Misadventures with a Super Hero

by Angel Payne

  “I…don’t understand. Where did you—” My breaths come faster and faster. “Did he give this to you? Like a souvenir?”

  He laughs. Not hard, but enough to make me want to smack him again. No. Punch him. He needs to be telling me I’m right—that the leather in my lap is just a gift from his buddy or a memento found on the train platform.

  Because if I’m not right, that means…

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  “He didn’t give me the mask, Emmalina.”

  …that every knowing note in his tone is right…

  “Then why was it in your nightstand?”

  …that every ounce of dread in mine is too…

  “Because it’s mine.”

  …that the unreal is suddenly very real.

  I lurch to my feet and force them to move in a frantic figure eight, countering my exploding mind and churning stomach. My fist twists against the molded leather game-changer he’s just laid on me. My other hand opens and closes in time to my wild-woman pace. “But not because it’s yours yours, right?”

  When he issues nothing but silence, I freeze in place, gaping at him with new urgency. Mentally, I drop the towel from his body and redress him in black leather. My imagination secures the mask across the chiseled planes of his face.

  All too easily, the result blooms in my mind. All too clearly, I can see him in that god-in-leather finery. Filling it with his regal posture. Turning it into visual poetry with his stride, his grace.

  Dominating the very air he’s in.

  Controlling it. Using it.

  Like his weapon.

  The guy’s weird, Emma.

  He’s not the person you think, Emma.

  “Shit.” I sink back to the bed. “Shit.”

  “Emma—”

  “It is yours.” I lift my head, staring, as if seeing him for the first time. “Because you’re…him.”

  He averts his gaze. Twists his lips into a ruthless grimace. “I’m just me, Emma. And I’m just trying, for the first time, to do something with my life besides being paparazzi food. What everyone else chooses to call it, or how they want to glorify it…” He shrugs, turning the errant drops on his shoulders into planes of muscled luster. “That’s not up to me.”

  After letting that statement steep in a long silence, I murmur, “Which is why you’ve kept it a secret.”

  “Among other reasons, yes.”

  “But you finally did tell me.”

  I lift the mask, still dangling from my palm, back toward him. I’m not sure what I’m trying to tell him with the act, but he gazes at the leather with the same intensity I do, knowing the gesture stands for something. Not my total understanding—that may not ever come—but perhaps my gratitude. Exposing himself like this… It’s taken trust that turns his body into a block of tension and his energy into a strained matrix.

  He accepts the mask from me and drops the leather piece back on the nightstand. He sits down next to me, curling one of his hands with mine. “Because it was tell you or lose you.”

  I turn, taking in his face more intently. Most specifically, the truth now speaking to me from his eyes. “But you’re still not sure I won’t run away flailing.”

  I don’t expect his sardonic snort. “I’m just a guy playing the odds, beauty.”

  I turn my hand in, twining my fingers with his. Comprehension slams hard. The recognition that, despite the informational warhead he dropped a minute ago, this moment blows me away more. The rogue savior of our city, the idol who’s fascinated the land of the jaded, is sitting next to me wrapped in nothing but a towel and a lot of uncertainty. A super hero who keeps his mask in the nightstand has clearly placed his heart in my hands.

  Is this really my life?

  Am I really lifting his hand and gently turning it over to trace a finger along the pulse beneath his wrist? Am I really watching a tremor take him, rolling through him like a bank of summer thunder, turning his blood vessels into a web of lightning? Are his fingers actually glowing blue and gold against mine, their light corresponding to the heavy breaths pumping his sculpted chest?

  “Tell me.” My whisper is weighted by demand as much as curiosity. I join a second finger to my first, flowing my touch up his arm…watching the amazing light of his bloodstream beneath his skin.

  Beneath my touch, Reece’s limbs jerk and shudder. He grips me, digging into my hips, all but pleading with me to keep exploring him like that. “Tell you what?” he grates. “You can have anything, Velvet. Everything.”

