Dinner goes well

Soft music is playing, something jazz-adjacent, just loud enough to help muffle the various conversations so that while the place is crowded the acoustics and lighting make it feel intimate. Colin came back to take your orders and deliver an appetizer “compliments of the Chef.” Now the two of you are noshing on something delicious involving quail and blueberry(?) sauce on a bed of something you can’t pronounce.

“Can I ask a favor,” you say in a light voice.

“Only one?” Diana answers in a matching tone.

“For now. Seeing how it’s just us, would you be willing to take off the glasses so I can actually see your face?”

She thinks about it for a moment (or pretends to? not sure) and nods, “I suppose that’s a reasonable request.” She removes the glasses and the difference is instantaneous – where a second ago you were looking at an attractive woman, now you are sitting next to an exquisitely beautiful one. “Better?” she asks playfully.

“Stunning,” you manage to say without drooling.

She nods acknowledging the compliment. “Thank you. You clean up surprisingly well yourself by the way. That’s a nice suit.”

“Thank you. I don’t get to wear it very often but I like it.”

“It suits you.” You have no idea if the pun is intended or not. “No tie tho?”

You cringe as you reach for your wine glass, “Ugh, no. I can’t stand feeling like I’m being choked.”

Diana raises her glass for a sip, her face a study in innocence. “No ****. Noted.”

Your wine goes down the wrong pipe and you spend a minute coughing like an idiot.

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a weird way of flirting?”

“Is that what I’m doing?” she asks innocently.

Colin chooses that moment to arrive with your entrees. Further conversation is delayed while you sample the dishes and make yum yum noises.

The food is amazing, almost as impressive as your date. You make assorted small talk, trade Worst First Date stories (hers involves an extra-dimensional imp and the God of Love), movies you’ve seen, music you like, and she even tells you about her first trip to New Genesis. She is surprisingly easy to talk to, and if she’s bearing any kind of grudge for your previous night’s shenanigans, she doesn’t show it.

You wait until the plates have been cleared away before addressing the elephant in the room. “So. At some point we need to talk about the other night.”

Diana takes a sip of wine. “We do.”

“I’ve been a little **** to bring it up because, well I’ve been having such a nice time.”

“As have I,” the heroine says with only a hint of surprise in her voice.

“This is the best date I’ve had in…ever really.” She doesn’t agree but nor does she disagree. “But. You said you would think about what happened.”

“I did,” she replies, her even tone giving nothing away. You pause to see if she wants to say more but she stays silent, studying her wineglass.

“And?” You can play terse too.

She sets her wineglass down deliberately. “I have been bound before. And I never found it in any way arousing. Perhaps because I was always so focused on escaping. The stakes were usually too high to let myself…feel it.”

“But the stakes were lower with me? I should probably feel slighted but I can’t.”

She makes a small scoffing noise, “You should take no offense that I did not judge you on par with Ares or Darkseid or the Joker. You weren’t looking to blow up the city or conquer the world or hurt anyone really, not even me. It was obvious the only threat from you was sexual.” She looks up at you and her face hardens, “Which is not to minimize the wrongness of it!”

“Of course not,” you nod in agreement but not in apology.

She looks away again, “And then you started asking me questions no one had ever asked before and the lasso **** me to think about it, and I couldn’t lie to myself about how I felt.”

She pauses to take a sip of wine and you resist the urge to joke if this is making her hot – don’t interrupt the lady when she’s on a roll.

“And as furious as I was, that anger only fed the sensation more. I had never felt anything like it.” She gives you a conspiratorial grin, “A new and interesting idea for an immortal.”

You return the grin, acknowledging the callback. She pauses for a long moment, then meets your gaze, her blue eyes practically glowing with hunger. “And I want more.”