Breathing Vapor Read Online Free

understand.”
    Mira held out the baby. They didn’t move.
    “You paid for it.” She huffed with feigned irritation. “Take it or I’ll dispose of it.” A selfish part of her wished they wouldn’t take the baby cyborg, that she could hold the infant forever.
    “Don’t do that.” The female scooped K017282 out of her arms. “We want it…him.” She pushed the warming cover away from his cheeks and her face softened. “Oh stars, do we want him. He’s perfect.”
    He was perfect. Mira resisted the urge to snatch the baby back. Keeping him wasn’t an option. K017282 wouldn’t survive another planet rotation at the compound. With his new mother and father, he’d have a home, be loved, live a long lifespan.
    “If it was perfect, I wouldn’t be selling it.” She was unable to disguise the gruffness in her voice and hoped the couple wouldn’t notice it. “Our business is done. Leave before you draw any more suspicion to me.” Or before they invoked the ire of the grown cyborg watching them.
    She couldn’t bear to watch them return to their ship. Her heart was splitting in two. Mira turned and walked away, struggling to suck back the emotion, the sense of loss.
    The stars sparkled above her, set on a covering of black…like the fabric wrapped around K017282. Would he live close to one of those suns? Would he remember her, think of her with kindness?
    Would any being?
    Mira followed the gray stone linking the compound’s rectangular buildings. The structures were functional but extremely ugly. She focused on them and not on the gaping hole in her heart. The compound had been built seven solar cycles after her mom’s death, a reward for her father’s continued loyalty to the Humanoid Alliance.
    She’d thought the new compound, new planet, would mean a fresh start. It hadn’t. Many of the Humanoid Alliance officials from Erinome V, their previous home planet, had been assigned to Tau Ceti. The cycle of slowly starving the local beings until they rebelled and then stealing their resources had continued.
    Lydna Listmann, her mom’s so-called friend, the female who had convinced an eight solar cycle old Mira to share her mom’s treacherous secret, was one of the relocated humans. Her husband was the planet’s Humanoid Alliance council representative and Lydna ruled over the society events. Mira couldn’t avoid her.
    Her presence served as a constant reminder than no being could be trusted.
    Mira turned a corner and stopped.
    A familiar silhouette, shrouded in shadows, blocked her path.
    “You smell like him.” Vapor’s deep voice flowed down her spine, along her arms and legs.
    “Are you recording this?” It was a struggle to maintain her cool persona. She burned for his touch, her need wild and barely controlled.
    He paused for one heart pounding moment. “No.”
    She relaxed. Cyborgs were unable to lie. “Which him are you referring to? There have been so many different males.”
    There had been. Once. Solar cycles ago, she had tried to lose herself in sex. It hadn’t worked so she had given up on relationships, focusing on her mom’s favorite causes—freeing the suppressed, feeding the hungry, righting the wrongs the Humanoid Alliance had created.
    “You lie to me, female.” Vapor stepped into the light. The cyborg was hard—hard eyes, hard face, hard body. His tall, broad form was encased in black battle armor. His fingers rested on the hilts of his daggers. He could kill her before she made a sound and she couldn’t stop him.
    That aroused her.
    She was truly fucked-up.
    “There haven’t been many males.” His dark eyes glittered. “I smell only one on you.”
    Could he smell what K017282 had done, what she’d allowed the baby cyborg to do? “Why are you out of your cage?” Mira covered up her embarrassment with aggression.
    “I had the urge to kill.” Vapor caressed his daggers, drifting his fingertips over the metal, his hands moving up and down, up and down. “The Designer