Page 20 of Hero & Villain (Super Serum Billionaires #1)

Chapter Eleven

HERO

I woke up with a scorpion on my face.

Other than that, the view was quite good, all jagged distant mountains beneath the pale blue dawn. The stars would take your breath away if the most desirable woman you’d ever met hadn’t stolen it first, and then dumped you in the desert.

I was almost surprised that she hadn’t stripped me naked.

With my phone, it was a matter of minutes to get a chopper out there.

I spent the thirty minutes waiting, having a nice breakfast of roasted scorpion.

I should pack more spices in my suit’s compartments to go with the lasers I’d cooked the bugger with.

Maybe I should have minded being bagged and tagged by Daniela, but she’d kissed me, and only knocked me out when she realized that I’d seen her struggling through her night terrors, stripped her bare and vulnerable.

Clint, her fiancé of two years, hadn’t ever seen her like that, because that’s not the side she showed, any more than she revealed the sharp tongue and sharper wits.

What I’d expected was a little more seduction, and a lot less truth.

It was almost as if she wasn’t interested in subjecting me to her feminine wiles at all.

No, it was like she physically couldn’t seduce me as she intended.

I’d seen her flinch away from me when she was trying to be the icy heir who could bring anyone to their knees.

She couldn’t stomach seducing me, which was a problem, since I was counting on her getting close enough to bring me down so that I could get her on the inside.

Of course, I liked her much, much better when she was vicious, honest, true. But I didn’t deserve any of that.

When the chopper came, I was ready to climb in with only a slight headache. I kept the bits of the scorpion I hadn’t eaten as a memento.

I took a seat next to the pilot, Horse, and gave him a nod once I’d buckled myself in.

“Your face doesn’t look so good.”

I grinned at him. “Good enough to be kissed.”

“You aren’t bitter? Most men would feel a little irritated after they woke up in the desert with a broken nose.”

I gently touched it. Yes, it would have to be set, but it wouldn’t be the first time, or the fifth. “There’s a slight snag in the plan.”

“Is Jezebel influencing her strangely? I knew that she’d be a problem.”

“No, I think Daniela might be having…” I didn’t want to say it.

It felt like a betrayal of her confidence, but Horse wasn’t going to repeat anything I told him.

He was more discreet than anyone I knew, and he did have all those degrees in psychology.

“She struggles with night terrors. She tries to seduce me, but freezes up. When she isn’t thinking about it, she can’t stop touching me, looking at me, but as soon as she decides that it would be logical to make a move, she shuts down. ”

“That is a problem,” he agreed.

I was irritated that he thought that was a problem because it messed up the plan instead of a problem because Daniela needed help, but that was hypocritical of me. “You’ve seen a lot of messed-up people. What does she need?”

“And you’re only interested because you want her to perform her part of the play, not because you’re a hero,” he said with a wry smile.

“Therapy. She needs therapy, maybe drugs, but most of all, a change of lifestyle. You can give her this,” he said, handing me a black card.

“Musicians, good musicians, are sensitive spirits who need to be protected from the brutal realities of existence, realities she’s had shoved in her face her whole life.

Selling yourself takes a toll on body and soul. ”

“She wasn’t a prostitute.” Why did I want to punch Horse for suggesting that Daniela was anything other than respectable when she’d knocked me out and dumped me in the desert?

I didn’t owe her anything. No, if I did owe her anything, it was reciprocation of my own diabolical scheme to match hers.

The only trouble was that she didn’t seem capable of following through on her own ill intentions.

She couldn’t be weak, or I’d be weak for taking advantage of her weaknesses.

I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated, but also feeling more alive than I had in a long time.

She was so fascinating. Soft and jagged, strong and vulnerable, like spiked cotton candy.

She didn’t hold back anything, but at the same time, she couldn’t be herself at all.

He lifted the chopper off the ground and glanced at me, showing my own reflection in his dark sunglasses. “I didn’t say she was. Everyone knew what Clint was into. It takes a certain mindset to be capable of harnessing that kind of deviant. I’m saying it takes a toll.”

“Everything takes its toll.” I scowled at the view of the dusty desert southwest of Vegas. They’d picked a nice isolated spot to dump me. I’d have to thank Jezebel for that since Daniela didn’t know the terrain.

His voice was low and soothing, his late-night DJ voice. “All right. No need to get upset about it. How are the views? Are you ready to put up the next video? The performance when she’s wearing her coat has amazing stats, but the goddess of death outfit…”

“I’ve got it taken care of, making allowances for algorithms and viewer trends.” I didn’t like it. It felt like a betrayal, which it wasn’t, because she was the one who played in public. But marketing it felt wrong.

“Sure. And what do you want to do about her current reluctance to play the villain?”

“I’m not going to force her.”

“No? You could seduce her without too much effort. I don’t think you’d dislike it.”

I pulled out a stick of gum and chewed a little too vigorously.

The way that she kissed me, clung to me, looked at me, made her attraction almost painfully obvious, matching mine in absolutely every way.

I’d never wanted anyone like this. Kissing her was more than addictive, it felt as necessary as breathing.

The fact that she’d lost her temper and knocked me out when she was supposed to be seducing me made it clear that her feelings were as sincere as mine.

What a mess. I found myself grinning. She really wasn’t in control.

“No. She’s got to figure out what she wants on her own. ”

“She won’t be on her own. Jezebel will be influencing her.”

“That’s okay. Jez has given her permission to break my heart after the Three-Hundred.”

He laughed. “And the game is afoot.”

“You’re no Sherlock.”

“Only because I don’t snort coke.”

