"A DATE?" Mailah managed to ask, her voice barely above a whisper.
"A date," Grayson confird, though his eyes held a hint of uncertainty, as though he wasn’t sure she would want such a thing after everything she’d learned about him. "If you’ll have ."
The vulnerability in his request made her chest ache with tenderness. Here was a centuries-old demon, powerful enough to level buildings with his supernatural energy, asking her permission like a nervous teenager.
"Yes," she said softly, then surprised herself by adding, "but I get to choose where we go."
Sothing flickered across his expression—surprise, perhaps even relief. "Of course. Where did you have in mind?"
"There’s a little family restaurant about twenty minutes from here," Mailah said, thinking of the cozy Italian place she’d discovered during her lonely weeks exploring the area. "Nothing fancy, just... real food, real people. The kind of place where supernatural politics and succubi ex-wives don’t exist."
The smile that spread across Grayson’s features was radiant. "That sounds perfect."
Three hours later, Mailah found herself questioning whether "perfect" was the right word to describe what was unfolding at Romano’s Family Restaurant.
Grayson sat across from her in the cramped booth, his six-foot-three fra looking almost comically out of place among the checkered tablecloths and plastic wine glasses.
He’d changed into dark jeans and a navy sweater that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, but no amount of casual clothing could disguise the otherworldly magnetism that radiated from his skin like heat.
Every server, custor, and passing delivery driver seed drawn to their table with moth-like fascination, creating a constant parade of interruptions that had Grayson looking increasingly bewildered.
"Can I get you folks anything else?" asked Maria, their server, for the fourth ti in ten minutes. Her eyes were fixed on Grayson with the glazed expression that seed to affect every human who ventured too close.
"We’re fine, thank you," Grayson said politely, though Mailah could see the tension building in his shoulders.
Maria lingered anyway, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "Are you sure? Maybe so dessert? Our tiramisu is really special..."
"Maria," Mailah said gently, "we’re still working on our entrees."
The server blinked, seeming to rember where she was, and hurried away with flushed cheeks.
"Does this always happen?" Mailah asked, gesturing toward the growing crowd of "casual observers" who had found reasons to walk past their booth.
Grayson’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. "It’s worse since last night. The awakening made my supernatural presence more... pronounced."
He picked up his fork and stared at his untouched plate of chicken parsan as though it were a puzzle he couldn’t solve. "I should have realized this would happen. I haven’t eaten in a public restaurant like this."
Mailah watched him attempt to cut his chicken with movents that were precise but sohow chanical, as though he were following a manual for human behavior.
"When was the last ti you went on an actual date?" she asked softly.
The question made him freeze mid-cut.
For a mont, she wondered if he was going to deflect or change the subject entirely.
"The honest answer?" he said finally, setting down his fork. "Never. Not like this."
"What do you an?"
His storm-blue-gray eyes t hers across the table, and she could see the desire to be honest battling against centuries of practiced emotional distance.
"My marriages were business arrangents," he said carefully. "Dinner was served in formal dining rooms by staff who were paid to be invisible. Conversation was limited to schedules and social obligations. Physical proximity was..." He trailed off, searching for words.
"Avoided," Mailah supplied, confirming her guess.
"Carefully managed," he corrected, though his slight smile suggested her version wasn’t entirely wrong. "The goal was always to maintain distance while appearing to fulfill societal expectations."
An elderly woman at the neighboring table had been staring at Grayson with undisguised fascination for the past several minutes. When she finally worked up the courage to approach, Mailah watched in amazent as Grayson’s entire deanor shifted.
"Excuse , dear," the woman said, her voice carrying the tremulous quality of soone gathering courage. "My husband and I were wondering if you’re an actor? You have such a distinctive look..."
Grayson went completely still, his supernatural energy seeming to condense around him like armor. "No, ma’am. Just having dinner."
His tone was polite but carried undertones that made the woman step back instinctively, though she couldn’t have said why.
