Bled Dry (22 page)

She was his.

And as he entered her from behind, sliding his aching cock into her softness, he bit her shoulder, holding her in place, keeping her locked to him, with him, together. A soft moan escaped her, and Corbin would have responded in kind except he was tasting her blood, drowning in the ecstasy of blending her with him everywhere, burying himself in her thighs while his teeth sank into her vein. He wouldn’t take too much, because of the baby, but just enough to slide her taste past his lips and tongue, enough to feel their thoughts intermingle.

There weren’t coherent sentences emerging from Brittany, but thoughts and feelings. He could hear, feel, sense pleasure, wonder, hope emanating from her in wave after wave.

Brittany,
he murmured in his head, wanting to see if that bond between them, strangely absent in recent months, was there, intact.
Do you like the way I feel inside you?

Yes,
she answered, clearly and immediately.
I really like it. You have the most amazing cock.

Corbin broke his bite and groaned out loud, feeling his body tighten as he thrust harder. What man wouldn’t want to hear
that
? She could be lying, ego stroking, reciting a line from a pornographic film, he didn’t care. Her words sent him crashing into an orgasm, his fingers digging into her thighs.

“Brittany,” he groaned as he pushed forward, knocking her into the mirror, her hands and forehead slapping the glass. “Beautiful Brittany.”

Her lips moved, no sound emanating, as she had another small orgasm, her body clenching his, coaxing his climax to linger. He was slowing down, but unwilling to retreat from the warmth of her entirely when a knock on the door made them both jump.

“Is everything okay?” the salesclerk asked.

“Fine,” he said, his voice coming out in a growl.

“Then could you leave the fitting room, sir? It’s not really good for business.”

Brittany gave a soft laugh. “Whoops. We got carried away, didn’t we?”

“I am helping her try on ze clothes,” Corbin said with as much dignity as he could muster with his manhood still out of his pants.

“Um-hm,” was the clerk’s response.

Corbin licked Brittany’s shoulder to heal the puncture wounds he had made and pulled back with both satisfaction and regret. They would have to continue this at home.

She bent over and scooped up her panties. “I feel ready to take on the Baby Superstore now. That was very relaxing.”

Relaxing? Corbin felt tight everywhere, like his pants had shrunk. He did not want to shop for baby bottles. He wanted to take Brittany home and make love to her slowly and skillfully all night long.

“Ze Baby Superstore?” He wiped his mouth and zipped, handing her the jeans she’d been wearing from the hook on the door.

“Yes. It’s so much easier to register now. All we have to do is scan and go. Piece of cake.”

Nothing was a piece of cake with Corbin. Brittany scratched her itchy stomach through her shirt and watched her bloodsucking boyfriend assess car seats. After his initial exclamation of, “Why the hell are there so many?” he had methodically started at one end and was reading the features of each seat.

Fortunately, he read quickly, his lips moving as he ticked them off down the line. Halfway through the twenty models, he looked at her and said, “When I was a boy, my nanny just held me on her lap.”

“Unless you’re a celebrity, that will get you arrested nowadays.” She really wanted to tell him to just pick one, damn it, but she’d already tried that in the baby monitor aisle and had mortally wounded his feelings. Even worse, it hadn’t made him move any faster. Apparently vampires were used to disposable time, because Corbin moved like molasses uphill in a snowstorm.

“I think this one is too masculine. What if it is a girl?” He gestured to the stripped navy blue car seat.

Brittany didn’t think she cared, really. It wasn’t like their daughter was going to have a gender crisis because her car seat was blue, and besides, she didn’t believe in encouraging those kinds of stereotypes. But if it helped him narrow the list down, she’d be down with blue. “Good point.”

“Then again, on the other hand, this has the highest safety ranking.”

If he weren’t so damn adorable, Brittany would be sorry she’d brought him. But he
was
adorable. He was so sweet and concentrating so hard, so flippin’ cute, that she wanted to just eat him up whole. How lucky could she be? She’d had unprotected sex with a vampire she barely knew from Adam and gotten pregnant, not an auspicious beginning. But not only had he stepped up to the plate to accept his responsibility, he was giving her hot fitting room sex and debating the pros and cons of car seats like they were sinking half a million dollars into buying a house, not spending a hundred on a carrier seat they’d use for a whopping six months. Because he cared about their baby’s safety. Swoon.

Not every girl pregnant by a vampire was going to be that lucky, you know.

But it still made for a long night. Thank God the store was open until midnight. She would have previously wondered who shopped for baby supplies at eleven at night, but now she had her answer. Tired fathers buying formula and diapers, stressed-out mothers dashing in to pick up infant Tylenol, crying, red-faced babies in their arms, and pregnant dentists whose undead partners slept all day long.

When Corbin had narrowed it down to three models, he asked her opinion. “Which one?”

“I think this one,” she said, pointing to one at random, liking its earthy tone.

“It looks more difficult to maneuver than the others,” he said with a frown.

“Then this one.” She pointed to the green one.

“The canopy doesn’t extend as far.”

“Then how about this one?” She pointed to the last remaining one, two models down from the others.

