Super Trouble (a Superlovin' novella)

by Vivi Andrews

  Super Trouble

  by Vivi Andrews

  Copyright © 2014 Vivi Andrews

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights reserved under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Super Trouble

  To keep her out of trouble, he'll have to hold on tight.

  Kim Carruthers is done being the damsel in distress, waiting for some superhero to save her. Now that she finally has super powers of her own, the bad guys had better watch out. It's payback time. Provided she can get past the sexy super determined to stop her quest for vengeance.

  Unfortunately, the hero on her tail is none other than Frost Nightwing, the man even supers fear and the ex-lover whose icy touch always set her on fire. Tall, dark and deadly Frost is the one love she could never forget and the last person she wants to face… especially now that he's playing for keeps.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The One That Got Away

  Chapter Two: Professional Hostage

  Chapter Three: The Couple That Teleports Together

  Chapter Four: Looking for Clues at the Scene of the Crime

  Chapter Five: Advanced Negotiations

  Chapter Six: Ex-Boyfriend Confab

  Chapter Seven: The Villain America Loves to Hate

  Chapter Eight: Bringing a Gun to a Super Fight

  Chapter Nine: The Iceman Cometh

  Chapter Ten: Once You Go Super

  Chapter Eleven: A Rock Hard Alibi

  Chapter Twelve: Trouble to the Rescue

  Chapter Thirteen: Demolition For Beginners

  Chapter Fourteen: Nothing But Trouble

  About the Author

  Additional Works by Vivi Andrews

  For Leigh & June.

  Chapter One: The One That Got Away

  The full moon hung suspended over the city like a prop in a romantic movie and the sky was so clear hundreds of stars were visible even in the heart of downtown. The air was crisp and cool without the icy chill of the storm that had passed through over the last few days, leaving every surface covered in sparkling white snow. It was the perfect night for strolling hand in hand with a lover, ice skating in the park, or taking a carriage ride through the snowy streets before the car tires turned that pristine white to muddy brown.

  And the perfect night for stalking a would-be felon across the rooftops of Capital City.

  Frost moved from shadow to shadow, easily keeping his target in sight, though he hardly needed to. He was a hunter. He could taste the slight, constant burn of her power at the back of his throat—that odd, tangy mélange of citrus and ozone that marked a telekinetic.

  If she’d been wary, he would have hung back, trusting his inborn super hunting senses to track her, but his prey wasn’t making any effort to conceal herself, careless with the confidence that she was alone on these rooftops and no one looking up from below would be able to see her black-clad form against the night sky.

  Frost shook his head at the arrogance as she leapt from one building to the next, her dark hood falling back and platinum blonde hair streaming behind her like a banner, catching the moonlight. She floated through the air like a dream, seeming to hang suspended, mocking gravity for a moment before her feet touched down nimbly on the next rooftop.

  Gorgeous.

  And idiotic.

  She was so new. So high on the thrill of her heady newfound powers she hadn’t yet realized they didn’t necessarily make her indestructible. Or invisible.

  Damn, he’d missed her. Even her foolish recklessness. Always pushing, barging right in when a sane woman would call the cops and run—

  Frost forcibly evicted the thought from his head. He wouldn’t let himself think of her name, remember her scent. She wasn’t his. Not anymore. The blonde. The target. That was all she was to him tonight.

  He didn’t usually track the new ones. His job had less to do with the shiny excitement of fledgling powers and more to do with what happened after that power had gotten twisted and corrupted into violence and vengeance. By the time he was called, the words dead or alive were usually involved.

  This woman hadn’t tipped over into the dark side. Yet. But Captain Justice was convinced she was right on the verge of crossing that line.

  Frost didn’t owe many favors. A man who hunted down supers when they went rogue couldn’t afford to be indebted to anyone, but he owed Captain Justice. If this would clear the books, he gladly would step in and stop the pretty little telekinetic from going bad.

  She did certainly seem to be heading in that direction at the moment, as fast as her feet would carry her.

  Frost moved silently, one shadow among many, the stealth more habit than necessity since the blonde never even glanced over her shoulder. Her focus was riveted on the street below and the man she, in turn, was stalking.

  Frost knew exactly who she was trailing, had fantasized about killing the bastard himself more than once, but that didn’t matter tonight. All that mattered was the fact that she was stalking the asshole for personal vengeance—and that was the line a superhero could never cross.

  She stopped, crouching at the edge of a rooftop overlooking an alleyway, her black-gloved fingers curling over the rain gutters, blonde curls falling forward over her shoulders. Anyone looking up would spot her in a heartbeat.

  Amateur.

  Frost, in contrast, moved against the night like he was born to it—his dark skin, dark clothes, and dark thoughts all suited to these midnight hunts. Most of the snow up here had melted away under the heat of the exhaust vents, leaving the rooftop a paradise of darkness, made more complete as the heavy moon rolled behind a nearby skyscraper.

