Fuse

by Angel Payne

  “We’ll be ready.” Reece nods at Sawyer, who mirrors the action.

  “I’m going with you.”

  And why am I not stunned when my insistence is matched, word for word, by the woman who steps in with her supermodel legs, blond wig newly reaffixed, and huge green gaze brimming with intense “concern” to “help”?

  And don’t I give in to the fire in my belly now, ordering me to go ahead and rip out with a scream of fury, frustration, and exasperation?

  Answers all too easily given.

  As soon as Reece dips his stare back down to me again.

  And drenches me in the bright love, edged all around the dark regret, in his eyes.

  “Velvet.” He turns his back on everyone else, cupping my face and pushing in until he consumes every fraction of my vision…until his desperate energy consumes every electron of my nervous system. “You need to understand…”

  “No.” I wrench against his grip. He holds tight. Really fucking tight. “You need to understand!” I try to twist again. He’s even more unrelenting. “You say we’re partners?” I use the only weapon I have now, my gritted seethe, to fight him. “You say we’re in this together? You say you want me by your side forev—”

  He halts me with a steel hammer of a kiss that radiates raw shockwaves through my system. I sway in place, probably looking like the Valhalla maiden just tamed into place by the conqueror Viking, and I long to clock him for it. And, damn it, jump him for it. Holy shit, even now. Bastard.

  “Goddamnit,” he growls. “I want you alive more.”

  And now, bastard doesn’t even cut it. I can’t even call him on not playing fair, because he isn’t playing. As a minute stretches by—at least I think it does, because Sawyer has finished giving the coordinates of the clearing behind the house to the police chief and starts nervously pacing—Reece doesn’t move. The edges of his gaze thicken with emotion. The whites of his eyes are bright cobalt tumults, begging me to understand but telling me it’s not going to matter if I don’t. In less than fifteen minutes, he’s going to take off for a war zone. Without me. Without a clue of what he could be facing.

  But with the best team he can possibly gather around him.

  With the intention of not becoming a casualty of that war.

  Yes. I see that in every tormented flash in his eyes too. More than that, I know it in all the throbs of my heart and all the fibers of my soul. And the rest of me may hate the crap out of that certainty, but right now, none of that matters. I have to slam my rubber against this awful road, give up both my hands on the steering wheel of this speeding car, and surrender them to an unknown neither Reece nor I can know or predict.

  And worst of all, I’ll have to do nothing but watch. And pray.

  And keep hoping he feels the force of the words I give him now, as I yank on the back of his head so he’s bent low for my lips to be at his ear.

  “Come back to me, you big ox.” My voice cracks before I kiss his neck hard. “Do you fucking understand me?”

  “Yeah, baby. I do.” He rolls his head, finding my forehead with his. And I hate him all over again because he knows how much I melt when he does this. How much I wish we’d just melt together like this and be fused until the end of time.

  But that’s not what I get here. Not what I signed up for when accepting his presence in my life, his engagement ring on my finger, his place in my soul.

  I fell in love with a superhero. So that means pulling myself back, no matter how fast the sweet fusion turns back into bitter tears, and forcing even harder words to my lips. “Go, damn it. Save the city, Reece Richards.”

  He pulls away a little. There’s a faint but beautiful smile across his lips. Some of his hair falls into his electric eyes, and my breath is punched from my lungs. Hell. He has to go and be this beautiful, in this outrageously dire moment? I’m tempted to hate him for real now.

  Until he pushes back in, palming my nape and yanking my head up. “Only if I know you’ll be waiting when I’m done.”

  I part my lips, knowing he’ll cover them with tender possession—and he does. Then set my chin, knowing he needs to hear my determined pledge.

  And he does.

  “I’ll be waiting, my love.”

  He inhales as if he was waiting to do so. After his equally heavy exhale, he states, “And you get Mom and the rest into the bunker under the command center. Make sure you’re all secure. If Kane’s really in cahoots with those bastards and he’s told them—”

  I take my turn to slam the interrupting kiss, because if I even hear the whole thing out loud, it’ll make the horror all too real. “I’ll make sure everyone is safe. And we’re going to be fine. And you’re going to be fine.” Because I refuse to say anything else. To believe anything else. To accept or live with any other reality right now.

