Stripper: The Fringe, Book 4

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  “You know I only considered it to distract him.” Duster looked deep into her eyes.

  “Of course.” She glared at him, wishing she could literally throw daggers with her gaze. “When you lie, you have a good reason. When I lie, I’m just being a big fat liar without a conscience. Isn’t that called a double standard?”

  He flashed her a tight, what’s-your-deal wink.

  “Don’t you dare look at me like that. I despise that expression. You want to know what my deal is? I’ll tell you. I want you to take whatever it is you want from me, then leave.” Diane had to forcefully keep her tears at bay.

  “I want my life back.” Duster tried to resettle the cloth on her forehead, but she pushed his hand away.

  “I didn’t steal your life.”

  “You did. You betrayed me, and I never got over it, and when I tried to get over it, you messed that up too.”

  His obvious pain broke her heart. “Duster, I didn’t know you were the client. I had no idea until I saw you on my ship. That’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. I swear to you, I didn’t plan this.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Her compassion quickly faded in the face of his unrelenting distrust. “Fine.” She refused to yell at him even though she wanted to. Yelling would only make him accuse her of being hysterical, and she wasn’t. Frustrated, yes—hysterical, not yet but damn close. “Explain, then, what did I do this for? 7Mil? Let’s assume that’s true. Why didn’t I just kill you when you were incapacitated, since Network Thirteen already banked the money?”

  “I don’t know.” He frowned. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Let me know when you do.” She laughed without mirth. “I can’t wait. And, oh, I suppose this is a minor point, but they have your money, not me, so I’m still not sure what the hell I get out of this grand scheme.” Diane rolled over and peered at the far wall and the double sunset print that hung there. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is. You’re going to twist everything around to prove your point. Anything I say or do against your beliefs you will just toss off as another lie.”

  “So you admit you lied to me.” Vindication rolled from his tone with victorious power.

  “Yes. I did. Seven years ago.” Diane rolled to her back and glared defiantly up at him. “I wasn’t just a slave. I was there to take down the Damn You and anyone who ran the ship, which turned out to be you and Michael. I should have killed you both. I could have killed you both. But I didn’t.”

  “Why?” he asked, as if he was genuinely baffled when she thought the answer was patently obvious to anyone.

  “Because I fell in love with you.” Knowing she would never convince him of the sincerity of that feeling, she softly added, “I did the best I could to walk the line between you and my network. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  He didn’t openly laugh or scoff or roll his eyes. He just considered her for the longest time. And for a moment, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she had a chance to start over with him.

  “You seduced me to carry out their plan?”

  “I did.” Diane refused to lie to him anymore about the past. “I really thought I could do that and walk away. If I seduced you, Duster, you did the same to me. In seven days, I took over the Damn You, but I also fell in love with you. When I swore to those vows, I meant them. Every word. But I also had no choice but to walk away.”

  “Walk away?” Duster lifted her chin with a touch of his finger. “You didn’t walk away. You manipulated the hell out of me, then ran.” His curling upper lip conveyed that seven years had not healed that wound. Duster’s pain and humiliation was as raw today as it had been then.

  “I did the best I could to leave you limping and get out alive myself.” She lifted her hand to touch him, to perhaps soothe away that twist in his lip, but he pulled out of her reach. Reluctantly, Diane pressed her hand to her chest, noting that Duster had folded the edges of her robe together. “I did the best I could with so much hanging over my clueless eighteen-year-old head. Did I do the right thing?” She shrugged. “Depends who you ask. But I did the best I could to keep me, you and even Michael alive.”

  “You lied to your network too?” His frown perplexed her as she wasn’t sure if he was surprised by that information or not.

  “I had to lie to them.” Oddly, she found confession was good for the soul. “If they knew I’d left two slavers alive, they would have killed me.”

  “They had to know, eventually, that you let us go.” Duster placed the rag on her forehead, and this time, she let him.

