“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.