by Vivi Andrews
Dedication
For my favorite sidekicks: the Inventinator, Danger Boy, & Princess Rambo—someday when you’re older, I might even let you read it.
Chapter One
The New Bad in Town
Lucien Wroth didn’t think of himself as such a bad guy, for a Bad Guy.
Admittedly, breaking into a secret government vault to find schematics for an even more secret government facility so he could bust out a convicted felon did fall slightly on the shady side of legality, but no one was perfect. Not even those damn smug heroes, with their holier-than-thou swagger and shiny PR images.
It was all about spin. If you had powers, you were either a hero or a villain, no grey area. So a teenage girl going through a rebellious phase who fell in with the wrong crowd while exploring her ability to project false images into the minds around her was labeled a villain after one tiny little bank robbery and locked away in the specialized Super prison known as Area Nine.
If that girl’s father happened to have chosen the losing side on a few rather significant historical altercations and earned himself the title supervillain, the powers that be were even more unforgiving. Life sentence. No parole.
Mirabelle was nineteen. She’d made a mistake. But mistakes weren’t allowed when your father was Demon Wroth.
Lucien’s fists clenched at the thought of his baby sister in a cage. The heavy-duty filing cabinet screamed as the drawer warped, the thick metal providing as much resistance as warm butter to his strength. Looking down at what his hands had wrought, he eased his grip and swore under his breath. That drawer would never close again.
Sloppy.
Now wasn’t the time for emotion. Now was the time to search the secret vault beneath city hall before some do-gooder in a cape swept in to be a pain in his ass. Even if his spectacular entrance punching through a wall on the first floor had somehow escaped notice, he’d undoubtedly tripped some silent alarm the second he set foot on the lower level—the sub-basement that housed the secret filing room dealing with all things Super. So secret the press had even come up with a cute name for it. The Crypt.
Where the not-so-pristine truth about heroes is buried.
Conspiracy theorists loved to speculate on the contents of these super-secret files. But tonight he didn’t care about the truth. Just Mirabelle.
Lucien scanned the room. The filing cabinets had been his best bet, but he’d come up empty there. He walked past the computers, ignoring them. The schematics for Area Nine would be low-tech. Hard copies. Any techno-super with half a brain could hack digital files, so the most coveted secrets in the world were old school—typewritten, carbon-copied specs and hand-drawn blueprints. But where?
The heroes loved their secret hidey-holes. He wouldn’t put it past them to have a top-secret filing cabinet hidden behind a wall, but he didn’t have time to tap along the walls for a hollow compartment or check behind paintings for a safe. He wasn’t feeling particularly subtle, anyway.
Brute force sounded pretty damn good right now.
Typically, villains possessed powers that were mental in nature—like his sister’s projection and their father’s ability to coerce others to do his will. Lucien’s abilities fell into the more traditionally heroic side of the spectrum—the brainless physical side. Superstrength, superspeed. But he had one trick up his sleeve that was a bit more sophisticated than his ability to bend rebar with his bare hands.
Lucien closed his eyes in the middle of the room, centering himself. Going still, he drew air molecules toward himself, coiling them close to his body, feeding them potential energy until the air felt like plated armor on his skin. He drew in a breath and released the particles, like setting a spark to a fuse. They exploded out on an invisible shock wave with him at the epicenter, kinetic energy bursting to life. The room shook from the force, the foundations of the building trembling.
Lucien held his breath, hoping he hadn’t just brought the damn building down on his head, but after a moment, the quaking foundations stilled and he opened his eyes.
The room was in chaos. Computer monitors destroyed, file cabinets toppled, furniture bent, broken and scattered, but Lucien looked past all that. To the walls. The drywall had bowed and caved, shifting back several feet—everywhere except a section where an Outstanding Service plaque had hung only moments before. The reinforced brick there had barely budged under the shock wave, but the drywall at the surface had cracked to reveal a large rectangular panel.
Bingo.
Lucien crossed the room in two strides and ripped away the last of the drywall covering a safe as tall as he was. It had slots for a physical key, a keypad and a combination lock as well, but he didn’t have time to play nice. He gripped the handles and yanked.
They flew off in his hands, and he stumbled back a few steps.
“Shit.”
He took a running step and rammed his fist into the front of the safe, but it didn’t even dent. Reinforced. Probably with that new anti-superstrength polymer that had been in the news a few months back.
Time for Plan B. Lucien pulled back and pulverized the wall beside the safe, clearing the space with two quick blows. Then he took aim at the side of the casing and slammed his fist through three inches of metal, like punching through a paper bag. He was in.
“Typical heroes,” Lucien snorted. “Reinforcing the front, but completely ignoring the sides.”
“An oversight we’ll be sure to correct while you’re rotting in Area Nine.”
Lucien’s head snapped around at the sound of the voice. A voice like velvet handcuffs and slippery sex.
He recognized her instantly. It was hard not to with her face splashed across the covers of half the magazines on every newsstand. Her distinctive long red curls blew in a breeze even though they were three stories underground. The Powers Princess.
DynaGirl.
