by Vivi Andrews
“You have a better plan?” she asked him as he used superspeed to pick up the henchmen and set them down again across the room. But no matter how much he set them back, they kept running toward Kevin, not speaking or even grunting when hit, the only noise they made the patter of their feet.
“I don’t see why we have to be so fucking gentle,” Lucien snapped irritably.
“Neither do I.” At Mirabelle’s low rasp, Darla turned her head—just in time to see the chameleon put her palm on Kevin’s bare arm.
“Belle!”
Kevin and Mirabelle both jerked, the rigid seizing of their bodies a physical representation of the mental power-struggle they waged. Lines of tension creased Mirabelle’s brow, her eyes squeezed shut.
Darla watched the silent battle as much as she could with the zombies swarming. Who was winning? How would they even tell?
Mirabelle gave a soft gasp. Then Kevin began to scream, a high-pitched, agonized shriek that would do any horror queen proud. His cries went on and on, his body convulsing as Mirabelle kept her hand on his arm, a small, almost curious smile curving her lips. The sound cut off abruptly, though his mouth remained open wide, as if he would still be screaming but his vocal cords had forgotten how to form the sound.
“Mirabelle,” Lucien said, his own voice hoarse.
Her eyes flicked to her brother, then back to her victim. The zombies kept rushing forward, even more frantic now, until Mirabelle’s low command broke the silence of the room.
“Stop them, Kevin.”
The zombies froze mid-step and crumpled to the ground. Mirabelle smiled and removed her hand. Kevin gave a low whimper of relief, his bowed back landing back on the floor with a thump. “Good boy,” Mirabelle whispered.
But Kevin wasn’t done. Now that he wasn’t being tortured inside his own mind, the zombies began to stir, shambling to their feet…
Mirabelle grabbed a fistful of his hair and used it to smash the back of his skull into the concrete. The zombies flopped down as Kevin did, unconscious.
She looked up to her brother, her pupils still cycling wildly. “He always was a controlling ass,” she mumbled. And fainted.
Lucien stood at the mouth of the cave, his sister’s slight form cradled in his arms. Darla stood nearby, fidgeting with the makeshift harness they’d jury-rigged for her to fly a couple dozen bound prisoners back to the city. Surrounded by bodies as they were, it was surprisingly intimate, since they were the only two conscious.
“Trident should be able to help her,” Darla said, dragging a toe through the dirt. “Prolonged exposure to mind control can have lasting effects, but she’s tough. She’ll be fine. And I’ll, uh, I’ll do what I can to make sure she never sees the inside of Area Nine again. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’re both heroes.”
A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Don’t get too carried away, princess.” She might want him to be a hero, but he knew what he was. And what he was was in no way good enough for her. He met her gaze, holding it steadily. “I appreciate it. Everything you’ve done.”
Her face flushed. “It wasn’t anything—”
“It was everything. More than anyone else would’ve.” She took a small step toward him, and he stopped her with his next words. “Just wanted to reassure you I’ll be keeping my end of the bargain.”
“The bargain?”
“Mirabelle and I won’t be troubling you anymore.”
“You…”
He went on before she could find a way to finish that sentence. “I said you’d never see or hear from us again. I keep my promises.” A lie, but a convenient one. He’d never given a shit about promises, but he couldn’t stay. The Bad Guy didn’t get the girl.
Darla took a deep breath, seeming to collect herself. “Right. Good. Thank you, Lu—Wroth. It was…educational working with you.”
His lips twisted again. “It’s been something else, DynaGirl.”
She nodded. He thought he saw her eyes gleaming wetly in the moonlight, but then she launched into the air, hauling a bundle of criminals below her in a net.
It’s for the best. Which was why it felt so wrong to a villain like him.
Chapter Fifteen
Strong Enough to Be My Man
“What do you mean you’re never going to see him again?” Tandy yelped. “Like never never?”
