Page 33 of By the Pint

A genuine laugh burst free from me, and the tiniest smile cracked the corners of his mouth, disappearing almost as soon as it arrived.

“Moonflower, why are you mad with me?” Maybe I could tease the smile back.

Casey stood towering over me. The moon directly over his head disappeared behind a cloud. “You’re telepathic,” he answered out loud, but in his mind, he said, and not for my benefit,I liked you and you lied to me.

Ouch. I didn’t know why that hurt so much. Perhaps it was the use of past tense.

“You lied to me too, Sean.”

“But you knew from the beginning I was lying, and you just let me go along with it. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t able to read you, and it was driving me bonkers, and you knew. All that time. You knew it was getting to me.”Making me question myself.

Well, okay, maybe I had been a bit shitty. I spoke into his head, because these were generally the sorts of things two people shouldn’t discuss aloud.I never encountered a human mind reader before.I just got a bit excited and carried away.

You could have saved me all that trouble. Just let me know from the beginning that any attempt to penetrate your mind would’ve failed, he said.

My heart sank with his words, but he was right.I should have. And I’m sorry. I took advantage of you. I … just … You’re fascinating, Casey, and beautiful, and I should have been the bigger man and walked away from you, but I … I couldn’t do it. I am terrible. I’m the opposite of you. I have no self-control. What happened between us, well, I should never have let it get that far.

“If you’re talking about what happened in my hotel room,” he said aloud. “You should know that even if you’d have told me the truth, I would have still fucked you.”

My hand slapped into the water, sending little droplets over his bare feet.

Casey switched back to mental conversation.You think I would have passed over the opportunity to take the famous Dima Black to bed? Telepath or not? Don’t be stupid.

So, you’re not mad about the sex?

Of course not, that was …He stopped his thought before he finished it.I don’t even know why I’m pretending here. You can see my thoughts. You can see how much I enjoyed it.

An understatement.

This is about you letting me think … letting me think I was failing.

I’m sorry. That was never my intention. You have to understand that.

Well, you’re not forgiven,he said.

How do I gain your absolution?

Once again, his gaze flicked over my chest.You let me into your mind. No barriers. That’s how.

So you can march straight back to Killian with all my business secrets?

Casey dragged a hand through his hair and inwardly groaned. He stormed to the edge of the deck and peered out into the darkened grounds. His trainers still dangled from his fingertips.

The other side of the resort was much more family friendly. With a splash pool and play park and a lost-kingdom themed mini golf course. From this end of the hotel, the only things visible were the gardens and the forests beyond that, and maybe not even those with his human eyesight. The moonlight and the hotel’s atmospheric strings of Winter Fest style fairy lights and multicoloured up-lit trees did little to actually illuminate the space.

I tried not to press into his thoughts, to watch whatever inner war was waging inside his mind. It was none of my business. Even if it was about me. I hit the bubbles-on button,slid back into the tub, and tried to focus on my own corrosive thoughts.

Apparently, I had no self-resolve.

I haven’t seen everything in your mind. I didn’t go all the way in,I said.

“Well, it seems only fair you let me into yours, doesn’t it? Tit for tat,” he replied out loud, still looking out over the grounds. If I were human, I would not have heard him.

It would be easy to let Casey into my mind. Drop my defences and let him see all my thoughts, and memories, and ‘business secrets’, and my deepest desires. But he wouldn’t get what he was looking for. I had no real business advice that wasn’t some variation on “Never give up”.

And as for my memories and desires, he wouldn’t like what he saw there either. Humans could never fully accept the inhumanity of vampires. The things we’d done. Most of us, over a certain age, will have a shameful and bloody past. Because before blood banks, what were we to do? We fed, or we starved.

Casey lived in the City of the Undead. He lived with vampires. He was telepathic. He already understood. Accepted that most of us had murder checked off our Very Bad Naughty Things One Should Never Ever Ever Do bingo card.

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