Chapter 32
Lionel
Tonight was going to be my night. Well, mine and Mitch’s.
As I waited for him outside the restaurant, I decided it was a good night that was only going to get better. I had a date, he was hot, and going by the fact that I had seen a couple go inside arm in arm, Mitch had chosen The Angry Dragon with a purpose.
I heard soft music and the sound of people enjoying good food and company from inside and couldn’t wait to join them. The place had a big neon dragon head above the door, its nostrils fuming, its eyes bulging.
I stood by a window and watched one of those golden plastic kittens with the waving arms while I did my best to resist the urge to pull out my phone and check for a text from Mitch.
Had I been stood up in the past? Well yeah, but everyone had.
And Mitch was working on an active case that I wasn’t allowed to get close to, so if he was late, I could be sure it wasn’t his fault. Plus, he had asked me out.
But Mitch, perfect in his sexiness, wasn’t late. A smile lit up his face as he walked toward me, one hand raised in greeting. He still wore his work clothes, though he’d left his jacket behind, and the two top buttons of his shirt were open, which I took to be a good sign.
“Hey. You been waiting long?” he asked when he stood in front of me, closer than he had at the scene or at work. Obviously. I could smell his cologne. He’d refreshed it since earlier. Had he taken a shower too? Likely after the beach.
I shook my head, doing my best to project confidence. “Just a couple of minutes.”
Mitch rolled his shoulders. “I’m glad. Ready to go inside? I could use a drink.”
I nodded, glad he and I were on the same wavelength.
Inside, it was dark and cozy, fake, bedazzled, and just the right amount of kitschy to make me not think about burning things every other minute.
After the first excellent tequila cocktail, Mitch rolled up his shirtsleeves, and I found myself drawn to the corded muscle of his forearms, forgetting all about the gaudy, Shanghai-in-the-’20s decor with all the neon dragons. Did his arms look like that all the way up to those shoulders?
Mitch was talking about champagne and how it was named after a region in France, while I was working my way through Jade Dragon Fins, which was an edamame cucumber salad with chili, sesame seeds, and soy sauce.
We’d just started on our second cocktail.
Mine had champagne in it, and I wasn’t sure why I’d thought that was wise.
Then again, it had allowed Mitch to show off his geography knowledge.
“Gods, your arms look great,” I blurted out. Blame that on the tequila from cocktail one.
Sexy Mitch let one of his hands fall below the table and ran his fingers up my thigh. “Thanks.”
Gods, I wanted to rub my forehead on his strong shoulders. I blinked, double-checking I hadn’t said that out loud, but Mitch was still looking at me expectantly while twirling the rim of his still mostly full cocktail.
Yeah, this was happening. Sexy Mitch was going to get naked with me, and we were going to do unspeakable things. Then maybe we’d have a glass of water after and go for round two, try even less speakable stuff—the beast with two backs and then some.
I inhaled half my cocktail, the second half of it, and signaled the server for a third before I put the glass down.
Just thinking the word “beast” brought Lucifer’s damn spice and campfire scent back, and I needed to remain focused on Mitch.
The Devil was amnesia, and I couldn’t think about that anymore.
Mitch of the sexy arms. Was I interested in armpits? Not overly, but maybe I should make it an experience. With Mitch.
“You seem to be handling this well,” Mitch said. “Getting taken off the case, I mean.”
Work? Nooo. We were not talking about work. “It’s a reasonable decision on Christine’s part. Didn’t you want to talk about magic?” I asked. “One more of these please,” I told the server when she came to collect my empty glass.
As she left, I licked some cocktail off my lips, tasting the pineapple juice in it.
Juice. Mmh. I could think of things I wanted to suck more than a cocktail straw, but I could not think about any juice cleanse I’d recently been forced to undergo.
I knew I had that fortitude of mind, and the champagne from somewhere in France would definitely help.
Mitch leaned on his elbow. The move made his forearm flex. “Do you enjoy doing it? Raising dead things?” His leg moved under the table, his calf touching mine.
“I don’t like reanimating those that have been dead for long,” I told him. “But the power itself, letting my magic flow through me to bring life back to something that lost it?” I inhaled deeply, desperate for a whiff of his cologne so I wouldn’t remember the scent of fire. “It’s nice.”
Was I slurring? Had I been slurring that? Why was I even telling him that? I really shouldn’t. The non-magical types like him might react badly to my professional necromancer candor.
Sexy Mitch looked kind of hungry though, and not in the food sense. Heavens. I was feeling so light, like I was floating. On Jade Dragon Fins.
“Wow. You’re such a powerful sorcerer, Hawkes.”
“Necromancer, and call me Nell—I mean, Lionel. Call me that. Lionel, with an…L. Did you see that video of some amateur necromancer making their own Fiji Mermaid and reanimating it?” As I said that out loud, I realized I should not have ordered the fins. Silly train of thought, that mermaid.
Before Mitch could answer, his eyes went up, focusing over my right shoulder.
With a clunk, someone put a chair between Mitch and me, forcing Mitch to pull his leg back, thus removing his cozy calf from my cozy calf, breaking up the good thing that had been going on under the table.
In the next moment, Lucifer, the fucking Devil his own damn self, was sitting his oh-so-pretty ass down right next to me.
Close to me. I could smell him. Even over the champagne from France.
Woodsmoke and spices. Damn the Devil’s ass and his Devil scent.
“Nelly,” he said, sniffing a long-stemmed rose he kept twirling between his fingers. “You ran away.”
Oh, fuck him very much.