Super Trouble (a Superlovin' novella)

by Vivi Andrews

  The muscles across Frost’s shoulders jumped visibly beneath his light jacket, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for the intruder.

  “Makes it real, doesn’t it? Scene of the crime. But if I moved every time some villain violated my place, I’d never have time to unpack.”

  He cursed under his breath.

  “Yeah. That’s what happened to me, Frost. I got kidnapped twenty-five times.” And you never came for me.

  She’d always waited for it to be him. Wanted it to be him. She’d never quite gotten him out of her system, no matter how she tried. Even when she had a drawer over at Justice’s apartment, she’d always had one eye on the door, waiting like an idiot for Frost to appear. And he never did.

  She shrugged. “My fucked up life. But now I’m tough. For the first few months after Demon dosed me, my powers were erratic. All over the freaking place. I lost my job at the Sentinel after I accidentally chucked my editor’s desk through a fourth floor window. I didn’t mean to, and I don’t think he wanted to fire me, but it was the right call. I was a hazard to everyone around me until I got the TK under control. But I’ve been practicing. I’m strong now. Ready to be a real super. Or I was. Until tonight. What did you do to me?”

  He’d been silent for so long, his voice almost startled her. “I froze you.”

  She became aware of that slight chill again, tickling right at the base of her skull. “Froze my powers, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But they’ll come back?”

  He nodded. “As soon as I let go.”

  “So let go.”

  The smile was slight, but for stoic Frost it might as well have been busting his cheeks wide open. “Can I trust you not to chuck me out a fourth floor window?”

  “You’ll never know until you try me.” She grinned. “Come on. Live dangerously.”

  “That’s never been my motto.”

  “No,” she acknowledged, briefly closing her eyes. “You’re more a save the world from itself type.”

  His jaw locked. “I have certain responsibilities.”

  “I remember.” It was a familiar argument. She could probably have recited both halves with no help from him, even if it had been five years since they’d gone toe-to-toe about what it meant to be super.

  Of course, things were different now. She was super too. No longer the cub reporter gazing up at the Big Bad Nightwing Enforcer like he hung the stars. She hadn’t been surprised when he left her. Heartbroken, yes. Surprised, no. She was powerless. She knew that was a dealbreaker for him. That she’d never be good enough.

  But she wasn’t powerless now.

  Or she wouldn’t be as soon as he unfroze her damn TK.

  “So how has the rogue hunting biz been treating you?” she asked conversationally. Just two old friends catching up.

  He shrugged, coming around to sit on the back of the couch so their legs almost brushed. “Same old, same old.”

  “And your family?” She’d never met the infamous Nightwings when they were dating. A fact that had always impressed on her exactly how little she meant to him. But he’d spoken of them often and she’d gotten to know a few of them professionally over the years, covering the superhero beat.

  “They’re good. Tandy’s in love and I haven’t wanted to beat her boyfriend to a bloody pulp more than once or twice, so I’d consider that a win.”

  “Eisenmann’s a good guy.”

  Frost nodded. “And your folks?”

  “Good. Retired now. They’re in the process of selling the house and moving to Arizona.”

  He nodded again, falling silent. And just like that they’d exhausted all the safe topics. So much for small talk.

  “Unfreeze my powers, Frost. I’m not stupid enough to try anything when you can just refreeze them whenever you choose.”

  The pale, pale blue of his eyes studied her. “Promise me you won’t stalk Little Vic again.”

  “I promise.”

  “Say it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I promise I won’t stalk Little Vic again.” Tonight.

  He frowned. Big Bad Frost, all ominous and glowery. Some things never changed. “Are you lying to me?”

  “That is the most ridiculous question. Why would I tell you if I was?”

  Her name came out of his mouth on a frustrated groan, but she felt that icy pressure at the back of her skull ease. Testing her power, she flicked out a lick of TK, flipping off the light she’d left on in the kitchen so they were left only in the pinkish glow from the lamp on the bookshelf.

  God, that felt good. Right. It was amazing how much a part of her the TK had become in only a few short months. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, making no move to leave, thank God. A strange sort of truce hovered between them and she wasn’t ready for it to end. Nor for him to walk out that door again. Probably without so much as a note this time.

  “This is your only warning, Trouble.” The words were soft, without any trace of a threat. “Stay away from Little Vic.”

  “I’m not going rogue. I don’t want to kill him. I don’t even really care about revenge.” Much. “I just want answers.” And to put some healthy fear into the little bug zapper so he passed the word along to all his buddies to stay the hell away from her.

  “Even if he confesses, he can’t be tried again. Your answers won’t change anything.”

  Kim hesitated only a moment, weighing how much to tell him. She trusted Frost. That wasn’t even a question. But so many people had given her that soft pitying look whenever she started in with her so-called conspiracy theories. She’d learned to keep her mouth shut, but that hadn’t impacted her certainty. Her journalistic spidey-senses had been twitching for years now. There was a story here. She was sure of it.

