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Excerpt
from FALLEN
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley Sensation, May 2008 (ISBN 978-0-515-14462-8)
New
Orleans, 1849
Gabriel
St. John knew that he was fallen. From angel to demon, favorite
to disdained, he embraced the change, welcomed the passion,
wallowed in the ecstasy he found day after day in the bottom
of the bottle,
and night after night in the arms of his favorite whore. In
the two years of his tenure walking the earth as a Watcher, he
had
absorbed the stench and pain of human misery surrounding him
until he could no longer suffer the helplessness and hopelessness
they brought upon him. Their sad, desperate, begging eyes were
a much easier burden to bear when his over-heightened angelic
senses were dulled from vast quantities of whiskey, opium,
and the beautiful green fairy of absinthe he had come to adore.
It
was a drink he had come to worship, to crave with every ounce
of his preternatural essence. His absinthe was his clarity,
his respite, his one true love.
“Good evenin,’ Mr. Thiroux,” a
stout woman in full-blown scarlet silk said to him.
Gabriel stepped
inside the parlor, such as it was, of The House of Rest For
Weary Men. The name of the two-bit bordello never failed
to amuse him, the irony even more prominent in his case, given
that while he was weary, he was not a man, and in either case,
rest was never what a man sought at this particular address. Escape.
Fleshly pleasure. A bawdy good time. Oblivion. They were all sought
at various times by various men for mere pennies passed to Madame’s
hand. Gabriel was never bawdy, but he longed most vigorously for
escape, for a contentment that eluded him, for the respite the
grandiose name promised.
“Good evening, Madame Conti, you’re looking well.” In
fact, Madame was looking rather ill at ease, standing in front
of him, blocking his way to the creaky, slanted stairs that led
him up to Anne, where his glass and spoon would be waiting. Perhaps
he’d forgotten to pay. He wasn’t really sure when he’d
last fronted Madame money for his nightly sojourns, but several
months prior he had sold a painting for a significant amount, and
had settled his affairs far enough into the future that he had
lost awareness of the time.
“You’re early tonight,” she
commented, fanning her heavy bosom vigorously with a faded lace
fan.
“Impatient.” He
gave her a smile and took a step forward, assuming she would
move. The dryness in his mouth was
irritating, the shake in his hands increasing.
Madame Conti
didn’t move, which annoyed him. Moreover,
she placed one fleshy hand on his chest and stopped any progress
he might have made. “Anne isn’t ready for you yet,
Mr. Thiroux.”
Gabriel despised
the use of his false name. But he disliked being made to wait
even more. Staying away for twelve hours of daylight
was becoming more and more of a struggle for him. “I do not
care. Whatever she is doing can be done in my presence.”
“In all certainty. But I’m guessin’ you don’t
want to see it.”
Gabriel stared
at Madame Conti, nee Ginny Black, and narrowed his eyes. A former
prostitute who had invested wisely, Madame was
a shrewd businesswoman, with a mixed vocabulary, acute intelligence,
and a devious mind. She didn’t miss an opportunity to make
money.
“What might I see?” Though
he already had a suspicion, and it did not please him.
“Her
toilette.”
It was an
innocuous remark, but Madame tipped her hand by shifting slightly
in front of him again. Rage lit through him, clashing
with the craving for his drink and pipe, and sent heat rushing
into his face. “She’s with another man, isn’t
she?”
There was
no response, which was as telling as an admission. Gabriel brushed
past her and pounded up the steps, down the hall,
and shoved open the door to Anne’s room. What he saw made
his stomach twist in an unpleasant knot. Anne was beneath a man,
her slim pale legs spread. A broad shouldered man with black hair
was mounting her with noisy enthusiasm. Gabriel couldn’t
see Anne’s face, but she was giving encouraging mewling sounds.
His sounds. They belonged to him.
Madame slid
to a stop behind him. “It’s just business,” she
said. “No sense letting her laze around all day.”
“Dispense with him or I will,” Gabriel told her.
He wasn’t exactly sure why he was so angry, but Anne was
his. She and his opium and absinthe were all intertwined in his
mind, and he loved his pipe and his drink, loved the pleasure she
gave him while his mind sharpened and his body floated, while he
stretched and strained to achieve an escape from mortality.
Stepping into
the hall, Gabriel wiped at the cold sweat on his forehead, struggling
to ignore the pervasive nausea clawing at
his innards. He knew his human body was addicted to the alcohol,
the opium, and the absinthe, and he felt no remorse for that, just
merely resented the inconvenient symptoms of withdrawal. Leaning
against the wall, he waited. It was a mere jaw-locking, bile-producing
three minutes later that a man brushed past him, cursing while
Madame offered him three girls in compensation for the one he’d
lost.
Gabriel didn’t even glance at the man, that irritated,
whining voice familiar, yet not enough for him to care, to look
up, to connect the pieces that floated around his agonized, sloshing
brain. He was amazed that Madame had carried out his demand to
get rid of Anne’s unexpected client, but then again, Gabriel
spent an obscene amount of money in her establishment monthly.
He was a preferred client.
Anne appeared
at the door, clad in a dressing gown, rich auburn hair spilling
over her shoulders, green eyes wide and full of tears. “Are
you angry with me?” she asked, voice trembling, anxiety palpable. “Madame
said it was what you wanted, that you wished to watch, but I didn’t
know it was…”
Anger was
a pale description for the depth of what he felt, but he found
it wasn’t directed at Anne. She was a simple woman,
and she had always aspired to please him. Madame was manipulative,
and Anne not bright enough to see her obvious lies. It startled
him to recognize he retained such a well of compassion.
Yet he still
was disgusted at what he had seen, so he cut her off by saying
roughly, “Just get my drink.” He pushed
past her, stripping off his coat and tossing it on the chair at
her vanity table.
The sight of
the rumpled bedcovers increased his fury. The night was ruined,
tainted, the idea of stepping in and escaping gone,
replaced by the ugly and brutal reality that escape was ever elusive.
He had thought perhaps tonight he’d sketch after he drank,
was feeling a pleasing tug of creativity, but it was all shattered
by the sheets, soft and yellow with age, disheveled and stained.
Reaching over, he tore the sheets completely off, and tossed them
in the corner of the room. Mouth dry, he undid his shirt collar,
and sat in his chair, sighing. He felt tired all the time, his
human body protesting the abuse he rendered it. His tray was next
to him- pipe, glass, spoon all waiting. The bottle. Gabriel unstopped
it, poured it into the tumbler until it was half full, and reached
for his spoon, the sugar already carefully resting in its well.
