by Julie Kenner
“The nerve of some people. It’s absurd. No, it’s obscene! That poor girl. Oh, God,” she said, looking at him. “You don’t think he’s going to take it out on her, do you? The fact that I embarrassed him in public?”
“It’s the risk we take, doing what we do,” he said, and she bit her lower lip, suddenly thinking that maybe rampant ballsiness wasn’t such a great thing after all. “But, no. I think they’re truly over now. More than that, I think you set a great example for her.”
“Really?” she asked, starting to feel a bit hopeful. “You honestly think so?”
“Absolutely. Someone stood up for her. Valued her. I think now she’ll value herself more.” He met Lydia’s eyes. “Don’t you?”
She considered the question, thinking about her B.S. life (before shoes, that is), and tried to imagine being in that woman’s place, with Roy across the table.
“Yeah,” she finally said. “I think you’re right. Even if she doesn’t have the nerve to confront him herself, she might at least now have the nerve to say no to going out with him anymore.”
“So what now?” he asked, coming closer and hooking his arms around her waist. “Your place?”
“Is yours even an option?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve been staying at the Council’s New York field office. Seemed easier than getting a hotel.”
“Oh. So where’s your home?”
“Colorado,” he said, and she felt her heart sink a little. Colorado was far from New York. Which meant that once his mission was over, Nikko would be a long way from her.
“Oh.” She licked her lips. Part of her did want to go back to the apartment, back to the bedroom and the warmth of Nikko curled up next to her, his body hard and lean and pressed close. She closed her eyes and sighed, imagining a lazy morning turning into a lazy afternoon and finally fading into a lazy night. Lazy, that is, except for a few bursts of intense aerobic activity.
Ah, heaven.
And yet at the same time, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say she wanted to go back. The truth was, as much as she wanted to be with Nikko that way, she also craved the excitement of being with him . . . well . . . superheroly. Defeating bad guys together and all that Justice League stuff.
“You have that look,” he said.
“I have a look?”
“Definitely,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “So tell me why. What’s the look for? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I want to learn from the best,” she said, boldly kissing him back. “I want to go do superhero stuff. And then,” she added, taking his hands from around her waist and pulling them up to kiss his fingers, “then I want to go back home and—what do they call it?—debrief each other.”
He laughed. “That may be what they call it,” he acknowledged, “but I’m not sure I’m the best.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He paused, then sat down at a bus stop. “I’m in town because I screwed up a while back. This is my chance to redeem myself.”
“Oh.” The guilt was back. “So that mission I messed up . . . You’re telling me that I not only let a bad guy go, but I also messed up your chances to get back in, um, Protector good graces?”
“Pretty much.”
She licked her lips. “Sorry.”
He shook his head and looked at her, the smile on his lips reaching his eyes. “It’s not your fault. The only one who got me in this position was me.”
“What happened?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t. After all, it wasn’t really any of her business.
He drew in a deep breath. “I did a dumb thing. I was trying to nab a bad guy, and I blew my cover. Let mortals see me. And even though that kind of thing can usually be covered up—”
She nodded, remembering the story the newspapers had run about the baby, the limo, and a SWAT team.
“—in this case, I was seen by more than just ordinary mortals. I was seen by an artist.” Nikko frowned. “Damn comic book.”
“But that’s one of the things I love so much about the comic,” she said. “The Streak is so damn honorable.”
He narrowed his eyes, looking at her. “What do you mean?”
“In all those early issues,” she clarified, “he wasn’t supposed to let regular people know who he was, but he did. Because otherwise, folks would have gotten hurt. He had to make a choice: follow the rules and let people get hurt, or . . .” She cut herself off with a shrug. “I think he made the right decision.” She put her hand on his arm. “Sounds like you did, too. Even if it did mean you were immortalized in a comic,” she added with a mischievous grin.
He made a derisive noise in his throat, but even as he did, he turned to her. “You really think so?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I do.” She stood up, then reached out her hand. “Like I said: I want to learn from the best. Teach me?”
He hesitated, then stood up. “I’m not sure who’s doing the teaching here,” he said. “But I think we can definitely go nail a few bad guys together.” He pulled some sort of cloak out of the backpack he’d been carrying. He swooped it over his shoulders, then pulled her close, enveloping her in his strong arms. “You don’t have a propulsion cloak issued to you?”
“Um, no,” she said, debating whether now was the time for her confession. She looked up at the sky, remembered the way it felt to fly with him, and decided to wait a little longer. Right then, she wanted the thrill of flying with him, and the kick of doing good, of stepping into the shoes—literally—of the superhero life she’d fantasized about for so long.
“You should talk to the Council about that,” he said. “Sometimes I think they do a piss-poor job of walking Halflings through procedure.”
“Mmm,” she said, but fortunately, he didn’t mind her relative nonanswer.
“The invisibility feature is acting up, so we may not be able to— Hang on. Never mind. It’s still working.”
She looked down, then gasped to realize that she couldn’t see her feet, her hands, any of her.
“What the . . . ?”
“Hold on,” he said, his smile as bright as his eyes. And then, suddenly, they were flying, their bodies transparent against the deep blue sky, and the streets of Brooklyn spread out beneath them like a diorama.
