Superlovin' (12 page)

DynaGirl had saved him.

Lifting himself onto his elbows, Lucien looked down into Darla’s bright green eyes, brushing the hair away from her face. “Since when is a villain worth saving?” he asked, his voice unaccountably rough.

“Everyone is worth saving,” she replied, her tone as hushed as his had been. As if she was as reluctant as he was to break this fragile moment.

The words hit him hard. She meant them. He was a cynic to his core, but Darla was the real deal. She would risk her life for someone the rest of the world didn’t believe was worth saving. Her heroism wasn’t a farce, put on for the benefit of the press. It was who she was. So much a part of her, it didn’t even occur to her to be anything else. It wasn’t a lack of choice, it was a choice so deep it couldn’t be changed.

She pushed gently on his chest, and he let her up, hating the awkwardness that instantly filled the space between them.

“Do you know where Mirabelle is?” Darla asked.

Mirabelle.
Not Kevin. Mirabelle. She could’ve gone after the bad guy, but she wanted to be sure his sister was safe first.

“I have an idea,” Lucien said, shaping the words carefully.

Darla grabbed the laptop case and slung it over her shoulder. “We’ll drop this at Trident on the way,” she explained, her expression showing how eager she was to get rid of the most powerful device ever discovered.

Lucien watched her, feeling something hard shift in his chest. Darla didn’t care about fame and glory. She really did care about justice, truth and saving the world from itself. Saving those who couldn’t save themselves.

God. He couldn’t be more wrong for her. And damn if he wasn’t already falling…

Chapter Fourteen

The Couple that Kicks Ass Together

Darla couldn’t look at Lucien without blushing. Which meant she was blushing a lot since it was hard to avoid looking at him with her arms wrapped tight around his brawny shoulders, flying through the clouds.

Apparently, her most effective superpower was being a slut. She’d saved the city…by shoving her tongue down Lucien Wroth’s throat. Not exactly a story she could regale her grandchildren with. Or her parents.

She wished she could say it was all part of her master plan, blinding him with her epic sex appeal for the greater good, but the truth was, in that moment, she hadn’t been thinking or planning or even considering the fate of the universe. All she’d seen, all she’d felt, was him.

Now she couldn’t meet his eyes as they flew off to one of his father’s old lairs so Lucien could save his sister. And so Darla could drop-kick the asshole who’d fucked with Lucien’s brain into next week.

What did you say to a man after you’d sucked the tongue out of his head to save a few million people?
Was it good for you?
Because it had been fucking epic for her. World-shattering. She’d practically come from the taste of him alone. Yet another thing she couldn’t tell her father.

“There.” Lucien pointed to a small cave at the base of a sheer black cliff. “That’s the entrance.”

She dove down and landed lightly at the lip of the cave, setting him on his feet. Darla dropped her arms and put a couple feet of distance between them. Lucien didn’t seem to notice her reaction. He was too busy peering down the darkened passageway leading into the heart of the cliff.

“Are you sure they’re here?” Darla frowned into the unlit tunnel. No footprints marked the inches of dirt and dust on the floor at its mouth.

“No,” Lucien admitted. “But it’s the best guess I’ve got.”

“If Mirabelle is here, we wouldn’t know if they were all standing right in front of us, would we?”

“Spread out,” he ordered, walking to the far side of the passageway and starting down it. “The more different our perspectives, the harder it is for her to maintain multiple illusions.”

Darla followed, keeping as far from Lucien as she could while still guarding his back. The dark passageway sloped slightly upward and curved just enough she knew they weren’t going straight, but not enough that she could keep track of how far they’d turned. The effect was disorienting.

She strained to pick out any whisper of sound, but only heard their footsteps—Lucien’s moving so quickly she was having trouble keeping him in sight in the low light.

“Lucien—”

A loud clang echoed from the cave mouth. The limited light it provided vanished, swallowing them both in absolute blackness.

Trapped.

Darla heard Lucien swear, and then there was only the rasp of her own breathing, too fast, too ragged. She wasn’t afraid of flying, falling, or much of anything—but being buried alive wasn’t high on her to-do list. She heard a low keening noise, realizing with shame it was coming from her own throat.

“Hey now.” Instantly, Lucien was there, somehow having found her in the black, his scent warm and familiar, his hands firm as they cupped her face. “You afraid of the dark, DynaGirl?”

