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Chapter Nineteen

Roland

The design meeting was derailed slightly when I refused to wear the gloves—not so much wouldn’t as couldn’t wear the gloves. “How have you kept this hidden?” Margerie is holding my hands. It’s fucking weird, but I get why she’s holding on to me like this. Like we’re about to break out into a slow dance.

Dr. Larsen is looming over her shoulder, having just arrived. She gasps theatrically and then cackles like she’s lost her marbles. “Oh my God! That’s just since last Sunday?”

Even after I texted her a picture of my nails, she still wanted me to let them grow. Our official checkup is still scheduled for Friday, when Nessa has her checkup for her ankle. The little asshole hasn’t been wearing her brace since our dinner. She feels fine—like the doc said she would—but I still catch her wincing every once in a while when she puts weight on it. If I deny her sex, I wonder if she’ll put it back on.

Who am I kidding? I’ve been denying her sex all damn week.

I’ve been denying me sex all week because I know that if I let myself go with her, there’s a high chance I’ll grab her too hard, and right now I can’t afford to do that. Not with my nails looking like ... this.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been enjoying her screams.

Her spread out across the kitchen island. All that brown marble underneath her body made her look a part of it. She glittered in sweat. She spread her legs on command, and she let me eat her pussy through two orgasms without giving her a break.

And it isn’t like she hasn’t noticed that I haven’t taken things further yet. She’s been needy, all but begging for my cock, but I don’t want to show her my nails or my fresh marks. What if they freak her out? Hell. They freak me out.

I shiver and flex my hands. “Test failed. I need ’em cut.”

“Are you sure?” Emily has the stones to ask.

“The fuck are you talking about? Yes. ”

“We could wait just to see what happens, for scientific purposes.”

“I will scratch your eyes out if you don’t cut these nails off.”

Emily sighs and gives me an annoyed look, her scrunchie and nails both pink today. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Roland.” She reaches out and grips my shoulder like she’s about to give me six months to live.

“Fucking say it.”

“I will if you’ll stop interrupting.”

I huff but manage to stay quiet as she comes even closer, too close, standing up on her tiptoes to get closer yet. Margerie leans in, too, not wanting to miss it. “You don’t have nails, Roland. You have claws.” Margerie’s still holding my hands but drops them like hot stones the moment the words are out. She gasps.

I squint. “What?”

“You have claws. I suspected as much from the sample I took from your hand. It seems as if, unlike most mammals that have claws, you have six layers of a keratin-like substance coating a keratin nail bed. The COE scientists looking into the matter haven’t been able to isolate each individual biological component that makes up your claws yet. We’re not even sure all the types of matter exist within earthly human biology.” Her voice rises at the end, finishing in a squeak.

“Glad you’re fucking happy about this. What am I supposed to do with that information?” I say, stepping out of the mosh of women and shoving my fingers—claws—angrily back through my hair. I don’t cut myself. I’m not sure how it’s possible when I’ve chipped or torn so many other things while trying to let them grow—a wooden desk, a doorknob, one of Vanessa’s fancy pillows—but I haven’t cut myself yet. I’ve tried and found that I can’t.

“Accept them. Besides, I’m not sure the polymers I’ve been experimenting with will even work. You use your hands too often, wash your hands too often, and when you cut your nails, they just grow back the same thickness and strength they were before. A regular nail file isn’t going to cut it, Roland, if the photo you sent me was any clue. You’re going to have to use gardening shears. And rather than that, I think you should consider that these may just be your new hands and learn to work with them.”

“Work with them?” I’m about to fucking explode. I hold up my hands in front of my face and nearly topple the two women standing in front of me when flames shoot out of my ears. “How am I supposed to touch my wife with these?”

“Your wife?” Margerie all but screams. “You’re married? And that little hussy didn’t tell me?”

“I’ve got a few more dates, then yeah. She said she’d marry me,” I grunt. Sort of.

My hands forgotten, Margerie backs away from me and reaches for her phone in hysterics. I know she’s calling her friend; it was either that or beat me up, and she looked like she was a hair trigger away from it. I know there’ll be repercussions from Nessa for putting that out there without her permission, but I honestly don’t give a fuck. I want her to marry me, especially now that she’s resigned her Lois Lane contract.

I’ve only got nineteen dates to go. We had dinner again Monday night after our Italian date night Sunday, and if she thinks I’m not including the coffee we had together yesterday morning as a date, she’s gonna be disappointed. Food out equals date. Period. Nineteen dates to go ... and you can bet your ass I’m counting.

“All right! Sheesh, don’t blow a gasket,” Emily says with a chuckle. “I’ll cut them back this time, but we’re not going to be able to keep this up indefinitely. How often do you realistically need them trimmed so you don’t cut yourself?”