The shaking in his hands had stopped, and he focused with total
clarity on the task, body tingling with anticipation, heart beating
faster. When he poured water over the spoon, the liquid in the
glass below kicked up a deliciously beautiful cloud, and he watched
it, appreciating the swirls and ebb and flow as the absinthe turned
a milky white. While it stirred and mixed and mesmerized, he struck
a match and lit his pipe. The opium took him down into a relaxing
languor, the absinthe pulled him back up into sparkling awareness.
Together the two gave him a shade shy of bliss. Between draws on
his pipe, the first glass went back smoothly, settling into his
limbs and easing the ache. The second he drank just as fast, and
by the time he was pouring and stirring the third, a cloud of smoke
rising around him, blurring his vision and his brain, he remembered
Anne, and beckoned her to him.
She went on to her knees in front of him, undoing his trousers,
and stroking his bare flesh as he relaxed back, eyes closed, glass
in hand. He sipped and reached, seeking the sharpness of mind,
the sense of confidence, of clarity, the absinthe brought. It was
ironic that escape could be achieved by such pure and clear thinking.
Gabriel felt more intelligent when he was in the bottle, more rational,
more decisive. Perhaps the night could satisfy him after all.
Anne was caressing him with her hands, the tip of her tongue,
the moist inside of her mouth, and the pleasure was acute, bright
and crystallized, right. Opium, absinthe, and Anne, and he was
almost out of his mortality, could almost reach the pinnacle of
perfection that he had known as an angel.
Except that
he was not in heaven, nor in the presence of God, but sitting
in a rickety chair in a dingy room on Dauphine Street,
one of the many such rooms around New Orleans, where sex was bought,
and hungers of all sort satisfied for a mere sixteen cents. He
should have been ashamed that he had descended into such depths
of depravity, but he no longer cared. All that mattered was that
medicinal ecstasy rushing through his veins, that pulsing in his
head, that throbbing intensity that Anne’s tongue and fingers
drew out from his groin as she licked and sucked on his flesh.
All that pleasure,
all that shattering desire coalescing into rigidity, an acute
sense of self, and the need to take, to own,
to feel everything, yet nothing, to be utterly in control, yet
surrender, surged up in Gabriel, and he accepted the physical release.
His human body let go of its messy brand of satisfaction into Anne’s
mouth, and he closed his eyes, sank back, went up, then down, embracing
the darkness, the incoherency, the oblivion.
When he pried his lids back open, he had no idea how much time
had passed, but the candle on the night stand had burned out, the
bottle was empty, and Anne was sleeping in her bed. His mouth was
dry and he reached for his glass and tossed back whatever drops
of diluted absinthe were still clinging to the bottom of the cloudy
glass. There was a sour smell in the room, but Gabriel ignored
it, knowing a foul odor was not out of place in The House of Rest.
He was relaxed,
still floating, his vision sharp and clear, tumbling over the
familiar hulks of furniture in the room despite the dark,
and he enjoyed the vision of Anne lying in bed, one arm above her
head, the other carelessly abandoned at her side. Most of her figure
was in shadow, but the free arm was milky white, caught in a pool
of moonlight bursting through the slats of the broken shutters
on the window. That elegant limb beckoned to Gabriel, made him
struggle to reach the paper and pencil he kept next to his chair,
at the ready in case he felt the urge to sketch. He hadn’t,
not in months, but Anne At Rest spoke to him, and he moved his
pencil quickly, capturing the bed, the hidden figure, the beautiful,
illuminated arm.
Standing up, he stretched his stiff, weak body, ignoring that
all too familiar nausea, and walked towards his lover. She was
a good girl, Anne, with none of the brashness of many common whores,
and she did a fine job of tolerating him. Some nights he even suspected
she felt love, such as she was capable of, for him. He read it
in her anxiety, her eagerness, that desperate desire to please.
In return he felt something like gratitude. Now he simply wanted
to capture her features, her expression, see and appreciate how
her lovely worrisome face relaxed into innocence in her sleep.
Still two feet
from the bed, Gabriel’s boot heel slipped
on the floor and he cursed, nearly going down before grabbing the
bedpost for balance. Glancing to see what had halted his progress,
he saw a dark spot on the floor, raised like a puddle. Unsure what
it was, he shifted forward, his hand sliding along the side of
the mattress as he leaned for a better look. There was dampness
beneath his fingers, and he realized the puddle appeared to be
originating from the bed, a stained trail descending from the sheet
to drip upon the floor.
Head snapping
up, mouth hot, room spinning from the alcohol, Gabriel rushed
his gaze past Anne’s perfect arm and hand, to her
face.
Or where her face should have been.
Unrecognizable, covered in blood, Anne was lacerated from hairline
to waist with multiple stab wounds, a bowie knife placed mockingly
in her other hand, her chemise and huge areas of her flesh shredded.
She was dead.
Bile rose in
his throat, and he turned and spilled the contents of his stomach
on the floor beside that dark circular stain of
her life’s blood, his heart racing, his mind registering
a rapid succession of shock, horror, regret, fear. Anne had just
been alive, warm and anxiously eager to please him. Now she was
irrefutably and grotesquely dead.
Slashed to bloody bits while he floated in a pleasure cloud of
drugs.
While he could never die, she had viciously been yanked from this
mortal coil, and for him there would be no escape.
Ever.
|
Excerpt
from SUCKER
BET
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley,
January 2008 (ISBN 0-425-21718-3)
Gwenna
smiled at him, and Nate felt something he sure in the hell shouldn’t.
It was a kick of lust, right where it counted. Which scared the
crap out of him. The mind was weak at the moment, yet the body
still was totally functioning, which made this a bad thing. A stupid
idea. This was him with his head up his ass if he went up that
elevator with her.
He went.
Which meant he was a total idiot.
But
he was on the edge, and he knew it. Everything he felt, everything
he’d lost,
the hurt, the fear, the bitterness, swirled around inside him and
threatened to take him down. He was going to crack,
soon, the pressure pulling inside his skull, the lack of sleep, that
last phone call to his parents, the indignity of yet another mindless
murder on tonight of all nights, pushing and tugging at him.
It was Gwenna Carrick or a bottle of Jack, and she was a hell of
lot more attractive than him drunk.
“What floor?” he
asked as they stepped into an elevator with a thirty-something
couple who were leaning dangerously close
to each other.
“Sixteen.”
Gwenna
glanced over at the pair dressed in cocktail party clothes. Nate
watched her
eyes widen a little at the fact that the couple
was now making out vigorously. With lots of hand, tongue, and leg
movement. Well, that was special. Shifting a little to block her
view, aware that the guy’s hand had just gone up the woman’s
skirt, Nate tried to think of something inane and conversational
to say. “So…”
He had nothing. Especially since Gwenna had moved a little to see
around him.
Instead of being appalled at the public fondling, she looked curious.
