Last Kiss Goodnight

“Do you want me?” he asked.

“More than anything.”

“Then have me.”

She did. Oh, she did.

•   •   •

Vika propped herself up on one elbow and peered down at Solo. He met her gaze through heavy-lidded eyes. His hair was in complete disarray, the dark strands sticking out in spikes. The strong bones of his face were overlaid with skin flushed from the intense pleasure they had shared. His lips were soft and red from her kisses, a little swollen.

He was breathtaking.

“I think I liked that time better than the first,” she announced.

“You’ll like the third time even better,” he promised.

She laughed with delight. “So, when we get to your farm, are you going to let me feed the animals? Can that be one of my chores?”

A pause. A hesitant “You’ve decided to stay with me?”

“For now,” she said, thinking, forever. But she wouldn’t tell him that part. Not yet. Not until she was certain he wanted her in his life that long.

“That’s good.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “But I have to tell you something, Vika. You might change your mind.”

Her stomach bottomed out. In a single blink of time, he had gone from playful and aroused to serious and grim. “What is it?”

He looked away from her. “I don’t want to lie to you, want to give you full disclosure even though I told myself I’d keep this a secret, and I know I should have told you before you ran off with me. But I’m a smart man— really smart—and now it’s too late for you to ditch me, so this was the wisest path and I’m not sorry.”

O-kay, she’d never seen him this uncomfortable. And she’d seen him stripped and fondled by strangers! “Just tell me.”

His fingers tangled in his hair. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Well, you’re just gonna have to use your man parts and do it!”

He stilled, his lips twitching. “My man parts? Do you mean my balls?”

Heat blasted from her cheeks. “Maybe.”

“Say it,” he said with a grin. “Say the word. I want to hear it on those candy-apple lips.”

“No! Now stop stalling and—your eyes,” she said with a frown. There was a slight ringing in her ears, annoying and yet wonderful. “Your eyes used to be a light blue, but now they’re a dark purple, like my father’s used to be. Like mine are.” And she could see far more clearly than she’d ever seen before, she realized as she looked around the room.

Before, she’d thought everything was clear. Now she realized how wrong she’d been. This was clear. Dust motes swirled in the air, floating . . . floating . . . and the overhead light provided an undeniable radiance that caused her to tear.

Confused, she eased all the way up. “What’s going on?”

“Your eyes are now a light blue,” he said. “I noticed it a few minutes ago, but I figured it was a trick of the light.”

“My eyes aren’t dark purple?”

“No. They’re blue, like mine used to be.”

So . . . they had changed, both of them. “I don’t understand this.”

“Could we have . . . switched?”

Maybe. “But I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Not with humans, or even humans dating otherworlders.” The ringing stopped abruptly, and in its place, she heard her own voice. “I can hear,” she said with a gasp. “I can hear!” And oh, her voice was gorgeous! She knew it was wrong to brag, but she couldn’t help herself. Her voice was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard!

“What?” he said, rubbing at his ears. “Say that again.”

Scratch that. His voice was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. Rough and raspy, dark and masculine, full of power and undeniable vigor, causing her to shiver. “It’s a miracle! My ears are working. Do you have any idea how long I’ve—”

“I can’t hear you,” he interrupted. “I can’t hear anything.”

“What?” she screeched. She could hear, but he couldn’t? No. No, no, no. That would mean they’d done more than switch eyes. They’d switched ears. His perfection for all of her flaws.

“The vow.” He gave her a dazed look. “I vowed to give you all that I was.”

So had she. The moisture dried in her mouth. “Oh, Solo, I’m so sorry.” She flattened her palms on his chest, felt the hard thump of his heartbeat. “I never would have agreed to such a switch—”

“Hush,” he said. “In my line of work I had to learn to read lips, too, so we won’t have any problem communicating.”

Yes, but he’d helped her and she’d hurt him. “I’ll never be able to forgive myself. After everything you’ve done for me, I go and do something like this to you, adding to your misery. It’s not fair to you. It’s criminal, actually. I should be punished!”

“You stop that right now. This hearing thing? It doesn’t matter.” He tugged her down so that she sprawled across his chest. “Now listen to what I have to say.” He traced his fingertips along the ridges of her spine. “I will tell you about my past, and you will vow to stay with me anyway.”

An order. One she would heed. There was nothing he could say to change her mind about him.

“I was a contract killer for the government.” He paused, as if expecting her to leap up and run.

She didn’t—she was too stunned.

He continued. “I killed humans, otherworlders, males, females, it didn’t matter. If I was told to kill someone, I killed that someone, no questions asked. I’ve killed a lot of people, Vika.”

She wouldn’t lie. The words were hard to hear, and she flinched. Her man, a killer. But he wasn’t anything like her father, she reminded herself, and she would never think of him that way. Jecis had enjoyed the pain he inflicted. Solo never had, something she would stake her life on.

“I cried after my first kill, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. I stared at the body for a long, long time, shaking, sick to my stomach. But I still took the next job, and the next, and eventually what I was doing no longer bothered me. I was cold inside, and glad of it.”

But not now. There was too much regret in his tone.

“Most of what I did was for a good cause, and I know men like me are needed to keep our world safe. But the things I had to do to complete certain jobs . . . I think I’ve always been more like you, because, no matter my reasons, what I was doing was also killing the man I was meant to be. I wish I could undo my past. I wish I could go back and live a different life, but I can’t. I have to live with what I’ve done. And now, I’m asking you to live with it, too.”

She heard the regret, now mixed with insecurity, doubt, guilt, and sorrow. A desire to clean the slate and start fresh. A desire she knew very well. She was surprised she could judge the emotions so precisely, and doubted she could have done so with anyone else, but this was Solo, her Solo, and she knew him in a way she’d never known anyone else.

Vika sat up, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. He waited, tense.

“Everyone regrets things in their past,” she said, and he tensed a little more. “Even me.”

As he watched her lips, he relaxed, but only slightly. “You have done nothing wrong.”

Oh, no. He wasn’t going to absolve her. “Rather than finding a way to free the otherworlders right from the start, I enabled my father to use them. And don’t you dare say I did what I could. I could have done more. My actions were selfish. I wanted out of there permanently and I let them rot while I saved my money.”

“You searched for the key.”

“I could have searched harder. I could have asked Jecis about it.”

“And placed yourself at greater risk.”

“All I’m saying is, we both could have acted differently.”

“Vika—”