“No, you’re not.”
“Oh, yes, I am.”
“I will kill you if proof of me wearing this exists on the Internet.”
“Coward.”
“Nice try, but you’re still not getting that picture.”
“Fine. But when Random loses his goddamn mind upon seeing you in that, just make sure it’s my voice in the back of your head saying, I told you so. Try these on.” She held out the shoes.
Valkyrie tried. She really did. But she was never going to be able to walk in high heels. After a few minutes of attempted instruction, Meredith admitted defeat. She left the room and returned with a pair of strappy, mercifully flat sandals.
“I didn’t think you owned anything without a heel.”
“I have plenty of flats. Just don’t wear them.”
“Then why do you own them?”
“Therapy.”
“Your therapist told you to buy shoes you won’t wear?”
Meredith laughed. “Not unless my therapist’s name is American Express.” At Valkyrie’s blank look she said, “Shopping, Val. Retail therapy. Buying things you don’t need to fill the void in your soul.”
“Oh. Does it work?”
“No. But it does mean I have cute sandals to give you.”
Valkyrie got out of the dress and back into her own clothes, then realized she had another problem. How was she supposed to get this stuff past Random without him noticing? She’d never live it down if he found out the urgent reason she’d needed to come here was fashion advice.
“Put them in here,” Meredith held out a canvas bag. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” She dashed back into the closet, came out holding a tiny black bag.
“What is that?”
“It’s a clutch. For your things.”
“That thing will barely hold my phone.”
“Phone, ID, one credit card, lipstick.” Meredith agreed. “That’s pretty much your limit.”
Valkyrie took the clutch and popped the clasp open speculatively. There was no hiding a weapon under the damn dress. It was too tight and too short. But though the clutch looked ridiculous, if she left her phone in the car and—
“Do not put a knife in the clutch, Val.”
“You don’t know that I—”
“No knives, no throwing stars, no weapons of any kind.”
“And people say I’m no fun,” Valkyrie muttered. “When do you want this stuff back?”
Meredith waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t.”
“I’m not a charity case.”
“Let me put it this way. After what is likely to occur in, around, and near that dress, I have no interest in taking it back.”
Valkyrie rolled her eyes and gathered everything into the canvas bag. There wasn’t any real point in disillusioning Meredith about the fake nature of the damn date. And it was...nice, that she’d gone to this much trouble. She could have just told her what type of thing to wear and sent her off to a department store, but she hadn’t.
She started to shrug it off, to walk out of the room without a word, like she would have done a day ago. Maybe even an hour ago. She didn’t want to need anyone. When Elijah was still here, she hadn’t, because there hadn’t been room for anyone else. He had been the demonic god around which her existence pivoted.
Once he was gone, she’d been able to pretend she still didn’t need anyone, because Random had stepped into that void. But he would be gone, soon, too. Once this business with Danvers was resolved, he would be free to live his life without her. She’d had the last two weeks to understand how alone she would be without his constant check-ins and funny quips.
There wouldn’t be another Random for her, but that didn’t mean she had to be alone. “Meredith? About what you said. About Jace. I get it.”
Meredith lifted an eyebrow. “Is that forgiveness?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I fully understand the concept. But I think—I think maybe I could use a friend, after all.”
A smile spread across Meredith’s face, the first real one Valkyrie had seen all day. “That makes two of us.”
Despite renewed friendship, Valkyrie still wasn’t good with the emotional nonsense that followed these types of situations, so she hefted the canvas bag like a duffel and started downstairs. In the kitchen, Random was closing the dishwasher door and hitting the “start” button.
He turned around as they entered and zeroed in on Meredith. “Are you aware that the only well-stocked part of your kitchen is the liquor bar?”
“It is the most important part.” She sniffed at the tantalizing aroma coming out of the oven. “It smells like you managed just fine.”
“That’s because I’m a culinary genius and my Aspect managed to direct me to the one jar of pasta sauce in your cupboard that was hiding under a metric ton of plastic bags. You know those things are really bad for the environment right?”
“I’ll be sure to jump on the reusable bandwagon right away. What did you make?”
“Calling it lasagna is a stretch given what I had to work with, but it’s the closest approximation I have. Take it out of the oven in twenty minutes when the timer goes off. And for goddess sake, actually eat some of it.”
Meredith looked at Valkyrie. “I’d forgotten how bossy he is.”
“It’s a problem,” Valkyrie agreed.
“Good luck with that.”
Random’s eyes narrowed. “I think I liked it better when you two were sniping at each other. It’s less fun when you gang up on me.”
“There, there. I’m sure Val is more than capable of tending to your wounded ego.”
“Oh?” Random turned a speculative eye on Valkyrie, and he had that look in his eyes, the one that said something wildly inappropriate was about to come out of his mouth. “I find my ego is best tended by frequently engaging in—”
“Time to go,” Valkyrie said.
“But I haven’t—”
Valkyrie shoved him out of the kitchen.
10
Valkyrie had been ready for the not-date for the last fifteen minutes. She just couldn’t find the courage to leave Random’s bathroom.
