Damian gallantly offered his arm to her as they walked down the metal staircase, past Eumie’s now-closed Greek bakery downstairs, and she took it—just for the excuse to touch him again—feeling the bunch of his bicep underneath his leather coat. He opened the winged passenger door of his car—just as clean as the first time she’d seen it, somehow—and let her arrange herself inside before closing it gently and walking around to his own. By the time he’d gotten there, she’d slipped her shoes off and tucked her feet underneath her dress on the seat—her preferred mode of passengering.
He looked over at her before putting his car in drive. “So, did you think you had to dress up for me?” She could see him fighting not to grin.
“It’s nice to see you again,” she said, helplessly attempting redirection.
“It is nice to see you again, too,” he agreed, showing more teeth by the moment. “But answer the question?”
“Fine.” The smug bastard. Might as well confess. “Originally, no. But I guess my uncle sent me this? For a meeting with him. It’s just that I thought it was from you, and I think my head went all Pretty Woman.” From a lifetime of hating rich people to being felled by a silk dress. Andi rolled her eyes at herself.
Damian’s eyebrows rose. “But I thought I couldn’t buy you?”
“You can’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like a new dress.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” he said, giving her a wolfish grin before pulling onto the freeway.
Damian drove just as fast as Danny had, but for some reason when he did she still felt safe. Maybe it was because she was sure none of the parts on his car were stolen. Andi snorted at the thought of her brother and watched the coin strung on a ribbon around Damian’s rearview mirror sway every time he shifted gears.
“What’s that?” she asked, reaching for the flickering gold.
“Careful,” he said, without taking his eyes off the road. “It might give you scrofula.”
Andi’s hand paused, unsure if he was joking or not. “Okay, I’m a nurse, and even I’m not entirely sure what that is.”
Damian chuckled, glancing over at her. “Me either. But the coin’s a touchpiece. A thing that kings—who served by divine right in the Middle Ages—gave people with horrible diseases. The thought process was that if the king touched it, and the coin touched you, you’d be healed.”
Andi batted at the coin like a cat, deciding to take her chances with old-timey cooties. “And why is it hanging in your car exactly?”
Damian made a thoughtful noise before answering her. “As a reminder.”
“That you’re a king?” she groaned, letting her disbelief color her voice. “Oh my God—”
“No, not anymore,” Damian said, with an entirely straight face that Andi wasn’t sure what to make of. “It was from a friend,” he finished. “Who died.”
“Oh.” Andi bit her lips, feeling a little foolish now.
“It happens,” he said, matter-of-factly, and she watched his jaw tighten while still staring at the road.
“No, yeah, I know,” Andi said, swallowing a nervous apology.
“He thought it was funny because his name was Michael, and on the coin, it’s St. Michael killing a dragon. A wyvern, if you want to get technical.” Damian glanced over, this time at the coin, and she could see a rush of memories in his expression.
“How did he—” Andi began asking.
He cut her off, shaking his head and the memories away. “Maybe we could just not?”
“That’s fine, I just…” she said awkwardly.
“I know,” Damian agreed, nodding. “But…we’re almost there,” he said, pulling his car into an alley. Andi hopped out of the car before he could come around and get the door for her.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized.
“Don’t be,” he said, gesturing her forward toward the restaurant’s back door. The alley was full of trash cans, and the only light was a motion sensor that picked up as they approached, casting everything around them into sharp shadows. Andi walked up to the door, then turned back toward him, hesitating.
“Are you taking me to a murder factory?”
“If you’re seafood, yes, but for humans, no.” He leaned past her and rapped on the door with one hand. “I try to save murder factories for the third date.” Her eyes widened, and he realized what he’d said. “Not that that’s what this is, though.”
“Oh, yeah, this is totally a coffee shop thing,” she said, sweeping her dress up so that it didn’t touch the ground.
The door before them opened, revealing a jolly man who took up most of the doorway.
“Bastian!” Damian announced.
“Little D! Come in, come in!” Bastian said, pulling back into the brightness of the kitchen, and Damian gave Andi room to follow him, as he made the rounds of waving or shaking all of the kitchen help’s hands. It was like he was famous because—Andi realized belatedly—he was.
“Sorry about that,” he whispered when he rejoined her in the hall.
“‘Little D’?” she teased.
He leered at her, for half a hot second. “You tell me. You were with me in the pond.”
She flushed red as Bastian bellowed, “Come in!” again, and they followed the sound of his voice.
They walked out of the kitchen into a hallway with polished cream-colored marble floors. Thick Corinthian columns stretched to a cavernous recessed ceiling lined with gently glowing hidden lights. The room was scattered with tables where other diners sat nearly done with their meals, sipping the last dregs of their wine and arguing over who would have the last bite of a shared dessert.
