Page 14 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits

RUBY

I t starts with flour in my eyelashes and ends with a scream I only half regret.

The bakery has never looked like this. There are mixing bowls stacked like barricades on the counter, dough rising in bio-tempered crates along the windows, and an entire crate of Yxari sugar pearls exploding into pastel chaos thanks to a faulty dispenser I swore Vonn fixed last week .

The new triple-burner induction unit hums with anticipation in the corner, preloaded with a tub of Vortaxian chili glaze I’m scared to even smell directly.

Lyrie floats through it all like she’s conducting an orchestra.

She’s got a clipboard in one hand, her holographic shades perched on her horns, and she’s already yelled “Eyes on the ganache!” more times than I thought legally possible.

Vonn’s in the back grumbling about unauthorized spice storage and muttering curses in Fratvoyan that would make a reaver blush.

Me? I’m halfway through piping chocolate mousse into tiny citrus shells when the door chimes.

And then I see him.

Rekkgar.

In the doorway.

Wearing an apron.

A pink apron.

With sparkles .

Lyrie’s doing, obviously. The words “Chef’s Assistant” glint across the chest in bright neon shimmer-font. It's the most ridiculous, most absurd thing I’ve ever seen in my entire baking career—and I’ve seen a Baragon try to deep-fry ice cream with liquid nitrogen.

I choke.

Right on a doughnut hole.

It takes three gulps of water and a firm slap from Vonn to stop hacking long enough to stare at him properly.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t joke. Doesn’t smirk or scowl or even explain.

He just walks in like he belongs, rolls up his sleeves—those strong, corded forearms inked with stories in scars—and washes his hands in the prep sink like this is the most natural thing in the world.

Like he wants to be here.

Like he chose to be here.

My voice fails me, so I just blink at him while he grabs a towel, dries his massive fingers, and turns toward me.

“Where do you keep the mixing bowls?” he asks, his voice low and even.

Lyrie snorts from behind her clipboard. “Bottom shelf. But make sure you use the stainless set, not the synth-glass. She’s partial to that for dry ingredient blends.”

Rekkgar nods once. No complaint. No hesitation. Just bends down and starts unpacking bowls.

I glance at Vonn, who’s peeking around the corner like a nervous raccoon.

He shrugs. “Wasn’t my idea.”

I should say something. Anything.

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 am not swooning.”

“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 in weeks , 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.

But here.

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.

Instead of the elegant swirl I showed him, what emerges is a blob. A deflated, uneven blob that looks vaguely like a flattened mollusk.

I can’t help it—I burst out laughing.

He startles, eyes flicking to mine, his expression unreadable for a beat.

Then, quietly: “It’s... not symmetrical.”

I snort, wiping my hand on a towel. “Sweetheart, it looks like it lost a fight with a mop.”

“I followed the angle you demonstrated.”

“No, you held the bag like it owed you money.”

He glances at the frosting, then at me. His voice stays flat, but I catch the faint flicker of mischief under it. “Would monetary debt improve its structural integrity?”

“Oh my god,” I giggle, nearly dropping the tray of meringue roses. “Please stop. My abs can’t take it.”

I don’t know what shifts, exactly, but something does. That thick, awkward tension we’ve been dragging around the kitchen all day—the fear, the guilt, the unsaid everything—it thins, loosens, lets in air.

We move differently after that.

Still a little clunky. Still weirdly out of sync. But there’s rhythm now. Give and take.

He cracks eggs like he’s preparing for battle, so I show him how to do it on the counter edge, gently—tap, split, separate. The second time, he gets it perfect. I clap and he looks at me like applause is a foreign concept.

“I don’t need praise,” he mutters.

“Too bad,” I say, bumping my hip into his.

Later, I teach him the delicate fold of macaron batter, how it should fall off the spatula like lava—not too thick, not too runny. He watches me with the same kind of focus he gives his sparring forms.

“You treat pastry like martial arts,” he says softly.

“Pretty sure my ganache has a black belt.”

He smiles.

Not a full one—just the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth. But it's there.

And gods, it wrecks me.

We switch stations. I’m working the chiller trays when he comes up behind me, wordless, and gently rotates my wrist with his hand—adjusting my grip on the flame-jet nozzle.

“You’re over-tilting,” he murmurs. “Your arc is too wide.”

“Says the guy who set fire to three marshmallow peaks.”

“I learn quickly.”

“You’d better,” I grin. “That caramel glaze is sacred.”

He doesn’t let go of my hand right away. The warmth of his palm bleeds into my skin, steady and callused, like stone that remembers fire. My breath hitches.

Then he steps back. Professional. Distant.

But not cold.

There’s heat now. Simmering between us. Low and constant.

We keep moving.