Intrigued. She wet her lips. His own immediate and painful reaction
to that was an instant boner. No hesitation, no slow inflate, just
up, hard, and ready to go.
Which
was more disgusting than the happy gropers behind him. He couldn’t understand how he could get an erection on the same
night he’d been to a crime scene and watched his sister die.
It was like confirmation of everything he’d ever been told
by his grandmother- his animalistic male body was totally disconnected
from his emotions.
On the other hand, maybe it was just a coping mechanism of some
kind. Distract him from the rough stuff with a simple physical response.
That sounded right on with what a therapist would tell him.
But he was starting to think maybe he should have stuck to the Jack
Daniels idea, because the last thing he or Gwenna Carrick needed
was a one-night stand.
The elevator dinged right as the woman let out an encouraging moan
in the small space, and her back slammed against the wall from a
particularly aggressive lunge at her breasts by her guy.
“This is our floor,” Gwenna
said.
Thank God.
They
stepped off as Gwenna murmured, “Well, those two are
in for a fun night.”
“Doesn’t feel very fair, does it?” he said, glancing
into the empty spa as she used a key card to open the locked door. “They’re
going up without a care in the world to bang each other’s brains
out, and here we are. Day from hell for both of us.”
She
glanced back at him, blue eyes filled with compassion. “I
think it’s safe to say yours has been worse from mine.”
Damn, she really was beautiful. Just pale and soft, all pink lips
and shiny hair.
What would she do if he just reached over and kissed her? If he
just grabbed on, held tight, and buried himself and all his thoughts
inside her?
She’d
probably kill him or file a rape report.
God,
he was wrecked. He needed to go home. “Maybe I should
just go, Gwenna. I’m fucking walking the edge here… I
don’t think I’m very good company.”
“Don’t go.” Moving in closer to him, her hair
brushed along his jaw, her petite hands touching his chest. “I
want you to stay.”
Then she tilted her head up to look at him, her fair skin stark
in the muted glow from the overnight lights.
“Why?” he
asked, standing stiffly, aware of how soft she felt, how delicate
and feminine, and how much bigger he was than
her. The scent of her was delicious- fruity and womanly, with a hint
of coffee- and Nate wanted to run his fingers through her pale, silken
hair and just let it go, let it all go.
“Because I don’t want to be alone,” she said simply. “And
neither do you.”
Then she lifted her mouth and kissed him.
|
Excerpt
from MY
IMMORTAL
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley Sensation, September 2007 (ISBN 1-515-14348-0)
Marley watched out
the window as the taxi turned into a deeply rutted drive, nearly
consumed by low hanging branches and lush foliage.
“Are
you sure this is it?” It looked abandoned, and there was
no sign, no address marker. Just thick oppressive trees that
formed a heavy canopy, blocking out the relentless sun.
“Sure it is,” the
driver told her, dark eyes glancing at her in the rear view mirror. “Everyone
here ‘bouts knows Rosa de Montana. Lots of people coming
and going all the time.”
“Why?” This
didn’t look the kind of place anyone would be eager to
just dash off to on a regular basis. They were miles from anything
resembling civilization, and Marley thought most funeral homes
were cheerier than this isolated entryway. The two dilapidated
posts on either side of the drive screamed Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Amityville Horror, The Seventh Sign.
“Parties.”
“Parties?
Like cocktail parties?” Maybe Damien du Bourg was the Jay
Gastby of the bayou.
Her
driver gave a little laugh and smiled at her over her shoulder.
He was in his fifties, his hair a bristly gray, and he wore an
ear bud for his cell phone. “Not exactly. Word is they’re
more like sex parties.”
“Sex
parties?” Marley adjusted her canvas summer purse on her
lap and contemplated the concept. “What do people do at
sex parties?”
Okay,
so that came out wrong. Of course she knew that sex had
to be involved, somehow, but she was having a little trouble
visualizing exactly how these things played out in a crowd. It
seemed to defy logic that a large gathering could dissolve into
intimate hedonistic sexual gratification. Were there hor d’ouerves?
Alcohol? Did they start off mingling over dinner, cocktails… and
then what? Someone rang a bell? Were there rules? Who did you
hook up with? Was it in front of other people?
Yeah.
She had a hard time visualizing it.
The
driver gave a real hearty belly laugh, the guffaws cutting in
and out each time the taxi hit a rut in the pitted driveway. “Sweetie,
you sure you want to go on up there?”
“I
have to. My sister is there.” She hoped, anyway. No one
knew where Lizzie was, and Marley was more than a little worried,
fear starting to replace her earlier irritation.
So
Lizzie was unreliable. So she had run off before and always resurfaced.
But never had she cut herself off from her family for over eight
weeks. It was too long, and the only place Marley could think
to look for Lizzie was here, at the plantation house she had
mentioned in her last email.
“She
know you’re going to visit?”
“No.” But
Lizzie would be glad to see her. Her sister was always glad to
see her even when she pouted and told Marley she was a fun-sucker,
ruining all Lizzie’s good times.
It
was true. She was a fun-sucker. She couldn’t help it. Someone
had to be rational, even if it was boring.
They
slowed to a crawl, the taxi turning into the circular drive that
abutted the impressive mansion. It had definitely seen better
days. The once white paint had softened to a dirty gray and flaked
aggressively in all directions. The shutters clung to the house
precariously, like novice mountain climbers with white knuckles,
knowing if they relaxed just a little, they’d be down on
the ground.
“She
ain’t much to look at,” the driver said.
“No.
But it’s still gorgeous.” It was massive, its long
galleries sweeping left and right from the front door, a grand
reminder of the days when conversation was an art, when the French
owned New Orleans, and sugar was the road to riches.
In
the closed chill of the car, the air conditioning blasting next
to her shoulder, Marley was puzzled. This type of crumbling house,
with the past struggling to remain in the present, the musty
whispers of history wafting out from it, was Marley’s brand
of pleasure, not Lizzie’s.
Marley
loved history, the past, anything vintage or antique. A progressive
Jesuit priest in college had told Marley that history and religion
were the most effective means to avoid the present and she suspected
that was true. She had certainly used both as a means to that
end from time to time, though she felt no guilt for it. Every
day she was firmly grounded in reality as an urban teacher and
designated Sane Person in her dysfunctional family and was entitled
to an occasional respite. She found that in antiques, and in
old houses, with the stories they breathed, and how they sparked
her normally dormant imagination.
On
the opposite end of the spectrum sat her sister. Old made Lizzie
itch. She wanted new, shiny, clean, the next big excitement,
the latest and the coolest. This wasn’t the kind of place
her sister would enjoy staying in, yet Lizzie had claimed she
was here.
