Page 24 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
RREKKGAR
Idon’t remember the walk back.
One moment I’m standing on Ruby’s porch, her scent wrapped around me—cinnamon and sweetened cream, like the pastries she coaxes from her ovens and the laugh that rises in her throat when something delights her—and the next I’m inside my quarters, the door sealed, my back pressed to it like I’m keeping something dangerous locked out.
Or maybe in.
I rub my palm over my face, then lower it and stare at the hand like it’s foreign. My claws are curled, trembling. The skin beneath the scales is hot, raw. Because I touched her. Ikissedher.
And gods help me, I didn’t want to stop.
The shame hits low and deep, in the belly where my restraint used to live.
I didn’t mean to do it. Notreally. I didn’t go to her shop tonight intending to break every oath I swore to myself, every code burned into my bones from the years spent kneeling before the Vakutan elders. I didn’t intend to cross that threshold. But she looked up at me with eyes so wide and soft, with a voice likevelvet and lightning. And when she leaned into me—head resting on my arm during that ridiculous ballet—I felt the chain snap.
She trusted me. She always has. And I…
Itooksomething.
My tunic still smells like her hair. Like those weird Earth berries she keeps in jars behind the counter and sneaks into her baking when no one’s looking. I inhale, desperate and angry with myself in equal measure, then rip the shirt over my head and throw it into the wash chute like that will burn away the proof of my sin.
But the truth is under my skin now.
Her lips were soft. Too soft. Like heat-soaked silk. Her hands curled into my tunic when I kissed her, not pulling away but drawing me down, begging me without words to keep going.
And I wanted to. Every instinct, every scar, every star-damned beat of my heart wanted to take her inside, shut the door, and drown in her until nothing else mattered.
But itdoesmatter.
She was promised to another. Human tradition or not, it was a bond. Sacred. My people believe in the sanctity of such things. I’vekilledfor less.
I pace the room, bare feet thudding against stone, claws scraping the edge of the doorway with every pass. My breath comes hard. My chest is too tight, like the oxygen here on Novaria is thinner than I remember. Or maybe I’m just choking on guilt.
My cybernetic eye tracks every shadow, too alert, too sharp. I can’t shut it off. Not when my blood is still humming from the memory of her mouth on mine. Not when her eyes burned into me like she saw every flaw and stillreached.
What kind of man does that to someone bound to another?
I am dishonored. A predator.
But if I am, why did she lean in?
Why did she whisperthank youlike I’d offered her a piece of her soul back?
I punch the wall.
Not a full hit, just enough to make my knuckles sting. The metal reinforcement behind the plaster groans under the impact, a dull note of pain to match the one vibrating in my chest.
She kissed me back. She wanted it. And that… that’s what terrifies me most of all.
Because if she wanted me—wantsme—then I can never look at her again without remembering that taste. That sound she made in the back of her throat. The one that wasn’t fear or surprise. It wasneed.
My comm chimes once.
I ignore it.
It chimes again.
I snatch it off the charging cradle and flick it open. The name makes my stomach drop.
