Heroine Complex

by Sarah Kuhn

  “I don’t think you have anything resembling a delicate—”

  “I mean, we can’t because I will burn you to death.”

  His fingers flexed against my back again and I felt another stab of wanting, so fierce I gasped out loud.

  “Remember the closet,” I managed to get out.

  We just stared at each other for a moment, our breathing still jagged. Even though I knew it was a bad idea to stay all tangled up in him, I couldn’t quite bring myself to get out of his lap.

  “Evie,” he finally said. “At the mall, you directed the fire at Aveda. You controlled it.”

  “No need to rub it in,” I muttered.

  He gave me a half-smile. “On the contrary; I thought it was impressive.” He took one of my hands in his and brushed his thumb over my palm. “Your hand isn’t even hot,” he said. “Despite what just . . . happened. Between us.” Color rose in his cheeks. “Consider the changes your power appears to have gone through the past few days. It seems to be gaining more nuance.”

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  But then I did consider it. Not only had I taken out Tommy and the hand, I’d also managed to keep the fire inside during moments of extreme stress. Like when I’d had to deal with Maisy and Shasta outside the Nordstrom security office. Or when Nate had infuriated me so much, I’d stalked off in a huff. Or when I’d found myself getting more and more enraged with Bea and Aveda before the hand had attacked us . . .

  Wait a minute.

  In that case I’d told the fire to stay put.

  I’d given my power an order, and it had obeyed.

  And, hell, hadn’t I also kind of given it an order when I’d gotten the disembodied hand off me? Telling it to come out gradually, so I wouldn’t burn myself up? If anything, the moment in The Gutter closet was an anomaly.

  I wiggled my fingers experimentally. My palms were still cool. Okay, so maybe my temper could use some work, but when it came to the fire power itself, was I actually gaining control?

  “I’m sorry,” Nate’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I didn’t mean to push. I’m not trying to . . . to . . .”

  “To get it on with me, thereby fulfilling your weird fetish that involves burning down entire buildings and getting yourself incinerated?” I cocked an eyebrow.

  “No!” He looked horrified. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave. I—”

  “No—don’t. I’m sorry. I was kidding. Badly.” I brought my hands to either side of his face, studying his features. Usually so harsh, they were rendered softer and less distinct by the darkness of the room. “I think you’re right. My control is getting better. Much better.”

  His hands tightened around my hips and desire flooded my senses again, overwhelming everything.

  “And I think . . . I would like to have sex right now. With you,” I clarified. My breathing had gotten all shaky again.

  “There’s still the question of regret,” he said. “You have a lot happening at the moment, a lot of conflicting emotional states, and tomorrow I don’t want you to feel like—”

  “Stop.” I met his eyes. “I may not know much right now, but I know I want this. And I don’t want to think about what it means. I want to exist in this moment and I want . . .” The full weight of everything that had happened that day washed over me. My voice broke and I swallowed. No more crying. “I want the rest of the world to disappear for a little while. Okay?”

  He stared back at me and I thought he was going to move me to the side, to leave, to let my delicate girl-soul down easy. Instead, one side of his mouth tipped up and his eyes lit with tenderness, softening his face even further. He covered one of my hands with his.

  “Okay.”

  We took a few precautions. We agreed to go slow. And at my request Nate found the fire extinguisher we kept downstairs and put it next to the bed.

  And then we were back to me straddling him. We stared at each other, unsure of what to do now that we’d taken a little break from the heat of passion. I shifted uncomfortably as the silence stretched on too long.

  Finally I said, “Maybe you should kiss me.”

  He rested his hands on my waist.

  “You’re the one who made the, er, final decision. That we should do this. I think you should kiss me.”