By the time we hit the third trial round, our chaos has become choreography. I toss him ingredients mid-stride, he catches without looking. He slides a pan into the oven, I adjust the temp with a flick. Our rhythm isn’t perfect, but it’s ours—and it feels like flying.

Vonn whistles from the prep sink. “Well I’ll be damned. They’re not trying to kill each other.”

“Give it time,” Lyrie says, scribbling notes on her datapad. “They’re still in foreplay.”

I hurl a spatula at her.

Rekkgar catches it one-handed before it hits her, places it calmly on the counter, and keeps whisking.

Showoff.

Eventually, the timer buzzes.

We stare at the final product—twelve precision-piped galactic fusion macarons, dusted with nebula shimmer and filled with layered starfruit-jasmine ganache. Perfect. Glossy. Uniform.

I exhale, stepping back to admire the tray.

Then I feel him behind me again, closer this time.

“They’re... beautiful,” he says.

I look up at him. “You helped.”

“I followed instructions.”

“Yeah, well. That’s half of love, too.”

The words slip out before I can catch them.

He doesn’t flinch. Just studies me for a moment longer, his expression unreadable.

Then he nods once, solemn. “You teach well.”

It’s not a confession. Not yet.

But maybe... it’s a beginning.

By the time the sun begins to dip beneath Novaria’s steel-blue skyline, the bakery looks like it’s been looted by flour-hungry pirates and caramel-crazed sugar demons.

There’s a thin sheen of powdered sugar on every surface, including my eyelashes.

The industrial mixers are coated in streaks of violet glaze.

One of the ovens is hissing ominously. Lyrie has retreated upstairs muttering about needing “a wine bath and a prayer circle,” and Vonn is in the back, passed out with an ice pack on his forehead after losing a brief but impassioned argument with a very aggressive bag of chia-snap batter.

And me? I’m leaning against the marble prep table, panting softly, my apron plastered to my hips with sweat, flour, and pride.

We did it.

We didn’t kill each other. We didn’t burn the place down. And somewhere between spilled frosting and singed pastry bags, something shifted.

Rekkgar wipes his brow with the back of his arm, leaving a clean stripe across his soot-dark skin. A dusting of cocoa clings to his jaw like war paint. His apron—pink, because Lyrie has no shame—is crooked across his massive chest, the words “FLUFF MASTER” blinking in glitter script over one pec.

I stare at him for a moment longer than I should.

Then I take the rag from the sink, cross the floor, and reach up to wipe a smear of caramel from his cheek.

“Hold still,” I murmur.

He does. But there’s a stillness beneath the stillness, something coiled and breathless.

My fingers tremble just slightly as I dab at the sticky spot, and when I’m done, I don’t let go.

Neither does he.

His hand comes up slowly, wraps around mine. Warm. Callused. Gentle. Every nerve in my body becomes a tuning fork.

I look up.

His gaze pins me in place—calm, steady, impossibly deep. His pupils are blown just slightly, and the faint glow of his cybernetic eye casts a pale halo along my jaw.

“I want this,” he says.

Three words. No fanfare. No pleading.

Just truth.

It punches straight through my ribs.

My voice comes out small, but firm. “So do I.”

There it is.

The line, crossed.

His breath hitches—barely audible—but I feel it, like thunder in the air before a storm. We stay frozen, tangled in this moment, like if we move too fast we’ll shatter the spell.

But there’s no spell.

Just us. Finally. Here.

I step closer.

“Rekk—” I start, but he lifts my hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the base of my fingers, reverent and devastating.

My knees damn near buckle.

Outside, the sounds of the city hum: transport trams whooshing, vendors calling out evening specials, a child’s laughter echoing off the alley bricks. The world keeps moving.

But in here? It’s quiet.

No, not quiet. Sacred.

He doesn't speak again. He doesn’t need to.

Instead, he leans down and presses his forehead to mine, his breath brushing my lips, heavy and deliberate.

I close my eyes.

I don’t know how long we stay like that—anchored to each other, our bodies barely touching but our hearts crashing against the same drumbeat—but when I finally pull back, I’m not the same woman who walked into the kitchen this morning.

Neither is he.

I squeeze his fingers gently. “You still planning on being my test-taster tomorrow?”

He huffs a soft laugh, so rare it makes my chest ache. “Unless you find someone else who can survive that spiced pudding monstrosity you created.”

I smile, slow and wide. “Coward.”

His teeth flash in a brief, dangerous grin. “Tempt me.”

My cheeks flush all over again.

I step back reluctantly, letting his hand slip from mine. “You should go,” I say, though everything inside me is screaming stay.

He nods. No argument. No question. Just trust.

And as he walks to the door, his footsteps soft despite his size, I know without a doubt?—

He’ll come back.

Maybe for muffins.

Maybe for more.

But either way, this time, he’s not running.

And neither am I.