“Boots have a certain cachet. They’re the favored footwear of self-respecting serial killers. What else is Jamison going to wear? Penny loafers? Crocs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something more athletic? It would be quieter.”
“You didn’t notice me standing at your door.”
True, but I’d been distracted and busy. “I’m in the middle of writing an intense scene here. I wouldn’t notice you if you were the hottest guy on earth.”
“Really.” It wasn’t a question at all, from the look on his face. He had taken it as an insult. “So who do you think is hotter than me? Zero? You like them pretty?”
“Are we really having this conversation? What do you care who I find attractive? You don’t even like me.”
He snorted, more of an animal sound than a human one. His dark gaze turned back to my document so slowly I wasn’t sure if he was planning to read it or take me by surprise and…I don’t know…bite me?
I wouldn’t put it past him.
He scrolled up the screen quite a bit, then started reading. I cringed through most of the ordeal, hyperfocused on his every sound and shift in facial expression. At the end of the paragraph I’d been struggling with he slowly shut the laptop while I waited anxiously for his verdict.
“And?”
“Give me a minute to gather my thoughts, will you?”
I groaned and flopped back against my pillow, leaving me completely defenseless when he turned to brace his arms to either side of me, trapping me beneath him.
I stared up at him, my breath caught in my throat.
“Close your eyes, little monster.”
Close my eyes? I glared up at him, not sure if I should trust him.
“You let me lock you in my basement, remember? You’ll survive closing your eyes for a minute. You have a safeword.”
Was I willing to give him the satisfaction of admitting I was too nervous to close my eyes in his presence? It did seem sort of ridiculous, all things considered.
I allowed my eyelids to slide shut, even though a spike of adrenaline pumped through me, making me shake with apprehension and a nasty, humiliating desire. He took my wrists and pinned them above my head. His grip was too tight, and I whimpered. He chuckled, his coffee-scented breath caressing my face with his amusement.
“Poor Jenny. You can’t help but want me.” He used my main character’s name, confirming this wasn’t he and I, but Jennifer and Bastien. “You keep asking me to send you home, but I can hear all the silent ways you’ve been begging me to cut you.” His blade stroked my face, sliding along the line of my jaw to my neck the way a lover would use his fingers.
Terror leeched through me as I wondered whether this was the time he’d lose control and slit my throat. I knew, ultimately, it was what he wanted to do, but then the game would be over, and he’d have to find a new toy.
My brain screamed in a cacophony of sensation and feeling, the terror too much to bear. I cried out, and he groaned, the ugly sounds discordant and mingling. Symbiotic. Impossible to tell where he started and I ended. Life and death, male and female, fear and desire. Maybe those last two weren’t opposites after all—just two sides of the same coin.
Every breath I drew was a breath he’d exhaled, his evil invading my lungs, my very pores. Was it possible that he was going to inhale some of my goodness—that it would touch him? Or was he the tainted smoke that rolled through the world, seeping into everything? Ruining everything.
I could feel myself slick with desire. What was wrong with me? I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want this man to snuff out every hope I had for the future.
“You want this even more than I do,” he accused, but there was no good way to deny his statement without sounding like I was protesting too much. I didn’t want this. I didn’t.
Why would I want to be murdered?
Was Bastian talking to Jenny, or was Vandal talking to Sadie?
I opened my eyes to look at him, but his gaze was fastened on my mouth and the blade of the pocketknife he had pressed to my bottom lip. He was using the flat edge of the tip, but his cock was hard and threatening against my leg.
Maybe this wasn’t about me or about Jenny. Maybe this was about his own book.
His gaze caressed its way up to my eyes, his own fathomless and black.
“Sorry.”
For a guy who was apparently sorry, he didn’t let me go, and he didn’t move the knife, but his gaze dipped back down to it and turned dangerously unfocused, as though he wasn’t quite in control of what he was doing. Gradually, the knife moved away, and he laid it aside on the nightstand without his other hand letting go of my wrists, all of his concentration still on me.
“Have you ever cut anyone?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Have you ever been cut?” he replied. I thought at first it was rhetorical, but his attention was hanging on my anticipated response.
“No, but it’s not on my list of hard limits as long as I trust the dominant, and they can control themselves.”
He swallowed hard and leaned in to kiss me, but then bit me before letting go. I hissed with pain and shoved him with my freed hands, more than half hoping it would piss him off and goad him into doing something rough.
“Your scene is fine, but you’re overthinking it. When you’re writing something that emotional try closing your eyes while you type—that is, if you can type without looking. It helps me, anyway. Maybe try dictating it.” He picked up his boots. “Come to my office, and I’ll give you my old Dictaphone.”
I rose from the bed feeling like the newest spring lamb, my legs shaking and threatening to give out. I brushed my skirt down to make sure I wasn’t having a wardrobe malfunction and followed him from the room, his stocking feet quiet in the quiet house. Then again, his booted feet were usually quiet too.
Maybe I could convince him to invest in indoor-only shoes.
Wow, that was probably the first girlfriend-ish thought I’d had about the man. I probably shouldn’t let myself have more of those.
We walked into the office, and I stood there a moment watching Vandal search his desk drawers. There was a rapid clicking sound in the room, and I realized Zero was sitting on the floor with his back against the same wall as the doorway. The man worked in the oddest places sometimes. He didn’t look up, only continued to type, his dark brows locked in a serious line. If I had to guess, I’d say he was in the middle of writing an action scene and was on a roll.
Vandal laid the recorder on the wooden desktop, then sauntered around to me. What was he up to with that gleam in his eyes?
“Do you remember the discussion we had the other day about head hopping in your story?” He hitched a hip up on his desk, and I realized this whole scenario had schoolgirl fetish written all over it. If my principal in high school had been anywhere near so hot, I would have been a very bad girl.
“Yes, sir,” I answered automatically. I really tried not to fall into automatic submissive mode with him, but he triggered it in me, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.
“In the three paragraphs I read you switched points of view twice.”
“I did?”
“If you’re writing first person she has no idea what he’s thinking, does she? She also can’t see herself. All the back and forth is giving me a headache.”