2 Pushing Luck by Elliott James Read Free Book Online Page A

knowing how to discourage each would-be player as fast as possible.
    She told suitors that she wanted to be up-front about her sex change operation because she was tired of having it cause problems when her lovers found out later, or she told them that she liked only black men, or young men, or older men who made more than seventy thousand dollars a year. She told them that what really turned her on was men who were willing to have sex with other men while she watched. She mentioned one man’s wife by name, and when the weedy-looking grad student doing a John Lennon impersonation tried the sensitive-poet approach, she challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest. He stared at her, sitting there exuding athleticism, confidence, and health—three things he was noticeably lacking—and chose to be offended rather than take her up on it.
    There was at least one woman who seemed interested in Sig as well, a cute sandy-haired college student who was tall and willowy, but when it comes to picking up strangers, women are generally less likely to go on a kamikaze mission than men. The young woman kept looking over at Sig’s table, hoping to establish some kind of meaningful eye contact, but Sig wasn’t making any.
    Sig wasn’t looking at me either, but she held herself at an angle that kept me in her peripheral vision at all times.
    For my part, I spent the time between drink orders trying to figure out exactly what Sig was. She definitely wasn’t undead. She wasn’t a half-blood Fae either, though her scent wasn’t entirely dissimilar. Elf smell isn’t something you forget, sweet and decadent, with a hint of honey blossom and distant ocean. There aren’t any full-blooded Fae left, of course—they packed their bags and went back to Fairyland a long time ago—but don’t mention that to any of the mixed human descendants that the elves left behind. Elvish half-breeds tend to be somewhat sensitive on that particular subject. They can be real bastards about being bastards.
    I would have been tempted to think that Sig was an angel, except that I’ve never heard of anyone I’d trust ever actually seeing a real angel. God is as much an article of faith in my world as he, she, we, they, or it is in yours.
    Stumped, I tried to approach the problem by figuring out what Sig was doing there. She didn’t seem to enjoy the ginger ale she had ordered—didn’t seem to notice it at all, just sipped from it perfunctorily. There was something wary and expectant about her body language, and she had positioned herself so that she was in full view of the front door. She could have just been meeting someone, but I had a feeling that she was looking for someone or something specific by using herself as bait…but what and why and to what end, I had no idea. Sex, food, or revenge seemed the most likely choices.
    I was still mulling that over when the vampire walked in.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
    Copyright © 2013 by Elliott James
Excerpt from Charming copyright © 2013 by Elliott James
Cover illustration and design by Wendy Chan.
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior