Perfect Strangers

by Barbara J. Hancock

  He had paused, his muscled chest flexed and it was as naturally perfect as divine chance and sweat could make it. Silk swallowed and resisted the urge to cross the room and accept what his gleaming eyes offered. Harry would be here soon. Too soon to do the gleam or her tingling response to it justice.

  This time when Davis pushed against the unseen gravity bands offering resistance, his gaze locked to hers. The workout no longer held his attention. Even after several months of being lovers, she could still be surprised breathless by the intense attraction between them. They hadn’t been engineered to be partners, but the connection between them was all consuming and complete. They were meant to be together all the way down to a cellular level.

  The door chime made her blink and tear her gaze from Davis.

  Soon. They would be alone soon…but not soon enough.

  Silk walked to the front portal and keyed the control that retracted the glass into the wall. She could see Harry through it before it swooshed open, but even those buffered seconds didn’t help her recover from the initial shock of pleasure she always felt when she saw him standing tall and strong without his chair.

  “I wanted to see you again before I left,” Harry began. He pulled Silk into a warm, strong hug just ever so slightly shy of sexy. Davis had abandoned his workout. He cleared his throat as he came up behind her, and Harry chuckled into her neck before releasing her and stepping away. “To see you both again before I left,” he amended, but the twinkle in his eyes said he’d enjoyed the hug more than he enjoyed the quick, firm handshake from Rule that followed.

  “You could stay, Harry. After what they inadvertently put me through the Council is eager to make amends. There’s no limit to what they would offer us. You would make a good JR and the doctors could…”

  Davis stiffened beside her, but Silk still reached up to touch Harry’s scarred face. He had accepted the spinal implant, but he had refused the surgery that would have given him a face even more perfect and handsome than the one he’d been born with.

  “I’m not ready to forget, gorgeous. Not yet. Maybe one day. For right now, I’ll keep this face as a reminder of the job I need to finish back home.”

  In spite of the bumpy flaws beneath her fingers, or maybe because of them, Harry’s eyes flashed, brilliant and warmly attractive when he smiled. Though there was a glint in them that said he wasn’t all flirtation and charm. He glanced at Davis before he reached up to take her hand and place a kiss in its palm. His eyes met hers and the scar tissue didn’t matter. He was a wicked handsome devil on the inside and it showed on the out. Scars or not. Davis or not. She would always remember that Harry Striker had believed her and helped her when others wouldn’t have.

  Without breaking eye contact with her, Harry spoke to Davis.

  “You do realize you’re one lucky sonofabitch?”

  “Every impossible second of every impossible day, my friend.”

  Harry laughed, and Silk remembered Davis and his words to Harry on that day not so long ago.

  “Your passage is in twenty minutes, Striker. Don’t want to be late. You might end up jumping to some dimension where giant shrimp eat techno geeks for dinner,” Solstice Meadows strolled through the portal Silk had yet to close with Piper on his arm.

  Both of them looked like younger, fresher versions of themselves. Piper was still the most wrinkled woman Silk had ever seen, but there was a glow to her skin and a spring to her step that Silk knew was only partly due to vitamin treatments.

  And Sol’s haircut and shave was testament to his new interest in pleasing his companion as well.

  “Your?” Harry asked.

  “We figured we’d stay awhile,” Sol admitted, and his freshly shaved cheeks blossomed with color.

  “What Sol is getting at is that you can’t beat Never-Never Land for a choice honeymoon location,” Piper clarified with a bold, brassy wink.

  The room erupted with surprised laughter and congratulations. Davis even swept Piper up into a hug that had her blushing until Sol cleared his throat.

  “They said we could stay as long as we’d like,” Sol explained, grinning broadly. He suddenly looked like a kid who’d been asked to move into the candy store.

  Silk impulsively leaned to kiss his cheek. They had all braved great danger because of her and for her. She was happy this dream of Sol’s was coming true. He was finally getting the close encounter he’d always hoped for.

  And Piper?

