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“How’s it going between you two? Never thought I’d see him work with a broad.” T-Bone added hastily, “No offense.”

“None taken.” As for the whole, how’s it going between you question, she dodged it entirely.

“Where’d you two meet?” T-Bone inquired.

“Overseas. I spotted him through a scope on my sniper rig.”

The big man laughed heartily. “My greatest fear. A woman on the business end of a high-powered rifle.” He drained yet another beer and ordered a pitcher for himself this time around.

She peeked over her shoulder surreptitiously to check on Ian’s progress. A trashy blonde was hanging all over him and practically crawling into his pants on the dance floor. Ian didn’t look exactly head-over-heels with Slut-cheeks, but he didn’t look entirely miserable, either. That hadn’t taken long.

“You like him?” T-Bone asked.

Cripes. When did the slab of meat get so bloody observant? “He’s okay,” she replied, deliberately misunderstanding the question. “Decent to work with.”

“He’s the best in the business when it comes to a shootin’ match. An idiot about women, though, I’m tellin’ ya.”

The guy was hinting at something. She just had no idea what. “He got a past with a lady I should know about?”

“Nah. He’s been a confirmed bachelor all along.” Then T-Bone asked cryptically, “You wanna know fast whether or not he likes you back?”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?” She hadn’t admitted to liking Ian, let alone to wondering about his feelings for her.

The big man ignored her pretense of not knowing precisely was he was talking about, and instead, reached over and planted his hand on her rear end.

“Hey!” She bumped his arm away with her elbow.

In a millisecond or so, the huge man had wrapped her in a bear hug she couldn’t breathe in, let alone move in, and planted a sloppy, beer-flavored kiss on her mouth. She pounded at his sides with her fists, but with her elbows trapped under his arms, she ended up flapping at him more like a chicken than striking like a real field operator.

The more she tried to fight, the tighter he gripped her. He was going to start breaking bones if he didn’t loosen up pretty soon. Or maybe she would just pass out from lack of oxygen.

T-Bone laughed. “Aww, c’mon, honey. I’m more of man than that Navy jack?—“

Without warning, the big man let go of her and spun away as if he’d been grabbed by a tornado and torn away from her by the force of the wind. She bent over gasping for breath. The guy had been squeezing her like a danged python. A solid thwap of knuckles on flesh made her look up, startled.

A low, enraged voice drew her the rest of the way upright. “Get your hams off the lady, Bosworth. I’d hate to have to kill you in a nice place like this.”

The Marine grinned over at her beneath the stream of blood pouring from his broken nose. He reached up casually to straighten it with a sickening sound of crunching bone. “There’s your answer, ma’am.”

“What the fuck are you trying to pull, T-Bone?” Ian looked back and forth between her and the big marine.

She stared back at T-Bone in shock. Slowly, she turned to stare at Ian.

“What?” he demanded, irritated. “What the hell’s going on?”

Busty blonde chick from the dance floor chose that moment to mince up on her six-inch heels and wrap herself bodily around Ian’s left leg and arm. “Hey, handsome. You’re with me. Let the big guy have that skinny bitch. She looks frigid, anyway.”

Piper whirled to face the drunk bubbette and pitched her voice low, packing it with as much warning as she could muster. “The skinny bitch can kick your ass into last week and is inviting you to stay out of this. And while you’re at it, you can peel your slutty self off my partner.”

The blonde took an aggressive step forward, inch-long fake fingernails outstretched.

T-Bone, wads of paper napkin stuffed in his nose, stepped in front of her with surprising speed. “The skinny bitch isn’t kidding, sweetheart. She’s an operator like the boys. She’ll kill you and mop the floor with you for good measure. Leave her be.”

The blonde threw a few phrases of invective over T-Bone’s shoulder as he ushered her out to the dance floor, but in about ten seconds, the ex-Marine had her totally distracted and starting to smile up at him.

Piper let out a slow breath. Holy crap. She really had been prepared to hurt that blonde if she didn’t get away from Ian. “Let’s get out of here,” she mumbled at him.

“But I haven’t had sex, yet.”