He pulled her chair out for her and scooted it in gently as she sat down. When he took his own seat she was acutely aware of him, his heat, his...scent. Humans didn’t have the same senses as Katierans or Kiljorns, but she could smell a woodsy, masculine scent. It was delicious and seemed to wrap around her. Crap! She needed to get her mind off of the sexy male next to her. She concentrated on the food that was placed in front of her instead.
“Is that lasagna?” Lizzie asked.
Lindsey smiled. “It’s a combination Earth-Kiljorn version of lasagna. The sauce is my own creation that I’ve been working on in my small garden.”
“Lindsey is a wonderful garner,” KadEN bragged.
“‘Gardener,’” Lindsey corrected with a loving smile. “I’ve been taking classes from a master gardener class taught by two instructors, one from Earth and another from Kiljor. I really like taking care of the vegetables, growing them and taking them from the garden to the kitchen.”
Tera took a bite of the lasagna, closing her eyes and sighing in pleasure. Chuckles around the room made her pop open her eyes in surprise. She felt the heat in her cheeks again.
“Sorry, I’ve not had anything this good in a long time.”
“That’s the best compliment I could have asked for,” Lindsey reassured her.
Everyone else was eating and expressing their appreciation for the food. It was clear that these couples were close friends, almost a family, by the ease of their banter and how they teased one another.
“Is this the kind of food you ate often on Earth?” CristOF asked as he leaned closer to her.
She looked up into those dark eyes of his. His gold irises made him look like a predator, and that impression was strengthened when he didn’t take his eyes off of her. Tera almost forgot to breathe again. Damn, if he kept this up she might faint or something.
He seemed to sense her discomfort and moved back from her a little. But he never stopped looking at her; his focus went to her lips, and she unconsciously licked them.
“Um...yeah, I’ve often eaten Italian food, including lasagna and other kinds of pasta. To be honest, though, I take after my father. He was always a meat-and-potatoes guy. Give me a juicy steak any day and I’ll be happy.”
“What kind of game did he hunt?” CristOF sounded truly interested.
She laughed. “My dad? A hunter? No, he was a college professor. My mom was an elementary-school teacher.”
“How did he get his meat if he didn’t hunt for it?”
“On Earth, we go to a grocery store or a market. He did like to fish, though, before the EWG banned fishing for conservation reasons.”
“I am a very good hunter, but I too like to fish,” CristOF told her.
She smiled, warming to the subject. “Dad would take us six kids and my mom camping and fishing once a year. I was pretty good at it. No one else liked the fishing the way I did, so a lot of times it was just me and Dad on a boat out on the lake while my mother and sisters stayed at the cabin. What I miss most is the quiet and calm that came with fishing. I could sit there with Dad for hours, and neither of us would say a word. We’d just listen to nature and enjoy the stillness together.”
CristOF leaned closer and said in a low voice, “I admit to spending much of my time in the jungle. It’s where I was raised, and I’m better with nature than with people. I feel awkward in social settings.”
“Me too,” she admitted, also whispering. They had a moment, sitting close together and looking into each other’s eyes. She felt that electricity again, and they weren’t even touching. Then he broke the connection by moving back in his seat and turning to answer a question that Commander TylOR asked him. The next thing she knew, he was standing up and following the other two men down the hallway.
“They’re going to have a quick meeting in KadEN’s home office. It’s top priority, apparently. I don’t know what it's about, but CristOF is being assigned a mission that even I’m not being told about. Hey, let’s take tea in the living room and talk about that daycare, get our minds off the men for a while.”
An hour later Tera was ready for some fresh air. Lindsey was in the kitchen checking on dessert, Lizzie had put her feet up on the couch, and the men were still in their ‘quick’ meeting. Not that she was paying attention to how long they were gone or anything. She would’ve already left, but she’d promised Lindsey she’d try a piece of her cake first. Cake was her weakness. She hadn’t had it in years.
Looking up at the stars in awe, she didn’t think she’d ever seen anything so lovely. They were so bright and shiny. Tera felt like she could almost touch them
“Beautiful.”
She jumped at the sound of a male’s voice from behind her—a damn sexy male voice. The timbre in CristOF’s voice made her whole being respond. Her heart beat faster, she had to remind herself to breathe, and her nipples tightened, which she found most disconcerting.
“Warrior CristOF.” Was that her voice? It sounded winded, like she’d been running.
He stepped closer, until he was standing right beside her. “Please call me CristOF.”
“CristOF,” she repeated.
“Why are you out here all by yourself?”