Marley
had spent the last three days trying to track down her sister
with no luck. None of her friends knew where she was, her cell
had been disconnected, and her last landlord had evicted her
in June. Doing Internet research on this plantation and Damien
du Bourg had revealed only that he did in fact own the property
and that it was a Louisiana historic landmark, but closed to
the public since it was privately owned. The house had been in
the du Bourg family since it’s construction in the late
eighteenth century, and that was the extent of what she’d
been able to determine.
There
had been no way to know if Lizzie was here so Marley had hopped
on a plane to find out for herself.
She
handed the driver fifty dollars. “Can you wait for twenty
minutes or so? I just want to make sure someone is here before
you leave.”
It
didn’t look teeming with activity. The whole house gave
the feeling of abandonment.
“Sure.
You okay going up there by yourself? I can park and walk you
up.” The driver suddenly looked worried, his head leaning
towards her paternally.
“No,
thanks. I’m fine.” Maybe. She forced a smile. “I’m
the well-adjusted sister. I’m just going to go in there
and haul her out.” She’d done it before. Marley had
never had Lizzie’s looks or her confidence, but when it
came to protecting her sister, she would do whatever it took,
and she doubted anything Lizzie did could shock her.
“You
do that then.” He nodded in approval. “This isn’t
the place for a nice girl like you, you know what I’m saying?”
What
bothered her was knowing that Lizzie wasn’t a nice girl,
hadn’t been one in a long time, and she couldn’t
fix her sister anymore than she had been able to fix her mother.
So she just smiled at the well-meaning driver. “I know,
thanks.”
Marley
opened the door and felt the heat hit her, heavy and invasive,
filling her lungs and pricking her skin. The porch gave low moans
of protest as she climbed the steep steps, her sandals making
slap, slap sounds as the rubber hit the wood. Worried but optimistic,
she knocked and waited. Knocked again. Waited some more. Peeped
in the window and saw nothing but shadowy hulks of furniture.
Walking
to the end of the porch, she leaned over, trying to see more
of the property. How the heck her sister had ended up in such
an obscure corner of Louisiana was a total mystery to her, and
she would actually doubt it was even true, if it hadn’t
been for the letter Lizzie had attached to her email. It had
been a letter, from one Marie du Bourg, a resident of Rosa de
Montana, and a confession to her priest two hundred years earlier.
Whether
it was real or fiction was almost irrelevant. Why had Lizzie
attached it to her email, with no explanation? And the plaintive
yet polite tone of the letter had disturbed Marley, had her rereading
the words several times. She sensed Marie’s agitation,
but she didn’t know why Lizzie would have wanted her to
read it. Bottom line—why had Lizzie been here and how had she
gotten that letter in the first place?
“Hey,” the
driver called to her, the passenger window down as he looked
up at her.
“Yeah?” She
didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t see anything
but weeds, and a row of tiny wooden buildings slowly deflating
with age, soldiered behind the trees.
“There’s
a man coming round the other side of the house. He came out of
the pigeonnier.”
Marley
didn’t really know what a pigeonnier was, but she was relieved
that at least there was someone on the property. She started
back across the porch, wiping her forehead with the back of her
hand. She was sweating from the heat and nerves, and she was
sorry she’d worn jeans. A loose skirt or shorts would have
been a better choice in this climate.
When
she reached the top of the stairs, she spotted him. The man coming
from the other side of the property walked with strong, graceful
strides, his MP3 player dangling around his neck, like he’d
just pulled it off his ears. He was tall, he was broad-shouldered,
he was gorgeous. Even from a distance it was easy to tell he
was a complete hottie, which was irritating. Marley didn’t
do well around hotties. Normally articulate, in the presence
of male physical perfection she tended to make strange gurgling
sounds and blush like a Victorian virgin.
Six
year olds she worked wonders with. Men baffled her.
“Damn,” Marley
muttered. He was almost at the bottom of the steps and there
was no way for her to run down them quickly and meet him before
he noticed her. Acutely aware that this was not her best angle,
she started down the stairs anyway, walking slowly so nothing
on her body would jiggle. It was a futile attempt. She was a
bit—okay, a lot—curvier than Hollywood standards dictated,
and from down there, her thighs probably rivaled the porch columns
for width.
“Hi,” he
said as he stopped and smiled up at her, hands going into the
pockets of his jeans. “Can I help you?”
|
Excerpt
from BLED
DRY
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley,
May 2007 ( ISBN 0-425-21515-6)
“Well,
it’s not the flu.”
Brittany
Baldizzi watched her general practitioner tuck her hair behind
her ear as she stepped back into the room. Perched on
the edge of the examination table,
Brittany was seriously confused. “An ulcer then? I’ve felt this
awful nausea for weeks.”
“Not an ulcer.” Dr. Hopkins smiled. “You’re
pregnant.”
“Excuse me?” The
room went stark white and a buzzing rang in Brittany’s ears. “Pregnant?
I can’t be pregnant!”
There
was no way. It wasn’t possible.
“Have you been practicing abstinence?” Dr.
Hopkins asked with a rueful shrug.
“Yes, I’ve been totally abstinent.” How
in the hell could she be pregnant?
Dr.
Hopkins raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
Okay,
so that wasn’t completely true. “Well, mostly. I’ve
only had sex once in the last six months.” But that had been
with Corbin Atelier, and that didn’t count because he was a vampire.
“Once
is all it takes.”
Normally.
When you were having sex with regular, mortal men. “But…” Brittany
rubbed her head. “He can’t have children.” She didn’t
think. Of course, he had never really said he couldn’t have
children. But neither had he suggested birth control.
“I’m
sorry this is such a shock, Brittany, but obviously he can have
children, because you are definitely pregnant.”
“Well, I had no idea.” That
vampires had sperm.
Which
was a stupid assumption on her part. After all, hadn’t
her brother-in-law sworn to her up, down, and sideways that her own
biological father had to be a vampire? But she hadn’t put two
and two together when she and Corbin had been talking that night.
Though
to be to totally honest, it wasn’t like she and Corbin
had devoted a whole lot of time to conversation when he had climbed
in her bedroom window and asked for blood. She’d given him
her blood and her body, and now he had given her a baby.
Holy crap.
It really would have been nice if he had warned her his boys could
still swim.
|
Excerpt
from BIT
THE JACKPOT
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley,
December 2006 (
ISBN 0-425-21013-8)
“This
is the part where you tell me your name,” Seamus said
with a wink.
Only
if she were stupid. She knew how important it was to protect
herself as
a dancer from freaks who obsessed
over women. He didn’t look like a freak, but he did look
dangerous. Strong. Well-dressed. Sexy, damn it.
“No, this is the part where I walk away. If I see Jodi
I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.” She
started to turn, but only got half through the pivot.