“This building used to be a bank,” Bastian said, leading them down a short set of stairs. He pulled out a key, opened a door, and led them into a wine cellar. Andi was glad she still had her coat as they walked past rows of bottles, and then Bastian stopped in front of a very square door that had a lock just as esoteric as some of the ones she’d seen in Damian’s mansion. “Just a second,” he said, twisting a number on a dial, pulling on a bar, and then using a different key. A hissing sound began as compression engaged, and the obviously heavy metal door floated open—at least a foot thick—sliding out on a track on the ground under power. Its opening revealed a tastefully modern dining room and let the scent of lemon and wood smoke escape.
Damian walked in like he belonged there, but she hesitated, looking to Bastian. “What happens if you lose power?”
“Backup generator,” Bastian said with a grin. “Although it’s not really to make sure people can leave here. I’m working on homemade prosciutto—it’s a two-year-long process. I’m not losing my refrigeration system unless there’s a nuke.”
Andi gave him a nervous smile and followed Damian, who was apparently holding her seat out for her—like that was a thing men still did—and she handed her coat over to Bastian, reluctantly.
“I’ll turn on the heat,” he promised, before leaving them.
Andi sat in the leather-cushioned chair as daintily as she could as Damian pushed it in for her. The room was narrow but long, and their table was only set for two, though it could’ve held twelve people easily.
“Where are we?” she asked, once Damian sat across from her, taking off his coat to sling it casually across the back of his chair.
“Belissima’s,” he said. A waiter swanned in out of nowhere and filled up one of their wineglasses each. “I thought the name was apt.”
Very beautiful, she translated—and knew that he meant her. Oh, for the safety of her coat, now that she was sitting in sheer soft silk across from him.
“But…doesn’t it take months to get reservations here?” she asked him. He looked imminently comfortable, like these leather seats were his second home.
“For some people,” Damian said, swirling the wine in his glass. “Have you been here before?”
“No, but I’ve read about it.” On multiple occasions. She might live under a rock, but her dreams were more worldly.
“It’s better than what you’ve read. Trust me,” he said, as half the kitchen staff came in through the still open vault door, setting down ten dishes all at once. “I know ordering for you is patriarchal bullshit, so I figured I’d order one of everything so that you could pick and choose, and we could be private.” He tapped the table, and the waiter deposited the wine bottle they’d been hovering with before disappearing and closing the vault door behind himself, leaving them alone.
Andi gawked at their surroundings, the apparently locked door, and then at Damian. “You do realize this is faintly ridiculous.”
“Entirely,” he said with a predatory smile. “Eat up.”
Seeing as she hadn’t eaten since sometime yesterday, she was starving, and when it came to eating, her family was never shy. She had to at least try a little of everything—pasta, steak, wine, crab—because when would she ever get to come back? So, she collected a small mountain of food on her plate and then realized Damian was only eating steak just this side of raw. She took a few bites and worked up the courage to ask him, “So, like, when you eat, are you eating for two?”
He paused mid-knife cut. “Is that really the first thing you’re going to ask me?” His tone was sharp, but his eyes said he was teasing, so she doubled-down.
“Runner-up was going to be if you hatched from an egg.”
At that, he laughed hard, and she realized that might’ve been the first time she’d heard him truly laugh—ever—and in that moment, he sounded so free. She wanted to hear him laugh again.
“Answer the question?” she pressed, doing her best not to laugh back and failing.
“I had a mother. If I was hatched, I don’t really remember it. I’m fairly certain she would have mentioned it to me, though. Your turn…how long have you been a nurse?”
She tilted her head, giving him what she hoped was a sarcastic look. “Didn’t your background check tell you that?”
He waved her concerns away. “Shhh, I’m trying to seem less intimidating.”
“Okay, then…four very long years.
“Always nightshift?”
“Pay’s better. Slightly.” She took a bite of lobster that’d been swimming in herbs and butter. He wasn’t lying—the food was divine. But it was weird to be eating in a restaurant and have it be just them. She looked around at the space, and at the vault’s closed door. Her, him, here—it didn’t feel right. Then again, she had no idea what going out on a theoretical date with a dragon-man—or man-dragon?—ought to be like.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked her.
“Will you walk into my parlor?” she quipped honestly.
Damian snorted and took a sip of wine. “I’m a dragon, not a spider.”
“I notice you’re not saying I’m not a fly.” She tilted her head at him again.
His gaze swept over her as though inspecting her for himself. “You’re definitely not a fly.”
