WarriorsWoman by Evanne Lorraine

and her sincere thanks for the simple supper of soup and crackers. Cooking his way into her heart might work.
    After a few hours of recharging sleep, Lorcan slipped out of bed. Adding wood to the dwindling fire kept him busy for a couple of seconds before he tugged on his jeans and buttoned a thick, tartan-plaid flannel shirt over his bare chest. Leaving off his armor felt strange, but good. He carried his boots and crossed the room without a sound. Nigel followed close on his heels.
    Lorcan eased the door open and slipped through after the cat.
    Before he’d pulled it shut, Batzorg whispered, “Then ride me, little one.”
    Don’t look, don’t look, no… Lorcan’s eyes refused to obey, locking on Minka’s slender silhouette gracefully undulating atop Batzorg’s hips.
    His retinas were etched with the carnal image and his cheekbones burned as he headed for the kitchen. Yeah, he would’ve done the same thing—twice if she’d been willing.
    Grateful to keep busy, he focused on his new plan for the dough that he’d started yesterday. He fired up the stove, set the temperature to warm, and left the oven door ajar. Nigel tucked his limbs under his furry body and settled close to the oven, looking remarkably like a loaf of black rye on the tile floor.
    Under the cat’s watchful eyes, Lorcan filled the kettle, set it on a back burner, and turned up the flame. A few minutes later, he turned off the oven and checked the temperature. Seventy-five degrees—perfect.
    Nigel stretched and craned to supervise Lorcan setting two packages of sausage in a pan of hot water. While he checked the progress of the roast he’d set out to thaw yesterday, the cat lost interest and curled back into a ball.
    One amber eye opened as Lorcan buttered a pair of cake pans and got busy on the filling for the dough. After tossing together chopped walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, mace, salt, raisins and a splash of corn syrup, he set the mixture aside to dig out aluminum foil. He tore off a rectangle, and laid it on the cool counter. Then he turned out the dough and kneaded the puffy mass into a silky ball, not quite as soft or sleek or warm as Minka’s ass, but for bread it was damn nice.
    He whistled Heavy Metal Hero as he used the heel of his hand to flatten the ball into a tidy rectangle just short of the foil edges. With quick, sure spatula passes, he spread the filling evenly over the brioche rectangle and put the sticky bowl in the sink to soak. Using the underlying foil, he eased the mass of filled dough into a tidy log.
    Leaving the rolled brioche dough to rest, he cubed a cup of butter, dug out a sauce pan, poured in a cup of sugar, added a half a cup of water, and simmered the mixture over a low flame. While the pan heated, he swirled the liquid until the sugar was completely dissolved. He paused to turn up the heat then added the butter one cube at a time and stirred slowly.
    As the syrup boiled and colored he sped up the stirring, swirling the pan at the same time until the drops from the spoon were golden brown and thick. He worked fast while the syrup was still warm and pliable, pouring half of the hot sugar mix into each cake pan. After a few more minutes of cooling in the chilly kitchen, he added fat slices of the sticky, filled dough atop the syrup base. When the pans were full he set them in the warmed oven to rise for the next hour.
    After poking around in the kitchen drawers, he found a vinyl red-checked cloth and covered the worn table. He added a fallen branch and a few pine cones circled fat red candles to make a decent centerpiece. Then he set two places with paper napkins, utensils, plates and cereal-sized bowls. The dinnerware was restaurant white, plain, thick and serviceable—a lot like him.
    After a critical survey of his arrangements, he decided the table would do. There were plenty of other tasks waiting. Everything needed to be as clean and as perfect as possible for Minka.
    He lost count of the times he’d