Must Love Vampires Read Free Page B

turned out to be true, this could be very bad for her. Very, very bad.
    Getting on the wrong side of the richest man in Las Vegas—a man who likely owned the ground you were standing on at any given moment, if you were standing within the city limits—was never a good thing. Getting on the wrong side of the richest man in Las Vegas who just happened to also possibly be a bloodsucking creature of the night . . .
    She was a writer, and even she didn’t have the words to describe what a cluster fuck that could turn out to be.
    She swallowed hard, mind racing as she tried to come up with an excuse for why she’d been following him, checking him out, why she’d switched places with her sister. Nothing came to mind, which made her sweat even more than the past three hours of hoofing it under the thousand-watt stage lights.
    “Um . . . hello,” she squeaked when he showed no signs of moving out of her way.
    How would an employee of the Inferno greet its rich and powerful owner? Would there be obeisance? Groveling? As a showgirl, would she bat her overly glittered lashes and cock an inviting hip?
    She shifted around awkwardly, raising a hand to the back of her head, thrust her breasts forward, and fluttered her lashes until one of them got stuck, rendering her blind in her right eye.
    When she reached up to pry them apart, she lost her balance and flailed wildly on her platform ice-pick heels, frantically attempting to stay upright.
    Sebastian . . . Raines . . . Dracula reached out and grasped her upper arms just as she began to topple, effectively stopping her from falling on her keister.
    Well, how embarrassing to be rescued from certain doom by the very person she intended to “out” as a bloodsucking fiend. But doubly embarrassing was the fact that when he touched her, a zip of electricity ran all the way down her spine and into her girly places from where his fingers gripped her bare arms. That hadn’t happened since cell phones were the size of lunch boxes.
    And what the heck was her body doing getting all turned on by a vampire, anyway? Didn’t it know that was a sure-fire way to become a human Slurpee? To be turned into a slobbering, brain-dead minion of the damned?
    She didn’t want to become a bug-eating Renfro or a mindless Mina. . . . Not even if, as a Mina, she would get to experience life-altering orgasms at the hands—and other body parts—of this tall, dark, handsome, sexy, powerful, mesmerizing . . .
    Oh, God, it was happening already! He was hypnotizing her into finding him attractive. Into wondering what it would feel like to have him nibble at her neck (literally) while he banged her into oblivion.
    Get ahold of yourself, Charlotte! she ordered silently. And as usual, the use of her given name caught her attention and snapped her back to reality.
    Then Mr. Tall, Dark, and Most Likely Fanged had to go and confuse her all over again.
    “Chloe,” he murmured in a low, mesmerizing voice.
    Had she mentioned how freaking mesmerizing he was?
    She blinked, caught off-guard at having him address her by her sister’s name . . . even though it meant her ruse was working.
    “Chloe, look at me.”
    She was looking at him—who could stop?—but his demand had her looking more closely, and directly into his eyes.
    They were beautiful eyes . . . stormy gray around dark black pupils. She could see her reflection there, even in the lousy lighting of the shadowy backstage area, and so much more. They were like the ocean after a storm . . . like storm clouds drifting overhead . . . like swirls of smoke floating heavenward.
    She was concentrating so fully on holding his gaze that her own vision began to blur. She didn’t notice his hand coming up until it was directly in front of her face.
    Holding up two fingers, he placed them lightly over each of her heavily made-up eyelids. Glitter, apparently, was a lousy vampire repellant.
    Drawing them slowly down . . . which wasn’t difficult, since she felt half-asleep