Sucker Bet (Vegas Vampires #4)(43)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"That sounds like a plan, Nate."

She had one, too. When they got to the Ava, she was going to take him upstairs and show him that she was a girl with bite. Literally.

Chapter Thirteen

Ringo stared at Sasha in disbelief. "What do you mean, no?" She couldn’t just rub all over him and get him hard and then bail on him. It did not work like that.

"Nyet ." She shook her head, zipping the pants he’d just undone back up. Yet at the same time she leaned forward and kissed him again vigorously, her br**sts pressing against his chest.

No, no, no. That wasn’t going to work. "Hey, back off, Bond Girl. You can’t be doing that. We either have sex, or you’ve got to stay the hell off of me."

She looked at him blankly, just shrugging her shoulders, fingers playing with the back of his neck as she grinded her body against his. What was the Russian word for dick tease ? Jesus. Sasha was gorgeous, tall and thin and exotic, with piercing eyes and legs meant to wrap around a man. Except there was no wrapping going on and he was losing patience. The chick wanted to make out and leave it at that, and he wasn’t in f**king high school. That pet-and-cuddle shit didn’t cut it for him. He wanted something real. Something to take the edge off his frustrations and anger, and to help him forget that he missed his dipshit of a wife.

Kelsey would never tease. She took it as hard as she gave it, and he respected that.

"Look, I know you don’t speak English, but I’m telling you that this isn’t going to work. The clothes have got to come off." Ringo went for the zipper on her jeans again.

She slapped his hand. Hard.

"Oww, Christ!"

Lifting her hand, she pointed to the big-ass rock of a diamond on her ring finger. "Nyet . Gregor."

So she suddenly had a conscience about the fact that she was married? Ringo stared at her in disbelief. They were kissing and pawing each other in Gregor’s freaking hotel suite at the Bellagio, and that was okay, but she drew the line at penetration? That was the good part. Man, he didn’t understand women.

Of course, he was only with her because she was slipping him a little cash to get her into vampire-restricted events, like that Inaugural Ball the night before. He wasn’t sure why she had wanted to go—she had just looked around and left without a protest when security had ousted them since he wasn’t exactly welcome and neither was she since she was married to Chechikov, Carrick and Donatelli’s political enemy. But he’d been willing to do it for the money, because he owed Donatelli for stealing his heroin, and prospects for employment weren’t looking too good. Nobody was in the market for an assassin at the moment.

Ringo figured it hadn’t hurt to be seen with Sasha either, since she was a very attractive woman, and he wanted to make his wife jealous. He missed Kelsey, and was pissed at her for abandoning him. She had always stood by him before, and the fact that she’d just walked out, for such a lame reason, had hurt. Down deep, where it sliced and burned.

"Who gives a shit?" Ringo slid the ring off her finger and plunked it down on the coffee table. "There. You’re not married."

He expected her to get ticked, and that was fine with him, because he was about sick of this broad, but she just lifted her eyebrow and gave him a smirk. She said something in Russian and reached into her pocket. That better friggin’ be a condom she was pulling out, or he was walking.

Even better. It was a bag of heroin in powder form. Ringo was a solid twenty-four hours out from his last hit, and he was feeling it. It made him anxious and impatient and irritable. The sight of the bag in her hand made his leg twitch, his body burn, his mouth dry and thick.

He reached for it. She turned and dumped the powder into a glass sitting on the coffee table. A used glass, blood dried on the rim and pooling in a sticky circle on the bottom. Ringo moved forward to take it from her, not worried about cleanliness or clumping. He would just add a fresh shot of blood before he drank it. Hell, maybe he’d add hers. She was mortal, after all.

Giving him a smile, she darted away from him, went to the wet bar behind the sofa, and reached into the little fridge. She added a splash of blood to the glass and swirled it around. That was more like it. Nice, chilled drug blood and a hot chick waiting on him. That’s how he wanted it. Then as he was reaching for the glass, she suddenly and inexplicably dumped the whole thing down the sink with a flick of her wrist.

Ringo watched her in disbelief, before knocking her aside and swiping his hand across the disappearing fluid, mopping up what was still clinging there. He licked his blood-smeared skin, intense painful disappointment coursing through him, pitting his stomach, and tensing all his muscles. There was hardly any left, but he sucked every last speck off his hand, going back with his finger in the sink basin over and over again until there was nothing left.

Then he lifted his head and glared at her. "Why the f**k did you do that?"

It took him a second to realize that she had just shoved a knife into his heart.

The pain exploded, mingling with the beginning high of the heroin, and he stared at her in shock, unable to react.

"Because I want you awake when I kill you," she whispered, hand still firmly on the knife handle.

No way. The conniving little bitch spoke English.

Ringo fell onto his knees.

"Let’s just go straight upstairs," Gwenna said as they parked in the garage at the Ava. She felt anxious to get Nate alone, like it was really important that she tell him the truth now.

He glanced over and grinned at her. "I thought you wanted to get me drunk before you take advantage of me."

"I’ve suddenly got nervous that you might pass out on me before we can get to the good part."

Laughing, he hopped out of the truck, and came around and opened her door. "Whatever you want. I’m game."

Damn it, he was so adorable. Gwenna leaned forward and kissed him. "Thank you for being so accommodating."

"You have no idea how accommodating I can be."

That sounded promising.

Gwenna slid a leg over to climb out of the truck and smiled, taking the hand Nate offered. He was smiling, too, still wearing his suit from the funeral, and looking a bit rumpled in it. He wasn’t really a suit kind of guy. He was jeans and boots, sweatshirts and T-shirts. She was about to respond, to toss off some witty reference to his sexual prowess, when she smelled the scent of vampire in the air.

Her face must have revealed her curiosity, because he said, "What?"

Then they both heard the popping sound. Nate reacted before she did, shoving at her, pushing her back in the car, his hand on her shoulder gripping her jacket as he tried to haul himself back into the car.