  Knowing that if I really want it to stay a reality, I have to let him go. I have to watch him go and get the bad guys and trust that the team by his side will help lift him to another victory.

  And concede that once more, I won’t be one of them.

  No matter how much that truth rips me the hell up inside.

  Chapter One

  Emma

  “What the hell do you want, Kane?”

  As my superhero fiancé bellows from the roof of a Los Angeles skyscraper, my mind plunges into a war of reactions. Two huge monitors on the concrete bunker wall in front of me perfectly embody my mental adversaries. The first screen carries multiple images from Reece’s body cams that are embedded in his sturdiest battle leathers. The feeds are a little shaky, giving away the force of the wind, the eye-popping height of that rooftop, and the crackling energy of every breath Reece takes. I don’t fight my instinctual pull to that feed, stepping closer to the monitor with every excruciating second, mentally tethering myself so I don’t reach up and try to touch him. To soothe his rage, his confusion, and yes, even his fear.

  But I can’t control my longing looks, either—along with the urge to lick along with the touching. And yes, I’m a little ashamed of that, especially now, but—

  No. I’m not one bit ashamed. And am thoroughly blaming the local news, whose coverage is consuming the second monitor, their camera angle even including the lightning-shaped “summoning beam” that rakes back and forth across the smoke-darkened sky. The media is all about extolling the glory of Bolt, the superhero savior of LA—with every sexy-as-hell connotation the label implies. Their lenses capture every dramatic, sinewy, alpha-male inch of him, from his wide-legged stance to his glowing, splayed fingers, to his hair blowing so perfectly, a computer could have generated the effect instead.

  I know differently. So much differently.

  Over the last year, my fingers have been immersed in those dark, breathtaking waves. I’ve held them through heartbreak, twisted them with frustration, and clutched them at the peak of my passion—and his. I’ve learned every expression of the face framed by those mesmerizing strands and discovered the man behind every one of those nuances.

  I’ve learned that the drool-worthy hero captured by those media lenses is only a fraction of the real man—and lover—beneath.

  So yeah, I gawk along with everyone else.

  But keep the gloating to a private roar.

  Not that my stress is giving me a lot of time for that. Thankfully, I don’t have to keep that so private—not when I feel it on every molecule of air around me, courtesy of the two other women in this security bunker with me.

  At my side with one hand entwined in mine is my sister Lydia, her gaze glued as hard to the screens as mine. Her brutal grip gives up the truth she’s been denying to my face for so long—things between her and Sawyer Foley are intensifying, and though her lover is nowhere to be seen, she’s terrified he’s not too far from Reece’s side. In the small kitchen behind us, Trixie Richards makes a halfhearted attempt to make coffee. Her other son, Chase, isn’t “on scene” with his little brother but is arguably in just as much danger, having chosen to stay upstairs
with his wife, Joany, to lend much-needed extra eyes to survey the dizzying data flooding into the Team Bolt command center overhead. If there’s anyone down here with tension levels close to mine, it has to be my future mother-in-law, who shovels grounds into the coffee maker with war-room intensity.

  In short, Trixie’s in the same mood as her son—minus the spark-wrapped fingertips, lightning-laced eyes, and dragon-inspired voice.

  “I’ll only repeat it once, man.” The monitor on the right, labeled BBC, Minus the Tea—Wade’s cheeky way of saying Bolt Body Cams—quivers from the force of Reece’s shout. “What the hell do you want?”

  The feed shudders even harder, but not from any boosted effort on Reece’s part. This time, the lumbering steps of an approaching creature are the clear cause: a verifiable hulk. Not a mutant in torn clothes, painted thirteen shades of green—but the stranger we used to know as Kane Alighieri, a warrior who, despite being built like a tank, was always the Hodor to Mitch’s Bran. The guy who openly cried at every mushy Super Bowl commercial. The one among us who really did stop to smell the flowers. But now, he’s so transformed from that sweet hero, I expect to see his former clothes in tatters, as more pain fills his glare, more rage pumps into his bulwark shoulders, and more tension notches the virulence of his war-ready stance.

