Temptation's Heat Read Free Page A

hot-headed. Dangerous. Reckless. The very last thing she needed.
    Okay, he was totally her type. But that didn’t mean it was a good thing.
    He was a member of the Guard. An infamous member. That had to be some kind of double violation of her Don’t-Date-the-Guard policy.
    She cursed under her breath and hurried along Main Street. Clifton had never quite recovered from its downfall as a now-useless railroad town, and tracks still crisscrossed the roads, a body of scars, despite the fact that trains hadn’t run through the town in ages.
    She hooked a right at the abandoned train station, wary now that she was heading into the seedier part of town. A group of younger guys, standing in front of a corner store with bars on its windows, directed catcalls at her as she passed. They looked harmless enough, but she rested a hand on the sickle folded into her waistband anyway. Her pendant warmed against her chest, the power that was part of her bloodline priming in the crystal prism that allowed the Guard to control their weapons. It was against the rules to harm a mortal, but the boomerang-shaped sickle with two deadly edges—one with jagged teeth, the other sharp as a razor—was particularly intimidating. She wasn’t above pulling it out to head off an altercation.
    She didn’t take her hand off the weapon until she was inside the dimly lit safe zone of the Anti-Chamber. Members of both the Alliance and the Legion drank there, and while they didn’t exactly socialize, they respected each other’s boundaries.
    She looked past a cluster of bikers in black leather and another group she recognized as fighters for the Legion’s Blackguard. Massive and flinty-eyed, they were every bit as intimidating as the warriors of the Shadowguard. Of course, to the untrained eye, they were just men, out for a few drinks and a game of pool on a Thursday night. Like the descendants who made up the Shadowguard, the demons of the Blackguard were part of an ancient bloodline. And while legend made them out to be freakish, monstrous creatures, millennia separated them from their spiritual origins. Most of them weren’t very different from the mortals they sought to sway.
    In appearance, anyway.
    Scarlet spotted Eva sitting at the bar. Dark roots peeked out from under her short blonde hair, her pixie face tilted up to a familiar mortal clad in jeans and a white t-shirt. Scarlet had seen him before. Matt Something-Or-Other. She wished she could save him the trouble by breaking the bad news; Eva didn’t date mortals.
    “Hey.” She sat down on the other side of Eva and gestured to the bartender, Billy, before looking at Matt, whose eyes were glued to Eva’s boobs. “Hi, Matt.”
    Billy set a dripping beer in front of her.
    “Hey, Scarlet,” Matt said.
    Eva looked up at him. “Scarlet and I have some business to discuss; do you think you could give us a few minutes?”
    “Sure.” Matt nodded, but his disappointment was obvious. “I’ll see you around.”
    “When are you going to put that poor guy out of his misery and go out with him?” Scarlet asked when Matt was out of earshot.
    “Never.” Eva took a swig of her beer and knocked on the bar for another. “And you know why.”
    Scarlet laughed. “You don’t have to marry the guy. Just go out with him. Have fun. See what happens.”
    “Says the girl whose last date was almost a year ago.”
    Scarlet leveled her gaze at Eva. “That’s different. I’ve been busy training. I hardly ever go out anymore. Opportunity is staring you right in the face.”
    Eva smirked, raising her eyebrows. “From what I hear, opportunity was staring you in the face today, too.”
    Scarlet took a drink of her beer, avoiding Eva’s eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Um, let me think … Tall, dark and handsome? Bad-boy rep? One of our very own?”
    “You must mean rude, obnoxious, and arrogant. And the fact that he’s one of our very own makes him off limits for me. Maybe you