A small fire had started when the paramedics told Eric he couldn’t accompany her to the hospital. He’d been escorted back to Trident, where he would stay until he could demonstrate he was no longer a danger to himself and others. Tandy couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital so she could go to him. There were things she needed to say. Things she hadn’t been able to tell him with her brothers and a dozen other supers crawling all over the warehouse demanding to know what had happened.
Finally the paperwork arrived and she was free to go. Her car was still wrecked in the alley as far as she knew, so Chance offered her a ride. He waited until she was buckled in and they were driving out of the lot before he said, “You could stay with me for a few days. I’m much easier to deal with than Frost and none of us will rest easy if you’re alone.”
“I won’t be alone. You can drop me at Trident.”
Chance’s eyebrows flew up. “Do I get a say? Because a pyro isn’t exactly premium brother-in-law material.”
“I never said we were getting married. I said you should drop me at Trident. And no, you don’t get a say.”
“He did come in handy today, so I guess I might not have to kill him for sullying your honor.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
She barely talked him out of escorting her all the way to the south bunker.
Butterflies flew patterns in her stomach as she walked down the long familiar hall, filled with a nervous anticipation. The vault doors beeped and opened, and she gasped at the destruction of the lab. “Eric?”
She rushed into the lab, searching for some sign of him among the charred and melted down equipment.
“Tandy?” He came out of the living area, fresh from the shower wearing just a pair of jeans—always with that aversion to clothes. “I thought you were still at the hospital.”
“What happened to your lab?”
He looked around, as if seeing the wreckage for the first time, and shrugged. “Darla told me you were kidnapped. This is what happened before I got to the frequency emitter.”
Wow. She probably shouldn’t think it was romantic that he’d gone off like Chernobyl when he heard she was in trouble, but damn. He came to her and gently framed her face with his hands. “You okay? I barely got to see you after the cavalry arrived.”
“I’m fine.”
He backed up a step and shoved his hands into his front pockets. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to come back here after the way things heated up.”
“You mean after you almost burned yourself out saving me?” She closed the distance between them, resting her hands on his bare chest, cast and all. “We got interrupted before I could thank you properly.”
She went up on her toes, but she was still in her flip flops and without her heels she wasn’t tall enough to reach his mouth without his help, and he wasn’t helping.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said, when he really ought to be kissing her. “I’ve been ignoring everything I feel for you, because the big emotions always trigger the fire. So I just pretended they weren’t there, but then you wound up getting hurt anyway.”
“Big emotions, huh? I like the sound of that. What kind of big emotions are we talking about?”
“I’m in love with you, Tandy.”
“Yeah?” She put her arms around his neck and tried to tug him down. “Then why aren’t you kissing me?”
“You deserve better. Even if we get the portable emitter working, I’m always going to be a fucked up pyrokinetic.”
“Turns out I like fucked up pyrokinetics.”
“Tandy, I’m serious.”
“You wanna be serious? All right. Let’s be serious. I never let myself get involved with a real relationship, because I think on some level, I felt like I didn’t really deserve them. Somewhere along the line, I bought into my own inferiority. I always went for guys who were less than I deserved. The Spineless Weasel Club, Frost called them. Until you. I’ve finally figured out that I deserve a great guy and that’s you. I’m in love with you, Eric Eisenmann. So will you please kiss me already?”
“Are you sure? You do deserve a great guy. Someone so much better than me.”
“Stop pretending to be modest and kiss me already. You’re my hero. It doesn’t get better than that, Super Sexy.”
“When you put it that way…” He reached down, wrapped his arms around her lifted her until their lips met. The kiss started soft and sweet and perfect—but just like every time they touched, it lit a fire and flared quickly into hot and aching and perfect.
After several minutes, Eric lifted his head with a groan. “I really need to get a mattress down here.”
Tandy grinned and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Yes you do. And as soon as we get your portable frequency emitter working, you are expected to take me out on a proper date. And meet my parents. And play nice with my brothers.”
“Bossy little thing, aren’t you?”
“I’m worth it.”
“Yes, you are.”
“But in the mean time, I have very fond memories of that couch. Why don’t we go visit it and you can see about setting my world on fire?”
She didn’t have to ask him twice.
