Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (22 page)

When I woke up that morning, exhausted after a night of studying far too late, I had no idea just how crazy of a day it was going to be.

Exams were coming up, which meant basically the most stressful part of my life. There was no way actually being a doctor could be more stressful than studying to be one, and every time exam time was close, I regretted not taking fewer classes and deciding to make them up in the summer semester.

“There’s still three weeks before our first exam,” Annie told me as I met up with her outside the physics building.

“I know, but I have so much to learn. I’m so far behind on my studying schedule.”

“You know, I’ve never met someone who studied so hard as you. Relax. So what if you only get ninety percent on one exam. Definitely not the end of the world.”

I sighed. “I know. But I need these good marks. Like, what if I don’t study well enough, and then when I’m a doctor someone dies because I didn’t memorize the symptoms of the disease they have well enough?”

“Here’s your answer, Val: real life isn’t a test. You don’t have to have all the answers memorized. When you’re a doctor, you’ll have access to all your books. You’ll have access to databases, that will tell you the symptoms. This is just a test. Get through it with a decent mark, not necessarily even the best mark, and you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Annie,” I told her, giving her a small smile. She was right, of course. I might have had a whole bunch of book smarts, but Annie was the wisest person I knew. By the time we were old she was probably going to basically be Gandalf wise.

We settled into our spots and pulled out our books.

“Shoot, I think I left my book in your car,” I told Annie. She had been nice enough to pick me up this morning, since we both had an early class.

“Ok, here’s the key,” she told me, passing it over. “I’ll let you copy my notes that you missed,” she told me as Professor Nelson walked into the class. “Be careful though,” she told me.

“Thanks,” I whispered. “I will, don’t worry, what are the odds the rapist is out right now in the middle of the day?” I asked as I slipped past her and back out the door.

Silently cursing the fact that the parking lot was on the other side of campus, it was about fifteen minutes before I was making my way back towards the physics building.

It was strange how few people there were on campus during class. Well, I supposed it made sense, but I never really realized it before. I probably only saw about a dozen people during the five minute walk to the car, and maybe a couple more on the way back. The closer I got to the physics building, which was isolated on the far end of campus, the more alone it felt. And I started to actually think maybe Annie had a point about being a bit careful.

I decided I’d already wasted enough time and took a shortcut through an alley that ran between the general sciences building and the biology building.

“Hey, you!” I suddenly heard behind me. I stopped and turned around. “Excuse me,” the man told me, coming towards me. Every instinct in my body told me to run. All of my senses were throwing up red flags, telling me this wasn’t a good idea.

“Sorry, I’m late for class,” I shouted back, turning and walking as fast I could, trying to get to the end of the alley. I focused on the spot of light, thirty feet away, signalling that I’d be out in the square in front of the physics building.

My heart was pounding in my chest. Maybe this guy was just lost. Maybe he just wanted to ask me the time or something. Maybe I was being paranoid, but after all, there had been three women who were sexually assaulted on campus this year. It hadn’t happened in a few months now, but the thought was still there. No, I couldn’t think about that.

I was ten feet away from the end of the alley when the guy grabbed me by the arm. Nope, this wasn’t good.

I screamed, but a second later his hand was over my mouth, and he pressed me against the wall of the alley. I dropped the physics book I was holding to the ground. His face was covered by a hoodie, but I could tell he was white, young. A bit of stubble. The same kind of description the other women who had been raped had given.

“Shut up, bitch,” the man hissed into my ear. “You’re going to enjoy this,” he told me as his hand wiggled underneath my shirt and he began to fondle my breasts over my bra.

I kicked out at him, and connected with his knee.

He yelled out and let me go for a second, and I ripped away from his grasp.

“HELP!” I cried out, trying again to run desperately for the open part of the campus, but a second later he had me again. He was just too much faster than I was.

“You’re gonna pay for that, you dumb slut,” he told me, grabbing my face and slapping me across the cheek, hard. As soon as his hand connected my cheek burned, stinging like an attack from a thousand bees.

But the pain was nothing compared to the fear I had of what was coming next.

I could feel him tearing at my pants, he was yanking them down. He had my legs pinned with his, and I could feel his hardness pressing against me, disgusting and terrifying.

I struggled, I struggled as hard as I could. I absolutely wasn’t going down without a fight, but he was just so much stronger than me. He almost had my panties down when suddenly I heard a voice.

“Leave her the fuck alone.”

It was such a shock that both me and my attacker stopped moving. I looked over to my left, and standing in the entrance to the alley was the silhouette of a man.

“Get out of here man, this doesn’t concern you,” my attacker said, still holding my mouth shut with one hand. I struggled, trying to make as much noise as possible, trying to make it obvious that I didn’t want to be here.

