High Stakes

Vegas Vampires- Completed Series

First Published 2006-08-01 in Trade Paperback

Reissued 2008-01-01 in Mass Market Paperback

Publisher: Berkley Sensation

He’s a bloodsucking freak of nature. But, unlike other politicians, Ethan Carrick is actually a nice guy. Not to mention a very hot, wealthy, casino-owning vampire. It’s an election year for vampires, which means he’ll first have to escape his opponent’s hit men. Then he’ll have to find a suitable First Lady, preferably here in Vegas.

Brittany Baldizzi fits the bill. She’s smart, pretty- and sweeter than a glass of diabetic O-Negative. But her protective sister Alexis steps in with a message for Ethan: Bite me. It’s then that he realizes it’s the sexy, no-nonsense Alexis who raises his stake. And as much as she denies it, Alexis wouldn’t mind a romp in the coffin with him. But can a mere mortal, even one who risks her life for him, make a centuries-old, womanizing vampire feel something entirely new?

“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.