Thrust Read Online Free PDF

answer the phone all day long.  
    They all gave him the shoulder at the same instant.   Sometimes it wasn't so easy.   You'd be nose to nose with a gal who had that kind of attitude, and you'd either fall in love or they'd have to cart you off with handcuffs and a chain between your ankles.
    Again.
    The women went back to their conversations.   Shake remained the star and they knew his poetry by heart, quoting lines out of context.   Black urban child of the streets with four hundred years of slavery and pain in his veins, cries flowing from the very heart of the Congo itself.  
    He'd lose most of his readership and all of his casual lovers if they ever found out his parents were cardiologists who summered in the Hamptons.    
    "Isaac wants to talk to you," Timmy said.   "I think he was a little, ah, unnerved by the proceedings tonight."
    "How about you?"
    Those teeth again, shining, as he prepared to let loose with canned laughter.   "Oh, I held up all right."
    A half-dozen other slammers had gone on before him and Shake and several more were scheduled afterwards.   Chase doubted that anyone really cared much about his antics.   Other performers had done a lot worse on that stage.   "Anybody ask for a refund?"
    "Not that I know of."
    "His nerves will steady up."
    The fey blonde blinked at him, beaming.  
    A twinge of excitement went through Chase's belly, turned left and pulled like a screwhook .   Dimples angled out at the flanks of her mouth.   That nearly invisible down under her ears waved with his breath as he moved closer.   Her cheeks had a rich pink gleam that somehow made him want her.   She didn't appear to be much over eighteen and drank only raspberry juice.   Her eyes changed color as he watched, caught staring: from blue to green and then back again.
    We all have our thing.   Fey blondes with slightly erotic mouths painted with the gloss of berry juice was his.  
    Timmy would never serve alcohol to anyone under twenty-one.   He probably hadn't moved more than ten feet from her all night, checking, surveying.   Timmy liked to keep close to the kids, knowing there were pervies like Chase in the crowd.   It kept him busy.
    One of Chase's books hung halfway out of her handbag but she didn't ask him to sign it.    So much for the natural next step.   Now Chase had to wait, try to yank himself back, kick his interest down a gear.   You had to watch every word you said.   Every ounce of your blood and where it went.  
    She swung around on the stool and gave him a dead-pan gaze—those eyes flashing green and blue, daring him to follow.  
    "I'm Dawn Miller," she said.
    "Hello."  
    There, he'd already run out of charm.
    "I want to ask you something.   If you're not busy."
    "I'm not.   I never am."
    This could be something right here.   She maintained her intensity, not quite glaring but pretty close.   A lot of first-timers had at the Palace, trying to be hip without appearing vulnerable.  
    The verse started up at the back of his head, and he was about halfway through a love poem dedicated to her when she said, "Was it all a put-on?"
    "What's that?"   He needed a little time to compose an answer.   He still wasn't so sure himself.
    "When you were up there. I thought you were really coming unstrung, but now you're sturdy, controlled."   She patted him softly on the belly, let her hand rest there.   Arlo Barrack used to do the same thing before trying to drown Chase.   Same as Jez before making love in the tub.
    "I am a performance artist, after all," he told her.   Sounding more than a tad stupid.  
    He really had to work on making that big first impression, and not always letting it slide.  
    "Sure," she said.   "I realize that, but which is the honest you?   You know, deep inside where it counts the most.   At the bone.   Under your heart."
    He liked the way she talked, and it was almost enough to loosen the clawing rage between his shoulders.   You never knew what