Bled Dry (6 page)

“And is my butt really bony? Is it gross?” Perched on the couch next to him, she felt up her ass, patting and rubbing the seat of her extremely tight jeans.

Ringo felt a hard-on stir to life. “Not at all, baby. But stand up, let me check it out.”

Kelsey did, sticking her very tight booty just inches from his face. She peered back over her shoulder, clearly worried, hands still gliding around down there. Damn, she was so clueless, and yet she made him so hot.

“Very nice.” Ringo put his hands over hers and squeezed her firm flesh. Her eyes widened in sudden understanding.

“You did that on purpose,” she said, frowning at him even as she bent her knees slightly and rocked against his grip.

“Yep.” Ringo bit her ass, letting his fangs puncture the denim and nip at her skin.

“Ouch!” She swatted at him with her pale hand and tried to wiggle away. “Stop it, that hurts.”

“Then take your jeans off, let me have a real taste of you.” He tugged her back so she landed in his lap, right on his boner. “Can’t you feel that? I want you. I’m in pain.”

She sighed, one of pleasure, yet regret. “I feel it. But not in here. The guard is right outside the door.”

“So?” He thrust upward, and spread her knees with his hands. It amazed even him how much he really did want her. She was annoying, unpredictable, treated him like a problem child, and really did have a bony ass. Yet she was the only person whose company he could actually stand, and when he looked at her, he felt intense, biting desire, and the urgent need to protect her. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, or what it meant, but the sexual urges he knew how to act on, if she would just let him. “Who cares if the guard is in the hallway?”

She rubbed her butt against his erection. “I would be embarrassed if he heard us.”

Said the woman who had gone down on him the first night they had met. Ringo was resigned to the fact that Kelsey’s logic was never going to be clear to him. He would just use her reluctance in his favor. “Then let’s go away somewhere together. Like a romantic weekend. No one around but you and me.”

“You’re still on house arrest. You can’t leave Vegas.”

Ringo supposed an apology for trying to assassinate the vampire president wasn’t going to impress Kelsey or the tribunal. Not that he was interested in groveling, but he did resent having his freedom clipped. That’s why he had a better plan. “Oh, come on, just a little weekend away. You know me. I’m not going to do anything. I just need to get out of this casino. I don’t even need to leave Vegas. I just feel like I’m suffocating here, stuck inside all the time.” He kissed her shoulder, brushing her long dark hair out of the way. “Don’t you want to be with me? Don’t you care about my mental health? Don’t you want to make love to me somewhere private?”

Her eyes lit up as she turned to look at him over her shoulder. “I know, let’s get married, Ringo, and get one of those really sexy romantic honeymoon suites with a whirlpool.”

Married? Jesus, how had she pulled that out of her bony ass? While he had interesting emotions regarding Kelsey, the thought of marriage made him want to hurl up his blood breakfast.

“Okay,” he said. Opportunity pops up, you take it. That was his philosophy.

“Really?” She spun all the way around. “You mean it?” Her arms came around his neck and she kissed him eagerly. “That’s so cool.”

“Way cool,” he said, kissing her back, indulging in a little tongue. He needed the contact to reassure himself he wasn’t going to regret this dumb-ass move. “So pack a bag, baby, and let’s figure out how you can get the key to my ankle bracelet from the guard.”

Corbin knocked on Brittany’s apartment door an hour later, determined that he would remedy the situation. What he suspected, based on simple biology, was that their child would be born immortal, with no urge to drink blood. At first glance, that had seemed a positive outcome to the situation, at least compared to the alternative. But what had concerned him was how an immortal child would mature, both physically and emotionally. That was something he could not predict, no matter how much research on vampire genetics he had garnered, but after talking to Ethan Carrick, he felt somewhat reassured. Carrick hadn’t mentioned any complications from his niece’s unusual genetics.

That left only the need to secure secrecy about the baby, which despite his aplomb with Carrick, Corbin had his doubts about. Brittany was a bit unpredictable, he had determined. Or perhaps
impulsive
was a better adjective to describe her. There was no guarantee she would want to marry him, but he was going to have to convince her of the obvious merits of such an arrangement.

Brittany answered the door with a smile. “Come in.”

It struck him anew how beautiful she was, how sweet and pure of heart, honest and compassionate. That was what had attracted him to her in the first place, had made him forget himself. “Good evening, Brittany.”

Corbin loathed the idea of lying to her. Hated that no one would know she was carrying his child, wouldn’t know that she had opened herself for him, that he had taken her, blended his body, his DNA, with hers and created a child. It brought out all manner of feral urges he hadn’t even realized he had.

Not to mention embarrassment.

“I knocked on the door,” he said inanely, not at all sure what to say to the woman he had made love to with an appalling lack of finesse. That alone was cause for awkwardness, but added to his own bad handling of that night was the memory of her huddled in her pillow, so embarrassed she had refused to look at him. He could honestly say that had been a sexual first for him, leaving a woman writhing in emotional discomfort. Now that same woman was having his immortal child. There was not a greeting card for this particular occasion.

