The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

Her power had hopped ahead, like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake. Now it plopped beneath the waters, dragging her down into the depths of her vision. Gone was the bathroom, gone was Steelhand’s silver-and-blue masked face. All she could see was his real face, lips slack from panting, eyes shut, neck arched and muscles straining as he ...

  ... as he invaded her vision? Sensations doubled, trebled abruptly, spiking desire sharply through all six of her senses. Bodies and minds collided, muscles flexed, pleasure seared. The image shifted without her conscious control; he shifted it, grabbing and lifting her thigh, tilting her hips just that little bit more for the perfect stroke, exactly what she craved most in her foresight-swamped thoughts . . .

  Carrie gasped, jerking back from his touch. The back of her head thumped painfully into the wall, breaking up most of the lust clouding her senses. Blinking rapidly, panting for air, she found him staring at her with eyes so wide she could see the whites ringing the chocolate brown of his irises.

  “What the . . . ?” he mumbled, still visibly stunned.

  “What the hell do you think you were doing?” she hissed, barely remembering to keep her voice down. The last thing they needed was for any civilians to overhear the two of them arguing through the restroom door. “That was an invasion of my privacy. You are not supposed to scan your partners without their prior consent.”

  Her embarrassed anger snapped him out of his daze. Frowning, he focused on her. “I thought I had probable cause. At the last place I worked, my partner turned Rescindant. I thought he was acting strangely beforehand, secretive and not quite right, but I didn’t exercise my right to scan him under probable cause. He nearly blew up half the team as he tried to make off with millions of dollars in bearer bonds. I thought it was happening with you. When you refused to say what you had foreseen, after acting like you didn’t want me as your partner any more, I got a little suspicious.”

  Hands shifting to her hips, she gave him an annoyed look. “I am not turning Rescindant, Steelhand. And I didn’t tell the others what I’d seen because it was none of their damned business!”

  “Well, you could have told me!” he demanded, then winced, catching himself and lowering his voice as it started to echo off the hard cement blocks around them. “Dammit! This is not the best place for an argument.”

  “Well, we’re not going to avoid it this time,” she muttered. Somehow, she knew they would get through this misunderstanding; her vision had been too strong to suggest otherwise. She took a deep breath.

  “I wasn’t sure if that powder was an aphrodisiac. But if I keep it away with a shield bubble, and we still make love . . .” She stopped and trained her eyes on him. “Why the hell won’t you flirt with me? Let’s start with that, shall we? Why won’t you flirt with me?”

  He gave her a duh look. “Because you’re my partner? League studies have proven that if two League members in the same city start dating each other, the partners become distracted whenever one or the other gets into danger. Because of that, I don’t date fellow Ascendants.”

  “You are dating Farshot!” Carrie hissed, incensed.

  “I am not! We’re just friends,” he whispered back defensively.

  “Oh, friends, really? Then why is it she keeps coming on to you like a love-struck puppy? Or didn’t you notice that, Mr Touch-Telepathic?”

  “She’s not in love with me. She’s in love with Oversight. But he’s gay!” Wincing, Steelhand covered his masked face with his bared hands. “Oh God, I did not mean to reveal that. God, this is another reason why I don’t date people ...” Dragging his hands free, he sighed. “Look ... I like you. A lot. Too much to treat you as anything more than a colleague, because League policy prohibits partners from dating. I’m good at my job. I love my job. I will do whatever it takes to adhere to the rules.”

  She eyed him askance. “The League prohibits partners from dating? Since when? Where did you hear that piece of drivel?”

  “When I first joined the League as an active-duty Ascendant, I was given the lecture that League members on the same team do not date each other,” he explained patiently. “Adding a relationship to the situation is too much of a distraction, given the potential danger in our line of work. That means that, no matter how attractive, intelligent, funny or competent I find you - and you have no idea how much I do — I cannot date you. Statistically, it increases the danger on the job, and it puts a dual strain on the Ascendant in question, because if their date and their partner are ever both placed in peril, they’ll be torn in two different directions as to who to go help first. The partnership has to come first!” Steelhand seemed to know the entire League manual by heart.

