She blinked. Okay, no more champagne for Alexis. Either that or it had been spiked with a friendly little plug of acid. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Because now when she pried her eyes open, the wound was closed. Just gone. Bye-bye. Like it had never been there.

  “Alexis.” Ethan wiped the blood off his chest and waist with his balled-up shirt and looked her straight in the eye. “I’m a vampire. For real. No game. No pretend. I am a vampire, and I can’t be killed with a bullet.”

  Everything she’d ever eaten in her life threatened to come back up. “Ha ha. Very funny. This is some kind of trick. A joke. Let’s make an ass out of Alexis.” But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She was a logical person, and what she’d said was illogical. There was no way Ethan could have faked lacking a pulse.

  He’d been shot. In the heart. The wound had closed. Which meant the only thing that made sense was if…

  “I’m a vampire.”

  Oh, crap. She’d been insulting a vampire for two days. Yelling at him. She’d kicked him in the nuts. “Well. Okay. Lucky you, I guess.” She went for a laugh, but it sounded like a bad hyena impersonation.

  “In this case, yes.” He winced a little as he touched his chest. “I wasn’t trying to mislead you, it just seemed easier to let you think I was playing some kind of game.”

  “Are you all vampires? Seamus, Kelsey, Peter?” She felt betrayed, like everyone else had a secret and didn’t bother to tell her. It was prom all over again.

  “Everyone at the reception tonight is, yes. It really is a fund-raising dinner. I really am president of all registered vampire voters.”

  “Cool.” If she was going to hang with vampires, she might as well go for the head honcho. Alexis dug her fingers into her thigh. This was going to take a mental readjustment. A big one.

  Ethan’s eyes briefly closed, and he lay back down on the floor. “Sorry, just a little dizzy still. I think I lost too much blood.”

  Alexis didn’t have a response for that. “Sorry” seemed trite and she had no idea where vampires replenished lost blood… oh, yuck. Yes, she did.

  Ethan looked pale, his lips parted and still. His face was contorted in lines of discomfort. Alexis rolled her eyes, checked out the ceiling. Wiped her sweaty palms on her dress and pondered why she had for one minute thought her life was unexciting.

  “Um… would it help if… you know, you had like some of mine? Just a little, though!” Alexis felt her cheeks burn as Ethan’s eyes popped open.

  “You’re offering your blood to me?” He studied her, midnight blue eyes boring into her. “You surprise me, Alexis.”

  Embarrassed, she tried to backpedal. “Well, this is an unusual circumstance, obviously, and it wouldn’t be like an open-ended invitation. This is a onetime deal, because you clearly are in pain. You look like shit. I would do it for anyone.”

  Liar.

  He smiled. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re attracted to me? That you like me and, whenever I look at you, you feel a tingling sexual awareness?”

  Ethan struggled not to laugh at the outrage and horror that flooded Alexis’s face. He shouldn’t tease her, but even in his half-conscious state, he had reveled in her words.

  She was attracted to him. He hadn’t lost his touch with women. Not that any other women had entered his thoughts since he’d met her. After nearly a millennium of living, he had finally found a woman who intrigued him enough to stay in his head nearly every second since the moment he’d met her.

  And she liked him. That was enough to help him ignore the wave of pain the bullet ripping into his chest had caused.

  “If you weren’t wounded, I’d hurt you right now.”

  “I know you would. You’d kick my ass, right?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, even as her lip trembled. “And for the record, people say all kinds of weird things when they’re under stress. So don’t read too much into that sexual tingling thing.”

  “Of course, I understand.” Ethan stayed on the floor, even though he could stand up now. In fact, he should be getting up and checking the security cameras for the man who had shot him. There would be clips of him in the casino with Kelsey, and going up the elevator.

  But he just wanted to lie there and bask in Alexis’s sympathy for just another minute. It had been a long time since a woman had bothered to fuss over him. That implied an intimacy that was lacking in his life and relationships.