  She was getting validation and a husband who looked at her with stars in his eyes.

  Davis returned Piper to Sol’s side and came back to stand close to Silk. His arm came warmly around her shoulders as they spoke with friends who felt not only like allies, but like the family Silk had never had. She snuggled in close, not caring if she showed everyone how much she craved Davis’ touch. This sweet camaraderie had been a long time coming. She wouldn’t shy away from it now.

  None of them mentioned Ronin D’Ja-Nar. A team of specially trained JRs were even now scouring Earth for his body. Until they found it, Silk would assume her laser blast hadn’t killed him. A JR had to stay ready for anything…even if that anything included someone returning from the dead. Miilos could never hurt her or anyone else again and Ronin had been defeated. That was enough for now.

  Harry’s imminent departure made hurried goodbyes a necessity. Soon they had to rush more hugs and more laughter and the brazen former cop stole a kiss from Silk before Davis could stop him. Silk didn’t even try. Though she did keep her response to a minimum.

  The tri-cubicle seemed even more peaceful when all their friends had gone.

  Eros had sunk beyond the horizon and night hugged against the glass of their home, wrapping them in a private cocoon of darkness.

  “You know, if he wasn’t headed for another dimension, I’d have to kick his ass,” Davis growled.

  His hands were on his hips and the tight T-shirt he’d donned did nothing to hide the taut muscles proclaiming his tension.

  “But tonight was made for dancing,” Silk returned. She changed the subject by sliding her body against his and twining her arms around his neck.

  He stayed tense for another moment, but the tenor of his body changed. She could tell Striker was far from his mind when his chin tilted up and he closed his eyes.

  “I will never get used to the feel of you against me,” he whispered to the ceiling above them. It almost seemed like a prayer of thanks to the universe that stretched out infinitely beyond that.

  As her breasts were flattened softly against the firm round pecs of his chest, Silk understood. He hadn’t been made for her by a scientist’s hands and yet he had been made for her. Somehow, some way, they had been made for each other. With all their strengths and imperfections, they were somehow perfect only when they were together.

  “There are times when I almost can’t breathe thinking about what would have happened if I had turned you in to…Miilos. He might have killed you and it would have been because of me.” Davis looked back down into her eyes.

  Silk couldn’t bear the awful possibilities she saw in them. The what ifs that might have kept them apart. She had been a JR her whole life. She didn’t deal in religion or philosophy. She dealt in fist to jaw, cuff to wrist, ass in can.

  But now that she had met Davis Rule she had to believe in something more, because she couldn’t accept that chance might have kept them apart.

  She lifted her hands to frame the handsome, too-serious face of her soul mate.

  “What makes you think you ever could have turned me in, Rule?”

  It was her customary confidence, but it was also an acknowledgement of his feelings for her. Physically, he would have faced quite a challenge if he had tried. Emotionally, he hadn’t stood a chance.

  Davis groaned, admitting everything with that one masculine capitulation as he fiercely claimed her lips. Silk opened for his tongue and they tasted deeply of each other—sweat, fear, hope and love.

  They didn’t make it to th
e bed. The floor was a stretch. It seemed to take way too long to get there. Davis went down on his knees as if in supplication, but Silk followed quickly. She knelt facing him to show that she was saying her own prayers for forever.

  Her breasts were peaked and her skin flushed and awash in chill bumps before he even pulled away her clothes. Her body felt the miracle of finding Rule even if her mind wouldn’t go there. When her clothes were finally tossed aside, his hot mouth fell to her nipple and he worshiped there with the rough, insistent lave of his tongue.

  She spread her legs for his shaking hand, and he found her slick and ready for his questing fingers. She cried out when his touch worshiped there too. Stroking almost reverently. Not teasing. They were both too aroused for teasing. But so careful and gentle that it made the throb he brought to her reach all the way to her heart.