  “They didn’t know you by name. They only knew the name of the ship. When a Runner showed up using the ship, they believed me that I had killed the men who first piloted the Damn You.”

  The glare of distrust in his eyes softened. “Did you ever wonder…?”

  Without him finishing the thought, she knew what he was asking. “I knew that Michael had survived. Who hasn’t heard about Overlord? But you?” She reached out to touch his face. Duster didn’t flinch away. “I never heard anything about you. I thought you were dead. By my hand.” The guilt had been devastating. If not for Scott, she didn’t think she would have survived.

  “I always wondered what happened to you.”

  On the tip of her tongue hung the question of why he didn’t look for her, but she already knew. Her betrayal had so devastated him, he didn’t believe anything she’d ever said to him, not even that her name was Diane Black. Besides, how many women with that name were scattered over the IWOG, WAG and Fringe worlds?

  “You said you never seduced any other men. I don’t see how you worked for Network Thirteen without doing that.” Rather than flat-out call her a liar, he was, in a roundabout way, asking her how she did her job.

  “They chalked my mismanagement of the mission up to my inexperience. During that time, they found out about my stripper ability and helped me to perfect my skill. Bringing in money that way, to fuel operations, served them better.”

  “What if you stripped someone and found out they were a slaver?”

  “I was supposed to turn them over immediately.”

  “You didn’t do that with me.”

  “No. I didn’t.” Would they, in this very quiet way, bridge the gap between them? If only she could make Duster understand why she’d done what she had in the past, she could tell him everything.

  After a deep breath, while looking deep into her eyes, Duster asked, “Why not?”

  “Because I still love you.”

  Hope flashed across his gaze for a split second before suspicion returned. “How could any woman love a man like me?”

  Astounded by the question, Diane wanted to babble out a laundry list of justifications, but she knew Duster was searching for truth, not placating words. “Back then, on that ship, you looked miserable. You knew what awaited us at the end of that ride.”

  “And I did it anyway.”

  “It didn’t take much to sway you off that path.”

  “I pulled you out of that cage intent on taking what I wanted. You kept trying to protect me by stopping the other woman from throwing things at me. And I was angry that you were sweet while they spat and swore. I thought if I hurt you, it would put the fear of God in the other women, and they’d stop fighting.”

  Even now, she remembered the look of determination on his face when he yanked her out of the cage. With one big fist around her upper arm, Duster had marched her from the cell room and down a short hall to a room that had only a bare mattress on the floor.

  “I pushed you down. I climbed on top of you.” Duster winced. “The exact same thing I’ve done here.”

  “You stopped.”

  “Because you started crying.” Duster looked down at the floor. “I only stopped here because we were attacked.”

  Diane suddenly realized that a lot of Duster’s anger was at himself and the choices he’d made both in the past and with her yet again. Just as the number seven seemed to weave thro
ugh their relationship, so too did echoes. Behaviors, choices, decisions—they seemed to repeat them, just like their circular arguments. Maybe the trick was breaking the cycle.

  “I cried because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I failed to seduce you, not that you were going to hurt me, because I knew you wouldn’t.” Diane took his hand. “And you wrapped me up in your arms and held me, apologizing and swearing that you weren’t going to rape me, that you just wanted to scare the others.” Squeezing his hand, she added, “And when I started kissing you, you tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t quit. So if anyone did anything wrong there, it was me.”

  “I outweighed you by over a hundred pounds. I could have stopped you.”

  She felt a smile lift the edges of her lips. “Not when I was so determined to have you. Honestly, Duster, everything you did that day made me fall in love with you. I didn’t sleep with you because of Network Thirteen or some mission. I made love to you because I wanted to.” After a pause, she added, “I still do.”

  The truth seemed to hit him like a wave that tried to pull his feet out from under him. “Even when I’m rough, and—”

  “Determined, demanding,” she whispered, sitting up so that she could speak directly into his ear. “Dangerously male. Then as now, you are more bark than bite. You’ve not hurt me once.”