“I ...” I clear my throat. “I’m healing fast, and my nails don’t bother me. But I’m not gonna take that chance with Vanessa.”

Emily frowns. Her eyes move over my chest. She can’t see anything of me past my uniform, but she’s a smart woman. She reads between the lines and asks, “How have your wounds healed from last week’s heroics?”

It’s scary. A little too scary to admit to. But the wounds I had last week are almost totally gone. “They’re scarred over.”

“Already?”

I nod.

“And the tattoos are unchanged?”

“No.” I swallow hard, drop my tone, and say, “I got another one.”

“Where?”

I don’t know how to fucking answer her. Because the truth of it is awkward as fuck. I got a new tattoo after Vanessa gave me head on the couch. And the tattoo? I woke up with it wrapped around my cock. “Groin ... area,” I say quietly enough that the other members of the design team working in the back of the room on a new set of gloves—and Margerie smashing her finger down on her phone furiously—won’t hear me.

Emily blinks at me, shocked. “Oh my.”

I nod, feeling a little unnerved by my own body. And seeing Emily looking at me with such concern right now isn’t bringing up my mood.

“I haven’t found anything in the COE archives,” she whispers. “But I’ll keep looking.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“I’d still like to take a look at Vanessa too.” Her voice is casual. Too casual.

I narrow my gaze. “Her ankle, right?”

“Yes.” She brought her tools with her—including an electric sander. The machine whirrs while she brings it to my hands. As she files my nails in the weirdest way I’ve ever seen, she continues to frown. And she should know better, because even over the sound of the machine, I can still hear her whisper, “Among other things.”

“What other things?” I snarl.

Emily gives me a nervous look. She’s not afraid of me, that’s for damn sure, but she looks a little bit afraid, and I don’t like that shit at all. She opens her mouth, but she never gets a chance to speak.

Margerie stomps back over, and when she whacks me on the shoulder, I’ve got no choice but to be distracted by her. “She’s not answering, so I can’t yell at her, so I guess I’ll yell at you instead. How dare you get married to her without asking permission?!”

“Your permission?” I scoff. “I’m not asking you for permission.”

“Not mine! Her parents’, you big idiot. And her brothers are going to give you a hell of a time if you’re serious.”

“I am serious.” I feel heat in my gaze, but Margerie doesn’t back down from it. Stubborn woman.

“You haven’t dated long enough, and you’re pushy. You need to give her more time.”

I don’t like that she’s right. I open my mouth to tell her off when the phone in my pocket starts to ring. I think about ignoring it, but a greater instinct has me reaching for it immediately. “You done?” I ask Emily.

“Just about ...” Emily says, giving me back my right hand as she polishes off my left. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I see Nessa’s name flash on the screen—the name I want to call her. Wife.

Margerie sees the name pop up with Vanessa’s face, and her cheeks get bright red. Her shoulders bunch under her ears, and I’m about to laugh at her ire when I answer the phone and hold it up. “Nessa, where are you? You threw me to the wolves down here in design.”

“You’re late,” Margerie shouts, trying to be heard by the quiet breathing coming from the other end of the line. “And I need to have a talk with you, missy!”

But Vanessa doesn’t answer. There’s no breathless laughter; there’s no quick apology. There’s only quiet breathing. Something isn’t right.

I jerk away from Emily, who almost drops her electric sander on the floor. “Roland? Everything okay?” Margerie asks while Emily turns her machine off and Shandra and the two minions working with her at one of the long wooden drafting tables in the rear of the room stop fussing with my gloves and turn my way.

I’m still wearing the old uniform, though there’s something wrong with the color. I think it’s all wrong. I feel like an ass and look like a grape. I drag the zipper down from the side of my collar to my shoulder, then underneath my armpit to my hip. Pulling my torso out of the uniform, I leave the top half bunched around my hips so I can fucking breathe ... even though, right now, I can’t.

“Vanessa?”

And then she releases a terrible sound. A sob. She may be tougher than old leather to have been through what she’s been through and come out on the other side of it sweeter than sin, but she’s still so fucking tender. Her tears tear straight through me. I’m standing, but when she sobs again, I stagger. I only miss that first step though, because in the next beat, I’m at the door.

“Where are you?” I somehow manage to say.

I can hear others talking to me, Margerie’s worried warble, but I don’t have time for that. I take the stairs. Too big to fly down the center column of the stairwell, I take each set of steps in a single leap. I try to keep my steps even and cool, not wanting to cause a panic without first knowing what the fuck is going on, but I hate that I’m forcing restraint when all I feel is untethered. I want to burn something to the ground.

