Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(19)

She’d considered just telling the truth, begging for his help, but she couldn’t risk a flat it.” Or worse, a get the hell away from me, or I’ll get a restraining order. Which was what she herself would have said, in her former life, if someone approached her with a request like that.

She had no other leads. She had to be sneaky, get close to him, gain his trust. That was the plan. But the perfectly defined shape of the guy’s ass wiped her hard drive clean like a powerful magnet. This lust attack was so unlike her usual modality with the male sex, which was mostly fear and loathing. The men she’d hooked up with so far had been good for one thing only, and even that only on alternate bank holidays that happened to coincide with a blue moon.

She forked up another banana cream oral orgasm. She’d eaten more than half of both desserts. One would think running for one’s life would be a real slimmer-downer, but no, disillusioned again. On the run meant convenience stores, bus stations, hot dogs, Mickey Dee’s, pizza slices. It meant zero access to a decent kitchen, a stocked refrigerator, or any sort of vegetable. It meant all carbs, all the time. It meant desperate sugar compensation for loneliness and fear.

And here she was, compounding her sins with two desserts. The wretched man had not done his part in saving her from her own greed.

Bruno hadn’t been hard to find. His business had a big, fancy interactive Web site. He was smeared all over Facebook and other social media. For God’s sake, there was a magazine cover with his gorgeous, grinning face on it, framed and hanging right there in the diner. She’d read the article from the Portland Monthly probably a dozen times. It was one of the first hits she’d made on the Internet when she’d begun to research him. It was all out there on a silver platter, for anyone who wanted to know about him.

All except for the info that she needed. The monsters in his closet.

In any case, she was following him now for all the wrong reasons. Which was to say, just to get a better look. To see if it was a trick of the light, or if he really was that criminally hot. To check out that perfect build. Not swollen gym-rat bulk, which she abhorred, but sinewy, trim perfection. Pantherish power in his long legs, his defined thighs. The jut of his butt made her want to just sink her nails into his ass and palpate the wedges of muscle in his back with a feral squeal of delight.

Three nights ago, she’d risked The First Approach. She’d steeled herself for the close-up reality. Bad breath, enlarged pores, body odor, anything. She almost hoped for a fatal flaw, just to break the spell.

Nope. No flaws. The guy was perfect. She’d had to grit her teeth and look away when he took her order, and remind herself to breathe.

Information flooded in even while ignoring him. That big barrel chest. His black hair, buzzed very close, would be curly if he allowed it to be, but he was having none of that. His heavy-lidded Italian eyes were the velvet brown of rum truffles dusted in fine cocoa. His biceps distended the sleeves of a crisp white T-shirt. The sweeping pattern of body hair against sinewy golden forearms, the pattern of veins, tendons, the shape of his hands, it practically hypnotized her. And his smell. A knee-weakening blend of tapioca, coffee beans, and dish soap.

Fortunately, being speechless was part of the plan. She’d given a lot of thought to his handling, once she’d gotten a grip on his strange schedule, which did not include sleep. Fortunately, her schedule didn’t include sleep, either. She’d broken it down. Fact: Any guy that fine-looking had to think he was God’s gift. Therefore, frigid indifference was the way to go. It was guaranteed to pique his 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.