Page 33 of All Superheroes Need PR
“Someone will bring them to you.”
“What about coffee?” Her voice dips.
I look down at her and hate my body’s physiological response to having her up against me like this. She’s injured, but somehow that just makes the sensation worse. She’s softness and vulnerability all laid bare, and I just want to do dark and terrible things.
I grunt and head to the door, ignoring my blood pumping and my chest burning and Dr. Larsen entirely. “We’ll make a stop. See ya, Doc.”
“Don’t think you’re getting out of this scot-free. I’m scheduling you an appointment for tomorrow!”
“Make it next week. I’ve got a date tomorrow with a bunch of kids in a skate park!”
Chapter ElevenVanessa
I don’t know if it’s the lingering shock of my fall this morning or the fact that he actually took me to a coffee shop afterward, but I’m feeling like my entire universe was tipped on its side and all the sanity that it once held has fallen out and scattered like marbles under furniture.
He carries me up the stone steps to my front door, and nervousness washes over me. “I can’t believe you’d never been to a coffee shop before,” I say, trying to ignore the feeling of his hand clenched around my thighs and the other around my back, palm pressed between my arm and my side, fingers shifting over the side of my sports bra. I haven’t had a second to worry if I’m stinky or anything like that up until now.
“Nope.”
“What have you been doing this whole ... time if not ... ooph!” I drop my phone, and he somehow ducks, still holding me, and catches it. I look at his face. It’s awfully close to mine. I open my mouth to say something, anything to break the tension, but all words run screaming out of my brain.
He smiles. He’s been doing that a lot. Smiling so, so softly at me. I’m struggling to reconcile the male I first met in the conference room, who later yelled at me in a bar and who fled from me after the press conference, with this stranger. “Waiting.”
My stomach ... I hiccup. And then immediately clap my hand over my mouth. “I’m not going to puke, I promise,” I say quickly, and the Wyvern—the freaking Wyvern—tips his head back and laughs. He laughs riotously as he pulls my key fromhispocket, though I have no idea how he stole it from mine—somewhere in the air? Sometime in the doctor’s office?
My antique red door swings inward, and I freeze up as he invades my town house, too many confusing thoughts smashing into me from different directions.
I’ve been working to de-modernize a lot of parts of my 1800s home with Elena’s help, but my brothers think some of it is really stupid. What if Roland agrees?
Also, what did he mean by “waiting”?
Why is he being so nice to me?
And was he serious about moving in? What’s he gonna do when he finds out ...
“I liked it though,” he says, glancing around my entryway and then heading to the right. My door closes behind him, and I jump at the realization that we’re alone. It’s also noon, and I haven’t started working yet at all. “What was the thing you made me order?”
“A vanilla Viennese. It’s my favorite.”
He smirks and sets me down on the sofa before taking a seat on my giant, round ottoman, first pulling it closer. It’s dark-pink velvet. It matches his eyes. He leans forward onto his elbows, and I twist to the side to face him, curling my good leg under me and keeping my swollen ankle outstretched. “It was good,” he says.
“Seriously, though, how have you not been to a coffee shop?” I say, trying to keep any sort of judgment out of my tone.
He tilts his head to the side. “You read my file, right?”
I nod.
“Then you’ll know I was with the SDD for a few years and with a host family from ages they suspect were somewhere around eleven to sixteen. They were nice enough, but the host family they placed mewith lived in the middle of nowhere. The SDD thought it best to keep us placed outside of cities. They said it was to give us free rein to exercise our powers, which they encouraged, but I think it’s so that if shit went south while we experimented, we stood less chance of hurting others.”
I nod along as he speaks, my mouth feeling so, so dry. My fingers curl into my palms. I’d really like to be back in the coffee shop. Alone with him, staring at me like this, I’m overwhelmed. I’ve never ... had a guy in my house before ... like this.
And then the tension between us shoots up a thousand degrees as he says, “Didn’t have a coffee shop in unincorporated Sundale backcountry.”
I stiffen, and the subtle ache across my chest burns cold. “You lived out in the boonies?”
He nods and then tips his head to the side, and he says the last thing I want him to. “Yeah. Not too far from you. Different time though. You’d already moved out by the time I arrived.”
Hell freezes over, and I do too. All those warm fuzzy feelings from the day die as quickly as they bloomed. My heart just about stops. I reach up to catch it, as if afraid it’s about to tumble straight out of my throat.
