Super Hot (a Superlovin' novella)

by Andrews, Vivi

  “Success.” Eric charged back into the room, holding a condom aloft like a trophy. His eyes raked over her bare legs and gleamed darkly. “You moved.” It didn’t sound like he minded.

  He knelt beside the couch, running one large palm up the outside curve of her thigh. Tandy squirmed self-consciously.

  “You’re thinking too much again, aren’t you?”

  She was. And she didn’t want to be. There was already too much thinking going on in this relationship. If it was a relationship. God, what was she doing? She planned everything. She never slept with someone when she wasn’t completely in control, completely aware of what the implications of the act were.

  “Tandy? We don’t have to go any farther.”

  Oh great. Now he thought she didn’t want this. When nothing could be further from the truth. She wanted everything where this man was concerned. And if she took a flying leap and got her heart broken—well, wasn’t that worth it for those few moments when she was flying?

  “I want farther.” She reached for him, pulling him toward her for a kiss. “I want you to make me lose my mind.”

  He smiled against her lips. “Done.”

  You had to love a man with confidence.

  His confidence was well-deserved. Five minutes later he had her squirming on the edge of insanity, her hips pulled to the edge of the couch, her legs draped over his shoulders as he worked his mouth over her. But no matter how good he was—and the man was very good—she didn’t want to be the only one falling apart. She wanted more than just being the star of the show. She wanted him with her scream for scream.

  Tandy grabbed him by the hair and tugged until he met her eyes. “C’mere,” she begged. He could have refused—he was so much bigger, so much stronger—but he was also her willing slave. All that strength was hers tonight. He crawled over her, caging her body with his arms, and lowered himself in a slow press until she caught his mouth, tasting herself on his lips. Their tongues tangled and she sucked his into her mouth with a slow draw as her fingers went to work on his zipper. He was wearing way too many clothes.

  Then he wasn’t and the condom was in his hands. She plucked it from his fingers, rolling it down over him and giving him a friendly squeeze that made the veins in his neck jump out. “Jesus, Tandy.”

  “No,” she murmured against his lips, guiding him to her entrance. “Goddess Tandy.”

  “Fuck, yes,” he groaned as the head worked into her slick heat. “Goddess Tandy.”

  Then he wasn’t capable of anything so coherent as speech. And neither was she. Her awareness was limited to long, driving strokes, throaty moans, and hands that were almost too firm, but exactly as hard as she needed it. She grabbed his ass, her nails digging in as he slammed high and held and a keening scream built in her throat and exploded through her mind. Everything locked and straining sprang into release and fireballs exploded around the room like a one man fireworks display.

  Eric collapsed against her, burying his face in her neck. When she could breathe again, Tandy slid her hands from his ass to his shoulders and concentrated for a moment on the flames until the smoke in the room triggered her power and she felt that shove push through her hands and banish the fire.

  Then she closed her eyes and basked in the feeling of this man in her arms. For however long it lasted.

  Chapter Fourteen – Some Like It Hot

  He definitely needed a bed.

  Eric sprawled—as much as he could sprawl on the narrow couch—with Tandy laying half on top of him, her head pillowed on his chest. He stroked a hand down her sleek, bare back, trying to ignore the fact that he was getting the mother of all cricks in his neck from the couch’s arm ratcheting his head up.

  He could actually get a bed now without worrying that it would just become so much kindling. Hell, he could even have sheets. Though at the moment he didn’t mind the lack so much.

  “So,” Tandy murmured as she arched her back and stretched against his side. “A frequency emitter, huh? And it knocked out the fire?”

  “First try. And I think it might be permanent. I haven’t fired up once since I used it.”

  Tandy propped herself up on his chest and arched a brow, nodding toward a singe on the wall.

  Eisenmann frowned. “That’s new.”

  “Yeah, there was fire in the air a few minutes ago.”

  “But I didn’t feel it. It didn’t take control.”

  “You were pretty distracted at that particular moment,” Tandy said dryly.

