Free Blood and Fire by Shannon McKenna Page A

ego, spark his curiosity.
    Of course, the corollary to this was that she herself had to be a stunning sex goddess. Yow. A tall order, on her budget. Beauty and glamour were expensive, financially and emotionally. A constant I’m-so-smokin’-hot vibe took a lot of vital energy to project and maintain.
    But she was highly motivated. She really wanted to live.
    She had lots of practice at frigid indifference, but tonight she was bombing on it, big-time. She couldn’t stop peeking at the sexy beard shadow that accented the angle of his jaw. Those jutting cheekbones, the creases of twin dimples. The throbbing force field of his sexual energy, bumping up against her personal space.
    This crush was just a distraction her mind had grappled onto so that she didn’t have to think about how lonely she was, how scared. So she wouldn’t have one of her stress freak-outs, or start to obsess about Howard and his shard of glass. It was much less painful to obsess about Ranieri’s luscious bod instead, and mull over The Approach.
    Her problem was, once she’d hooked his attention, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Aside from the screamingly obvious.
    She tried to breathe. She needed to get close to him. There was a tried and true way. Though sex did not necessarily mean closeness.
    Ranieri was neither married nor engaged. Slut or no slut, there she drew the line. She supposed she could try to strike up a friendship, but how the hell was that even done? Like she had time to join his health club, chat him up at the juice bar, run into him at the bookstore. That kind of thing was so vague, so random. It could take years.
    She didn’t have years. She was going insane, treading water. Cocktail waitressing under the table, crashing at a squalid downtown youth hostel. Carrying her netbook everywhere because she had no safe place to leave it. Always looking over her shoulder for the guys in the SUV. Because eventually, they’d find her, and shove her into the back of their car, and skewer her. It was just a matter of time.
    She had to find out what Bruno Ranieri knew, now. Ergo, they had to become best buddies, fast. Seducing a guy was a simple, step-by-step process that she could wrap her imagination around.
    She would sacrifice her, well, call it virtue, for lack of a better word, in exchange for her life. She’d do penance later. If she had a later.
    Then she saw his dimples, his ass, his eyes. Smelled his scent. She’d had that provocative, intimate conversation that she had actually started to enjoy. And suddenly, she couldn’t remember what she was trying to accomplish anymore. Her agenda just flopped on its head.
    She watched Bruno pour coffee for a guy hunched at the bar, and scraped up the last of her rice pudding. Wow. She was officially taking this to the next level, after a fifteen-minute conversation. She had to keep it light, playful, but how? Her hands shook. No, correction. Her whole body shook. He was going to notice that. It was hard to miss.
    For God’s sake. The man was not scary. In fact, he seemed really sweet. Who’d have thought that Dudley Do-Right vibe could be so arousing? Her champion, indeed. And he made a wicked banana cream pie, too. What a honey bear. A kissable, squeezable, positively lickable—
    Cool it. She pressed her hand to her mouth, until her teeth bruised the inside of her lip. She could wait, of course. But for what? To get pissed off at him, and then alienate him with her hostility? This being as inevitable as springtime, death or taxes. Considering her track record with men.
    Bruno glanced over. His dimples deepened the grooves bracketing his mouth. Something expanded in her chest, hot and breathless.
    Worse yet, she could fall in love with the guy. God help her.
    He pointed at the clock, held up five fingers. She clenched her thighs. Realized, to her dismay, that she was already wet. Her brain buzzed around in tight, frantic little circles. And the rest of her ignored her brain