Darla waved at Tandy to keep her voice down, though none of the nearby diners at Le Cirq tonight seemed to have noticed her outburst. “That was the deal,” she said, struggling to keep her speech flat and even, refusing to let any emotion creep in.
“What an idiotic deal.”
Darla grimaced. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Tandy contained her next protest as their desserts arrived “with the chef’s compliments to DynaGirl, our city’s favorite heroine,” drumming her fingers impatiently until the waiter stepped away. Darla focused on Tandy’s dark fingers contrasting the crisp white tablecloth, trying to ignore the vast, yawning abyss in her chest.
It had been two weeks and everything was back to normal. After the exclusive she’d given Kim Carruthers on the Kevin adventure, she was back in the press’s good graces, and Lucien and Mirabelle were about as cleared as she could make them. Following Kevin’s indictment, a series of public officials had woken up to the fact that the thin man had shaken their hands at a fundraiser or two, from the mayor to a few state senators and on down. Kevin made me do it was already becoming a common tactic to avoid corruption charges—though the villain wasn’t talking from his cell in Area Nine, so they may never know how many of those claims were true.
Her parents were back from China, and just as proud for how she’d repaired her public image as they were that she’d saved the entire city. She’d wanted to talk to someone about that, someone who would find the distorted priorities funny or aggravating, someone with intense inky black eyes and a fondness for leather, but Lucien had been as good as his word. She hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of him.
Darla was back to being the golden girl, but her shine felt distinctly tarnished. Dinner with Tandy tonight was supposed to perk her up, her energetic friend always capable of brightening her mood, but Tandy only wanted to talk about Lucien since the latest in Kim Carruthers’s exposé series had come out today—all about Lucien Wroth’s part in saving the world.
“Don’t you want to see him again?” Tandy asked, as soon as the waiter had left them alone with their crème brulee.
Did she want to? Oh God, yes. She wanted another kiss. She wanted more than a kiss. With him she could be strong, and he never made her feel wrong for it. Physically, he matched her like no one ever had, but it was more than physical. He opened her eyes. He kept her from getting so caught up in her own ideals that she missed the reality. She wanted him to keep harping at her about the grey areas, and she wanted to be the one to show him there was still some purity and virtue in the world. She wanted to prove to him that good could be more than a PR stunt and that goodness existed inside him too. She saw it there. She believed in him. She was three quarters in love with him.
But she was never going to see him again.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. If they don’t want to be found, I’ll never find them.”
“What if he wants to be found? What if he’s just waiting for you to look?”
Darla shrugged to conceal the fact that she had looked. His loft was abandoned, his father’s lair empty. She’d checked everywhere she’d ever seen him, sometimes two or three times a day, and all she ever found was a bigger void in her chest.
Tandy sighed, the gusty sound echoing Darla’s disappointment. “It’s always the bad boys.”
Twenty minutes later, Darla stepped out onto the carpeted walk outside Le Cirq.
“DynaGirl, give us a smile!”
“Darla, baby, how does it feel to be the city’s favorite hero again?”
She flashed a smile for the cameras, forcing her wooden lips to curve, tossed the reporter a wink and a sau
cy, “Super!” and then hurtled into the air, needing the rush of wind beating cold against her face.
She landed on her balcony, unlocked the French doors and walked into her apartment. Home, sweet empty home. Her footsteps faltered when she saw the dark, menacing figure leaning against her bedroom wall. Or not so empty. Her heart sped to triple time.
“Lucien?”
He shoved away from the wall. He hadn’t bothered to turn on a light, but she would’ve recognized him by his scent alone. Her knees began to melt. He tossed a paper onto her bed between them like a gauntlet, his picture glowering up from the front page.
“What are you doing screwing with my reputation, princess?”
“Just setting the record straight,” she said, sounding more breathless than she would’ve preferred. He was here.
“You lied.” His voice was another layer of darkness in the dim room.