  She didn’t want to see that dismissive look in Frost’s winter blue eyes, but she had to give him something or he’d never help her. She’d never been the kind of girl who was daunted by risk—rushing toward the answers full tilt was more her style, earning her the nickname Frost had assigned her when they first met—but this risk was different. She wasn’t good at risking her heart and every interaction with Frost carried shades of that, even five years after she’d stopped mattering to him.

  “Kim?”

  She’d been silent too long. “I think there was more to it than a simple kidnapping.”

  ****

  The weight she put behind the words warned him not to ignore them—this was the real reason Kim couldn’t move on. “You think Little Vic had an ulterior motive for kidnapping you and he’s… what? Just been waiting five years to get around to activating his master plan?”

  “He’s already activated it.” She bounded out of the chair in a sudden burst of energy, pacing around the tight confines of the living room and flicking the massive recliner back into its usual position with a wave of her hand when it blocked her path. “He’s a big star now. The Villain America Loves to Hate. And do you know who paid for the first season of the show? An anonymous corporation. The same anonymous corporation that paid for the top notch legal team that got him acquitted. He was rewarded for kidnapping me. And he wasn’t the only one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Over the years some of them have let things slip. Little things. They all acted like I was a means to an end. They weren’t excited about kidnapping me. They were excited about whatever they would get for it. One even said he would rather have kidnapped someone else but it wasn’t his choice. Why would he say that if someone else wasn’t pulling the strings? Justice put most of them in prison, but the ones who got off are all rich and successful—and you can track the origin of their success to something that happened to them immediately after they kidnapped me.”

  “You think there’s some kind of bounty on your head? That young villains are being paid to kidnap you? Why? If the man with all this money wants to hurt you, why not just abduct you himself? And why reward the ones who just kidnap you? What’s the purpose of tha
t?”

  “Why not kill me, right? I wonder the same thing. But no one gets kidnapped twenty-five times as a coincidence, Frost.”

  “You were dating Justice.”

  “Lots of girls date supers. Admittedly most of them are super themselves and can hold their own, but not all of them and those girlfriends get kidnapped once, twice at the most.”

  “You’re high profile. You write about the super beat, so they think they’ll get their names in the paper by coming after you.”

  “Which might account for part of it, but twenty-five? Really? At first I thought it was some sort of initiation ritual. That kidnapping me was an entrance exam for some kind of super villain club. I thought the corporation had to be some kind of coalition of bad guys.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know. It could be that. It could be one puppet master pulling strings behind the scenes. Whatever it is, I want answers and Little Vic is the key. He was the first. I need this, Frost. Just this one thing for myself.”

  “Heroes don’t work for themselves. That isn’t how it works. It isn’t vengeance or vendettas that makes a super into a hero. It’s helping others.”

  She stopped her pacing in front of him, only a foot separating them. “You’re a hero. You could help me.”

  “Why would I do that?” He said it dismissively, but she had him intrigued.

  “Keep me out of trouble. Satisfy that do-gooder gene that runs so dominantly in the Nightwing DNA.” She moved another half-step closer, and he widened his knees to make room for her between them. “No one takes my theories seriously,” she said, her voice huskier as she gazed pleadingly into his eyes. “He ruined my life, Frost. Made me a victim.”

  “Sounds like vengeance to me,” he murmured back, his own voice unaccountably gravelly. Suddenly the low lighting carried a new intimacy, caressing the lines of her face and making her—impossibly—even more beautiful.

  Her hands rose between them, brushing his chest butterfly-light before moving up over his shoulders. She continued to hold his gaze. “You won’t even do it for me?” she whispered, the low tone wrapping the net of desire that much tighter. “For what we used to mean to each other? I’ve missed you, Frost.”

  She shuffled another step closer until his thighs pressed against her hips on either side. Her fingers linked at the back of his neck and she leaned close, her touch fire against his skin. He could see the rest of the moment playing out in graphic detail. The first brush of her mouth. The fuse it would light—that cold fire chain reaction of lust that only Kim incited. He could have her beneath him on the couch in a heartbeat. Or pinned against the wall. The bedroom was too far. They’d never make it there. Right here on the floor maybe, if his knees gave out under that first blast of need. Unless she had the presence of mind to use her TK to drag something beneath them.

  It would be good. So damn good. Blood rushed south, driven by the images flashing vividly in his mind. She would ignite against him. He could see in her eyes that she would be just as sweetly eager as his memories painted her.

  Memories he was itching to relive.

  Chapter Five: Advanced Negotiation

  She tipped her face up to his. She was close enough for the brown-sugar sweetness of her scent to tease. Still using that same bodywash after all these years. What else would be the same? The way she responded to him, so wild and demanding? He could have her again, after all this time. Once more to banish her from his thoughts forever—if such a thing was even possible.

  Except this time it would be because she wanted something from him.

  Shit. Frost wrapped his hands around Kim’s upper arms and held her away, trying to send cooling thoughts below his belt without much success. Five years hadn’t dulled the memories of how good it could be between them. He needed to put the brakes on as fast as possible. He made his tone purposefully brutal.

  “You think you’re the first superheroine to try to fuck me into compliance?”