  “Yeah, pretty sure we’re both really into my decision. I’d say there’s some very convincing proof . . .” My eyes drifted downward, right below his waistband. “ . . . that you’re equally—”

  His mouth was on mine before I could complete that thought, his hands taking charge and pulling me flush against him. The aforementioned proof pressed against the critical juncture between my legs, but before I could so much as moan, he rolled me onto my back, his hands sliding underneath my tank top, the electric brush of his fingertips raising goose bumps on the most sensitive parts of my skin.

  “Are we really fighting,” he said between kisses, “about how we’re going to have sex?”

  “You started it,” I murmured, biting his lower lip.

  “I don’t think so. But I’m not going to argue with you.”

  He pulled back and gave me a wicked smile. “There are much better things I could be doing with my mouth right now.”

  Before I could fully process the fact that 1) Nate made a joke and 2) Nate made a dirty joke, he was making good on that promise, trailing kisses down my neck and between my breasts. Every brush of his lips was an incendiary mark, a touch that sent shockwaves coursing through me. His hands skimmed my torso, playing with the ragged hem of my old tank top, then yanking hard, instantly transforming my shirt into shreds.

  “Hey.” My hand jutted out, landing on his chest. “Do you really have to ruin all my shirts like that?”

  He smiled at me, twisting a particularly sproingy lock of my hair around his finger and giving it a little tug. “The one I just . . . removed was almost destroyed anyway.”

  I bit my lip to keep my traitorous mouth from smiling back. “Take yours off, too.”

  His grin widened and he obliged, slipping his black cotton number over his head and revealing . . . wow. I knew he was fit. But even my most vivid imaginings couldn’t have conjured the beautiful muscles of his chest, the way they flowed into impossibly broad shoulders. My greedy fingertips skimmed over the terrain of his bare skin. I wanted to touch it all.

  We made a wordless agreement to do away with the rest of our clothes. And then he knelt between my thighs, nothing left between us but the thin cotton of his boxers and the lace of my panties. I allowed my eyes to flutter closed, wondering what was next. He was so big. Those broad shoulders. That gorgeous chest. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was, you know . . . proportional.

  I mean, he’d certainly felt impressive when we were pressed up against each other the night before, but I hadn’t been able to really get the full picture—

  “Oh.” His voice broke into my porny thoughts. “Wow.”

  I remembered then that I was wearing neon yellow underwear. My eyes flew open.

  “You trying to blind me?” His voice was laced with amusement.

  I propped myself up on my elbows, getting my best glare on. “I didn’t exactly expect that we would be—oh.”

  Suddenly his tongue was stroking me through neon lace, hitting the exact right spot to send spikes of pleasure rocketing through me. I gasped hard, want giving way to need.

  He lifted his head. No wicked grin this time—just pure intensity. He touched my hand. Which was still perfectly cool, no sign of fire at all.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I managed to squeak out.

  He hooked his thumbs under the waistband of my panties and slowly dragged them off, his eyes never leaving mine.

  And then I was naked in front of him.

  He hesitated, his eyes roaming my body, and I felt self-conscious. I had
n’t been naked in front of someone in a very long time. Not since Richard.

  “Wh-what?” I stuttered. My arms crossed over my chest, trying to cover some of my bared skin. “Is something wrong?”

  Maybe my breasts were lopsided. Maybe that random smattering of freckles on my left hip was off-putting. Maybe I looked weird naked.

  He gently pried my crossed arms away from my body, interlacing his fingers with mine and pinning my hands on either side of my head. “No,” he said softly. He leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “I just like looking at you.”

  I flushed all over.

  He squeezed my hands. “Still okay?” he whispered.

  I took inventory. My hands remained nice and cool. The fire was staying put.

  “Definitely okay,” I whispered back.

  He released my hands and pulled back to study me again, and now I could see the raw desire in his gaze. He slipped off his glasses and set them on the nightstand—an endearingly tidy gesture—then lowered himself along my body. He framed my hips with his hands and found me again with his tongue, marking my most intimate spot with his mouth. The pleasure had been intense even with the barrier of my panties. Now it was almost unbearable, nearly sending me over the edge. My fingernails dug into his shoulders.