“Not about the important things.” She may have bent the truth here or there to make it look like they had been working together all along, but how else did he expect her to explain away his little transgressions in the Crypt and Area Nine if she didn’t claim they’d had a secret partnership from the beginning and were just trying to throw Kevin off the scent by pretending to fight?
“You made me out to be a fucking hero.”
Darla blushed. She’d waxed rather poetic on his virtues during her exclusive with Kim Carruthers. His nobility, his integrity, his strength and dedication and loyalty—and if Kim had noticed the moment Darla had gone quiet with the realization that she was well on her way to falling in love with him, she’d graciously kept it out of her articles. “You are a hero, Lucien.”
He came close, brushing his thumb across her throat where the bruises from his fingers had long since faded. “No, princess. I’m not.”
You could be. Darla took a deep breath, wondering why the air felt so thick. “What are you doing here, Lucien?”
“I remembered something.” His voice was low and gravel-rough.
“What’s that?” Hers was barely more than a breathy expulsion of air.
“I’m not a hero. I’m the bad guy. I don’t care what I deserve. I take what I want. And I want you.”
His lips closed over hers, daring her to resist. The empty place in her chest was suddenly full, bursting, pressing joy and heat and need out of her every cell.
He claimed her, a bad-boy stamp of ownership forever burned into her lips, and they fell together onto the bed, the paper rustling to the floor as his strength, God, all that marvelous strength, pressed her down. She couldn’t get his clothing off fast enough, couldn’t wait to feel warm skin beneath her hands.
He paused in the act of jerking his shirt over his head. “If you want to say no, do it now.”
“No.”
Lucien went still above her as she shoved his shirt up, sliding her hands up the muscled expanse of his chest. Damn, he’s gorgeous. “No?” he asked, grabbing her hands to still them.
Darla looked up at him through a fog of lust. “What?”
“You said no.” His frown was fierce. I love that frown.
It took three thundering heartbeats for his words to process, then she blushed. “Yes. I mean no, I’m not saying no. No, don’t stop. Just, God, Lucien, kiss me already.”
His frown eased and he snorted, bending down to brush a soft kiss onto her mouth. “Try to be more precise,” he murmured, the vibration of sound humming against her lips. For a lingering moment, everything was sweet and luscious and slow, hanging on the edge between laughter and longing. Then something deepened, something shifted, and she couldn’t get enough.
Their clothing was the work of a few frantic rips and shoves, even the sturdy material of her supersuit yielding easily to his hands, then it was nothing but wicked heat. Darla writhed beneath him, touching every inch of skin she could reach until Lucien caught her wrists and pulled them above her head, pinning them to the bed.
Oh wow. No one had ever been strong enough to put her somewhere and make her stay there—especially in the bedroom. A bolt of liquid heat shot straight to her core. Still holding her hands above her head, he began to work himself inside her. She panted his name.
“Any sins you’d care to confess, princess?”
I love you. No. She couldn’t tell him that yet. Instead she gasped, “I took out an entire SWAT team.”
Lucien stilled above her. “Did you now?”
He rewarded her with a shallow thrust of his hips. She moaned. “Trident—Oh God, Lucien, there—I broke into—oh—Trident Labs.”
“Good girl,” he praised. “Now be bad for me.”
And she was.
Chapter Sixteen
DynaBunny
“Damn,” Lucien panted. “It’s a shame we have such crappy chemistry.”
He feinted like he was going to get up, and Darla smacked him. Hard. The bed groaned. He chuckled, rolling her back into his arms. It was no small miracle the bed had survived the onslaught. “We’ll have to try the kitchen table next. Test out that polymer reinforcement.” He stroked a hand down her side, the vision coming to life in his mind and stirring parts of him that shouldn’t be up to stirring just yet. “I’ve got very wicked plans for you, princess.”
Darla cuddled into his side, her smile wry. “Why do villains always have to brag about their evil plans?”
