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TANSY UNPACKED HER farmer’s market haul on the wide island in the kitchen. So many colors and textures and scents. She picked a tomato and pressed her nose to the soft red flesh, inhaling the spicy, sweet grass scent. The smell of ripe tomatoes represented the big change her life had gone through. An Auxiliary Elemental, her powers were weak, her body weaker. She and others of her kind were the working class here on Earth to support the Warriors, the ones who fought the universal war against Chaos. Her assigned duties were in the kitchen at the training base, cooking and creating the energy bars the Warriors ate to sustain the caloric needs of their powers.
Doing the same steps, every day. Using the same ingredients. Endless days of monotony and sweating and stirring pots and dying inside.
Until Walker came. Delicately, diplomatically, he’d offered her a job. Keeping the secret of the humans living here from the Premiers was a small price to pay for freedom, for deliverance. For creativity and joy and contentment. For fresh tomatoes.
She had a little bit of hero worship toward him for that, but getting the position was mostly a fluke of timing. She’d needed to escape the Silverthorne base and Walker needed a head cook here in Topaz Ridge. Head cook would never have been a possibility in her own base, and her roommate and best friend, and her new Warrior lover needed some space.
She missed her friend Shaye, but they talked often and it sounded like she was deliriously happy now. And Tansy was pretty darn happy herself. Walker gave her money to buy anything she needed to get the kitchen ready, plus a weekly stipend for supplies and food. Plus a salary for herself, which was unheard of for Auxiliaries. They were just supposed to accept food and shelter and necessities in exchange for the honor of serving the Warriors. And Tansy had, for a while. But it hadn’t been long before there’d been a yearning inside for something more.
And now she had everything ‘more’ she’d wanted.
Tansy smiled as she stirred the pot of pasta sauce on the huge gas range. Her own recipe, and it smelled great. She sat the plastic spoon down on the stove-top as her timer dinged for her to drain the pasta. She hummed as she took two pot holders and grabbed the large pot by the handles, pouring the noodles into the colander in the sink to drain them.
As she shook out the last few clinging to the bottom, a new scent tickled her nose over the smell of tomatoes and herbs and pasta. A sharp, scorched smell that made her wrinkle her nose.
Burning plastic.
What the—
She slammed the pot down and flashed over to the stove, moving the plastic spoon she’d placed on it, too close to the burner where the sauce was cooking.
Well, that was a loss. The big plastic utensil looked like something had taken a bite of it, the rest stuck to the side of the pan with a thin, black thread of smoke coming off it.
Stupid. She should have used a wooden spoon. Or simply not sat the spoon there by the burner. She should’ve been paying better attention. As much as she loved cooking, sometimes she still wasn’t very good at it.
But she would get better.
With a deep breath, she turned off the flame and grabbed a clean pan. As she was about to pour the sauce into the it to continue simmering, someone ran in behind her yelling, “Where are they? How did they get inside?”
She looked behind her and there was Rowan, the Botanical Warrior, small ornate hatchets in each hand. Soaking wet... and wearing nothing but a towel.
Tansy slopped a little sauce on the stove and sat everything down to try again in a minute when she could concentrate.
“Where are who?”, she asked, turning to him, forcing her eyes to stay above his chest. His defined, muscular, glistening wet chest. “How did who... what?”
Concentrate, Tansy.
“The Chaolt,” Rowan said, turning and backing toward her, hunched and wielding his hatchets in a protective pose. Well, at least it was easier to keep her eyes off his chest. But the white towel clung damply to a firm set of butt-cheeks shaped like two small hams, below a long back rippling with tensed muscles.
“Um. What?”
A bright pair of green-hazel eyes flashed back her way. “The Chaolt,” Rowan growled, his accent thicker with exasperation. “Where are they? Don’t you smell them?”
Oh.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The damn spoon.
“Um, Rowan, there’s no Chaolt.” She stepped toward the stove and held up the decimated plastic spoon. “I was cooking and I accidentally set this too close to the flame. It burned.”
He dropped his hatchets to his side and stood, facing her, looking from her to the poor spoon.
“No Chaolt,” she repeated, cheeks heating. Just her incompetence.
He stared at her as he lifted his chin and sniffed the air. The odor was already fading behind the scent of rosemary and basil and garlic. “I thought it was odd that I couldn’t sense them. Didn’t have the buzz.”
The buzz was a kind of clanging, blending, buzzing sensation in the brain of Elementals when the enemy, the Chaolt, were close. All Elementals felt it, but it was supposedly stronger for the Warriors.
She sat the spoon behind her on the counter and leaned against it avoiding his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. “Nope. Just a kitchen mishap.”
What if there had been a fight? Rowan would have fought the Chaolt in a towel?
She smiled a little bit. Only a Warrior would jump out of the shower to attack the enemy, to protect the innocent, unclothed. Because the towel truly couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds.
“What it is you’re doing here?”
He’d turned to look at the island covered with fruits and vegetables, all in various stages of preparation.
“I’m cooking.”
“Your food is made with this?” he asked with a side-eye in her direction, motioning to the island.
“Yes.” She was prepping all the food for the week, peeling and chopping and packaging it to use quickly later on. She picked up a cucumber. “Are you hungry? Would you like something?”
She’d been cooking for the humans and their Warrior mates for a couple of months, but some of the Warriors were still hold-outs and ate only the energy bars. She tried not to take it personally. They literally didn’t know what they were missing. Rowan was one of them.
But Rowan shook his head and took a step back from the island. Then another.
Why?
She licked her lips, trying to think of something to say. “I’d be happy to make you something. Anything you want to try,” she said, gesturing with the cucumber.