  Holding her face in both his hands, drilling his gaze into hers with a ferocity that almost made her flinch, he demanded, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  “Because I love you. I did then, and I do now.” Lifting her hands slowly so as not to startle him, Diane pulled the chain from under her robe. Slender links of gold held a battered platinum ring. “I’ve never taken it off. Not from the day I accepted it from you.”

  Letting go of her face, he dropped his gaze to the ring that matched the battered platinum band around his right-hand ring finger.

  “I put it on your finger.” Duster lifted his gaze to hers.

  “I couldn’t let the women of the network see it.” Diane looked down at his hand. “I see you wear yours on the right now, not left, like a widower.”

  Tugging the chain firmly between his calloused hands, Duster broke the delicate links and slid the ring off the chain. Cupping the ring in his palm, he tossed the broken necklace over his shoulder.

  With the ring balanced on the tip of his finger, he held the slender band out to her and asked, “What finger would you put it on now, Diane?”

  Chapter Seven

  Alarm bells blared.

  “I still consider myself married to you.” Diane took the ring from his finger and slipped the band—a bit tight but still fitting—onto the ring finger of her left hand. “I always have.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. It was fast, but the way she smiled at him, she wanted the kiss to be much longer and intimately deeper. But they didn’t have time.

  “I can tell by the tone that alarm is for low fuel.” Diane flung her robe off, grabbed a gown from the closet and settled it over her head. Dressed, she marched to the bridge.

  Duster followed in her wake. “Fuel?”

  “Those idiots must have hit a line. We’re leaking fuel. We’ve got to limp planetside within three hours.”

  “You have a three-hour idiot alarm?” He pushed his way in front of her.

  “It’s not a Runner ship, Duster. It’s a whore ship, as you’ve pointed out many times.” Diane darted in front of him as she said, “Den of Iniquity has sensors, but low-grade ones at best.”

  “Network Thirteen obviously doesn’t put their money into their ships.”

  “I can’t tell you how true that is.” Beating him to the bridge, she dropped to the pilot chair and flipped a series of switches.

  “Shut down—”

  “The fuel system.” Diane cut him off. “I just did. And that alarm.” Diane nodded to the copilot chair. “Strap in. I’m gearing up to shut off the grav gen too.”

  As she clicked down her three-point restraints, Duster mimicked her. A part of him wanted to take command, but it would be nothing but pig-headed male pride to take control from the person who knew the ship best. So he didn’t. Between Michael and Mary, Duster had learned a great deal in seven months.

  “If we’d been watching the bridge, we would have known that those idiots were in the vicinity and likely to attack.”

  “With this pathetic array?” Duster asked defensively. Because what he heard her say was that if he’d been watching the bridge, this wouldn’t have happened. If he’d been paying attention to the ship and not getting between her thighs, they wouldn’t have been attacked in the first place. Worse, she was 100 percent correct.

  “As pathetic as it is, this array would have shown you—us—those idiots long before they got in visual range, and long before they sank a hook into a fuel line, then breached our airlock.”

  Her cutting words made him clench his jaw, but he accepted the accusation with a nod. He wasn’t going to deny the truth, not when he’d been harping on her to be honest. Lifting his gaze to the dash, assessing what controls he could easily reach, he said, “Shutting down energy-cell feed.”

  Lights dimmed. Emergency lights came on. Amber flickers lined the bridge and the hall that came off it.

  “Shut down all superfluous energy drains.”

  After flicking a series of switches, Duster confirmed, “Off.”

  “Switch everything we have to—”

  “Life support.” Duster did and grabbed his restraints when gravity fell sharply away.

  Den of Iniquity went suddenly still, even though it maintained forward momentum, eerily silent and filled with shadows. There wasn’t the comforting throb of the engine, no pull of gravity. Only a low whisper of air. At the moment, they were an object in space going until they hit something.