“Why do heroes always want to trade barbs when they could be getting down to business?”
“What business is that?” she asked with exaggerated sweetness, blinking innocently.
He attacked. Showing no mercy until she was begging, crying out her surrender. Only then did he stop tickling her.
“You should be nice to me,” she gasped, deliciously breathless. “Otherwise I might be forced to tell all my friends you’re really as superfast as they say.”
“Ouch. That’s playing dirty, princess.” He tugged her until she fell against his side, cuddling close. “You shock me. Turns out DynaGirl is surprisingly naughty for such a good girl.”
She was silent for a long moment, tracing a pattern on his chest. “I didn’t pick my name,” she admitted. “I wanted something unique, but my dad kept insisting that as a legacy I needed to display my family pride.” She giggled softly, mischief thick in the sound. “At one point, I was so annoyed with him, I told him I wanted my super handle to be DynaBunny and to wear a playboy bunny suit as my costume. I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”
He grinned, stroking a hand down her back. “See? Naughty. I knew it the second I saw that Maxim spread.”
She blushed, ducking her head against his chest so he barely heard her murmur, “I do still have the bustier.”
All of the blood rushed away from Lucien’s brain, charging south. “Do you?” If his voice sounded a little strangled, Darla didn’t seem to notice.
“You are a hero, Lucien,” she said softly. “You’re mine.”
If his heart warmed at those words, it was only because it was Darla saying them. He didn’t need the rest of the world to see him as good, as long as she kept looking at him the way she was right now. “Let’s keep all rumors of my heroism just between us, okay? Though you’re welcome to tell me I’m heroic in the bedroom whenever you like. Especially if you’re wearing that bustier.”
Darla smiled and slipped out of the circle of his arms. “Don’t move.”
He wasn’t likely to. She’d need a small army to get him out of her life now. Villains played for keeps.
When she stepped out of the bathroom five minutes later wearing that epic bustier, Lucien felt all the oxygen leave the room. Lord have mercy. She gave a little shimmy and strutted toward the bed, a naughty gleam in her eyes.
He’d never been much of a believer in karma, but he must’ve done something pretty damn good to deserve someone so bad.
About the Author
Vivi Andrews lives in Alaska when she isn’t indulging her travel addiction. She’s currently hard at work on her next paranormal romance. For m
ore about her books or the exploits of a nomadic author, please visit her website at www.viviandrews.com or stop by her blog at viviandrews.blogspot.com. Vivi also loves to hear from readers and invites you to email her at [email protected].
Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews
Now Available:
Karmic Consultants
The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant
The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story
The Sexorcist
The Naked Detective
A Cop and a Feel
Serengeti Shifters
Serengeti Heat
Serengeti Storm
Serengeti Lightning
Serengeti Sunrise
Reawakening Eden
Ghosts of Boyfriends Past
No super deed goes unpunished…
Breaking Bad
© 2012 Jodi Redford
A Midnight Justice Story
It’s been twenty-five years since the last Light Guardian was wiped out. Or so it’s believed. Ruby Winston is about to blow the lid off that theory, even though it’ll bring every Shadow Czar minion down on her ass.
She’s always known she was different from the rest of the evil-dictators-in-training Winstons. Uncovering the secret half of her gene pool proves it. Now she’s out to bring down her late father’s mind-control soda empire—and break the Shadow Czars’ hold on Earth.
Problem is, becoming a superhero overnight isn’t as easy as it looks.
Teague Younger has his own secrets to keep: his heritage, and his fierce determination to exact revenge on his friend and mentor’s murderer. So far he’s kept his cover—until he’s forced to use his Light Guardian powers to save Ruby from a sticky situation.
Thrust together and on the run, Teague and Ruby form a wary alliance as they desperately fight their circuit-blowing attraction. With an army of Shadow Queen minions hot on their tails, they might have a hard time surviving the night, much less ignoring their hearts.
