Bled Dry (21 page)

Corbin narrowed his eyes. Frowned. Then shocked the hell out of her by saying in a firm voice, “We are. That is what I wanted to talk to you about. We are together. Zat is zat.”

He squatted down before she could say anything and grabbed the back of her head. Dragging her forward, Corbin gave her a hard, possessive kiss. She let go of the couch and oozed into his arms. Damn, it felt good there, flush up against his hard chest. He made her feel so sexy, so feminine. But Brittany yanked her mouth back and sucked in a breath. “What if I say we’re not dating?” Not that she would. But he needed to know she wasn’t some nineteenth-century sheltered miss. They were both going to wear pants in their relationship.

Given that his hand had started to wander over her nipple, Brittany didn’t think he was taking her threat seriously. He kissed her earlobe and ran his lips over her jaw. “Then I will do whatever it takes to convince you that we should be together. I will be devoted to you and our child. I will go to any store you want, read any baby book you want, and prove my sincerity to you. I will come to you every night and pleasure you for hours and hours until you no longer know your name, until you can’t imagine your bed without me in it. We will be together.”

His lips brushed hers. “Forever.”

Okay, she was gone. Melted like wax. He did it every time with that sensual arrogance, until she was ready to rip off her clothes and do the naked mambo with him. Like now. She kissed him back. He kissed her harder, taking her mouth with his tongue, sliding and dipping inside with intrusive demanding thrusts, his taste sweet.

Blame it on increased blood flow from pregnancy, but Brittany’s inner thighs fired up. She was already reaching for his belt buckle when he pulled back.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?” she asked stupidly, breathing hard. Corbin looked utterly unaffected by the lust she was feeling. Yet he could just glance at her and she wanted it. It was so bizarre.

“To the store. We are buying maternity clothes and doing the baby registry, yes?”

“You’re going with me?” She gawked at him. The baby registry, maybe, she had been hopeful, but maternity clothes shopping? Even her sister had refused to do that with her. It was like trying to find a bathing suit—a painful fluorescent lesson in reality.

“Yes.” He reached for her hand to help her up. “Zat is what you do when you are together, a man and a woman, and you are having a baby. You shop. And we are together. So we will shop.”

The logic was there.

But Brittany wasn’t sure their unusual circumstances qualified them as a standard couple. On the other hand, normal was relative, and she was damn frightened to attempt purchasing a nursing bra all on her own.

“Baby Superstore, here we come,” she said.

Corbin sat on the bench outside the fitting room at the maternity shop and wondered how honest he should be.

Brittany had such a pleasing figure, long and shapely, that he would have thought her capable of wearing just about anything, but clearly he had been wrong. The black stretchy pants she had on seemed to shrink her by six inches, clung to her backside, and brought much more attention to the apex of her thighs than he could tolerate in a public setting.

“What do you think? They’re very comfortable, but I think my butt looks big in these.”

This was a test. Corbin felt sweat creeping down his back. “I don’t care for the color.”

“They’re black.” She frowned at him. “How can you not like black?” She twisted in front of the mirror again, trying to get a better view of her behind.

“Your feet are going to be cold.” He shifted on the bench, waving away the saleswoman who had brought three more pairs of the stretchy pants in various colors. The black was bad enough. They sure in hell did not need them in pink.

“That’s true. Though it seems like I’m hot all the time lately.” Brittany twisted yet again, in the opposite direction.

He fought the urge to sigh. So he was bored and uncomfortable, feeling as though one wrong word might set her screaming at him. He didn’t imagine she was having fun either, and she seemed to need a second opinion. This was his duty. A painful, onerous duty.

The store was stuffy and close. Brittany’s pile of “maybes” was in his lap. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair askew, and he knew now why she had been avoiding the chore. For every seventeen things she tried on, she found one item that both fit and she liked. It was hell on earth, filled with mirrors and hangers and sensor tags.

It was endless. Interminable. The questions were all incendiary:

“Why do my boobs look so huge?”

“Do you think these pants are mislabeled? They’re really tight.”

“What’s my best color?”

“Why is my nose so shiny?”

And worst of all, an hour and thirty minutes into the torture, a plaintive plea, made with big eyes and a trembling lip, “You don’t like my hair short, do you? I made a huge mistake cutting it, didn’t I?”

Corbin stood up and set the piles of clothes onto the bench and moved toward her. He cupped her cheeks with his hands and brushed a kiss on her soft lips. “I love your hair,” he told her truthfully. If he had loved it more longer, no matter. “I love your body, I love your heart, the way you embrace life, your optimism, your passion, your tenderness, and selflessness.” He rested his hand on her belly, swelling slightly beneath the cotton shirt she had put on. “I love that you are the mother of my child.”

I love you
, he almost added, but the words stuck in his throat. It would sound like a balm, like a token gesture if he said it now, and he wasn’t sure if he even meant it exactly. He thought he did, but how was one really sure about these things?

Everything he spoke, he meant, and best to leave it at that.

She sniffled. “What the hell has happened to me? I’m never like this. But now I walk around feeling like I just got my eyebrows waxed. Stunned and watery-eyed. It’s so annoying.”

“I think it is called hormones.” He tucked her short hair behind her ear.