  Her eyes widened and he waited for her hand to flash out in a second—well-deserved—slap, but Kim never failed to surprise him. A spark kindled in her eyes and a slow smile curved the mouth he could be kissing right now. “You just called me a superheroine. No one’s ever called me that before.”

  “Maybe if you acted like one, more people would call you that.”

  She shrugged, leaning forward against his grip as if she was enjoying the feel of his hands on her, her own falling to rest on his upper thighs—way too close to the part of him that was still emphatically in favor of tumbling her beneath him onto the couch. “It isn’t like there’s a superhero training academy or something where I can go to learn how to be a do-gooder. The folks at Trident helped me learn how to control my powers, but you know how those scientists are. They work with as many villains as heroes and they’re Switzerland when it comes to the morality of it. How’s a girl to learn all the rules of being a good guy? You wanna teach me?”

  The last was a purr. Far too suggestive for his overactive libido.

  “I’m not a teacher.” He was a monster. The bogeyman.

  God, it would kill him to have to come after her. He needed her to be good. But being good was all about rules and limits and he knew Kim. She had a tendency to crash through any barriers when she wanted answers. It made her an excellent reporter—but the job requirements for supers were different. They couldn’t abuse their power.

  “How about a partner?” she pressed against his hold, another inch closer and he fought to focus on what she was saying.

  “Partner?”

  “I could use a partner. Someone big and bad who I could trust to always have my back. I still trust you, Frost.” Her hands moved, up to the crease of his thighs and along the sides of his abdomen—never touching where he was burning.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Shouldn’t trust you?” she repeated—though he wasn’t sure that’s what he’d been referring to. “You’re probably right, but I’ve always been stupid where you’re concerned. We proved that pretty thoroughly five years ago, didn’t we?”

  “Kim…” He caught her hands, pressing them together between his own against his chest. He made his touch icy cold and she gasped, a shiver rippling over her shoulders, her nipples beading hard against the thin material of her shirt. Sweet Jesus. “Stop. I don’t work with a partner.”

  “Are you sure about that? We’d make a good team. I’m not helpless anymore.”

  Now that he wasn’t holding her shoulders away from him, she pressed even closer, the heat of her intoxicating as she inhaled deeply, breathing him in.

  “You were never helpless.” For all she called herself a victim, she’d never been that. She was a fighter who never gave up, even though the whims of nature had given others super advantages over her for so long.

  “Of course I was,” she insisted. “That’s why you left me, wasn’t it? At least that’s the reason you gave in your note.”

  “What? That wasn’t—”

  “Oh, I know. You didn’t want to endanger me. You were protecting me—because I wasn’t strong enough to protect myself if someone came after me.”

  He opened his mouth to argue. It had never been a case of her not being enough for him in any way. It was him who hadn’t been good enough, strong enough, fast enough to protect her, not the other way around. But Kim didn’t give him a chance to get a word in.

  “I get why you bailed then, but I’m a badass now.” She wrinkled her nose. “Admittedly, you caught me tonight, but you’re Frost freaking Nightwing, the Enforcer. You can catch anyone. If it hadn’t been you, I would have stomped all over the opposition with my new badassery.”

  She used a quick pulse of TK to break his hold on her hands, as if reminding them both of what she could do now. Once she was free, she pressed closer again, putting her hands on the outsides of his knees, where they were spread around her hips.

  “I always hated the idea of someone rushing into danger to sa
ve me because I was too weak, but now I can rescue myself. I’m tough. No more endangering others for me. Kim Carruthers is never going to be bait in a super trap ever again.”

  No, she wasn’t bait. She was temptation. A temptation he’d conditioned himself to resist for the last five years. He rested his hand over hers on his knee, because he couldn’t resist that one touch before he had to leave.

  “I should go.”

  That summer storm anger flashed instantly in her eyes. “That sounds familiar.”

  “Kim…”

  She drew away from him, leaving him feeling suddenly, strangely chilled—he who never noticed the cold. She crossed to her door, leaning against the wall beside it with her arms folded tightly. “Well? Go on. Time for the famous Frost Nightwing exit. At least this time I’m awake to see it.”

  He cringed—okay, maybe leaving just a note had been cowardly, but he’d known she would argue and he’d known that he would never be able to leave her if she asked him to stay. So he’d done the cowardly thing, just that once. He straightened from his perch on the back of the couch. “I’m sorry about that—”

  “Apologies don’t count after five years, Frost. They have about a six month shelf-life and then you’re just irrevocably an asshole, no matter how you beg.”

  He grimaced. “Fair enough.”

  He crossed to the door, feeling inexplicably like she was kicking him out when he was the one who’d suggested he should leave. He’d screwed up again. She’d gone from being so warm and easy in his arms to rigid and unyielding beside the door. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to play out.

  Not that he’d let himself think about how it would play out. He hadn’t even let himself think her name until he saw her, and then all he could think of was how wrong it was that he didn’t know this new version of Kim. How natural it was to protect her—even from herself. And how badly he wanted the right to touch her. But he’d burned away all those rights five years ago with a goddamn note.