Bled Dry (2 page)

She was usually so much more rational about men. Brittany had always liked to live in the moment, to have fun, to meet new people, and she enjoyed sex for the pure physical pleasure. Never before had she felt this weird sort of melancholy and longing for a guy she wasn’t dating, didn’t really know, and who clearly had no interest in her. She had no problem admitting she had indulged in a one-night stand or two in her time, and she’d always walked away with a whistle, no regrets.

This was different, and she didn’t know why. Definitely didn’t like it.

And she was pregnant.

“Where is he?” Brittany blinked hard. She really needed to find Corbin, tell him the news, and retreat back to her corner to get a grip on her life.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I believe he’s on the twenty-fourth floor at the moment.”

“He’s here? At the Ava?” Corbin was in Ethan’s casino right as they were speaking in that very same casino? Her stomach roiled.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’m going to throw up.” Brittany lurched forward and tossed her dinner into the sink adjacent to the bar with impressive velocity.

A martini glass fell off the counter and crashed to the tile floor when she jerked back up, wiping her eyes and mouth. Brittany clutched her gut and ignored her sister and brother-in-law staring at her in horror. Shaking her hair off her face, she took a deep breath.

She had a fertile French vampire to see.

Corbin Atelier stared out the window at the Vegas cityscape, feeling restless with his confinement. He’d been living in Las Vegas for nearly four decades, and never had he felt the yoke around him so tightly as now. There was no reason for it, but he longed to be able to leave the desert, to fly to the ocean, to the mountains, to smell the crisp air of Paris in late October.

A knock sounded on the door of the suite of rooms he had been staying in for the past two weeks as he oversaw Ringo Columbia’s withdrawal from his drug blood addiction. Corbin made no movement to answer the door, staring, searching, wanting some kind of answer from the view in front of him.

“There’s someone here,” Ringo said.

Corbin turned and saw that Ringo was slumped on the divan with his eyes closed, legs stretched out in front of him. A cigarette dangled at his lips, and his cheeks were pale, skin sallow. His chest moved up and down laboriously, like ancient bellows. It was difficult to watch Ringo suffer through his withdrawal, but Corbin was confident he was through most of the physical trauma. Mentally, it was never a sure thing. Addiction waged war on its victim, the battle was never completely won, and Corbin wasn’t entirely sure Ringo wanted to be free of his dependency.

The knocking came louder.

“Would you answer that?” Ringo asked, voice rising in irritation. “It’s probably Kelsey.”

Corbin didn’t know what the relationship was between Ringo and Ethan Carrick’s secretary, but her visits usually had a positive effect on the patient. However, this wasn’t Kelsey.

“It’s a mortal. I can sense it.” Corbin moved to answer the door, suppressing a sigh. He had work to do and every day he spent stuck in Carrick’s casino, forced into the role of part prison guard, part medical doctor to Ringo, the longer his research was delayed.

Brittany Baldizzi was standing in front of him when he pulled open the door. Corbin was so startled he said the very stupid and obvious, “Brittany! This is a surprise.”

“Hi, Corbin.” Her cheeks went pink, and her eyes didn’t quite meet his.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Are you recovered from the flu?” Truthfully, she still didn’t look one hundred percent healthy. Her skin tone was off, and she looked like she had lost weight. Corbin felt both worried and guilty. He should have checked up on her a second time, but he hadn’t been entirely comfortable with his own feelings toward Brittany, so he had avoided her. Yet again. He had done plenty of avoiding as well following the night he had bedded her.

“How did you know I had the flu?” she asked, looking startled.

“I saw you. I came to your apartment one night when you were sick.” The night he had heard her call him mentally, felt her suffering. Without thinking, he had gone straight to her and found her sick in her bathroom. He could have sworn at the time that she didn’t have a fever, but she must have if she didn’t even remember seeing him.

Her eyes went wide. “You were really there? I just thought... ”

“What?”

“That I was dreaming.”

This beautiful woman he had made love to thought he was in her dreams? That pleased Corbin more than it should. “No. I was there. I put you to bed.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“You are welcome.” Corbin suddenly remembered that he had manners. “Would you like to come in? Are you here to see Ringo?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve actually never even met Ringo. I wanted to talk to
you
for a minute. Privately.”

He couldn’t possibly imagine what she wanted to discuss with him, but she looked so anxious Corbin didn’t hesitate. He admittedly had a rather soft spot when it came to Brittany. Not to mention he’d been attracted to her since the first night they met, when she had thought he was a serial killer.

“Certainly. We can go into the other room.” It was a bedroom, which wasn’t the best place to be escorting a woman he thought was so beautiful, a woman he’d impulsively made love to in a moment of total sexual weakness. It had been a wonderful, madly erotic five minutes, and a bed was sure to remind him of that, but the only other option was the bathroom, and he was too much a man of the nineteenth century to speak to her by the commode.

He offered her a seat in the sleek gray suede chair next to the bed, but she shook her head.

