Bled Dry (Vegas Vampires #3)(2)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Now that was a little personal.

“Ethan.” Alexis glared at him. “That’s not really any of your business.”

“It is,” he insisted. “Vampires aren’t supposed to sleep with mortal women without using birth control. While the odds of pregnancy aren’t as great as copulation with a mortal man, there is still that risk. It’s irresponsible to mate with a mortal woman and impregnate her with a half-vampire, half-mortal child.”

Copulate … mate … impregnate … could he make it sound any grosser? Next he’d toss out breeding and bitches in heat .

And she was not about to tell her by-the-book brother-in-law that Corbin had not used birth control. That they had gone from discussing Corbin’s scientific experiment to body slapping in about a blink. There hadn’t been time to grab a good breath for moaning, forget finding a condom. They had been there and done before you could say ovulate.

“Corbin and I may have been irresponsible, but that’s irrelevant at this point, Ethan. I’m having a baby. Alone, apparently, since I haven’t seen Corbin since we conceived this child.” Well, she had thought she’d seen him the night she’d been so sick, but Alexis had assured her she must have dreamed that Corbin had showed up, hauled her off the bathroom floor, and put her to bed. “I have no idea how to get in touch with him.”

Brittany would be mortified to actually have to face Corbin and tell him she was having his child, but it made her uncomfortable to realize that he wasn’t going to know. Whatever he wanted to do with the knowledge of impending fatherhood was fine with Brittany—he could be involved or not—but it only seemed right that he have the opportunity to make the choice himself.

But she couldn’t tell him if she couldn’t find him.

Rubbing her mildly nauseous stomach, Brittany bit her lip and worried. It took her a second to realize that Ethan and Alexis weren’t saying anything. When she looked up, she saw them glancing at each other. Damn them. They were doing that vampire mind-reading thing with each other, leaving her out of their conversation.

“If you guys are talking about me, quit it. That is so rude.”

Alexis swore. “Ethan… ” she said in warning. “Let me handle this.”

“I don’t need to be handled,” Brittany said, feeling a little irritated. “What are you keeping from me?”

“So handle it,” Ethan said, sweeping his hand out gallantly. “I have utter confidence in you to do the right thing, Alexis.”

Did they even notice she was sitting there? “What are you both talking about?”

“Brit… ” Alexis tugged on the end of her shaggy blond hair. “Corbin is in Vegas if you want to talk to him.”

Her breath caught. “He is?” A lump the size of a grapefruit seemed to be stuck in her throat. She was having trouble swallowing, and her stomach was grinding and twisting. “How long has he been here?” And why the hell hadn’t he told her he was in town?

“Um, I’m not really sure,” Alexis said, biting her fingernail. It was a clear sign she was lying. Apparently she decided to come clean. “But well, actually, I think he’s kind of always here because he sort of has to be. I don’t think he ever left. He, um, well, lives here.”

Tears popped into Brittany’s eyes, mortifying her. So no one had told her Corbin lived in Vegas, including Corbin himself. Big whoop. They were nothing to each other, an embarrassing little one-night stand, two minutes out of Corbin’s two hundred years of life. Of course he hadn’t put her at the top of the list of people to see when he was out and about. She wasn’t even sure why she had assumed he was from out of town, except that maybe that had been wishful thinking, her mental justification for why he hadn’t bothered to speak to her in the last eight weeks.

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.

Two

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.