Misadventures with a Super Hero Read online

  I curve my fingers in, catching the edge of her hairline, outlining her features with an ethereal glow. My glow. “Fuck.” I gulp hard, struggling to put what I feel into words, but finally accept that uselessness. I can only stare, gutted and grateful, for what she’s done for me in this moment. Her elegant profile illuminated like this turns my garishness into a gift, my curse into inspiration.

  Because of her, I’m no longer a victim. I’m a survivor.

  I’m stronger.

  And maybe, someday, I can even think of calling myself a hero.

  For right now, it only matters that she sees me as one.

  With her eyes glimmering and her lips parted, she releases my hand and slides her touch up my arm. Once she gets to my shoulder, she doesn’t stop. Tremors radiate across my back as she skates her hand down, skimming past my waist, before molding a palm across my ass. Before I can process how fucking good that feels, she grips my other cheek too.

  Pulling me closer to her softness. Urging me deeper into her beauty.

  I fall onto my elbows. Our faces are inches apart. Her eyes are like sapphire smoke. Her skin is a sheen of arousal. I inhale as she exhales. Her breath smells like sex… The essence she’s already kissed off my cock. The desire I have yet to sate.

  The lust with which she claws into my ass, seating me tighter between her legs.

  “Light me up, Reece.” Her voice is a shimmering, demanding plea. “Do it. Light me up. From the inside.”

  “Emma.” I shake now too, fighting to restrain myself. There are more words to be said here. Words that must be said. Shit about being careful and grabbing condoms and…

  “It’s all right.” She rocks beneath me, lithe and lusty, taunting my dick with the soft, soaked layers of her pussy. “I’m on the pill. I didn’t tell you before, because—” She interrupts herself, coloring a little. “Well, because…”

  I kiss her nose in reassurance. “It’s all right, beauty. I get it.”

  “And now you’ve got me.” She lifts her legs, crossing them at the small of my back. “And I need you. Please. All of you. Every freaky, weird, magnificent, glowing inch of—oh!”

  As hot as I am, she’s hotter.

  As taut as I am, she’s tighter.

  As bright as I am, she’s so much brighter. Illuminated. Ablaze. A sensual, incredible angel, looking like a goddamned page out of a comic book herself. Her hair fans against my sheets as if she’s flying. Her face, surrounded by my neon fingers, is alight with strength, sensuality, surrender, joy. Her body, spread for me, is a collection of muscle and might and power—especially in the center of the gem where we’re joined. As we rock, completely in sync with each other, the light of that juncture pulses and intensifies.

  “Ohhhh!” She screams it again as I shove at her legs.

  “Ohhhh!” Once more as I stretch her deeper.

  “Ohhhh!” Even louder as I slam into the tight, dripping oval welcoming my cock.

  I stop only for a second to grab at the pillows and bunch them behind her head. “No more closed eyes, Emmalina.” I angle her head down, ensuring she focuses toward the sight of her body sucking me in, over and over and over. “Watch,” I dictate. “Watch me.”

  “Yes.” Her breath-filled obedience is like rocket fuel to every inch of my dick. “Yes.”

  My balls constrict.

  The fusion of our bodies is raw radiance.

  “Do you like the freak fucking you?”

  The beast inside me growls into my words, feeling so damn good to be let out.

  “Don’t see any freaks around here, Mr. Richards.” She puts a coy spin on the smirk. “You sure you got the right address for that claim?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.”

  “Better check again.” Her eyelids go heavy, emphasizing the tease of her pouting lips. “Or…knock a little harder.”

  My grin splits wider.

  My cock swells against her walls.

  “You are really asking for it, Miss Crist.”

  “Damn right I am, freak.”

  I’m not sure what drives me more blissfully insane—the sexy sarcasm in her tease or the come-on in her eyes. In the end, it doesn’t matter. In the end, I’m ramming her tight, perfect cunt with all the force I can flex into my hips, all the power I can surge into my cock…all the passion I can summon to my spirit.

  All the pleasure, heat, and fire I can give her—bursting into the high, aching joy of her climax.