“You don’t think I don’t know you’re the fucking rapist pig that’s been making his rounds around campus? Well it fucking ends here buddy,” the guy continued, and I felt like there was something a bit familiar about him. The man stepped forward a few steps, and the rapist seemed to pause. Then, suddenly, he let me go and ran as fast as he could down the alley away from the guy that had just saved me.

My legs were like jelly and I collapsed to the ground; I couldn’t even run away. My attacker tried, though. For a second, I thought he was going to get away. Then the other guy started running. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Usain Bolt would have been impressed.

He caught up to the attacker in seconds, grabbing him by the hoodie and pulling off his hood. The man let out a hoarse yell.

“You think you’re a big man, attacking women?” the guy asked before punching the attacker in the face so hard that even from thirty feet away I heard his nose crack. Blood poured out of it; it was obviously broken.

“I’m… I’m sorry!” the guy said.

“Sorry just doesn’t fucking cut it.” Another punch, and this time the man screamed. The man who saved me picked him up and tossed him out of the alley like he weighed nothing. Suddenly, I knew who it was. It was the same man who had saved me from the attack outside the bank!

“Oh my God,” I muttered as I forced myself up to my feet. I ran out of the alley, following them. The man was being beaten to a pulp; he’d stopped screaming and was now just lying on the ground, moaning.

“You’re going to kill him!” I cried out. “Stop!” I begged. The man stopped.

“Yeah, well, the world’s still better off without guys like him around, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, but is that really your call to make?”

I could see the guy thinking about it.

“You’re right. If it was anyone’s call, it should be yours, and his other victims.”

That was an interesting way of looking at it.  Either way, he stopped pounding on the guy. I went over. He was still breathing, at least. And he was still conscious. That probably wasn’t a blessing for him, but a part of me was pretty glad about it. I wasn’t going to lie, I did think the guy deserved every ounce of pain he was feeling right now. His right arm was sticking out at a weird angle; it was obviously broken.

“How did you find me?” I asked my rescuer, looking over at him. He was wearing normal clothes this time, but he still had on the same mask as before. I couldn’t help but feel that same sense that there was something I was missing, that something obvious in my head just wasn’t clicking that should have been.

He shrugged. “Right place, right time.”

“I have to say, I prefer you beating up rapists to stealing.”

“Me too. You might want to call the cops before he gets away,” he told me, motioning to my attacker, still lying on the ground.

“Yeah, I will,” I told him. There was something about him. Something strong, something powerful. I didn’t want to look away. His body was completely ripped, there was that much. Even with his normal clothes, it was obvious he worked out.

This wasn’t the sort of thing I did. I wasn’t the kind of girl who checked guys out, who looked at guys they barely knew and wanted to jump them. I’d had like two one night stands my entire life, and they were both disappointing.

Besides, what would a guy like that see in a girl like me, anyway?

Still, I wondered, would a superhero’s manhood be…

No. No, I wasn’t going to think about that. I was a good girl. Absolutely not.

“I guess I owe you. Again,” I told him. He smiled and moved towards me. Suddenly, my heart started pounding. He was so tall, but it was more than that. His presence was even bigger than his body. He was imposing, like a man who knows what he wants, and always gets it.

When he finger touched my chin, gently tilting my head upwards, I didn’t fight it. I should have fought it. This wasn’t a thing Valerie King did. Ever. But something stopped me. Something let it happen.

His lips found mine, hungry and powerful. He kissed with an animalistic passion, like it was the last kiss we would ever have. And while I started off timid and scared, I found myself slowly getting more and more into it. I kissed him back, and before I knew it we were at each other. His hand found my ass, cupping it as he pulled me towards him. My back arched as I pressed against this complete stranger that I was now making out with. I could feel his hardness against me; he obviously wanted me as badly as I wanted him.

Suddenly, my brain realized what I was doing.

“No, I can’t,” I said, pushing away. To my surprise, the guy was grinning.

“Fine. Anyway, just so you know, we’re even,” he told me, before taking a quick look around to see there was no one there, and flying off into the sky. I stood and watched as he became smaller and smaller, before finally he was only just a dot in the sky.

I wondered if I hadn’t just made a huge mistake.

I didn’t even know what came over me. I wasn’t going to do it. I was just going to leave, fly off again. But something about her big doe eyes, that innocent face, those lips that just looked like they hadn’t been kissed in a while… damn, I just couldn’t resist.

