chapter Nine
Ethan opened the door to his security advisor a minute later, still wearing a grin. Alexis made him laugh, in a way he hadn't in a long time.A hundred years or more. He'd been serious lately, trying really hard to keep a lid on his emotions, urges, instincts, temper.
In the process it seemed he'd forgotten how to laugh, and that was rather a shame.
"I brought the disc for you to view, Mr. Carrick, sir."
"Thank you, William. Is he on it?"
"Yes." William stepped into the room, a cardboard box in his hands. "And I wasn't sure which shoes belonged to Ms. Baldizzi so I brought them all."
"What do you mean, you brought them all?" Alexis came up behind Ethan and stared into the box. "How many pairs of shoes are left lying in the elevator?"
"About three a day, miss," William said with a completely straight face, his little electronic earpiece tucked in place, his goatee trim and tidy.
Ethan liked the way Alexis was hovering behind him, sort of leaning around him.Like she was with him.Comfortable being behind his protection. It may have been an illusion or wishful thinking on his part, but she did actually touch his arm to shift him out of the way as she reached into the box. A red bra flew out of her hand and across the room.
" Geez!That's definitely not mine." Keeping her hand tucked behind her back this time, she leaned farther over the box. "There'sthree more bras in here and a thong.From six elevators? "What the hell goes on in these elevators?"
Neither he nor William spoke.
"How long did it take to accumulate all this?"
The corner of William's mouth twitched. "This is since yesterday, miss."
Alexis grabbed her throat and curled her lip back. "Is everyone in the world depraved except for me?"
"Oh, come now, Alexis, I'm sure you're capable of as much depravity as the next person."
She glared at Ethan.
"Are any of these yours?" William looked ready to be on his way.
"I see my shoes, but they're underneath a pair of boxers thatam not touching. I think I'll just get a new pair next payday-Thanks."
Ethan wanted to offer her a new pair, but was pretty sure shetell him to stick them in an uncomfortable place.
William retrieved the flung bra from the sofa and tossed it back into the box."Sorry, Miss Baldizzi ."
"Hey, it's not your fault. Thanks for trying." She turned and tapped the disc Ethan was holding. "Does this show us who shot you?"
"We shall see." Ethan dismissed William. "I'll be in contact. Let me know when you've IDed him."
"Absolutely, sir."
William left and Alexis turned to him, crossing her arms over her chest, which prevented him from seeing her nipples. "Just one question vampire or mortal?"
"William?Vampire. Most of the guards are mortal, but as head of security, he needs access to certain information."
"Well, I hope he figures out who that guy is I mean you can't just walk into casinos and shoot people. If you have it on tape, my office can prosecute. I don't normally do homicides, but I can assist the senior prosecutor. I have a ninety-five percent conviction rate, by the way."
Even though she seemed to be handlingall of this quite well, there were obviously some issues she hadn't thought through. "Alexis, you can't prosecute. There is no police report, and no victim. I cannot be medically examined by mortals, which is why I had Seamus intercept the EMTs . There is no crime here, according to the mortal world. We want to discover his identity so we can find out if Iwas a direct target, or if it was an accident. Either way, we'll erase his memory to avoid suspicion." well, that sucks. I wanted to send the bastard to jail." She took the disc out of his hand and headed for the TV. "Will this play in your DVD player or just the computer?"
"The DVD player is fine. And why do I have the feeling you enjoy putting men in prison?" There was true disappointment on her face, which didn't really blend with her cute blond hair, perky nose, and pink lips. Wearing his sweatpants and a T-shirt, she looked more like an escapee from a local high school gym class, not an attorney.
But that gleam in her eye was allprosecutor .
Alexis pushed Play on his remote control. He liked the way she just made herself at home in his suite. Most women were intimidated by him, and waited for his initiative.Maybe not sexually, but to be involved in his life in any way, yes. He hadn't had a woman assume she could take charge in his home since his mother.
Maybe there was something to be said for modern aggressive women.