“No,” he said with what looked like a tight swallow and a direct stare. “I’m good.”
He backed away another step, apparently now aware he was only wearing a towel, because he was struggling to hold the knot with a hatchet in each hand.
“Are you sure? I’ve got—”
“No.” He shook his head again, a few water droplets falling to his shoulders. “No. I have to go,” he said, turning away.
“Rowan—” she started, but he was gone. The only thing that remained was the scent of cedar quickly being drowned out by tomato sauce.
What had just happened? Why had he left so quickly?
She sat the cucumber back on the counter and sighed. A burned spoon and clumpy pasta and a saucy stove and a weird interaction with the Plant Warrior—
Oh god.
He was a Plant Elemental, and she was cooking plants. Her eyes traveled from the decapitated-looking head of cabbage to the carrots and potatoes with their skin peeled away, to a dozen other things in various stages of torture and murder. Not to mention the pot of tomato blood and guts simmering on the stove.
She bent over and rested her forehead against her folded arms on the island, shaking her head back and forth.
No wonder he looked at her like she was insane. No wonder he avoided her. No wonder he didn’t want to eat her food.
His power was creating plants, giving them life, and here she was torturing and butchering them to death. Literally.
It would be funny... if it wasn’t.
Rowan was the only person she really had anything in common with here. They came from the same base, and while she’d never seen him from her post in the kitchen, that was still something. But he’d seemed to avoid her, avoid conversation with her. She still didn’t know him any better than she had the day she’d arrived and met all the Warriors and the families of those with one. Even then, she’d been struck by the clarity of his hazel eyes, his accent. To have him here in her kitchen in just a towel was a chance she hadn’t wanted to waste, but she’d chased him off in spectacular fashion.
But oh well. At least she had her kitchen and her job and the satisfaction of cooking almost anything she wanted for other people. And that was enough, right?
Right.
––––––––
ROWAN RUSHED BACK TO his suite before he embarrassed himself more. Not only were there no Chaolt, but he’d popped a hard-on in the middle of the kitchen while talking to Tansy. Then he’d damned near hacked his dick off trying to keep the strained towel from falling while holding his hatchets.
But the way she’d been holding that cucumber, her lips wet and her eyes earnest... He was not a strong enough man or Warrior to keep from reacting the way he had.
He only hoped that she hadn’t noticed and he could get back to his room before—
“Hey! Dickweed!”
Rowan ground his teeth and tried to open his door with two weapons in his right hand hand, and his towel and other weapon in his left.
Maybe Ajax would go away if he ignored him. The guy was a dick, plain and simple. Either he didn’t remember his name or he did, but he still chose to use insults to address him instead. The last thing he wanted to do was give him any more ammunition to aggravate him.
But dammit, it was either drop his weapons or drop his towel to get the door open... which meant he must stand here and see what Ajax wanted.
He turned to the blond man as he swaggered up.
“Where’s the fight, buddy?” Ajax asked, motioning to his hatchets.
Rowan answered through clenched teeth. “I thought I detected Chaolt stench, so I went to go check it out. Just to make sure everything was okay.” He shrugged, keeping his face and his posture as casual as possible. It was no big deal. “The new cook burned a utensil on the stove.”
“So you jumped out of the shower to go protect the pretty little chef from the enemy, is that it?”
Heat crept up his neck. Why did everything Ajax say sound so scornful? Of course he went to check out the situation. That was their job, their mission. He’d thought Chaolt were in the base and hadn’t waited around to make absolutely sure first. It wasn’t unheard of, as Ajax very well knew from them attacking his mate and child last year. And of course, she was pretty, with her sandalwood skin and mahogany eyes... but that wasn’t the reason he’d run to protect her. Everyone else here had someone to look out for them, save her.
But rather than engage, Rowan just shrugged again. It wasn’t worth it. You couldn’t win people who didn’t like you over with logic.
And for some reason, Ajax hadn’t liked him since they met over a Chaolt fight on the side of the road.
Ajax’s chuckle was soft, and he didn’t say anything further as he went past, but Rowan still wanted to trip him. However, he’d promised his commander, Walker, he’d try to be civil.
The only good thing about this was that his chub had gone down enough that he could be reasonably sure his towel wouldn’t fall when he opened his door.
He was wrong.
The cool breeze he felt as he pushed it open had him scrambling to catch it. A cackling “Nice ass!” confirmed that Ajax saw all of it. And it was probably too much to hope that he wouldn’t tell everyone. And they’d laugh about it behind his back.
Rowan slammed the door shut with his foot and stood there, steaming, the towel pressed to his crotch.
With a curse, he strode into the bathroom and dropped the towel. Inside the shower, he turned the water on and waited for it to warm. He was freezing after his wet jaunt to the kitchen, and probably still had a little shampoo in his hair.
Leaning his head back into the spray, he closed his eyes. And popped them open again when a doe-eyed Tansy, on her knees in front of him and hands busy, materialized behind his eyelids.
He turned and tipped his head forward, hand on the wall, water running off the hair in front of his face. He closed his eyes, and the vision returned. For one hot minute, he let it play.
But this would never do.
He opened his eyes and scrubbed himself, avoiding the hard-on his daydream brought back.
He couldn’t ever let it get to Ajax that he had the hots for Tansy, an Auxiliary. If Ajax turned his scorn on her, he’d have to break his promise to Walker and kill the guy.
And he couldn’t let that happen, because he had to prove that he possessed what it took to be a Warrior, that he could handle whatever came his way—even if it was his smartass Elemental peer.
Or, the beautiful cook stroking vegetables in the kitchen.
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