And damn, for the first time in ages, she said no. Unlike that piece of shit I saved her from a minute earlier, I understood the meaning of the word. But I wasn’t used to hearing it. Zander Keats was a fucking superstar. Girls were always flocking over to me. Hell, Sam had pretty much started off as a groupie, and whenever we were off-again I got my share of pussy. Ok, to be fair, I got way more than my share of pussy. I couldn’t even remember the last time I got shut down like that.

And that was even before I had superpowers. Chicks were always fawning over fucking Iron Man. And yet Valerie still said no. Which only made me want her more.

After all, I was Zander fucking Keats. I wasn’t a man women said no to.

* * *

The next morning I woke up to an all-new headline about myself as I walked down the street to get a protein shake from my favourite place.

“Masked Hero Saves Woman, Stops Loch College Rapist”

Masked hero. I had to admit, that had a nice little ring to it. Better than ‘Group of Thieves’, anyway. I paid the newspaper salesman a couple bucks and grabbed a copy, my eyes scanning the article.

“Yesterday morning, on Loch College campus, a man suspected of three rapes was stopped while attempting to assault a woman heading to class. Valerie Knight, a medical student at Loch College, was walking to class when she was grabbed by the suspect, who assaulted her until a man stepped in and helped.

“Yesterday around 11:15am we were alerted to the presence of a man suspected of sexual assault on the Loch College campus. We arrived and found a witness who told us she had been attacked, and rescued by a masked man, identified by her one of the men who had previously been associated with the gang of thieves involved in a number of recent robberies, including the one at Olympus City Bank three weeks ago,” said a statement from police commissioner Robert Ponte.

The police urged the public not to take justice into their own hands, but had to admit that this mysterious masked man has stopped a dangerous criminal from continuing to roam the streets of Olympus.

Three women have been raped this school year on the Loch College campus, as Olympus finds itself in the middle of one of the worst crime sprees in the city’s history…”

I stopped reading after that. I couldn’t help myself; I smiled. I wasn’t a smiley guy. But this was kind of funny. I wasn’t the superhero type. I was a brash, arrogant, abrasive asshole who did one nice thing to one woman because she saved my life. And I guess because I wasn’t a complete fucking psycho that wanted to see innocent people die. But it wasn’t like I was a good person.

Masked Hero.

That wasn’t me.

Just to prove it I took out the lighter I’d started carrying with me everywhere and flicked it on. With just a quick thought I sent a giant flame rushing towards a nearby small tree, setting the leaves alight immediately. I laughed to myself as the people around panicked, desperately calling 9-1-1 and trying to put it out.

So why didn’t my little prank feel as good as it should have?

* * *

For the next six weeks, things went pretty smoothly, all in all. I kept up with Sam and Keith’s crime spree in the news, more or less. They were getting more brazen, more bold about hurting people. I was worried, but there was nothing I could really do about it. I passed all my exams, including the physics class that had cost the college millions, but at least they had insurance.

As for me, interestingly, the public began to call for me to do more. It seemed like half the letters in the local paper were asking if I could stop these freaks, if I had the same powers they did. But what could I do? Stalk them? I had my own life to live.

But for what it was worth, I kept my mask in one of my pockets. And I had started wearing the rest of my suit under my clothes. After all, it felt pretty good.

I just hadn’t come across any other crimes since the day I stopped that fucking rapist.

Until I was woken up by a pile of screaming and sirens that was especially loud, even for Olympus.

The summer holidays were in full swing, and after a night of heavy drinking and partying with a brunette whose name I didn’t even remember, I woke up passed out on my couch. At first I thought I must have left the TV on, but then as I heard the rumbling of a helicopter passing overhead I realized that no, this noise was real.

One advantage of my new superpowers was that I didn’t seem to get hangovers anymore. I got up off the couch and wiped my eyes as I made my way over to the window.

Three cop cars and a fire truck were speeding north, lights and sirens blaring through the neighbourhood, interrupting what should have been a sleepy Sunday. North of here, about ten blocks away by my guess, a plume of smoke rose from the street, like a beacon announcing to the city that this was where all the action was happening.

Looking down at the sidewalk the people that weren’t headed straight for the towering plume of smoke were all pointing and staring.

More than anything I wanted to just crawl into bed and sleep all day. Wake up in the late afternoon, drink a coffee and play video games for a while.

Then I thought of what my mom would say.

“Seriously? You have superpowers, you could have saved those people, and you chose to sleep instead? That’s not the kind of man I raised you to be.”

I sighed, then grabbed my old costume, put my mask on, then ran up the stairs to the roof of my building; it was easy to do without being seen; I lived on the seventh and top floor of an old walkup, no one ever went up that many steps if they could help it.

From the roof I leapt up into the air and instantly flew off towards the source of the chaos. I tried to stay above the buildings, to avoid being seen. I stayed low, and as I got to within a couple blocks of the fire, I started to jump from roof to roof rather than fly.