  I lean in and lift a hand to the thick artery pumping down the side of his neck. I watch it light up like a hose holding radioactive acid. I stroke a little harder. The glint intensifies. “Is this why you always ordered me to close my eyes?”

  He swallows deeply. “Yeah.”

  I lift my head, confronting the gorgeous glow from his pupils too. “It’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful.” He pulls my fingers to his lips. His kiss carries a tiny shock, inciting a gasp. He does it again, sending a similar zap to the tender tissues between my legs.

  I angle my body more toward his. He releases my fingers and settles his incredible lips over mine. I thread my touch through his hair as we kiss for long tender moments. Static flows in the wake of my fingers, transferring white-hot energy back into my hand and up my arm.

  “Wow.” I let out a delighted laugh.

  “No shit.” His commiserating grin is mesmerizing.

  “Dork.” I say it as a tease but turn sober enough to add, “As if all this is new for you?”

  He kisses me again. New energy arcs between us, making us both gasp and quiver. “Every moment.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No shit.” He dares me to doubt him with a harder, deeper kiss. Well over a minute later, when he lets me up for air once more, I openly gawk.

  “So…you weren’t kidding the other night? About it being a while?” I watch the slow, steady shake of his head. “Because of…what happened to make you this way?” Refusing to accept his thick silence as an answer, I tug at his hair. As silken as the strands are, I stay focused. “You said I could ask anything, Reece. That you’d give it to me.”

  His brow furrows. I can all but hear him cursing himself, but that won’t get him a bye on my purpose. I need to know.

  “This shit…it’s part of me now,” he finally utters. “It’s in my blood, my sweat, my nervous system…”

  “And you didn’t know what that would do to someone if you were intimate with them.”

  I release a long breath as the understanding sinks in. He answers by jerking another nod.

  “To be honest, my head wasn’t even there anyway. My life was ass-backward and upside down, and all I cared about was righting it again.”

  “Then why did you end up here?”

  “In LA?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Richards Resorts International is headquartered in New York. You’re as far away from that as the contiguous states will allow.”

  “And?”

  “Well, if you’re trying to get your shit together, why did your dad banish you out here?” I tilt my head. “You have to know that’s what everyone is saying, right? That the family sent you out here for some heavy shit that went down in Europe. Parties? Women? Drugs?”

  He chuffs. “Yeah. That’s all still pretty funny.”

  I right myself. “So it didn’t happen like that?”

  His stare turns droll. “Hell if I know, Velvet.”

  “You were too strung-out to remember?”

  “I was too not there to remember.”

  I blink hard. Then again. “But there were pictures of you…”

  “Cut, pasted, and altered, and then strategically released to the media,” he supplies.

  “What?” I gape. “For how long?”

  “Nearly six months.”

  “Why?”

  “So nobody would figure out where I really was.”
He cuts me short from the logical follow-up to that with a look I can only describe as shellshock. He juts his jaw, inhaling deep once more. “It was six months of fucking hell, and that’s the only ‘everything’ you get about it.”

  My heart squeezes. My throat constricts. Air is my new enemy, hurting with every intake, as I slide my hand to the back of his neck. I wrap my other arm around his waist, rejoicing as he pulls me even tighter.

  Just like that, it’s back—that sizzling, encompassing force field of his, binding our energies like lightning in storm clouds but with a thousand times more magic. I give into it with a jagged sigh, tucking my lips against his neck. I press kisses from his ear to his jaw and back again. His breaths rumble into my hair, sparking more fierce need between us. My pulse sprints to match his. My hand races up and down his spine. I marvel at his corded strength bunching beneath my touch like power cables wrapped in satin. Tanned, taut, muscle-laced satin. I yearn to dissolve into him, to tangle myself with him. The admission pushes another shaky breath through me, echoed by a similar sound in his chest.

  Between those rough breaths, I finally compose words. “Wow.” Okay, one word. Saying it all, yet saying nothing. How do I tell him he’s fried the neurons of my mind? Blown apart every imagining of my soul? Given my heart one of the greatest gifts it could ever receive? How do I tell him all that, without making it about Bolt?