“Wait.” His eyes darted down to her robe. “I
saw your show. You dance beautifully. Sensual.” Those blue
eyes darkened, just went right from pale sky blue to cerulean.
Which had to be a trick of the disco light from the stage. Eyes
didn’t just completely change color in two seconds. “Your
moves are very classy.”
Not sure why exactly she was still standing there, Cara licked
her lips nervously. She could have sworn she had ordered her
feet to walk away and yet she was just frozen in a half swizzle.
A strange sensation stole over her, like a tugging, tingling
feeling, in her shoulders, her neck, her skull. She opened
her mouth to speak, but realized she couldn’t remember
what he had just said. Just that it suddenly seemed really
important to tell him her name. Urgent.
Her brain battled with the need to open her mouth. Her common
sense was screaming no, no, no, he could find her address and
phone number on the Internet with her name.
Yet she said, “Cara,” before she could stop herself.
It just came out with no warning or consent from her.
What the hell? She seethed at herself silently. What was the
matter with her? He wasn’t that good looking. Okay, yes,
he was, but that didn’t fully explain why she seemed
to have lost her mind. She glared at him, just to let him know
the name thing had been a slip, one she wasn’t going
to repeat.
The
glare didn’t seem to faze him. He smiled, a beautiful,
white teeth grin. “Come have a cup of coffee with me, Cara.”
She’d rather die. “No,
thank you.”
“There’s a shop right across the street…” he stopped
smiling. “What? What do you mean?”
“I
mean no.”
Now
he looked flat out shocked. “No? You can’t
mean no.”
“I do.” He’d obviously never heard the word
no before. Maybe he was famous. Probably rich. Used to women
dropping at his gorgeous feet. Well, she didn’t know if
his feet were gorgeous, per se, but given the rest of him she
could see, it was highly likely. This would be good for him,
to hear no. Take his obviously huge ego down a notch or two.
Seamus stared at her. Hard. His eyebrows rose just a little
bit, like he was waiting for something.
Feeling
a little weirded out by his intensity, Cara eased to the left,
still
half-turned.
She must be shuffling like a hunchback,
but she didn’t care. She needed to get away from him, but
couldn’t seem to force her body to do more than step forward
an eighth of an inch at a time. She was either in a dream or
she’d suffered some kind of post-dancing paralysis. That
had been a really deep cat in the cradle at the end of her routine.
She must have sore muscles, or maybe her high heels were too
small and she had pinched a nerve.
He
smiled, a slow, charming, roguish sort of smile. “Let
me walk you to your dressing room. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
Umm.
Didn’t she just say no twice? She attempted another
shuffle and moved all of half an inch. Damn it. She was getting
really freaked out. Her legs didn’t work. So if she couldn’t
get her own legs to leave, she’d have to force him to take
a hint. “Well, that depends. Do you like long walks?”
“Sure.” The
smile relaxed.
“Do you like sex?” Cara
asked in a husky voice, hoping her acting skills were passable.
“Absolutely.” His
nostrils flared.
“Then
take a fucking hike.”
Order
Bit the Jackpot
|
Excerpt
from HIGH
STAKES
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley,
August 2006 (
ISBN 0-425-21013-8)
Mass Market Reprint, January 2008 (ISBN 0-425-21978-X)
“He
offered me a lot of money to do it, Alexis, and I might have said
no except I realized that it was important for me to spend time with
Ethan and his staff, because I need to save them from eternal damnation.”
Huh?
Alexis stared at her sister, waiting for anything about that sentence
to
make sense. “Umm… eternal damnation? Baby,
what are you talking about?” Brittany had always led with her
heart, but she’d never shown signs of insanity before.
Brittany
tossed her long black hair over her bare shoulders and nodded. “Yes,
eternal damnation. They’re all vampires, Alex.”
“Vampires? Vampires. Vam-pires?” Alexis felt her blood
pressure rising like an elevator. She’d started out on the fear
floor and was heading straight towards furious. A headache was brewing
behind her eyes, and she wished that Brittany wasn’t six inches
taller than her, so she could just grab her sister and haul her ass
home where she belonged. “You mean like Dracula? Blood sucking
demons with bad breath, nocturnal habits, and an aversion to crosses,
stakes, and garlics? That’s crazy.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?” Alexis rammed her hands in her suit pocket. “Yes,
it’s crazy, or yes, they’re blood sucking demons?”
“Both. I know it’s
hard to believe, but Ethan is a vampire, and he needs our help.”
Our help? The only thing Alexis was going to give him was a flying
roundhouse kick into the crotch.
Not only was he a rich casino owner, he got his jollies running some
kind of goofy club/cult of creepy pale people who all had her little
sister believing they were freaking vampires. Dead people. Undead.
Double dead. Whatever you wanted to call it.
They
weren’t
any of it. And what they wanted to do on their own loser time was
their
business, but since they had dragged Brittany
into their weird hobbies, Alexis was not happy.
In fact, she was so angry her mouth went hot and the hallway spun
a quick tilt.
“I’ll help him, Brit.” She jammed her purse back
onto her shoulder. She’d help escort him to the police station
to answer a few questions.
And prosecute
his ass away from her sister and straight into prison.
Ethan heard the
moment Alexis and Brittany stopped speaking by the elevator bank and
headed
towards the reception room. Even while chatting
with Peter Federov about his winnings at the Bellagio’s elite
poker table, Ethan sensed the angry footsteps marching in his direction
long before he saw Alexis.
She was muttering, even though he couldn’t decipher the words,
in an irritated way that amused him, as he sipped vintage blood
from a champagne
flute.
“Thirty grand in one hand,” Peter was saying. “Like
taking candy from babies, since I can sense everything going on in
their minds.”
“That’s not exactly ethical, Peter,” he
said automatically, though he was distracted.
Now he could smell Alexis, a warm blend of vanilla lotion and the
natural scent of her skin, a salty anxiety. The steady, rapid beat
of her heart echoed in his sensitive eardrums, and the cadence of her
walking drummed in harmony with the pulsing of her veins. With chilled,
aged blood on his lips, the taste a sharp, dry, subtle satisfaction,
he suddenly wanted more. Sweet, warm, immediate blood, like a bubbly
Riesling wine, straight from the source into his mouth, where it would
roll over his tongue and fill his cheeks and make his eyes slip shut
with pleasure.
“Screw
ethical, Carrick. Why do we have these talents if we can not use
them? If
we want something, we should take it.”
Take
it. Ethan could take it. He could draw Alexis to him and take her
thick, rich blood, and
she would never know. It had been a long
time since he’d fed straight from a mortal, and he was suddenly
very thirsty for the experience.
|
Excerpt
from WHEN
GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD BOYS
Anthology
featuring 'Lady
of the Lake' by ©Erin McCarthy
Kensington Brava, April 2006 (ISBN 0-7582-0933-9)
Adjusting
the sail, Dylan Diaz narrowed his eyes as he scanned the horizon.