  And he funnels every drop of his rage toward the man I desperately love.

  If the torque of Lydia’s grip means what I think it does, she’s hopped into the same camp. Kane’s far beyond what any of us expected, even after the warning Angelique brought us earlier today during the memorial service for Tyce and Mitch. Yes, she told us that Kane had voluntarily fallen in with the Scorpios and the Consortium, thinking he could obtain the intel that would take them down from the inside out. And yes, her own cover had been blown once his plan failed and she’d tried—and failed—to help him get back out. So yes, that meant we had to conclude that the shitwads had done their worst to him.

  But this is beyond “worst.”

  And Kane’s beyond derailed.

  He’s on a track of his own, custom-built for him by the Consortium, carrying him into a wilderness of insanity, vengeance, and violence.

  “Oh, I think we both already know the answer to that, Bolt Man.”

  He seethes it while filling more of the camera’s view, the wind flapping fiercely in his hair and fatigues.

  “How’s the expression go?” he charges. “Oh, come on, Reece. I’m sure you know it. A pound of flesh? An eye for an eye? A superhero for a real hero?”

  Trixie abandons the coffee machine to rush back up next to us, jabbing a thumb between her teeth as a deep V appears atop her angular nose. Lydia shifts her hold on me, clamping an arm around my shoulders. She holds me up while we watch that gleaming-gazed warrior stomp straight for Reece.

  The giant who’s already maimed half the downtown Los Angeles skyline. The hulk who openly bares his teeth at Reece, his gaze flashing in malevolent spurts.

  The guy who’s clearly not playing for Team Bolt anymore.

  The animal who’s obeying another master.

  But has that allegiance been wrought by Kane’s choice—or has he been forced to accept the fusion of the Consortium’s puppet strings? Is he Faline Garand’s new boy toy because of audition or subjugation?

  And at this point, does the answer even matter?

  My heart cracks from the admission that it doesn’t. However the change has happened, Team Bolt’s gruff but gentle giant is gone. He’s a wraith with flexing muscles. A leather-clad mammoth on a disturbingly clear mission.

  Which he puts back into motion the next second—channeling the purpose of a charging bull.

  Obviously the man won’t stop unless he’s forced to, but does Reece see that yet? Or is my man still so blinded by his guilt over all the fatal hits the team has taken from the Consortium that he can’t see every change in Kane now? The guy’s gothic storm gaze. The surreal speed in his sudden sprint across the rooftop. Every indent he’s putting into the surface of that rooftop with every stomp of that attacking gait.

  “Holy shit on a shingle,” ’Dia exclaims. At the same time, Trixie and I cry out from the mutual awareness that Kane’s barreling way too fast and Reece is holding way too stubbornly for any other result than what happens. “What the hell is he think—”

  The collision sounds and looks like a nuclear explosion. An otherworldly silence, followed by both monitors flooding with terrifying white light.

  I ram my face against Lydia’s shoulder, unsure what else to do about fate’s vicious slam of anger and horror. It’s compounded by remorse when Trixie lets out a sharp wail and crumples onto the couch, burying her face in her hands.

  “Damn it,” I sob, turning to join Trixie. I have to be stronger than this! I need to tell this giant wad of wuss to go suck it so I can be there for the woman who gave birth to him. And if this is the moment Trixie has to look on as her second son dies…

  No. No!

  This isn’t the off switch for him, damn it. Even from fifty miles away, I’m as certain of his heartbeat as I am of mine. The sensation’s not as clear as when Reece is in the same building or room, when my entire body sizzles to life from the impact of his presence, but our connection isn’t about the powers the Consortium gave him. It’s about the essence the angels gave him. A life force that resounds in my soul, breathes in my psyche, lives in my heart.

  Several seconds drag by like knives through congealing blood. But finally, at Lydia’s burst of laughter, I tug my head back up in time to watch her nod at the monitors. “Look who knows how to make double layer cake out of shit and a shingle.”