When I got to the building next to where all the action was happening, I looked down to get a good look at what was happnening.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered to myself as I took in the scene.

The building was on fire, that much was obvious. It was one of those buildings with retail shops in the bottom, and six stories of apartments up above. Those fucking assholes had somehow set the building on fire, and now people were trapped, screaming at their windows. Sam and Keith were at either end of the building, each one of them dressed in their costumes as well, taunting the cops.

A group of them on Keith’s side fired, and he held his hands in front of his face. The bullets seemed to all just bounce off him, and he laughed as he sprayed acid towards the cops from his fingers. They all ducked behind the doors of their cars; I saw one cop who didn’t get down in time and he started clutching at his face, screaming.

Firefighters stood at the base of the building, helpless. I assumed that whenever they tried to get close to it, Keith and Sam stopped them.

They were fucking psychos.

I couldn’t focus on Keith and Sam, though. Not right now. I looked at the burning building. Instantly, I willed the fire to disappear. It got smaller, that was for sure, but I had never practiced controlling
this much
fire at once before.

I didn’t have the luxury of time to practice right now. I flew off the building and straight at a lady in her 70s who was coughing by the window. Without a second thought I grabbed her under the arms and flew her straight down to one of the waiting ambulances, where a group of EMTs immediately went to work.

Before I even knew what I was doing I was back at the windows. One was a family of three. A latina woman and her two daughters. As soon as the daughters saw me, one of them, the younger one, started crying.

“It’s alright, I won’t hurt you,” I tried to soothe her, but it only made her cry harder. I wasn’t exactly a soft and cuddly looking guy.

“Marisol, it’s ok,” her mother whispered in her ear. “Please, take my girls,” she begged me.

“I can take all of you,” I told her.

“What about Amica?” the older girl asked.

“Who’s Amica?”

“My cat, he’s over there,” she replied, pointing to the couch, which was smouldering from the heat.

God fucking damn it.

“Fine,” I muttered, flying past them into the apartment. Smoke filled the room, and while it blurred my vision, my breathing wasn’t affected at all. It seemed my fire powers were more than just window dressing. I grabbed the couch and with a single movement flicked it over to the other side of the room. I heard the mom at the window scream.

The cat tried to dart away as quickly as he could, but I was faster. I heard a meow of disdain come from its mouth, but it seemed to understand I was here to help it.

“A fucking cat. Of course I’m rescuing a fucking cat,” I muttered to myself as I went back to the window.

“AMICA!” the girl cried out, taking him from my grasp. I was more than happy for her to be in charge of him.

“Ok, hang on to my back,” I told the woman, and she climbed on. I took each of her daughters in one arm and flew back out the window, letting them down safely on the ground.

“Thank you mister fire man!” the older girl told me, still clutching her cat, who looked angry and covered in soot, but very much alive.

“You’re welcome,” I told her, and I couldn’t help but smile at those innocent little brown eyes looking up at me.

But I knew I wasn’t done, there were still people trapped in the building. Making the fire smaller might have bought them some time, but it wasn’t forever.

Without thinking about it I flew back up to the next window I saw, where a young boy clutching a teddy bear was standing with his parents, both of them waving for help, but before I managed to reach them something struck me like a wrecking ball in the side, driving me straight into the wall of the building with the full force of my shoulder.

“Fucking hell!” I cried out, and I saw Keith, his eyes like steel, ball a fist and get ready to punch me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked him as he loaded up the punch. He threw it, but I was too quick; it missed me and his fist went straight into the wall, sending shards of brick falling four stories to the street below.

“We told you to stay the fuck away from us,” Keith growled at me. “This isn’t your fucking business.”

“It is when you start trying to roast people alive,” I replied, shoving him away from me and sending a kick to his mid-section. My surprise attack landed, and he doubled over in the air in pain.

Looking up, I could tell he was angrier than ever. He came at me again, pushing me back into the brick wall. Pain coursed through my body, pain like I hadn’t felt since the incident in the particle accelerator.

An uppercut to the jaw sent Keith reeling back far enough for me to fly away from the wall. I could hear the crowd below cheering me on, and it was suddenly just like playing a football game.

A really fucking high stakes football game.

I risked a glance at the family waiting for me to rescue them. The boy was coughing, and the mother had tears running down her cheeks as she clutched her boy, looking at me desperately. The father kept looking down, like he was considering if his family would survive the fall. They wouldn’t.

It was time to go on the offensive. I flew at Keith and tackled him in the midsection. We flew backwards together, and he elbowed me in the back to try and get me to release my grip, but I didn’t.