She laughed a little. “Yes, you did. Thanks.” She led him to her living room and she sat down on a thick floral sofa.

Brittany’s apartment was very white and pink with lots of competing floral patterns, china hung to the walls, and a profusion of pillows. It had a cottage feel to it that pleased him, even if it was excessively feminine. He sat down on the sofa opposite Brittany and was immediately enveloped by lacy pillows. It didn’t feel like a position of power, to say the least, so Corbin leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees. He could do this. Had to do this.

“Aside from the morning sickness, you are feeling well?”

“Yes, I’m tired, but that’s normal according to the doctor.”

“When is your due date?”

“May twelfth.”

Now what in hell did he say? Brittany was looking at him expectantly. “I am sorry if I have caused friction between you and your brother-in-law.”

She shrugged. “Ethan is worried about me, but he’s totally on my side.”

And against Corbin. He heard the subtle censure. “I am also sorry for my irresponsibility. I have never before... created a situation... ” He couldn’t think of a delicate enough phrasing for what he meant.

“I’m the first girl you knocked up?”

He winced. So much for delicate.

“That does make me feel better, Corbin. I admit it would bother me if you’d had a kid every decade for the last five hundred years or something.”

The very thought offended him. “This is not a habit for me. I do not normally succumb to passion and lose sight of all common sense. This was a first, and I have already apologized. Besides, I am only two hundred and ten years old.”

Brittany looked amused. “Is that all? I’m twenty-six. And in case you were wondering, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten knocked up. So we’ll just have to bumble through this first time for both of us together.” Then her smile disappeared. “Unless you don’t want to be involved. If you don’t, I understand. I’m not expecting anything. I just need you to be honest up front and tell me so that I know what I’m dealing with. And it won’t be fair to our child for you to pop in and out of her life whenever you feel like it, so I’m just going to be clear right here and now that I won’t tolerate that ‘I’ll be a father whenever I feel like it’ kind of mentality.”

Surely her opinion of him was quite low if she thought him capable of such irresponsible selfish behavior. It occurred to him that they had certainly done this backward. They knew nothing of each other and yet they were having a child. He no longer got headaches, but he could swear he felt one now, throbbing at his temples.

Yet this would work out. He was determined.

“I have no intention of popping in and out, as you say. My intention is to marry you as soon as possible.” After they were certain no one would suspect the truth. “We can live here if it pleases you, or we can live apart if you prefer. I will pay for the education and upbringing of the child. He can attend the same boarding school I did in France.”

Brittany was sure he had no idea how absurd he sounded. “You want to get married but live apart?” What the hell was the point in that? All that would do was screw up her taxes and prevent her from ever dating in the future.

“If that is your preference.”

Corbin was not making this easy. Brittany still had no real sense of how he felt about the situation. “What is
your
preference?”

“My preference is to ensure your happiness.”

That was an artful dodge of the question. “Have you ever been married before?”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to be now. I’m not marrying you, Corbin. Just forget it. I am perfectly willing to give you visitation with the baby, though that could be dicey with the whole sleeping during the day thing, but we can work it out so you have plenty of time with the baby. I would like child support and a dialogue with you regarding major decisions. But I am not marrying you.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

And he was being ridiculous. “I am not being unreasonable. I just offered you shared custody. And sweetie, just to remind you, you are a vampire. How many women would be willing to leave their infant in the care of a bloodsucker? I think I’m being very reasonable under the circumstances.”

“That is insulting. And if you were being reasonable, you would agree to marriage and we would not need to have this argument.”

Brittany was trying really hard not to lose her patience. Normally, she almost never flew off the handle, and she was a real happy-go-lucky kind of woman. But she was tired, hungry, and nauseous, and he was pushing a bit hard against her patience. “So we should get married, live apart, each take recreational lovers whenever the mood strikes us, and send our child thousands of miles away to go to school. Why don’t we just hire a wet nurse while we’re at it.” And move into a nineteenth-century gothic novel.

Corbin tilted his head. “Can you still find such a service? We should consider that.”

The sad thing was, he was actually serious. “Sure, if we want our kid to be warped. You have no idea how children are raised in the twenty-first century, do you?”

He looked affronted. Corbin opened his mouth, snapped it shut, fell back into her couch cushions. “Perhaps not,” he conceded.

The misery and horror on his face made her feel bad. It wasn’t like she was an expert, either. “That’s okay. I mean, you probably haven’t been around kids much in the last two hundred years, have you? We just need to talk these things through, like we are now. See, we’re doing so good at this already. We’re communicating and working things out, which is so important when you’re raising a child together.”

“You do not know what in hell you’re doing either, do you?” he asked.

No, but she was optimistic she could learn. “Not really. My experience with kids is kind of limited to
Nanny 911
episodes and the kids I see as patients in my dental practice.”

But she knew a boarding school in France wasn’t going to fly. And don’t even get her started on the whole marriage-of-convenience thing.