  Silk pulled and pushed and tore aside the clothes keeping her from his warm, salty skin. She found the faint hint of scars that traced over his flesh with her lips and teeth and tongue. Those fine white marks proclaimed his vulnerability, but she would never ask him to have them removed. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She had taken Miilos for granted. Their “love” had been preordained by chemicals and test tubes and lab coats.

  Not this.

  What she’d found with Davis was too precious to risk complacency.

  He was rampant and ready when she freed him from his shorts. He scorched her fingers when she wrapped them around his shaft.

  “Take me, Silk. Take me.”

  “Yes, yes,” Silk soothed, but when she lowered herself down onto his penis she didn’t soothe. She rocked her hips and he thrust upward, crying out her name again and again.

  Somehow their lovemaking went from slightly desperate to a pure celebration.

  When her orgasm claimed her, she threw her head back and looked outside at the glitter of stars in the distance—a cool, infinite witness to their joining.

  Davis tensed beneath her, and as the hot flood of his release filled her she collapsed down to the earthy sweetness of his arms. His was the only witness that mattered. Together, they were warm enough to hold chance and the universe at bay.

  “I found you,” Silk managed to whisper against his moist chest.

  And in the tight embrace they shared, they both found trust.

  About the Author

  To learn more about Barbara J. Hancock, please visit www.barbarajhancock.com or send an email to barbara@barbarajhancock.com.

  Look for these titles by Barbara J. Hancock

  Now Available:

  Hunger

  Enemy Mine

  Love might stand a chance…if they can keep from killing each other.

  Hunger

  © 2009 Barbara J. Hancock

  Holly Spinnaker is a monster. Really. Fangs and all. Never mind the petite figure. Pay no attention to the once-bouncy blonde mane. When Jarvis Winters first encounters…it…he prepares to exterminate freak number one hundred thirty two without a flinch.

  Mistake number one: following it back to its lair. Mistake number two: watching and listening to her…it…replay voice mail messages from loving, clueless parents again and again and again. Mistake number three: having an actual conversation with a bloodthirsty fiend.

  “Make them see you as a person.” Holly remembers the advice from a self-defense class her mother made her take her freshmen year. She couldn’t save her own sister, who ended up a pile of ashes at her feet only one month ago. The night they both found out monsters were real. The night her sister embraced the change. And Holly began to fight it.

  “Make them see you as a person.” Kind of hard when you aren’t even sure if you are a person anymore.

  Warning: This title is not vampire-lite. There is blood. Sometimes sexy. Sometimes, well, not. There are fangs, fights and even a zombie or two. But most of all there’s yearning and burning and aching and angst… It is called Hunger after all.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Hunger:

  The man sagged to the ground like every bone in his body had dissolved when the girl let him go. If she hadn’t been less than half the man’s size, Jarvis Winters might have been fooled. He might have thought drugs or alcohol had gotten the better of one of the partiers along Belmont Street. He might have thought a little groping in a back alley had ended with someone passing out.

  Jarvis wasn’t fooled.

  He’d had the dance club under surveillance for hours. Long enough to stiffen his shoulders and dim his sight. Still, when the waif exited, followed soon after by a gorilla in jeans, he had known. He’d seen this set up before. Little Miss Victim luring a big bad predator to his turn-about-is-fair-play demise. He wasn’t impressed. A killer was a killer. It didn’t matter who they chose to kill—or feed upon—as the case may be.

  Winters wanted to wait until she moved on before opening the squeaky door of his ancient Ford Fairlane. It took longer than he expected. His hand was frozen on the door handle as she leaned back against the brick wall for a long moment. At more than a hundred yards away, he couldn’t see the expression on her face. He didn’t need to. He’d seen that satiated look countless times before. Her body would be in an unresponsive swoon. Her face would be slack, way past satisfied. The kind of look every man dreamed his lover would have after a tumble in bed…except, of course, for the fangs.

  Finally, she staggered around the corpse at her feet and made her way out of the alley and down the dark street. Too many busted streetlights made her tiny figure seem hunched and grotesque as it stumbled in and out of shadows. A fitting aura for a monster.

