Bit the Jackpot (4 page)

"Go away before I cut your damn heads off!"

They took him seriously and shuffled off awkwardly, bitching and moaning to each other.

Seamus stopped pressing at Cara's wound. His shirt fell away, covered in her blood, as he picked up a limp hand, felt for a pulse, any sign of life.

Nothing.

She was so beautiful, even with her face contorted in agony and surprise. Her robe was sliding open, her bare breast pale, her chest still. Seamus rearranged the fabric to cover her back up. Pulled her broken leg out from under her, and brushed her hair off her lips and cheek.

"Damn it." He knew what he was thinking. Knew he shouldn't be. Seamus stood up, paced back and forth. Ignored the hunger that gnawed at his gut from the scent of her blood spilling out over the street. "This is a bad idea."

It wasn't just a bad idea, it was a horrible, dumb-ass idea. They were in the middle of a reelection year, and Ethan was fighting for every single vote. Having his campaign manager turn a mortal just for the hell of it would raise eyebrows. It would undermine Ethan's current presidential policy of vampire population control. The latest polls showed Ethan only had a narrow lead of fifty-two percent with a two percent margin of error.

Turning Cara would be a bad political decision, a complete strategical error.

"Shit, shit, shit." Seamus ran his hand through his hair and glanced down at Cara's body. Blood encircled her head and shoulders in a dark, sticky puddle as Seamus marveled that her eyeliner was perfectly intact on her closed lids, still drawn out into those cat eyes he'd found so sensual.

"Oh, man." He couldn't do it. He just couldn't walk away and leave her like this. It was his fault she was dead, and he had to fix it to the best of his ability.

"Good thing you're used to nightlife, Cara," he said as he dropped back on his haunches, talking out loud to give himself courage. "Look at it this way. Now you'll always be able to find work as a dancer. Your body will never change. That's something." He gathered her limp body in his arms and retreated to the alley. "Right?"

Like she was going to answer. She was dead and was going to stay that way until he stopped dicking around and bit her.

Okay, he could do this. Seamus tilted her head to gain access to her neck. Her head flopped back over his arm, her hair dangling toward the street in a black cloud. He winced. Yep. Definitely dead. Her jugular vein showed clearly through her fair skin and Seamus took a deep breath, bent over, and sank his fangs into her smooth flesh before he could change his mind.

He was acutely aware of the stillness of her body, the lack of a heartbeat, the need to use more effort to pull her blood up into his mouth since her heart wasn't pumping it out to him. There were no thoughts from her either, none of the usual jumble of emotions, confusion, sexual desire, and titillation he had always experienced when he fed from live donors.

Cara was no longer alive and the guilt of that made him draw harder, faster. This wasn't fair, that the one night he decided to forgo his loner status he wound up responsible for another death. And even turned, Cara would be his responsibility, to guide and advise, just like he did with Kelsey since he had revived her.

It was the great truth, illustrated for him all over again. Life for Seamus Fox was not meant to be fun, or filled with pleasure. He had been bound to the land in physical servitude as a mortal. That was his role as a vampire as well, and he needed to accept that, stop fighting against it. Deal with it.

When there was no blood left to draw out, Seamus removed his fangs, sick with the feeling of fullness. Using his teeth, he sliced open his wrist and dribbled blood on Cara's, lips. She didn't respond at all, so he forced her mouth open with his fingers and let his blood run down into her mouth. He raised her jaw to encourage swallowing, and after sixty seconds, he sensed her stirring back to life. Felt her arm jerk against his thigh.

Then she started thrashing, jerking her lips away from his blood, her hand slapping weakly at him.

"You're going to be fine, it's okay," he said, in a lame effort to calm her down. He wished he'd had a mother who had comforted him as a child, but his da had been more inclined to cuff Seamus on the head when he was sick, to toughen him up. Whether his mother had agreed with that philosophy was unknown to him since she'd died during his birth. That and the last couple hundred years of avoiding female companionship had left him feeling like an idiot with the whole nurturing thing. He knew nothing about soothing someone's discomfort or fears.

