Page 23 of By the Pint

I slapped my free hand to the grazes on my neck like I was swatting a fly, and I groaned. Half frustration, and half something else.

Why? Why couldn’t I read him?

I switched arms.

This morning had been incredible. Fucking Dima, it had been like nothing I’d ever experienced … quiet, intense, amazing. Ordinarily, I would use the other person’s thoughts to manipulate the situation. Get them closer, or edge them to insanity. But there had been no commentary from Dima. Otherthan the noises he’d made, I’d had no indication of what was working for him. I wasn’t in control.

I liked it. It was hot. My first time bottoming since I was a teenager, but … damn. I’d loved every second. Maybe it was the unknown that made it hotter. Dima was a predator. My life had been in his hands quite literally, his fangs against my neck. He could have killed me if he’d wanted to. Could have turned me too. He was the only person I’d ever fucked who could have done that, but instead, he chose to snuggle his freezing feet against mine, and fold my clothes into a neat little pile on the dresser, and make me come so hard I saw stars.

He had this way about him. Like he was a Casey expert. Like he instinctively knew how I needed to be touched, how hard, how fast. I was surprised I’d lasted as long as I did. Which, in fairness, wasn’t long at all. And when he called out my name as he came … my gods, I’d never heard anything as hot as—

Oh. Fuck!

The way he called out my name as he came.

My name. Casey. Not the pseudonym I’d given him.

The weight fell from my grasp onto the mat with a dull thwump.

He knew my actual name.

How I liked to be fucked.

He’d been wilfully blocking his mind.

“Fucking hell!” I said to the ceiling.

The two rowing guys looked at me.Typical, Temper’s having another wobbly, one of them thought.

There was only one explanation why I couldn’t get a read on Dima, how he knew my real name, how he gave me the best orgasm of my thirty-nine years. How his mind, fuck, how it sort of resembled the parts of Killian’s that were closed off to me.

Why had I not seen this before?

Dima Black, entrepreneur extraordinaire, notorious recluse, lover of quilting, owner ofthatbody, was a motherfucking telepath.

A telepath!

Chez Killian, as Killian liked to refer to his home, or Chateau Killian if he was feeling fancy, was a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old, seven-bedroomed, gothic manor house on the outskirts of the City of the Undead. Every house on the outskirts of the city was identical. New houses were built in the same style, with gargoyles, and spiky wrought-iron fence posts, and spooky porthole attic windows. Because vampires were stereotypical to a fault.

There were actual skeletons in Killian’s closets. Sometimes he brought them out for parties, and the cobwebs were more a decor statement than an act of laziness on his cleaner’s part.

Dusk had settled when I finally got home. Killian’s coffin lid hung open, my master asleep in its centre. Naked except for a pair of baggy grey long johns. His lank black hair covered his entire face, and only tiny slivers of ghostly pale skin peeked through. Gobby Gabby had draped herself over his chest, one oiled and tanned leg hanging free of the coffin’s mahogany casing.

I knocked loudly on the wood. “Up!”

They both stirred. Gabby hissed at me.

“What time is it?” Killian said, rubbing his red eyes with the heels of his palms and pushing himself upright, unceremoniously dumping the centaur’s part-human wife off his chest.

“It’s seven PM,” I said.

Gabby groaned. “Control your familiar, Kill.”

“There’s no controlling Casey, Gabs. You know this,” Killian said, wearily climbing out of the coffin, but avoiding my eye.

Gabby flipped me off and closed the lid on herself.

She only hated me because we were so similar. She used information to her advantage, traded secrets for better things; drugs, favours, power. But I’d always had the upper hand with her, and she never forgave me for that. Not that she understood why. Killian had done a great job of protecting our secret.

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