"Oh, of course. Sorry to bother you," she mumbled, retreating to her table where her husband was craning his neck to get a better look.
"You’re terrified," Mailah observed quietly once they were alone again.
"I’m not—" Grayson began, then stopped, his expression shifting to sothing more honest. "Yes. I am."
"Of what?"
"Of doing this wrong," he said, gesturing between them with a helplessness that seed at odds with his usual controlled composure. "Of saying sothing that reveals too much about what I am, or not enough about what I want to be. Of losing control of my abilities and accidentally influencing you the way I’m apparently influencing everyone else in this restaurant."
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Of you realizing that maybe Kassandra was right, and I’m too much monster and not enough man to deserve this."
The raw vulnerability in his confession made her chest tighten with emotion.
Without thinking, she reached across the table and covered his hand with hers.
The effect was imdiate and electric.
At first, he sttiffened, but then his supernatural energy seed to recognize her touch, wrapping around her like silk instead of the oppressive weight that was affecting the other patrons.
The tension in his shoulders eased slightly, and so of the uncertainty in his eyes gave way to sothing warr.
"You’re not doing it wrong," she said softly. "You’re just out of practice."
"Three centuries out of practice," he said ruefully.
"Then we’ll have to work on that," Mailah replied, then realized how forward that sounded.
Heat rose in her cheeks, but she didn’t pull her hand away.
The smile that spread across Grayson’s features was transformative—genuinely pleased and tinged with sothing that looked suspiciously like relief.
"You’d be willing to be patient with a reford demon who apparently doesn’t know how to order dessert without causing a scene?"
"I think I can manage that," she said, her own smile matching his.
For a mont, the chaos around them seed to fade into background noise.
The pull of his presence, the curious stares, even the hovering servers beca secondary to the connection sparking between them across the small table.
"Can I ask," Grayson said softly, his voice carrying genuine curiosity, "why you chose this place?"
Mailah’s hand stilled under his, and he could see sothing shift in her expression—a flicker of old pain quickly masked by careful composure.
"This was..." she said quietly, then hesitated as though weighing how much to reveal. "This was my mom’s favorite restaurant. Mine and Lailah’s, when we were little."
Grayson seed to understand the significance imdiately, his thumb tracing gentle circles across her knuckles in silent encouragent.
"We used to co here every Sunday after church," she continued, her voice growing softer with mory. "Mom would order the sa thing every ti—chicken parmigiana and a glass of house red wine that she’d make last the entire al. Lailah and I would fight over who got to sit next to her in the booth."
A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, though sadness lingered in her eyes. "She died when we were 10. Car accident. After that, we were sent to St. Catherine’s orphanage, and..." She shrugged, the gesture carrying the weight of years of separation and different paths.
"Different families adopted us within a few months of each other. We lost touch completely until months ago."
Grayson could see the carefully controlled pain in her expression, the way she’d learned to compress years of grief and abandonnt into clinical facts.
He recognized the defense chanism—he’d perfected it himself over centuries of emotional distance.
"I’m sorry," he said simply, aning it more than any elaborate consolation could have conveyed.
"It’s why I chose here," Mailah continued, seeming to find strength in his understanding. "I needed sowhere that was mine, not Lailah’s. Sowhere that reminded of who I was before all this supernatural chaos entered my life."
The vulnerability in her confession made sothing tighten in Grayson’s chest.
He lifted their joined hands and pressed a gentle kiss to her knuckles, a gesture so tender it made her breath catch. "Thank you for bringing here. For sharing this with ."
The warmth in his storm-blue-gray eyes made her feel seen.
Then Grayson’s expression shifted, his eyes focusing on sothing beyond her shoulder.
The warmth in his features was replaced by a wariness that made her pulse quicken with alarm.
"What is it?" she asked, starting to turn around.
"Don’t," he said quietly, his hand tightening slightly under hers. "Just... stay calm."
But it was too late. She’d already caught sight of the figure approaching their table, and her breath caught in her throat.
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