If
he didn’t know better, he’d think that brown spot was
a head in
the water. He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. It was a head.
With hair. Bobbing.
Oh
my God, he’d found a dead person.
With
a grimace, he put his water down in the cup holder.
Well,
nothing like a floating corpse to make him feel even worse for griping.
Ungrateful was an understatement. Here he had life by the balls-
he was young, strong, healthy, loaded with cash. This person was dead.
It couldn’t get much rougher than that.
Unless
the dead guy’s eyes had been pecked out, too. He shuddered.
There was a nasty thought.
He’d
been hoping for a little excitement, something different, for his
birthday. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
Dylan
reached for his radio to call his find into the coast guard, when
the head lifted.
It was
wearing glasses.
He
scrambled back a foot before letting out a “Yaahhh!” like
a kid in a haunted house. Shit, it was alive.
Then
his momentary shock gave way to relief. Alive was good. Better than
dead.
Unless the person was injured, which was not so good. “Are
you okay? Damn, hang in there! I’ll help you out of the water.”
He
stood straight up, rocking the boat, and leaned over, reaching out. “Lift
your arms, I’ll pull you up.”
The
head was actually a woman, with chattering teeth and long hair trailing
in the water like seaweed, as she stared up at him through water-logged
glasses. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he thought she was in
shock. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, and Dylan pawed
through the water, locking his grip on both of her wrists.
He
pulled, hard, and she ripped out of the water towards his boat. But
in his
eagerness to get her to safety, he misjudged the distance. There
wasn’t enough room for clearance and her lower half collided
with the hull.
A soft
moan carried to him as he winced. Then pulled again, this time sort
of scraping her up the side of the boat before she cleared it. His
shoe slipped, he went down on his ass, and she fell right on top
of him since he was still holding onto her wrists.
There
was pain in his shoulder, a whole lot of wet hair slapping him across
the chin, and dead weight landing on his lower half. Well, not dead,
but damn close, as heavy and limp as she was.
All that
exhausted female fell right smack on him, her elbow nailing him in
the nuts, but he took the blow like the man that he was. By swearing.
With
a grimace, Dylan glanced down at the closed eyes, as the wetness
of
her hair and clammy skin soaked through his shorts. She wasn’t
moving. At all. Jesus, maybe she really was dead. He was no MD. Of
course, she had moaned, but what the hell did he know? It could have
been her last breath.
“Are
you okay, lady? Please say something.” He was afraid to move,
afraid to exasperate any injuries she might have, afraid that he
was starting to panic a little and that for all he was a macho ballplayer,
he was freaking out here.
“Just
give me a second,” she whispered in a husky voice.
Alright
then. Alive, thank God. “But are you hurt? I need to call for
help. Let me scoot out from under you.” If she was injured,
he needed to get assistance, and he was a good thirty minutes from
shore. He had his cell phone in his pocket, and he was close enough
that he might be able to get a signal. If not, he’d use his
radio.
But
when he started to shift, she moaned into his pelvis. “I’m
fine. Just let me be still for a minute.”
Dylan
stopped moving. She sounded pretty intact, just tired, which had
him staring up at the sky in some serious relief. “Nothing’s
broken? You’re not bleeding, or delirious, or paralyzed?”
“No.”
Good,
because he was working on an erection and he was a sick bastard if
she was hurt, and he was getting off on her face being plastered
down in his crotch.
But
that facial proximity below his waist, coupled with her chest… holy
hooters, she had a nice rack. It was all pressed against his hips
and between his legs, and his body was automatically responding to
the position. He didn’t mean to, knew that there was a church
confessional with his name on it for this one, but damn, her breasts
were so soft and big.
There
was no way those were fake. They felt pliable and bouncy, sort of
wrapping around him in a hug.
Dylan
looked up at the sky and did a practice Hail Mary. He’d be
doing twenty of them after this. Might as well make sure he remembered
the words.
She turned
her head a little, so that her lips pressed right over his fly, her
nose burying into his crotch, only covered by thin swim trunks.
The gates
of hell swung wide open in welcome for him.
Because
he was hard, getting harder by the minute.
“How
long have you been in the water? What happened to you?” he
asked, followed by, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”
Man, he
was blanking out after that. His mother would beat him with her rosary
if she found out. Second confession needed- forgetting prayers as
well as lusting after unknown, helpless woman.
“Are
you praying?” the woman asked, her voice sounding a little
incredulous.
“Yes.
I’m praying that you’re okay.”
Oh, my
God, he had just lied. Shit. And taken the name of the Lord in vain.
How
many commandments could he break in one day? He was probably coveting
his neighbor’s wife right this very second.
The
problem was, he hadn’t had sex in an entire year. His body clearly
missed it, given its let’s-do-it reaction to a half-drowned
woman.
“I’m
fine,” she said. “I’m just tired. Thank you for
the pillow.”
“Uh…” Dylan
tried very hard not to move. She had to be delirious. She had fallen
right onto him two minutes ago, not a pillow in sight. His semi-erection
was right alongside her ear, and while he wasn’t going to brag,
he was big enough that she should notice its existence. And
it damn well wasn’t soft. “You’re welcome.”
But his
voice must have given him away- he never could lie well because of
his Catholic guilt. Her eyes popped open and she looked up. Wiped
her glasses with a finger. Looked down. Looked left to right, then
sat up with a scream.
Which
gave him a glorious view of her breasts, covered by tiny bikini triangles
in a stars and stripes pattern.
Dylan
was pretty sure he was saluting the flag.
Order
When Good Things Happen to Bad Boys
|
Excerpt
from HEIRESS
FOR HIRE
© Erin
McCarthy
Berkley
Sensation, January 2006 (ISBN 0-425-20761-7)
Mass Market Reprint, July 2007 (ISBN 0-425-21484-2)
There
were some things money couldn’t buy. For everything else, there
was her father.
Since
Brett Delmar couldn’t- or wouldn’t- provide Amanda Delmar
with love, affection, or respect, at the very least she figured he
should foot the bill for a few of life’s necessities. And luxuries.
“Daddy,
just two hundred. That’s all I need.” Amanda checked
out her manicure and grimaced. If he could only see how godawful
her nails looked, he would understand that this was an emergency.
“Why
not make it two thousand? Why not make it ten thousand?” Her
father’s sarcasm came crackling through her cell phone.
She
decided to ignore it. “That’s so sweet of you! And it’s
not even my birthday.”
