Christmas in the Kitchen

be so strict about my not sipping my tea until the doll had hers.”
    It made Dorian laugh, the thought of big, often silent Clay waiting patiently for a doll to have her tea. “Women—the things we do for them.”
    “Talking about women”—Clay lowered his voice even further—“I meant to talk to you about Jon. He has a thing for Rina, so he might turn up while you’re training with her. Don’t be too hard on him.”
    Dorian winced. Rina was Kit’s older sister, and one of the strongest, most headstrong female soldiers in the pack. “Even if he was a grown man, and not a juvenile, she’d eat him alive.”
    “I think he’d die happy.” Clay’s cat prowled in his eyes, huffing with laughter. “Truth is, she’s being gentle with him.”
    “Rina? Gentle?” Dorian was Rina’s trainer and supervisor, the task falling to him after the young woman wrapped her previous trainer around her finger. He liked her, and was dead certain she’d become one of the backbone pieces of the pack as she grew further into her strength, but gentleness was not Rina’s style. Like all adult leopard females who were dominant, she was more apt to challenge a suitor than to pet him. “You think she knows he’s into her?”
    Clay nodded. “I figure she’s trying to let him down easy, since he’s just a kid—but my money’s on Jon. Give him a few more years and age difference or not, I bet you he goes after her.”
    “Big call, man.” Dorian whistled softly. “But I tell you what—if you’re right, I will bake you a cake, complete with frilly pink icing.”
    “You’re on.”
    Ashaya came around the counter to lean against Dorian, the hair he’d messed up once more neatly in its bun. “What are you two talking about?” she asked as he resisted the wicked urge to undo her work all over again, his cat rubbing against his skin at having her so close, the feel of fur sliding underneath his skin no longer painful now that he could shift into his leopard form.
    “You’re hatching something,” his mate added in a distinctly suspicious tone.
    Grinning, Dorian did what he’d wanted to earlier and hauled her into him for a long, luscious kiss that had her fingers fisting in his T-shirt, the sound of the children’s delight swirling around them.
    “We’re talking,” he murmured afterward, “about baking cakes.”
    Ashaya, her lips swollen from the nips he’d taken during the kiss, and her voice a little husky, said, “Didn’t you tell me you could make the best banana cake? I have some ripe bananas.”
    “In fact,” Talin said from the other side of the counter, reaching out to tap Clay on the nose with her mixing spoon, “how about a contest? Dorian versus Clay.”
    Kit and Jon, having turned to listen, gave the thumbs up. “We volunteer to judge,” they said magnanimously.
    “You think I can’t bake a cake?” Clay said to his mate, a glint in his eye.
    Talin’s cheeks creased, the freckles on the golden skin of her face adding to the mischief in her expression. “I think you’ll kick Dorian’s pretty butt.” She blew Clay a kiss that had the other sentinel’s lips curving.
    “While I agree with your assessment of Dorian’s body,” Ashaya said mock-solemnly as she played her fingers through Dorian’s hair in a way that made a purr vibrate in his chest, “I must disagree with the rest of your statement.” His scientist leaned in close, all soft curves and warm femininity. “My mate will leave yours in his baking dust.”
    “I think that’s a challenge,” Kit said, a little bit of the hellion he’d been back in his voice.
    “Way I hear it,” Jon added, “sentinels never back down from a challenge.”
    ~
    Three hours later, Dorian clinked beer bottles with Clay as they stood outside the house, and said, “It wasn’t too rubbery. Truly.”
    “And yours didn’t have too much salt,” Clay replied, loyal to the bone.
    Looking at one another, they started to laugh, the sound carrying through the air to where the children played and their mates sat talking. Kit and Jon were gone—Kit had taken the boy with him as he continued on to his watch position, the teenager looking up to the young soldier, but they’d promised to return for dinner.
    “I think,” Dorian said when he could breathe again, “we should give the judges big slices for dessert.”
    “Serve the smartasses right for egging us on.” Clay took a drink of his beer. “That was a cruel and unusual death for those