  “So, do you want the blood or not?” Her voice started to sound a little testy, though her hand hovered over him like she wanted to pat him, soothe him.

  Ethan stared up at her, trying to get inside her head. But it was blocked, like it always was. “I can’t, Alexis. It would be painful for you.”

  She frowned, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Then how do you feed normally? You can’t run around hurting people. It would be on Jerry Springer if vamps were biting people left and right.”

  There was an image. He sat half up. “A lot of our feeding is done from blood banks. But when we feed from a live source, we wake sure they don’t feel pain. We either put a glamour on them or give them pleasure to distract from the pain.”

  Let’s see how she took that.

  “A glamour? Like a trance? No way in hell anyone is doing that to me.”

  That’s what he’d thought her reaction would be. “I can’t put one on you anyway, because I can’t read your thoughts. You’re the first person who has ever been completely closed to me.” Ethan was starting to suspect the reason for that and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  “Really? Wow. That’s cool, because I totally wouldn’t want you getting into my head. That would really piss me off.”

  “Don’t worry. I can’t.”

  She looked thoughtful. “So no glamour. And the pleasure thing… I’m not in the mood right now. Besides, I’m not sure you could turn me on.”

  He snorted, shifting his elbow away from the bloodstain on the carpet. “I most certainly could arouse you. But I’m not really in the mood either, to tell you the truth. I’m feeling a little like I took a bullet in the chest.”

  Alexis rolled her eyes.

  With a laugh, he said, “So why don’t we go up to my room and I’ll grab a bag from the fridge? I’ll order you another dinner since I’m sure yours is cold by now. I’ll have Seamus make our apologies to the guests, and we can eat while I have security scan the tapes for the attacker. I want to know how he brought a weapon into my casino.”

  Alexis swallowed hard, but nodded. “We can eat together? Sounds good. Steak… blood… they’re not so different, right?”

  He grinned. “Not really.” Alexis had some grit, and he admired that.

  “Do I have to call you Mr. President?” She stood up and tugged at her dress just about everywhere she could tug, ending with the straps.

  “No, you can call me Ethan. But if you want to hum ‘Hail to the Chief’ whenever I walk into the room, that would be appropriate.” With a charming smile, he stood up. Not normal vampire speed, since he was low on blood, but faster than a human. Faster than most mortal eyes could follow.

  She blinked. “Show off. Last time I offer you blood, geez, you obviously don’t need it.”

  Feeling downright giddy, which must be the lack of blood, Ethan flung his arm over his face and winced. Doubled over.

  “What? What is it! Are you bleeding again?” Alexis reached for him.

  He dropped his arm and smiled. “No. It’s just that I was momentarily blinded by your beauty.”

  Her jaw dropped and she slapped his arm. “Idiot.”

  But as he laughed, he saw her struggle not to grin.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Brittany studied the vampire in front of her and waited for him to explain why he had flown her up to the roof of Ethan’s casino.

  It had been quite an experience, zinging through the air so fast she hadn’t even been able to see where they were going, or even if they were going up or down. Like the world’s fastest roller coaster, or like that blissful moment of wild exaltation right before an orgasm. But he had set her down a solid two minutes ago, and she’d already patted down her flying frizzed hair, crossed her legs on the little chimney he’d set her on, and was ready for him to say something.

  He just stood there staring out at the Vegas strip.

  “Did you want to speak to me?” she asked, trying to be helpful. Meeting new people was awkward sometimes and she had seen him suck a woman’s neck. That probably wasn’t a standard introduction.

  Just a shrug. He was around the same height as she was, lean.

  with caramel brown hair that was a touch long. Dressed in black pants and a short-sleeve silk shirt, he was stylish, with a European flare that was a little too cosmopolitan for the average guy running around the bowling alley.

  Not that she imagined this man had ever played tenpin.