  “Reece!”

  “Emma.”

  “Need…you…with me!”

  “On my way, beauty.”

  Not a lie.

  Because I am. Because I do.

  My cock isn’t just the color of a laser beam anymore. It feels like a laser beam, consumed by a cataclysm and pushing through the cosmos of blinding heat and fury until it bursts like a goddamn star, pouring liquid life into ultimate darkness. Fucking and fucking and fucking, until there’s nothing left of the light anymore.

  But everything left of the ashes. And the freak is rising from them like the most bizarre new phoenix in the history of ashes. A guy I’m not sure I recognize. A man who might actually be ready for this super hero gig.

  Like he just might have something worthy to add to the narrative.

  Not that I’m ready to go spreading that shit around.

  I mean, it’s just a thought. At the end of the day, I’m a man more used to VIP ropes than police tape. I’m happier finding discrepancies on spreadsheets than tracking down bad guys in sewers. I thought it might be the right thing to do, after all the douchebag moments to which I’ve subjected the world, to pay back Karma—and, yeah, The Consortium—by going out in a blaze of glory instead of headlines of scandal. Who thought a few do-the-right-thing moments might actually feel right too.

  Not that I was ever really taught anything about “right.” In boarding school, “conduct” and “character” were ideologies to make fun of between chasing tail and sneaking booze, not part of the life lessons I ever learned from Chase Richards.

  Maybe that’s why I question how good everything feels now. How right.

  It’s her. Emmalina. I’m obsessed with her beauty, slammed by her passion, floored by her purpose, consumed by her simple but sublime wonder. And I know, even if the world never does, that with this, with her, I got shit right at least once in my life.

  I know it with the certainty still flooding me, hours later, when I drag my eyes open and still find her in my bed. I know it as I reach over to brush hair from her face and feel a smile breach my lips in tandem with the one curling hers. I know it with every thump of the heartbeat rising to greet her touch as she slides over and burrows against me.

  “Mmm.” She inflects it with kittenish gusto. “You’re warm.”

  “And you don’t even have to plug me in.”

  “Oh, there’s another one for the he’s-a-keeper column.” Her teeth snag her bottom lip. “Not that you’re a keeper keeper. I mean, not like that. I mean”—she gulps—“shit. Can I have a do over?”

  “Not on your fucking life.” I jam a firm kiss to her forehead. “I like being your keeper.” I slide my lips down the bridge of her nose. “Just say you’ll be mine too.”

  “I want to. But Reece…”

  “Yeah?” Stay open. Stay calm. But that’s easier said than done. I’m the one used to doling out this kind of anxiety. Suffering it is no fucking fun.

  She flattens a hand over my sternum again and gazes right into my eyes. “I need to know everything.” A careful swallow. “About Angelique.”

  I roll to my back and suck in a long breath. She shifts too, rolling to lie on her side next to me. “What about her?”

  “She’s the one, isn’t she?” Her query is soft and knowing. “The one you trusted. Who led you into the hell that changed everything.”

  I snort out a laugh. She looks like I just hurled in the bed. Not sure I don’t want to, especially when replying. “I wasn’t exactly white milk, apple pie, and innocence about the who
le thing, okay? I met the woman in Paris, in a club where condoms and blow were offered on the menu next to appetizers, and the private rooms were more crowded than the dance floor. We did the circuit there together for a week, and I was enthralled because she knew more people than I did.”

  I’m not comfortable, but I keep going. She deserves the truth, and in this case, the truth doesn’t come in a scrapbook surrounded by hearts and flowers.

  “When she told me the scene in Barcelona was more interesting than Paris, I jumped at the chance to follow her there. She played me perfectly, knowing the exact bait to dangle. I wanted the goodies none of my friends had seen yet. The experience none of them could buy through the normal channels.”

  Emma curls her hand into a fist, forms her other hand over it, and then parks her chin on the stack. “You wanted more.”

  Three simple words, meaning so much. Meaning too much.