Nor did he understand why Cara was fighting his blood. She kept batting at his wrist, and flinging her head to the side, an expression of distaste on her face. Most mortals clung to the source of vampire blood, and wanted more. Would feed until they burst that first time if they were allowed. This particular mortal, soon to be immortal, was wrinkling her nose like she smelled something rotten.

First she'd resisted his mind-reading attempts. Turned down his offer for coffee. Now she wouldn't take his blood. How many ways could one woman reject him in a night?

He didn't want to find out.

"Come on, Cara, you have to drink it." There was no going back at this point, but if she didn't drink enough blood, she'd be too weak to fully make the change. He wasn't even sure what would happen if she refused to drink. Starvation, he guessed. Which would be horrible to suffer through.

Slashing his other wrist, he let the blood flow freely without making her drink, to let her smell the rich scent, let her hunger recognize it, desire it. He moved her head down into his lap, pinning her lower body to the ground with his leg so she couldn't wiggle away. With his right hand securely in her hair, he took his other wrist and let the blood drop over her mouth again, hoping for better results.

She still frowned and turned her head, but her tongue also popped out and licked a bead off her lips. Relieved, Seamus put his wrist right onto her mouth so she could drink faster. Her hand gripped his knee weakly, like she was going to push him away, but instead she settled down and let him feed her.

"That's it, good. You'll feel better in a minute." He hoped.

After five minutes her eyes suddenly popped open and she wrenched her mouth away from his wrist. "I told you I didn't want any coffee."

He gave a strangled laugh. Even though her face was upside down, he could tell she was mad, her dark eyes spitting fire. It wasn't gratitude or raging lust, but he'd take it. It was a big improvement over dead.

"It's not coffee, babe, that I can promise you."

"It tastes horrible." She rubbed at her lips. "Why am I in your lap? Did you drug me?"

"No." Did he look like a guy who drugged women? He was kind of insulted by that, but would attribute her statement to her recent trauma. "You got hit by a car, Cara." Might as well ease into the whole "you're now a vampire" thing.

Her eyes went wide. "Am I hurt? I feel kind of strange, like I've been drinking cherry bombs. Light-headed… hey, is that my blood?"

She grabbed his wrist and yanked it over in front of her face. "It's everywhere, all over you. This is a lot of blood… why don't I feel that hurt? Is the ambulance coming?"

Seamus eased his hand away from her as she struggled to get up. Okay, so how did he put this? "Cara, you were hurt. But you've healed because I gave you my blood to drink."

Maybe that didn't sound right.

"Excuse me?" She gaped at him and scrambled onto her elbows, inching away. "I knew you were trouble. The minute I saw you, I said there's trouble, and I was so right. I mean, you did that whole weird staring thing and I told you my name even though I didn't want to, and then I had this bizarre feeling that you were hurt and so I went out into the alley and you were in my head. I mean, I could hear you in my head. And now you're saying you made me drink your blood… what kind of sick game are you playing?"

Seamus was trying to find a way to interrupt and explain that he was immortal when she stopped for air.

"I didn't really drink blood, did I?" Her eyes darted down to his wrists, which had healed and closed, but still had blood smeared on them.

"Well…" A little help here would be good, since he had no clue how to handle this. But Seamus knew he wasn't going to get any. He'd done this, now he had to make it right.

Cara touched her lips and pulled her fingers back. They were crimson from his blood.

"Holy shit! You made me drink blood. That is sick, sick, sick." She turned on her side and promptly threw up, Seamus's regurgitated blood splashing all over the asphalt.

He darted back to avoid getting hit. "Heaven and hell!" He hadn't expected that. "Cara, calm down, I can explain."

Seamus tried to pull her hair back off her face as she finished retching, but she smacked at him.

"Don't touch me. Oh, my God, look at my puke. It's red." She heaved again.

"Okay, okay, the thing is, Cara, I had to give you my blood. You died. The car hit you, and you died. I gave you my blood because I'm a vampire."

She tilted her head a little to look up at him, on her knees, her hair a curtain shielding half her face. There was a brief pause while he wondered what she was going to say, hope rising in him that maybe she understood. Then she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Help! Somebody help me!" She stood up, broken leg clearly healed, and ran back to the nightclub door. "The club's on fire! Everyone out!"