  Memory of the study came back to her. Foresight rolled her eyes. “Did your superiors ever tell you about the second study they released? The one encouraging partners to date? Yes, to date someone who isn’t your partner is a potential problem in an emergency, but if you’re dating your partner, the study found that you tend to fight harder to protect them. The Spartans at Thermopylae were all lovers as well as partners, and they held off a massive invasion force for days back in ancient Greece -and I’ll remind you that very few of them were Ascendant heroes! If it works for regular citizens, it’ll definitely work for us.

  “Look, why else would Oversight go to all the trouble of pairing us up male—female, if not to encourage dating opportunities? With your steel-skin ability, you’d actually be a better partner for Bomber, but he didn’t pair you two together,” she said. “That’s because the League’s policy is to encourage Ascendants to date, marry and produce more Ascendant-potential offspring. Stable families come from couples who have a long-term friendship and know how to work well together in times of adversity. Teammates who get along well fit that bill very nicely.”

  He frowned at her, confused. “If that were so, then why didn’t I hear about this?”

  “Maybe your former supervisor just didn’t want to deal with the headache of couples dating and breaking up, and partnerships constantly having to be rearranged. Did you ever think of that?

  “Backhand is patrolling the Riverside where Nearsight is working undercover. Between his super-strength and his ability to turn invisible, he can keep an eye on her at least part of the time. He wouldn’t do any less for an assignment because they’re dating each other. And Oversight knows it. That’s why he has never reassigned Backhand to partner with anyone else.”

  Steelhand gave her a puzzled look. “Backhand and Nearsight are dating? Are you sure? They act so ... professional around each other.”

  “You knew that Oversight is gay — which I didn’t even know — but didn’t know that Backhand and Nearsight were going out?” she asked.

  A blush spread across his lightly tanned skin. Steelhand cleared his throat. “The only reason I know is because I caught him leering at me in his thoughts at my interview.”

  “Well, you are rather handsome,” she told him. “And I have been flamingly jealous of Farshot because you’ve flirted with her, but not me. That’s why I didn’t want to be partnered with you any more. Because you weren’t interested in me. And it’s been killing me.”

  He moved closer to her, not quite bringing their bodies together, but close enough that she had to lean back against the wall. Not because he intimidated her, and not because she didn’t want him to touch her, but because of the rising warmth in his dark eyes. “It’s been killing me too. I didn’t dare flirt with you, because I thought it was forbidden.

  “When I date someone, it’s very . . . intense for me. At least at first. I cannot touch someone without getting flashes of their thoughts. And when we make love—” his gaze drifted down to her mouth, and the corner of his lips curled up on one side “—everything feeds back on itself until I’m nearly mindless with our mutual pleasure. Of course, it does mean I’m a very good lover, because I’ll know exactly what you’re craving.”

  Carrie didn’t have to focus her thoughts on the future to feel that same sharp spike of desire
in the here and now.

  Clearing her throat, she focused her thoughts. “Well. Now that we know that both of us are attracted to each other, and that the League policy doesn’t forbid it, shall we finish meeting and greeting the populace, and then make our way out onto the streets to deal with the Doctor’s minions and their mysterious powder? Since they are watching and waiting for us to exit the ballpark.”

  “And find a place to explore that . . . intense . . . future you foresaw?” he asked, touching her waist with his silver hand.

  She started to say yes, then remembered an important detail. Tipping her head, she asked, “Do I at least get to know your real name before we make love? It might kill the mood a little if I shout out ‘Steelhand’ mid-lovemaking.”

  “It’s Rio Sanchez.” His smile turned into a smirk. “But don’t worry, it won’t kill the mood on my end if you call out my team name. I want you so much, I’m not going to give you time to think about anything once we’re alone.”