She tried and failed to convince herself that this was like the Gathering Ball, or Jace’s wedding. On both of those occasions, the dresses had blissfully covered her to the ankle. And they might have been form-fitting, but at least they’d had substance. This thing was so thin it made her feel naked.
Why hadn’t she told Meredith to find her something else? Maybe a nice pantsuit?
At least her hair wasn’t a disaster. She was confident on that point, since Siren had insisted on teaching her how to use a curling iron, which had annoyed her at the time, and for which she was now grateful.
As for her face...she was never going to be beautiful, and she was never going to be comfortable in a lot of makeup. But she’d played up her eyes, and they matched the dress, and she thought maybe she at least didn’t look bad.
She gripped the annoyingly-small clutch and wished it was a weapon. Any weapon. How did normal women do this? Always trying to present their best selves and getting their souls sucked out for it? The great thing about never putting any effort into her appearance was that she didn’t have to worry about being judged for it. People did judge her, yes, but it didn’t matter, because she wasn’t trying to impress them.
Putting on a dress and makeup blatantly said, Hey, look at me. I’m trying. It invited scorn and derision. She couldn’t even retaliate properly against inflammatory comments people might make because if she got into a fight in this dress she’d end up showing the world a lot more of herself than she was interested in revealing.
Random knocked on the door. “Not to push you, but I can’t guarantee they won’t give the reservation away if we’re late.”
“I’ll be right out.”
She could do this. She could. She would just pretend it was her Academy trials all over again. She straightened her shoulders, put on her expressionless war mask, and s
tepped outside. The bedroom was empty. She relaxed a fraction, until she walked into the kitchen.
Random leaned against the island and he looked—goddess, he looked good. In dark pants, with a dress shirt and tie beneath a black blazer, he looked like he was about to go on a date with a woman he actually wanted to impress.
He straightened and stared at her. Just...stared. She hoped maybe it was a good stare, but then the seconds continued to tick by and he still didn’t say anything. The longer the silence went on, the more certain she was that this was not a good reaction.
Random was relatively positive he possessed functioning lungs, he just seemed to have forgotten how to operate them.
Snap out of it. You’ve seen her in a damn dress before. The very male part of his anatomy was keen to point out he hadn’t seen her in a dress like this before.
“You look…” Perfect. Beautiful. Stunning. “Nice,” he finished lamely. “Excuse me. I forgot something.”
He retreated into the bedroom and shut the door. It was that, or make an idiot of himself. Since that was all he seemed to do around her anymore, he wasn’t interested in staying to do it again.
It’s not a real date, he reminded himself. But damn if she hadn’t turned out like it was. How was he supposed to sit next to her all night and pretend to be infatuated with her without the reality of his actual infatuation seeping through?
Easy answer there: he wasn’t. There was no show like the real thing. And if he was going down that road, he might as well go all in. He walked over to his nightstand and rummaged through it until he found the small black box he was looking for. He’d bought it from some up-and-coming jewelry artist in the local art scene a few months back.
He’d wanted to give it to her for her birthday, but it hadn’t been the right time. He knew now there wasn’t ever going to be a right time, and if he couldn’t give it to her properly, she might as well still have it.
Valkyrie Winters did not cry. This was a truth universally acknowledged. But she was the closest she’d come to it in a long, long time. She’d known, known, how ridiculous she looked, but some small part of her had hoped maybe Meredith had seen something she couldn’t. Meredith had been wrong.
You look...nice. It had taken him long enough to come up with a neutral, one syllable word to describe her. He had fled the room at the mere sight of her.
Her gaze went to the black box on the living room bookshelf. She’d retrieved the blood samples she had for the other councilors when she’d packed her clothes earlier, and she’d stowed them in the box. She reminded herself that that—blood acquisition—was why she was going on this fake date. She had a goal to accomplish tonight. It didn’t matter what Random thought of her.
But that didn’t stop embarrassed heat from flushing her cheeks when Random came back out of the bedroom, carefully looking anywhere but at her. She couldn’t believe she’d gone to the trouble to try and look nice. And she was wrong—she couldn’t do this.
“We’re calling this off,” she said.
“What? Why?” His head jerked up, and he carefully directed his gaze at some distant point over her left shoulder.
She shrugged.
“This is our best chance for an ’‘accidental’ meeting with DuPont on short notice. Even if you can come up with a legitimate reason to set up a meeting with him, he’ll remember that.”
“I don’t care. I’ll find another way to get to him. One that doesn’t involve me looking like a bull in spandex.”
“You look nothing like a bull in spandex.”
She channeled every ounce of insecurity she felt into fury and leveled it at him in a glare. “You can’t even look at me.”
“It isn’t because you look bad.”
“I’m not so pathetic I need you to lie to me.” She didn’t have to stand here and listen to him soothe her out of pity. She could go take off this stupid dress, find a knife, and stab something. Even if it was just the punching bag in his gym instead of her usual sandbag course. Stabbing things always made her feel better. It was a soothing activity.
