The Barbarian's Owned(29)

His expression made her snort with laughter. She’d seen it on angry cats before. It was a silent, scolding stare from a terribly self-important being. That look dared her: One more. Just one more and see what I do.

She couldn’t help it. Picking up the flour bowl, she playfully flicked a puff of gold dust onto his shirt.

Glancing slowly down at the smudge, rubbing it with his fingers, Garr looked back at her and shrugged either shoulder from his jacket. Holding the garment at arm’s length, he dropped it to the floor.

Bare-chested now, the sight of him made Rae’s smile falter, her eyes tracking down his long torso now that she was so close to it. The confidence in his gesture had implications that twisted her stomach into a pleasant knot.

***

Garr took the bowl of flour from his mate and slid it away, stepping closer. It forced her knees to part, since he was at the counter’s edge, and at stepping between them, he saw her body straighten and her eyes dilate. She realized precisely what position they were in.

“You want me to punish you,” he realized.

“Of course not.” But her cheeks were pink and there was no outrage in her voice. If anything, she sounded like she’d been caught with her hand in the bracvlat jar.

Garr took hold of her top’s hem and, with his status as prime, assumed control of her garment without her quite realizing it.

“What are you—”

He stretched the fabric over her head, loosening it so that it came off with ease. He left her sarong and bra in place, but effortlessly stripped the rest over her head.

The motion pulled her arms up, and when the fabric was around her elbows, he turned the otoya liquid—then into a ribbon of silky fabric that caught her wrists, tying it rapidly to the branches that held pots and pans.

“Hey!” she cried.

“Now I can keep track of your hands.” But he was also gazing down at her. Ythirian females tended to be svelte, their bodies smaller than a male’s, but more subtly defined.

This creature was round in all the right places. Her breasts were concealed only by that bra, though he could see enough of them that he had to restrain the desire to cup, to hold, to possess them.

With willpower honed from three cycles as prime, he forced himself to turn from appraising her and to quietly mix his dry ingredients right beside her instead.

***

“This is so unfair,” Rae muttered. She couldn’t free her wrists and he’d turned back to cooking, as though their bodies hadn’t just been so close to touching that her skin had gone electric.

The tease of his hands stripping her, the vulnerable thrill of being tied up and half naked in his presence seemed to add fuel to her arousal from earlier in the day, stoking it higher.

There was no way she was getting this otoya to make her panties now. And the sight of him cooking wasn’t helping at all.

Maybe it was how turned on she was, but the sight of him mixing and stirring drew her gaze to his forearms, biceps, shoulders—the brisk and measured motions in his upper body pleasant to watch.

The repetitive whisking, especially, made her think of what he could do to her body with those brisk, circular strokes. A shudder worked up her spine.

The physicality didn’t end there. He broke open a nut with a gooey center, which he drizzled into the batter. He squeezed a fruit, pulping it, his fingers getting messy.

Sometimes dust from the dry mix would powder lightly on his forearm or, once, his shoulder, and she wanted to brush it off him—if only to feel the smooth strength of him under her fingertips.

She imagined a petition to Food Network back on Earth: Dear executives. Please consider my idea for a new program featuring shirtless, handsome men cooking me dinner.

He transferred his batter to a pan and now worked on a complementary icing that involved a lot of honey.

While stirring the honey in by drizzling it from the end of a long spoon, he paused to lift the spoon and hovered it near her mouth. “For you. For being so quiet.”

God, how his smirk ticked her off. She’d been quiet because she’d been drooling over him the whole time. If he was going to provide a show, though, perhaps she could return the favor.

***

His mate seemed unsure at first, but then something changed. She went from looking nervously at the honey-glazed spoon to glancing up at him with confident, hungry eyes.

The pose stole his breath, because while it was that classic expression of submission—nose pointed down, but eyes lifted up to meekly look at him—she subverted it with a burning look of sexual desire.

She parted her lips and opened them wide enough to brush the spoon’s tip with her lower lip. He could imagine how her warm breath spilled over the spoon and, with a satisfied purr, she took it in her mouth.