  Getting up, she moved to his side and rubbed her arms. The hot desert night felt wonderful up there, like somehow they were higher than the heat, basking in a comfortably warm wind. Brittany breathed in deep, taking in a crisp earthy pull of air, unlike the oppressive atmosphere down on the Strip, with its cocktail of odors—people, food, exhaust fumes.

  “There’s the Stratosphere. And Excalibur.” She pointed out the landmarks, enjoying the view, the magic of a million lights filling the desert sky.

  He glanced at her. “Did you grow up here, in Las Vegas?”

  “Yes. My mom was a stripper.” She smiled. “Alex would freak if she heard me say that. She wants to pretend we were both hatched. But Mom had her moments.”

  “Who gave you your vampire blood?” he asked quietly.

  “No one.” Brittany tried to get him to look at her, but he was still studying the cityscape. “I don’t have vampire blood.” That she could say for certain. Ethan had never once even tried to bite her, let alone given her blood.

  “Who ez your father?”

  “I don’t know. Some guy my mom had an affair with. I think she met him at the club she was working at.”

  “Ethan Carrick, he tells you nothing.”

  It wasn’t a question. “If you mean that he’s a vampire, no, he hasn”t told me that. I figured it out on my own.”

  She couldn’t take it anymore. Something about this man was so sad, so quiet and intelligent, that she touched his arm. “What’s your name? Why don’t you go to Ethan’s parties?”

  Finally he gave her his full attention. “I am Corbin Jean Michel Atelier.” He nodded his head.

  “You were going to bow, weren’t you? But you stopped yourself.”

  Again he nodded.

  “That’s cool. You can bow to me if you want.” Brittany thought she would really like that, actually.

  “It ez out of fashion.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t think drinking blood is really fashionable either. So Corbin, what brings you to Vegas, and why won’t you answer my questions?”

  “I am here because there is nowhere else I want to be.”

  Well, that was a nothing kind of answer. “Why did you bring me up here?”

  “Because you need to understand you cannot talk about my kind when there are mortals around. You must be discreet. That ez all.”

  “Okay.” But there was something else, something bothering him.

  “There ez nothing.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I heard your thoughts.” He tapped her temple with his finger. “You have very loud thoughts and feelings. They spill out of you like sunshine. I hear everything.”

  And here she’d thought she’d gotten a handle on blocking out vampires. She hoped he couldn’t tell she thought he was cute—

  Or that she was thinking of that woman from the night before and the look on her face…

  “What about her?” He looked sharply at her. “I did not hurt her.”

  So much for privacy. “I know you didn’t hurt her. In fact, she told me that while you were, you know, doing your neck thing…” Brittany stared straight at him. “She had an orgasm.”

  Corbin looked aghast. “You should not talk about these things.”

  “How else am I going to help you if I don’t talk to you?”

  Now she’d hurt his masculine pride. He bristled. “I do not need your help. I need you to stay away from my business.”

  Brittany looked over the edge of the building, down at the street far below. “If I fell, would you catch me?”

  His arm came up in front of her like he expected her to pitch herself over the side. “Of course I would!”

  With a pleasant sigh, Brittany tossed her hair back. “I thought so.”

  She is a very strange person.

  Corbin’s thoughts floated over to her, and she knew, felt, that he wasn’t soulless. Humanity beat just as bright and strong in him as it did in her.

  She grinned at him. “Takes one to know one. If I’m weird, you’re even weirder.”

  “You can hear my thoughts?”

  “That was the first time,” she assured him, since he looked so horrified.

  “I could kill you,” he said.

  “But you won’t.”

  “I could drain you of your lifeblood and fill you with mine, making you a vampiress.”

  “But you won’t.”

  He paused. “I’ll take you back. You shouldn’t be seen with me.”

  Brittany looked around the rooftop. It wasn’t like the joint was hopping up there. “Who shouldn’t see us?”

  “Any of them. I am banished.”

  Ooohh. Brittany sat back down, pulling the snap of her jeans out of her gut. “Now this sounds good. Tell me all about it, Corbin Jean Michel Atelier. What did you do to put yourself in the vampire doghouse?”