  He took a position among the darkest shadows, less than ten feet away from the woman, though she didn’t so much as twitch a finger in his direction. An oblivious idiot as well as a careless one. Wonderful.

  She hadn’t done anything worthy of his intervention yet, but Justice seemed convinced she would. Tonight.

  Impatience clawed at him. Frost wasn’t in the habit of stalking and intercepting supers before they sinned, but Justice wanted him to catch this angel before she fell from grace.

  She sure as hell looked like an angel. That hadn’t changed in the last few years. The pale curls, the high, sculpted cheekbones and delicate contours of her face. The perfect bow of her lips. He studied her profile from his position in the shadows, wondering if she was, objectively speaking, the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on. Probably.

  Subjectively, there was no question. She’d always made his heart beat irrationally fast.

  But he would still take her out if it came to that.

  Part of him hoped it wouldn’t. That he’d be able to sway her from her path. Step in at the exact right moment and save her from herself, be her hero this time. The instinct to protect her was strong, but the rest of him was resigned to whatever he had to do. He was cold, merciless Frost. No amount of hope changed that. He’d learned that lesson years ago.

  She shifted at the lip of the building, lifting her fingers to her mouth to blow on them through the gloves. Frost was impervious to the cold—empowered by it, actually, drawing the chill into his body in invigorating waves to be stored fo
r later use like a battery taking a charge— but she had to be freezing. The temperature had dropped since the sun set and it couldn’t be more than twenty up here in the wind.

  So what the hell was she waiting for?

  Impatient, Frost sent an icy chill slithering down her jacket. Maybe he could spook her. Send her running home before she did something they would both regret.

  When she merely tugged her jacket tighter around her shoulders against the chill, Frost grimaced with frustration. He didn’t have all damn night.

  He could talk to her now…

  Justice wanted him to scare some sense into her—which would be more effective if he caught her in the act of something dastardly, but maybe catching her on the cusp of dastardly was good enough. She had stalked that man halfway across the city. He could work with that.

  And, damn, he just wanted to talk to her, hear his name on her lips, see the look in her eyes when she saw it was him. Would it be anger? Fear? Joy? It had been so long.

  Frost shifted from the shadows to reveal himself, a suitably intimidating entrance line already rising to his lips, when she straightened to her full height—inches taller than he’d expected thanks to the spike heeled boots—

  And stepped off the edge of the building.

  He hissed out a curse, lunging for her, but he was already too late.

  She landed feather-light in the alley below, of course—any telekinetic with an ounce of talent could control a fall from only three stories up—but she was so new his pulse had spiked into the red zone until he saw her safely landed. Too far away for him to draw her talent into himself and use it as his own. He’d always been particularly shitty with the finer points of borrowed telekinetic manipulation anyway.

  He could freeze her power from here—lock it down completely so she was incapable of doing whatever she was planning in the empty alley below—but that left her helpless if whoever she was confronting was truly dangerous.

  Hold on. The empty alley?

  Frost frowned, scanning the area for the man she’d been tracking. Nada. She’d positioned herself a few feet in front of the back door to the building across the way. Lying in wait for her target, no doubt.

  Wasting no more time, he unclipped the lightweight cable device—courtesy of his sister’s Research and Development department—from his belt, fired the brace pin into a handy chimney, and followed the blonde over the edge of the building, the cable spooling out with a near-silent hiss as he descended. He hit the brakes ten feet off the ground, decelerating to a soundless touchdown on the snow-covered ground directly behind the angel.

  His landing must not have been as silent as he thought; she whipped around so fast her curls flew out in an arc, crystal blue eyes widening with horrified recognition as they locked on him. “Frost.” Her whisper hung in the air between them and for a second the ice that he’d layered around his heart seemed to crack and melt.

  Kim Carruthers. Intrepid reporter. Ex-girlfriend to Captain Justice. Perennial damsel in distress. Newly minted telekinetic. Angel on the verge of a fall. And trouble, from her head to her pointy-toed heels.

  The one that got away.

  “Hello, Kim.”

  He supposed he should have expected her to take a swing at him.

  Chapter Two: Professional Hostage

  Kim’s pulse slammed into overdrive and her hand shot out before her rarely used survival instincts caught up enough to suggest maybe it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to punch the superheroes’ version of the bogeyman. She probably would have overruled her survival instincts anyway. She’d been fantasizing about hitting him for far too long.

  Frost Nightwing. So tall, so dark, and oh so dangerous, but it was the eyes that made him beyond sexy. They were the only pale thing about him, shards of glacial ice leaping out of his face in dizzying contrast to the rich darkness of his complexion. The man had always made her knees wobble—of course, that was when he wasn’t swooping in and screwing up her plans.

  Oldest son of the most powerful superhero couple in the world. Rogue superhero hunter. And total asshat commitment-phobe ex-love-of-her-life who’d disappeared like a freaking coward the morning after she’d told him she loved him for the first time.