That
wheezing was probably the sound of his blood pressure going up. She
felt a momentary twinge of guilt. She didn’t want to give him
a heart attack. She just wanted a manicure.
“Amanda
Margaret.”
Ouch.
Trotting out the middle name was never a good thing. Amanda set the
swing on her front porch swaying. She ran her fingers idly through
the lilac bush that hugged the porch as she rocked back and forth.
She was
enjoying her summer in Cuttersville, Ohio. It was quaint and different
and full of fawning men, eager to pay court to the rich girl from
Chicago. But it had its drawbacks in that there were actually establishments
that only accepted cash, as unbelievable as it seemed. And her father
with his many mountains of money was back in Illinois, getting cranky
about her spending habits.
Which
was ironic since he had created those spending habits, nurtured them
in her. He had praised her beauty and her style as a child, and scoffed
at her attempts to use her brain. Now he found those very traits
he had fostered in her annoying.
All her
attempts to please him had failed, and around about her eighteenth
birthday she had stopped trying.
“Yes,
Daddy?” If he could use sarcasm, surely he would recognize
it.
“Have
you heard of Tough Love?”
Amanda
stopped playing with the tips of her hair extensions and frowned.
Maybe she had been in the country too long ogling brawny farmers
and getting back to nature. “Is that a new designer? Did P.
Diddy start a line of street wear? Why haven’t I heard of it?”
He
snorted. “No,
it’s not a goddamn clothing line. It’s what I’m
about to do for your own good, because I love you and you need to
get serious, Amanda. You’re almost twenty-six goddamn years
old. When I was your age I was making half a million a year already.”
Amanda
moved her mouth in a silent, “blah, blah, blah.” She
had heard this speech before. Could recite it backwards and forwards
and in French.
“You
need to work for your money.”
She
was. Listening to him blather was hard, painful work, and she had
to endure
it every time she needed cash. It was as bad as flipping burgers
at McDonald’s would be, she’d bet.
Maybe
it was time to get a job. Not that she was qualified to do anything,
given her degree in Art Appreciation. But it was getting a little
old to beg for money all the time, and the childish satisfaction
of spending her father’s fortune no longer had quite the same
charm.
My God,
maybe she was actually maturing. There was a scary thought.
Amanda
reached down and scooped up Baby, her teacup poodle, and stroked
her downy head. She was getting stressed out, and Baby was soothing,
her fluffy fur poofing around Amanda’s fingers. Baby’s
devotion was simple and uncomplicated, and Amanda appreciated that.
“So,
this time, I’m serious, Amanda, I’ve had it. I’m
instituting Tough Love. In the end we’ll both be happier this
way.”
Amanda
heard herself sigh. She really was getting too old for these circular
arguments. There was no fight left in her. That’s why she was
nesting in the country, to relax. “What are you talking about?
What does Tough Love actually mean?”
“It
means I’m cutting you off. No more money.”
“What?” The
words didn’t make sense. They were unintelligible to her. Daddy
was money, money was Daddy, and he couldn’t possibly mean…
“No.
More. Money. Ever. That’s what I mean. You’ll have to
fend for yourself from here on out. I know your rent is paid for
the duration of the summer, so you’ll have plenty of time to
look for work. There’s the two thousand I gave you last week.
That should hold you over until your first paycheck.”
“It’s
gone already! Baby needed dog food.” And she had needed a new
handbag, one better equipped to handle the dust of the country.
“What
the hell is the dog eating? Beluga? Christ, Amanda, give me a break.
That dog is the size of an egg. It probably eats a can of dog food
a month.”
Amanda
felt the beginnings of panic, followed by pure anger. How absolutely
like him. He gave, and he taketh away. Her father had a serious power
trip going on. He just loved being the one in control, holding the
cards, manipulating her life.
Well,
she wasn’t going to beg. Not this time.
She’d
just run to the money machine instead and make a large cash withdrawal
on her credit cards. All six of them.
“Well,
if you’re really serious about this…” she paused,
giving him time to regain his sanity.
“I
am.”
“Then
I have to go. I have to find a job before I die of starvation and
exposure.”
Or worse,
her cell phone ran out of minutes.
Order Heiress for Hire
|
Excerpt
from THE
NAKED TRUTH
Anthology
featuring 'The
Winning Truth' by ©Erin McCarthy
Berkley Sensation, November 2005, (ISBN 0-425-20614-9)
Mass Market Reprint, September 2007 (ISBN 0-425-21665-9)
Tansey
Reynolds had sworn off men and embraced celibacy.
Okay,
so maybe embracing was an exaggeration, since every time she
saw a two-legged human male, even remotely attractive and over the
age of twenty, she started to drool and engage in a battle with her
willpower. But she really had sworn off dating men.
And she
was celibate. For now. For as long as she could stand it.
The
problem was, she wasn’t a virgin. And once you got the ball rolling,
it was kind of hard to stop it. Her ball wanted to tumble down a
long driveway at top speed with the first boy ball that bounced by,
and she was trying to force it to stay still. It wasn’t working,
and she hadn’t figured out how to deflate her ball yet.
“What
are you staring at, Tansey? We’re next in line.” Her
best friend, Emily Baker, gave her a little nudge.
Forcing
herself to stop salivating over a construction worker’s tight
butt in line ahead of her, Tansey clutched the contest flyer in her
now sweaty hand and pondered a life without car payments. She frowned
at Emily and tried to hold onto the dream. “How long
have we been standing in this line? It feels like an hour.”
Taking
another king size bite of her pretzel and a slurp of her
cherry slushie, she added, “And I’m starving, Em.
I wanted to eat a real lunch today for a change. The clock is
ticking on my break.”
“Eewww,” Emily
said, curling her lip in horror. “Close your mouth,
Tansey, it looks like open heart surgery in there.”
Carefully
chewing the soft pretzel remnants, Tansey swallowed. “Sorry.”
But there
was nothing better to do but eat carbs and fat standing in line at
the mall waiting for a chance to win a free car. Eat or talk to the
guy behind her, which she had done for a minute or two. And while
that guy was cute, in an eager, much-younger-than-her sort of way,
Tansey needed to concentrate her energies on the F word. Focus.
No more
men. Not until she figured out what to do with the rest of her life.
Not until she figured out how to stop herself from being attracted
to gorgeous, sexy, lying male sluts.
“I
can’t even see the car because the fountain’s blocking
it,” she said, feeling grumpy.
This
wasn’t
exactly where she had pictured herself being at twenty-eight. Single
and spending ninety percent of her waking hours at the mall between
work and shopping, with fatty food as her only consolation. And as
unexciting and low-paying as her job was, she was going to get fired
from the department store if she didn’t get back to work in
about two minutes. “This is a total waste of time. I’m
getting out of line.”
