Super Bad (a Superlovin' novella) (15 page)

Jesus Christ. She
wanted to get back together. Julian glanced guiltily back toward the bedroom
where Mirage slept, as if by even hearing Kim say that he’d somehow betrayed
her. “Kim…”

“I know I screwed up,
but you were always so invincible, invulnerable, and then this girl came along
and she could hurt you.”

She could hurt him. Mirage
could destroy him in a way Kim never would have been able to, but that was also
why he could never walk away from her without a fight. Not like he had from
Kim. “You didn’t screw up.”

“I didn’t?” She sounded
so hopeful he had to cut her off.

“No. You weren’t right
to leave. You were always honest with me and you were grateful. I think we both
mistook that for something more than it was. You said yourself our relationship
was mostly for show in the last few months. We both deserve more than that. A
relationship should be more than just rescues. If you ever find yourself in trouble
again, I’ll be there for you. You know that. But it ends there.”

“It goes both ways,
Julian. You’re in trouble. This Mind Bender chick—”

“Is none of your
business. I’m fine, Kim. Retract the story. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so.”

He said goodbye before
she could get started on another round of concerns, hung up and turned off the
phone. If nothing else, he’d learned that he and Mirage needed to stay hidden. Darla
and Lucien should be back in a few days and then they could worry about getting
Mirage cleared so she wouldn’t wind up shipped off to Area Nine again.

A few more days alone
with Mirage. Not exactly a hardship. Especially if they spent them as they had
the last few hours.

He went back to the
other bedroom where she still slept and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb.
Was Kim right about her? Was this an illusion? He’d mistaken his own hero
complex and friendship for more with Kim. Could he be lying to himself again?

He’d never
needed
Kim. Being dumped had stung, but he was never heartbroken that she was gone. He’d
never really let her in. In a matter of weeks, Mirage knew things about him
that he’d never revealed to Kim. But was that love or manipulation?

Jesus.
Love
. Did
he love her? Was that what this was?

On the bed, she
stretched like a cat, making a small drowsy noise in her throat as she felt
across the bed. Reached for him. His heart lurched. He crossed the room in two
strides and slid in beside her. Her searching hand brushed his shoulder and she
rolled against his side, a smile curving her lips before she even opened her
eyes. “Hey,” she mumbled sleepily.

“Hey.” If this wasn’t
love yet, he was falling fast. And if it was an illusion…he wasn’t sure he
cared.

“Did you always want to
be a hero?”

The afternoon sun
slanted through the high window, splashing over them where Julian was sprawled
out naked on the bed and Mirage was sprawled out on him. It was a position
she’d grown extremely fond of in the last few days as it gave her an
up-close-and-personal view of his freakishly exquisite body. With one finger,
she idly drew designs over the firm ridges of his underwear model abs. They
jumped beneath her touch.

“I always knew I would
be, but it wasn’t like a goal so much as an inevitability. The family legacy.”

“But what did you say
when people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up?”

“I told them I was
going to be a vet.”

Mirage blinked,
levering herself up so she could see his face. “Seriously? Healing kittens and
stuff?”

“My parents told me I
couldn’t have a dog unless I could take care of it. I thought that meant I had
to become a vet to have a dog.” He shrugged. “I was six.” The more she heard
about his childhood, the more she ached for the lonely little boy he’d been, so
desperate for companionship. She dropped a kiss on his chest before resting her
head there and resuming her doodling. Julian hugged her to him briefly and went
back to playing with her hair. “What about you? What did you want to grow up to
be?”

“I never really thought
about it,” she admitted. “When I was really little, I wanted to be a ballerina
or a princess. Pretty standard, I guess. Then, after my mother died and my
dad…changed, I stopped thinking about the future. I still don’t, I guess.”

“But you went to
college—”

“Because Lucien would
have flipped his shit if I hadn’t.” Her memories came easily, so clear now, so
sharply defined it was becoming hard to remember just how broken she’d been.

“What were you majoring
in?”

“Technically I was
undecided, but all my classes were political science. Like that would ever pan
out. Who would let a Mind Bender run for office? They’d put me back in Area
Nine first.”

“Then why Poly Sci?”

“Because…” She blushed,
wanting to tell him, but embarrassed to admit the truth. To him of all people. “Because
I wanted justice.”

She felt his surprise
in the subtle tensing of his body. “Justice?”

“I know. I’m the
villain girl, right? I’m supposed to want chaos and destruction and all that
crap, but
justice,
that was how Kevin got me. My father isn’t a bad guy,
but he will
never
get a fair trial because of his compulsion abilities. Rapists,
serial killers—they get a jury of their peers, but a scientist with one scary
power is labeled a threat to national security and locked away because of his
assumed guilt. I hated that. I hated the way super
heroes
were celebrated
like gods for every life they saved, but never taken to task for their
failures. No one ever admitted that my mother died because a superhero made a
really shitty call that day. He screwed up and no one cared. They were too busy
giving him the keys to the city because he managed to save
some
of the
victims. I just wanted a chance to make that right. And now I’m wanted by the
authorities and I’ll never be able to convince anyone of anything.”

“You won’t be wanted
forever. We’ll fix this.”

She wanted to believe
him. Her fractured psyche was mending, but her life was still as broken as
ever. What kind of future could she really have? And would her mind just fall
to pieces again as soon as she was separated from Julian? She couldn’t stay
glued to his side forever. He’d already given her weeks of his life. Who knew
what she’d been taking him away from?

