Page 2 of Charisma

I bite my lip, rolling it in between my teeth as I work hard to keep from bursting out in hysterics as her belly jiggles and her baby tries its hardest to push his or her way out of its cushioned abode from the jolting thwack.

That panther kitten already has claws and an attitude and hasn’t even been born yet.

“You consider wooing part of the dark side, Baldwin?” Charisma jabs me, amusement freely dancing in her irises.

“Sure ‘nuff,” I admit. To make my point, I tilt my aluminum soda can toward Landry and Paxton where he’s cooing in her ear while patting her extended baby bump. “The whole affair of wooing, seducing, and awing the opposite sex with your skill is nauseating.”

“Your skill?” Charisma grins.

“He doesn’t have to court her, he’s already got her,” Connelly titters.

“And yet, he’s still having to work his ass off to prove to her that he’s the right choice as a mate for her. It’s downright pitiful,” I groan.

This time, Charisma loses her composure. She’s bent in half, holding her stomach while tears trail down her cheeks. I start to get a little concerned when her lips begin to turn a chalky shade of blue.

Do vampires have problems with holding their breath? Tilting my head to the side I begin to consider my next train of thought… their eternal immortality should prevent her from dying from lack of oxygen intake. I mean, I don’t think their hearts even technically beat like everyone else’s does. Fuck. If my comments have caused her to have some sort of medical crisis, the males around here will have my head served on a silver platter. Well, maybe not Beast since we’re family.

“Maverick!” I bellow, knowing that he’s in the backyard training with his sister, Leigh, and shouldn’t have any issues hearing me. Hell, the guy can hear whispering from opposing ends of the field. I should know. He’s caught me more than once plotting his demise while we’re doing drills.

Maverick’s damn militant, he’s a strict fucker who accepts nothing less than warlike perfection over his squadron of warriors. I’ve never been one to back off from a good fight, but he’s combative. I suppose when the woodland creatures are your teachers and friends, you get used to a ‘survival of the fittest’ type mentality as a way of living.

“What!” Maverick roars as he tosses the door into the wood grain paneling. “Is someone in here dying? You know not to disrupt me when I’m instructing someone, Baldwin.”

“Yeah, about that,” I say, interrupting him while pointing at Charisma where she’s gone a pastier shade of white than her normal pallid complexion. “Do vampires require a breathing machine?”

“Only when they’re in the company of idiots,” Mav growls as he tosses a look of irritation over his shoulder and exits as dramatically as he entered.

I bump Connelly’s shoulder and ask, “What’s he trying to say?”

“That you’re a buffoon,” Paxton snaps, not giving Connelly a chance to answer me herself.

“Am not. I don’t scratch my ass on a minute-by-minute basis,” I argue. “And I don’t have fleas.”

“You’ve just proved my point, sincebaboonstypically scratch their asses and sometimes have fleas,” Paxton jeers.

“Yeah, well, I’m no fucking buffoon, cat boy. Somethings seriously wrong with the vamp.”

I jump to my feet when Charisma flops off of the couch, landing on the floor with a loud thud, and flopping around like a jellyfish fresh out of the ocean.

“Someone get the paddles. We’re gonna have to shock her.” I’m only half-assed joking when I state this.

She really does look like she’s fixing to keel over. Esmerelda will rip my innards out of me and hang them on her wall, or use them for one of her potions.

No thank you.

I refuse to be her sacrificial bear. I like all my body parts exactly where Mother Nature intended them to be; on my person.

“Get up, woman,” I demand, accompanied by a snap of my fingers. “Stop that shit, you look like an octopus with all of that flopping around.”

CHARISMA

Nobody has ever mademe lose control over my functions like Baldwin just did. No matter how hard I fight, I can’t seem to quit laughing. It’s to the point that I haven’t stopped long enough to inhale a single breath.

Not that I need oxygen to survive, I could walk the floor of the sea and not suffer, but I still have some of my homosapien’s disabilities. My outside appearance just so happens to be one of those things.

Not only do I continue to look like I’m the average twenty-two-year-old female, the age I was when I was turned, but the evidence that I was once mortal is still deep-seated in my genetic material.

My cheeks redden when I’m mortified.

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