Hekind of liked Alexis's attitude.
Or maybe that was blood loss talking.
"Okay, what the hell are we looking at?" Alexis frowned at the TV screen.
Ethan studied the image in front of him. A man, in his early thirties, lean, well dressed in an expensive but discreet suit, was walking off the elevator. He leaned to the side, whispering, his hand dangling in midair.
Alexis tilted her head. "He's talking to himself or something."
"Actually, he's talking to Kelsey. She took him upstairs, remember?" For which he really should fire her. But Kelsey was not the brightest bulb in the vampire pack, and he had always thought it was better to keep her reasonably contained than to let her loose on her own. She was only thirty years a vampire, and still driven by blood lust. And she had warned him about the attacker, even if she had inadvertently led the guy right to Ethan.
"Oh, my God, I can't see her. She's there, but can't be recorded? That's so bizarre." Alexis sank down into an easy chair a foot in front of his flat screen.
It was odd watching the man talk to nothing. But Ethan was more interested in his face, not his marionette hands moving up and down in thin air. The image wasn't perfect, and the room was dim, with just the overnight lights on, but Ethan was certain he'd never seen him before.
So why did this man want him dead? He obviously thought a bullet would do the trick, so he either didn't know Ethan was a vampire, or didn't understand what would kill one of hiskind . This man, the way he turned his head, the way he smiled with a healthy dose of disdain, the way he gripped what Ethan guessed was Kelsey's backside, didn't point to him being insane, or a self-proclaimed vampire slayer. It wasn't fire that burned in his eyes. It was despair.Coldness.
This man was a professional killer, Ethan was sure of it.
They heard heavy breathing from the TV as presumably the pair kissed, grinding against each other. Kelsey must have hit the reception desk because there was a thump as the furniture shifted and the phone was shoved.
This is really disturbing. I think I'm being scarred as we speak. It's like paranormal porn."
Alexis did look a little pale. "Do you want me to turn it off?" No, are you kidding? I have to see what happens. It's like a car accident, but with tongue. You don't want to look, but you have to."
Personally, Ethan was finding the combination of heavy breathing from the TV and Alexis next to him wearing his clothes a bit arousing. Her chest heaved as she stared, head tilted, one eye closed. Ethan watched her watching the recording.
"He's going up her skirt! Oh, man, maybe we should fast-forward."
"How can you tell if you can't see her?" Ethan redirected his attention to the TV. Okay, so he could see it, too. With a little mental imagery, he had no trouble reconstructing the scene.
"His hand is like jerking upward, like he's pulling up her skirt." Alexis fell back against the chair arm." Aahh! No, no, please don't do that. Just stop!" She yelled at the screen, throwing her hands up. "Don't get out the oh, no, yuck, yuck, yuck, did they have to do that?"
The man, whoever he was, now had unzipped trousers, and a decent-sized erection pointed directly at them. Ethan grimaced. The man gave a tight moan, his hips pumping toward what body part on Kelsey Ethan really didn't want to know. "Jesus, where's the remote? I don't want to see this either."
While he started looking around, a little desperate, Alexis covered her face with a throw pillow and started laughing. Her little snorts were muffled by the plaid fabric, but her shoulders shook.
"What's so funny?" Ethan found the remote, but somehow managed to freeze the screen, instead of fast-forward.Right in mid-thrust. "Damn it." Seamus was the electronics whiz, not him. He was old, for chrissake , they'd barely had the wheel when he was a kid. He couldn't be expected to keep up with all this technology.
Alexis peeled the pillow back, watched him pushing every button on the remote frantically, and started laughing again. "I'm sorry, it's just so weird and gross,you have to laugh. I'm going to die every time I see Kelsey now."
Ethan finally hit the right button and the man's head snapped back, and eyes rolled upward. Yeah, he was going to have a hard time seeing his receptionist in the same way, too, after catching this little glimpse into her sex life.Especially since he was seeing her feed now.
