Must Love Vampires (6 page)

“What are you looking for?” he asked in a low voice.

“Nothing,” she denied quickly with a sharp, negative move of her head. “I wasn’t looking for anything.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, darkened. He didn’t make a habit of using his powers on defenseless humans. To wipe their memories of having seen him in certain situations, yes, but not to delve around in their brains and search for information. That sort of thing wasn’t usually necessary in this day and age, and he preferred to conduct business fairly, knowing that at the end of the day, any profits he made or lost were due to his entrepreneurial skills and
not
the cloak of preternatural hypnosis.

But there were times, such as this one, when a little otherworldly woo-woo was necessary. And considering his brother’s eagerness to rush this woman down the aisle, as well as the fact that he’d kidnapped her and wasn’t sure how long he could keep her here before she started putting up a fuss or he started cruising toward a felony he couldn’t talk his way out of, the sooner he found out what she was truly up to, the better.

Wrapping his hands over her shoulders, he ignored the spark of awareness that sizzled at the touch of bare flesh to bare flesh. He caught her gaze and held it, staring deeply into her eyes.
Deeply.

“Chloe,” he murmured softly, “tell me what you’re looking for.”

Her brow wrinkled slightly, even as her violet eyes began to dilate, grow foggy. “Chloe?” she said in a strange, faraway tone. “But I’m not . . .”

And then she blinked, her expression went blank, and she sagged in his arms.

Two Pair

Either Chloe Lamoreaux was extremely suggestible or . . . Or he didn’t know what else. He’d never had someone pass out on him just from a small bit of mental pressure pushed in their direction.

With the unconscious showgirl in his arms, Sebastian stalked down the hall,
back
to his bedroom, and draped her across the bed, atop the thick navy coverlet. Stepping back, he stared down at her, considering.

Perhaps his powers had grown over the years without frequent use and without his realizing it. Which didn’t explain why the random women he fed from on a regular basis reacted exactly as they should from his gentle nudges to allow him to take their necks and the mental erasings that followed to remove their memories of ever having met him.

Or perhaps he’d pushed too hard. If she was tired, ill, maybe even worn out from his first blast of power when he’d knocked her out to get her upstairs . . . Any of these things could be a factor in her current response, he supposed.

None of them kept him from admiring her half-naked body, though. Still encased in fishnet stockings and the highshine, overly-sequined costume he was beginning to realize was a little over the top, even for Lust.

The problem was, he wouldn’t mind seeing her out of it. He couldn’t imagine that the skintight outfit, made out of those materials (if they could even be called “materials” instead of “hardware”) was comfortable.

Crossing to the closet she’d been about to snoop through when he returned to human form and caught her off guard, he flicked on the light and studied his options. Despite the number of women he had in and out of the penthouse on a regular basis, few of them left personal items behind. He made sure of it.

He wasn’t exactly a T-shirt and jeans type of guy, so his “casual” options were limited. Deciding on a plain white undershirt and pair of dark maroon pajama bottoms, he stalked back to the bed. He knew they would likely swamp her, but the more coverage he could offer, the better. Frankly, she was lucky he didn’t dig out his ski-wear and dress her head to toe in a thick down snowsuit.

Bending close, he started to strip her. Not the finest idea he’d ever had, considering the singe to his fingertips every time they touched. If he were smart, he’d wait until she woke—or wake her intentionally—and let her dress herself.

But he suspected that if he offered her that option, she would turn it down, preferring to remain in the ridiculous—and no doubt binding—costume rather than climb into something from his personal wardrobe. So he would take that particular decision away from her and just get the job done. But not without extreme personal distress.

The one-piece outfit fit her like a second skin, which meant that in order to peel it from her unconscious body, he had to dig his fingers in between the bodice and the full globes of her breasts. His nostrils flared at the feel of that soft, silken skin against his knuckles. If only the damn thing had a zipper. But it didn’t—he’d checked.

Feeling his blood heat, pooling uninvited in the vee of his legs and the gums around his aching, fully distended fangs, he turned his head, doing his best to avoid the full blast of her lushly naked form. Perhaps doing this by feel wasn’t the best idea, either, but it beat the alternative all to hell.

