Perfect Strangers Read online

She pretended and she walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Blue Diamond Maverick didn’t compete in size, scope or grandeur with the newest casino hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. It didn’t have to. Even Silk had seen the giant hat-tipping cowboy in her training vids. The BDM had an iconic flair that obviously still attracted thousands through its aging doors when the lights went down and the gambling heated up.

  Of course, none of the gamblers, honeymooners or convention attendees knew that one of the original hotels on The Strip was also built on top of an underground cavern that held a portal to hundreds of different worlds.

  Miilos was here.

  The beat of her heart would have told her it was so even if deductive reasoning hadn’t. She felt his presence, and her awareness was like the sting of a fresh wound now that she knew the truth.

  He didn’t love her.

  He never had.

  He had betrayed her and everything they had been bio-engineered to stand for.

  She knew what she had to do.

  She knew why she had to do it.

  But knowing that evil must be brought to justice didn’t stop her from feeling like a woman scorned out for revenge.

  Davis Rule was dead.

  She walked through the crowds of unsuspecting humans in an evening dress the shop attendant had called a Jason Wu, but while the sparkling material was whimsical and festive, her mood was not. She carried a light wrap in her hands to conceal the Mahberg, and she realized how closely she mirrored her burden.

  Silk-wrapped death just waiting to happen.

  One thought repeated in her mind with every hot throb of her heart, with every determined stride in her ridiculously delicate and impractical shoes. Somehow the thought propelled her forward even as it threatened to make her legs give way, too weak to go on.

  She did want revenge on Miilos. But not because he had betrayed her. Her blood flowed hotly through her veins and her muscles were tense because Miilos had killed a good man, and he deserved to suffer for it.

  She had only known Rule for a few days and most of that time he had thought she was deranged. Yet he had fought by her side as the best of partners would have. Her body could still recall his touch with perfect clarity.

  Dead.

  Because of Miilos.

  Revenge then, but not because she had been scorned. Rule had not deserved to die at the hands of a man like Miilos—a traitor, a filthy fiend who put his needs and desires for wealth and power above everyone and everything in the universe.

  If Miilos had been in his own unaltered body, she would have spotted him sooner. As it was she had to keep reminding herself to look for his older, paunchy disguise, so it took her a while to see him in plain sight at a nearby bar.

  He was sipping a cocktail and, when her gaze swept back to him after almost passing him by, he raised his glass in a mock salute. Her gaze met an unfamiliar one over the frosted glass.

  She walked toward him, squashing her disbelief beneath ugly reality. This hateful, arrogant killer was the man she had loved and trusted her entire life. The muscles around her heart clenched, reminding her of those long-ago needs and desires he had seemed to fulfill perfectly.

  That she had been young with no reason to doubt or suspect didn’t make her feel any better.

  Silk had her weapon out and pressed to his side in one smooth fluid motion as she pretended to embrace him. He didn’t flinch. He simply took another sip of his drink.

  “You are neutralized, Miilos.”

  She longed to pull the trigger and dreaded having to all at the same time. The dread eased when her dead partner’s only reply was a slow smile that arched his now unfamiliar lips.

  “I am a respected FBI agent and you’re a fugitive, dear one. I really don’t think you want our personal drama played out in public.”

  “This isn’t personal. This is business. Pure business,” Silk insisted, pressing the Mahberg harder into the strangeness of his soft side.

  He turned his head suddenly, bringing his face closer to hers. The wrong face, but it held an expression that was startlingly familiar. The dread returned, punching her in the chest. It stole her breath and turned her trigger finger numb.

  Miilos.

  He shifted his gaze from her eyes to her lips and back again. No longer arrogant. He looked as if he ached for her, lived for her, missed her with every cell of his being, altered or not.

  Silk swallowed and tried to breathe. Miilos leaned closer and brushed his slightly open mouth across hers. Her lips knew him much sooner than her eyes had. Instinctively, they moved to participate, accepting the soft taste, the slight moisture of his tongue.

  It was all a lie.

  She knew it even before his smile returned, but she couldn’t pull away.

  What had begun as perfect biological symmetry had become true devotion on her part. She’d loved him, literally, with every fiber of her being. They had been designed for each other and she’d never questioned that, never fought it, never resisted.

  But he had.

  He had balked at the inevitability of their union even as she had embraced it. He had used her blind devotion. Used it, then thrown it away.

  And still her lips accepted his kiss.

  The numbness of her trigger finger spread up her arm and outward until her whole body seemed frozen. She couldn’t react in time when he reached up quickly, faster than his new body should have been able to move, and took the gun from her hand.

  Before she could blink, the weapon was pressed to her side.

  The kiss was broken and the lie of his expression had morphed into truth. He gloried in being able to recall the hold he’d had over her. His cheeks were flushed. His lips moist. But it was his eyes that showed his true reaction to the kiss. Triumph gleamed there. Sadistic delight.

  “Not personal? Siilc, you wound me. How can you forget what we’ve meant to each other?” His voice had slipped into mockery, but it still whispered softly, too close to her lips, too intimate.

