Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Cecilia looked away from Sloane quickly, unsettled by the accuracy with which he’d hit her where she was most vulnerable. Clearing her throat, she summoned up her usual cheerful veneer and announced, “All right, champ! If you want to be my mate, then we need to get this date rolling.”
He inclined his head. Holding one hand out toward the restaurant in a stiff but gentlemanly gesture, he said, “Yes, madam.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Madam? I don’t think I like that.”
“It’s the respectful form of address for an adult female in elvish society,” he explained. After a brief pause, he added, “But I can call you whatever you prefer.”
“Cece works,” she answered, spinning on her heel to face the restaurant. “If you’re feeling lovey-dovey you can call me honey or baby, but absolutely no sweethearts. I got way too many of those from random vampires in the bar.”
Gravel crunched beneath her feet but somehow didn’t seem to make a noise under his boots as they strode toward the brightly lit outdoor dining area.
The only other customers were a couple of puffy jacket-clad teenagers huddled around a plastic table, their mouths glued to red and white striped straws as they sucked down what Cecilia could only assume were milkshakes.
“I…” Sloane trailed off, uncharacteristically uncertain.
“What?” She nudged his side with her elbow. “C’mon. Spit it out.”
“I have a… name for you. That I use. In my mind.”
Stopping in her tracks, she demanded, “What is it?”
Sloane stopped walking. His posture was always perfectly straight, but he appeared somehow stiffer than normal when he admitted, “Doe.”
She blinked. “You said that before, I think. I didn’t really catch it at the time but… Wait, do you mean like doe as in cute deer or dough as in pizza, because—”
“Doe as in deer,” he confirmed.
Nudging him again, this time to get them walking, she asked, “What made you think of that?”
Without hesitation, he answered, “You’re small, cute, and defenseless.”
Squawking, she forgot who she was talking to when she slapped his arm with the back of her hand. “Hey! I know you elves are built like you were made in a lab, but arrants aren’t completely defenseless!”
Sloane snatched her hand before it’d had the chance to bounce off his impressive bicep. Holding it with infinite care, he smoothed the pad of his thumb over the hills and valleys of her palm. “Correct. You command me. That makes you the most dangerous creature of all.”
If her face got any hotter, she was fairly certain her eyebrows would catch on fire.
“You know, if you wanna hold my hand, you don’t have to whip out all these smooth one-liners,” she teased, hoping to distract him from the way said one-liner absolutely worked on her.
Sloane’s grip tightened a fraction when he asked, “You would let me hold your hand?”
Good gods in the sky. This man really is a deadly weapon.
Aware she was probably being suckered, Cecilia hoarsely replied, “Yeah, I would.”
In an entirely unsurprising turn of events, Sloane wasn’t very good at the whole hand-holding business. Marveling at the fact that he apparently thought he was supposed to hold her entire appendage in his fist, she had to gently correct his grip.
“There,” she announced when they were much more comfortably situated. “How does that feel?”
“This is another tactical disadvantage,” he replied. “If a threat approached, my dominant hand would be compromised. My reaction time would be slowed and that would provide an opening to an enemy.”
Moving to slide her hand out of his, she said, “Well, we don’t have to—”
“No.” His grip tightened, refusing to let her go. “I will compensate.”
Tucking her chin to hide her ridiculous, smitten smile, Cecilia tugged her stalker toward the counter.
Pretending like she didn’t notice the cashier’s alarmed scan of her bruises or the even more panicked look he aimed at the obviously military-affiliated elf holding her hand, she cranked up her smile to megawatt status.
“Hi!” she chirped. “Can I get a double cheeseburger with American cheese, no onions, extra ketchup, double pickles, fries with a side of mayo, and…” She took half a step back to quickly eyeball the menu. “A cookies and cream milkshake, please?”
The cashier started to sweat when he turned his wide eyes to her date. “A-and you, sir?”
Sloane took a beat before he asked Cecilia, “Am I required to eat to qualify this as a date?”
“Um, technically no. I don’t think so, anyway.” Giving him a narrow-eyed look, she asked, “But aren’t you hungry? I haven’t seen you eat anything.”
“I can eat later.”
“Or you can eat now, while we’re on our date.”
Sloane rolled his shoulders again. “That is unwise.”
“Why? You have bad table manners or something?” She was certain that wasn’t the reason. It absolutely had everything to do with him keeping that helmet on, which only made her want to push him more.
If he’s going to stalk me for a year, kidnap me, coerce me into staying at his serial killer bunker, and also date me, this man has got to show me his face.
Unfortunately, Sloane didn’t seem keen on giving her what she wanted.
Shaking his head, he promised, “Another time.”
Even more curious than she already was but aware this probably wasn’t the place to push the topic, Cecilia shrugged and turned back to the cashier. “I guess that’s it.”
When the nervous man rattled off the price for the meal, she reached out to scan her ID chip across the old scanner he pushed through the hole in the window, but Sloane intercepted her with a matte black card.
“Hey!” she complained, aware that it was probably ridiculous to want to pay for herself when he was the one still kinda-sorta holding her captive. “You didn’t even get any food. I should pay.”
“You will not,” he flatly refused.