Even without Kelsey's image, he knew that's what was happening. The man's head tilted, neck elongated, ecstasy over his features. Tiny droplets of blood appeared on his flesh, then immediately disappeared. Then suddenly he was moaning in distress, eyes still closed, body suspended, hovering over the desk.
This was where Kelsey had run out on him, leaving him under a weak glamour on the goddamn reception desk. The elevator dinged.
"Oh, God," Alexis said in a somber voice. "She left him there, didn't she?"
"Yes." Ethan was embarrassed. What they were watching it wasn't how he wanted to introduce Alexis to his world. It shouldn't matter, but it did, that sheknow it didn't have to be crude like this. "Alexis "
She glanced at him. "Are you going to say something totally embarrassing to both of us, like that it isn't always like this that a feeding can be an exchange of souls, as pure and sweet and sensual as making love with the right person?" well, he wouldn't have used those moronic words, but the sen-timent , yes. But obviously, she got it and didn't want him to say it.
"No, I was just going to say that you sound like a tortured crow when you laugh."
A laugh burst out of her, half-amusement, half-relief, it looked to him. She hit him in the arm with tithe throw pillow. "You're a schmuck."
He was a smart schmuck. He knew when to retreat from a woman. Ethan fast-forwarded until the shooter collapsed against the desk.
The man said something, though it was too garbled to distinguish the words. He looked around, pleasure replaced by confusion, which disintegrated into anger. Wiping his hands on his pants, he then put everything back inside and zipped. He straightened his jacket, reached inside for thin leather gloves, and pulled them on. He was walking around the backside of the desk when the elevator door opened.
Ethan knew it was himself, cominng to investigate, even though he wasn't visible on film.
Fast, smooth, poised, the man reaached into his suit, pulled out a piece, drew his arm up, and squeezed the trigger two times.
Alexis jumped. "Did it hurt?" There was concern in her voice.
"Yes, there was pain when I was hit. Then I blacked out."
The shooter stepped forward, avoiding a puddle of blood forming on the tiled floor. Ethan had forgotten to ask William to send housekeeping to clean the mess up, but his head of security was smart enough to handle all those details on his own.
"He's making the sign of the cross over your body with his gun. I told you therewere sickos in't this world ."
It was an odd last thing to do bbefore the man calmly put his gun in his pocket, removed one glovve ,punched the elevator button.
withthe other, and disappeared. But to Ethan it still read like a professional hit. When the man had been caught off guard by Ethan's sudden appearance, there had been no hesitation. No panicking.
The questionwas, who wanted him dead?
"Now that I've seen you lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and then seen your invisible self get shot on camera, I feel like I have the right to ask this." Alexis tucked her feet under her legs.
"What?" He couldn't even imagine what she was going to ask.
"What the hell were you thinking going up there by yourself?"
That he'd been feeling stodgy and white-collar and had wanted to handle the situation himself to prove that he could. That he was so attracted to Alexis that he was distracted and acting on impulse. That he hadn't been thinking at all.
"Hello! I remember what Kelsey said. She said he was going to kill you, that he was empty inside, and that lipstick I thought was bleeding outside of her lip liner really was bleeding, you know what I'm saying. You knew she had fed off of someone, knew she thought he was after you, and like a hugely arrogant 'I can handle anything' man, you just ran off and got yourself shot." Alexis's cheeks were pink, her hands flying all over as she gesticulated wildly. "Do you want to die? What if he'd had a stake or a sword or a sunlamp or whatever it is that can kill vampires?"
Ethan hit the Eject button on the DVD. "A sunlamp is not go- ingto kill me, and it would hurt less than a bullet, that's for sure."
The very thought made him scoff, though he found her concern appealing.
"You know what I mean! It's a good thing I went up after you." And why exactly did you do that? It was no smarter than me going up in the first place. What if the shooter was still there? You'd be lying dead on my office floor right now."
Her face paled. But she stubbornly stuck her chin out. "So you're just going to erase his memory and that's it? That doesn't seem like much punishment for shooting someone."
