High Stakes (Vegas Vampires #1)(19)
Author: Erin McCarthy

He had been pissing her off five minutes ago and now he couldn’t just be dead.

"Where’s your pulse, damn it! I really don’t like you, you know, but shit, Ethan, I don’t want you dead."

There was no pulse or heartbeat, and she could see clearly that his chest wasn’t rising and falling either. The tears came then, which shocked the hell out of her. She never cried. And unlike Kelsey, her tears were loud and wet. They blurred her vision as she pressed her hands hard over Ethan’s wound, feeling helpless and a little frantic.

"Okay, I’m lying. I do like you infact, I’ve been lying when I said I wasn’t attracted to you. Every time you look at me, I get that weird sort of tingling sexual awareness. And you may be insane, but you’re always polite, and you seem to treat your employees well, so I guess you’re not a total pig, and you shouldn’t really die. I mean, you’re not dead." She waited a second, well aware that Ethan was exhibiting all the obvious signs of death, and that his entire shirt, jacket, and waistband were now drenched with his blood.

Closing her eyes tightly and pulling her hands back, she begged, "You’re not dead are you?"

"No. Could you please call Seamus for me? He’s number two on my cell phone. It’s in my pants pocket."

Alexis screamed and opened her eyes. Ethan was sitting up, resting on his elbows, eyes wide open. "Ethan! How? What

oh, shit, I’m hallucinating. I fainted, didn’t I? See, I didn’t eat dinner and I drank that champagne, and now I’ve let my wants replace reality." She had never been unstable before or prone to delusions, so that was the only explanation.

"Never mind, I’ll call him myself." Ethan dug his phone out with jerky movements and flipped it open. He pushed a button. "It’s me. Can you intercept 911, please? I was shot and Alexis called the EMTs in. Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks."

"Um "’Alexis bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to disintegrate into hysterics. "How are you sitting up? Talking? You didn’t have a pulse a minute ago!"

Ethan was stripping off his jacket and his blood-soaked dress shirt. When he bared his chest, she gasped. A nasty flesh woundgaped wide open above his heart.

That was absolutely sick looking, all puckered flesh and slimy, coagulating blood. "Oh, crap, that’s like a science lab. Dissection 101 God, you must be in so much pain. And how are you even sitting up, and why did you tell Seamus to intercept the EMTs ?" Her voice rose shrilly, because even as she stared at the torn flesh of his pectoral muscle, the wound got smaller.

She blinked. Okay, no more champagne for Alexis. Either that or it had been spiked with a friendly little plug of acid. "I don’t feel so good."

Because now when she pried her eyes open, the wound was closed.Just gone. Bye-bye.Like it had never been there.

"Alexis." Ethan wiped the blood off his chest and waist with his balled-up shirt and looked her straight in the eye. "I’m a vampire.For real. No game. No pretend. I am a vampire, and I can’t be killed with a bullet."

Everything she’d ever eaten in her life threatened to come back up."Ha ha .Very funny. This is some kind of trick.A joke. Let’s make an ass out of Alexis." But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She was a logical person, and what she’d said was illogical. There was no way Ethan could have faked lacking a pulse.

He’d been shot.In the heart. The wound had closed. Which meant the only thing that made sense was if

"I’m a vampire."

Oh, crap. She’d been insulting a vampire for two days.Yelling at him. She’d kicked him in the nuts. "Well. Okay. Lucky you, I guess." She went for a laugh, but it sounded like a bad hyena impersonation.

"In this case, yes." Hewinced a little as he touched his chest. "I wasn’t trying to misleadyou, it just seemed easier to let you think I was playing some kind of game."

"Are you all vampires? Seamus, Kelsey, Peter?" She felt betrayed, like everyone else had a secret and didn’t bother to tell her. It was prom all over again.

"Everyone at the reception tonight is, yes. It really is a fund-raising dinner. I really am president of all registered vampire voters."

"Cool." If she was going to hang with vampires, she might as well go for the head honcho. Alexis dug her fingers into her thigh. This was going to take a mental readjustment.A big one.

Ethan’s eyes briefly closed, and he lay back down on the floor. "Sorry, just a little dizzy still. I think I lost too much blood."

Alexis didn’t have a response for that. "Sorry" seemed trite and she had no idea where vampires replenished lost blood oh, yuck. Yes, she did.

Ethan looked pale, his lips parted and still. His face was contorted in lines of discomfort. Alexis rolled her eyes, checked out the ceiling. Wiped her sweaty palms on her dress and pondered why she had for one minute thought her life was unexciting.

"Um would it help if you know, you had like some of mine? Just a little, though!" Alexis felt her cheeks burn as Ethan’s eyes popped open.

"You’re offering your blood to me?" He studied her, midnight blue eyes boring into her. "You surprise me, Alexis."

Embarrassed, she tried to backpedal. "Well, this is an unusual circumstance, obviously, and it wouldn’t be like an open-ended invitation. This is a onetime deal, because you clearly are in pain. You look like shit. I would do it for anyone."

Liar.

He smiled. "It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re attracted to me? That you like me and, whenever I look at you, you feel a tingling sexual awareness?"

Ethan struggled not to laugh at the outrage and horror that flooded Alexis’s face. He shouldn’t tease her, but even in his half-conscious state, he had reveled in her words.

She was attracted to him. He hadn’t lost his touch with women. Not that any other women had entered his thoughts since he’d met her. After nearly a millennium of living, he had finally found a woman who intrigued him enough to stay in his head nearly every second since the moment he’d met her.

And she liked him. That was enough to help him ignore the wave of pain the bullet ripping into his chest had caused.

"If you weren’t wounded, I’d hurt you right now."

"I know you would. You’d kick my ass, right?"

"Absolutely," she said, even as her lip trembled. "And for the record, people say all kinds of weird things when they’re under stress. So don’t read too much into that sexual tingling thing."

"Of course, I understand." Ethan stayed on the floor, even though he could stand up now. In fact, he should be getting up and checking the security cameras for the man who had shot him. There would be clips of him in the casino with Kelsey, and going up the elevator.