The Jessica Rabbit of crime fighters. Sex kitten in a skintight supersuit. From her fuck-me boots and suck-me lips, to the make-me-beg body lovingly encased in black spandex with a glittery red D over her heart, Darla Powers was walking sex appeal and she knew it. Beloved by reporters everywhere, she was the only superhero he’d ever seen who made that cocky hero confidence look good.
Damn good.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to wipe the floor with her. He was leaving here. With the secret location and schematics of Area Nine. No one was rotting in there any time soon. Especially not Mirabelle.
Miss I’m-Too-Sexy-For-My-Supersuit would just have to get used to disappointment.
Chapter Two
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Superheroine Scorned
Darla Powers had never been in more of a mood to kick some evil ass.
Even if that ass is seriously hot.
After the day she’d had, she needed the catharsis of a good fight, the righteous rush of taking out a villain, and the sweet, sharp satisfaction of fulfilling her purpose and keeping the city safe. Justice therapy.
“DynaGirl.” Black eyes met hers across the thoroughly ransacked Crypt, but other than that the villain didn’t move a single bulging muscle. There was no intimidation or surprise in his tone. No caught-in-the-act fear. She could almost have admired his cool if she hadn’t been determined to make him quake in his biker boots.
Darla drew herself up and struck her favorite fear-my-wrath pose. “In the flesh.”
His lips curved, a suggestive gaze raking her from head to toe. “Lucky me.”
She narrowed her eyes. Lucky? She was DynaGirl, dammit. Second generation superheroine and scourge of villains everywhere. Didn’t he realize he was supposed to be fearing her freaking wrath?
Darla refused to entertain even a sliver of doubt tha
t she couldn’t handle him. Even if he was massive. And strong.
When she’d flown into the room, manipulating the gravitational forces around her so she touched down silently among the debris, she’d been breathless watching him shred the wall beside the safe like confetti and plunge his hand through layers of metal without flinching.
She’d never seen anyone move like that—fast, purposeful, with the singular confidence that no force on earth could stop him. It was…
A huge turn-on.
Especially for a girl who’d just been dumped because her dickhead not-quite-boyfriend felt emasculated by the fact that she could bench-press a Humvee. Yet another in a long line of promisingly confident men who wilted once the novelty of dating a super wore off and the reality of dating a chick with powers set in.
God forbid a girl be able to hold her own in an epic battle. Apparently it was too much to ask to meet a single man who wasn’t intimidated by her strength. Every super she knew was either banging his way through super groupies or hopelessly in love with the intrepid reporter he rescued on a weekly basis.
Or covered with drywall dust from a robbery in progress.
Big & Bad here looked like he didn’t know the meaning of the word emasculated. It was almost a pity she’d have to lock him up and throw away the key.
“And you are?” She’d never cared about the names of the villains she apprehended in the past, but curiosity had dug in its claws where Big & Bad was concerned.
His smile was wicked, baiting her. “Don’t you know?”
No, dammit. Something about his eyes teased the edge of her brain, vaguely familiar, but Darla was certain she’d never seen this Lucifer-wicked man before. She wasn’t likely to forget him.
His tanned face was stark, all dark slashing brows and glittering black eyes, like one day God sat down and decided to create the perfect bad boy. Even his voice sounded evil—low, rough and humming with anger like an electrical current crackling through his vocal cords.
He was easily eight inches taller than her own five-ten. Broad, heavily muscled shoulders stretched the limits of his black leather jacket, black hair curled over the collar, and faded jeans clung to the contours of his…
Jesus. She was here to kick his ass, not ogle it. Or nibble…or dig her nails in to pull him closer…
Darla felt her face heat. She was not having lustful fantasies about a man who was literally elbow deep in crime. Not about a man who practically radiated villainy. Her mouth wasn’t pooling with drool at the animalism and single-minded focus with which he was breaking into a secure government vault. And if her heart was racing at the prospect of throwing her body against his, testing his strength against hers, it was only because she hadn’t had a good battle in weeks.
If only his strength of character matched those gorgeous muscles.
“Whoever you are, you’re about to be just another inmate.”
Maybe she’d visit him in Area Nine. To see how his rehabilitation was progressing, of course.
He smiled, taunting her with the curve of his lips. “Don’t you have to catch me first, princess?”
“You’re as good as caught, pal.” She didn’t let his cocky overconfidence faze her. Villains were always cockiest right before they landed in a cell. DynaGirl hadn’t failed yet, and she wasn’t going to start tonight.
The only way out was past her, but he made no move toward the single door. Didn’t even pull his hand out of the side of the safe. Darla studied him for any sign of movement, braced for the first attack, weight forward, ready to tangle.
Come on, pretty boy. I know you’re gonna give me the fight I need.
He clearly had superstrength, but there was no telling what other nasty tricks he could do. Spitting acid, lasers shot from his eyes, deafening sonic booms, mind control… Fighting an unfamiliar villain wasn’t a matter of expect anything. It was expect everything.
“Step away from the safe with your hands up,” she demanded.
His black brows drew down into a threatening frown, but otherwise he remained immobile. “Make me.”
“Things will go easier for you if you come quietly.” Though she couldn’t deny she was hoping he wouldn’t. She wanted to put her hands on all that muscle…because she needed a fight. “You might even get a shortened sentence.”