“What is the matter?” he asked, unable to resist the urge to smooth her hair back from her forehead. She really looked ill, and he felt prickles of concern.

“Corbin... I’m pregnant,” she blurted, locking eyes with him for a second, before dropping her gaze to the floor.

“Pardon?”
She’d spoken so quickly, mostly to the carpet, that surely he had misunderstood.

Those dark eyes, which he found so innocently alluring, locked onto his. “I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.”

That was rather unpleasant news. Granted, he had not spoken to her since the night they had made love, aside from when she’d been ill, but he had foolishly thought she had felt the same way as him—knocked off his feet by their encounter. He had not so much as looked at another woman in those eight weeks, yet she had moved to another man’s bed. He was not so memorable, it seemed.

“Ah. Zat explains the vomiting,” he said, his English slipping as it always did when he was irritated. “Morning sickness, yes? Well, I wish you happy.”

The last remaining bits of color in her cheeks leeched away. She frowned at him. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

Corbin shifted uneasily. He didn’t see how the situation called for him to say anything else. “Take care of yourself,” he said politely.

“Uh!”

Tears came out of nowhere and rolled out of her eyes, scaring Corbin senseless.

“What ez the matter? Don’t you want to have a baby?” And why was he the one standing there in complete discomfort patting her arm inanely? Where was the baby’s papa?

“
I
want to have a baby. And I thought that it was only the right thing to do to come and tell you that
you’re
having a baby, but it seems like I shouldn’t have wasted my night. You could care less!”

Corbin listened to her words. Played them back in his brain. Was she saying... “
I’m
the father?”

“Duh. Of course you are!” Brittany swiped at the tears on her face. “Who else would be? You’re the only man I’ve slept with in six months.”

Well, that was pleasing—she hadn’t found him so lacking as a lover she’d had to find another. But that also meant... “
Mon Dieu
, you’re having a baby? Our baby?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Corbin needed to sit down. He needed a drink. He needed to think this through. Good God. A baby? A small, crying, helpless, mortal creature. That was half his, half Brittany’s biology. It didn’t seem possible. There had only been that one night. But he had made no effort to use birth control or even withdraw at the precipitous moment. Quite the opposite. He had enjoyed exploding deep inside Brittany. Just the memory had him shifting, manhood swelling inappropriately.

“You are certain?”

She sighed. “Yes, Corbin, I’m certain.”

“We didn’t use birth control,” he said, trying to reconcile what she was telling him with what had happened.

“No. But I didn’t think you had sperm.”

Corbin frowned at her, feeling insulted. “Of course I have sperm. I am still a man. I still function, do I not? I have everything that is manly the same as a mortal.”

Brittany couldn’t stop a small smile from crossing her face. Corbin looked so outraged and French. “Yes, you still have everything.” And then some. She would never forget how in five minutes he’d given her better sex than some guys had in six months of dating.

“Absolutely.” He nodded up and down once.

Brittany couldn’t tell how he was taking the news. He didn’t look angry. He looked surprised, but nothing more. Damn, he was cute. She’d almost forgotten how adorable he was in person with his caramel-colored hair and rich, chocolate eyes.

Corbin rubbed his jaw. “And as such, I owe you an apology. This is my fault and I accept complete responsibility. I will marry you.”

Brittany forgot how cute he was. “What!” Of all possible reactions, she hadn’t even considered that one. He was smoking something if he thought she was going to just marry him because he’d gotten her pregnant. And what kind of a proposal was that anyway? A sucky one, that’s what kind.

“It is for the best.” He nodded, like everything was decided. “We will marry and hire a nurse to care for the babe.”

Someone had fallen back into the nineteenth century. “Why is getting married for the best? We barely know each other.” Brittany sucked in quick, short breaths. Her stomach was churning again. “I don’t want to marry you.”

“You would have my child be born a bastard?” He looked outraged.

“This is Vegas! No one cares.” Brittany took a step back. He was so close to her she was getting dizzy trying to talk to him. “My mother was a stripper, for God’s sake!”

Corbin winced.

Brittany was offended. He didn’t like that? Too bad. “I don’t even know who my father was. My mother cheated on her husband with Mr. Anonymous. Alexis and I don’t even have the same father.”

She was blathering on in total panic, because while she was intrigued by the idea of maybe dating Corbin, or at the very least having an amicable relationship with the father of her child, she could not marry him. Jesus. What the hell did they have in common?

Just a bundle of cells that were dividing in her uterus as they were speaking.

“Brittany... ” Corbin clapped his hand on his forehead. “You and I, we have forgotten something. Your father was a vampire.”

“So?”

“So, you are half-vampire. I am a vampire. This baby you’re carrying, it is a three-quarter vampire child.”

“So?” she asked again nervously. Why did Corbin look like he was going to drop to the ground? His eyes were actually narrowing, darkening, turning almost black, and she could tell he was thinking hard.