Trik shook his head. “I can understand why,” he turned to look at her and she had finally dropped her hands from her fac e. He smiled at her as he spoke. “I feel very protective of her as well.” He looked back at her dad and the smile was gone and his face was serious. “I assure you Mr. Tate, I will treat her with respect and I will keep her safe.”

Cassie’s dad stood and everyone followed suit. He held his hand out to once again shake Trik’s hand.

“Thank you. It was very nice to meet you, Trik. Have a good time and please be safe.”

Cassie took Trik by the hand and pulled him out of the door before her dad decided to ask Trik to pull out his wallet to see if there was a condom in it.

~

“What did you think?” Sylvia asked William after shutting the door as Trik and Cassie drove off.

He narrowed his eyes in thought and rubbed his chin. “He seems a lot older than eighteen, but doesn’t look older. I think he was telling me the truth about respecting her. He won’t touch her without her permission.”

“I have to agree. The way he looks at her, like she is the only thing in his world and more precious than the most beautiful diamond.”

“The question is, is that a good thing or not?” He asked her.

“They are young,” Sylvia agreed.

“We’ll see how tonight goes,” William said. “Heck, she might have a horrible time and hate him by the end of the night.”

She shook her head at her husband, “I don’t think Cassie could hate anyone.”

“Everyone has their breaking point Sylvia, you know that.”

~

“That wasn’t too bad,” Trik told Cassie as they drove, to where Cassie didn’t have a clue.

“Trik, he asked you about your sex life.”

“Or the lack thereof,” he interjected, which earned him a fist in the side.

“He asked you if you understood bra sizing. What exactly would you consider too bad?” She asked, obviously still very embarrassed by her father’s actions.

“Well it could have been worse.”

“No I don’t think so,” she said shaking her head.

“What if he had asked me to label pictures of sexual positions?”

Cassie slapped her hands over her ears. “You did not just say that. I am going to totally ignore that it even came from your mouth.”

Trik laughed and pulled one of her hands away. “Okay I’ll conduct myself in a more gentlemanly manner.”

She lowered her other hand cautiously.

“Or what if he would have asked….”

“STOP! Not another word.”

“Okay, okay,” he relented.

“So where’d you get the fancy car?” Cassie asked, changing the subject, as she sunk into the rich leather seats of the BMW.

“I’m not without my resources,” Trik winked.

Her eyes widened as she asked. “You didn’t steal it did you?”

Trik looked at her from the corner of his eye and then back to the road. “Cassie, I’ve been around for quite a while, surely you don’t think I haven’t the money to purchase a car.”

Cassie shrugged. “Dude, you work for an evil elf King hell bent on taking over the world. I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to consider that you might have illegally procured a vehicle.”

“Okay I concede your point.” He glanced at her then a crooked smile appeared. “What’s with the big vocabulary? Procured?”

“I’m just trying to keep up,” she told him, “one minute you are throwing out slang with the best of them and the next you sound like Wilfred.”

“Who’s Wilfred?”

“You know, Batman’s butler.”

Trik laughed and butterflies danced in her stomach at the joy that shone on his face.

“You mean Alfred?”

Cassie’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know that?”

“I’m seriously beginning to be insulted, beautiful. You think that just because I’m old…”

“Ancient,” she interrupted.

He frowned at her. “Fine, ancient, and from another race, you think that I don’t know anything about your world.”

“Do you watch a lot of movies?”

“I have a human friend that I’ve spent time with and he often wants to sit and watch movies. He calls it male bonding.”

Cassie smiled. “Do you like movies?”

Trik thought about it. “I guess some of them. I’m amazed that they create such worlds in their movies but can’t fathom that they might actually exist.”

“We are often scared of what we don’t understand and what we don’t understand we often chalk up to imagination, not reality,” she said.

Trik reached over for her hand and brought it to his lips. He placed a kiss tenderly in the center of her palm. “Sometimes you seem so very young, and then you go and say something like that and I wonder if you too have been waiting for me as long as I have for you.”

They drove in silence, lights from the other cars shined into theirs and Cassie watched as each car illuminated Trik’s face for brief moments in time and each time she was caught breathless by him. She finally tore her eyes from him and began to pay attention to where they were. Her eyes widened as they pulled into the parking lot of her dad’s building.

“What are we doing here?” She asked.