Magical Midlife Dating (Leveling Up 2)

He slowed just enough to get traction, then we were on our way again, speed limits be damned.

I cracked an eye open. “I flap my arms because I’m dropping through the air without wings.”

“You shouldn’t think of arms as wings.”

“Yes, thank you. That hadn’t dawned on me.”

“Didn’t it?” He looked my way as we approached a glowing establishment with a large wagon wheel affixed to the outside. Steakhouse, I’d bet.

“You’re not one for sarcasm, huh?” I asked.

“No.”

I took a deep breath when he parked, his car easily the most sporty and upscale vehicle in the lot.

“Oh, I forgot to mention…” I climbed out of the car and steadied myself. “After dinner, we need to stop by the bar.”

He waited for me at the back of the car. “The one the bear owns?”

My heel caught a divot and I wobbled, clutching his arm, my fingers not able to wrap around his forearm, not even close. He stopped and let me regain my footing. “Sorry, heels and gravel do not mix. Austin’s bar. He’s the polar bear, yes.”

I wasn’t great at reading grunts, but he didn’t seem pleased.

“He found someone who escaped the attack yesterday,” I said.

He opened the door for me and waited for me to go in. A little hallway led to a scuffed-up wooden podium, currently unoccupied.

“Escaped?”

“Yeah. Apparently there was one more attacker that your guys didn’t grab.”

“Impossible. We’re very thorough.”

“He tracked down the guy.”

“I don’t know who he found, but it couldn’t have been from that battle. My people assured me the threat had been extinguished.”

“Well…I mean…they weren’t lying. The guy took off, so the threat had been extinguished. It’s just that not all the attackers had been extinguished with it.”

The host, who would have given Sasquatch a run for his money with his thick beard and shoulder-length hair, showed up at the podium in a black vest with a white shirt layered underneath. He lifted his eyebrows at us.

“Stavish,” Damarion said, his arm encircling my shoulders possessively.

The awkward feeling of a stranger being too close crept through me, but I ignored it as the silent host led us to our table. We sat in the back, the table built for two, our menus laid sideways because of their size and the little wagon holding the condiments between us. The host nodded once and walked away.

“Real chatty, that guy. I kept waiting for him to shut up.” I opened the enormous menu, the words big and spaced far apart just to fill it all up. “This is a man-sized menu, huh?”

Silence greeted me. A quick peek told me Damarion was still there, his fingers gripping the edge of the menu and the rest of him hidden behind it. He wasn’t much of a joker, clearly. Pity. Hot guys were so much hotter when they had a sense of humor.

“So…” I hunted for small talk as a strange feeling washed over me. I couldn’t place it, but it persisted. “Do all the guys you came with live in the same town as you?”

“No. None of them. I arrived with them, but I did not come with them.”

“Oh, really? How do you know them? Like…how’d you meet up if you didn’t come with them?” Because they’d clearly known one another at least a little.

I was still trying to tap into that feeling, to pin it down, as it were. Buoyancy was as close as I could get. It made me feel lighter than normal, almost like I might drift into the sky. This couldn’t be normal. Damarion was hot, but he wasn’t hot enough to make me float.

“We all felt the summons, and I met them on the way.”

“Mmm. Mhm.”

My thoughts turned to the attack yesterday. They’d been magical workers. One had gotten away, a mediocre mage, and if he’d escaped, wasn’t it possible a higher-caliber mage might have gotten away too?

I glanced around at the couples and families, spying nothing out of the ordinary. No one glanced up out of curiosity or from darker intentions. No one within my view was sitting alone.

In fairness, why would someone who was out to cause me harm or capture me make me feel as light as a feather? What would be the point?

“How’d you meet them, then?” I asked absently, taking in more details of the scene, just to be safe.

We’d been given a fairly private table, with a wall behind Damarion’s chair, plus a half wall directly to my right. Behind me, four of the five tables were taken, two couples, a group of three with a young girl, and a group of older ladies.

“What’s the matter?”

I lowered my enormous menu, thinking about who was on the other side of that wall, when my stomach fluttered and the feeling died away, like getting over nervousness.

I frowned, pausing. Maybe it had been the adrenaline from the car ride mixed with nervousness. It hadn’t felt threatening, in any case.