“So, what do you do?” she asked. “Fly around looking for good deeds?”
He chuckled. “I’m usually handed specific assignments,” he said, reminding her that he was on assignment right then, which meant that soon he’d have to leave her and this lovely, sensual interlude would come to a halt. “But, yeah. Since Protectors swear an oath to protect mortals, we have to step in if we see anything untoward going on.”
“Right,” she said. “The oath. That’s exactly what the Silver Streak lives by.” She peered down at the street, a morbid part of her hoping for a mugging or robbery. Or a juicy carjacking.
Nada.
In the end, they rescued a cat from a tree in stereo typical fashion, then helped a woman get her jammed front door open.
“Not exactly a superhero morning,” she said to Nikko as she leaned against a maple near the woman’s front door. “I never thought I’d be bummed not to see someone being mugged or harassed,” she added with a laugh.
“You can’t have everything,” Nikko said, his dimple showing. “Besides, you—”
But he was cut off by a shrill scream as a teenager raced by, a purse banging against him as he sprinted away from a woman screaming bloody murder.
The dimple deepened into a full-fledged smile. “Go get ’em,” he urged.
Lydia didn’t wait for him to tell her twice, but took off after the thief, her shoes moving her at a speed she would have thought impossible yesterday. More than that, she no longer feared for her own balance. She was in control now. Her feet might have called the shots at first, but now it was all Lydia . . . and it felt wonderful.
In no time at all, she caught up to the guy, getting in
front of him and halting him with a flat hand against his chest. “I’ll take that,” she said, snagging the purse back. Around them, passersby hurried over, including a beat cop. And Nikko and the victim were jogging toward her, Nikko doing his best to look very, very mortal.
“Who the hell are you?” the thief asked her.
She lifted her chin. “The Pink Streak,” she said, then bit back a laugh. Okay, so maybe she understood where Nikko was coming from. Having that moniker stick would be no fun at all.
She passed the thief off to the officer, accepted the victim’s profound thanks, then linked her arm in Nikko’s and took off walking back the way she’d come.
“So how’d I do, coach?”
“High marks across the board. Speed. Agility. You got your target. You delivered him to the authorities. You were calm, controlled, and very assertive.” A slow grin spread across his face. “All qualities I like in a woman.”
“Is that a fact?” She took a step forward, her eyes on his and the air between them thick with electricity. “If assertive turns you on, then you should love this. Take me home,” she said, clutching his collar and pulling him down so that she could whisper the rest of her invitation in the kind of language her mother had definitely not taught her.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s a suggestion I can definitely get behind.”
They took the old-fashioned way home, snuggled together in the backseat of a taxi, with roaming hands and nuzzling lips. So much, in fact, that she caught the driver peeping at them once in the rearview mirror.
But whereas old Lydia might have blushed furiously and sunk to the floorboards, this Lydia simply grinned and suggested he subscribe to cable.
Nikko rolled his eyes and pulled her close. “Newlyweds,” he said, apparently more inclined to be polite.
At least, she assumed he was only being polite. Surely he wasn’t thinking along those lines. Was he?
She licked her lips and leaned up against him, but turned her head to face out the window, afraid her thoughts would show on her face. Could a person know after only one night? Because Lydia thought she did. He was her fantasy come true, and when he walked into her life it was like he’d walked into a hole in her heart and filled her utterly.
Her mind was still meandering when they reached her apartment, but his soft kisses and sultry suggestions of a quick shower got her mind back on track. She gave him a quick kiss, then bent over to pull off her shoes. They were off, and she was working the button on her jeans when she heard the bing bing of his cell phone that apparently wasn’t actually a cell phone.
He pulled it from deep in a pocket and flipped it open, then pushed a button or two. She wasn’t really paying attention, but something changed—the air in the room seemed to grow colder and she couldn’t help but shiver. She looked up, distracted from the act of undressing, and found him staring at her. His already familiar face seemed harsh. Harder than she’d seen it, and she shuddered a bit, not from lust this time, but from a deep, cold dread.
“Nikko?” she asked, fearing the worst. “What’s wrong.”
“Text message,” he said, with a steely edge to his voice. He held the phone up for her to see. The screen was too far away, though, and so she shook her head, an icy chill coursing through her.
“I’m not sure I—”
“Cut the crap, Lydia,” he said. “Tell me the truth and tell me now. Who in Hades are you, and how long have you been working for Ruthless?”
“What?”
She was staring at him, her mouth gaping open, her expression of surprise so sincere that he almost believed it. Almost, but not quite.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see through your ruse earlier. A Protector? Honestly, I’ve been out of the game too long.”
Not that that was a legitimate excuse. The truth was, he didn’t see that she was conning him because he didn’t want to. He was lonely and tired of living for the mission, and when a beautiful girl appeared out of nowhere and seemed to be as attracted to him as he was to her, he fell hard and fast.
Oldest story in the book. He wasn’t pathetic. He was just a typical male.
