tall, thin Black man in pristine chef’s gear. She waved at him while he nodded and kept grinding at a flat, round rock with what appeared to be whole wheat berries. “This is my pastry chef, Thabo Kanumba. He’s milling einkorn wheat—”
“Oh!” Rose said and turned to Jac. “Weren’t you talking about ancient wheats, einkorn, and Vikings the other day?” She glanced back at the chef. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“That’s okay.” The chef smiled at him, waiting for his answer.
Jac nodded and spoke to the chefs, rather than chance a glance at Rose too deeply. “I was. But I was just talking about ancient Danes, not Vikings, that conversation was later, the Viking conversation I mean, and the cereal they, the ancient Danes, used to eat long ago.” Jesus, could that have come out any more convoluted?
Chef Peretz glanced at him with something glittering in her eyes then bounced her gaze back to Rose, as if she were trying to figure out who he was to elegant Rose—him a callused-palmed farmhand with a beard that he should have trimmed before the trip, him a bit too big even in this spacious kitchen which made him keep bumping into Rose, him who couldn’t maintain eye contact with her for too long because he’d remember his dream, where dream-Rose kissed him, moaned, and rolled her eyes back because he’d been so deep inside her warm wetness. Him who had inappropriate dreams of his boss who he was weirdly traveling the world with.
He tried for another smile which usually disarmed enough people to look away, but Peretz’s hazel eyes glittered more like she was putting a puzzle together and seeing something he couldn’t.
The chef nodded. “Yes, einkorn spread widely throughout Asia and Europe.” She waved again at her pastry chef. “Chef, how’s the milling going?”
Kanumba groaned with a smile. “It’s tough work, this grinding the wheat to make flour.” He laughed good-naturedly. “But I like to try to work with the same kinds of tools our predecessors used.” He pointed with a nod of his head at the grinding stone in his palm he worked with. “It makes a rough flour, but I try to make it as fine as possible, less chewing that way.” He laughed again.
Rose chuckled and nodded.
Kanumba pointed with his head again in the direction of another chef nearby. “Chef Levy is working with the club-rush tubers.”
“Club-rush tubers,” Chef Peretz explained, “are what was found in the 14,000-year-old bread I was talking about earlier, not just the einkorn. Club-rush tubers are long grasses, like reeds found along shorelines, that can flower. Their roots were cooked and often dried and pressed into a powder. It’s this powder that was combined with the einkorn flour that made the first flat breads found in Jordan.” She waved her hand in the direction of the fire oven, where another chef was taking a long pair of what looked like pliers and extracting small brown pita-like breads.
When Jac and Rose got closer, Chef Peretz waved at the freshly baked bread. “It cools faster than you think. Go ahead and try one. It’s really so good if you dip it in a little oil and salt.”
The chef who had extracted the breads, revealed a few small dishes—one filled with what looked like melted animal fat and another filled with coarse salt. Rose shocked Jac by placing a hand on his back, guiding him closer to the freshly baked flatbreads. She got even closer to him, leaning a shoulder against his arm while she gingerly held one of the breads and tore it in two, giving him one half.
Jac took what was offered and followed her lead, all while studiously trying to ignore her dark eyes and the way she kept touching him. She dipped the bread in the oil then the salt. He did the same then put it in his mouth and he tasted his dream—earthy Rose, floral Rose, Rose’s mouth, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, her sex.
Real Rose smiled at him brightly. “It’s so good, right?”
“So good.” He might have growled that more than anything else.
Forbasket.