Screwing the Superhero (2 page)

“I promise.”

“You do?”
He did?

“I was a lot younger then. I’ve learned my lesson.” He raised his hand in mock salute. “I am not invincible. If I drink too much poison, I will die. I almost learned the hard way.”

She swallowed. The secret behind why Draco had collapsed had been so well guarded she’d never known the cause. “Poison? You drank poison?”

“It saved a lot of people.” He shrugged. “I’ve done it before, just never so much.

My stomach has never quite forgiven me. I still can’t consume as much arsenic as I would like.”

Her mind whirled. “What? Why on earth would you want to consume arsenic?”

“Ha. Wendy, it’s a joke.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks heated. “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t have much of a sense of humor.”

If he wasn’t going to go to the doctor, she needed to get out of his office and regroup until she regained control of her emotions. “If you don’t need anything else, I’ll go work on tomorrow’s schedule and do more research on the missing son case you have on your afternoon agenda. Something isn’t sitting well for me with this one.”

He nodded and an emotion she couldn’t identify filled his eyes. Pushing away the thought that his mood had something to do with her, she waited for his response in a way she hoped came across as calm or serene.

“I trust your instincts, if you think something is not kosher, I believe you. We can cancel.” He moved away, crossing to the window to stare outside.

In all their years together, she’d never seen him like this. He seemed almost pensive.

“Do you think it’s the Organization?” he asked.

The Organization. The two words always made her shudder. If Superheroes were real then so were their nemeses, and for lack of a better phrase, they were called the
Organization
. A group of people out to destroy the world Powers, Inc. worked daily to preserve. Two of Draco’s associates had nearly been killed the week before and were recovering. All of the employees knew to be on guard until they uncovered the mastermind and his organization disbanded.

Slowly, she moved to stand next to him. “No, I don’t think it’s them. I just think something is … off.”

He nodded, a few wisps of black hair falling over his eyes. Wendy stuck her hand in her uniform pocket to stop herself from pushing his fallen strands out of his vision.

Draco finally spoke. “And the legal matter?”

“I’ll call downstairs and see if there’s an update.”

One of the newest associates had overstepped and interfered in a matter where they didn’t have a contract. The person he’d pursued and brought to the police was now suing the company. Wendy wasn’t overly concerned. This wasn’t the first person to begin litigation either to get money or to stop them from doing their jobs. So far, Powers, Inc. had always won.

“Your first job is about three hours from here by air.” She looked out the window.

“The weather should be fine.”

“Excellent. Then we’ll leave two hours from now.”

With one last nod, she walked to the door and stepped through it, shutting it behind her with a thud. She had to give Draco credit. When he’d commissioned the building, he’d used only the best materials. The thick oak door separating his office from everyone else made a point every time it closed. If anything ever screamed, ‘stay out’, the thud of his office door shutting did.

Approaching her desk, she found herself humming, though she’d been horribly nervous and embarrassed a moment earlier. Draco seemed satisfied with her job performance; she’d get to fly with him in just a matter of hours; he’d touched her; and it was likely she would progress another level on
Hero Land
tonight.

Life was good … until she reached her desk.

Gasping, she rushed forward as she realized the contents of her purse littered the floor.
What the hell?
Scrawled across her computer monitor in red lipstick were the words, SLUT and FREAK.

Whirling around, she glared at Kate, who typed at her computer, apparently working on the database Draco had asked her to finish the week before.

“Why would you do this?” Wendy hated the way her voice shook. She knew this was a little thing, nothing of consequence, a mean spirited prank, but still, she felt violated. They’d gone into her desk, touched her purse, and defaced her computer. This was her private space.

Kate raised an eyebrow. “Why did I do what?”

“This … .” Tears threatened to spill, but she knew she wouldn’t give Kate, Tania, or any of the others involved the satisfaction of watching her cry. She pointed at the mess on the floor and then to the computer. “Why would you do
this?”