  Jarvis tightened his fingers and wrenched the handle harder than even the stubborn forty-year-old mechanism warranted. The rusty shriek was followed by a thud as he headed after his prey. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but he knew what it had looked like. Pure, drunken ecstasy. She would die happy.

  The woman who was once Holly Spinnaker pulled her feet away from the unconscious man and shuddered against the warm zing arching through her flesh. She wasn’t ready to let go, but dying had to be preferable to this mini-death, this loathing of the “life” she now led.

  She wiped her hands on the hips of her jeans as she slid along the wall and away from the would-be rapist without so much as tapping him with the toe of her sneaker. The awkwardness of the maneuver caused one elbow to knock and drag against rough brick, but she didn’t care. She was as tainted as she needed to be. His blood was in her for God’s sake. She wouldn’t touch him again.

  She stumbled when she was finally in the clear. The blood had gone straight to her head like too many glasses of sparkling champagne on New Year’s Eve. The memory of that cool, bubbly sweetness mocked her. She pushed it away, but she knew the analogy would stay with her. When she finally made it home and her bed spun beneath her, she would think of it. When she woke tomorrow night with a head-thumping, soul-splitting hangover, the sick analogy would be there to haunt her.

  She didn’t know she might not live to see tomorrow. She was too new. Too inexperienced. As she made her way across town, dizzy and weaving, she didn’t notice a man following her. She didn’t realize she’d been zeroed in on as prey for the second time that night.

  The voice mail light was blinking when she finally managed to get the key in the lock and open the door to her loft. She walked by the phone, straight to the kitchen where she doused her hands with orange antibacterial dishwashing liquid and scrubbed her face and hair and arms and hands in a disinfecting frenzy. Suds-filled water splattered the floor and the countertop and dripped into her eyes.

  She pushed her hair back and stood dripping and shivering and quaking in the dim shadows of a home that had seen happier times.

  The light still blinked. It beckoned her and she moved away from the sink toward it. Habit, despair, longing—all propelled her forward. Her shoes left damp footprints all along the deep rose-colored carpet that was actually a pale shade of mauve when the sun gleamed through the bank of high window
s above her. She hadn’t seen that bright pastel hue in over a month.

  With a cold, damp finger, she reached for the button. Even in the dark she found its worn rubber pad. Habit or, heaven forbid, her coordination and night vision were better, aided by the fresh blood in her veins.

  A slightly breathless voice filled the room at high volume as it filled her heart with pain.

  “Holly? You there? Pick up… Well, guess I didn’t catch you. Hope you have fun at the concert—”

  “But not too much fun,” a different voice interrupted her mother’s, deep and male, full of humor and fatherly concern.

  “John, stop it,” her mother protested with a laugh.

  Holly could imagine the loving push Elizabeth Spinnaker would have given her husband. She could close her eyes and see the playful way her parents had always interacted with each other.

  “Listen, Holly…call me tomorrow and tell me all about it.”

  “And don’t let Jayne talk you into anything stupid.” Another interruption from her dad was followed by a less playful admonition from her mother. Then, the last words of the last normal message she would ever receive from her parents echoed through the dark empty room. “We’ll see you next week for Christmas.” That from her mother. “Be careful.” That from her father. And then, they were gone.

  She didn’t replay the four following messages. She didn’t want to hear their concern as it grew into terror when they realized their only daughters had disappeared without a trace. Instead, she pressed the button to replay the normal message. Again and again and again. She knew it would wear out one night, but she stood shivering and compulsively torturing herself with one replay after another.

  Jarvis listened from a dark corner. It wasn’t smart, but he listened. Better to have made the kill quickly after slipping through the unlocked window. Every one of them had been human at one time. It was the nature of the beast. You took that knowledge and you buried it or you couldn’t do the job. He should have attacked during her odd dishwashing-liquid ablutions. It would have been quick, easy and painless…for him anyway. Vampires didn’t go quick, easy or painless, but it was better to catch them by surprise. It saved a lot of wear and tear on his part.