“No,” Darla insisted, hating the thready, weak sound of her voice. “It’s more the suffocation, smothering, starvation, insanity—”

“Easy, princess,” he murmured, his breath whispering across her temple and stirring her hair. “It’s all in your head.”

“My head?” she squeaked.
Trapped in the dark, no escape, buried in the heart of a mountain.

“Bright as daylight in here,” he murmured, his voice so sure and steady she almost wanted to punch him for being so composed. “There’s no door to block that entrance. It’s all Mirabelle. She’s just saying hello.”

An illusion. It’s only an illusion.
“Damn strange hello.”

“She knows I know there’s no way to block that entrance. She wants me to know she’s here.” His heat shifted away from her. “Brace yourself, princess. Things are about to get rough.”

Darla braced her feet even as her brain scrambled to keep up.
Rough?

Lucien sucked in a breath, and she stumbled, pulled toward him, as if the air itself was magnetically drawn to him. The moment held, a suspension in time, an eternal waiting heartbeat, then
wham
.

Energy exploded outward. She staggered, barely keeping her feet as a shock wave slammed into her. Her ears rang as the percussion of the shock wave echoed like they were in an enormous cavern.

And, suddenly, they were.

Darla blinked up at what looked more like the inside of a brightly lit aircraft hangar than the inside of a mountain. The inside of an aircraft hangar that had just been hit by a tsunami. Kevin lay on the ground about twenty feet from them, Mirabelle crumpled at his side. About two dozen uniformed men littered the ground beneath assorted fallen debris.

“Belle!” Lucien sped to his sister, unnaturally fast.

Darla ran after him, intent on restraining Kevin before the mind-fucker had a chance to recover. He lay on the ground, groaning softly, blood trickling out of his nose. Darla pulled a zip-cord out of her belt and reached for Kevin’s wrists.

“Careful!” Mirabelle cried from her supine position. “Not his skin. Don’t touch his skin.”

Darla jerked her hands back. She used the edge of Kevin’s shirt as a buffer between their hands as she secured him.

“Belle?” Lucien’s voice was thick with concern.

Darla’s heart ached at the care with which he cradled his sister. Her pupils were contracting to points and expanding to nearly cover her bright blue irises. Contracting and expanding disturbingly fast, like a camera snapping between aperture settings, unable to lock on one.

Mirabelle frowned up at her brother. “Did I bring you here?” she asked, the words wavering with her confusion. “He kept telling me to bring you in, but I wouldn’t, Luc. I wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t. You did great, Belle.”

Around the room, Kevin’s henchmen began shoving themselves to their feet. Darla watched them for signs Kevin’s effect on them had worn off, as it seemed to be doing on Mirabelle, but when they looked at her, their expressions held the eerie blankness she’d seen on Lucien’s on the train. “Um…Lucien?”

“I’m so sorry, Belle. I should’ve been here.”

She hated to interrupt his touching moment of fraternal devotion, but the henchmen were moving faster now, picking up bits of debris—a club here, a shard of metal there. Their faces contorted into masks of avid fanaticism, cultish adoration rising in their eyes as they gazed at Kevin lying at Darla’s feet.

“Lucien…”

“I’ll always be there for you, Belle.
Always
. I’ll never let you down ag—”

“Lucien!”

The henchmen swarmed like locusts, heads down, weapons out. Lucien jerked upright, reflexively striking out at the first one and sending him catapulting through the air.

“Don’t hurt them!” Darla yelped, taking the more moderate approach of crushing the weapons they raised against her. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Lucien cursed and pulled his punches, but without throwing them across the room, the henchmen were relentless. “Fucking zombies,” Lucien snarled. “How do we wake them up?”

“I could try kissing them all.”

“The fuck you can.”

Ignoring her surge of girly satisfaction at his possessive growl, Darla spun and gave a love tap to the freakishly fast zombie rushing her from behind. He staggered back, wheezing and clutching his sternum.
Damn, hope I didn’t break it.

“You have a better plan?” she asked him as he used superspeed to pick up the henchmen and set them down again across the room. But no matter how much he set them back, they kept running toward Kevin, not speaking or even grunting when hit, the only noise they made the patter of their feet.

