I relaxed, letting the cool leech into my skin. As much as Vandal was easy to dislike, he had saved me from what had probably been a closer call than I’d wanted to admit.
“I don’t know. I started when I was maybe sixteen? Not like Van. He’s been writing pretty much since he was old enough to hold a pencil. For me, I was all about reading comics until then.”
“What happened to make you start writing?”
“I got tired of not having any control over the storylines. It’s one thing not to have any control over real life, but not getting to decide how a story plays out was starting to make me…disgruntled.”
“Yeah, I feel that way with some authors, but you guys usually get it right.”
“Usually,” he repeated sardonically.
“Yup. Usually.”
He arched a brow at me, looking hot and bossy.
“How about you? When did you start writing?” he asked, treading water and looking back at the table where we’d been working. Vandal had reappeared, and was typing furiously, as though his fingers couldn’t keep up with his mind. I’d always imagined him writing slowly, pondering each word choice, but in reality, he wrote as if his brain was on fire and only getting the words down would keep the blaze under control.
“I don’t know. Probably around the same age as you.” I ran my palms over the surface of the water, letting it glide between my fingers. “I only wrote fanfic before this, and I hadn’t shown it to anyone.”
“You’re not in a critique group or anything?”
“I’m not good enough for that.”
“Yes, you are.” He smiled at me then rubbed at his forehead. “Or you could just keep writing as a casual hobby and enjoy your life rather than living with crippling self-doubt.”
I laughed. “I have crippling self-doubt anyway, so what the hell? Maybe I’ll start writing seriously, since I’m stuck here. I can’t imagine lying around doing nothing until Vandal’s book is ready to publish. I guess I could spend all my time reading, but I feel like I need to get to work.”
“Not a big fan of vacations?”
“I’ve never had a vacation—not since I was a kid and summers seemed to last forever. As soon as I was old enough to get a job, I worked all summer, every summer.”
“Your family doesn’t have much money?” He floated onto his back, staring up at the sky, his body haloed by ripples of water and serene despite the welts still covering his skin. Some of them had already bruised.
“Not a lot of family in my family,” I admitted. “I have my aunt, but she’s only a few years older than I am, and she was in school when I was younger. We lived off her student loans, and I did what I could to help out.” I needed to ask Vandal if I could call her every once in a while so she didn’t worry.
“She was good to you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it when it comes to family,” he pointed out, sounding like he spoke from experience.
“Do you think you’re going to hit your word count today?” I asked anxiously before I could stop myself.
He bobbed upright and grimaced at me.
“Are you suggesting I should stop goofing off?”
“I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me.”
He swam around me, not close enough to touch, but close enough I felt the current of displaced water glide over my bare skin. “Hey, maybe he could be your word count dominant too.”
“No offense, but he’s about the last man on the planet I’d want to play those sorts of games with. My taste in partners does fluctuate, but I’ve never been into jerks.”
Zero chuckled. “Maybe he’ll grow on you.”
“Like a fungus? No thanks.”
“He’s good in bed.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
He grinned, his gaze sliding from my eyes to my lips, then away.
Had he just checked me out? I should probably make sure to avoid encouraging him if I wanted to avoid being a home-wrecker—if there was, indeed, a home to wreck.
Chapter 8
“Let me see it.” The deep voice startled me.
My head jerked up. Vandal? I hadn’t even heard him coming up the stairs let alone down the hall. I snapped Zero’s old laptop closed and hugged it to my chest.
“If you want to write during the period of our agreement, you are required to let me see your work—otherwise you’re not going to have access to so much as a scrap of paper.” He was glaring, but so was I.
“Even if I was copying you word for word, I’d have no way of publishing my book before you publish yours, so you could just sue me for plagiarism. Yours will be out first no matter what.”
He was still holding out his hand and making the universal gesture for ‘hand it over.’ When I didn’t move, he lunged toward me, grabbed the laptop and yanked it out of my arms. The cord unplugged and arced up into the air, landing on the bed spread beside me with a thump. I launched myself across the bed to grab it back, but one venomous look from his dark eyes kept me from making an actual attempt. He cracked open the laptop in front of me but walked away as I scrambled after him.
“Hey! Give that back! How am I supposed to know you’re not going to steal my ideas?”
“You only wish you were that good.”
He stalked down the stairs, with me trailing behind like an irate puppy nipping at his heels.
“There’s no reason to be so rude, you know.”
“There’s no reason to be polite, either.”
He sat down at his office desk, and I skidded to a halt on the hardwood floor, my socks not giving me enough traction to stop in a more dignified way.
I was angry and breathing hard, but the man didn’t care. He flipped open the laptop, acting as if he were alone in the room.
Hands clenched, I stood there, staring smoking holes into the top of his head with my imaginary laser vision while he ignored me and read. This felt far more invasive than when Zero had read the paper version, but then again Zero had asked rather than yanking my work away from me.
A couple of minutes passed, and he didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash in reaction to what he was reading.
At some point reality tiptoed in.
Holy shit. My favorite author was reading my story. My depraved story.
Would it go against our signed agreement for me to walk into the lake behind the house and drown myself? I’d never been so humiliated in my life.
He grunted and shifted in his chair, cocking his head as though really considering my words rather than just skimming his eyes over the page to irritate me.
“You can see I’m not copying you,” I said, sticking my hand out the way he had upstairs, as though there was any hope he would politely hand it back to me.
He shooed me away with a wave of his hand and scrolled down the document, chewing at his bottom lip, his dark eyes glittering and unreadable. I dropped my hand to my side. There was no point in waiting there for him to obey me. He wasn’t the obeying type.
“You really don’t have to read that,” I said, my voice weird and thin.
“You used the word terrified twice in the same paragraph on page four.”