Sparkle
I change my shirt four times. Sending a picture of each option to my friends.
The first one makes me look too desperate.
The second makes my shoulders look weird.
Why the hell did I buy it? The third is purple, and I refuse to wear purple on my first date with a purple demon.
That feels like I’m trying to coordinate with him, which is ridiculous.
I settle on a soft green sweater that matches my eyes and black pants that makes my ass look fantastic.
I adorn my face with a bit of makeup. Nothing too flashy.
And slide on a pair of comfy sneakers just in case we end up walking a lot.
At exactly seven, there’s a knock on my apartment door. I stare at it because Lucien can teleport, who's to say he won’t just teleport right into my living room? My tail curls around my leg as I open the door. Lucien stands there with a smile and flowers.
“Hi.” I take in the pink and purple flowers filling the brown paper. There are tiny white flowers tucked between the rest. Nothing overly fancy. Nothing that looks like he bought out an entire florist to impress me. Thank fuck. “They’re beautiful.”
“So are you.” Lucien’s gaze travels over me before coming back to my face, and heat crawls up my neck. His grin grows. “There’s that pretty blush.” Lucien laughs before offering me his hand. “Ready?”
“Let me just put these in some water.” I rush into the kitchen and grab a water pitcher since I don’t have a vase. “Where are we going?” I ask, but he shakes his head.
“You agreed to a surprise. You are not ruining this for me.”
“What if you’re taking me somewhere horrible?” It’s a joke. I don’t think he could.
Lucien presses a hand to his chest. “Sparkle. I have eleven steps and centuries of life experience. Have a little faith in me.”
That should probably worry me. Instead, I laugh and take his offered hand.
The world folds around us. My stomach flips, and my fingers tighten around Lucien’s.
His other arm immediately circles my waist, pulling me against the solid warmth of his body.
Oh, hello muscles! I grab his shirt until the world stops doing weird things around us.
I don’t know if he thinks I’m going to fall or if he just wanted an excuse to hold me. I’m okay with either.
When the world settles again, we’re standing in an alley. I glance around at the brick walls and dumpsters before looking up at him. “Romantic.”
“Give me a chance, kitty cat.” Lucien keeps hold of my hand as he leads me around the corner. Humans are everywhere, but enough supernatural scents mix among them that I relax. This must be one of those areas with enough magical protections that we don’t have to hide.
I’m so busy staring at everything that I almost miss the sign. Almost. I stop so abruptly Lucien gets yanked backward.
There’s a giant cartoon cat painted on the window with at least twenty smaller cats around it.
WHISKERS & WISHES CAT CAFé.
I slowly turn toward Lucien. The demon looks so fucking proud of himself.
“You brought a cat shifter to a cat café.”
His smile grows. “You like cats.”
“I am a cat.”
“Exactly!”
I stare at him. He stares at me. His tail gives one excited little flick behind him. He really thought this was a good idea. I start laughing.
Lucien’s smile grows. “It’s sweet, right?”
“Very sweet.” I cover my mouth, trying to get myself under control.
“It’s a practice run for when I meet your family. I already accept everyone, though. Maybe not your dad. He was an asshole. Anyway, I have reservations.”
That only makes me laugh harder. Reservations? At a cat café?
The woman at the front desk barely glances at Lucien’s horns or my ears when we walk in. She explains the rules before opening the door into the café.
Every cat in the room freezes. I freeze with them. Oh, this is going to go great.
Lucien, oblivious to the sudden tension, grins. “Oh, look at all the kitties!”
I grab his arm. “Lucien.”
A giant orange cat rises from a pillow, his back arching as a black cat on a shelf puffs up to twice its size. Another creeps out from beneath a table and gives me the slowest, bitchiest blink I’ve ever seen.
Excuse me?
I slow blink right back.
Lucien finally notices. “What’s going on?”
The orange one hisses at me. So of course I have to hiss back.
“Sparkle!” Lucien catches my arm before I can take a step toward the asshole.
“He started it.”
The orange cat yowls, and my ears flatten. “Oh, you wanna go?”
“Darlin’, you can’t get into a fight on our first date.”
“He called me an asshole!”
Lucien goes completely still. His grip on my arm loosens as he looks from me to the cat. “You can understand them?”
“Of course I can understand him. I’m a cat shifter.”
Another cat yowls from across the room, and I gasp. “Take that back! My mother is a wonderful woman!”
Lucien’s shoulders start shaking.
“Don’t laugh!”
That does it. He bends forward, laughing so hard he has to hold on to me. I should be offended. But his laugh is wonderful. Deep and loud and completely unrestrained, and before I know it, I’m laughing too.
“This is a disaster,” he manages. “I thought you’d love it.”