I leave the small domed COE building through the first door I find and make my way out of the campus. On the street, the wind picks up. The sky is bright. I can’t fucking speak, and she isn’t fucking speaking. A headache sprouts behind my temples, and I feel achy from my crown all the way down to my teeth. My gums sear with an incredible pain that momentarily makes it hard to think.

“Nessa.” I say her name three more times before she finally releases a shuddering gasp.

“Rollo?”

“Baby, I’m here. Where the fuck are you?” Outwardly I remain tense, hard— fucking furious —calm. She releases another cry, and I step into the alleyway between the COE campus and the next block of buildings. I punch the wall, and my fist chips away at the concrete. “Nessa, please ...”

“They brought me to my old house, and they left me here ... I can’t be here.”

The fire in my bones explodes through my shoulders. I have to marshal myself so I don’t melt my new cell phone. “Address.”

She rattles it off before whimpering. I take off into the sky. “Nessa, are you in the house?”

She makes a murmuring sound that I fucking hate.

“Get outside. Find a neighbor to take you in ...”

“No ...” I can barely hear her over the sound of the wind. “I don’t want anybody else. Just you.”

I can’t speak, and it has nothing to do with the fact that my phone’s cutting out. I just ... can’t. Because the headache that started when I first heard her sob is back, and my whole body feels strange, and none of that matters. I’ve never felt ... like this before. Like I want to kill. Like I want to weep.

“Coming for you, baby,” I say into the phone, no idea if she can hear me. “Get outside. I’m coming.”

It takes me forty more fucking minutes to get to her. I must have flown over 150 miles. That’s fast, even for me, but not fast enough for her. Because when I touch down, staggering with the force of my impact on the earth, she stands up from where she’s been seated on the edge of a dusty road in the middle of fucking nowhere, hugging her knees. Her hair whips around her face, the sun turning the outer strands to gold. She pushes them back while I struggle to proceed.

She’s crying, and ... is that ...

No.

There’s blood.

She runs toward me, and I rush to meet her. It’s dusty out here. The road is covered in a thin sheen of dirt. It’s hotter than it was in Sundale proper, and it’s a hell of a lot filthier than the place where I grew up.

The community I lived in might have been near here, but the grass was green in front of each house, the lots were manicured, and there were stores and little shops lining one primary strip. This place ... out here ... it looks like it’s been abandoned for years ... generations. And she’d been sitting on the edge of a road without a sidewalk, looking just as abandoned.

We meet in a desperate collision, the momentum of my flight pushing me down the street. The momentum of my shock making it hard to regulate anything other than my impulse to erupt into a bonfire. I’m falling all over myself, and when I reach her, I keep falling. I slam into her body, tackling her back to the ground and catching myself on one arm before I accidentally crush her. I wrap one arm around her neck while I try to find my limbs and control them. I’m shaking. Fucking shaking.

She starts to cry again, softer than she had been over the phone. She’s wiping her face convulsively, tears mixed with red on her chin. “Sorry ... I wasn’t crying in ... the house, b-b-but after I got outside, I haven’t b-been able to st-st-stop.”

“It’s all right, baby,” I try to say, but my voice comes out as a gash as I manage to get one knee under me as well as a foot and push myself up into a crouch, pulling her with me. Holding her up in a seat, I loom over her, blocking out the sun so that when she looks up, all she can see is me and all I can see are the bruises on her face and the blood on her mouth.

“What ...” I have my hands on her face, and she’s clutching my wrists as I tip her face to the left and then to the right.

Her cheeks glitter with tears. Her lips are swollen; her eyes are too. The blood on her chin is dribbling from a split in her lip, one deep enough that it might need stitching. Purple splotches decorate her face above the jaw on the right side of her face. She got hit. Somebody fucking hit her.

I blink longer than I need to, just to get my bearings, just to try not to fucking implode. Trying to cycle through every possible scenario I can come up with for how she ended up out here looking like this while I was stuck inside of the goddamn COE headquarters, one of the most secure buildings in the entire fucking world.

I’ll slam my fist through the center of the earth and tear the whole thing apart from within. No one deserves to live while Nessa’s sitting here broken like this.

But ... that’s not what heroes do, is it? And I told her once already that I wasn’t gonna try. I was gonna do.

I cover my mouth with one hand and take a breath. My other hand cups the back of her head, her hair tangling between my fingers. She doesn’t flinch from me as I thought she might, and the next breath I take comes a little easier. I drop my hand from my mouth, gather my senses and what tatters are left of my sanity, and I roar at the top of my lungs, Who fucking touched you?

No, I don’t. I whisper gruffly, “Where else you hurt?”

Her lips part shakily. She shakes her head, and her hair falls around her face. Her hand flutters away from her knees, and it shakes as she gestures down her body. I’m distracted by what her other hand is doing, though. Like she owns me, she’s placed her hand on my thigh.

