“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.
“Maybe he’ll get mad enough to finish loading the dishwasher,” she bit out.
Sharone laughed. “Wanna bet?”
“Ten bucks he doesn’t,” Anya shot back.
“Ten bucks he does and the kitchen sparkles when he’s done. Alpha doesn’t like messes unless he makes them.”
Well hell, she had nothing to worry about then, because she was the biggest mess there.
She wasn’t much better by evening. Adrenaline was racing through her system and Dr. Armani wasn’t being helpful. Natural arousal her ass. There was nothing natural about her reaction to Del-Rey, and no one was going to convince her otherwise.
She waited until darkness fell to check the kitchen and turn over the ten bucks to Sharone, then she and the three other girls slipped out into the night.
The guards on duty were used to her slipping out; they didn’t even blink. As usual, when Del-Rey was on base, there was a strangely relaxed atmosphere. She’d slipped into the base a few times while he was there, when she had forgotten something she needed. She had noticed the difference. There was more of an air of camaraderie, a warmth that was lacking when he was on a mission. It made her feel curiously lonely, and aware that the Coyote home wasn’t complete when their alpha was gone. Their coya just wasn’t a fitting replacement.
Del-Rey stared around the kitchen and at the younger soldiers that had completed cleaning up the mess that had been made.
“How long has your coya had kitchen duty?” he asked one of them, strangely enough one of the men from his own group, not the group that came from the Russian facility.