He nodded. “Good choice.”

Brittany almost rolled her eyes. Instead, she just handed him the scanner. He was really enjoying adding items to their registry with the little wand. Clicking the button and capturing the bar code brought a smile to his face every time he used it. Now he wielded the wand like a saber and slashed through the air, scanning at an angle.

“There. It es on ze list.”

Men never changed. They could turn anything into a toy or a weapon.

“Zap one of those headrest things while you’re at it.” There were only three choices, all looking very nearly the same. “Just pick the cheapest one.”

To her amazement, he actually complied. “On to ze high chairs,” he said, consulting the New Parent checklist he had in his other hand.

Brittany noticed that the intense concentration of baby registry sign-up had impacted his English. He sounded fresh from Paris. Not that his vocabulary in English was lacking, because the extensiveness of that constantly amazed her. But he could never entirely shed his accent. It suddenly made her wonder if he would teach their baby French. How cool. Her baby would be bilingual. So when her child was annoyed with her that she had to clean her room, she could bitch about it in French and Brittany would never know what she was saying. Maybe not such a good thing after all.

“Who exactly is going to purchase these items for us? I still do not understand why we don’t just buy them ourselves,” he said as he ran his hand over a contemporary white high chair.

“Where does your money come from, Corbin?” she blurted out, suddenly curious.

He shrugged. “Family money. We were very wealthy in the nineteenth century and I was the last of the line, so it all came to me upon my parents’ death. I have lived modestly, the money has grown through investments. My research is funded by an ancient vampire, so I do not spend my personal money. I am very wealthy. Perfectly capable of seeing to all the needs of our infant.”

He looked offended so she put out her hand. “Chill out. I wasn’t implying you couldn’t. I was just curious. And the whole point of registering is so people can buy us gifts. It’s tradition. People want to give gifts when you have your first child. Everyone at my office will be giving me gifts, and Ethan and Alexis will want to buy us something, and my college friends, my next-door neighbor, your vampire friends... ”

Making a face, Corbin said, “I do not have any friends.” He moved down the row. “Not these. Neither of us has this type of furnishing. We are more traditional.”

Brittany felt her heart swell. She hadn’t meant to remind him of his loneliness. She hadn’t even realized the truth of what he had just said. Yes, Alexis, Ethan, and Cara had all told her Corbin was not accepted by most vampires, but she had figured he had some friends or comrades tucked away somewhere. She knew he was something of a loner, but that had always seemed like his choice to her. Now she understood that no matter what a certain eccentric scientist insisted, he missed simple companionship.

Going after him, she touched his arm. “Hey. I’m your friend.”

Corbin smiled back at her, his thumb stroking across her cheek. “That you are. And it is a gift. I used to have friends, you know, when I was mortal. Even as a young vampire. But then, everyone died. And I didn’t bother to make new ones.” Corbin dropped his hand. “But I am grateful for your friendship. I did not realize how much I missed that.”

I love you,
she wanted to say, knowing that she did, that Corbin was different, her feelings for him unique and deep, but she clamped her lips shut. It would sound like she was trying to make him feel better, like it was a declaration brought about by pity, not true feelings. She wished they could still read each other’s thoughts so he would see the truth in her heart, her head, her words written across her consciousness. But for some reason, since the two-month separation they’d had, she hadn’t been able to hear him. Except for when they were having sex. And she didn’t think he heard her either, which bothered her.

“All work and no play isn’t good for anyone, not even a vampire. Don’t worry, I’m going to be dragging you out of the house a lot.” That should reassure him. She almost laughed at the look on his face.

“You are too kind,” he said dryly. Then he turned to a mahogany high chair. “This one?”

“Yes. It’s lovely.” And matched both of their distinct decors.

Damn, they got along so well. They were like poster children for mortal-vampire parents who weren’t married.

Brittany grinned when Corbin aggressively zapped with the scanner.

Everything was going to be
so
fine.

“What do you mean, your sister will be here in an hour?” Alexis looked around their apartment and tried not to panic. She was a crappy housekeeper. There were papers everywhere, bills piling up, a Wal-Mart bag full of toiletries on the breakfast bar, and various piles of laundry dotting the couch. “Brittany just asked if you could call Gwenna yesterday!”

“Actually, I invited her to visit several months ago, after you suggested that very thing. I thought you’d be pleased. This will give Brittany a chance to talk to her.”

Men. “A little warning would be nice! The apartment’s a wreck and so am I.”

Ethan looked baffled. “I don’t think Gwenna will care if we haven’t run the sweeper all week.”

There was no time to argue with him about female dynamics and making a good first impression. She went into action, scooping up the laundry piles and tossing them willy-nilly into the basket. “Pick up all that paperwork! Shove it in a drawer or something or at least stack it all in one pile.”

Running into the bedroom, Alexis tossed the basket in their closet and slammed the door shut. Damn it. Their bed wasn’t even made. She whipped the comforter over the whole mess of rumpled sheets and smoothed it flat. Tossing pillows on top, she ran back and grabbed the Wal-Mart bag, tossing her hair out of her eyes. She needed to jump in the shower.