“Do you think God has forgotten about the Outcast?” I asked with genuine curiosity.
“I do not know.” He drained the last of his port. “It may be that a thousand years may pass in the blink of an eye for the divine. It may be that each of us has a lesson yet to learn. Or it may simply be that God can no longer intervene from beyond the Inviolate Wall, and must use other hands as His tools.”
I looked at my hands. “You know, I’m really not comfortable with that whole idea.”
“I know.” Stefan’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Forgive me. I did not intend to trouble you.”
“No, it’s my fault,” I said. “I brought it up. Will you excuse me for a minute?”
“Of course.”
I didn’t really need to visit the restroom, but I wanted to collect my thoughts. And I don’t know how the evening would have ended if I hadn’t encountered Daniel freakin’ Dufreyne on my way.
The reek of wrongness hit me as I was passing the bar, where Dufreyne was paying his tab. I stopped dead in my tracks. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hello, cousin.” Dufreyne bared his white teeth in his sharklike grin, winding his cashmere scarf around his throat. “What a happy coincidence. I was just passing through and taking in a bit of local color. That’s an interesting date you’ve got there.”
My skin crawled. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” Dufreyne shrugged into his expensive coat. “But if I were you, I’d want to know a lot more about his history with our kind before I sealed the deal.” He fished his gloves from his coat pocket. “Take care.”
Son of a bitch.
I stared after Dufreyne as he made his exit, then ducked into the ladies’ room to wash my hands and splash water on my face before returning to the table. “We should probably be going,” I said to Stefan.
He rose to retrieve my coat. “As you will.”
Based on what I knew of Daniel Dufreyne, I was ninety-nine percent sure he was just seizing the opportunity to mess with me, which really sucked, because it had been a relief to spend a whole evening not worrying about that damned lawsuit or my nightmares about destroying the world. I did my best to put his words out of my head and enjoy the chivalry thing. Back at my apartment building, Stefan got out of the Lexus to walk me to the door. On the doorstep, chivalry gave way to something else, something filled with sexual tension and unspoken possibilities. That fluttery feeling was back in my stomach, along with the molten stirrings of desire.
I wanted him.
I wanted to do this, to embrace the danger. I wanted to lose myself in simple lust, in the deadly knife-edge play of emotion between us. And thanks to the bond between us, Stefan knew it. I could see it in the swift dilation of his pupils, in the quickening of his breath in the cold night air.
“Daisy.” Stefan said my name in a husky whisper, drew me against him and kissed me. It wasn’t as explosive as the last time he’d kissed me, before he’d left for Poland, but it was a kiss that meant business. It was a kiss that was the start of something serious, intense enough to weaken my knees and leave me no doubt of his intentions.
And yet, this time I was the one to end it. Ninety-nine percent wasn’t a hundred. I needed to know more before this went further.
I didn’t pull away or raise my shield, but I broke off the kiss. “Thank you.” My voice sounded as unsteady as I felt. “It was a lovely evening.”
Lifting one hand, Stefan brushed my lower lip with his thumb. “You’re not going to invite me inside?”
“No.” With an effort, I let go of the lapels of his coat. Huh. I didn’t remember clutching them. “Not tonight. It’s too easy for me to abandon myself with you, Stefan. I need to take this slowly. I need to know I’ve got some measure of self-control. And I want to get past the cryptic eldritch crap,” I added. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning wondering why I went to bed with you after you shut down any conversation about your history with hell-spawns.”
“I see.” Stefan’s pupils glittered at me. “Then I will court you, Daisy. Slowly and deliberately, until you beg me for release.”
A shiver ran down the length of my spine, and my tail twitched reflexively. “And the cryptic eldritch crap?” I challenged him.
Stefan dialed it down a notch, his expression easing into a wry smile. “I will endeavor to answer your questions with candor. Perhaps our next outing should be dedicated to such a conversation.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Very much.”
He inclined his head. “Next Saturday, then. I’ll call for you at eleven o’clock in the morning and take you to brunch.”
Like condominium, brunch was one of those words that sounded incongruous coming from Stefan, and it made me smile. “It’s a plan. And, um, thank you for understanding.”
“Anything worth pursuing is worth waiting for.” Stefan dusted a few snowflakes from the collar of my new coat, then leaned over to kiss me again, his lips lingering on mine. “You looked very beautiful tonight.”
Okay, I had to make my escape before I changed my mind. “I’ll see you then,” I promised, backing away from him and fishing my keys out of my messenger bag. With that, I turned tail—no pun intended—and fled into the stairwell and the subsequent safety of my apartment.
All in all, Dufreyne’s insidious insinuation notwithstanding, I thought that had gone well.