  Secure in her restraints, Diane assessed the dash. “Good news. The fuel is contained at prox three hours. Nearest planet—”

  When she turned her attention on him, Duster realized it was his call. Tapping up the local chart, he said, “Dahank.”

  “City?”

  “Jade.”

  She swallowed hard, then said, “Set coordinates. Time?”

  “Prox—shit.” Duster tapped the dash, searching the chart. “Prox four.”

  “We’ve got three hours of fuel.”

  “If we patch or don’t patch the leak?” Duster asked.

  “If we don’t.”

  “If we patch?”

  Diane tapped her controls. “Prox four plus ten.”

  “Four hours and ten minutes will get us there.”

  “I don’t have much in the way of a patch.”

  “Got plastimirror?” Duster grinned at Diane’s utterly baffled expression. He really had to live through this just so he could tell Mary thanks for all she’d taught him in a short seven months.

  “Tons of it,” Diane said. “But I don’t see how plastimirror can patch anything outside the ship.”

  “I think it will. Got duct tape?”

  “I think there’s a roll in the back with the tools, but that won’t hold it either.”

  “It might.” Duster released himself from his restraints and floated up to his feet. “And we’ve got nothing to lose by trying.”

  They argued for a bit. Then he bounced around as he gathered supplies. In short order, Duster found himself off the ship.

  Outside the Den of Iniquity in a suit, Duster crawled along the exposed nubs of Diane’s ship. Ponderous as a newborn babe, he made his way to the damaged fuel line. It was buried deep in the metalwork of the ship, but the band of desperate idiots had sunk a grappling hook into Diane’s ship without a care to where it landed. They’d ripped the damn thing in half. Hell. Had they actually succeeded in taking over the ship, they would have rapidly run out of fuel as they argued.

  Duster slapped awkward dabs of plastimirror to the damaged line. Working with the liquid, moldable mirror with gravity was tricky. Without it, and in vacuum, it was even more so. The plastimirr
or didn’t vaporize so much as it oozed in a curious curve as it bubbled.

  “Turn the pump on.”

  Diane did.

  Duster saw wisps of vaporized fuel. “Off.” Carefully, he packed more plastimirror into the crevice. All at once, Duster realized how vulnerable he was sitting outside the ship. In a suit that was barely thicker than his canvas trousers. Moreover, he was held to the ship by a metal cable no thicker than his wedding band. All this while Diane was inside at the controls.

  That voice of doubt, the one that would probably never fall silent as long as Diane was around, whispered, If ever she would betray you, this would be the time.

  He tried not to think about his defenseless position as he bought time with spit and bailing wire. Well, plastimirror and duct tape. If he died, Diane would too. They had to trust each other. Alone, they would not survive. Together, they would. But only if they worked in concert. Duster trusted Diane because he had no other choice.

  As he added another layer of moldable mirror, he thought that wasn’t quite true. Duster trusted Diane because she told him the truth about the past. She looked him right in the eye and told him everything without one damned bit of subterfuge. After all this time, he had his answer.

  For seven years, he’d agonized over what he’d done to drive her away. Was it the fact he’d been a slaver at all, no matter how long, and she couldn’t forgive him? That was the horrible truth that Duster hadn’t been able to tell anyone, even Michael. Diane hadn’t betrayed him; she’d stayed true to herself and walked away from a slaver. Her father had sold her, and Duster feared that she thought that if he were ever desperate, he would sell her too. To find out she was aligned with Network Thirteen changed everything he’d ever thought. But that truth didn’t change, and nothing ever could change, the taint of self-loathing for what he’d once done by running slaves.

  Duster had wanted to blame Michael for luring him into becoming a slaver, but he couldn’t, because Duster knew he could have said no. He could have walked away. But it was the temptation of the money. Piles and piles of script would solve so many of his problems. It was his own damn greed that had ensnared him. And Diane’s tender vulnerability had yanked him right back out.