“Do you have a day job?
Or other heroic duties I’m keeping you from performing?” She knew from Darla
that most heroes had jobs to pay the bills, given that hero work paid jack shit
most days. Darla consulted with Trident on super-tech. The Nightwing family had
massive manufacturing interests. But she’d never heard Captain Justice mentioned
in a non-hero capacity.

“I inherited well,” he
said with just a shadow of self-mockery, as if having money handed down to him
was something to be ashamed of. “I’m also on retainer with the local
authorities as an interrogation aide, but being the human lie detector isn’t
urgent work. There’s nowhere else I need to be and nowhere I would rather be
than here with you.”

How did he manage to
make something so sappy sound so masculine? If any other man had said those
words, she would have rolled her eyes and rolled away as fast as she could. But
with Julian, the mushy stuff made her insteps melt.

She crawled up his body
to press a sweet, uncomplicated kiss on his lips, but as with all things with
them, it didn’t stay simple for long. Julian cupped the back of her head,
Mirage tensed her nails in the pads of his shoulders, and then she was on her
back and he was sliding high inside her where she was already slick and wet and
there was only a slight twinge of an ache because they’d been doing this rather
a lot the last few days and her body was having a hard time keeping up. Then he
reached between them, thrummed her clit with his thumb and she was keeping up
just fine.

“How does that feel?”
he rasped against her ear. “And be honest. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Her laugh broke into a
gasp as he hit that sweet spot inside her. She was already primed and he took
her up fast, his blue eyes piercing into her deepest corners, his expression so
raw, so fierce and strong, this man who would fight any battle for her. And if
that wasn’t an aphrodisiac, she didn’t know what was. He laced his fingers
through hers, pressing their joined hands into the mattress and she gave
herself up to sensation. The tight, coiling sweetness in her core, the tension,
the ache, then the hard wrench of release hitting and suddenly she was coming
apart in the best possible way. Not shattered like a broken mirror, but
spinning off and reforming, like each new tremor took her closer to whole
again. Until it was hard to remember any feeling beyond this perfect completion
and any sight other than gorgeous blue eyes following her into sleep.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mirage jerked, coming
awake with a start, and Julian’s arms were already there, soothing her, holding
her, the memory of the dream already fading. It had been Kevin again, but this
time he’d sounded so reasonable. So sane. She’d
liked
him. That was
almost as frightening as the hate. Had it always been his mind games, or at
some point had she liked him for real?

Had part of her liked
the idea of letting him shape her? Decide things for her? Wasn’t that exactly
what she was doing with Julian?

She twisted in Julian’s
arms, needing to reassure herself that she wasn’t making the same mistake she
had with Kevin, only to realize he hadn’t even woken up, just comforted her
automatically in his sleep. He didn’t even need to be conscious to give her
what she needed. That was good, wasn’t it? So why did it make her lungs seize,
panic spiking down her throat?

Mirage extracted
herself from his arms and slipped out of bed, quickly pulling on clothes to
give herself some mental distance from the shag-fest of the last few days. They’d
both been insatiable, but was alternating between reclaiming her memories and
building new ones of Julian’s body really what she needed to be doing right
now?

She padded to the
kitchen and cracked open the fridge. They were running low on provisions. In
the next couple days, Julian would have to go out to get more. He’d have to
leave her alone. Would she backslide without his constant presence? She’d never
thought of herself as the kind of girl who welcomed dependence, so why had she
let that happen with Kevin and now again with Julian? Was she really so afraid of
standing on her own two feet?

She grabbed a slice of
cheese, nibbling on it as she wandered to the front door. She could leave. Slip
out in the night and Julian would never find her. But that complete
independence wasn’t what she wanted either.

She liked Julian. More
than liked him. She trusted him totally, but was that stupid? Was she just
setting herself up to let another man define who she was? Define her truth for
her? Would he remake her into his own image—the virtuous, righteous hero so
opposite to who she was? She didn’t want to be saved like that, but Julian was
the only person who had seen past her crazy, shattered surface to prove there
was still something left underneath. He’d helped her find herself again. Hadn’t
he? Or had he just helped her find the person he wanted her to be?

God, why couldn’t the
answers be easy?

She stared at the front
door. She could go. Nothing was stopping her. But would the distance that could
give her clarity on the Julian situation suck away all the memories she had
reclaimed with him? Would she relapse?

The truth was none of
those questions mattered. She wanted to stay with Julian. Wanted it so badly it
scared the ever-loving shit out of her. What kind of long-term prospects did
the pair of them really have? Sure, he was shagging her senseless at every
opportunity, but that didn’t mean he would’ve taken her home to meet his
parents…if his parents had still been around.

She wished she could
talk to Lucien. Like they used to, before he thought she was nuts, but even
when he called now it was always careful and distant, checking on her status
but never really connecting with
her
.

She wanted to hear from
him so badly, when the phone began to ring she almost thought it was a figment
of her imagination. Then she heard Julian call her name from the bedroom and
the creak of the bedsprings. He came out of the bedroom as she reached the
phone he’d gotten from Trident. She picked it up and grimaced when she saw the
caller ID.
Kim Carruthers
.

Had she been calling
the entire time she and Julian were holed up here? Just how over was their
relationship?

Mirage tossed the phone
to Julian—or, more accurately, chucked it at his head, but he caught it easily
even though he still looked half-asleep, hair flopping over one eye, jeans
half-buttoned. The man had no right to look so edible when she was jealous and
confused and trying to work up the gumption to walk out the door. He frowned
when he read the caller ID, but connected the call in a damn hurry that made
Mirage’s back teeth grate together.