Sucker Bet (Vegas Vampires #4)(18)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"Excuse me?" Gwenna tried to move out of his grip, but he held on tighter. How could he dismiss what she had just said? It was a deep confession and he had the utter nerve to say she didn’t mean it? "I absolutely did feel that way."

"You don’t want to die, Gwenna… if you did, you would be dead already. But he played into your guilt, your sadness, and for a minute, maybe, you thought it would be easier to just let it happen, let it all go, leave this world. But he didn’t and you were glad, weren’t you?"

She sighed. "Yes. I’m glad to be alive."

"You’ve been through a lot." It wasn’t a question, but a statement, his lips brushing over the top of her head.

"No more than anyone else." That was where her shame came from. She had held on to her grief, her pain. "After it happened, I realized how very selfish and shortsighted I’ve been… I can’t and shouldn’t control the length of my life, but I can control what I do in the time that I’m here."

Nate gave her a small squeeze. "Amen to that, Gwenna."

Gwenna stared at the wall, reflecting how odd, yet how right, it felt to be there, to have taken an opportunity and seized it, how interesting and intriguing it was to talk to someone she hadn’t known for five hundred years. How pleasant it was to let her sexuality back out to play after keeping it in check for three centuries.

She wanted to say something, to think of some way to say thank you to Nate without sounding like a complete idiot, but she suddenly realized something else.

Nate was asleep.

And her phone was ringing again.

Chapter Six

Gwenna listened to the phone ring and wrestled with her conscience. It had to be Roberto. Which meant she wasn’t obligated to answer it. But she should turn it to vibrate so it didn’t disturb Nate.

Reluctantly leaving the warm bed, and the warmer man, Gwenna slid out from under the blanket and searched for her purse, which was somewhere on the floor. Feeling a little odd scrambling around in the nude, she grabbed on to her panties and wiggled back into them. Then she added her T-shirt for good measure.

Her phone stopped ringing, then started again. She found it and was about to switch it to vibrate when she saw on the screen that it was Alexis calling. Her sister-in-law didn’t ring her all that often, so Gwenna found it odd. She answered, horrible visions of something tragic having happened to Brittany, the baby, or Ethan.

"Yes?" She kept her voice low, very conscious of Nate two feet away. But he was sleeping hard, not stirring at all.

"Okay, we have a girl crisis. Are you busy or can you come over?"

Alexis always cut right to the heart of things. "What crisis?"

"Kelsey is here, crying her eyes out, and babbling about her marriage being over… she’s totally destroyed, her mascara is all bleeding down her face, and I don’t know what the hell to do with her. You know I suck at comforting people. Cara’s back in Ireland, Brit’s in the hospital, so you’re all I’ve got. I need you to come and say the right things."

Walking out into the hall so she didn’t disturb Nate, Gwenna wanted to both roll her eyes and laugh simultaneously. "I hardly know Kelsey. I doubt she’d appreciate me showing up right now."

"But you’re very maternal. Please?"

Gwenna made a face. That was absolutely the way to make her feel guilty. Grateful she couldn’t show up on the security cameras since she was rumpled in nothing but her T-shirt and panties, Gwenna paced back and forth. "Okay, fine, but I can’t really see what I can do."

"Well, it will definitely be better than my handling of the situation. I told her she was better off without that junkie sack of shit husband of hers, and now she’s locked in my bathroom bawling."

"You called her husband a junkie sack of shit?" Gwenna sometimes suspected Alexis was missing the gene for tact.

"It’s the truth." Alexis sounded defensive. "You’ve met Ringo. He’s a waste of space."

Gwenna had met Ringo only once at Roberto’s when she had gone to discuss her ex-husband’s stubborn insistence on continuing to pay her alimony she neither needed nor wanted. Kelsey’s husband had been quiet, clearly a drug abuser, though Gwenna had felt more desperation from him than anything else. He’d looked like he was in a silent agony, begging for a way out. She hadn’t sensed any violence from him, and she believed everyone deserved a second chance, despite what Alexis was always saying about every offender being a repeat offender waiting to happen.

Which was probably all the more reason that she couldn’t justify sitting in a massage room watching Nate sleep when Kelsey was hurting. "Alright, give me a few minutes. I need to pop by my room first."

"Why, where are you?"

Damn. She was terrible at discretion. "Just running a few errands."

"With that hunky guy we saw you with at the hospital?" Alexis’s voice sounded downright gleeful. "Shit, if you’re with that hottie, don’t worry about me and Kels. We’ll work through it. I’ll get her drunk or something."

"No, it’s fine. I’ll be there." Then some little devil inside her prompted her to say, "He’s actually sleeping now, so it’s good timing."

"Oooohhhh. That sounds promising."

Gwenna could feel her cheeks going hot, and not just from embarrassment. She was actually feeling a bit boastful. Yes, she had a naked man sleeping a few feet away from her. And since she didn’t intend to inform the world at large, the least she could do was brag on it to her sister-in-law. Because there really was something fun and exciting and delicious about what she had done. "He’s mortal. He’ll be out for hours."

She didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded—like she’d thoroughly wore him out—but Alexis just laughed.

"You go, girl."

"I’ll see you in a few minutes." Gwenna quickly hung up, not wanting to give Alexis time to dig further into her relationship with Nate. Because she had no idea where they went from here, if at all, and she didn’t want to speculate out loud about it. That would ruin the pleasant satisfaction she felt.

Going back into the room, she finished getting dressed. Nate was still out cold. She figured she had hours before he even roused. He’d had a very rough couple of days, and he probably hadn’t slept well. Given what he was still facing with making arrangements for his sister’s funeral, it was a good thing for him to be sleeping so deeply. She’d chat with Kelsey and be back in an hour, and he’d never know she’d been gone. It wasn’t like she could sleep anyway. After nine hundred years of night walking, nothing could force her to sleep at only three in the morning.

It seemed like she should leave him a note or something and let him know what she was about, but at the same time that struck her as odd. She could call him and leave a message on his cell, but she didn’t have the number and she couldn’t very well dig through his pants looking for it. Besides, she’d be back in a flash.