Watching what he was doing, seeing her pale skin and voluptuous curves come into view inch by agonizing inch, would most certainly send him over the edge. And then he would have guilt to deal with, and apologies to make, to both this woman and his younger brother.

Like a Band-Aid, he tugged the costume down in one great yank, making sure to snag the waistband of the drool-inducing fishnets along the way. When he had her completely stripped—at least he hoped she was completely stripped—he quickly shook out the clean and pressed pajama bottoms and worked them over her feet. All by feel and with his eyes tightly closed.

Oh, if his brother could see him now. Well, no, that probably wouldn’t be very bright. The last thing he wanted was for his brother to see him with his
naked
girlfriend draped across his bed. But in another time and place, with some other woman naked and passed out in his bed, Aidan would find this highly entertaining.

Aidan thought Sebastian rigid and uptight; never a smile, a chuckle, or the tiniest hint of a sense of humor. Never a thread or hair out of place. He was all business all the time. Hundreds of years of being the eldest sibling—not to mention an immortal who needed to keep that small fact a complete and total secret—had made him that way, and he refused to apologize for it.

Which was why this particular situation was so unlike him . . . and why Aidan would probably laugh himself stupid over it, if he knew.

Even Sebastian could see a modicum of amusement in the picture he surely made, undressing one of his showgirls with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. This was far from how he normally performed when he had a beautiful woman in his bed.

Letting the elastic band snap at her waist, he turned away to find the undershirt, then did the same Blind Man’s Grab to get it over her head and down to cover the rise of that sumptuous chest. Even though his eyes were closed (and he didn’t peek, really he didn’t), that didn’t stop him from imagining every detail of what he was working so hard to cover. Especially as his fingers slid down her arms, along her waist, and pointedly avoided getting too close to those breasts that even now had his muscles tensing and his mind going straight for the tripleX section of the pay-per-view menu.

Just as he had the hem of the undershirt pulled down around her hips, and thought it was probably safe to stand back and check his work, she groaned. His eyes popped open at the same moment hers did. Surprisingly, she didn’t look nearly as shocked to find him towering over her as he felt.

“What happened?” she asked in a sandy, sleepy voice.

Sebastian’s first instinct was to tell her—to explain why she was in his bed and how she’d gotten into his clothes before he ended up with a screaming, shrieking female on his hands. Again.

Then he remembered his initial goal in “coaxing” her to open up. He’d meant for her to go cross-eyed and spill the beans, not faint at his feet, but now that she was once again conscious, but still groggy . . . There was no time like the present.

With slow movements, he approached the bed, rearranging the pillows at her back and helping to prop her into a better sitting position before lowering his hip to the mattress beside her.

“Chloe,” he murmured, “listen to me.”

She blinked, but held his gaze. Unable to resist, he lifted a hand and brushed it down the side of her face, through the soft waves of her chestnut hair.

“I need you to answer some questions for me. All right?”

Her eyes were just the right shade of violet—wide, black pupils with a ring of bright color around the outside. And while there was still knowledge there, intelligence, awareness, she was mesmerized, as well. Just enough. With no signs of being ready to slip back off into oblivion.

Good.

“Chloe,” he said softly.

She shook her head, making his mouth turn down in a frown. “Not Chloe. Charlotte.” Then her nose wrinkled. “Hate that name. Call me Chuck.”

It was Sebastian’s turn to blink in confusion. Not Chloe? How could that possibly be? And yet this explanation was something she’d uttered a million times before, he could tell. She was obviously used to telling people she hated her given name and would prefer to be called by the shorter, more masculine “Chuck.”

Reorganizing the order of the questions swimming around in his head, he decided to start with the easy stuff—
scoff
. . . there was the understatement of the century—and build from there.

“Who’s Chloe?” he asked simply.

In an almost mechanical tone, she said, “Sister.”

“Older or younger?”

“Younger by two minutes.”