She fought not to flush under his attention. “I bet you say that to all the girls you bring here. Or…lady dragons?”
He set his wineglass down and considered her. “You might be surprised to find out that there are very few people like me.”
“That must be so rough for you,” she began, like she meant it, and then impishly added, “to have even a shred of competition.”
He grinned at her, eyes glittering. “Oh, and just who is my competition, Andi?”
“I don’t know. How thorough was your background check? I mean…did it list the three doctors I’m sleeping with?”
There was the smallest flicker of movement in his jaw as his teeth clenched, although nothing else in his smug, confident, smoldering expression changed—and she knew she had him. She covered her face with her hands and began cackling. “Oh my God, you actually thought I would date a doctor!”
His golden eyes widened in confusion. “Why not?”
“Says someone who has never worked with a doctor in their life,” Andi snickered, and she shook her head at him. He only thought he had the upper hand. “So…have you always lived here?”
He made a thoughtful sound before answering her. “Mmm…here like on this mortal plane or here in this particular incidence of time and space?”
Was he finally going to tell her the truth? “Remember, I’m a nurse, not a physicist,” she said, leaning forward.
He grunted and rearranged a series of smaller bowls on the table. “Let’s say this is Earth, eh?” he suggested, centering his steak on the plate. “This, here, is another Realm, and this is another, and this is another.” He went on, setting the roll plate, the butter dish, and a demitasse plate adjacent to ‘Earth,’ around them. “Most Realms, like most other planets, are useless—except for some travel considerations—but certain ones contain alternative forms of life and run off of non-scientific principles.”
“Dragons…and magic?” she guessed.
“Your words, not mine,” he said, still coy.
She squinted at him. “Then what happened the other night?”
“My people and I watch out for gates.” He took a fingertip and stroked some of the blood from his plate out over its edge and onto the butter dish. “Gates let things that shouldn’t be here, through. They’re like rifts between different Realms.” He touched the butter, then streaked it back onto his plate, before licking his finger.
How much was safe to tell her? It was the first time Damian had ever tried explaining the gates to a normal human aloud. He couldn’t help but be aware of how crazy it sounded—no matter that it was accurate.
But just this afternoon, Jamison had managed to predict one of the smaller ones. He and Mills had rushed out to a rural grocery store while Damian’d been sleeping, and they’d sealed it off just as it started to leech Unearthly matter through. No one had been the wiser, although they’d bought the entire contents of the soda aisle just in case any of it had become contaminated—and Damian had a suspicion that even that was just because Jamison really, really liked Dr. Pepper. It was the first success they’d ever had on that front, and he hoped the first of many.
If he had met Andi in a few weeks—or a few months—would they even be having this conversation?
“So,” she asked, pointing to his steak and butter in turns, “what are you?”
He settled back into his chair and observed her. How best to answer? It was hard to keep his defenses up when she was in that dress. The silk hung off of her in all the right ways, suspended by skinny straps he longed to reach over and break. He hadn’t expected to open the door to a dream made flesh tonight, but he had.
His dragon roused. She still smells good.
Shush.
“What do you think I am?” he asked her.
He watched her gasp for air while thinking, and then stir the food on her plate. “Well, I don’t think you’re a vegetable,” she said, pushing out a piece of broccoli. “And you’re not a mineral,” she said, dashing the table with salt. “So, you must be an animal. But there’s a lot of different types.” She pointed to beef, chicken, and crab in quick succession. “And I don’t see Godzilla here on the table, sooooo…”
Was he just an exotic animal to her? He’d never considered that he might be. “Yes. So few places serve authentic nuclear reactor lizard these days, it’s a shame,” he said, snarking to cover up the flush of shame he felt. “Any other questions?”
“How long have you been doing this?”
And all of a sudden, she’d disarmed him again. He paused to think. There was the true-truth answer of twenty years, and then the just-truth enough. “Too long.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
Such a good question, after so many dark nights. He took a longer sip of wine, considering. “There are…aspects of it that I enjoy. But it has its downsides. Like most jobs, I suppose.”
“Why do you do it?”
Her tone was so earnest, he blinked. It’d been an eternity since he’d ever considered other options—and as far as he knew, they didn’t exist. “Because someone has to. And I’m the best suited for the job.”
Her lips twisted to one side. “Because of your thick skin?”
“Something like that, yes.”
She sank back, looking at him. She’d been so intense, and now she was frustrated. “You still haven’t told me anything I can Google.”
Which was true, but it was for her own good. She had to know that, didn’t she?
