Chapter Two
"What the hell is wrong with me?" Ty asked, pouring a few more ingredients into the huge bowl in front of him and going at it with a spoon with such intensity Pyra took a step back.
"What do you mean?" the enormous warrior asked.
Ty paused his assault of the cake batter and looked at Pyra.
"If you haven't noticed, my apron has a bit of a tent situation going on here and I haven't been able to think straight since last night."
Pyra glanced down at the front of Ty's apron and saw exactly what he was talking about. Though better concealed with the thick white apron hanging over him than it would have been if he was just standing there in the soft tie-front pants that were the usual wardrobe of the Denynso men, it was still pretty obvious that he had a raging hard-on. The baker shifted slightly and Pyra looked up at him with a knowing grin.
"Yeah, I've noticed. Why are you even asking? You watched me go through it months ago, then Ciyrs, then Gyxx, and now Ero. It seems that the efforts to communicate and cooperate more effectively with Earth have had a much different impact than we originally anticipated. These human women get here and the Denynso men start dropping like flies. It looks like you are the one that came under the line of fire this time."
He reached out and dipped a finger in the bowl of batter and Ty pulled it away from him roughly. Even though he was baking a cake specifically for Pyra to bring to his mate Eden, who happened to be a couple of months into her first pregnancy and constantly in the throes of either a dramatic emotional situation or a craving, Ty didn't like when Pyra stuck his fingers in the batter. Not only did it just seem pretty unsanitary, his perfectionist ways made Ty feel like it threw off the entire balance and measurement of the batter so the cake wouldn't turn out exactly as he had wanted it to when he first started baking it. In the back of his mind he knew that that was being a little bit ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. Just like the warriors couldn't shake off their compulsion to fight and protect, Ty couldn't fight off his compulsion to create and perfect.
"That can't possibly be it," Ty said, adding a few drops of dark brown liquid from a bottle he kept on the top shelf of his spice cabinet.
"Why not? I was there when Zuri got back with that new girl. Anyone with eyes can see that she's beautiful."
"Samira."
"What?" Pyra asked, running the tip of one of his fingers through a mound of sweet powder on the counter and licking it off.
"The new girl. Her name is Samira."
"Uh-huh. I guess your big old orange eyes definitely noticed that she's beautiful."
"My eyes aren't orange!" Ty protested, then picked up a cookie sheet so he could see his reflection. Sure enough, there were streaks of orange through the usual brown of his eyes. "Shit."
"Yep. They might not have made their complete changeover yet, but those eyes cannot deceive. They know that your mate has shown up, and unless you are preparing yourself to fight Ero for Zuri or you are going to break into the space shuttle and try to pry out that little flight attendant who always runs and hides the minute that the ship lands, that means that your mate is Samira."
"She can't be."
"I don't get it. Why are you so pissed about your mate showing up? You have the whole nurturing and taking care of someone thing down pat. You've been taking care of all of us warriors for as long as I can remember. And you are plenty old enough to get mated."
Ty groaned and started distributing the batter into three hexagonal pans he had placed in a row in the middle of the counter.
"That's the problem right there. I am plenty old enough, but is she? Did you see her? She looks barely old enough to be out of her mother's house much less in somebody's bed. I just don't feel right looking at her the way that I obviously look at her when she is so young."
"She's old enough to be Zuri's student, which means that she is old enough to be in college. I don't think that Zuri would have brought her here if she wasn't an adult, but if it makes you feel any better, I can ask Eden how old she is exactly."
"How would she know that?"
"They are human women. They tell each other everything. It's a little disturbing actually. I think that she had told the other girls far more than I would ever want any of them to know about me because last time I was in the room with all of them, they all seemed to be far too focused on the front of my pants. And since I am no longer in the fun pre-mating phase that you are currently finding yourself enjoying, there would be nothing to draw their attention there unless they were trying to confirm a story that they heard."
Ty laughed, feeling better now that he at least had Pyra to commiserate with him a little bit. It wasn't exactly the same thing, but they had both found themselves at the mercy of the confounding and sometimes irresistible human women who had started infiltrating their planet.
As he slipped the cakes into the oven, Ty found his mind wandering back to Samira. The second she stepped off of the shuttle from the university the night before, he was enraptured. This was something he had never felt before. While some of the warriors were known for having as many female conquests as they did battle victories, Ty had never been that kind of man. He had thought he had feelings for a couple of the females of the tribe a few times before, but even when they had sex no bonding ever occurred. Now that he had seen Samira, he realized that those feelings were nothing and that he was truly screwed. If Pyra was right, and truth be told, Pyra was almost always right, especially when it came to things that he had experienced himself, there was nothing that Ty could do about his newfound attraction to Samira. If the constant erection wasn't enough to tell him, the hint of orange in his eyes was unmistakable.
Samira was his mate and would be the only one for him for the rest of his life. He would just have to decide if he could deal with it or if he was going to let her age keep him from pursuing her and risk living the rest of his existence alone and longing for her. It was not a decision that he wanted to make.