Page 88 of Shattered Silence

She read between the lines.

Is this what you want? To spend the rest of your life with this lethal, quiet, deliberate alien, who keeps Pandora’s box in his heart?

This sweet man.

Who needs you as much as you need him.

“I want you,” she said simply, knowing it was the purest truth in the Universe.

All of the tension seeped out of his body then, and he took her hand into his. “Then come.”

And he led her across the dusty ground, a creature of darkness walking through the brilliant sunlight.

Taking her home.

Chapter Thirty-Five

This is the infernal creature that dared to lay his hands on my mate?

Cold rage coursed through Enki as he watched his target—this so-called Damien Andross—from his vantage point in the shadows. At last, he’d found the bastard. It had only taken several nights of searching; of him quietly slipping away, leaving Layla in a deep sleep while he commandeered a stealth cruiser and scoured various corners of this strange and densely populated planet.

With the assistance of Xalikian’s mate Sera, who was well versed in locating humans who didn’t want to be found, he had narrowed his prey’s whereabouts down to this particular location after several fruitless attempts.

Enki would have kept searching for the man even if it took a hundred fucking cycles. Layla seemed not to care about what others thought of her, but Enki couldn’t tolerate what this Andross had done to her.

Layla was Enki’s mate, and when it came to her, he was supremely irrational.

He wanted her safe, spoiled, and content. That was all. Anything that even hinted at threatening her happiness, he would destroy.

No bloodshed.

Fuck.

He had promised her, but still…

Enki was a full-blooded Kordolian male, and now that he’d found his prey, every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to kill the creature. But he wouldn’t do that, because if Layla heard through Earth’s infernal Networks that Andross had been brutally killed, she would be upset with him.

Humans were odd like that, but Layla was his mate, so of course he would make an exception for her, as difficult as it might be.

Enki’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man who had caused his mate such misery in the first place.

The human was a tall, middle-aged man with grey streaks in his dark hair and a muscular body that was starting to go to fat. He sat in a raised circular pool of water on the rooftop of a high building, sipping some sort of foul smelling liquid from a glass. For some reason, a perpetual stream of bubbles rose violently from the bottom of the pool, making a glugluglug sound. Tiny wisps of vapor drifted off the surface of the water, which was obviously steaming hot.

Tch. Humans and their inane activities. To Enki, it looked as if the man were trying to boil himself alive.

Just as Enki was about to step out from behind the pillar, he heard the sound of bare feet on wood. Two naked human women appeared, tiny bumps and fine hairs rising on their bare skin as they stepped out of the plushly decorated living room into the cold outdoors, traipsing barefoot across the stone-tiled floor.

They slipped into the water, laughing. Andross spoke to them in some unintelligible Earth language, saying something that was obviously lewd and vulgar. They laughed again, but it seemed forced. One of the women cozied up to him and proceeded to dip her head beneath the water, right over his lap.

Enough.

Enki stepped out. Beyond Andross’s little pool, the busy, haphazard skyline of this infernal human outpost—New York—glittered like millions of stars in tiny boxes, but Enki paid the odd sight little attention, because he was fucking angry.

His claws were out.

His killing instinct flared.

How was it that they still hadn’t noticed him?

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