  “Your name is Rio Sanchez?” she repeated sceptically, ignoring the promise in his words. She was still a professional, still an on-the-clock Ascendant at the moment . . . though she did plan on sticking to her “potentially embarrassing need for isolation” excuse to cover their abandoning of their patrol tonight. Sometimes it was good to be a precognitive, and protected by League policy from having to reveal the full truth of every little matter.

  “I know I don’t look it, but my father’s Filipino and my mother’s Korean,” he stated with a grin. “You’re not the first one to think the name doesn’t match the face.”

  “No, I meant it sounded like a hokey sort of secret-identity alias. I’m Carrie Vinson,” she introduced herself, holding up her gloved hand. “It’s not much better as far as names go, but it’s what I’ve got.”

  Steelhand/Rio clasped gloved hands with her, then leaned in close and kissed her. It wasn’t exactly a brief kiss, but it wasn’t a very passionate one either, just a gentle, warm salute of her lips. Mindful that he would be picking up snatches of her thoughts, Carrie carefully blanked out everything but the feel of his mouth pressing against hers and her enjoyment of it. He kissed her a little more firmly, then flicked the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips. Before she could do more than inhale sharply in pleasure, he pulled back.

  “We have to be professional,” he muttered. “If I keep kissing you, I won’t be able to go out in public. Not in spandex pants. Even if it is armoured down there. Foresight — Carrie,” Rio corrected himself.

  “Everything I know about you as a partner says I’ll like you even more as a man, and I do want to find out all about you, if possible, she agreed.”

  Lifting his gloved fingers to her hair, Rio tucked a loose, light-brown curl behind her ear. “Everything I’ve learned about you as a partner makes me think I definitely want to get to know you as a woman.”

  Someone knocked on the door. Both of them jumped a little, then blushed. Carrie pulled her mind back into work mode -Foresight mode. “We need to get back on patrol. But I just want to tell you that I’ve never foreseen anything I’ve wanted to happen so badly before.

  “By the way, what did you do for a living before you became a superhero?” She asked, stepping aside to let him check his mask in the mirror.

  He gave her a smile. “Before I turned Ascendant, I worked as a translator, out of a tiny little apartment with a balcony barely big enough for a few tomatoes and a box of leaf lettuce. Now I work for the League and live in the suburbs on the Eastside, with a big backyard where I grow my own vegetables. I remember being very disappointed that I didn’t get any green-thumb superpowers to deal with plants when I Ascended. But I suppose turning my body into living metal and reading minds aren’t too bad as far as superpowers go. What about you? What does Carrie Vinson like to do?”

  “Ceramic arts. It’s extra easy, what with the telekinetic thing. I’ve even had a couple of pottery shows in local galleries,” she confessed.

  “Vinson . . . wait, Vinson Pottery? Isn’t that the shop on the corner of Fourth and Stewart?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “It’s a nice change from throwing around villains with my mind, or having to probe into the future. So you’ve seen my work, then?”

  “I’ve bought your work. I bought one of the bamboo sculptures for my father’s birthday—” Rio was interrupted by another knock on the door, cutting off their exchange of personal information. Sighing, they both squared their shoulders, preparing themselves mentally for the waiting public.

  Carrie glanced at her partner as she reached for the door lock. “No rest for a superhero, and all that,” she said. “Are you ready to face the public?”

  “Not really. But now that I have tonight to look forward to, I can endure almost any torture,” he quipped. “Bring on the crowd of adoring thousands, fellow Ascendant. The sooner we can get this over with, the sooner we can run away and be an adoring little crowd of two.”

  “I’m looking forward to that.” In a much, much lighter mood than at the beginning of her evening, Carrie opened the door.

  Daniel

  C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp

  One

  “Jenna! Ohmigod, Jenna Cooper! Is that you?” I made my voice a girlish squeal. Inwardly I was wincing, but I played the role to perfection, running up to the mark like a long-lost acquaintance, making sure everybody in the restaurant would be watching so that there’d be witnesses later if she tried to deny what was about to happen.

  A gorgeous woman in a lavender silk suit and pearls the size of gumballs leaned back from her salad plate and eyed me suspiciously. But she didn’t bolt or try to deny it, so I ploughed on.