Using her hand to steer her toward a table at the far end of the less than polished dining area, he continued, “I don’t know much about dating, but I do know that I get pleasure from providing you with things you enjoy. This food makes you happy. That means I pay.”
Settling down on the chilly plastic seat, she muttered, “You know, for a stalker, you’re pretty charming.”
The chair opposite her own looked comically small when Sloane sank into it. The plastic squealed a bit in protest, but it somehow managed to hold itself together under what she could only imagine was considerable bulk.
“You’re the only person in this world who could say that,” he informed her.
“Don’t got a lotta good reviews from ex-girlfriends, huh?”
Sloane rubbed his thumb over the line of her knuckles when he admitted, “I don’t have any ex-girlfriends.”
Cecilia was glad she didn’t have her milkshake yet, otherwise she was pretty sure it would’ve ended up sprayed across his visor. “Sloane… have you never dated anybody?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “I’ve never had any intimate partners.”
Truly, she thought watching a man get his arm ripped off would be the most shocking thing she’d experience in a week. It turned out that finding out Sloane was apparently completely inexperienced was a pretty close second.
She wasn’t even sure why, really. It wasn’t like she knew anything about him. For all she knew, it could’ve been standard practice for elves or members of Patrol to eschew romantic relationships.
But it didn’t feel that way.
Despite the fact that there was no inflection or emotion in that modulated voice, Cecilia sensed there was much more to the story than something as simple as protocol.
Maybe it was madness, but she thought there was vulnerability there, hidden beneath the layers of his visor and plain black, military-style clothing.
Taking a second to process her immediate shocked reaction, Cecilia coughed into her free hand, hoping it would cover up the strange pitch in her voice. “So, you’re… a virgin?”
“I have not had sex,” he confirmed, as dry as her old high school med class’s sex education.
Taking a breath, she worked hard to school her expression. “Are you comfortable explaining why you haven’t… done that?”
Sloane nodded. “It’s traditional for elves to exchange virginity with a friend or someone of a similar rank at thirty, but we were… discouraged from the practice.”
“I mean, I wasn’t exactly encouraged to have sex either, but I still managed to lose my virginity in the band room’s supply closet when I was seventeen. Why didn’t you disobey orders and just do it? It’s not like anyone would know, right?”
“I had no interest,” he replied.
Cecilia’s stomach tightened. In a hushed voice, she asked, “Has that changed?”
Sloane’s chest expanded with a deep breath. “Yes.”
She really couldn’t decide whether the news should make her more concerned or less. On one hand, there was something deeply endearing about knowing he was so deadly yet so innocent. On the other hand, it made him seem even more unpredictable.
The gods only knew what a super-powered virgin who’d spent the last year watching her through her bedroom window was capable of.
It was a lucky thing for both of them that the sound of a bell dinging broke the tension. Tugging her hand out of his, she nervously brushed her hair behind her ear and made to stand up. “That’s my food.”
Sloane waved at her to stay seated. Rising from his chair, he told her, “I’ll get it. Don’t move.”
Cecilia watched him walk away. It didn’t even occur to her to get up and run until he reached the pick-up window, and even then, she found herself paralyzed.
Go, that reasonable part of her screamed. Go!
Only her eyes darted toward the treeline. No doubt she’d get lost in there after only a handful of steps, and the road wasn’t much better, seeing as she’d be on foot and he’d be on a bike.
Her heart raced as she battled her conflicting impulses.
This was the first chance she’d really gotten.
For all she knew, it’d be her only chance.
For the first time since Dahlia called her from Felix’s house all those weeks ago, she finally understood what her best friend meant when she insisted she couldn’t just stay.
No matter how attractive the kidnapper, he was still a kidnapper. And a prison was still a prison, even if he let you out for cheeseburgers and motorcycle rides sometimes.
She blinked hard as her eyes refocused. The small crowd of teens in their puffy jackets passed between her table and the restaurant, obscuring her view of Sloane.
“You okay?”
Cecilia glanced at the girl who spoke. A girl with deep brown skin and shifter-bright eyes looked closely at her, phone in hand. Pointing at the bruises on the side of Cecilia’s face, she asked in a quieter, double-timbered voice, “You need some help getting away from that elf?”
Another teenager, this one a lanky, curly-haired boy with a bad case of acne, chimed in, “Our pack’s close by. You can come with us and you’ll be safe. No one fucks around with wolves. Not even elves.”
The other teens nodded, their noses wrinkling in a distinctly canine way.
I could go, she realized, time slowing. I could tell them to call Patrol or just hop in their car and let them drive into pack territory as fast as possible.
They’d do it. She could see it in their eyes.
These kids who couldn’t have been older than seventeen were willing to risk their safety to help a strange woman in need.
Because kids were fundamentally good, and that was why she’d worked so hard to become a teacher.
When a child saw someone needed help, they helped.
…She just didn’t want them to. Not this time.
All at once, the silent war of her impulses went silent. Cecilia’s stomach unclenched as she slowly relaxed her posture.
Giving the sweet wolves a sincere smile, she assured them, “Thanks, kids, but I’m okay. I promise.”
The girl with the bright eyes didn’t move a muscle. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Cecilia answered, her gaze pulled magnetically toward the dark shape of her elf as he came up behind the teens, deadly hands laden with a tray covered in greasy food, “I think I am.”