“Sentencing me already? I’m innocent until proven guilty, if I recall.” He had the audacity to say it with one hand still inside the safe.
Darla looked pointedly at his arm. “This is a pretty textbook case of caught red-handed, I think.”
“You’re the only one who’s seen me here, DynaGirl. Are you sure you’re seeing what you think you see?”
A flicker of uncertainty shot through her at the insinuation that he could manipulate her perceptions. Was she seeing what she thought she was seeing? Could anyone be as animalistically attractive as he was, or had he somehow reached into her brain and pulled out her own fantasies to reflect back at her? Could she trust her own eyes?
In the space of that minute hesitation, Big & Bad charged.
He rushed her, crossing the room at such speed she could barely follow the movement. Damn, he’s fast. From reflex more than thought, she got her arm up in time to strike his sternum. All her strength and all his momentum were behind the blow. It should have thrown him across the room. Anyone else would’ve flown through the plaster and been down for the count.
Big & Bad didn’t even flinch.
He grunted as the blow landed, and she felt it reverberate strangely across her knuckles and up her arm, like a hammer striking an anvil.
Shock rolled across her senses. Until that moment she hadn’t truly considered that he might be stronger than she was. His hands shot out, impossibly fast, and before she had time to suck in a gasp he had her pinned to the steel-reinforced doorframe. One of his thick forearms pressed against her ribs below her breasts as his other hand wrapped around her throat, his fingers applying just enough pressure to get her attention. She gripped his shoulders, instinct trumping thought, forgetting all her training as something hot and startling uncoiled in her stomach.
She was not getting turned on by being thrown around by a villain. Even if he did move like the devil and look like every kind of sin she’d ever wanted a taste of.
“Disconcerting, isn’t it?” he rasped, his dark eyes fierce from a distance of inches. “It’s much easier to be brave when you know you won’t get hurt, isn’t it, DynaGirl? Throwing around your strength and knowing no one can touch you.”
His vision of her, as some kind of hero bully, was a dash of ice water, bringing her back to her senses. She used a bit of counter-grav to lift her weight off him, easing the pressure on her throat even as she shifted her own grip to his neck, needing both hands to encircle it.
His eyes lit with undisguised fascination as she fought back. “Interesting.”
Had he seriously thought she was cowed?
“Glad I could entertain.” She grabbed him and shot toward the ceiling. They crashed into the support beam, and the building shuddered. His hold on her loosened, so Darla struck his elbows sharply, forcing him to release her entirely—
—and plunge to the floor eight feet below as gravity bitch-slapped him.
He was up almost before she saw him land. So damn fast. He reached up and gripped her ankle, flinging her to the ground with enough force to knock her out cold if she hadn’t been built to take it.
Just like him.
Realization hit harder than the hand he slapped on her back to keep her down when she would have flown up again. They couldn’t hurt one another, not by pummeling anyway. They were too evenly matched. If they kept trying, they were going to bring down city hall. Literally.
She’d have to outwit him, but she needed to do it somewhere else. Somewhere open.
She wasn’t sure the building could take much more punishment, and at least if she could get him out of here, he wouldn’t get whatever he’d come for in the safe.
She lay o
n her stomach on the floor, and he crouched above her to keep her down.
“Ready to play nice?” his electrical current voice rumbled in her ear, sending shocks of warmth to her extremities.
Not in this life.
Twisting in his grip, she earned just enough freedom to flip onto her back. He grappled with her, strong and too fast for her, easily pinning her again, but Darla wasn’t trying to get away. She wanted him to keep a good grip on her. She feinted toward a chokehold, wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders, and kicked off hard, flying off the floor and through the door into the corridor.
He gave a soft grunt of surprise but didn’t let her go. The hallway whipped past them, too slow for her comfort, but horizontal force was always trickier for her to manipulate than vertical, and the big bastard was heavy. When they reached the stairwell, she rocketed them up to street level, ascending so fast his shouted curse fell behind, warping out with the Doppler effect.
The night air was heaven as she flew them through the gaping hole he’d left in the side of the building. Inconsiderate bastard. He probably hadn’t given a single thought to the taxpayer dollars that would go to repairing city hall.
She took them up above the skyline, until the air was biting cold and thin in her lungs. Only then did she look at the man locked in her arms.
His black eyes glittered close to hers, a small smile playing about his mouth. “This is a little extreme, don’t you think? If you wanted to get me alone, princess, all you had to do was ask.”
Chapter Three
In-flight Entertainment
The city lights gleamed, a galaxy below to match the stars above. Darla had flown after dark countless times, enjoying the peace of the cool night sky, somehow feeling more connected to the world as a spectator high above it, but this was different. The man in her arms made the night feel private.
Intimate.
She shouldn’t be thinking of that word in conjunction with a supervillain. It wasn’t like she had any choice but to hold him close. Not unless she wanted to drop him.
Her grip on his shoulders had nothing to do with the muscular strength bunching beneath his jacket. Just like his forearms pressing against her back and mashing her breasts against the rock wall of his chest was about self-preservation more than lust.