  “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. Nobody ever does. But it’s you, isn’t it? You are Jenna Cooper?”

  She blinked a few times, and I could see her trying to match my face with a memory and failing. I mean, let’s be honest, the Jennas of the world are beautiful, and popular enough that from the day they’re born there are hangers-on and wannabes enough that they really don’t remember. Was I that girl from high school or college? The quiet mousy one? Maybe from that office she worked in briefly before marrying well? The other woman at the table gave her a sympathetic look. It’s always so embarrassing to be caught flat footed.

  “Yes. I’m Jenna, but it’s Jenna Ross now. I’m sorry, I really don’t seem to remember you.”

  “That’s all right,” I assured her as I pulled a stack of folded papers from my fashionably large purse. “You wouldn’t. We’ve never met.” I dropped the pages onto the napkin in her lap. “My name is Karen James, and you’ve just been served.”

  I turned and walked away, my high heels clicking on the hardwood floor. All eyes were on me as I made my way through the restaurant. Not because I looked good — I did, but I will never be in the same league as the Jennas of the world. I’m short and stocky, rather than tall and elegant, my suit was black polyester, my necklace tiny seed pearls. But I’d done my job, and done it well. Mrs Ross had been served her divorce papers very, very publicly, just the way her husband wanted.

  Nobody bothered me on my way out. Since I hadn’t bothered with the valet, I waved him away when he started to approach, walking to the farthest end of the lot where the employees park. I’d left my car there, because my battered, twelve-year-old subcompact would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb among the shiny new BMWs and Mercedes.

  I walked confidently up to my car, keys in hand. I’d parked directly under the street light. I could see every detail in that flat, orange light. He didn’t step out of the shadows. There were no shadows. He simply appeared. Like smoke, in thin air.

  I didn’t scream. I’ve seen the show before. Only this wasn’t Daniel. Which meant I was in trouble.

  “That was cleverly done. A brilliant piece of acting work you pulled off in the restaurant, if I do say so myself.” He was tall and slender, but well built. His hair was a natural silver-blond that looked perfectly in keeping with his marble-white s
kin. The voice was cultured too, as smooth as that same marble. Soothing. It was all part of the package. I didn’t dare look into his eyes, but I had no doubt they were gorgeous - and utterly mesmerizing.

  The stranger stood in quiet amusement as I took in every bit of his appearance.

  “Thank you. I’m actually very good at my job.”

  “As am I.”

  I didn’t doubt it. With those looks and attitude he probably had to beat off the prey with a stick. Sex is a powerful lure, and by God he was sexy. His whole body breathed pheromones. I felt my body tighten, and it wasn’t from fear. Dammit.

  “Look at me,” he ordered.

  “No.” I fought the compulsion. It wasn’t easy. But I’m as stubborn as hell and I’ve had lots of practice, so I managed.

  “Look at me.” There was a hint of a growl in the voice, and I felt my body give an involuntary jerk. But I closed my eyes and fought for all I was worth.

  “You know our ways, how is that possible?” Hands like steel bands dug into my shoulders as he grabbed me, intending to drag me towards him. “I smell . . . Daniel.”

  He pulled harder, and the pain was blinding. I fought long enough for him to put some strength into it then surprised him by going utterly limp. When he bent over to catch me, I punched upwards as hard as I could, driving my car keys deep into his throat, my fist slamming against his windpipe.

  He reared back, blood pouring from his neck in a wide spray. I’d caught an artery. His teeth bared, and I caught a glimpse of vicious fangs.

  I started screaming bloody murder. The valet turned, as did the customers he was serving. They moved slowly, as if coming out of a trance. But they did move. Apparently I’d injured him badly enough that he couldn’t heal and use his mojo. The men ran towards us. The woman pulled out a cell phone and began dialling 911.

  “You’ll pay for that, bitch.” He spit the words out with a spray of blood, and vanished, like a puff of smoke.

  “Are you all right? You’re covered in blood! What happened? Where did he go?”