Rising from her desk, Kate looked the model of perfection—as always. Her black hair fell past her shoulders, perfectly coifed, never a strand out of place, slick and smooth. Her sculpted eyebrows sat atop her long face, which belonged in a magazine spread not on the top floor of a company of Superheroes. Oh yes, Wendy was sure Kate knew how beautiful she was, the amount of power her looks held over both men who wanted her sexually, and women who hoped being in her presence would make them somehow like her.

“I didn’t
do
anything.” Putting her hands on her hips, she regarded Wendy’s destroyed purse and disrupted computer screen with an air of amusement. “I was with Tania the whole time. I only recently got to my desk. It must have happened while you were in there doing whatever it is you do every morning with Draco.”

Whatever she did every morning with Draco? She gritted her teeth and wished she could scream. “You’re lying.” She pointed a finger at Kate. “If you ever do this again—and tell this to all of your friends too—I’ll go to HR and report it.”

Kate laughed mirthlessly. “You’re going to tattle? I told you, I didn’t do this.”

The thud of a door closing interrupted Kate’s speech. Oh, god. Draco. Wendy had only a second before he appeared. Even knowing how powerful and fast he was, his quick arrival at her desk still startled her.

“What’s going on here?”

Kate’s eyes widened. If Wendy hadn’t been so furious, she might have laughed.

Unless you were used to Draco’s intensity, you could be overwhelmed. Kate almost never saw him in person. Most of the time, he spoke to her over the intercom or sent her computer messages.

Wendy covered her eyes with her hand. When hysteria threatened, it helped shutting out all light. Since she couldn’t actually flip the light switch, this would have to do. Draco could not see her lose her cool. Handlers did not display emotions in front of their Superheroes. It was imperative to remain calm. Superheroes lived with a lot of pressure, both by putting their lives on the line and then by having to hide their real identities from the world. Handler rule number one? Make your boss’ job easier, not harder by freaking out all the time.

Taking her hand off her eyes, she forced a smile. “It’s fine, I think we just had a misunderstanding.”

“You’re lying to me. I can hear it.” Draco turned all his attention on Kate. “I have the ability to compel you to tell the truth. All I have to do is alter my vocal patterns and not only will you tell me what I want to know, but you’ll also confess all kinds of things we’d both rather I not hear. If you want to keep your job, tell me the truth, Kate. What happened here?”

“It was just meant to be a practical joke. She’s just such … a … .”

He narrowed his eyes, and though the force of his blue-eyed stare was not on her, Wendy gulped.

Draco raised an eyebrow, with what could only be described as venom in his gaze. “Such a what?”

“Such a geek, and she gets such preferential treatment here. We wanted to knock her down a peg.”

“If Wendy gets preferential treatment, which I don’t think is true, it is only because she does her job better than anyone else.”

Feeling her cheeks heat again, she wanted to crawl in a hole and hide. It was great to be appreciated by your employer but not like this.

She tried to interrupt. “Look—”

“If anything like this ever happens again to Wendy or to anyone else, the person responsible will be fired immediately. Clean up this mess, Kate, now.”

Without another word, Draco turned on his heel and returned to his office. The thud of the wooden door stretched out over the silence in the room. Kate’s eyes, still huge from Draco’s interrogation, closed for a second. When she opened them, she’d regained the distant composure Wendy was used to seeing.

“I’ll get a cloth to clean off your computer.”

As Kate walked down the hall, Wendy gave in and collapsed in her chair, letting her knees buckle as she did. She wished, for a moment, she were a member of the crew in
Space Adventures;
none of them would ever have needed their boss to rescue them from bitchy coworkers. Sighing, she wondered how he had known to do so in the first place.

Draco Powers sat, feeling incredibly uncomfortable, in his client’s too-small-for-him flowery fabric lounge chair as he turned down her offer of tea for the third time.

What gave with the tea? He didn’t drink the stuff. Why push it on him? The whole living room, from ceiling to floor and everything in between, looked like a floral shop had thrown up.

The ceiling boasted badly stenciled roses. Daisies exploded on the carpet, and a different flower print covered each of the couches. Even his client, who looked to be around fifty years of age with graying brown hair and unremarkably dull grey eyes, wore lilacs on her housedress. If he spent too much time in this room, he was going to get hay fever.