  Because he’ll never believe me. I even wonder if I’ll believe myself.

  Because without the hell he endured to become this man in my arms, he likely wouldn’t be the man in my arms.

  And I’ve fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with the man in my arms.

  The man who envelopes me tighter in his hold, wreathing my torso in greater sparks of awareness and awakening, before whispering, “Wow is a damn good start.”

  “A start.” I trail my mouth down to his shoulder. I breathe him in, all fresh sandalwood soap with a hint of his natural smoke and cedar, while sliding my tongue over every fascinating muscle of his shoulder. “But…just a start, right?”

  “Only if you’ll have me for more.” He issues it in a soft snarl, which quickly becomes a fierce choke. The sound bites the air as I do the same to the bottom of his neck. “Fuck, Emma. Say you’ll have me.”

  He digs a hand deeper into my waist, bunching fingers into my shirt. His shirt. I revel in the awareness. I’m in his bed, wearing his shirt. And now, I’m twisting to straddle his lap before planting my knees in his sheets. I’m surrounded by him—his scent, his fabrics, his bed, his energy—razing me from scalp to soles, inciting one consuming need in return.

  To surround him with me.

  “I’ll have you, Reece Richards.” I brace my thumb and forefinger against his jaw, securing him with possessive intent. “I’ll have you. I want you.”

  I love you.

  For a second, I’m terrified I’ve let it escape aloud. The way his whole frame stills—stopping as if I’ve shot him in the chest—has me dropping my hand. His features take on a new hardness. His gaze beams with a force nobody would question twice. A message confirmed by every thrumming, throbbing, cell of my body.

  He craves me too.

  He shows me exactly that, lunging in until our lips collide. He’s untamed shrapnel in my mouth, everywhere at once, setting me afire with every sweep of his tongue. In response, I give a shaky, needy moan. I’m already collateral damage, gutted from his assault, gorging on his passion…

  Ripping off his towel.

  Looking down at him—all of him—with savoring hunger.

  Rejoicing in every magnificent muscle I see. And caress. And spark into electrified glory as his blood heats and pulses and funnels to the most fascinating bolt in his body…

  I wrap both hands around his cock and stroke him from glowing balls to the bold beacon of his head, wanting him worse than I ever have before.

  Chapter Eleven

  REECE

  “Emma. Fuck.” Both words are barely breaths, breaking past my locked teeth as her talented fingers coax more heat to the surface of my cock. Surface? Who am I kidding? Every inch of me, from the core of throbbing magma to the veins pounding at my stretched skin, is a new slave to her mastery, a new convert to her religion.

  And what does my new goddess give me in return? A stare brimming with just as much adoration, worship, amazement, devotion. Blowing me away. Spinning my senses. That’s before she even speaks again.

  “Reece. It’s beautiful.” She drops her head, brushing the glowing drop off my tip with her lips. “You’re so beautiful.”

  I smile. At least I think I do. It’s hard to know what’s real right now. “You mean that, don’t you?” My astonishment is authentic. “You don’t think I’m a freak? That this is fifteen kinds of weird?”

  “Of course it’s weird.” She licks her lips, spreading the sheen of my pre-come across their delectable curves like space-age lip gloss. “But it’s wonderful. And incredible.”

  “And freaky?”

  “Oh, that’s the best part.”

  I join my gruff laugh to her sighing giggle as she resumes touching me. Squeezing me. Gazing at me. Fuck, yes. That’s the best part. Getting to see her eyes, wide as Caribbean seas, drenching my body with their heat and light and lust. Seeing that even though I could lead Santa’s fucking sleigh with my cock, she still can’t stop touching it and then kissing it once more.

  “Fuck.” My hips convulse as she sucks off more drops from my strained head. “Velvet…baby…that’s…”

  “Freaky.” She laughs it out while kissing her way up my torso. Her lips, still heated by the drops she just took in, close over one of my nipples. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m into freaks.” Then the other.