  I was practically panting with need as he worked his way up, planting lingering, open-mouthed kisses on my hipbone, my navel, the delicate underside of my right breast. When he finally slipped my nipple between his teeth, I almost combusted, white light exploding behind my eyes as my lashes fluttered shut, my fingers thrusting into his hair to pull him closer, my back arching so far off the bed, I felt like I might break in half.

  A sharp cry of protest escaped me as he pulled away from my breast, but he stopped it with a kiss, his wall of a chest pressing against me, both of us slick with sweat, our heartbeats united again.

  He pulled back and brought a hand to my face, brushing my hair out of my eyes. Gentle, even in the midst of our moment of complete inhibition-shedding.

  He took my hands again, brushing his thumbs over my palms.

  My palms were good to go.

  All of me was good to go.

  Stay put, I thought at the fire. For the love of God: please stay fucking put.

  “Yes?” he whispered.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, bringing my lips to his ear.

  “Yes.”

  He rolled away from me and yanked open the nightstand drawer, scrabbling around for a condom and nearly falling off the edge of the bed in the process. If I hadn’t been so focused on the very serious business of having sex with him, I might have giggled.

  He finally found what he was looking for and slipped off his boxers and . . .

  Oh. Oh, God.

  So, yes—he was definitely proportional.

  He put the condom on and then he was back to me, his big hands lifting my hips. He slid inside of me in one long thrust and I groaned low in my throat. He felt good. So goddamn good, I could barely stand it.

  He gasped my name in that hoarse, husky way that undid me completely.

  And we went over the edge together.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE DISEMBODIED HAND reached for my neck again.

  I scuttled backward and it swiped at me, claws extended, as if it could already feel my neck in its slimy grasp. The crude tattoo on its index finger mocked me, a mysterious rune I couldn’t decipher. I tried to scoot backward again, tried to get the fuck out of the way, but I couldn’t gain traction. One of the claws made contact, cutting a deep groove into my wrist.

  I stared at the cut. It didn’t hurt. In fact, my entire arm was numb. Blood started to drip from the wound, slowly at first. Then it picked up speed: gushing, flowing. I pressed my hand over the cut, but blood poured through my fingers. And then it was everywhere, coating my entire body, a red haze obstructing my vision. I opened my mouth to scream and was choked by an onslaught of blood pouring into my mouth.

  I couldn’t call for help. I was drowning. I was dead. I was overtaken by the roaring in my ears, a deep growl that started low and crescendoed into a wall of sound. And then I was slipping away . . .

  My eyes snapped open. I jerked my wrist up to my face. It was unblemished, unbloodied. I wasn’t dead. I was in my bed, safe.

  And yet the roaring in my ears was still disturbingly present. I rolled onto my side and was greeted by a wall of muscular man-flesh. A wall of muscular man-flesh emitting a snore so powerful, I could practically feel the bed frame shake.

  Oh. Right.

  I eased myself into a sitting position, doing my best not to wake Nate. My fuzzy comforter had twisted itself around his giant frame, a comical imitation of a too-small toga. There were things about his body I hadn’t noticed in the dark of night: the muscular curve of his back, the surprising grace housed in those thick limbs, the pale latticework of scars crisscrossing over his left shoulder. I brushed a fingertip over the scars, wondering where they had come from.

  He was, I thought, kind of heartbreakingly beautiful.

  My fluttery thought was cut short when he let loose with another snore.

  I bit my lip to keep from giggling. I was thankful to that snore for snapping me out of my nightmare. I rolled onto my back, shuddering at the memory of the hand reaching for my neck.

  Three makes a trend. The phrase popped into my head out of nowhere. It had been a standby during my stint in academia, a thing professors liked to spit out to get you to better prove whatever thesis you’d been struggling to justify. And while I’d definitely struggled with it at the time, the rule was pretty sound and eventually led me to some of my best paper topics.

