Kiss at Your Own Risk Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t leave behind.
    And then he saw Christian. He was down on the ground, hunched over like he’d just been disemboweled.
    “Damn.” Jarvis moved up beside him. “That’s not good.”
    “Christian!” Blaine yelled. “Come on!”
    “You’re still here? Thought you guys would have been on the beach by now.” Christian’s voice was strained as he lurched to his feet. “You guys sure take your time getting the hell out of Dodge,” he shouted over the roar of the wings and bug zapping.
    Relief made Blaine’s fire surge. “About damn time!” he yelled back. “Get your ass over here!”
    To protect himself from the assault, Christian had already shifted his human skin into millions of metal scales, so his body was encased in chain-link armor, like the dive suits that shark wrestlers liked to wear. The only nonmetallic parts of him were the glowing blue orbs of his eyes. Christian’s body armor was poison to anything that brushed against it. Nylon was the only protection against him, which made Blaine damned curious what other unholy attributes nylon might have. He was already planning an assortment of experiments when he got out.
    The schnoodemgons were attacking Christian, and each time they touched his armor, they’d shriek and turn into a noxious red gas. The air was thick and crimson above Christian’s head. He squatted and scooped a mound off the ground, and Blaine realized it was a large bundle wrapped in a nylon blanket to protect it against his scales.
    Nice. “He got his girlfriend.” Damn, he respected that.
    A team of schnoodemgons body-slammed Christian into the ground, taking advantage of the one weakness of Christian’s armor: its inability to protect him against sheer, crushing force. The buggers disintegrated upon impact, but on their heels was another crew, descending with enough speed to finish the job.
    “No fair picking on pretty boy.” Nigel flicked his wrist, and a dozen burning blades cut through the air, taking out the crowd milliseconds before they turned Christian into roadkill. “Step it up,” he shouted. “We don’t have time to save your ass.”
    Christian flipped him off and lowered his shoulder to shove his way through the masses of beating wings. The wind was fierce, and Blaine had to brace himself to keep from being blown over. Like lemmings, they kept at him, hundreds of them crashing and burning as they hit his field. Hello? What kind of suicidal strategy was that? Almost made him feel bad for the scaly meatheads.
    Well, almost. The fact they were on the fast track to killing his team sort of balanced out the love. They were relentless and the supply endless, and he knew they’d come until they broke him. Nigel maintained his assault against the ones trying to crush Christian, and Jarvis was using his sword to absorb Blaine’s energy so he didn’t incinerate either Jarvis or Nigel, but this happy moment wasn’t going to last forever. “How about a little hustle, lover boy?”
    Christian was less than thirty yards away and moving fast when the first of the red gas from the dead schnoodemgons hit Blaine. His lungs burned, then searing pain assaulted his muscles.
    “What the hell?” Nigel went down behind him, his muscles contorting visibly beneath his skin. “Yeah, I was just thinking this was getting boring, but—” His word cut off as another convulsion twisted his body.
    Jarvis was still standing. “Talk to me, Trio.” They all had different vulnerabilities and talents, and they discovered new ones every day. None of them knew exactly what they were capable of anymore, or what their weaknesses were. Jarvis was apparently getting away unscathed with this one. Point for him.
    “Poison gas attacking muscle tissue.” Blaine redirected his fire and sent it racing through his cells. He ground his jaw as the heat blistered his body, but the flames burned up the toxin… only to have it replaced immediately with his next breath. He sent another wave of