About the Author
Vivi Andrews is the award-winning author of over a dozen paranormal romance novels and novellas. An incurable travel-junkie, she lives in Alaska when she isn’t flying, driving, or sailing off to explore some new corner of the world. For more about Vivi and her books, you can visit her website at www.viviandrews.com or blog at http://viviandrews.blogspot.com.
Also by Vivi Andrews
Karmic Consultants:
The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant
The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story
The Sexorcist
The Naked Detective
A Cop & A Feel
Finder’s Keeper
Naughty Karma—Coming October 2013
Serengeti Shifters:
Serengeti Heat
Serengeti Storm
Serengeti Lightning
Serengeti Sunrise
Superhero Romance:
Superlovin’
Super Bad
Super Hot
Super Trouble—Coming Soon
Stand Alone Novellas:
Ghosts of Boyfriends Past
No Angel
Reawakening Eden
Spinning Gold
Take a sneak peek inside Book 2 of the Superlovin’ series…
Super Bad
When your mind is a prison, love can set you free.
Ever since her supervillain father experimented on her as a child, Mirabelle “Mirage” Wroth has been able to project unbreakable illusions into the minds of those around her. But when a run-in with an evil Mind Bender snaps a delicate thread in her psyche, she loses control of her gift and can no longer tell where reality ends and illusion begins. Only sanctimonious superhero Captain Justice is immune to her gift and can help her find the truth again—if Mirage can trust another man to define her reality.
Justice is sick of saving damsels in distress—he just wants someone to look beyond the cape to see him—but he can’t turn away from the hauntingly vulnerable Mirage. Suddenly Justice is helping her hide from the police, willing to be downright villainous to be her hero. But as they work to save Mirage from herself, other forces are circling to threaten them both. Tangled in illusions and mind games, can love be real?
* * * * *
Mirage jerked awake in a strange room, disoriented, a chilled sweat making the unfamiliar cotton scrubs she was wearing cling to her body. No, not scrubs. Not medical. Institutional. Her awareness seemed to stutter, like a poorly cut movie, jerking her from moment to moment with no transitions. Something was wrong. Was she drugged? She felt quickly along her arms and throat for IVs, needle marks, but found no evidence.
The room was small. A box with four white walls, a high, narrow window, and a sturdy door that held another hig
h window, the light from the hall shimmering off the thin bands of metal reinforcing the heavy glass. A cell. Where was she? Did it matter?
Escape. The whisper came from inside her mind. It was her own voice, but there was something off about it. It was too confident, too sure, when she felt nothing but confusion and doubt. An outside force speaking in her own mind, in her own voice. Kevin. Mirage shuddered and quickly rolled off the bed and slid under it, hiding from whatever cameras might be watching her.
No. Not Kevin. She’d killed Kevin. Hadn’t she? Disjointed memories tripped over one another, overlapping in impossible ways. Breaking Kevin’s mind. Slitting Kevin’s throat. Listening to him scream. Banging his head hard against the floor. Yes, that one. No, strangling him, smothering him, a silent death.
Were they memories? Fantasies? He’d… done something. She shook her head, trying to shake some order into her thoughts. Why couldn’t she remember clearly? Kevin had tricked her, used her, bending her mind until she didn’t know where she began and he ended anymore, but she hadn’t been the one he wanted. Lucien. He’d been after her brother. Another fragment of memory surfaced—Lucien surrounded by Kevin’s mind-controlled hordes, swarmed by them, too many, even for a man with superstrength.
Had Kevin killed Lucien? Another cold shudder ripped through her body. Why wasn’t Lucien here? He would never abandon her. He would never leave her in a place like this and no force on Earth could keep Lucien from getting to her if he lived. He was too strong. He’d broken her out of Area Nine, the supervillain prison. She remembered that much. He would have broken her out of here. Wherever here was.
Escape. The word came again. Sounding more right this time. Escape and find Lucien. Escape and kill Kevin. Escape and shake the effects of whatever had her memories looking like a mirror that had been shattered and put back together in the wrong order, rough-edged pieces refracting back on one another in awkward, impossible ways.
The sound of a key in the lock was eerily loud, ringing in her ears. What fools held her that they thought they could enter her room with impunity? Or was she the foolish one? Had they given her something to inhibit her abilities? Were her disjointed memories only a side effect of some new super-suppressing drug?
Mirage held herself still under the bed, waiting, hoping to gather more information to fill in the massive blanks in her head.
Read More SUPER BAD.
Super Hot (a Superlovin' novella) Page 12
