High Stakes (Vegas Vampires #1)(60)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Then the thought fled her mind altogether when she saw a body propped up against Ethan’s glass balcony door. Shescreamed, a strangled shriek of horror that trailed off into a gurgle.

"Oh, my God."It was Kelsey, Ethan’s secretary, the one who had been missing, according to Seamus.

Her stomach did a hideous roll, and she gagged at the sight of Kelsey’s pale, bloodless face, her legs straight out in front of her, the strap on her dress slipping off her shoulder.

After a long horrified second, when Alexis battled back nausea, the lawyer in her took over. She’d seen many graphic crime scenes, both in photos and in person. She’d witnessed severely beaten rape victims getting medical examinations and she’d seen a five-year-old girl shot in the head by her stepfather. This wasn’t any different—it had just completely caught her off guard, ripping her out of the frivolity of a seduction.

She scanned the room quickly, in her shock forgetting where the phone was in Ethan’s suite. Spotting it by the television cabinet, she realized it was too close to the body. She was going to have to go out into the hall and to her room so she wouldn’t contaminate any possible evidence.

With shaking fingers, she reached down, feeling around to retrieve her dress before she remembered she’d thrown it on the counter. Then she sensed something as she stared at the body that had been a vibrant, energetic woman.Breathing. She could hear breathing other than her own. Was Kelsey still alive?

No, nothing about Kelsey looked alive.

Standing straight up, Alexis shot a nervous glance around the room. God, she wasn’t alone, she just knew it.

Then she spotted him. Just a few feet from Kelsey’s body, he was hunched behind a hunter green leather chair. Her eyes locked with his in the dim room, the glare of the light from the kitchenette flooding over into the living area. He moved so fast she wasn’t even aware of it until his hand was over her head, pressing firmly, but not painfully. The glint of a knife flashed as he flicked open a switchblade.

Fear leaped up in her along with a rash of bile.

"Leave," he commanded. "You never saw me."

She tried to edge back away from him, but his hand cupped her head like a basketball. Alexis instinctively sliced out with her palm and gave a side strike to his flank. Using her spiked heel, she dug down into his foot.

He gave a startled roar and let go of her."Bitch."

Immediately she realized her mistake. He’d been trying to wipe her memory of him and the incident. He would have let her go if she had faked confusion, acquiescence.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. She groaned and grabbed her head, backing away from him. She was a shitty actress, but it was worth a shot, and he.was between her and the door. If she could stumble around him, she could head for the hall slowly and carefully.

Too bad she didn’t really know what the hell happened to someone undera glamour . She’d only seen the guy who’d shot Ethan sort of hanging there drooling when Kelsey had put him under one.

And now Kelsey was dead. Involuntarily her eyes darted over to Kelsey sitting there like a big stuffed doll.

A shudder wracked her.

The guy in front of her sucked in his breath. Alexis looked at him and realized what was happening. She had walked backward right into the glare of the kitchen light and the guy was ogling her br**sts and everything else between her knees and neck.

Great.Just wonderful.She was going to die in her underwear, murdered by a henchman with a boner.

No way in hell was she pretending to be undera glamour now He’d probably lick her or something gross like that.

Best tactic was surprise aggression.

" Ki-Hap!"She yelled her karate cry of strong energy, prayed for a little yong-gi —courage—and went at him, fists flying.

Smith had encountered any number of unusual situations in the two hundred years he’d worked for Mr. Donatelli , but he’d never been karate kicked in the knees and chest by a half-naked blonde. She was fast and much stronger than she looked, but it wouldn’t be any trouble to suppress her.Except he couldn’t stop looking at her body. Every time she twisted, turned, lifted her foot to kick, he caught a new and fascinating shot of skin.

His brain couldn’t seem to process why she was in her underwear in the first place, and he could only manage to defend himself with halfhearted blocks while gaping at the see-through red bra, her ni**les puckered tight against the material.

And he didn’t even flinch when she clipped him on the side of the head, because that extensive kick gave him a view that men paid good money to see every night in Vegas.

Distractingwasn’t even the word for it. Smith was downright in awe, completely mesmerized, and only remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing when she tripped over the body he had planted.

She fell hard, her ankles flipping right over the sides of the high heels she was wearing. Pitching toward him, Smith instinctively moved out to subdue her while she was vulnerable.

The knife he was holding loosely made contact with the tender flesh below her ribcage. Horrified, he heard her gasp, felt her knees crumple,saw her eyes roll back in pain.

Uh-oh.This was bad.

Panicked, he tried to retract his knife, but it was caught on something—muscle or bone. He yanked and she groaned in agony, clutching at him. Shaking loose of her, he abandoned the knife and let her drop to the floor, falling right in front of the other girl. Smith headed toward the balcony, stumbling over the door runner as he yanked it open.

Damn it all. He’d just stabbed Carrick’s mortal girlfriend, and he didn’t think Mr. Donatelli was going to like that.

Even if it had been an accident.

Alexis wished she’d tried more seriously to open her mind to Ethan. Now she was screaming for him in panicked silence and it was nothing but a black, empty void. The pain in her side had faded into numbness, cold, cold, everywhere, like ice had crept over her hands and feet.

The clock in Ethan’s bedroom was ticking, ticking, and Alexis lay on the floor, knowing she was bleeding to death, trying to move, but unable to get her body to cooperate. Brittany and Ethan hovered in the front of her thoughts and Alexis felt regret, for all the time she’d wasted, for all the things she wouldn’t do or see.

Ethan, she screamed.Help me .

On the elevator to his room, Ethan was running through his sched – 1 ule for the following night when he heard Alexis call out to him. | In his head.

Alexis? He searched for the source, wondering if he had imagined it. She had sounded desperate, afraid.Lonely.

There was noanswer, and only silence when he called out to her again. He didn’t like this. Panicking, he willed the elevator to move faster. Seamus had said Alexis had gone upstairs with two guards, but he didn’t feel at all reassured. Not until he saw her for himself.