She swallowed tightly as he watched her, his hand moving as he brought the bottle of beer to his lips and tilted it back. Her breathing became deeper, harder. Sweet mercy, she was going to break out in a sweat.
“Call that damned quack Armani and tell her to get her crap together,” she ordered Sharone.
“Really,” Sharone muttered. “Damn, Anya, you’re getting hot.”
“Shut up.” Anya threw her a hard glare before stalking through the community room and heading into the kitchen.
Okay, the alpha leader was in residence, he could damn well approve kitchen help now. She needed a cook, assistants and a cleanup crew. And she didn’t want Breeds. Breeds were military trained; it was part of their genetics, part of their training. Breed soldiers did not make good cooks, or neat cooks.
She stepped into the kitchen and automatically started rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher as Sharone, Emma and Ashley began putting other items away.
“I wasn’t created to clean a kitchen,” Ashley informed all of them as she flipped her cosmetically enhanced blond hair over her shoulder and looked at her nails. “I’m not washing skillets.”
“You get the first stack,” Anya informed her. “I’ll take the second.”
“You’re so kidding,” Ashley laughed.
Anya turned back to the younger Breed girl. She and Emma might be twins, but they were worlds apart.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” she asked the other girl coolly.
“You’re just doing that because I got my nails done yesterday and you were stuck here.” Ashley pouted. “That’s so not fair, Coya.”
“I’ll give you a list of not fair later,” Anya told her.
“Oh boy,” Ashley hissed. “Alpha coming.”
Anya stiffened. She was put out with Dr. Armani, herself and the fact that the first thing she did on seeing him was crave the warmth she knew his body held.
Not just his warmth. His touch. She wanted to be tucked into his arms, and it was the one thing she knew he truly didn’t want.
She swore she felt him step into the room. The temperature in the large kitchen area shot up drastically, burrowed beneath her flesh and left her flushed.
“Coming to clean up your mess?” she asked as though she saw him every day rather than just twice in the past eight months.
He paused and looked around the room, his brows drawn into a frown. “I didn’t make the mess.”
“Neither did I,” she informed him sweetly as she shoved a plate into the machine. “Someone did though.”
He looked around at Sharone, Ashley and Emma as they made themselves very busy. Too busy actually. They usually balked at kitchen duty.
“How did this happen?” he finally asked her.
Anya straightened slowly and glared at him. “Do you ever read my reports?”
“With diligence and exacting attention,” he drawled. “What does this have to do with your reports?”
He leaned against the door frame, watching her curiously as she straightened and fought to control her temper. Damn him, she’d never had a problem controlling her temper before she met him.
“I’ll tell you what.” She smiled tightly. “Clean up the kitchen, then go read one of my reports with a bit more exacting attention than you read them before and see if you can’t figure it out.”
With that, she shoved the dishwasher closed and stomped to the opposite entrance, which led to a narrow tunnel running behind the community room.
Her bodyguards were moving quickly behind her, as though they bothered to follow her every step in Base. She was so safe here it was enough to offend her need for adventure. It did offend that need.
“Wow. You walked out on the alpha,” Ashley said and whistled behind her. “No one walks on the alpha, Coya.”
Anya rolled her eyes. No one argued with the alpha. No one sassed the alpha. No one disobeyed the alpha’s orders. The list was almost never ending and never failed to send Anya’s nerves into chaos. She wasn’t the alpha’s puppet and she wasn’t going to pretend to be one.