High Stakes (30 page)

There were no lights on and she felt along the wall for the switch, hoping Ethan had closed his blinds since she was in her bra and panties. Not just any bra and panties. This was a red-hot push-up bra made up of a sheer material that showed everything and then some.A scrap of similar fabric that covered her in the front down south and nothing but a piece of red string masquerading as a thong in the back.

Impulse panties.Bought in one of those rare moments where she'd longed to get in touch with her femininity. Hopefully in about ten minutes, Ethan would be touching her femininity.

Her hand found the switch. She flicked the light on and squeezed her eyes shut reflexively at the sudden flood of brightness from the kitchenette. Saluting the hound dog standing sentry by the front door, Alexis strutted down the hall to the living area and tossed her dress on the wet bar, debating whether to leave her heels on or not.

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
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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, andhe.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 breasts and everything else between her knees and neck.

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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 littleyong-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 nipples 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.

Distracting
wasn'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
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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 hissched - 1ule 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.

He raced down the hall when the elevator opened, and fumbled with his key for a second before giving up and just shoving the door open, breaking the lock. Pausing in the doorway, he scanned the room, listening.

But it wasn't sound that assaulted him. It was the smell of blood.Hordes of it. "Oh, Lord." Ethan ran into the room and saw Alexis immediately.

She was on her side on the floor by the coffee table, eyes closed. Blood ran down her side, across her abdomen, and in a wide, wet circle on the carpet.Way too much blood. Falling to his knees, he pressed at her fleshy, gaping wound, afraid to check for a pulse, scared of what the answer might be.

"Alexis, love, what the hell happened?" Why was she in her bra and panties and nothing else? Who'd put the knife in her side?

"Ethan?" Her eyelids fluttered open.

"Yes, it's me." He brushed her hair off her face in agonized relief. "It's all right, I'm here now. I'm here."

"I don't want to die in my underwear."

He would have laughed if he weren't choking back tears. "You're not going to die in your underwear."

Feeling in his pocket, he fumbled around for his cell phone. "I'm calling 911 and they'll patch you right up."

Except he could already tell by the pallor of her skin and the amount of blood she'd lost that it would be a miracle if they could save her. He felt his throat closing up, and he gathered her into his lap so he could wrap his arms around her, feel her warmth, hear her heart beat slow and sluggish. The knife in her side was twisted at an awkward angle, like she'd fallen on it. When he glanced around the room, he saw the missing Kelsey, drained of her blood, propped up against the glass door.

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Good Lord. What the hell was going on?

Anger boiled in him, hot and fierce. He had finally found a woman he could love and she was being taken from him before he could even blink. He hadn't even had time to live with her, to make her his wife.

And his cell phone wasn't in his pocket, damn it, not that he seriously thought she had a chance.

"You're crying," she said, sounding surprised.

"Vampires don't cry." But he felt the wetness on his cheeks, knew blood tears had fallen from his eyes.

He gripped her closer, tighter, wishing he could give her his strength. "And you're going to be okay."

Her head went back and forth. "No. You've got to turn me. I'm dying." Her words were faint and pain-wracked.

"Turn you?"

"He stopped stroking her cheek and stared down at her, not daring to hope. "But… you said you didn't want to be a vampire. That you didn't want to drink blood or quit your job… or other things." He couldn't remember what else she'd said, didn't really care, but he wanted to remind her.

The temptation to take her fear and use it to his advantage was powerful, so he needed to be rational.

Alexis hadn't wanted to be turned, and he couldn't be selfish and do it now when she was vulnerable and suffering with pain.

"Are you nuts?" she said, with characteristicAlexis attitude. "That was before I was dying. I choose living as a vampire over not living at all." Her eyes fluttered open, locked with his, clear and certain. "Do it.

Please. I'm not ready to leave you and Brittany."

Hope flooded his chest, made him pull her closer to him. "Are you sure?" God, he wanted her to say yes. With Alexis turned, they wouldn't have to settle for ten or fifteen years together.

He could have her for the next thousand years, until he died of old age, an ancient vampire. She was his chosen one, and they could be together forever.

"I'm sure." It was barely a whisper, her lips moving slowly,white and cracked, but Ethan heard her clearly. "I love you," she said. "I want to be your wife."

That was all he needed to hear. "I love you, too, Alexis, for eternity."

Ethan sent a call to Seamus for assistance, then bent to Alexis and whispered in her ear.

"It's going to hurt, love, I'm so sorry." Since he couldn't throwa glamour over her, or use pleasure to numb her senses, he was going to have to hope that she was in so much pain from her wound, a little
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more wouldn't matter.

He hadn't turned anyone since Seamus in the eighteenth century, and never had the outcome been so important to him. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head, while raising her limp body to meet him.

Hovering over her shoulder and neck, he brushed his lips over her cold flesh and pulled the knife out of her side. The smell of death clung to her, her breathing a labored in and out, a soft rattling in the back of her throat.

"You'll suffer no more," he told her. "You'll be strong, powerful, my chosen one, my wife."

And he sank his fangs into her neck and drew what little remained of her lifeblood into him. She barely reacted to his invasion, giving only a slight shudder, and within a minute Ethan had drawn all that was necessary. Most of her blood had spilled on the carpet, down her side, over Ethan's hands.

Moving quickly, he punctured his wrist with his fang and sliced an inch-wide gash. Pushing her lips open, he let a few droplets touch her lips, pool on her tongue. Once she got the taste, she clamped on to him, her body going rigid as she sucked hard, drawing his life into her.

Ethan closed his eyes, felt the tug and yank throughout his body as she fed from him, a sexual flush rushing into his groin. It was an intimate act, one of joining, and while he'd certainly never felt it as a sexual desire with any of those he turned before, his feelings for Alexis were different. He loved her, lusted for her, feared for her, and with all of those emotions churning within, her eager sucking at him tugged at his soul, pleased and aroused him.

He cupped his hand over her breast, stroking her nipple, feeling it tighten for him, her mind flooding with pleasure. Locked together like this, her thoughts were flowing and mixing with his, the fear receding, while the pleasure grew and replaced the pain. Anticipation, excitement, love washed over him from her, and Ethan projected his own thoughts back to her.