Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(19)

“Oh yeah? Where at?”

She laughed. “Cluck This. The bartenders wear chicken hats.”

“Hey, don’t knock it. A job’s a job. Anyway, they do have pretty good chicken. You been writing at all?”

She looked surprised. “Not really. I’ve been using Millie’s computer since mine met with an unfortunate demise.”

“Just be glad you didn’t follow.”

It might have been the wrong thing to say. Saylor’s clear green eyes fixed me with rather a stern look. I wanted to snatch those words back, damning myself for forcing her to remember shit she probably spent a good deal of energy trying to forget.

“I am glad,” she said without smiling.

I had to stop myself from looking at her body. It was doing all kinds of nasty things to me without trying. She stared down at her long legs as they lightly kicked the surface of the water. I wanted them around my waist as my swollen dick prepared to engage the tight space in the middle.

“What do you write about?” I asked with forced coolness.

“Fantasy romance.”

I didn’t know what the hell to say to that. Saylor looked at me and grinned. “I’ve been working on the same thing for the past year. It’s my own personal universe, bizarre and unpredictable as those who populate it. ”

“You said it’s romance?”

She sighed. “Yeah. That’s the heart of it. A clandestine story of lovers from different worlds who began as enemies.”

For some reason listening to her talk about this imaginary shit got me even harder. “Why are they enemies?”

“Born to it. She’s a human living in one of the carefully guarded cities of the realm. His race are fierce outliers who cannot be tamed, creatures which have fallen between the cracks of human and beast. They’re seen as a threat.” She looked far away, as if she were busily picturing the characters who were alive in her head. “Sometimes they are a threat.” She paused and pointed to my arm. “Kind of like those guys.”

I looked down the tattoo which covered my right bicep. “The centaur?”

“Yes. In mythology they were usually savage. Wild and lustful.”

“And strong,” I reminded her, having heard some stories from Chase when he was going through a mythology phase. “Sometimes even wise.”

“Sometimes,” she acknowledged.

Saylor had a lot of passion for her work. It was in her voice. I found myself envying her for that reason, wishing I felt that way about something too.

I cleared my throat. “I’d like to read it, your book.”

She wasn’t buying it. “No, you wouldn’t. And anyway it’s languishing in a hopelessly unfinished state.” She frowned, staring at her reflection in the water. “I don’t know how it ends.”

“Doesn’t it just end however the hell you decide it ends?”

“Yes. But it’s tough to write about love when life tells you it might not be real.”

I thought about that for a minute. “I think it’s real for some people.”

She didn’t seem to want to stay on the subject. “I guess. I mean, there’s Millie and Bray. They’ve got a good thing. Once I thought that was how stories usually ended.” She stepped down so that the water was up to her navel. “You never told me what you do.”

I thrash the shit out of guys for money and hope my body doesn’t break in the process.

Somehow I didn’t think a girl who had been used as a punching bag herself would appreciate my line of work. “A little of everything. I get by.”

Saylor took the hint and didn’t ask anything else. I jumped back in the water, hoping to god it was dark enough so she wouldn’t see the thick outline of my massive hard on. I wanted to tear that flimsy green bikini off her with my teeth. “You been back to Emblem yet?”

She shook her head. “Nope. I talked to my dad briefly. I think he was suspicious but he didn’t ask too many questions.” She sighed. “Which was a good thing because I didn’t have too many answers.” She swam to the side of the pool and rested against the side. “You go back often?”

“Not if I can damn well help it,” I answered, thinking regretfully of my mother still there with that sick f*ck. She never had any interest in leaving though. Or in much else except scrounging for her next fix. The last time we visited, about a year ago, it had been when the old man was on one of his thirty day vacations. My mother, who had once been a beautiful woman, grabbed at the cash Creed offered her and gave us a ghoulish, toothless grin. Then she turned around and hobbled back inside the rusted single wide while we watched her solemnly, knowing she’d already forgotten we were there.

“I don’t go back,” I told Saylor.

“I see,” she said. She rested her elbows on the concrete and looked up at the sky. “He keeps calling,” she said quietly.

“Your dad?”

“No.” She suddenly dove under the water and swam all the way across the pool. So she was talking about him; that dipshit who got his rocks off hitting his girl. And more. A sick wave washed over me as I remembered her admission about what else he’d done to her. It made me feel like a lousy bastard for the raunchy thoughts in my head.

Saylor touched the far end of the pool, surfaced briefly, and then headed back.