Twins!
he thought as comprehension dawned. Followed by,
Son of a bitch.

He’d grabbed the wrong sister. How the hell had he grabbed the wrong flipping sister?

Sebastian played back over everything he knew about
Chloe
Lamoreaux, mostly supplied by what little Aidan had shared about his latest lady love. Brown hair, nice body, showgirl for Lust, the dance revue club in his very own casino.

His gaze traveled the length of the feminine form stretched out along his bedclothes. Brown hair, rockin’—er—
nice
body (if
nice
was equivalent to the sexiest, hottest, most nubile thing he’d ever seen), and she had to be a showgirl.

He’d watched her onstage. Caught her as she’d walked
offstage
. Found her wearing one of Lust’s trademark red-and-orange “Flames of Hell” costumes, complete with feathers and sequins and stockings and platform neck-breaker heels. If that wasn’t clear confirmation that she was a dancer, he’d go downstairs, walk up to the nearest roulette table, and put his entire vast, vast, vaaaaaast fortune on black.

And yet this wasn’t the sister he’d been after. He didn’t think. Either he had it wrong . . . or Aidan did.

His brows knit in consternation. “What does your sister do?” he asked. And then, for clarification, added, “As her job. What’s her occupation?”

“Showgirl,” Chuck answered automatically, still glassyeyed. “Dances at Lust inside the Inferno. Doesn’t want to forever, though. Kicks are hard on the knees. Guys’ pinches are hard on the ass.” She chuckled at that, as though it was a long-standing joke between the two sisters.

Well, at least he and Aidan were right about that much.

“And what do you do?”

If he was expecting a similar explanation, he should have remembered that where this woman was concerned, it was just one surprise after another.

“Reporter. For the
Sin City Tattler
.” Her nose wrinkled at that. “Good at it, but no respect. Tired of making up shit about flying saucers and Bigfoot sightings. Need a good story. One really good, true story.” Her lips tilted upward, flashing her pearly whites.

That grin—which he’d seen a time or two on cats that had just swallowed beloved goldfish—told him she already had a story in mind. He wasn’t sure he should care or even needed to know, but curiosity won out, and he found himself asking, “What story is that?”

She was still staring off into space, not really seeing him, and yet she sat up straighter, as though getting ready to impart some grave secret. “Sebastian Raines,” she whispered.

His eyes rolled back in his head. Christ on a cracker, was there no reprieve from the roller-coaster ride this woman had him on? It was one sharp climb and sudden drop after another.

Pressing two fingers to the arch of his nose, he tried to push back the headache throbbing there. A bloody headache, when he’d never suffered one before in his life.

Vampires didn’t get headaches, or if they did, it was tantamount to a gnat buzzing at the hide of a rhino—so insignificant as to go completely unnoticed.

But here he was with the mother of them all.

Or maybe it was an aneurism. An aneurism brought on by stress was entirely possible. It would certainly explain the intense pain banging against the inside of his skull like a jai alai ball.

At this point, he could only hope for death. It wouldn’t last, of course, but it might be a nice reprieve.

Lowering his hand from his face, taking a deep breath to shore himself up for whatever answer she might give to his next question, he asked, “What about Sebastian Raines? What story are you working on about him?”

She leaned in even closer, until their noses nearly touched. He smelled that scent again—flowers touched by citrus—as her gaze drilled into his.

There was something there this time. Not recognition, but an intensity.
Feeling
behind what she was about to say.

“He’s a vampire,” she told him in the merest wisp of breath. “And I’m going to prove it.”

Three of a Kind

Chuck came to herself in a blink. Literally.

It was the oddest thing. One minute she was asleep—she thought—and the next she was wide awake, sitting straight up in bed.

Not her bed, though. She glanced around, realizing she was not just in the bedroom of Sebastian Raines’s phenomenal penthouse, but taking up space on his personal mattress.

She did not remember that. Going through his wine rack and beginning to snoop in his closet, yes. But climbing into his bed . . . Who was she, Goldilocks?

No, she definitely didn’t remember getting into—or on to, as the case may be—his bed.