Forcing himself to pay attention, he listened to the smooth rhythm of Wendy’s voice as she asked the requisite questions of the woman who wanted to hire him. He knew, having worked with and counted on Wendy for years, she had done some version of this questioning over the phone when the case was first sent upstairs after the online request for services had been filtered and approved. It was unusual to have Wendy so thoroughly ask the questions again. She’d expressed her concern that something felt askew with this woman’s story, so he was inclined to let his little Handler have at the flower-wearing lady until Wendy was satisfied with the answers.

Little Handler
? Where had his thought come from?

“Tell me again why you aren’t using the police to investigate this issue, Mrs.

Marckham?”

“I tried the police. For the first six months after Lael was taken, I waited and waited for the police to recover my son. Now, I’m pursuing other means.”

Clearly, or they wouldn’t be there. Draco looked at his watch. They’d shown up half-an-hour early so Wendy could do this, and then, assuming she let him take the job, he could find the child and still get home on time to go on his date.

“I guess I’m confused, Mrs. Marckham. Why do you think the Superhero route is your only option?”

Color rose in the woman’s cheeks. Draco wanted to sink into the chair as her gaze met his and he realized what was bothering Wendy. Their potential client fancied herself in love with him. It wasn’t the first time he’d run into this problem. All Superheroes did on a regular basis. But when this woman met his gaze, and her dull eyes lit up like stars, she made the ‘crazy alarm’ go off in his head.

Especially when she said, “The Superheroes can do anything.”

Something about this woman was off … .

He would still find her son. Not the teenager’s fault his mama was a whack job.

Wendy started to speak and he interrupted. “That’s unfortunately not true, ma’am. If we could do anything then I wouldn’t have a career. We would have long ago eliminated poverty, destruction, illness, and violence from the world.” Making eye contact with Wendy, he nodded to let her know that while he was fully aware of what she sensed from their client, he intended to take the job anyway. The great thing about Wendy Warner was she understood unspoken signals. She nodded back.

He might even be able to use Mrs. Markham’s Superhero infatuation to his advantage. “Why don’t you tell me who you think has your son?”

“It’s obvious.”

“Not to me, I’m afraid.”

He gritted his teeth. Years ago, when he and Ace had opened Powers, Inc., he’d been naïve in thinking he should feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction helping people. Now, all they did was annoy him. If the identity of her son’s kidnapper had been obvious, would he have asked her the damned question?

“Aliens took him, of course.” The older woman took a sip of her tea.

He closed his mouth, opting not to speak. This turn of events was almost too delicious to be real. He sat back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. This was why he had a Handler. So Wendy could speak at this moment and he could pretend he was a statue and stop communicating all together.

Wendy straightened in her chair. He could see she’d bit down for a second on her bottom lip. His super sight revealed two minute teeth marks left on the lower part of her lip. His cock stirred to attention, as it always did when Wendy was concerned. He wouldn’t act on it. No, he’d resisted her appeal for years. Nothing had to change now.

“Why do you think aliens took your son, ma’am?” Wendy’s Upstate New York accent slipped out. She was usually so careful not to show it but when she got really bothered, it flew out of her like they were sitting in Buffalo or Rochester instead of Allentown, Pennsylvania. At least he thought they were in Allentown. He flew all day, every day. Sometimes, he had a hard time remembering where he was … .

“Who else would take him?”

Wendy sighed. “Any number of people, I would imagine. Did your son have any enemies?”

“Enemies?” Sylvia Markham laughed. “No, of course not. Everyone loves Lael.

Except for the Aliens, of course.”

Wendy shot him a pleading look. He wanted to smile at her exasperation. She didn’t really expect him to speak, did she? He paid her to handle types of situations.

She turned back to their Alien-obsessed client. “Let’s all pretend it was not aliens who took Lael. Let’s come up with some other ideas.”

Maybe he should let Wendy off the hook and just drop Sylvia Markham. If she really thought aliens had Lael then she needed to find herself some alien hunters, if such people existed. And they might. Superheroes existed. Maybe alien hunters did too.