  Even surrounded by the crowd and the continuous noise of the gaming tables and slot machines, the moment was personal.

  Him.

  Her.

  Their love turned into a twisted ugly thing she no longer recognized.

  “We’re going to take this upstairs. Nice and quiet and slow,” Miilos commanded.

  Because she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to turn the casino floor into a blood bath, she obeyed.

  With one hand pressing the gun into her side and this other arm wrapped around her shoulders, they made their way to the nearest elevator. She couldn’t resist…yet. A public fight would only endanger innocents and end with him being triumphantly reinforced and her in handcuffs.

  Silk was no longer numb, but she went along with him as if she was. She would use his arrogance. Let him think his kiss had a lasting effect.

  He had disarmed her with his lips, but by the time the elevator door opened in the penthouse suite her brain was as cold and calculating as his.

  He walked her across the marbled floor and past luxurious furnishings. They moved through double glass doors that lead out onto a large balcony draped in a flowering vine that mocked the deadly moment with its beauty.

  It was a romantic setting.

  The city was twinkling gaily below. The night sky as dazzling in its own quieter way above. And somewhere out there light years away was the tri-cubicle they had shared.

  Home.

  Lost forever. Even the memory of it tainted.

  Miilos hadn’t spoken for many minutes. She could feel the tension in the arm he had draped over her bare shoulders and in his body pressed to her side. But it wasn’t until he backed her up against the gracefully curved and far-too-delicate looking rails that ringed the balcony that she felt his pleasure.

  Again, it was mockery. How often in the past had she been aroused by his heat when he was in fact only using desire to control her?

  “You have been mine for as long as I can remember,”
Miilos murmured into her hair, too aroused by his apparent power over her to realize she was no longer his. Not anymore.

  “You came so easily into my arms the day we gained our majority.”

  She recalled that warm, emotional day with perfect clarity. Like an earth woman’s graduation day and wedding day all rolled into one. They had celebrated their independence with long hours of intimacy. They had explored each other’s bodies and, she had thought, cemented their bond.

  Not all JRs became lovers, but many did. Mated for life with their life-long partner.

  And suddenly the contrast struck her.

  She had not gone easily into Rule’s arms. They had fought the chemistry that flared between them. He had been her enemy. An alien in an alien world. Their relationship hadn’t been inevitable. They hadn’t been designed for each other.

  Yet they had been perfect together just the same.

  Her true partner, Davis Rule, was dead. The ache in her heart for him went deeper than any she’d felt for the traitor who now pressed his face into the vulnerable curve of her neck.

  “Maybe I’ll let you live. I haven’t found a human woman who can withstand my appetites,” Miilos said, and revulsion shivered over her skin.

  Before she could lash out and push him away, gun or no gun, a voice interrupted from the direction of the open doors.

  “I’m gonna guess this isn’t what it looks like.”

  Miilos jerked and every nerve ending in Silk’s body jumped to tingling life.

  A familiar voice.

  A voice she hadn’t realized was so dear to her until she thought she’d never hear it again.

  Miilos turned to face the man who had interrupted his game.

  Davis Rule.

  No longer bloody and beaten and definitely not dead.

  He stood in the doorway. His tall, strong body highlighted by the lights at his back. When he moved forward, Silk gasped because his face was still bruised and he moved with a limp. But then she realized it didn’t matter. Not when his gaze shifted to take in the presence of the weapon in Miilos’ hand and the expression on her face. A grim smile tilted his lips and his entire body went…ready. Ready to help her. Ready to trust her. Ready to be the partner she’d needed him to be all along.

  “You’re a fool,” Miilos growled as he backed up to the railing so that he could keep the gun on Silk and Rule.

  Rule’s eyes looked from the laser to Silk. There wasn’t time. It wasn’t safe. But he allowed his gaze to track from her head to heels and back again. For the first time that evening, she was glad to be wearing shimmering fabric that hugged her curves. Their gazes met for a second, for only a second, but before his attention shifted back to the evil man at her side, she saw appreciation for her shine.

  “I’ve had my moments of foolishness, it’s true,” Rule replied. There was humor in his voice…and regret. “This isn’t one of them.”

  Miilos laughed and only someone intimately familiar with his moods could have heard the frustration in the sound.

  “Such devotion,” he mocked.

  “There’s only one fool on this balcony,” Rule continued as if Miilos hadn’t said a thing. Calm and steady as always.

  The Mahberg came up then as Miilos prepared to fire, and Silk moved. She launched her foot like a missile, the kick exploding from her with the force and speed that only twenty-six years of training and perfect genes could attain.

  Miilos hadn’t known she wasn’t in his power any more. He hadn’t realized she was waiting for the perfect moment to act. He hadn’t known her at all. Davis did. He had known she would disarm Miilos, and even though his reflexes couldn’t hope to match hers even when he was operating at one hundred percent, Rule launched his body at the same time she launched her kick.

  By the time his body slammed into Miilos, the laser was already discharged. The blast of deadly light went into the air and the weapon itself followed, up and out of Miilos’ fingers.

  Rule was still injured. Miilos was still a JR, born and bred to be a perfect warrior in every way. But Davis had righteous fury and that evened the odds.