Emily
looked aghast. “But, Tansey, if you get out of line, you can’t
win the car.”
“The
chances of me winning that car are about the same as the balance
on my credit card being zero.” A long time ago, in
a galaxy far, far away, her credit card balance had been
nothing. These days
it heaved and bubbled and popped, threatening to overflow
with a life force all its own.
“Well,
you won’t win if you don’t enter,” Emily
said, the eternal optimist in a sunny yellow sweater. Emily
was chronically
cheerful. She thought everyone was sweet and adorable and
oh-so-sincere, and she doled out trust like Tic Tacs. Somehow
it seemed to be working
for Emily.
Emily
was happy. Tansey just felt crappy.
There
was a life lesson there. Like maybe what goes around, comes
around. You receive what you give. Don’t sweat the small
stuff.
Or maybe
just stop being an ungrateful bitch.
The
thought made her feel better. “You’re right,
Em.” She controlled
her destiny. She could stand back and react when things
happened to her, or she could make them happen. “I’m
in charge of my life.”
Like swearing
off men. That was taking action. See, she had taken charge already.
Her
eyes strayed back to the construction worker’s fine behind. It was
very… firm in those worn jeans. Her mouth went dry.
Tansey
didn’t need a man. But she sure wanted one.
Just like
that, please. One gorgeous, tool belt-wearing, guy to go.
Tansey
watched the hunk with blond hair step out of the line in front of
her and take the clipboard handed to him. He wore faded jeans that
hugged his thighs, and scuffed work boots, with a tool belt hanging
down around his waist, dragging those jeans even lower. A white T-shirt
strained across a multitude of male muscle, and on top of that was
a red flannel shirt.
Tansey
fought the urge to lick her lips. She’d always had
a thing for men who worked with their hands. All those
calluses, and tanned
skin in the summer. Rippling muscle and dirty jeans. The
total lack of modesty they displayed as they slung hammers
around in ninety-degree
weather bare-chested. Even though it was February right
now, she could visualize it.
Yeah,
she could visualize it.
As he
turned, he saw her. Though he was a little too far away to be sure,
she would guess his eyes were blue, given his light hair with blond
streaks.
She
would not do anything, she would not, she couldn’t… she smiled,
did the hair flip. Damn. She was addicted to flirting. After nearly
fifteen years of mating behavior, she couldn’t just
drop it as easily as she wanted.
|
Excerpt
from THE
PREGNANCY TEST
© Erin
McCarthy
Brava
Single Title,
October 2005 (ISBN 0-7582-0847-2)
Mandy
lay in a chaise lounge and flipped through the parenting magazine
she had subscribed to eight weeks earlier when she had thought educating
herself about pregnancy would actually alleviate stress.
The weightier, Everything
Guide To Pregnancy, was collecting dust in her beach
bag. She had brought it, knowing she had to read the thing
sooner or later
so she didn’t miss the early signs of labor, or make
an ill-informed circumcision decision. But she had discovered
something about herself-
she was a wimp. She just wanted to sit back and enjoy anticipating
her baby- not memorize terms like VBAC and effacement,
or create her Delivery Advocacy Plan to take to the hospital
like Jamie kept
insisting she needed to do.
There
was just too much information flooding her brain cells. But
she had thought glancing through the magazine wouldn’t
hurt, since it had cute pictures of chubby babies, and funny
little essays on
parenting.
Punta
Cana was beautiful, a breezy eighty-five degrees and blue
sunny skies, not a raindrop in sight. But Damien had been avoiding
her, or at
least it seemed that way to her. She hadn’t seen him since
they’d arrived at the hotel forty-eight hours earlier.
On her own, she had taken all her meals with total strangers,
having been
adopted by a nice British couple in their sixties who clearly
felt sorry for her.
While
they were a couple of dears, and she had gluttoned herself
at the amazing buffets the hotel offered-not the least bit worried
about
unwashed fruit- it wasn’t the same as being on holiday
with family or friends.
She
wasn’t
comfortable parasailing, speed boating, snorkeling, or scuba diving
since she was pregnant. Though she had swum in the ocean a few times,
played three games of water volleyball, and one round of shuffleboard.
She’d entered an egg race on the beach with other hotel
guests, and had petted a monkey, perched a parrot on her
shoulder, and sat
on a donkey.
All
of which were delightful, but she was used to being surrounded
by friends
and co-workers. People to talk to. And as much as she’d tried,
the parrot hadn’t said a peep. Mandy sipped her virgin daiquiri
and wondered for the hundredth time why Damien had brought her on
this trip. He didn’t need her here, clearly.
Which
left her to read an article on the risks of pregnancy when using
condoms.
Many
pregnancies result from the condom breaking or a hole in the latex,
but just as many pregnancies are the result of improper use.
How did
one use a condom incorrectly? Stick it on their ear?
Many
men try to put the condom on inside out, realize their mistake,
and flip it over, thereby inserting the condom with seminal fluid
already present directly in the vagina.
Ben had
been notorious for doing that.
“Well,
that explains a thing or two,” she said out loud, tempted
to fax the article to Ben. At his office.
“Explains
what?” Damien asked from right behind her shoulder.
Damn. Mandy
jumped in the chair and slapped the magazine closed. Hell,
there was a cue ball headed baby on the cover, grinning for all
he was
worth. She flipped it to the back cover, which was a teary
eyed toddler gazing at the mess he’d made on the floor.
She shoved
it in her bag. Which left her stomach completely exposed to his view.
Her bare,
pregnant stomach, popping up above her bikini bottoms. She raised
her knees to de-emphasize the bubble below her belly button.
“Nothing,
just muttering to myself.” Mandy shielded her eyes from the
sun and turned to look back at him. “So you decided
to actually leave your room?”
Complex
and mysterious woman that she was, she found herself equal parts
thrilled and horrified to see him. Or maybe she was just idiotic.
Damien
dropped into the chair next to her and kicked his sandals
off in the sand. “I figured the guys back at work would
give me a hard time if I came home as white as when I left.”
“That’s
true.” Mandy tried to command herself not to look at
his body, but it was hopeless. Already she was raking up
and down him like
a starving woman at a feast. Or like a horny pregnant woman
having sexual dreams about her boss.
He was
sickeningly flawless. Broad chest, a smattering of hair across his
well defined pectorals, a ripped washboard stomach. When he sat back
on the lounger, he brought his arms up to cup his head, and Mandy
sighed.
Those
were the kind of arms a woman just wanted to sink in to.
If
she weren’t pregnant and hiding the fact from her boss.
“Make
sure you put on your sunscreen. This sun is extremely powerful. I
slathered it on, and I still got burned on my back and shoulders
where I couldn’t reach.”
“Do
you have your sunscreen?&# |