  The Aveda statues. The Tommy demon. The hand.

  All three of these things moved in similar lurching fashion. And . . . hmm. Come to think of it, the hand followed the pattern of imprinting on something very human-like. Did that mean something? What was the trend? Besides the fact that they were different from the demons we’d dealt with before?

  What were they after?

  Suddenly it hit me.

  That’s it, I thought. Or at least . . . that’s something.

  I sat up and punched Nate in the arm.

  “Nate,” I yelped. “Wake up.” He grunted and pulled a pillow over his head.

  I clambered on top of him, straddling him at the waist.

  “Nate.”

  “Mrph?”

  I yanked his pillow shield away and tossed it to the side. He threw an arm over his eyes. I jounced around, batting at his chest.

  “Naaaaaaate!”

  He lowered his arm, eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light and took me in. I was wearing his shirt and nothing else. He’d argued that I should put it on before going to sleep so I didn’t “catch cold from the freezing air seeping in through that window you insist on leaving open.” I’d just wanted to pass out after the mind-blowing series of orgasms he’d given me. We’d bickered about it, but I’d ultimately given in—the shirt was soft and smelled like him.

  It hit me that we were both half-naked and in the potentially awkward throes of the morning after. I decided to just motor through the theory I wanted to share without acknowledging that.

  “This possible new breed of demons,” I said. “I think they’re stalking Aveda.”

  I paused to make sure he was fully awake and listening to me. He appeared to be. He was also resting his hands on my hips. Which was kind of nice. I forced myself to focus.

  “In the places where we’ve seen these out of the ordinary demon things—Whistles, the Yamato, and the mall—Aveda was there right before the attack happened. She had to go down to Whistles the day before the party to scope out the atmosphere. She was skulking around the Nordstrom shoe department, shoplifting with Bea, right before the hand appeared.”

  “And what about the Yamato?” he asked.
“Since when has Aveda Jupiter deigned to go to something as pedestrian as a movie?”

  I poked his chest. “Every Friday, eleven a.m. matinee. She’s there, usually wearing some terrible disguise. Always hoping someone will recognize her and tweet about how down-to-earth Aveda Jupiter is, going to bargain matinees and all. And how fantastic she looks in her disguise, of course.” His eyes widened in surprise. “I guess that was our secret.”

  “What about the League benefit?” he said. He looked at me thoughtfully, his words free of their usual know-it-all air.

  “What about it?”

  “Didn’t you see a demon on your way to the bathroom? While you were glamoured as Aveda? One of the statue demons?”

  “I thought I imagined it, but . . .” I called up the image in my head and forced my brain to accept what my gut already knew was true. “It was there,” I said. “I think it must’ve ducked out that alternate bathroom exit you and I used to leave. And . . .” A chill ran up my spine as I replayed the scene from yesterday. “And the hand at the mall: it threw itself at her. It was trying to strangle her before I stepped in the way.”

  He nodded slowly. “So if they are stalking Aveda . . . why? What’s their goal?”

  I thought about it. I’d been giddy about my possible revelation, but as I contemplated it further, dread built in my chest. “Let’s think about the theory that this new evolution of demons is smarter. I mean, the hand didn’t interact with us like Tommy, but it played piano, which indicates some level of intelligence beyond the usual ‘I want to eat everything in sight’ credo.”

  I looked at him to see if he was following me. He nodded.

  “So if they are smarter, maybe they’ve keyed into the fact that Aveda Jupiter always takes them down,” I said. “Maybe they think if they defeat her, they can take over the world. Or at least the city.”

  “Do you think that directive-issuing stone from Cake My Day—‘You need three’—is connected?”

  “Three . . .” I trailed off, a shiver running up my spine.

  Three makes a trend.

  “Maybe whoever’s in charge, whoever the directive was issued to, has the three they need?” I said. “The statues, the hand, and Tommy? But if so, what happens next? Does that mean they’re all set to take Aveda out?”