Do you admire anyone more than yourself?
What’s your least favorite kind of music?
Every question held a negative connotation, proving I had quite the fight on my hands here. Such a new experience from my usual. In the Midnight Fae Kingdom, all I had to do was glance at a female and she’d fall to her knees in happy oblivion.
But not with Isabella.
Oh, no. This girl was going to make me work for it. And I couldn’t fucking wait.
We drove in silence to the restaurant I’d picked for our assignment. Isabella’s attire was going to draw a lot of attention, something I suspected to be her goal. She probably expected her wardrobe to turn me off. Hence her resounding silence now. Actually, she seemed a little nervous, what with the way she kept picking at her nails.
I pulled up to the valet and fought a grin when Isabella stiffened beside me. “La Scala?” she asked, her voice a little breathy.
“Yep.” I didn’t give her a chance to say anything else as I exited the car and tossed my keys to the valet. She still hadn’t moved when I opened her door, her seat belt firmly in place. “Ready?” I asked, holding out my hand for hers.
She glanced up at me, her cheeks a delicious shade of pink. “I… I’m not dressed for La Scala, Tray.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You mean that’s not your version of formal attire?”
She didn’t smile or laugh or even glare. She just shook her head and focused on the windshield. “This was a mistake.”
My brow furrowed. Where’s my feisty little female? I wondered, crouching before her. “Isabella,” I said softly, trying to grab her attention.
“Sir, I need—”
I shut the valet up with a wave of my hand. Literally. Dark magic pooled around him, knocking him into a daze of confusion that left him staring off into space. I’d deal with him in a moment.
“Ella,” I tried again, this time using her preferred name. “It’s just dinner.”
“Not here.” She closed her eyes. “Please not here.”
Odd. This was supposed to be the fanciest place in town. It’d taken some magical strings for me to secure us a reservation, as half the senior class seemed to be dining here before the dance.
Was that why she didn’t want to go inside?
My lips twisted to the side. No. That couldn’t be it. She never let the other students intimidate her in class, so why would a restaurant be any different?
Regardless, she clearly wasn’t comfortable, and while I didn’t mind pushing her buttons, this seemed to go beyond mere teasing and into dangerous emotional territory. “Okay,” I told her, standing up. “We’ll go somewhere else.”
I closed her door and waved my hand to release the spell on the valet. He blinked several times in confusion, the dark web slowly disentangling itself from his mind.
“Dinner was great,” I said, handing him a tip in exchange for my keys. “Thanks, man.”
He sputtered something unintelligible at my back that I ignored as I resettled into the driver’s seat with a very quiet Isabella beside me.
She remained mute, leaving me to come up with the backup plan on my own. Darlington was full of expensive restaurants, the kind you paid a fortune for only to be hungry an hour later.
We needed something comfortable. Something low-key with decent food and an easy atmosphere.
Benji’s, I thought, smiling. Yes, that’ll work.
It was a local place one town over with the most amazing chicken wings. The perfect place for a casual date.
“Where are we going?” Isabella asked when we were nearing the outskirts of Darlington.
“To a local wing bar in Asherington,” I said, my hand settling on the shifter between us as we neared a stoplight. I risked a glance at her and noted that her cheeks had returned to their usual pale color.
Her blue eyes drifted my way, blinking. “You’re not going to ask me why?”