  “Oh. Oh. Okay, so it wasn’t permanent. That’s good to know. The effects wear off. That might be a good thing. Most supers probably don’t want to eliminate their abilities entirely, just control them. Maybe a slightly different frequency would diminish the strength of the powers without subverting them entirely.”

  “You wanted one that was portable with a controlled range, right?”

  “Don’t tell me you want to design it for me right now?” He said it lightly, with a twist of a smile.

  “Why not?” Tandy’s expression was shuttered, a distinct morning-after awkwardness in the tension in her shoulders.

  If talking science made her more comfortable, he could work with that. “You’re right. No time like the present.”

  “Great.” She twisted out of his arms and maneuvered herself off the couch, out the door before he realized she wasn’t just making herself more comfortable.

  “Yeah, great.” He sat up, working the kinks out of his neck.

  Tandy came back into the room, wearing his T-shirt which hit her at the top of her thighs, and carrying what looked like her briefcase.

  He frowned. “You brought your briefcase?” For a booty call?

  “Force of habit. Handy, this time, because I think I have a mock-up on my iPad for a portable psy-dampener we’ve been working on at Nightwing. It’s supposed to make it possible to contain Mindbenders inside a psychic field so they can be put on trial without the risk of jury manipulation, but it seems to just knock them unconscious instead. But if we reworked it so that instead of trying to dampen psychic frequencies, it was emitting a specific one, we might be able to use a lot of the same design features.”

  As she spoke she pulled her iPad out of her briefcase and sat beside him, scrolling through schematics until she found the one she was looking for. Peering over her shoulder, he ran a hand up her spine beneath his shirt. He’d rather she hadn’t bothered to get dressed, but if she was going to he liked seeing her in his clothes. He didn’t know exactly what this was with Tandy. He wasn’t exactly a catch. God knew she deserved better than him, but he still felt proprietary toward her. In a way that would probably get his ass kicked if her brothers ever found out.

  She got out a stylus and began adjusting the dampener design. He pressed a kiss beneath her ear.

  “You aren’t going to distract me.”

  “No?” He never could resist a challenge.

  * * * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Eric slipped out from beneath a thoroughly sated Tandy. She mumbled in her sleep and curled on her stomach on the couch. It was comfortably warm, but he found his discarded T-shirt and draped it over her as a makeshift blanket, dropping one last kiss on the smooth, brown skin over her shoulder blades before he let the fabric settle there.

  Her iPad had slid half-under the couch and he retrieved it, along with his boxers. She’d actually managed to do quite a bit of work on the new portable emitter design before he’d completely distracted her. It was almost four in the morning, but he was still wide awake—and there was really only room for one of them to sleep comfortably on the couch anyway—so he took her design and went to the lab to work on it while she slept.

  It was ingenious, really, the way she had created a mechanism to cause the psy-frequency to naturally degrade so it would only impact close-range supers. But the energy to maintain the emission was going to require one hell of a battery.

  He began considering a variety of energy sources, instantly consumed by
the work. It felt like only a few minutes had passed, but the clock read six-thirty when a pair of slim arms wrapped around his shoulders and a soft voice whispered next to his ear, “Haven’t you ever heard of sleep?”

  Now that she mentioned it, his eyes were feeling a bit grainy and his progress had definitely slowed. “I’m too stubborn for sleep.” He turned, rising from his chair and sweeping her up into his arms in one fluid move. She squeaked in surprise and he caught the sound with his mouth. “Besides, this is better than sleep.”

  “I have to go to work,” she protested, but her protest would have carried more weight if she hadn’t simultaneously wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “I thought you cleared your schedule.” He tried to silence all further arguments with his mouth.

  She twisted away with a little groan. “I can’t. In my two a.m. insanity I forgot that I have the acquisition press conference at ten. I have to go home, take a shower—”

  He changed direction, heading for the bathroom. “Use my shower. I’ll help. I can be very helpful.”