  The one that got away. Who deserved to be beaten to a bloody pulp.

  Unfortunately, the punch never landed.

  “Hey!” He deflected the blow with such practiced ease she might have been a child having a temper tantrum.

  “Asshole,” she growled, lashing out again, this time with her new power. Telekinesis. The great equalizer.

  But when she shoved at him, hard enough he should have gone flying back into the brick wall behind him, there was a hollow ringing in her ears and nothing happened. Instead, ice whispered across the back of her neck, right at the base of her skull. “What the hell?”

  She flailed out with another TK strike. Nothing. Nearly shrieking with frustration, she threw everything she had into throwing him. He didn’t budge an inch.

  No. This wasn’t how this worked. She was super now, goddamn it. After years of being the victim, years of being used as a pawn in superhero games, she was finally powerful. So what the hell was happening with her power? Why was she suddenly so freaking helpless again?

  She balled her fists, winding up for another non-TK attack, but Frost was done playing.

  “Knock it off.” He caught her wrist and tugged, using her momentum from the attempted punch to swing her around so her back was to his front. His arms wrapped around her, pinning her elbows to her sides and yanking her back to press against a rock hard chest. The whole move took less than a second. The man could move.

  Oh mercy, that should not be a turn-on.

  But her body remembered him. Remembered how natural it was for him to take control—and make her so damn glad he had.

  Heady warmth rushed to pool between her thighs.

  She ignored it.

  “What the fuck are you doing to my power?” It had to be him. Did he have some kind of power dampener? She’d heard of them—just rumors, whispers about Frost’s sister Tandy and her scientist boyfriend doing super secret research in the basements of the Trident Laboratories. There was a story there. She could smell it. And she would have gone after that story with every fiber of her being—if she hadn’t lost her job and been more or less banned from working as a journalist. All thanks to supers.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Now? Right when she was finally going to be able to settle the score? “You’ve been doing a pretty fucking excellent job of ignoring me for the last five years. Why don’t you keep doing that?” she snapped, squirming in his hold—and trying not to notice the way the deep rumble of his voice had reverberated through her back where they were pressed together.

  “Justice asked me to.”

  “Of course he did.” The words dripped disdain. “Well, you can tell my other busybody superhero ex-boyfriend that I’m not his fucking problem anymore.”

  He lowered his head so the next words were exhaled against her ear. “You’re about to be my problem if you aren’t careful, Trouble.”

  “Don’t call me that.” That nickname used to make her weak in the knees, but she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was strong now. Fierce. A super in her own right. “You made it clear I wasn’t your problem when you walked away. We’re done, Frost.”

  He shifted his grip on her and suddenly she was hyperaware of the way his forearm rested beneath her breasts, plumping them up. Her nipples tightened sharply, as if they were naked to the cold rather than cozily swathed in layers beneath her jacket. Begging for attention, the little hussies.

  “I hunt supers who go rogue,” Frost whispered against the shell of her ear, sending another traitorous shiver racing through her erogenous zones. Her body did not seem to have gotten the We’re Done memo. It was busy setting up a Welcome back, Frost! parade.

  “So? What does that have to do with me?” He couldn’t know what she was planning.

>   He answered her question with one of his own. “Who are you stalking, Trouble?”

  “Stalking?” she repeated, falling back on strategy one—when in doubt, play dumb. No one could play dumb quite like a pretty blonde reporter.

  “Kim.” He made her name remarkably expressive—managing to pack this-act-is-beneath-you into the single syllable. “How do you think I got here? I saw you. I followed you as you followed him.”

  Deny, deny, deny. She gasped, feigning outrage. “You followed me? So it’s forbidden for me to go for a little rooftop wander, exploring my new gifts, but it’s totally fine for you to stalk me all over the city?”

  He sighed and she didn’t need to see his face to know he was unfazed by her theatrics. He always had been able to see right through her. She couldn’t imagine why she’d once found that attractive. “Why were you stalking him, Kim? Whatever you’re planning, I can guarantee you, it’s a bad idea.”

  Technically he was right. It was a terrible idea. But she wasn’t about to admit that. She saturated her voice with my-poor-little-brain-misunderstood, adding a slight pout for good measure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He nudged her toward the door, the move pressing one of his thighs against the seam of hers. “Shall we go inside? See who we meet?”

  “No!” Shit. “It’s Little Vic, okay? I was following Victorio Peccorino.”

  “I know.” So calm, always so goddamn cool and collected, while she was melting. “I just don’t know why.”

  “If you know who I’m following then you know why,” she snapped.

  The little bastard had started it all. He was the one who’d first painted a target on her ass as prime super-villain bait. Abductor Numero Uno.

  “He was acquitted,” Frost said, the words surprisingly gentle.

  “I’m aware.”

  “I can’t let you hurt a man who was found innocent in a court of law.”

  Innocent. That was rich. “He kidnapped me.”