  Silk was going to go for the Mahberg as the men grappled against the rail, but her plan was interrupted by the shriek of sixty-year-old wrought iron giving way. She forgot the laser and hurried to the edge where only two hands assured her that one of the men hadn’t already plummeted to his doom one hundred stories below.

  But which one?

  The night breeze caressed her face and stirred her hair as she looked down.

  They were both alive.

  The man who had probably intended for her to fall from this very balcony had a precarious hold on the faulty railing that even now moaned in protest against his weight. She could see Miilos struggle to tighten his grip as the balcony railing gave way another inch, then two.

  Davis had fared much better. His hands were griped onto the balcony floor. Fortunately, the men were too far apart for Miilos to attempt to break Rule’s hold.

  “Siilc, baby, you know I love you,” Miilos called.

  Rule didn’t speak. He only worked to hold on, his knuckles whiter than the cement they strained to grip.

  She couldn’t save them both. Rule’s fingers could give out any second and the iron Miilos held wouldn’t remain attached for long.

  “I’m your partner,” Miilos shouted, trying to appeal to years of conditioning and training when he sensed he could no longer appeal to her heart.

  Silk dropped to her knees to reach for Rule’s arms. She grabbed him tight and his eyes locked onto hers. Not calm exactly, even Davis Rule couldn’t be calm dangling one hundred stories above the street. But his gaze was steady and sure. His eyes held trust, a certainty that she would be there for him.

  “You aren’t my partner, Miilos. You never were,” Silk said to the man about to die.

  As she pulled Davis to safety, metal screeched and Miilos fell.

  He didn’t shout or cry out. Perhaps her choice had stunned him silent during his last moments of a life he’d always disdained.

  With every ounce of strength she possessed, Silk pulled the big tall agent back onto the balcony and back from its edge to stand by her side.

  But not for long.

  Because he pulled her from his side and into his arms.

  “I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair, and though she should be saying such words to him the reassurance felt right to her heart.

  Miilos was dead. With a violence and finality no less horrifying because it was deserved.

  She accepted Rule’s embrace. In fact, she accepted it and returned it so tightly that he grunted because his body had yet to recover from the Enforcer’s fists.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered just before he moved to claim her lips with a fierceness that surprised her.

  The kiss was deep and hot and unlike others they’d shared. It held the promise of many future kisses to come. When he finally pulled back from her lips, she was breathless and warmed. His solid presence chased away all the icy fear she’d felt when she thought he had died.

  Silk held Davis Rule, marveling that chance had created such a man. No genetic manipulation. No scientific interference. It made him all the more precious to her.

  “No, Davis, I’ve got you,” she promised, and she meant it.

  The devotion she felt for her new partner was more intense than any she’d ever felt for Miilos, because it had been forged in the fire of conflict.

  It wasn’t habit or conditioning.

  It was necessity.

  Her pairing with Davis was as natural and needed as the next breath she would draw into her lungs.

  “Partners,” he murmured against her lips as she kissed him again.

  And she knew he said it because, for her, the word meant love.

  Epilogue

  The soft, cool glow of the setting sun bathed her new tri-cubicle in pale blue light. It was the third sunset of the evening and Silk’s favorite. Once the larger, brighter twin suns
went down, the glass walls over the city went from darkly tinted to opaque. It was then that the stage was set for the prismatic show of the third sunset—a show that dazzled with its splendor—nightly fireworks more striking because of their silence.

  The entire bustling city seemed to hold its breath in anticipation and then sigh in appreciation. The setting of Eros had become a time of meditation and reflection that bordered on religious ritual…and Miilos had almost succeeded in taking this precious moment away from her forever.

  From them.

  Behind her, Davis Rule worked out like he’d been using the invisible force fields that were her world’s version of a home gym his whole life. Easily, efficiently, he strained against each setting of the gravity bands until he completed a sufficient round of repetitions. Then he spoke the command that would make him strain harder.

  He had recovered.

  Though she was enchanted by the setting sun, she spared many a surreptitious glance for her companion. The man who had become her partner in every way. No matter how often she saw him shirtless, she would never get used to his utterly random beauty. When she considered the odds of a man like Davis being born by chance with no scientific interference or manipulation, she was equal parts humbled and awestruck. Creation was mightier than she’d ever imagined. Being with Davis was in its own way as precious as the setting of the third sun.

  If he sensed her watching, he didn’t show it. He was focused on his workout. She’d learned more of his past. He’d always enjoyed pushing himself to top physical performance. That old habit seemed even more important to him now. With that thought, her cheeks grew warm.

  He was an overachiever in all aspects of his life, including the fierce, volcanic intimacy they enjoyed.

  “If you keep looking at me like that we’re not going to be fit for company when he arrives.”

  As always, casual but not.

  Davis hadn’t missed her increasingly lingering glances or the flush on her skin.

  “I love not knowing if you’re going to kick my ass or ask me to dance,” she teased, remembering.

  “Not that you don’t kick my ass every time we spar, but now I just love looking forward to the next dance and the next,” Davis teased back.