"Now who's the bloodthirsty one here? Look, we have rules, Alexis. We don't kill people. We'll contain him. If he doesn't know how to kill me, it will be nothing more than a nuisance until we find him. Then like I said, we'll contain him, and remove the parts of his memory relating to me."
Alexis didn't look satisfied with his answer. She worked her lip with her teeth and picked at the pillow in her lap. "How many of you are there?Obviously enough that you have some sort of governmental system."
Ethanhesitated only a fraction of a second. He wasn't supposed to tell a mortal about his kind, but he didn't feel much like following the rules when he was with Alexis."Ten thousand."
"Whoa. That's a hell of a lot more than I thought. You must be sucking blood everywhere."
Ethan sat down next to her and plucked the pillow out of her lap, amused by her lack of fear. "Ten thousand is not a lot. There are two billion Chinese alone in the world."
"Well, that's true."
"We're vastly outnumbered and are able to successfully blend in with society, while still being organized. The Nation exists to ensure we aren't discovered, and can live quality lives." It was a system that worked, kept order and prevented chaos among the ranks of the undead, and provided mentoring for young vampires. Ethan had seen the world before the Vampire Nation, and he didn't want to return to those dark days of rogue vampires and needless human slaughter.
But sometimes being a responsible vampire leader was a heavy burden.
And lately it had really cut into his sex life.
It was definitely time to change that.
Alexis had never given vampires much thought, but when she had, she had always envisioned brooding men living in isolation, snagging a random human victim here or there, and more often than not, lunching on animals while their houses crumbled around them.
Ethan wasn't exactly falling in line with that image.
And never once had it even occurred to her that vampires were democratic.
"So what is your platform? What differentiates you from your opponent?" She couldn't even begin to guess what the issues facing the modern vampire were. Security, financial planning, airport retina scans? Okay, maybe she could guess, but that didn't mean she was going to be right.
He cleared his throat as he set his foot on the coffee table. That shirt of his still wasn't buttoned, and Alexis was in touching distance of his chest. It was very distracting to her, considering that she hadn't been sexually active in six years.If you didn't count battery-operated self-service, which she didn't. That was stress management, not sex.
"Well, we encourage population management, whereas our opponent advocates population growth. He also is pushing a return to direct contact feeding, where we consider blood banks safer.More laws and policies, not less. Essentially, I stand for keeping things status quo, but with improvements in certain policies regarding identity creation and social security."
"Hmm."That was the sound of her brain atrophying. Maybe she was too tired to grasp vamp politics at the moment. "Do you think you're going to win?"
Ethan shrugged. "Seamus and his endless statistics say yes, but by a small margin. These things are unpredictable and Donatelli is a minority."
"He's Italian? That makes him a minority?" What the heck were the rest of them?Eskimo?
Mr. President laughed at her question and ran his thumb over his very sexy bottom lip. Not that she had noticed.
"Being Italian doesn't make him a minority. He's an Impure. Which means he was born half-vampire, half-mortal and was turned later in life. He is the voice of this rapidly growing group."
"Impure? Wow, that's really PC.Not . In a thousand years you couldn't come up with a better name than that? No wonder they're crabby and demanding rights. I would be, too. So is there like a vampire civil liberties union?VACLU? No, that's no good. VACLU sounds like a construction adhesive. Hey, how old do you have to be to vote?Two hundred?"
"At moments like this, I find it very distressing that I cannot access your thoughts. I am powerless to understand or predict what is going to come out of your mouth next."
She kind of liked the way that sounded. "That's sexy, isn't it-It drives you nuts that you can't dig in my head, I bet, but it turns you on, too, doesn't it?"
And fatigue must be making her punch-drunk. Baiting the vampire was not a good plan.
He took the bait. "Yes, it turns me on. You most definitely arouse me."
Whoa. When did his hand get on her thigh? She hadn't even seen him move. But now she certainly could feel him, sliding inward, upward, stroking over the soft cotton of the sweatpants she was wearing.His pants.Where she had a little bitty thong underneath just a few inches higher.
