Ethan let go of my hand, and I found myself turning my head toward him, hoping he would kiss me. His lips were shiny from the butter, and I knew I would practically drown in the taste of them. Lips parted, he leaned in to me.

But before his lips could touch mine, a piece of popcorn bounced off the tip of his nose. We both turned to look behind us.

I hadn’t noticed Finn buying popcorn—somehow, that seemed like an odd thing for a Fae Knight to do—but he was holding up another kernel in warning and giving us a stern look. I guess he hadn’t been able to see what Ethan was doing before the almost-kiss, or we’d probably be buried in popcorn by now.

My cheeks heated in a blush, but Ethan just laughed softly and leaned back in his seat. I don’t suppose the popcorn missiles could have stopped him from kissing me if he really wanted to, but they did kind of spoil the mood.

Just as well, I reminded myself. I’d let Ethan overrule my common sense before, and I’d been burned for it. He claimed he was genuinely into me, but I still had trouble believing it. A guy like him had no trouble attracting girls way prettier—and more willing to put out—than me. It didn’t make sense for him to want to date me of all people. Unless he had ulterior motives.

Once upon a time, I’d thought of myself as a relatively ordinary girl, though my alcoholic mom had made it impossible for me to be as ordinary as I would have liked. I’d gotten fed up with her drinking and run away from home, coming to Avalon—the only place where Faerie and the mortal world intersect—to meet my Fae father. That was when I’d discovered I was a Faeriewalker—a rare individual who could travel freely between Faerie and the mortal world, with the added “perk” of being able to bring magic into the mortal world and technology into Faerie. The last Faeriewalker before me had died like seventy-five years ago, and I’d found myself the helpless rope in a game of political tug of war. With Ethan and his father on one end of that rope.

So it was a good thing Finn was acting as chaperone as well as bodyguard. The last thing I needed was to fall for Ethan, no matter how tempting he was. Not when I couldn’t be sure what he really wanted from me.

I spent the rest of the movie fending off Ethan’s subtle advances. His eyes sparkled with humor as I glared at him, and I realized it had become a game to him. What could he get away with? What could he do that Finn wouldn’t see? I might have been offended by his refusal to take no for an answer, if I weren’t so aware of the mixed signals I was sending him. Yeah, I fended him off—but he couldn’t help but notice that it always seemed to take me a while to get around to it.

“You’re being a jerk,” I told him at one point as I grabbed his wrist and moved his hand off my thigh. My upper thigh. My voice was a little too breathy to be convincing, and I’d let his hand move way higher than I’d intended to.

His arm—which remained steadfastly around my shoulders—gave me a squeeze. “I’m being a perfect gentleman,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to.”

Yeah, well, that was sort of the problem. I wanted things I had absolutely no right to want. Or at least that weren’t sensible for me to want. And everything I let him get away with gave him that much more reason to take another shot at it every time I shut him down.

By the end of the movie, I was so turned on it was a minor miracle I hadn’t started tearing my clothes off in public. If Finn hadn’t been back there, I’d have had to rely on my own willpower, and who knows what stupid things I’d have done. I had a feeling I was in way over my head with Ethan, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

We walked out of the theater hand-in-hand. I’m sure Ethan would have walked me home if he could, but I was currently living in a secret underground safe house in the heart of the mountain on which the city of Avalon is built. You could count on one hand the number of people who knew where it was, and Ethan wasn’t on the list.

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles as we stood under the protection of the marquee. A gentle rain was falling, the cobblestone streets shining from the reflected glow of the street lamps.

Ethan let go of my hand, and I immediately missed the warmth of his touch as he helped me into my raincoat. He looked over my head, presumably at Finn, who was hovering behind me.

“Will you flatten me if I kiss her good night?”

“Probably,” Finn said drily. He wasn’t much of a talker.

I could have called Finn off just then. He wasn’t my dad, and “chaperone” wasn’t really in his job description. I don’t think he much liked Ethan, but I was pretty sure he liked me, and a kiss good night was relatively innocent. But I’d let Ethan get away with more than I should already, and it was time to put my foot down.

“This isn’t a date,” I told him for the millionth time. “You don’t get to kiss me good night even if Finn wouldn’t flatten you.”

Ethan flashed me a rueful, if somewhat skeptical, smile. “Right,” he said. “I keep forgetting. Not a date. Got it.” He reached out and pulled up the hood of my coat. His finger “accidentally” stroked the side of my face as he pulled away. I couldn’t suppress my shiver of pleasure.

“Maybe we can fix that next time,” he suggested. “Wanna be my date for Kimber’s party?”

Ethan’s sister, Kimber, was my best friend. Her birthday party was on Friday night, and I was looking forward to it more than I could say.