Maybe she would go stab DuPont. He had fired her, after all. It would be cathartic and achieve her goal of blood acquisition. All she had to do was make it look like a mugging. Except, of course, that someone of DuPont’s caliber of Aspect had the means to deflect ordinary muggings, which meant if she succeeded, he’d know it had been done by someone in the Aspect community. He’d be on alert.
Well, there was still stabbing punching bags to cheer her. She brushed past Random toward the gym. He muttered something in Spanish and stalked after her.
“You want to know why I can’t look at you, Kyrie? This is why I can’t look at you.” His arms encircled her and pulled her tight against him. He was almost the same height as her, which meant her ass pressed back against his cock. His exceptionally hard cock.
“You’re so fucking hot I can’t see straight,” he whispered in her ear. “But you’ve made it painfully clear you have no interest in sleeping with me again. So you’ll forgive me if I need a few minutes of not looking at you to desensitize.”
He let her go, stepped back and held out a small black box. “This is for you.”
She took it on reflex, too stunned by what had just happened to do anything else. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Meredith’s voice whispered, Told you so.
She stared down at the box. “What is it?”
It was his turn to shrug. “Not even you’re good enough to hide a knife under that dress. I thought this might make you feel a little less...naked. I’ll go warm up the car.”
She waited until he was gone to lift the lid. Inside, a necklace nestled against blue velvet. The black chain was thin but strong, the pendant hanging from it a black titanium sword with a sapphire set into the pommel.
She liked it. It was pretty, but also strong. Against her better judgment, she put it on and walked into the bathroom to check it in the mirror. The chain was short, and the tiny sword settled against the hollow of her throat.
Random was right. It did make her feel less naked.
Damn him for knowing it would.
Awkward was far too tame a word to describe the atmosphere in the car on the drive to StellaMia’s. Random’s house was only twenty minutes from the establishment, but every minute felt like an hour.
Random kept both hands on the wheel and his attention laser-focused on the road, as if they were driving in six lanes of high-speed traffic instead of an empty, single-lane road. Short of his asking her if the temperature was acceptable and her replying that it was fine, they hadn’t talked.
She fiddled with her new necklace. No matter how hard she tried to think about something—anything—else, her brain kept replaying Random pulling her to him, the proof of his interest pressed against her. He’d known that would convince her where nothing else could.
She groaned internally. He’d done it so she would know she didn’t look terrible, and it had worked, but it had had other unfortunate results as well. Every time she remembered it her inner walls clenched and desire flared through her. She was on the verge of being embarrassingly wet.
Thank the goddess he couldn’t tell.
Wait, he couldn’t tell, right? Did men have a fifth sense about that sort of thing?
She sneaked a glance at him. His jaw was locked tightly enough that a muscle twitched along it, and his eyes remained on the road. She returned to looking out the passenger window, but he’d clearly noticed the momentary inspection, because she felt his gaze shift briefly to her.
She couldn’t sit in this much tension for the rest of the drive. They’d both arrive at the restaurant looking like they were in pain and then no one, absolutely no one, would believe they were on a date. She had not put herself through this much discomfort for their cover story to fail.
“This is a nice car,” she blurted out. Wonderful. A truly inspired conversation starter. She hadn’t even known he owned a car, since his motorcycle seemed perpetually affixed to his person,
but it still didn’t qualify as decent conversation material.
He unclenched his jaw long enough to say, “I got a really good deal on it.”
Don’t ask him about the financing. You can come up with something smarter to say than asking about the financing.
“Good APR?” She officially wanted to die.
“Yeah, and I talked the salesperson down five grand and—goddess, are we really talking about the deal I got on my car?”
“Yes? What do people normally talk about on dates?”
“I’m not sure. I think you’re supposed to ask me about my job and listen with rapt attention while I bore you out of your mind with what I consider to be interesting details about my life.”
Valkyrie shivered. “What do I talk about?”
“I don’t think you do. You just bat your eyelashes and laugh at my bad jokes.”
“Dating sounds terrible.”
“Why do you think I’ve never done it?”
She swallowed as he pulled into the parking lot at StellaMia’s. “You really haven’t? Not even when you were in Academy?”
He didn’t answer until he’d pulled the car into the space and killed the engine. “No. Not even then.”
She wanted to ask him why. She didn’t.
“Since this is supposed to be a date, I should probably get the door for you.” He opened his and got out without waiting for her to respond. He walked around the front, opened her door and held out his hand. She took it and stepped out of the car.
She hadn’t relaxed any. Every muscle in her body was tense. She had the insane urge to bolt off into the darkness, only seven o’clock appeared to be a popular time for StellaMia’s—maybe they were always popular—and people would notice if she impersonated a fleeing animal. They would notice if she walked in this on-edge too, though.
She knew of only one thing—one person—that could turn her muscles liquid when she was this uptight, and he was still holding her hand. Kissing him would be stupid. But if she didn’t kiss him she’d walk into that restaurant so stressed that absolutely no one would believe they were on a date and then this entire charade would have been for nothing.
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