  “Damn good thing.” I cup the back of her neck, directing her to do it again. She flattens her tongue, forming a hot wet trail between my pecs, as I use my other hand to push at the T-shirt covering her. Though she’s turned white cotton into a fashion statement I’ll never tire of, naked is how I need her right now. Her tits are what I crave, smashed against my chest, smeared in the same fiery river blazing the plain over my heart.

  I finally strip the shirt away from her. With a starving growl, I yank her down to me. In a crazy torrent, we kiss. Bite. Devour. Spar. Fighting to expel our passion while feeding the damn monster with every passing second. It’s frenzied, fiery, passionate, and frightening, and I never want it to be any other way.

  Hell. It was the word I just used to tell her what made me this way.

  A hell I’ll endure again, a thousand times over, if she’s the prize waiting at the end.

  “Oh my…wow!” she exclaims against my lips as her breasts crush my chest. I lift a smile in return, nipping at the soft nectar of her mouth.

  “One way of putting it.” I scrape her chin with my teeth before jerking at her hair, compelling her head back. The exposed column of her neck is creamy and smooth…and ready for my mark. Needing to be branded.

  I lift my head, growling as she gasps, scoring her skin with my rough kiss. Between our bodies, my cock jerks and grows. More arousal spurts from my head, soaking the cotton barrier of her panties. I curl my head tighter to look down there. The sight of the spot I’ve made, turning the satin from light pink to dark, unhinges something even more feral in me. Something that needs that underwear out of my way. Now.

  I twist a couple of fingers into the sweet pink lace and jerk hard—only to have the material battle my grip. Damn it.

  I lift her and flip her all the way over. Pushing back for leverage, I’m treated to the world’s best aerial view. The landscape of her body is a silken dream, topped by the succulent berries of her erect nipples. All I need to see now is the bare peach between her thighs.

  A satisfaction I need this second.

  “Close your eyes, Emma. Only for a second, beauty,” I add as she sends an are-you-serious glower. I make good on the promise, pulling up on the lace at her hip so it’s nearly a taut pink rope—and now, a perfect target fo
r the blue laser my forefinger becomes.

  Inside a second, I sear the material away. Emma’s gaze pops open as the smoking satin falls from her body. I take a deep breath, forcing the heat to subside, though it’s damn awesome not to worry about hiding my ten lightsabers anymore.

  Very awesome.

  “Holy…wow.”

  I wiggle my fingers slowly…before lowering their tips to the graceful ridges of her pubic bones. “Wow,” I echo, spreading my touch outward, coaxing her thighs to spread the same direction. “You enjoy that word, don’t you?”

  “In this case, it fits.” As my thumbs meet, toying with the top of her pouting slit, her hips writhe. “It fits you.”

  I work my thumbs downward and spread the rest of my fingers along her pulsing lips, reveling in how they eagerly kiss at the air. “Fitting you is my goal, Miss Crist.”

  “Oh,” she mewls. The sound deepens and darkens as I work my thumbs in more, spreading her wet depths. Soon, I’m pushing into her as well, a tender but steady finger fuck. My other fingers spread out, keeping her thighs apart. I brace my elbows against her knees—which start to shake, becoming erotic turn-ons in their own right. Holy hell. Because of her, I’m now a knee guy.

  Fuck.

  Because of her, I’m now an everything guy.

  “Reece.”

  “Emma.”

  “Reece!”

  I replace my fingertips with my hips and gulp hard at how good her inner thighs feel against me. At how good all of her feels against me.

  “Open wider for me, beauty.” I lean over, kissing her in long, passionate pulls as she complies. “Yeah. Like that.” My own breath stutters. “Do you know how many times I’ve imagined being with you like this? Completely bare like this?” I skate my touch back up over her puckered breasts. Watching her nipples light up beneath my touch is a turn-on beyond the dreams I’ve just referenced. “No holding anything back. No more hiding.”

  Emma clutches my hand and guides it to the side of her face. “Never again.” Her tawny lashes lift. Her stare is pure blue conviction, engulfing mine. “No more hiding.”