Page 34 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

“I only had a problem with random bleeding because you shoved me in the pump shed.”

“Fair. You liked it, though . . .” His gaze caught mine, and whatever he saw on my face made his smile turn into a grin. “Don’t say you didn’t.”

“Maybe.” So he had noticed my reaction when stuffed into the shed with him.

Our laughter faded out naturally. The grumble of a plane’s engines rumbled in the distance, over the bay probably, then the quiet returned. Crickets chirped, and the soft music played behind us. It should have been awkward after everything that had just happened, but it felt right. There wasn’t any pressure to talk, to pretend. We were just there, side by side, sharing time and space without expectations. “You know, I should uh . . . I should get going, I guess.”

“Yeah, okay. Alright,” he said, holding his empty bottle up to the light.

“You going to be okay?”

“I’m always okay, Owen.”

That was clearly a lie. “Not going to find another bottle and drink yourself unconscious?”

“That is a fabulous idea.”

“Theo . . .”

“Okay, fine. No. I will not do that.” He huffed. “I’ll do something boring. Something you’d do. Like read a book about fish or something.”

I smiled. “Good. You go do that. Miami bay has some interesting fish species. You should look them up. There’s a fish out there called a hogfish that can change color to match whatever it’s lying on, and it can sort of see with its skin, even with its eyes shut. And we’ve got parrotfish that wrap themselves in a bubble of their own snot at night, like a sleeping bag, so predators can’t smell ’em. Oh, and the bay’s full of these little gobies that pair up with shrimp. The shrimp digs the burrow, and the goby stands guard ’cause the shrimp’s basically blind. Roommates. Co-op living, but make it fish . . . And I need to stop talking.”

He frowned but smiled too. “’Course you’d know some random facts about fish. Is there anything you don’t know random facts about?”

“I don’t know,” I chuckled.

“Right.”

And it seemed, in that moment, it didn’t matter that he was a vampire heir and I was the pool boy. We were just two guys, hanging out. If felt good. Felt easy. Felt . . . right. But I really did need to leave before Bentley or their mother ruined it.

“Hey, so . . . despite everything that happened tonight and your brother trying to kill me, I had a good time.”

“That’s because your bar is real fuckin’ low, Owen.”

“Wow.” I laughed and pushed off the doorframe, heading out to the poolside.

“Next time, I’ll make it better,” Theo called after me. “No passing out. Promise.”

I waved without looking back. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Yeah, you will.”

It wasn’t until I’d turned my car around in the driveway and headed to the gate that I realized I’d just agreed to a second date.

CHAPTER 9

I woke suddenly. That weird kind of waking, when you’re pretty sure you heard something but have no idea what it was. I reached for my phone on the bedside table. A pale hand handed it to me. That didn’t seem right.

I blinked, tried to focus on the figure in the chair. Heart stopped. Dead. Then my heart started up again, galloping along.

“My formidable presence in your tiny bedroom is understandably alarming,” Bentley said.

He sat in the chair on the other side of the bedside table.

In my apartment.

In my bedroom.