“I don’t see why we have to be so fucking gentle,” Lucien snapped irritably.

“Neither do I.” At Mirabelle’s low rasp, Darla turned her head—just in time to see the chameleon put her palm on Kevin’s bare arm.

“Belle!”

Kevin and Mirabelle both jerked, the rigid seizing of their bodies a physical representation of the mental power-struggle they waged. Lines of tension creased Mirabelle’s brow, her eyes squeezed shut.

Darla watched the silent battle as much as she could with the zombies swarming. Who was winning? How would they even tell?

Mirabelle gave a soft gasp.
Then Kevin began to scream, a high-pitched, agonized shriek that would do any horror queen proud. His cries went on and on, his body convulsing as Mirabelle kept her hand on his arm, a small, almost curious smile curving her lips. The sound cut off abruptly, though his mouth remained open wide, as if he would still be screaming but his vocal cords had forgotten how to form the sound.

“
Mirabelle
,” Lucien said, his own voice hoarse.

Her eyes flicked to her brother, then back to her victim. The zombies kept rushing forward, even more frantic now, until Mirabelle’s low command broke the silence of the room.

“Stop them, Kevin.”

The zombies froze mid-step and crumpled to the ground. Mirabelle smiled and removed her hand. Kevin gave a low whimper of relief, his bowed back landing back on the floor with a thump. “Good boy,” Mirabelle whispered.

But Kevin wasn’t done. Now that he wasn’t being tortured inside his own mind, the zombies began to stir, shambling to their feet…

Mirabelle grabbed a fistful of his hair and used it to smash the back of his skull into the concrete. The zombies flopped down as Kevin did, unconscious.

She looked up to her brother, her pupils still cycling wildly. “He always was a controlling ass,” she mumbled. And fainted.

Lucien stood at the mouth of the cave, his sister’s slight form cradled in his arms. Darla stood nearby, fidgeting with the makeshift harness they’d jury-rigged for her to fly a couple dozen bound prisoners back to the city. Surrounded by bodies as they were, it was surprisingly intimate, since they were the only two conscious.

“Trident should be able to help her,” Darla said, dragging a toe through the dirt. “Prolonged exposure to mind control can have lasting effects, but she’s tough. She’ll be fine. And I’ll, uh, I’ll do what I can to make sure she never sees the inside of Area Nine again. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’re both heroes.”

A wry smile tugged at his lips. “Don’t get too carried away, princess.” She might want him to be a hero, but he knew what he was. And what he was was in no way good enough for her. He met her gaze, holding it steadily. “I appreciate it. Everything you’ve done.”

Her face flushed. “It wasn’t anything—”

“It was everything. More than anyone else would’ve.” She took a small step toward him, and he stopped her with his next words. “Just wanted to reassure you I’ll be keeping my end of the bargain.”

“The bargain?”

“Mirabelle and I won’t be troubling you anymore.”

“You…”

He went on before she could find a way to finish that sentence. “I said you’d never see or hear from us again. I keep my promises.”
A lie, but a convenient one.
He’d never given a shit about promises, but he couldn’t stay. The Bad Guy didn’t get the girl.

Darla took a deep breath, seeming to collect herself. “Right. Good. Thank you, Lu—Wroth. It was…educational working with you.”

His lips twisted again. “It’s been something else, DynaGirl.”

She nodded. He thought he saw her eyes gleaming wetly in the moonlight, but then she launched into the air, hauling a bundle of criminals below her in a net.

It’s for the best
. Which was why it felt so wrong to a villain like him.

Chapter Fifteen

Strong Enough to Be My Man

“What do you mean you’re never going to see him again?” Tandy yelped. “Like
never
never?”

Darla waved at Tandy to keep her voice down, though none of the nearby diners at Le Cirq tonight seemed to have noticed her outburst. “That was the deal,” she said, struggling to keep her speech flat and even, refusing to let any emotion creep in.

“What an idiotic deal.”

Darla grimaced. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Tandy contained her next protest as their desserts arrived “
with the chef’s compliments to DynaGirl, our city’s favorite heroine,
” drumming her fingers impatiently until the waiter stepped away. Darla focused on Tandy’s dark fingers contrasting the crisp white tablecloth, trying to ignore the vast, yawning abyss in her chest.