  The next sound she made was pure capitulation.

  * * * * *

  Tandy had gathered up her clothes and was in the bedroom getting dressed, muttering direly about being late, when Eric saw the incoming message notice flashing on his screen. He checked it, hoping it was more from Diana, but it was DocDavid again.

  DocDavid: A little birdie told me you had a big breakthrough last night. What frequency should I be looking at?

  Eisenmann frowned. He knew. How could he have heard? Eisenmann had only told Diana and Tandy. Diana was in Area Nine and she’d run out of computer time.

  Which meant Tandy.

  He didn’t know where DocDavid worked. For all he knew, his most reliable collaborator might be a Nightwing employee. Was Tandy playing some game? Trying to control the patent? To what end? He wanted everyone to have this information. He’d been honest about that from the beginning. If she had her own people working with him, why keep it a secret?

  He closed the message window and spun his chair to face her as she came into the lab, the jeans and flip-flops a far cry from her usual designer armor. She smiled at him, the expression somehow shy in spite of all they’d done—and just like before, the smile hit him in the chest. But that little spark of suspicion was crackling with the fire in the back of his mind, refusing to be extinguished.

  “Did you tell anyone about my breakthrough? About the emitter?”

  Her smile broadened, one brow arching. “At two in the morning?”

  “I won’t be mad if you did. I want everyone to have access to this discovery.”

  She blinked, the smile freezing. “Surely not everyone.”

  “I told you I was going to share my findings.”

  “Yes, but you have to be careful with this kind of information. It can be dangerous. I thought you would be the last person in the world I would have to warn about giving supervillains access to this kind of data. Do you know how easy it would be to turn this into a weapon to be used against supers who use their powers to protect people? In the wrong hands, one of these emitters could do unspeakable damage. We’ll need regulations and controls—”

  “Meaning the science will be locked away in some vault where it can never do anyone any good.”

  “Not necessarily. But which saves more lives? Having no supers who are a danger to themselves, but also none who do good? Or leaving things as they are, but with this as a secret aide to people who need it?”

  “Leaving things as they are isn’t an option, Tandy. Not for people like me. And who gets to decide who’s worthy of using my emitter? You? The same people at Nightwing who are so perfectly ethical they set it up so your family can break into any vault in the city?”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t have time to argue with you right now. I have to go. Just be careful with this, okay? I know it can do a lot of good and I want it to—almost as much as you do—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.”

  “You’d better go. You’ll miss your press conference.”

  She glared at him and stalked to the vault door, swinging it open with a hand on the panel. “I’ll call you later.”

  He nodded, watching her go. His anger seemed to have a life of its own, and he couldn’t even blame the fire. It was flickering and sparking in the back of his mind, but it hadn’t taken over. This was all him. Why did the idea that Tandy was pressing caution make his blood boil like this?

  Maybe he was just tired. He hadn’t slept in… Hell, he didn’t even know. Way too many hours.

  He stood, meaning to retreat to his uncomfortable slab of a bed—hopefully for the last time. He’d get some furniture in here tonight. But before he could take a step, the phone rang.

  Tandy.

  Too soon to expect an apology. Maybe she just wanted to continue their argument while she drove to work. He walked faster than necessary to the phone, stupidly eager to hear her voice. Except it wasn’t her voice that replied when he said, “Couldn’t resist another round?”

  “I’m guessing you were expecting someone else,” Darla’s familiar voice said brightly. “But just in case you were trying to flirt with me there, I feel I should remind you that Lucien has super strength and a raging case of jealousy where I’m concerned.”

  “I thought you were Tandy.”

  “Did you now? Well, that is interesting. Do tell.”

  “Why were you calling me?”

  “You might as well spill all the gossip. I’m Tandy’s best friend. She’s going to tell me anyway.”

  “Darla.”

  “Fine, fine. Be a spoil sport. Actually, the reason I’m calling you is a little strange.”

  “Strange how?”