  “Maybe.” It’s more like probably, but it feels wrong to lay the filter of my depraved life over the earnest honesty of hers. To her, “more” has been a synonym for expanding her world. To the man I was, it was a chance to get off on new thrills and expand my empire of illicitness.

  Pathetic, stupid man. Grasping small, insignificant dreams.

  I had the capacity to do so much more. To be so much more.

  Thank fuck she’s there again, her tender voice hauling me out of my moroseness. “So what happened then?”

  “We’d been in Barcelona a few nights. I was getting bored with the scene, but Angelique kept me on her string—and finally told me about a private rave on the outskirts of the city. A real Bohemian bash in some secret warehouse with designer drugs and royal family cousins and shit.”

  She contemplates that with a tight look. “Only it wasn’t a party.”

  At first, I give her only thick silence. I use the pause to turn my stare back up at the ceiling. I reach to the back of her head and comb my fingers through her strands, using the movement as subliminal Zen. “You know that urban legend about the businessman who sleeps with the hooker, gets drugged, and wakes up missing a kidney? It was sort of like that, but if there was sex first I missed it, and the ‘hooker’ was a bunch of big guys in lab coats telling me they’d formed a global conglomeration called The Consortium.”

  “The what?” She stiffens. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “Wasn’t sure. And I didn’t care, since I’d just been checked into a joint that sure as hell wasn’t the Ritz. Slowly but surely, they let me in on the joke—but it wasn’t a joke. I’d been recruited as a subject in their groundbreaking research in the field of human DNA improvement through electronic enhancement.”

  She jerks upright and stares as if I’m about to reveal the big joke of the story, but with her lungs pumping frantically, she knows I’m not. She hears my truth. And crazily, crucially, she believes it. “Oh, my God,” she rasps.

  I shrug again. It looks caustic, but I know she sees that truth too—that it’s the sarcastic shield to lessen the stain of the memories. “God wasn’t around much,” I mutter. “Plenty of his son-of-a-bitch friends, though. What’s that fun expression? Devil’s in the details?”

  With that, even fixating on the ceiling won’t help. I push away the covers, roll to the side of the bed, and plant my feet on the floor to make the room stop spinning—and keep the cockroaches of memory from invading my mind. “Those bastards were very detailed.”

  I let my eyes slide shut. In my mind, I escape to visions of mountains and meadows and peace… My refuge when the lab and the walls and the pain threatened to drown out everything I was.

  Not working. Not anymore.

  What works now…is her.

  Emma’s fingers, soft as wind, brushing my hunched shoulders. Her body, like a waterfall, draping across my back. Her kisses, healing as herbs, following my jawline. She coaxes me back, willing my body back, though my mind clings to the fear. The vow I made to myself over and over again during those months before one of the guards got careless with my shackles one night, giving me the sole chance to escape that hell.

  But along with that memory, I also recall the mantra. The vow I swore I’d never forget—or betray.

  Never. Trust. Again.

  A year. I’ve honored the crap out of every syllable of that oath through every second of every day for the last goddamned year. Haven’t even been tempted to abandon it.

  Until now.

  Until, bathing in the perfection of her touch and the light of her comfort, I’m torn to let it all go. To let her all the way in. I’ve already given her the truth of my existence, and she’s already returned it with the gifts of her adoration, her acceptance, her passion. But there’s more. So much more. So much still bricked-up and blocked—those parts of me that were young and arrogant and stupid. Maybe they don’t even exist anymore. I haven’t even looked behind the wall in a year. Maybe they were fried by the lightning and are now shriveled husks in the heart that once pledged to keep them alive, hoping some extraordinary someone would come along to heal them one day.

  Someone like her.

  “You’re not there anymore, Reece. You’re right here, and you’re perfectly safe with me.”

  “Thanks.” I want to add more but can’t. The vow has been embedded deep into my psyche.

  Never. Trust. Again.

  “Hey.” Her fresh tone, inching toward a little playfulness, makes my head perk up. “You got any wheels around here? Other than Z’s?”

