Bled Dry (Vegas Vampires #3)(17)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Not quite right yet, but I’m feeling generous.” He thrust deep inside her and rested there for a minute.

“Yes… ” Gripping his biceps, she moved her hips, pleasure coursing through her.

He moved fast, hard, and pushed up into her over and over while Brittany panted and tried to keep up, ultimately giving up, collapsing back and letting him pound into her with delicious ferocity.

“Don’t stop,” she said, her voice warbling. “Don’t stop.”

And when she was going to come, when everything in her stilled and ripped up, when her mind was empty and pleasure painful, when she felt a breathtaking pause right before she burst over him, she said with everything inside her, “Do. Not. Stop.”

Corbin locked eyes with her, and she watched his change to a deep forest green. “Never,” he said.

She let go, and clung to him as they exploded together.

Five

“You care about your brother-in-law, yes?”

“Ethan? Of course. Alexis loves him and he’s a good guy.” Brittany snuggled up against Corbin, not really sure what place her brother-in-law had in the room when she was naked and postorgasmic. “Why?”

“I was just thinking that your pregnancy could have very negative repercussions on Carrick’s reelection.”

Brittany stopped playing with Corbin’s chest hairs and looked up at him. What a mood kill. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Carrick has campaigned on the side of population control. I am conducting very controversial research, not to mention that I have not completely served out my sentence. For you to be having my child, again a breach in vampire rules, will reflect very badly on Carrick. After the incident with Seamus Fox turning Cara, it could well prevent him from being reelected president.”

“I thought his opponent stepped down. And I don’t understand why the election was pushed back. It seems like he should have just won automatically.”

“It is meant to give the others time to replace Donatelli as an opposing candidate. And Carrick must still receive at least fifty percent of the popular vote within his own party to even remain on the ballot. It’s democracy, doing its job.”

Brittany was trying to get a grasp on vampire politics, but she had to admit she hadn’t made a study out of it. She wasn’t the vampire here. She was just a dentist, a normal day dweller. Until she had gotten knocked up by Corbin. Now she wasn’t sure what she was, but it had honestly never occurred to her that her pregnancy could affect Ethan’s career. “I don’t want to mess things up for Ethan. But we can’t change the facts. I am pregnant.”

Corbin smiled at her, his hair still rumpled. “And delightfully so.” He ran his fingertips over her arm, kissed her forehead. “But no one knows that I am the father of your child. No one even knows we are acquainted. Perhaps it would be best to keep our relationship a secret for a few weeks until the primary election is over. If any vampire discovered you were pregnant, they would assume the father to be a mortal. That would not be any cause for alarm.”

“But this… ” Brittany stroked Corbin’s penis, loving the way his body immediately hardened at her touch. “Is cause for alarm? We’re not supposed to be together? Does anyone really give a shit, Corbin? I think maybe you’re overreacting.”

He closed his eyes, his breathing heavier as she stroked him. Then to her disappointment, he reached down and held her hand still. “Zis es the reality, Brittany. I am a criminal. I am responsible for the death of a woman, however unintentional. I am on the verge of being able to offer a combination of medications, a vaccine essentially, that will inhibit the vampire virus, causing vampires to revert to a mortal physiology. There are vampires who hate me, who would like to see me dead. There are those who would like to steal my research, either to destroy it or to mutate it to their own purposes. Your brother-in-law is fighting with everything in his political power to ensure radical vampire politics don’t overthrow the current government. Our one moment of weakness should not jeopardize the entire future of my race.”

Well, he certainly had a way of sucking the romance out of the moment.

“Okay, God, when you put it that way. I can keep my mouth shut for a few weeks. But honestly, I had no idea things were as dire as you make them sound.” Brittany felt a small bit freaked out. “We’re having a baby, Corbin. Are you telling me rogue vampires are going to be after you all the time? I don’t think bloodsuckers randomly dropping over to kill you is the best environment to be raising a child in.” She was thinking bonnets and bottles, not draining blood and decapitation.

“Of course not. Once the election is over, and I present my findings to the UMA, then I intend to retire. We’ll get married, move to a house, and we will be soccer mom and dad, yes?”

With his hand on her butt, and her br**sts pressed against his chest, she could almost believe him that it would all work out, even if she had a hell of a time picturing Corbin sitting on the sidelines cheering from the bleachers. At night games. “So you’re still going to court me? Try to convince me I should marry you?” she asked flirtatiously. She couldn’t wait to see what his wooing entailed. It sounded fun and full of gifts. With any luck, it would also involve lots of sex and nights out on the town.

“Absolutely. But we will be discreet until the election is over.”

“A secret courtship? Wow, we’ll be like Romeo and Juliet. How sexy is that?” Brittany closed her eyes and yawned into his chest. A sharp stinging from the top of her head made her jerk back. “Ouch! Did you just pull one of my hairs out?”

“Sorry, it got caught on my watch.” Corbin massaged her scalp and encouraged her to lie back down.

Not wanting to remind him of what his watch represented—his punishment—Brittany kissed his chest and teased, “But I haven’t agreed to marry you, sweetie.”

“You will marry me,” he said. “That is what the courting is for… to show you how it will be between us, how we belong together.”

Brittany shivered in delight. There was something really flattering and pleasing about his determination to be with her. “Court me hard, baby.”

Apparently a certain nineteenth-century French vampire’s idea of how to court a woman was different from Brittany’s, and as far as she was concerned, his way sucked.

Eight weeks. Eight freaking weeks, and she had not seen Corbin. Not once.