“Fine,” he acknowledged. “Not like I’m making any progress here anyway.”
“Bad day at the joust?” she quipped.
“You could say that,” Tanner admitted. “My knight has vanquished his foe far too easily.”
She straightened up and curiosity flared in her eyes. “So what do you do about it?”
“That’s the question. If the game’s too easy, people complain. If it’s too hard, people complain. So I walk a fine line. Right now, the game’s leaning toward easy. Gotta come up with a fix.” He stared into her eyes, caught up in the excitement he saw gleaming there. How long had it been since he’d been really excited about anything? “The question is,” he said, “should it be a magical consequence or something a little more human?”
He shouldn’t be asking her opinion, he told himself sternly. The games were his domain and he rarely listened to anyone else’s input. The fact that she was standing there in the doorway, intruding on his work time was his own damn fault though, for leaving the door open in the first place. But then again, maybe he’d been hoping for an interruption.
Hard as it was to admit, Tanner thought, in the last few days that Ivy had been coming to his house every afternoon, he’d become accustomed to her. More than that, he’d actually begun looking forward to seeing her. So much so that he was shifting slowly out of his vampire work schedule.
So what did that say?
“What do you think?” he asked, not really expecting her to solve his problem, but not ready to stop talking to her or looking at her, either.
She abandoned the vacuum, stepped into the room and glanced at the walls where framed posters of his more popular games were hung. Silently admiring them with a smile, she walked toward him, glanced at the warrior knight still awaiting a command and said, “I think it should be something more human.”
Interesting. He would have thought she’d play into the magical fantasy. “Like what?”
“Does he have a love interest?” She moved up beside him.
Tanner took a deep breath of that warm, citrusy scent and forced his gaze to the screen. “Of course. The Lady Gwen.”
“Oooh, I like that.”
“Ten-year-old boys won’t, but hopefully everyone else will,” he told her wryly.
She laughed and the sound was musical, soft, as enchanting as the magical game he was working on.
“So then,” she said, leaning down, bracing her hands on the edge of his desk, “if the knight kills the troll with the enchanted sword, then Lady Gwen is swept into a dimensional prison.”
Tanner blinked at her. He hadn’t been expecting that. “What?”
She laughed again. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? He does something he knows is wrong—I’m guessing the use of the magical element—and so his punishment is to lose what he loves most.”
Intrigued, he said, “Hardly fair to Lady Gwen, though.”
“Ah, she knew what she was getting into the minute she met Sir Whatever-His-Name-Is.”
“Hawk,” Tanner told her, thinking about her suggestion. He had to admit, he never would have gone in that direction. But now he was considering it…
“Of course his name is Hawk,” she said, grinning. “Very heroic. So, Gwen disappears into a dimensional prison. Or she’s sucked into a portal—”
He caught the glint of excitement in her eye and shared it. Funny. Tanner had been designing games for more than ten years. He’d always considered it the perfect profession for him. An isolated one. A career where he didn’t require other people around—where he could shut himself up in his own world and create the images that had always been a part of him.
He’d never had a collaborator. Never even considered having one. Now with a quick conversation, Ivy had sparked new ideas in his mind and he knew in his gut, they were good ones.
Having Ivy in the house the last couple of days had surprised him in more ways than he would have expected. Yes, she’d been a distraction. But he’d allowed that distraction to get out of hand, too. He hadn’t kept his distance from her. Instead, he’d sought her out. Talking to her as she cooked, helping her move furniture when she had decided that his living room was too sterile-looking.
But the most surprising part of all of this was just how insightful she was about the game he was currently tweaking. She’d had other suggestions for elevating the skill level while maintaining an accessibility that all game makers strive for. And now, she just might have found a way for him to change the ending into something amazing.
“She’s trapped despite her powers,” he mused aloud, shifting his gaze to the warrior knight before starting a new sketch on the paper in front of him. He picked up a pen and quickly roughed out an image of the Lady Gwen being dragged into a shining doorway that pulsed with energy.
“That’s amazing,” Ivy whispered and he realized she’d come closer, her hair now brushing his cheek.
He gritted his teeth and kept his gaze locked on his drawing. Was it his fault that Lady Gwen suddenly bore a remarkable resemblance to Ivy?
“God, you’re a terrific artist,” she said, reaching past him to stroke the tip of one finger along the line of Lady Gwen’s flowing gown.
“It’s just a rough draft,” he told her, noticing just how tight his voice sounded. His pen sketched in a deeply cut bodice on Lady Gwen’s dress, displaying the tops of round, high br**sts and he couldn’t help wondering what Ivy’s br**sts would look like and feel like in his hands. His mouth.
Tanner’s entire body went still. His mind blanked out and all he could see was the mental image of Ivy, stretched across his bed, naked. Blowing out a breath, he swallowed hard and fought his way back to the conversation. “This is just to give the programmers direction.”
“It’s still amazing,” she argued, “I can’t draw a crooked line and you’d think that would be easy. So, how will Lady Gwen get out of the portal?”
Tanner shrugged. “Her knight has to save her.”
“Why can’t she save herself?”
He sighed and risked a quick glance up at her. But turning his head to hers brought their mouths within a breath of each other. His gaze dropped to her lips and he felt a quick, sharp stab of desire slam into him. His body was hard, instantly. He felt the rush of heat filling his veins and told himself to get a grip.
The problem was, he wanted to get a grip on her.