Alexis stood up, just this side of panicked. "You know, I think I should get some sleep. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed."
Ethan smiled a knowing little smirk. "Sure. Let me walk you to your room."
What, was she stupid? "Oh, that's okay, I'll be fine."Really.Just fine, away from him and his hot bod and blue eyes. She'd always had a thing for blue eyes.
Alexis booked it toward the door, scooping her purse off the end table. Before she could blink, Ethan was in front of her, opening the door with a charming half-bow.
" Geez!"Alexis pulled up short. "Don't do that. You'll give me a heart attack."
"My apologies."He moved his arm out to indicate she should pass.
Skirting him so there was no skin-on-skincontact, Alexis made it into the hall and rushed her own door. Digging in her purse, she tried to find the key card before he followed her.
Too late."Let me help you," he said, and before she could even draw a breath to protest, he had his hand in and out of her purse, and the key swiped through the lock.
His speed was really starting to freak her out. He could have sex with her before she could even realize he was in the room. And what would be the fun in that?
"Can you slow it down a little for Miss Mortal over here? You're making me dizzy."
Ethan pushed her door open and brushed her hair back from her forehead. "Sorry. And thank you for calling 911 when you thought 1 was dying. I appreciate your concern."
She should swat his hand away, but couldn't work up the disdain she should be feeling. In fact, she felt a lot like sighing. "No problem. I couldn't let you bleed to death."
He was touching her shoulders now, leaning over from his foot height advantage. His eyes were serious, searching. "If you want to leave, Alexis I understand. This isn't what you expected. It's not a game."
That made her smile as she stood in the doorway. "I guess I'm not much of a vampire slayer, am I? I tried to save you instead of killing you."
"I find you much more appealing than that skinny Buffy, for one thing. And life isn't always black and white, Alexis, with the good guys and bad guys clearly marked."
That had been obvious many times to her in her career. "Which was why she wasn't in a hurry to leave The Ava and Ethan Car- rick.She was fascinated by him, and the concept of a whole secret vampire government existing right there in Vegas, of all places, had her curiosity on high.
She didn't want to leave. She wasn't finished getting her an swers yet, and while part of her questioned that she would act so impulsively, the other part acknowledged it was actually very logical to want to understand Ethan's world.
Which was why she said, "I gave my word I'd stay and be your bitchy girlfriend.I'd be a wimp and a liar if I backed out now. Besides, I'm not done grilling you yet."
His eyebrow rose. "That sounds appealing.In a kinky, rather sexual kind of way."
She smacked his arm. "Watch it. I know karate, remember? And I'm not afraid to use it."
"I remember." But he didn't look worried. He looked like he was leaning closer to her, like was going to
Damn. He was kissing her. And it felt good, just a perfect slow, sensual meeting of his mouth to hers, his lips warm and soft, commanding, confident. His hand was in her hair, but otherwise they weren't touching, and it was pleasant, powerful, with no fumbling, no doubt, no hesitation.
While he only touched her mouth, she felt the kiss everywhere, undulating through her body in slow, lazy waves. Desire sparked, stoked, grew into a blaze within seconds, and she was opening her mouth, ready for more, when he ended the kiss.
"Good night, Alexis," he said, voice raspy, thick with want.
Afraid she might whimper, she just nodded. Embarrassed to hear her breath ripping in and out in the quiet hallway, she clamped her mouth shut and backed up. His hands were in fists and he looked fierce, like he might grab her and take her against the wall if she didn't move immediately.
She only hesitated for a second, ready to haul him back over to her. A quick progression to naked had its merits.
But then he drew in a ragged breath of his own, even as his hands reached for her, and she caught a glimpse of some really long-ass canines.Fangs.
Fudge, he had fangs. Those hadn't been there before. Alexis blurted, "Night!" then moved back, and slammed the door shut in his face.
She just wasn't ready to take their relationship to the biting level yet.