Bled Dry (Vegas Vampires #3)(37)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Oh, I won’t keep you then.” Corbin stood up and pulled out his wallet. “Here, use this for your expenses.” He tried to hand her a platinum Visa card.

For some reason, that both appalled and offended her. She shook her head and didn’t take it. “I don’t need your credit card. I’m perfectly capable of paying for my own clothes.” She and Alex were independent professional women. They didn’t need men taking care of them. And he couldn’t fob off his responsibilities by buying her maternity stretchy tops.

Even as her brain told her that wasn’t rational, he was just trying to help, her emotions were careening out of control. “If you really wanted to help, you could go with me. I need to register for baby gifts and it might be nice if you helped me pick out some of the choices. And we’ll probably need to get doubles of some things so you can keep them here at your apartment.” She glanced around, suddenly seeing the room with new, irritated eyes. It was hard to imagine a baby crawling alongside a hard-back of Dante’s Inferno , playing with Chinese porcelain. “And this place isn’t exactly childproofed.”

“Have I done something wrong?” Corbin asked in bewilderment, still holding his credit card. “Why are you angry with me?”

Because he wasn’t in love with her. Because they weren’t married. Because she couldn’t give her child the nuclear family she had craved so desperately when she was growing up.

“I’m not angry with you,” she snapped. “I just drove all the way over here from Summerlin in crappy traffic because I thought you wanted to talk to me, and you’re just staring at me. I hate this awkwardness. Either we are or we aren’t dating. It’s one or the other. Pick one now and forever hold your peace because I can’t do this, not when I need to have my head wrapped around parenting.”

Way to be rational. Brittany sucked in a breath and tried to stay still, confident, on the sofa. It was difficult to achieve when her ass kept sliding around on the satin, but she gripped the cushion and held on valiantly. She wanted to retain her dignity when he told her he had no intention of dating a lunatic like herself.

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.