Page 13 of Patrick’s Seduction

“Thank you.”

“Write down how I can reach you. I also need Cameron’s details, full name, contact info, and the like, same for Hank. I want to talk to him too. Maybe I can convince him to tell me what really happened.”

Patrick rose and walked to a sideboard. She followed his movements, her eyes darting to his backside, his muscled butt shifting beneath his well-fitting black pants. There was something so confident and self-assured in his walk that drew her to him. He snatched a notepad and a pen from the sideboard and turned back to her.

She quickly averted her eyes, pretending to admire the floral arrangement on the coffee table in front of her. Patrick handed her the pen and paper before he sat down again—this time not on the armchair opposite but next to her on the sofa. Close enough for her to feel his heat, and smell the faint scent of his shampoo or maybe the body lotion he used. Her hand trembled at first when she started to write down the information that Patrick had requested.

When she was done, she handed it back to him, while he was reaching for the pad at the same time. Their fingers touched for a brief second, making her gasp involuntarily and jerk back quickly. Her eyes shot to Patrick’s face, and their gazes met.

“I didn’t mean to…” she stuttered, embarrassed about her reaction to his touch.

“My apologies, Fallon. I didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice was calm and collected, even soft as if he was speaking to a frightened child. “I know that the emotional turmoil you’re experiencing is making you jumpy. It’s normal. I just want you to know that you’re safe here.”

She nodded quickly, casting her eyes to her hands that now rested in her lap. He’d interpreted her reaction incorrectly, but she wouldn’t correct him. It was better that he didn’t know that the reason for her reaction was the jolt of pleasure that his touch had caused. Because a reaction like this would only cause more trouble, more confusion. And she had no intention of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The risk of landing in another relationship that ended badly was just too great, because men who were too handsome and sexy for their own good, almost always came with a fatal flaw.

She was sure that beneath Patrick’s flawless exterior lay personality traits that she didn’t like either. And just like Cameron’s flaws had bubbled to the surface, eventually Patrick’s would emerge too. Nobody was as perfect on the inside as on the outside. There was always a catch.

8

Back in his office, Patrick replayed his conversation with Fallon in his mind. From everything she’d told him, he realized that if he followed the desire of the vampire inside him, it would lead to nothing but problems.

Fallon wasn’t a woman to readily accept a man she’d only just met, a man she knew nothing about. She was more careful, more contemplative, weighing up the pros and cons of a relationship. Hell, judging by the bad experience she was going through with Cameron, he doubted that she’d be ready to date anyone for a long time. And why wouldn’t she take a break from men after having to deal with Cameron’s jealousness and possessiveness? It was smart.

Unfortunately, this meant he couldn’t act on his desire to kiss her. Hell, he shouldn’t even have that desire. He prided himself in being more restrained than his fellow vampires when it came to women, and in the past two years, he’d only had the occasional one-night stand. He hadn’t really felt the need to be in a relationship. He wasn’t looking for a mate yet, despite having celebrated his 35th birthday not too long ago. He was happy with the way things were. He had a great relationship with his parents and siblings, and he loved his job and his colleagues. Life was pretty perfect.

Fuck! He wished he’d never laid eyes on Fallon, at least then he wouldn’t know what he was missing: a woman who stirred up all kinds of new feelings in him. None of which she’d be willing and able to reciprocate, not in the vulnerable state she was in. He couldn’t take advantage of her like that, no matter how much he desired her. The best thing was to lock that part of himself away, before he did something that he would regret later. He had to be patient. First, he needed to remove Cameron from the equation, then he had to let Fallon heal. Only then could he show her that he was interested in her.

Determined to work on the first step, he started his research into Cameron Gallagher. Luckily, because of Scanguards’ contacts with the San Francisco Police Chief and the California governor, he had access to all kinds of databases to help him with background checks. He pulled up Cameron’s driver’s license from the California DMV. It had expired a few months earlier. The man staring back at him from the picture was good-looking, he could admit that. Cameron was over six feet tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, a stubble beard, and a cleft in his chin.

So, this was Fallon’s type? Well, at least that meant she probably didn’t find him unattractive either, after all, Patrick too was tall, had dark, almost black hair, and had inherited his parents’ good looks, and his mother’s green eyes. Of course, that would also mean that Fallon might be reminded of Cameron every time she looked at him. That would be a turnoff. Maybe she’d choose a blond surfer dude as her next boyfriend, just so she wouldn’t be reminded of her ex.

When he looked into Cameron Gallagher’s social media presence, he found several persons by that name, three of them women, since the name was unisex. The two men who had social media pages weren’t the right age and race. According to his driver’s license, Cameron was thirty-eight years old and white. He checked several other social media sites, but the search was a bust.

This wasn’t entirely unusual, particularly if his assumption was correct that Cameron was a vampire or a vampire hybrid. Nobody in his extended Scanguards family had a social media presence. It wasn’t advisable for a vampire to leave a digital footprint where photos would eventually confirm that none of them aged.

Since Fallon hadn’t written down where Cameron worked, Patrick made a note to have Thomas and Eddie, Scanguards’ resident IT geniuses, hack into the IRS and the Social Security Administration to find out more. However, before he could dig into more about Cameron, his phone rang. He recognized the internal number and picked up.

“Hey, Buffy. What’s up?”

“I’m done with the preliminaries. Can you come down? Benjamin and Nicholas are already here, and I don’t want to have to say everything twice.”

“I’m on my way.”

It took him less than five minutes to reach the autopsy room, where his colleagues were waiting for him. It was cold in the room to preserve the dead body for as long as possible before decomposition set in. The door closed behind him, and he nodded at Benjamin and Nicholas, then gave Buffy an expectant look.

“I’m still waiting for some tests, but I’ve found something that leads me to believe that it wasn’t a vampire who attacked our vic.”

Patrick’s forehead furrowed. “Not a vampire? But the heart—you said yourself that it wasn’t cut out with a knife. It was ripped out.”

“And I stand by that,” Buffy said calmly. “Somebody or something ripped his heart out. No doubt about that. But I found something else.” She motioned him and his colleagues to step closer, and lifted the dead man’s arm. “You see these defensive wounds?”

“Yeah. He fought his attacker,” Patrick said with a shrug.

“He did. I swabbed the wounds as well as his fingernails. Guess what I found?” It was only a rhetorical question, since she continued immediately, “Strands of hair. Short, coarse black hair. I looked at it under the microscope and compared it to other hair samples in our database. The hairs aren’t human or vampire.”

Patrick pinned her with his gaze. “What are you saying?”

“He fought with an animal.”