  I bark in laughter. Before she can deliver much of a confused scowl, I sweep off the bed, scoop up the T-shirt, and toss it at her. I fish into the dresser for a pair of my drawstring shorts, usually reserved for home gym workouts, and add the Pentatonix sweatshirt I borrowed from her last night. “Those’ll fit you for now. Come on.”

  A few minutes later, we’ve descended to a garage below my building’s public space, gazing over a row of gleaming BMWs in different shades of gray and blue. As Emma takes it all in with a widening gape, I grin like a kid showing off his Lego collection. “Welcome to the nursery.”

  She swings her gaze around the garage and takes it all in. In this light, her eyes perfectly match the Long Beach blue of the M2 right behind her. “Excuse me?”

  “One advantage of being in LA over New York, besides destiny’s slam-dunk win this last week”—I clarify this with a wicked stare over her body—“has been indulging my little Bimmer addiction.”

  She giggles. “Little?”

  “I blame my buyer. Shannon keeps finding me deals I can’t pass up. She calls the machines her ‘sweet babies.’”

  “Ergo, the ‘nursery.’”

  “Bingo.” I rub my hands together with eager joy. “So, which one do you want to play with?” I waggle my brows as she brightens the whole garage with her laughter. “How about the one that matches your eyes? She’s cute—and fast.”

  She shakes her head and points to one of the M4 convertibles behind me. “I like going topless. The sun’s about to set. Let’s head for the beach.”

  I impale her with a mock frown. “Excuse me. I didn’t hear a word you said after ‘topless.’”

  She snickers again. “Dork.”

  “Your dork.”

  A grin lights up her face as she gets into the passenger seat. “If you insist.”

  While waiting for the M4’s roof to retract, I dip over the center console and yank her into an adamant kiss. “I insist.”

  Our hands stay entwined the whole trip to the coast.

  Her idea was a damn good one. As we park at Pacific Palisades, the sun is just a gold disc on the horizon, still casting brilliant rays across the waves. The sand holds the heat of the day, and it surrounds our feet with grainy warmth as we make our way to the berm. We’ve stayed hand in hand. It still feels fucking amazing.

  We walk to the edge of the berm and sit, butts in the softer sand and feet edging the firm moisture where the tide starts to tease. I release a satisfied sigh as Emma tilts her head onto my shoulder. Her sigh
blends with the seagull caws and the rhythm of the waves. It’s resonant with trust.

  For right now, this space feels pretty okay.

  More than okay.

  “Reece?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me if I’m overstepping…but since it was what sparked all the drama last night…”

  I turn in, pressing lips to her forehead to indicate I’m able to fill in her implication. “I have no idea why Angelique’s in LA, Velvet.” I see a sailboat on the water, tacking south toward Marina Del Rey, and pray for the calm of its glide to permeate my tension. “She called out of the blue the day before last. Insisted on seeing me, that she had important shit to discuss with me.”

  With a sharp jerk, her head lifts. “Important shit like what?”

  I expel a heavy breath. “I don’t know. We never got that far.”

  She’s still—too still—before murmuring, “How far did you get?”

  “Up to the part where I tried giving the cufflinks back.” I finally glance over, letting her see the pain I can’t convey in my tone. “She gave them to me the night before—” A growled grunt. “Well, before everything changed.” Then a rough chuckle. “They actually meant a lot to me at the time. When you have more money than everyone you date, there’s an expectation you’ll be buying the presents, you know? I was floored that someone had thought to get me something.”

  “Only to find out she wanted something from you after all.”

  “You could say that.”

  It’s dry and bitter, but it’s my truth. But even as she brings some comfort with the press of our foreheads, I can’t set aside what I must say after that. The fucked-up follow-up. It’s almost a hashtag. If only it weren’t so goddamned necessary. So goddamned disgusting.

  “And Emma…” I pull back a few inches, just to make sure she’s really listening. “It’s probably what she still wants from me.”

  Waves crash harder, ushering in the tide. A couple of seagulls fight for a corner of a trashed sandwich. Salt and smoke rush on the wind, changing midway from the balm of afternoon to the chill of night.

  The woman next to me has gone eerily still again. “What do you mean?”