He looked at her, seeing the confusion in her eyes along with the hurt. He took a step toward her, and then stopped. Watch it, Nikko. She was a good one. After all, didn’t Ruthless only recruit the best? Wasn’t that why he’d so far been untouchable?
He forced himself to stop, to harden his heart. Because no matter how much he wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her that it was all a big misunderstanding, that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t a Protector, and she’d flat-out lied to him.
“Dammit, Nikko, talk to me!”
“You lied to me,” he said.
Her brow furrowed as she looked from the phone to his face and back again. “No, I swear, I didn’t lie.”
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, thrusting the phone closer to her face.
“A phone?”
“And a lie detector. It’s automatic. Analyzes every sound it picks up. Not immediately, unfortunately. But it sends a signal to Council headquarters, and a text message is returned almost instantaneously. I missed the earlier message,” he said. “I was a little distracted at the time, I guess.” And about that he was truly kicking himself, even though the distraction had been oh, so very sweet.
No. Best not to think that way. Not sweet. Devious.
“And this time?” she asked.
“This time, there were two messages: one with an update on my mission, the other reporting on the veracity of your earlier statements. When you said you were a—”
“Protector,” she finished, looking at her toes. “I know. I’m sorry. But I wasn’t lying. I swear.”
“The phone says otherwise.”
“I didn’t understand.” She looked up at him, tears clinging to her lashes. “I was protecting, and so I thought—” She broke off and brushed a tear from her eye, pretty much ripping him apart from the inside in the process. “It’s all about the shoes, okay? I got the shoes and then suddenly I was in the thick of it, protecting that girl. And then when I heard you, I rushed in, too. And it’s not like I really knew what I was doing, but I figured, well, maybe you had ordered shoes, too, and maybe you could tell me what the deal was. That’s all. I swear. Do you understand? Do you believe me?”
“Shoes?” he asked, his head starting to spin.
“These shoes,” she said, pointing to the boots sitting on the floor beside her. “I bought them over this Web site, and there’s this shoe goddess, and—”
“Shoe goddess?”
She blinked. “I guess that sounds a little crazy, huh?”
He shook his head, just slightly. “Not as much as you might think.” Considering Protectors were descended from the Greek gods, it really wasn’t that unbelieveable at all.
“Well, anyway, the shoes are supposed to give you your heart’s desire, and, well, I wanted self-confidence, you know? And I guess Shoestra flipped that on its ear and made me totally kick-ass, but the truth is,” she continued, her words coming machine-gun fast, “I like it. It feels right. And I’m sorry if you don’t believe me, but I didn’t lie to you, and I only want—”
“Wait.” He held up a hand, exhausted from simply watching her. “Let’s take it back a notch. You’re trying to tell me you’re mortal? I’ve seen you in action, Lydia.”
But he believed her. He really did. For one thing, his bullshit meter wasn’t going off at all. For another, the text feature on his phone wasn’t blipping. It should be analyzing all this, and nothing was coming back saying that she lied.
Which either meant she was telling the truth, or it meant that the response time for the Auto-Detect feature was running slow again.
Nikko was willing to bet on the truth. Lydia, he thought, was something he was more than willing to gamble on.
She, however, didn’t know that yet, and as he watched, she put her hands on her hips and cocked her head, looking absolutely adorable. “Yes, I’m mo
rtal. I told you. It’s the shoes,” she said. “You’ve seen the shoes in action.” She drew in a shaky breath, then looked down at the ground. “I’m not like you. I’m not strong. I’m not really a superhero. It’s all about the shoes. Without them, I’m a complete loser.”
“No, you’re not.”
She looked up at him, her expression sad and a little hopeful. But then it changed. Her eyes widening and filling with terror.
He took a step toward her. “Lyd—?”
“Exactly, my dear,” answered a new voice, the words underscored by the crash of glass. “The shoes really are the center of it all, and I realized as much when I saw you in that alley. A fortuitous moment, to be sure.” He held out his hand. “And if you don’t mind,” said Rex Ruthless, “I’ll be taking them now.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Her shoes?
The ubervillain who’d pulled a U.S.S. Enterprise transporter trick in the alley right before her eyes—not to mention flipping her in midair—needed her shoes?
Lydia had no idea why someone who seemed to ooze powers of his own would want women’s shoes that upped your kick-ass factor, but she did know one thing: there was no way in hell she was letting him have them.
Those thoughts passed through her head in nanoseconds, and before she even had time to register that she had thought, she was rushing forward to shove her feet into her shoes, tripping over her toes in a tangle of limbs and jeans to get to them before he did.
Because he was trying!
Mere seconds after he’d spoken, he was lunging toward her shoes, with Nikko leaping on top of him. They rolled over, a mishmash of arms and legs, and then—suddenly—Nikko froze, his eyes wide with surprise.
“What did you do to him?” Lydia screamed, managing to tie the last lace and secure the boots firmly to her feet.
“It’s amazing the little tricks one can manage when one has access to Council prototypes,” Ruthless said, smiling thinly as he held up a small cylindrical silver contraption. “It won’t keep him frozen forever—and sadly I can’t repeat the freeze once it wears off naturally—but it should be plenty of time to get those shoes and head back to my laboratory.”
