Into the Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

to last forever for Maybe-Susan, too, who must’ve truly been at her wits’ end to ask if she could come home with him, said total stranger
grande.
    Either that, or she was a freaking idiot—Blanche DuBois reincarnated.
Ah have always relahd on the kahndness of strangahs…
    Or she really
was
a con artist, looking to gain access to his apartment, where, while he was sleeping, she would rob him blind. Or she’d take pictures of him in bed with her boyfriend, so they could blackmail him by threatening to post the photos on the Internet.
    Note to self: Don’t fall asleep tonight.
    But before he could make the “Yuh” sound to say
yes, you can sleep on my couch—at least for tonight,
because he really didn’t have anything in his apartment worth stealing and lack of sleep was well worth the potential prize of her moving off his couch and into his bed, she upped the ante.
    “Rumor has it, I give good head.” She smiled, but something shifted in her eyes, just slightly, and the effect was disarming. For someone so young and pretty, she suddenly looked tired—battle-worn—like she was twenty going on fifty.
    She took a step toward him, and Izzy took a step back, which was kind of stupid, like what? Did he really think she was going to fellate him right in the middle of the parking lot?
    Except, damn, he was depraved, because her offer had gone in through his ears, been processed by his brain, and sent straight to his dick, solidifying the father of all woodies that was lurking behind his zipper. And okay, maybe he was being harder on himself than he had to be, because, to be honest, the kind of Louisville Slugger he was packing was pretty standard MO for him after an adrenaline-filled op—even when that op was just training. He’d had the damn thing—or at least its little brother—before she’d walked into the Bug.
    Izzy opened his mouth and “I need a shower” came out, which was a dumbass thing to say, because there was this implication that
after
he showered, she’d…
    Yeah. Like it was helping him to stand here thinking about that.
    “Look, I hate to be a buzzkill,” Izzy forced himself to tell her. “But I gotta be honest. It creeps me out when there’s this implied exchange of goods and services—yeah, you can stay with me tonight, but in order to surf my couch you’ve got to…you know. Blow me. That’s not cool. I mean, yeah, it would be cool in another dimension where God was a fourteen-year-old but…” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m not even figuring in the mystery factor. You never did quite tell me your name.”
    She didn’t hesitate this time. “It’s Brittney.”
    “Really,” Izzy said.
    She looked away. “Of course not. You’re friends with Danny. If I tell you who I am, you’ll tell him.”
    “Actually,” Izzy said. “Me and Gillman—we’re not really friends. I work with him, yeah, but…He pretty much hates my guts. So, see, I kinda lied, too.” He held out his hand to her. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m Irving Zanella. People call me Izzy, from my initials—I.Z. Izzy, get it? Because, you know,
Irving?
Damn. I’m pretty sure my parents hated me. At the very least they wanted me to die a virgin.”
    She managed a brief laugh as she shook his hand, and his heart did another flip, because she really floated his boat. And not just because she allegedly gave good head. He liked her. Extremely. Crazy or not. Warnings from Lopez and Gillman be damned. Before this night ended, at the
very
least, Izzy was going to walk away with her phone number. And he was going to call her again.
    Probably tomorrow.
    He’d invite her to go skydiving. And if he were lucky, he’d be able to keep up.
    But maybe—and he still had a shot here—he’d get her into bed with him tonight. But he didn’t want it to happen because she was desperate, but rather because she’d discovered that she truly wanted to be there.
    “And you are…?” he prompted her.
    Her smile faded.