Page 77 of The Forsaken Heir
I eyed Elle questioningly. “Mind if I order for us? I’ve been here a few times.”
Elle flopped her menu down and relaxed her shoulders. “Yes, please. So much pressure. I’m sure I’ll like everything.”
“I can assure you, ma’am, there’s nothing bad on our menu,” the server said with a grin. “You’ll be happy no matter what.”
“We’ll start with a bottle of your house red, and for the appetizers, can we have an order of the elk sliders, as well as the crab dip?”
“Fantastic choices, sir,” the server said as he scribbled on his notepad.
“For the main, I’ll have the porterhouse, medium rare, with the sauteed trumpet mushrooms and the potato soufflé. For the lady, the twenty-four ounce ribeye, also medium rare, with the fried artichoke hearts and the potato
soufflé.”
“Oh my god, I’m starving,” Elle murmured, eliciting a chuckle from the server.
“We will take care of you, ma’am. No worries,” he said. “Any salads?”
“I think we’ll save room for dessert,” I said, handing him the menus.
“A man with priorities. I like it.” He winked at us as he left to place our orders.
For a few moments, we sat in silence, enjoying the faint piano music. The server returned with the wine and water glasses. He popped the cork and poured two glasses before setting down a bread basket on the table and vanishing again.
“This is really nice,” Elle said.
“It is. It was a rough day. I sort of figured this would be a good way to wind down.”
She took a sip of her wine. “You mean what we did earlier wasn’twinding down?”
I recalled the way her body had enveloped me, hugging my shaft as I thrust into her. “I would call that getting worked up, rather than winding down,” I said, lifting my glass to my lips.
An adorable shade of pink crept into her cheeks. “Fair point.”
“So, tell me about yourself,” I said, setting my glass down and picking up the roll. “We haven’t had time to really talk since I gave you that tour a few weeks ago.”
In all the stress of preparing for the gala, she and I hadn’t had more than a few moments alone. Delphine, Rasp, Vincent, Titus, and even my father had always been hovering around somewhere. What little time we had spent alone had been taken up with finalizing the millions of details for the gala. Those hours we’d spent wandering the estate, riding horses, and getting to know each other seemed a sweet and distant memory. I wanted to recapture that.
“What would you like to know?” Elle asked as she spread butter on her roll.
“What was your favorite class in school?”
“Really? That’s your question?”
“I have more,” I said, tossing a piece of bread in my mouth. “I figured we could start things off easy.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out as she stared up at the ceiling. “I suppose it was history.”
“History? Really? Why’s that? I always found it boring. Oh, also, did you go to a human school or one of the small shifter academies?”
“I went to a human school from the sixth grade. At that point, my parents already had their suspicions that I had no inner wolf. It wasn’t certain yet, and wouldn’t be until I hit puberty, but there were things thatshouldhave been happening that weren’t. Even then, they were worried I would be an embarrassment. They didn’t want me talking to their friends’ kids and ruining stuff for them.
“They moved me to a human school, and that sucked. Being the chunky new girl on the first day of fucking middle school? It was awful.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said. “It must be tough. I had private tutors, so I never experienced school life. I always glamorized it. You know how it is in movies and TV shows?”
Elle snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Super realistic. Thirty-year-old supermodel actors pretending to be high-school kids.” She waved a hand through the air. “Anyway, we were talking about classes. History. I liked it, especially when I started at the human school. It was fun to hear how they interpreted history compared to how we did. Shifters and fae, and to a lesser extent the rarer creatures, have done a brilliant job at staying hidden. There was no mention of the International Magic Treaty of 1034.Not a peep about The Great Wolf Civil War of the Middle Ages. That massive dragon battle in Russia in the early nineteen-hundreds? They all think that was some sort of asteroid impact or something. It was fun to listen to, and I like stories, so I remembered everything they said. I aced it all.”
The appetizers arrived, and I nodded my thanks to the server.
