I sit down across from him in the chair the woman just vacated, being extra careful to hover over the seat so my ass doesn’t sink through it. I give him my stern stare. “Look, Mr. Knight. I’m gonna level with you. This is not good,” I tell him with a chastising shake of my head. “You’re handsome, you’re successful, you have sweet digs, you’re rich. But you are failing in the love department. Big fat F minus.”
He stares down at his wine with his arm draped over the edge of the table as his thumb lightly raps against the glass.
Surrounded by people in the crowded, posh restaurant, he suddenly looks incredibly lonely. It’s these small moments, when his guarded mask slips for just a second, that I think I see something else in Warren Knight that nobody else does. That maybe there’s something deeper going on under his handsome skin that made him this way. But then, his asshole mask slips right back into place, and that vulnerability is gone before I can latch onto it.
“There you are!”
The sudden voice scares me so badly that I jump up and almost fly right through the damn chandelier. If I had a corporeal heart, it would’ve beat right out of my chest.
Scowling, I fly back down to my partner. “Shit, you scared me!”
She doesn’t look sorry for startling me. In fact, she looks pretty mad.
Cupid CXVI stands there with her arms crossed and shakes her head at me. With her beautiful dark skin and her cupid number marked into her wrist, her short spiky pink hair, red feathered wings outstretched behind her, and bow and arrow in her hands, she looks like a pissed off love goddess.
Oh...right. She is.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” she reprimands.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling instantly guilty. I kind of got separated from her. And by that, I mean I purposely separated from her.
It’s not that One Hundred Sixteen is a drag to hang out with. Actually, she’s quite nice, and she’s a really good cupid. Her powers always work right, which is something I can’t say about myself.
Her Lust Breath is always the perfect hue of pink, and it instantly gets men hard and women wet. Her Flirt Touches are a thing of beauty too. One swipe of her finger, and people start spewing playful, naughty banter or go off to buy candy and flowers. And don’t even get me started on her success ratio for Love Arrow hits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her miss. I can’t even get my arrows to magically refill in my quiver like they’re supposed to.
No matter what I do, my cupid powers just don’t work right. Which really sucks, considering this is my afterlife job for all of eternity.
Just to see if something has changed in the past fifteen minutes, I lean over to a couple’s table and try to blow some Lust their way. A gross, grayish green puff escapes me, and instantly, their faces turn from mildly interested in one another, to full-blown disgust. Nope. Definitely not working right. The woman takes one look at him and starts to gag. Whoops.
My partner sighs and flies over, fixing my mishap by blowing some Lust that actually works. It’s perfect, of course, and the woman’s gagging turns to sighs of desire as she shifts her legs together. The guy instantly hardens beneath his slacks, and all is right in their world again.
“Thanks,” I grumble to my partner.
She turns to me with a pinched expression. “You aren’t supposed to leave without me.”
“I know. I really am sorry. I just…” I trail off, embarrassed, my fingers fidgeting over the little twirly buns in my hair. At least when I died, my hair looked good. It would’ve sucked to spend all of afterlife’s eternity with bed head.
My bright teal dress is nice too, and it really complements my red wings and pink hair that I inherited upon becoming a cupid. Still, I’m nothing compared to my partner, because even though she’s just wearing corduroy pants and an ‘80s band tee, she still is the epitome of cupid perfection.
We were assigned cupidity partners about two months ago, so she knows exactly what’s going on without me having to say it.
Her eyes flick over to the table beside us, and when her gaze lands on Knight, she sighs. “Really, Cupid Thirty?” she asks. “You’re following him again?”
I can’t even be mad at her insinuation that I follow him too much, because it’s true.