She promptly popped it back out. “Don’t do that. I hate the way it feels.” Then she immediately made a face. “Ugh. Listen to me. I sound so bitchy and whiny.”

Her words, not his. Corbin decided he needed to take control of the situation. “This is exhausting, that’s all. We’ve done enough for today.” He plucked at the pants she was wearing. “I don’t like these as much as the others. Leave this pair and get the jeans.” Turning, he gathered up what she’d piled on his lap. “You have four outfits here, plus you can wear some of the items together. It is enough for tonight.”

She looked relieved to have him making decisions. Nodding, she headed back for the fitting room. “I’ll just try on the bras then, because I have to get a couple of new ones. I’m going to suffocate in my old ones.”

Corbin flagged down the saleswoman and handed her the pile. “Can you start ringing these up, please?” So they could get the hell out of there.

“Corbin?” Brittany called from behind the closed door. “I need some help.”

“Do you need a different size? Pass it over and I’ll get the clerk.”

“No, I need you to adjust these straps.” The door opened a crack and her face peeked out. “Can you just slip in here with me?”

That did not seem appropriate in the least for him to join her inside the fitting room in full view of anyone in the store, but this was not Regency England, but Vegas in the twenty-first century. At times he had to remind himself the same rules of etiquette did not apply.

He went into the fitting room, squeezing himself in sideways so he wouldn’t expose her to the room at large. Brittany was standing there in her panties and a bra with the tags dangling from it, her hands holding straps that were clearly too loose. It was nice to see she hadn’t gone to what Justin had called granny panties yet. She was wearing a black thong. That was good. But it was bad that he suddenly had an erection wholly inappropriate for the setting.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked, trying not to stare at her burgeoning breasts. Her smooth thighs. Her bare, tight backside, reflected clearly in the mirror. The triangle of her black panties hugging her femininity in front. Corbin’s mouth went dry and his fangs let down.

“Just adjust the little white clip thing and make the straps shorter. It’s all the way in the back and I can’t reach it.”

She turned around, holding the straps where she wanted them, so he could see the excess length gaping. Swallowing hard, he studied the little prongs and tried to determine how they worked. The sound of her breathing, the beating of her heart, were distracting him. And he would swear on his mother’s grave that he was catching the scent of arousal from her. She was
enjoying
standing nearly naked in front of him.

The thought increased his own ardor. Nine weeks was not a long time for a vampire, but it felt like forever, plus one day, for Corbin. He could not wait another minute to touch Brittany, to feel her skin, to taste her rushing, vibrant blood.

Moving the prong upward, he shortened the length of the strap, brushing his fingers over her flesh as he went to the other. He adjusted it as well, then looked at her in the mirror. “How does that feel?”

“It’s better,” she said, voice a little husky.

With his index finger he reached around and traced the outline of the bra, above the cotton, where her flesh was spilling forward. “You are sure it es not too small?”

“I don’t think so. It feels comfortable.”

Corbin flipped the straps down her shoulders. “Maybe you should try another to be certain.” Undoing the back hook, he stripped it off her efficiently.

Her breath caught and she met his gaze in the mirror. “I did pick out a black one, too.”

Tossing the bra over the door to dangle there, Corbin stared at Brittany reflected in front of him. “You’re gorgeous,” he told her, moving his hands to cup her firm breasts. He kissed her shoulder, and ran his touch down to her belly, swollen in an intriguing bubble. “I thought you were sexy before, but now, with my child inside you, I am speechless at how beautiful you are.”

Her eyes drifted close as he caressed over her flesh. “Thank you. I feel really good right now... I’ve heard the middle trimester is the easiest. We should probably take advantage of that.”

That sounded like an invitation to him. Corbin teased her panties forward and slipped a finger down, down, right into her welcoming moist body. He had been right about her arousal. She was ready for him. Brittany gave a soft gasp.

“Let’s take advantage of that right now,” he said.

“Here?” She sounded shocked, but her hips began to move, ever so slowly, rocking herself onto his finger. “I don’t know... ”

It wasn’t a convincing protest, so Corbin peeled her panties down, kissing the back of her neck. “You feel so good. I have missed you.”

The panties hit the floor with a soft thump and Corbin yanked off his shirt, unzipped his pants so he could feel his body against hers. When his skin touched hers, his chest to her back, he closed his eyes, reveled in the way she felt, his senses on high alert.

He moved his finger inside her, nudging her thighs apart. Brittany’s breathing was tight, stifled, quicker and quicker as he stroked faster and deeper. Her backside pressed against his erection, and he wanted her fiercely, wanted her with a primal irrational intensity. It had been like this the first night with her, and the second, and now again... it was different than with other women, unsophisticated, raw, reckless. He was different.

“Corbin,” she whispered. “I can’t help it, I’m going to... ”

Opening his eyes to catch the view, he watched her climax in the mirror, saw how her fingers fluttered toward the wall, enjoyed the way she bit her lip to hold back her cry, watched the graceful curve of her neck as her head tilted back. Her jugular pulsed violently, her heartbeat fast and erratic to his vampire ears. A beautiful, amazing sight, and a satisfying thing to know he could make her feel that way, that he could coax her naked in a fitting room, that he, and he alone, had planted a seed in her womb and brought a child to life.