“They, um ... they grabbed my hips. I think I’ve got bruises. They ... sting. Other than that, I’m fine.”

They what ? I’m frozen solid, made of ice instead of flame, as she reaches down and lifts the hem of her button-up. White today. There’s blood on it. She shifts onto her knees, looking pained as she tries to show me what happened.

“Stop, baby. Hold up. Don’t hurt yourself. Gonna take you to the doctor. I just need to make sure it’s safe to move you.”

“It’s safe. It’s not a big deal.”

“The fuck it isn’t,” I grunt, covering my mouth again to keep myself from saying anything else stupid.

She sniffs and shivers down to her feet. “I just ... really don’t want to go to the doctor right now.” A dry sob racks her chest, and I can’t stand it. I pull her against me, worried I’m gonna hurt her, but when I pull an inch, she falls a mile. She slumps against me when I stand, forcing me to take her with me. It’s no hardship.

“I’m not hurt bad,” she says, nuzzling into my chest. Her eyelids look heavy. “I just need you to ... do something for me. Please. ”

“Anything.” I’d tear my heart out of my chest if she needed it now.

She blinks and glances back toward the structure, the one I haven’t even bothered to look at.

The smell insults me before the sight of it, because the empty house has been that way for a while. The wood holding it up is half-rotten. Even calling it a house is generous. It’s a one-story rambler, maybe two or three rooms. The front door’s ajar and is hanging off one hinge. There is no grass, only dirt and weeds. Some abandoned bottles litter the space meant to be a yard. But I recognize it from the photos I saw in her file. I know what this place is.

“What do you need, Nessa?” I whisper against her temple.

She’s fully buried against my bare chest, holding me like she thinks there’s even the slightest chance in hell I might set her down, leave her here, and fly away without her. I don’t know how she got out here, but once I find out who brought her here against her will and how, I’m gonna find it and kill it dead just to ensure she never ends up this far away from me ever again.

She sniffs, but her breathing seems better, calmer than it was. She blinks, and the sky turns the bronze-and-brown color combination of her curls the same color as her skin. She looks like her whole body was dipped in gold and dragged through sunlight. She’s too good for me. And I couldn’t care any less.

“I need you to be the Pyro,” she says. I give her a surprised look, horrified and touched in turn by the sudden surge of violence I hear in her voice. “Burn it down, baby. Be my hero.”

I have to fight to stay on my feet. I nod at her silently, and without breaking her gaze, I push energy out and away from my body. I find the house’s center, find the heart of this shithole and set it alight. The fire that starts in the center of the structure fans outward in a burst hot enough to feel from here. I take the structure down in less than three minutes. The fire swells and swells, forming the shape of a heart before I bring it back down in the center and, with it, the rest of the house.

I make sure the flame is doused, but I also make sure that not one single plank, one floorboard, one piece of shitty fucking plastic remains. The appliances I melt so they don’t explode apart. I take the foundation out, the few cinder blocks that there were, and raze it down to the earth beneath it until only a blackened pit, a scar on the earth, remains. I take the weed-covered yard too.

She watches the fire burn, and I watch the reflection of the flames on her face all the way until the last ember is doused. She still doesn’t look away. A truck rambles down the road. I can hear it coming though it’s still far off. I stand there, letting her absorb this for a few moments more until I ask her, “You ready?”

She nods after a brief hesitation and then looks up and pulls on my neck, and it takes me a second to understand what she wants, but when it clicks, I don’t hesitate after that. I kiss her with all of me.

Her mouth is swollen and tastes like tears and rain, and her kiss is wet and needy. She’s pulling so hard on my neck that it’s hard for my mind not to trip out of this plane and into another more illicit one. My cock doesn’t know that this isn’t the time or place, and I pull back too soon, before it’s over.

“Shit. I forgot.” I lick my lips, able to taste fresh blood. “Fuck. You’re cut.”

“Oh. I ... it’s ...”

I slip my finger under her chin, forcing her gaze to mine. She blinks, this look on her face ... this fucking look ... and whispers, “You’re right. I just ... needed that.” And then she does the damnedest thing.

She smiles.

“You ready?” My voice sounds like gravel. I’m gonna puke. I’m so in love with this woman, it’s absolutely petrifying.

Because they took her, dragged her out here to torture her, and punched my woman in the fucking face.

Whoever they are, I’m going to find them and do terrible, terrible things ...

“I’m ready. Now.”

I’m ready.

Now.

It feels like she’s saying so much more, but I don’t have the strength to ask. I don’t have the strength for much at the moment other than clutching her to me with every bit of hope that I have. I take off into the sky with her gaze still locked on my face, staring at me with rapture and wonder.