Oh, shit. Seamus sighed. Could he screw this up any more?

With vampire speed, he erased the distance between him and Cara. He slapped closed the door that she had started to open. "Cara, you can't do that, darlin'." Trying to be gentle, yet firm, he wrapped his arm around her waist.

She kicked and punched him, wiggling wildly. "Let me go, you lunatic."

"I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help you, and everything is going to be okay."

Ignoring his words, she continued to fight to free herself, stomping on his foot and clocking the side of his head with the palm of her hand. That rang his ears a bit, but it wasn't any struggle at all for him to hold her, even with the thrashing.

"Okay, I'm taking you home, and we can discuss this calmly. I'll explain everything to you."

She shrieked. "I'm not going anywhere with you!" That was accompanied by another kick in his shin and an attempt to scratch out his eyes, which he thwarted. Then she reached out and bit his arm, right below his T-shirt sleeve.

He guessed it was an instinctive move, just a survival tactic to escape him, but almost immediately it became more than that. Her bite to hurt became a bite to feed. Seamus felt her new fangs puncture his flesh and eagerly draw on him. The feeling was unexpected and arousing for him, her body flush against his while she drew nourishment from him, her hair brushing against his chest. Seamus shuddered in pleasure, an erection immediately quickly growing firm and thick against her thigh.

Cara sucked and pulled for a long gratifying minute, then she jerked back, his blood on her mouth. Tongue running over her lips, she swallowed hard, distaste clear in the wrinkled moue of her nose and mouth. "What the… you're a vampire?"

He nodded.

"I'm a vampire?"

Seamus nodded again, rubbing his free hand along her back, the silkiness of the robe slippery. "Yes."

"No, no, no." She tried to back up again.

It was time to go back to the hotel. "Hold on, Cara." Seamus gripped her firmly, and shot straight up and over the nightclub. They were only a minute from his apartment at the casino, the Ava, if he took to the air.

Cara shrieked in his ear and clamped on his waist with arms and legs. He glanced down into her startled, wild eyes.
I'm taking you home with me
, he said directly into her mind. It was too windy to speak out loud without shouting and he wanted her to understand who he was. What she was now.

Her head shook back and forth and her teeth rattled. "No, I don't want to."

Seamus kissed her forehead, not sure why, but going on instinct.
It will work out, I promise
.

"Are we really flying?"

Yes.

"I'm afraid of heights."

Just don't look down.

Which was absolutely the wrong thing to say to someone who was afraid of heights.

She looked down, spasmed against him, and sank in a dead faint.

When Seamus carried Cara onto Ethan's balcony and knocked on the sliding glass door for someone to let him in, he cursed himself. He couldn't have made a bigger mess out of this if he had planned it.

Alexis, Ethan's wife, pulled back the drapes and unlocked the door, her jaw dropping. "Uhh…" she said as she opened the door and looked him up and down.

"Don't say anything, alright?" He brushed past her with Cara still passed out in his arms. He and Alexis didn't really get along. Truthfully, she'd always annoyed the crap out of him because of her willingness to disregard rules and protocol. Clearly, he had no business judging her now that he had a fledgling vampire in his arms.

"Did I say anything? I wouldn't dream of saying anything." Alexis was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and she had her computer on the coffee table, a stack of papers and a half-empty wineglass next to it. "Can I get you anything? A drink? A fresh change of clothes? A membership card to Hypocrites International?"

He supposed he deserved that. He hadn't exactly welcomed Alexis into the Vampire Nation with open arms. "No, thank you. I'm taking her to my room and I'll get us cleaned up there. Sorry to bother you, but my apartment doesn't have a balcony like yours does, and I didn't want to bring her in through the lobby."

She snorted. "I guess not. Want me to call Ethan?"

"No!" he shouted before he could consider it wasn't wise to sound so vehement.

"Chill out." Alexis stared down at Cara. "So, does she have a name? And is there a reason she's covered in blood and passed out? I can hear her breathing so I know she's alive. And I'm assuming it's nothing serious or you'd be calling 911."

"Her name is Cara. She's a stripper I met tonight and she's fine. Now." He wasn't sure he wanted to go into the rest. "And I'd appreciate it if you just kept this quiet for now."