  Under any other circumstances, I’d fist-bump the woman and her metaphor, but there’s not a second to waste as I swing my sights back to the monitors. Well, one of them. Though the feed from Reece’s body cams is still a garbled mess, the local news crews have recovered as fast as they can, scrambling into the building and up the elevators before the cops and security guards notice them. Not a surprise, since every available person in a uniform and badge not dealing with their own shell shock is helping to corral the screaming throngs in the streets.

  So by the time the cops have recovered and are onto the crew, the news team is already on their way to the roof. Nothing’s going to stop them from getting their scoop, though I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing this second. The crew on the ground is trying to get the best beat on what’s happening, but that structure is at least ten floors higher than the Brocade. Eighty floors up is a long damn distance, especially when the end point contains a pair of supercharged humans in an electronic pissing match.

  An assessment I seriously hope I’m wrong about.

  But swiftly learn, as soon as Reece’s body cams reboot after their jolt, that I couldn’t be more right.

  Once more, the monitor is filled with a view of Kane coming at Reece in a livid charge. And once more, I wonder when we’ll see bovine horns popping from the guy’s stringy hair. But he flashes a wickedly human snarl as the flares in his unblinking eyes get sharper. And while his black battle fatigues are ripped and scuffed in a bunch of places, he keeps approaching Reece in volatile stomps, more undeterred than before.

  “Christ.” Reece’s guttural expulsion is only for his and our ears, followed by a huge inhalation. He boosts his volume to address Kane again. “Damn it, man. Do we have to fucking do it like this?”

  Kane doesn’t stop. While his approach is just shy of a full stampede, he maintains that smooth, eerie smile—matching the voice that hasn’t stopped chilling my blood since we first watched him on the TV monitor upstairs, when he challenged Reece from the midst of the chaos.

  “Oh Reecey, Reecey, Reecey.” He shakes his head, adding a trio of tsks. I share a gape with Lydia. Kane Alighieri tsking is like John Cena in a Tinkerbell costume. “There is no other way to do this.” He swings an arm, deflecting a pulse Reece has thrown out as if swatting at a fly. “You, of all people, know that better than anyone, darlin
g.”

  “Darling?” ’Dia beats me to the blurt by a second.

  “That’s a Faline word.” I despise giving her name the honor of volume, but the reality of what I’m witnessing—of what my gut told me half an hour ago when Sawyer clicked on the news feed and Kane appeared with the Scorpio cartel tattoos across his knuckles—is getting horribly clearer by the second. “Seems as though they’ve been hanging out. And clearly, not to grab some milk tea and have glitter stars painted on their toenails.”

  Lydia huffs. “So what the hell? Has the bitch somehow figured out how to…what…possess him?”

  “I don’t think so.” I stare harder at the screen as Kane deflects another pulse from Reece, looking ready to attack again. “Tyce could change his face, but we always knew it was still him underneath. There wasn’t ever anyone else inside there with him.”

  “Then why are those words hers and not Kane’s?” Lydia challenges. “As if…she’s controlling everything he’s saying…”

  “And doing,” Trixie adds—at the same moment Reece growls a low profanity. It sounds like he’s patched the same details together and arrived at the same conclusion but is likely taking it further. He’s the one facing off against this creature, which also means confronting one central, harrowing question.

  If Faline has access to Kane’s body and speech patterns, can she also see inside his brain? All the battle practices he’s been to with Reece? All the strategies he’s honed? His strongest and weakest powers? His favored attack plans?

  Does she know all of Team Bolt’s deepest secrets?

  Does she know how to get here?

  I feel every one of these questions punching into Reece, just by the wobble of his body cam feed. But I also see him breathing composure back in, shoving away the terror in order to focus on his bizarre battle foe.

  “So that’s really how you want to take your coffee today, huh?” His voice is consumed by a dreaded ferocity I haven’t heard from him for a month—not since that night in the tunnels beneath Paris, when his father was about to turn Chase, Tyce, and him over to the Consortium via their heartless henchwoman. The same bitch who’s worked her electronic fuckery on Kane. Zapped him into her personal Frankenstein, only with better moves, faster reflexes, and a lot more anger issues.