  “The girl you wanted me to find in Area Nine? The one who hasn’t talked to you in several days?”

  “Oh right, sorry. I should’ve let you know I heard from her.”

  “Did you? That’s… unexpected.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I think someone may have been messing with you, Eisenmann. The girl, Diana. Pyrokinetic. Burned up her whole family by accident and self committed to Area Nine.”

  “I know all that.”

  “She died, Eisenmann. Less than a week after she entered Area Nine. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but Diana Palmer died over a year ago. Before you ever became pyrokinetic.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “Lots of things are possible online. Look, I’m sorry. Maybe next time you hear from your pen pal, you can clear things up.”

  He wouldn’t be hearing from her, Eisenmann realized. Or him. Or whoever the hell the Fake Diana was. He’d told her he had a friend looking for her in Area Nine. She knew she’d been found out. That’s why she’d gotten offline so quickly last night. Right after she’d asked him suspiciously specific questions about his experiments.

  He thanked Darla and hung up. Sleep. He needed sleep. Nothing was making sense anymore. Diana wasn’t Diana. DocDavid was in cahoots—with the person pretending to be Diana? And Tandy was… he didn’t even know what he and Tandy were right now.

  He could only hope things were clearer when he woke up. They couldn’t get much more confusing.

  Chapter Fifteen – Deadly Ends

  Tandy had never been followed before—that she knew of—so perhaps that excused why it took her so long to notice the black sedan keeping pace with her as she wove through the morning traffic toward her condo. She was running late, focused on the day ahead—and distracted by flashbacks of the night before—and reserving less attention than she really ought to the road, until she turned into the alley which accessed the condo’s garage, and the black sedan turned with her, suddenly on her bumper, far too close and not slowing.

  The black sedan’s bumper knocked against her rear fender, giving the Mercedes a little jolt. Tandy yelped and gripped the wheel. The driver would notice now. The little fender-brush would wake him up and he’d r
ealize his mistake—right? This was all perfectly innocent.

  But as Tandy approached the turn into the garage, already going too fast, the sedan sped up again and slammed harder into her tail, shoving the Mercedes past the entrance and farther down the dead-end alley.

  “Shit,” she whispered, fear spiking with the certainty that this wasn’t an accident. Masha and Kieren had been abducted out of their homes. Was this the same people? Tandy’s eyes sought out the briefcase on the passenger seat as the sedan rammed her again, making the steering wheel jump and jerk in her hands. Taser, check. But a Taser wasn’t much help against a vehicular attack.

  “Call Eisenmann,” she demanded of her Bluetooth, voice shaking.

  “Unknown call. Please repeat.”

  “Damn it!” She hadn’t programmed in his number. The sedan struck her again, pushing her faster, the unforgiving brick wall at the end of the alley all too rapidly approaching. No time.

  “Call Frost!”

  There was a muted click and the sound of a phone ringing filled the soft leather interior of her Mercedes—right before she slammed on the brakes, riding them to the floor. The wall was too close. Tires screeched, the crunch of metal came again as the black sedan once again threw her forward. Tandy screamed, giving up on steering and shielding her face with her arms. The car caromed wildly, tires squealing as the heavier sedan drove her mercilessly toward the wall.

  There was a crash of metal folding against unforgiving brick, the whomp of airbags deploying, then a flash of pain before the world went black.

  She woke to a ripping headache, something wet on her face and a twist of agony in her right wrist. Opening her eyes reassured her that she couldn’t have been out long. Still in her car, with shattered glass and deflated airbags around her—and a large black sedan visible in the rearview mirror, its doors opening.

  “Call Frost,” she demanded frantically, but the Bluetooth was as dead as the rest of the car. As dead as she would be if she didn’t get moving. She grabbed for her briefcase, hissing when the pain in her right arm spiked dizzyingly. Broken maybe. Or badly sprained. She leaned across the passenger side, using her less than proficient left hand—damn it, why did she have to be so totally right handed?—to drag the briefcase toward her and fumble it open.