The beep, beep of the game behind me regained my attention as I submersed myself in the world of Skyrim. I couldn’t tell you the number of hours I had invested in this game. It was probably not something I should go around boasting about, but I totally killed at this game. I wanted to impress Chase with my gaming skills.
He was utterly unaffected. If anything, he bitched and complained more than a girl on the rag when I turned on the Xbox. I honestly think he was jealous of the little black box with the neon green X. If he was given the opportunity, I didn’t doubt that he would smash it to smithereens—he was into the whole Hulk smash.
There was one thing that had definitely not changed. Chase could still push my buttons like no one else in this hemisphere. He excelled at it.
“Angel.” He nudged me with his shoulder.
“Hmm,” I mindlessly replied, eyes glued to the TV.
“I’m bored.”
“Go jump off a bridge.”
He snorted. “Let’s go out. I need some air.”
My fingers tapped, tapped away on the controller. “You know where the door is.” Yeah, I could be such a shitty girlfriend, but he caught me right in the middle of an important battle. You can’t do that to a girl. It was like gamer code.
His fingers brushed the back of my neck, and I had to bite my lip as he successfully destroyed my concentration. “I was thinking like a date. You know, me and you, maybe some dinner that isn’t frozen from your fridge.”
He missed my mom’s cooking. So did I. She had been picking up extra shifts at the station for the holidays, which meant I had been fending for myself. Chase was not impressed with my cooking skills, and I couldn’t blame him. The chef gene had sadly skipped a generation.
I tried not to be swayed by the lazy circles he was tracing on my neck. “No dice,” I mumbled, angling my neck away from his skilled fingers. “I’m almost at the end of this mission.”
I barely had time to register that he was no longer touching me when the TV screen promptly went black. I blinked, stunned, before I became the queen of bitchiness. “What the flippin’ hell, Chase! I am going to kill you and then serve you to the hounds for dinner.” I jumped to my feet, breathing fire just like the dragon I had been about to slay. I guess I would just slay a different kind of dragon.
He stood in the corner grinning like a shithead with the cord swinging from his hand. There was a very good chance that I was going to choke him with that cord. “Game time is up.”
“God, you are like a needy dog, begging for attention.”
“Let’s go. I’m starving.” In a flash, he was standing in front of me.
I never got used to how fast he moved. With me he never put up any pretense of being normal, he was just himself. Secretly, I loved that he didn’t pretend with me. It made what we had more real. “I just bet you are,” I said, unable to hold onto my irritation when he stared down at me with that gleam of trouble in his eyes.
He gave me one of his sexy brow lifts. “Is that an innuendo for something else? ‘Cuz I am totally down for some dessert before the main course.”
Completely betraying my anger, my eyes shifted to his lips. His tongue darted out, and I knew that I had been caught red-handed ogling the jerk, especially when the corner of those lips began to twitch. “Who can turn away dessert?” I retorted. Two could play this game, and Chase and I thrived on dangerous games.
His head dipped as I put my hands on his chest, slowly winding them around his neck. I made sure to brush my body up against his and was rewarded with the spike of gold that appeared in his eyes.
Score one for me.
He nipped at my lips and then grabbed my hand. A devilish grin spread on his face. “Dinner first.”
“Wuss,” I mumbled, pushing my auburn hair out of my face.
He paused at the door, barely giving me time to put on my shoes. “Are you attacking my manhood?”
I rolled my eyes. “As if I could.”
He took me to one of those quiet and quaint Chinese restaurants tucked into a strip mall. The ones where you would never know they were there unless someone told you. I ordered a kitty-cocktail with a red umbrella and a sword spear of cherries. Chase snickered as I sucked off one of the sweet cherries. “Don’t get any ideas,” I warned, eyeing him warily in the dim lighting.
His mystical eyes darkened. “Too late. Carry out?” he asked.
I swung my legs under the table. “Not a chance. You dragged me out here and now I am going to enjoy it. Every. Last. Bite.”
His hand reached across the table, weaving our fingers together. Dinner with Chase was like being on display. He drew all kinds of attention, from leers to sexual invitations. I found it maddening and annoying at the same time. For his sake, I tried to ignore the stares from the table beside ours, the open gawking from our hostess, and the gagging flirtations from the waitress.
“Anyway,” I added. “I thought we were on a no dessert diet?”
Thank God it was fairly dark and secluded inside. His eyes began to glow. “Under candlelight and soft Asian music, I’m finding it increasingly hard to remember why we’re not supposed to give in to those urges.”
I swallowed.