When I curled into the crook of Zero’s arm again, he pulled me closer even though he was asleep.
It almost felt like I belonged.
Chapter 23
“What are you doing?”
“Performing an arcane ritual.”
“Am I interrupting? I can go back inside.”
“You can stay if you’d like.” Vandal held his flaming twig to the sticks of split wood in the firepit, trying to get them to catch. As the fire began to spread, he took a sip of his drink and spat the alcohol on the fire, making it blaze up. “Be forewarned, this is going to be pathetic and asinine.”
I settled in the chair next to him, getting the feeling he wouldn’t mind the company. Zero came out of the house, and his gaze sought out mine, then he saw what Vandal was doing and silently joined us, taking the chair on Vandal’s other side.
“You’ve seen this often enough, Zero. You don’t have to stay.”
“I’ll be here every time you need to do it.”
“Maybe this is the last time.” He took another sip and swallowed it. Ice clinked in his glass, the only sound other than the wind and the waves, and the crackle of the fire.
“I wish you would have come to get me.”
“It’s stupid. There’s no point in wasting your time with this every time I publish a book—especially with you chugging toward your deadline.” He drained the last few fingers of alcohol from his glass.
“He doesn’t deserve this from you.”
“At least I don’t feel so outnumbered this time. He’s dead, and I’m here with the two of you—my critique partner and my biggest fan.” He smiled slyly, his gaze sliding to me, as though expecting me to argue that I wasn’t a fan of his at all. But I was, of course, possibly his biggest fan when it came to his writing and tied for biggest fan when it came to him as a human being. Even when I wanted to smack him.
“So what are we doing?” I asked.
“I’m getting you a hoodie,” Zero declared, unfolding from the chair and heading back into the house. Vandal glanced over to me, then leaned closer and kissed my knee where he’d scraped it playing rough with me a couple of days before. The feel of his mouth on my abused skin made me shiver. He parted my thighs and pushed up the hem of my sundress, then ran a finger over the thin fabric of my panties. His mouth fastened over the tender skin inside my thigh and he nursed at it, sucking and tugging with his hot mouth until he’d left an angry hickey there, and I was squirming with arousal.
A slushy drink appeared, hovering in front of my face, and I took it from Zero’s hand as he draped a hoodie across my shoulders. How long had he been watching?
Vandal left me interested and exposed as he added two small logs to the blaze, his attention fully back on what he was doing—or so I thought until I tried to push the hem of my dress back down and his hand shot out to stop me.
“It’s too late to hide that wet spot you’ve made in your panties.”
I said something rude, and both of them turned away from the fire to look at me.
“I know what I’m doing when this is finished,” Zero murmured.
“Getting back to work while I punish and screw a horny little girl?”
“I thought I’d give you a hand with that—or a dick, as it were.”
“How about you watch me beat her ass for using such shocking language, and then you can go write and listen to her sobbing as I fuck her?”
“Make sure she doesn’t scream too much this time,” Zero said, chuckling. “Someone is going to call the cops on us one of these days.”
“Out here? Unlikely.” He laughed. “Maybe I’ll gag her first.”
“I can gag her with my dick. It’ll be less work.”
“She’s wearing panties. I’m sure those will do nicely.”
I cleared my throat, interrupting them before I had a little orgasm right then and there just listening to them brainstorming plans for me. “So is this a religious ritual?”
Zero chuckled. “Yes. He’s making a sacrifice to his one and only god.”
“And a cruel and capricious god he was.” Vandal dumped the dregs of his drink into the fire, watching it flare and hiss as the ice cubes melted almost instantly.
Eventually, when the fire was toward the obnoxious side of large, Vandal got to his feet. “Here you go, Dad. Let me save you the trouble, since you don’t have the hands to do this anymore.” He took an advanced copy of his new book out of his pocket and tossed it unceremoniously onto the blaze.
I yelped in surprise and horror, my hand outstretched as though I could lunge in and catch it even though I was nowhere near close enough.
“Why?” I cried, wringing my hands to stop myself from reaching in to rescue the rapidly curling pages. Fire licked along the heat-shimmering words. What a waste.
“I gave him a copy of every book I ever wrote, and he burned them all,” Vandal told me. “He considered my work garbage.”
Anger flared through me. “What did he write? I want to buy copies so I can burn them.”
“My father never thought his work was good enough to submit—he was a purist and thought inferior work like mine had no business being published. He said reading it would make people dumber.”
Zero handed Vandal a fresh drink he’d had at the ready, and supportively squeezed his shoulder. It felt like a funeral.
“Wow. How easy is it to judge someone else’s work and never put your own out there?” I snapped. “How dare he try to stop you from publishing my favorite books!”
I got to my feet and looked at the fire as though his father’s soul was burning in it. “John Stokes, you’re an asshole.”
Vandal gave a startled laugh. “Are you talking to me or my father?”
“Your father! How could he do that to his own son?” I snapped, plunking my glass down on a side table because my outrage was making it slosh onto my hand. “Why are everybody’s parents assholes except mine?”
“We haven’t made them proud,” Zero said.
“That’s their problem. They don’t get to tell you what to do with your life.”
“No, they don’t,” Zero agreed. “But I think Vandal is the only one here that still carries around the weight of his father’s unmet expectations.”
“My grandmother was proud of me,” Vandal mused. “It made all the difference in the world.”
We all sat down again as Vandal continued to stare morosely into the fire.
“I think this is the last time I’m doing this.”
“The last time you write a book or the last one you burn for your father?” Zero asked.
I gaped at Vandal. “That better not be your last book, you bastard.”
He raised his brows and patted his knees, as though I were a cat he was trying to lure over. Hesitantly, I went to him. He pulled me into his lap and rested his hand on my thigh, under my dress. His hand was big and warm, and felt possessive.
“Would it be the end of the world for you if I didn’t write anything else?” His breath smelled like alcohol, and his gaze was mellow now rather than the usual sharp, sarcastic gleam.