Page 41 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
But my heart is doing backflips, my brain’s fried on stress and sugar, and my fingers are coated in dark chocolate mousse so I turn back to my shells and try to remember how to breathe.
“You okay?” Lyrie murmurs beside me, suddenly close.
“Define ‘okay,’” I mutter.
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. In a glitter apron.”
“You’re welcome.”
I snort, then glance back at Rekkgar. He’s cracking eggs now—delicately, precisely. One hand holds, the other taps with just enough pressure to split the shell clean. Not a single shard escapes. He moves like he’s sparring—controlled, efficient, entirely focused.
It’s infuriating.
It’s intoxicating.
“Don’t you dare swoon while I’m running a trial,” Lyrie warns.
“I amnotswooning.”
“You’re definitely swooning.”
“Shut up and hand me the pistachio paste.”
Hours blur. We knead, we roll, we roast. Lyrie calls out mystery rounds at random intervals—“Three-minute flan sculpt!” “Alien savory scone showdown!”—and Vonn throws barbs from the sidelines like he’s judging an amateur opera. Rekkgar doesn’t flinch once. He stirs sauces with brutal grace, chops alien roots with a precision that belongs more on a battlefield than in a kitchen, and even withstands a taste test of Vortaxian fire peppers with nothing but a slight twitch at the corner of his jaw.
By mid-afternoon, the bakery smells like an interstellar spice market collided with a chocolate factory. My shoulders ache. My feet throb. My hair’s full of sugar dust. And for the first time inweeks, I feel like maybe I can breathe again.
It’s when I reach for the honey siphon that our hands touch.
Just barely.
A brush of knuckles. A flicker of heat.
We freeze.
His eyes meet mine—deep, unreadable, that golden-ringed black that always sees more than it says.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
Then Lyrie yells, “We’re behind schedule! Ruby, start plating. Rekkgar, prep the chiller tray!”
And the moment breaks.
He nods, silent as ever, and moves to obey.
I stare at his back as he goes.
Strong. Steady. Silent.
Buthere.
He stayed.
There’s a kind of absurd poetry in watching a seven-foot ex-warrior fumble with a piping bag.
Rekkgar hunches over the cooling rack like it might attack him, his massive fingers curled stiffly around the delicate tool like it's a live weapon. His brow furrows, tongue pressing into his canine just slightly as he squeezes with the concentration of someone disarming a bomb.
