Page 70 of Patrick’s Seduction

He smiled, and his eyes suddenly turned almost golden. “Oh, Fallon, I’ve wanted to make you mine since the moment I first saw you.”

She drew back a little, some of his words sending a chill down her spine, because she associated them with something bad. “To be yours?”

“Not the way Cameron meant it. Not like property. No. Never. I want to be with you for eternity, that’s what the blood bond means for vampires. I never want to touch another woman. I never want to drink another person’s blood—”

He suddenly stopped himself, and his forehead furrowed. “That can’t be…” He rubbed his temple.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He locked eyes with her then. “When a vampire mates with a human or another supernatural creature—other than another vampire—he can only drink blood from his mate. If he drinks any other blood, it will make him sick, and he’ll eventually die. It makes the vampire or vampire hybrid dependent on his mate, in a way leveling the playing field. Like with my father and mother. He drinks only her blood. It gives her power over him. Not that she would ever abuse it, but he’ll do anything to make her happy.”

Not understanding what he was trying to explain to her, she asked, “What are you trying to say?”

“You drank my blood before we had sex, not during! We’re not mated, Fallon. I drank bottled human blood this morning while you had breakfast, remember? And I didn’t get sick.”

“Oh!” She suddenly felt deflated. Disappointed. But maybe it was better that way. Maybe this would give them both time to think about whether they really wanted this.

With his fingers underneath her chin, he tipped her face up, and suddenly, his face was only inches away from her. “Yes, unfortunately. However, the silver lining is that I’ll get my chance to ask you officially after all.”

Her heart beat excitedly—more than it should—because wasn’t that a question that she should contemplate for a while, particularly given her dating history? Wasn’t it unwise to tumble head-over-heels into a serious relationship? And eternity sounded not just serious, but, well, it meant forever. It should scare her that Patrick wanted this even though they barely knew each other. After all, they’d only met a little over three days ago. So, why did she feel as if she knew him? As if she could look into his soul and see that he had a pure heart, one that beat for her?

“Ask me what?” she whispered, unable to stop her lips from moving.

“Whether you want to be my blood-bonded mate.”

When she parted her lips to give him an answer, Patrick put his finger over them. “Don’t answer now. I like having something to look forward to.”

His lips brushed hers for just a second before the sound of the door opening startled them both.

“Patrick, we’ve got something.”

Thomas, the blond IT guy dressed in leather pants and a casual T-shirt, entered the room.

Patrick rose. “Let me hear it.”

“We think that William Gallagher called his son just after you guys left the property. The call lasted less than a minute.”

“Do you know what was spoken?”

“No. We didn’t have a tap on the Gallagher lines yet, but the number he called was a burner, and we must assume that it was Cameron’s, because his own phone has been disconnected. He probably trashed it, knowing that he could be traced that way.”

“Okay. Do we have a location for the burner?”

Thomas shook his head. “We’re working on it, but no luck so far. But Ryder just called in. He’s surveilling the access road that leads to the Gallagher estate. He saw an SUV passing, heading there.”

“But Cameron drives a sportscar,” Fallon interrupted.

Thomas looked at her. “He may have dumped it. If his father told him that vampires came for him, he wouldn’t be so careless as to use his own car to get around.”

“I agree,” Patrick said. “Have you sent drones up to verify it’s him?”

“No. Too risky in daylight. They’ll spot them, and he might run before we can get there with a team. I can’t send Ryder in there on his own. We don’t know how many other werewolves are there.”

Patrick nodded. “Alright. Then we’ll have to be a bit more clandestine. I think I have an idea how we can confirm that Cameron is there without alerting them to our presence.”

35

Afew minutes later, Patrick had laid out his plan: he would go to the Gallagher estate, enter from a different side, sneak into the house, and scout it out to see if Cameron had returned, and how many other werewolves were present.