Page 19 of Guarded By the Vodnik

If I kept staring, I knew my eyes would linger on how the too-large, blue sweater hung around her soft curves. How the black, tight trousers hugged her legs. How she rubbed one foot against the other, both covered with thick, dark socks.

I didn’t understand my odd fascination. Humans had never seemed particularly interesting to me.

“It’s because of the pressure,” I answered, my voice resembling a croak. My lips tingled.

She nodded. “Oh, well. I promise not to sing in the shower, then,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t want your ears to wither.”

The soft membranes by my ears fluttered gently at her words, and her eyes twitched, noticing the movement. Her smile widened and she opened her mouth to speak before exhaling with a frown. She shook her head once and gave me a tight-lipped smile.

“What?” I asked, touching my membrane that still trembled with a vague sort of nervousness.

I couldn’t remember when they’d last done that, honestly. But then, I never spent much time above the surface.

“No, it’s just a stupid thought. I have lots of those. You don’t want to hear them,” she said, looking away. She grabbed a cracker smeared with a thick layer of peanut butter from her bowl and popped it in her mouth, moving to the tall, narrow shelf by the TV.

“Tell me,” I demanded, watching her. I was frozen to the spot, tracking her hand as she ran her fingertips over the spines of movie cases stacked inside the shelf.

“You really want to know?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder. “Fine. I just think it’s cute. The way your ears twitch. Which is so odd, because cute is not a word I’d ever think would fit a… well, a grown man of your type. Are these DVDs? I don’t think I’ve seen those in years.”

Of my type? I frowned, about to demand she explain that remark, but bit my words back at the last moment. What was I doing? I was supposed to get food and disappear back into my room. Not lounge around with my principal and talk.

“This safehouse was built twelve years ago for a client,” I explained in answer to her question. “He spent long stretches of time in here and required entertainment.”

“Well, I hope these still work, because if they don’t, I’ll probably torture you with constant talking. I require entertainment, too,” she said, crouching to take a look at more titles. “Oh, workout videos! Cool, maybe I will finally get in shape.”

I said nothing, wondering what she meant by that. Did she think there was something wrong with her body?

When Zoe reached toward the closed cabinet under the TV, I jolted with sudden awareness of what was in there.

“I wouldn’t look at those if I were you,” I said, a bit too harsh. She flinched, looking up with wide eyes.

She was still crouching, her body turned toward me, her face open in curiosity. There was something about that sight that made me buzz. She looked so small and compact like that, and the way her face turned up, coupled with that wide-eyed, expectant look were so… So.

My tentacles twitched with the urge to squeeze. I forced myself to look away.

“Why? What’s in there?” she asked, her fingers grazing the flat knob with an obvious urge to open the cabinet.

“Fetish porn,” I replied, clenching my jaw as I passed her, heading for the kitchen.

“Wow,” she muttered under her breath. “Entertainment, indeed.”

Chapter 8

Zoe

I would have let it go, really, I would have. If he had just said porn, I would have given the cabinet a wide berth.

But he said fetish.

And that immediately made me curious what sort of fetish was involved. For a moment, I even wondered if it was his, because that would have kept me from snooping—I wasn’t so compulsively curious that I would have invaded his privacy to find out.

But Vodyan made it clear the entertainment in this room was for the previous client’s sake. And since he left it behind, I reasoned I had a right to take a look.

Finders, keepers.

I glanced at the door leading into the kitchen, but Vodyan was on the far side, rifling through the contents of the fish conserve cabinet. Just like my bedroom was stocked with clothing of various sizes, most likely to accommodate a range of clients, the kitchen was well stocked with a wide range of non-perishable food, and one entire cabinet was stuffed with canned fish.

Now I knew why.

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