“I do!”
Lucien straightens and wipes beneath one eye. “You do?”
Before I can answer, something brushes against my ankle. A tiny gray puffball of a kitten sniffs my shoe before rubbing her whole body against my leg, and every bit of my irritation disappears.
“Oh, hello, baby.” I slide to my bottom and offer her my hand. She sniffs me before climbing directly into my lap.
Lucien makes a strangled sound beside me. I glance up to find him staring at us with huge eyes.
“What?”
“You have a kitten.”
“Yes?”
“Kitty holding a kitty.”
I immediately know where this is going. “No.”
“Please.” Lucien drops into a crouch in front of me. His ridiculous excitement softens into something sweeter as his gaze moves between me and the kitten. My gaze drops for half a second.
Mmm, those thighs. Focus, Sparkle.
“One picture?” he asks.
Damn this demon, I’m never gonna live this down if anyone sees the pic.
“One.” I hold up a single finger.
His smile comes back instantly. I cuddle the kitten against my chest while he pulls out his phone. The kitten purrs, and I scratch beneath her chin. Then I start purring too. Damn it, I can’t help it. Lucien lowers his phone.
His gaze settles on me, and I’m far too aware of the sound rumbling from my chest. “What?”
“Nothing.” His voice is softer now.
“You’re staring.”
“You’re beautiful.”
My purr gets louder. Fucking traitorous body.
Lucien doesn’t tease me. He sits beside me on the floor, pressing his knee against mine as he reaches out to scratch beneath the kitten’s chin. His tail slowly curls around my ankle, and when I look down at it, he doesn’t pull away.
Neither do I.
The kitten eventually abandons me, but we stay on the floor while other cats cautiously investigate us.
Lucien tells me about The Rot when it first opened and how terrible the original music system was.
I tell him about the time I climbed onto the roof when I was twelve and refused to come down because Mama wanted me to babysit instead of going to a birthday party.
“You stayed up there for six hours?” Lucien asks, looking far too amused.
“I was making a point.”
“Did she get the point?”
“She stopped asking around hour four. I stayed another two to make sure.”
Lucien laughs and bumps his shoulder against mine. Warmth settles through me as I lean back against him.
By the time our reservation ends, three cats have decided Lucien is a heated piece of furniture. The orange asshole still hates me. And I’ve had more fun than I expected.
Outside, Lucien is unusually quiet. I bump my shoulder against his as we walk away from the café. “What’s wrong?”
“That did not go according to plan.”
“What was the plan?”
“Cats would love you. You would love cats. We’d have fancy little drinks.” His tail droops behind him. “I’d impress you with my excellent knowledge of your interests.”
I stop walking. “You thought liking cats was one of my interests?”
“You have cat stickers on your romance guide.”
“Because I was sixteen and I’m a cat.”
Lucien groans and covers his face. I laugh and grab one of his wrists, tugging until I can see him again.
“I had fun. A lot of fun.”
“But it wasn’t romantic.”
I open my mouth to agree, but I don’t. Because he brought me flowers. He knocked on my door when he could have just teleported into my apartment. He held me when we teleported, sat on the floor with me, and let cats crawl all over him because he thought this would make me happy. And it did.
Maybe it wasn’t what sixteen-year-old me had in mind when I wrote the guide, but what the hell did that little guy know about dating, anyway? Apparently not much, because this feels pretty damn romantic to me.
I step closer, and Lucien’s expression changes. His smile disappears as his attention drops to my mouth before snapping back to my eyes.
“What are you doing, kitty cat?”
“Deciding something.”
I rise onto my toes and kiss his cheek.
Lucien stops breathing. It’s barely a kiss, but my heart pounds so hard you’d think I stripped naked in the middle of the street. When I drop back onto my feet, Lucien slowly touches the spot with his fingertips.
“My pretty kitty kissed me.”
“Don’t make it weird.” I grab his hand and start walking again before he can see how red my face is. “You promised me dinner.”
His fingers immediately weave through mine. “Yes. Dinner. I know a place.”
“Does it have cats?”
“No.”
“Any animal that might insult my mother?”
“I sincerely hope not.” Lucien squeezes my hand as he laughs, and his tail finds mine. They brush once, twice, before mine curls around his.
I leave it there.
Maybe this isn’t what sixteen-year-old me pictured when I wrote about cute little dates. There aren’t flowers to pick or pastries to make. There haven’t been slow kisses that make the world stop or fireworks and cannon fire.
Instead, I got hissed at by six cats, watched a centuries-old demon nearly cry because a kitten fell asleep on his tail, and kissed him because he looked so upset that his carefully planned date wasn’t romantic enough.
My first date is a complete perfect disaster.
I already can’t wait for the second one.