Love Your Entity(75)

“No, as in, can your vampires read your mind?” Sierra said.

“Sometimes it seems like Nick can,” Daniella said with a secret smile.

“Ronan really can read my mind,” Sierra said. “That’s a side effect of the vampire bond thing. I asked him to swear on something he holds dear that he’d stop doing it unless I give him permission but he refused. I am able to block him sometimes if I really focus on doing that. And I have to be fairly close for him to read it. He said he couldn’t read my mind out here and I believe him. Besides, I can tell if he lies. Another effect of the bond thing.”

“I bet they wouldn’t like it if we could read their minds,” Zoe said. “Wait, sometimes I can read Damon’s mind.”

“Because you’re a witch?” Sierra said.

“No, because he wants me to know what he’s thinking. It’s written all over his face,” Zoe said with a grin.

“I have a hard time reading Ronan,” Sierra admitted.

“So the only reason you want to have sex with Ronan is to break the vampire bond?” Zoe asked bluntly.

Sierra squirmed in her seat. The chairs looked a lot comfier online than they were in reality. Perhaps that was because Zoe’s question made her uncomfortable. “Maybe not the only reason but the main reason.”

“Were you attracted to him before you knew he was a vampire?” Zoe said.

“He was nude when I first met him, remember?” Sierra said.

“And that attracted you to him?” Zoe said.

“You make it sound like I’m attracted to any guy I see naked, which is certainly not the case,” Sierra said.

“Are you having any premonitions about them having sex?” Zoe turned to ask Daniella.

“Not yet. I’ll let you know if that changes. But just because I don’t have a premonition, that doesn’t mean that there might not be danger ahead,” Daniella said. “Remember, I did have a premonition yesterday about danger and death.”

Sierra was pretty sure there was plenty of danger ahead. She just needed to do everything she could to make sure that one of those dangers wasn’t her being turned into a vampire against her will. Oh yeah, and that the death wasn’t hers. There was that too. No big deal.

* * *

Ronan was in the basement, studying the map on the passageway wall and trying to calibrate it with something in the house. So far no luck. There were no recognizable sites on the map.

Maybe that information was on the missing segment. He’d used his smartphone to take a photo of the passageway wall and put it together with the piece from Hal’s empty casket. He’d even taken the casket portion of the map to the passageway to see if putting the two together that way made a difference. It didn’t.

Ronan rubbed his hand over his face. He was trying to concentrate here but the memory of Sierra being yanked off her bed stayed with him. The force that had tried to take her was incredibly powerful. It had taken all his strength to hang on to her.

He could hear Sierra’s voice outside. He could hear all the women outside. She’d asked if he would be able to read her mind if she was outside and he’d said no. She hadn’t asked if he’d be able to hear her with his vamp-heightened senses. Sierra was talking about breaking the vampire bond and having sex with him tonight.

He immediately got hard at the thought. It wasn’t just a thought on her part. Sierra had said the words out loud.

Had he met her without all this shit hanging over his head, he’d have conquered her immediately that very first night. Not against her will, but with her blessing. Yeah, he was that good. Vamp senses were heightened in all things, including sex.

But now things were complicated. However, the bottom line was that he couldn’t risk failing in his mission to find the freaking key for Voz and thereby putting Sierra at risk. He had to protect her. That need had grown within him as intensely as his desire for her.

Sierra had only seen a brief flash of him going full vamp. She hadn’t seen the entire transformation. Not that he planned on doing that in front of her. But none of this was going as he’d planned.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Pat through the Vamptown tunnels.

“Damon gave me an update on the occurrence last night,” Pat said. “I also got a message from Bruce that Sierra wanted to talk to me.”

“She’s outside right now.”

“I saw. Far be it from me to interrupt their girl talk.”

It occurred to Ronan that if he could hear Sierra’s conversation, then so could Pat. “I’ll have her come down.”

“You’re a braver vampire than I,” Pat said with old-world syntax. “How are you adapting to the sunlight? No side effects?”