  She wanted to know so she could help him, of course. And she would not kiss away that tiny frown line between his eyes.

  “You most certainly will not!” he roared. “Then for sure we will both be killed.”

  “You’re already dead,” she pointed out.

  “Real dead. No more on this earth dead. And while I’m many things, suicidal is not one of them.”

  “That’s a relief.” She patted her lap. “Come sit down and tell Auntie Brittany all about it.”

  His eyebrows shot up. He didn’t look like he thought she was cute, which was kind of a disappointment. Men usually found her fairly attractive. Brittany felt her lower lip jutting out. She didn’t mean to do it. It was just a reflex. Because nine times out of ten it got her what she wanted with Alex.

  But not with Corbin.

  He shook his head. And stepped off the edge of the roof.

  Brittany screamed in reflex. Then remembered he wouldn’t get hurt. He would just wing away or whatever he did to fly.

  But then she remembered something else. “Corbin! You can’t just leave me here! I’m stuck on the roof!”

  Alexis sat on Ethan’s burgundy leather sofa, listening to the running water of his shower, and tried to get a grip.

  Okay, so he was a vampire. So what?

  Everyone had their little quirks. God knew she wasn’t perfect, and really, was vampirism an imperfection, or more just like having brown hair versus black? There was no reason to flip her wig like some squealer bimbo and run out of there screaming.

  Needing blood was like needing an asthma inhaler. Sort of. In a more gruesome, demonic, unnatural way.

  But hey, she was no wimp. She’d had defendants threaten her with physical harm. She’d had defendants’ mothers fling their three-hundred-pound bodies at her after a conviction verdict was read. Vampires? She was cool with it.

  Alexis Baldizzi was stuck in a pixie’s body, but she didn’t have to act like a wuss.

  So she propped her bare feet on the couch and jammed a plaid throw pillow behind her back. She liked plaid. It was the antithesis of the scarlet bordello-like atmosphere she’d grown up in. While every other kid on the block had a mother in seventies’ plaid pantsuits, her mother had been wearing short shorts, bikini tops, and high heels.

  Thoughts of her mother disintegrated when Ethan walked back into the room, his blond hair dripping wet, wearing jeans and a button-up shirt that wasn’t buttoned. Damn it. The last time she’d seen his chest, it had been covered with blood from a gaping chest wound, which had been a little distracting. Now he had nothing but clean, smooth skin, no evidence that a bullet had ever entered his chest.

  And without the whole no pulse, rivers of blood thing to distract her, she couldn’t help but notice he was pretty damn hot. A little pale, but hot.

  “Feeling better?” she asked, crossing her legs out of a survival instinct. If she could erect a sign below the waist of her evening gown, she would, //smc keep out. do not enter, no trespassing.

  VAMPIRES NOT ADMITTED.

  Because he had that look again—that super sultry, let’s make like bunnies and do it look.

  “Cleaner. A little tired, but fine, thanks. I’m sorry you had to find me like that. And I appreciate your quick emergency response even if it wasn’t necessary.” He sat down on the couch next to her and gave her a smile.

  “Yeah, well, all in a day’s work.”

  “I ordered a new dinner for you. It should be here in a minute or two.”

  “Thanks.” Alexis stared at his chest. She couldn’t help it. She knew what she had seen, believed Ethan was telling her the truth about his unusual genetic makeup, but it was still hard to swallow.

  “You can touch it if you want. Feel for yourself. There’s no permanent damage.”

  That was enough to rip her eyes off his chest. “I’m not going to touch it!”

  “Scared you’ll like it?”

  Yes. “No. Please. Get over yourself, Carrick.”

  He laughed. “You’re handling the events of the evening very well. I usually get hysterics when a mortal discovers the truth about me.”

  Alexis wasn’t entirely sure why she wasn’t in hysterics, but she was grateful for that fact. “Have a lot of mortals discovered the truth about you?”

 

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