She needs to eat, his dragon murmured. Damian hadn’t even realized his dragon was still paying attention. It was right. She’d stopped eating three questions in, and an entire table full of the most exquisite and expensive food in the entire city was growing cold as she tried to pump answers from him, and what was worse was, there was no way for him to not disappoint her. “Andi…it’s not my fault that most humans don’t think I’m real.”
Her perfect lips pursed as her gentle brow furrowed. “But I do.”
Andi’s answer echoed in the room around them as he swallowed, feeling his carefully collected armor start to crack. Like scales sliding over scales, he felt a rearrangement of the space he held—as a man and a dragon—making room for possibility. He had known hunger, and he had known lust, but now what he wanted was something more, and he wished the table were narrower so he could reach across it and catch her hands with his, as she went on.
“And that’s why I deserve the truth from you,” she went on. “You’re not normal—and I know that. So, don’t lie to me, and don’t pretend. I may not need to know everything, but I don’t have time in my life for someone who holds back. I’ve had too many of those relationships before—they’re not healthy.”
The pain of something that hadn’t shown up in his background check clearly arced across her face. “And what if I’m holding back for your own well-being?” he asked her.
Her full lips fell into a pout. He’d already noticed how often she would bite them when she was nervous—little did she know how that tempted him to bite them too. “Remember what you said earlier about patriarchal bullshit?”
Damian was forced to laugh. “Andi—” he began, ready to defend himself, which was becoming harder and harder in her presence, and then her phone rang. She blanched, and then reached for her clutch quickly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. Take your time,” he said graciously. He rather liked it when she was disconcerted.
“So, not now…” Andi said, instead of answering the phone.
“Are you rambunctious?” blurted out the person on the far end of the line, and Damian would’ve had no problem hearing them even as a human. Her next sentence was a little softer, though. “He was hot, so I gave him an extra thirty minutes to murder you, if you know what I mean.”
“Thanks, and I’m fine,” Andi said definitively, hanging up her phone and setting it far away from herself on the table before returning her attention to him. “My roommate was worried you were a serial killer.”
“Well, she isn’t wrong,” he said. “To be worried, that is,” he added, when her eyes widened.
“I guess that makes sense—considering what I saw.” She stared at the table, likely remembering his dragon and the shimmer-tiger.
“It was fairly intense, and you were up close,” he pressed. “All that blood and fear.” If she was going to break, he wanted it to happen now, when he could escape with only paying in money.
She seemed to consider things for a long while and then looked up at him again, her gaze steady. “You’d be surprised how used to danger I am.”
His dragon had heard the challenge in her voice and longed to answer. Leave this place. Go and take her.
Damian let his eyes trail over her, remembering the heat of her lips, the smooth sweep of her skin. She had to know what she was asking, didn’t she? He could feel his urges, filling him up, making him ache. It felt like he’d done nothing but ache since he’d met her. And he knew if given half the chance… No, he told his dragon, feeling it roil in anguish before he finished his thought. I’ll take her here. His dragon purred and settled in, waiting just underneath his skin.
“Is that so?” Damian asked aloud, staring across the table at her, waiting for her to back down or take back her words.
She raised her chin in defiance. “It is,” she said with certainty. He grinned, and stood and grabbed the table between them, sending it spinning to the side, revealing her sitting in her chair. Glasses crashed, the wine bottle toppled, its red liquid pouring out, and dishes careened to the floor.
“Damian!” she gasped, clutching her napkin to herself like she’d just been exposed.
“How dangerous was that?” he asked, advancing on her. “On a scale from one to ten?”
Her eyes were wild. “I…I don’t know…”
He lowered himself to kneel on his heels in front of her. “I thought you were used to dangerous things?”
“Are you trying to frighten me?” She frowned, looking down at him.
“If I am, is it working?” he asked while circling each of her ankles with a hand.
She gasped at his touch, and he could see her blood pulsing at her throat and breast, read the beating of her heart, and scent the smell of her sex—all before he started to slowly move his hands up. The only thing that could’ve made her more beautiful to him—if such a thing were even possible—would be if she were helplessly tied to the chair. She was panting now, small sharp breaths, and she whispered his name. “Damian.”
“Yes?” he responded, like everything he had done and was doing was as normal as could be. Her skirt was up to her knees now, his hands barely higher. He kissed the side of her exposed inner thigh and felt her shiver.
She reached down and pushed a hand through his hair. “I think you should know,” she began.
Oh Goddammit, this was going to be when she confesses that she’s a virgin, and I’m going to have to rethink everything and go slow…
Her fingers curled in his hair and pulled him subtly in. “That on a scale from one to ten, this is only a two.”
He looked up at her and laughed in delight before lightly biting her.