“Or play the violin.”

“And I have better taste in hats. Where do you want me to drop you off?”

“How close can you land to Jezebel’s property?”

“Without her shooting at me? Not close, but happily this helicopter has war-grade bulletproof glass.” He tapped the windshield.

“And that tells me all I need to know about you. You’re paranoid.”

“I’m at war with the evil minions of the earth. Tell me you don’t see Haversham shooting a rocket at you for fun.”

I grunted and closed my eyes. I needed to think. I needed to adjust the timeline of this debacle to give Daniela time to get her head on straight. To be the ice-cold Haversham heir she was born to be.

I said, “Set the chopper on the street next to my car. You can’t miss it.”

“Your pink thing got old a long time ago. Do you want to tell me about it? We’ve got a few minutes before we land. And then get shot at.”

It was barely dawn, and the desert sky was turning gold and purple around the edges. “You aren’t my therapist.”

“But I could be, or do you think that you don’t have any issues?”

I shook my head. Of course I had issues. What young man with a family like mine wouldn’t have issues? “My parents have the perfect marriage.”

“How nice for them. I suppose they had the perfect children as well, one strapping son, one darling daughter, both groomed to embody the perfect Prescott name.”

“Mm, something like that.”

“But somehow you didn’t want to play the perfect game, so you started getting into fights. The trouble was that you liked it. You liked all of it, from the pain to the punishment. You could breathe a little easier after you’d disappointed them and forced their expectations to lower.”

“Do you do all the talking for your patients?”

“Probably. Go on. You were going to tell me about pink, unless you’d like me to talk about your parent’s expectations about your sexual orientation.”

I sighed heavily. I didn’t want to talk about anything, but Horse was notoriously good at getting people to open up, to start the healing.

After my clashes with Daniela, I wanted to be healed so I could help her.

I shrugged. “Susan, my sister, her favorite color was garish, Barbie hot pink. You wouldn’t think that it would be a big deal, but it flipped something in my mother, the ‘white trash’ cue, and she absolutely forbade it. ”

He raised a brow, almost surprised that I’d opened up. Not really, though. He could read people unnaturally well. Supernaturally, probably. “You wear it in memory of your sister.”

“And as a ‘screw you’ to my mother. If she hated hot pink on her, you can imagine how she feels about me wearing it. Mostly it’s in memory of my sister. Also, in strictest confidence, I don’t hate the color.” I winked at him, feeling something ease in my chest.

He laughed, flashing that eighty-watt smile at me like he was on for show. “Interesting. Do you want me to tell you what that tells me about the deepest inner workings of your psyche? No, you don’t, because you’re a rugged, manly type who doesn’t need to be understood. Even by yourself.”

“Do you think you could fly a little faster?”

“As a matter of fact, I could.”

When we got to Jezebel’s street, Horse had me jump four feet to the pavement in spite of bragging about his bulletproof glass.

Jezebel’s house was like a South American drug-lord’s compound.

It wouldn’t surprise either of us to find her in possession of something she’d been given from one of her international admirers that would do more than crack the glass.

My car battery was dead, but Tom would be there in a minute with the charger. If Jezebel would let me plug into her house… No, better not risk it. She’d dump me in the desert naked next time.

A big black truck pulled up next to my car. The window slowly rolled down, and then Nix looked at me over the top of his sunglasses while he revved the engine.

“Someone needed a jump?”

I gave his truck a once-over. The Dodge T-Rex was ridiculously overpowered for the quiet neighborhood. “I thought Tom was coming.”

“Yeah, well I thought I’d check in on the recruit. Nice outfit. Is that Kevlar?”

I glanced down at the black reinforced suit. “It’s something I’m still working on. It needs more spice.”

“It’s weaponized?” He turned off the truck and got out, interest piqued.

“Lemon pepper, maybe chili powder, whatever goes with scorpion. I’m open to suggestions.”

He frowned. “What happened to your face? Did Jezebel do that? No, she wouldn’t. She knows that you’re in tonight’s fight and it’s not as good a show if the contender starts out looking like crap. I’ll have to switch you out.”

“It was an accident, and not Jezebel’s fault for once.”

He raised an eyebrow. “An accident? Noses don’t get broken like that by accident.” He smiled slowly. “The new girl doesn’t know about our fight schedule. Maybe we should put her in the lineup. What do you think about her? Will she be an asset or a headache?”

I rubbed my temple, where it throbbed from the literal headache she’d given me, and had a brilliant idea that would both punish her and keep her from becoming candy to feed the lecherous gaze of the masses. “I heard that she’s surprisingly good with paperwork.”

His eyes lit up. “And here I thought there would be no good news today. All right, let’s get you up and running so we can get things started.”

My car was nearly charged when Jezebel came out, a gun holstered on her hip. “Dagger. My, how pretty you look in the light of day. I should have skinned you for coming around at night like a petty burglar.”

“I sent him,” Nix said, a blatant lie that caught both of us off guard.

“Look, Jez, Toni is under my protection, since I agreed to take her on for the sake of sentimentality. You don’t get to keep her as your pet, however bedraggled and helplessly cute she is.

I expect both of you at the compound by eight.

We’ve got a lot to do if we want to have a nice long break after the Three-Hundred.

Is that all right with you?” Nix’s voice was friendly, easy, but his eyes were colder and harder than steel.

Jezebel smiled a gleaming smile that gave me shivers and holstered the gun I hadn’t noticed her pulling.

She was like that. “Well, honey, I didn’t realize she’d touched a corner of your sentimental heart.

I’ll be sure to wrap her up real good and deliver her right away.

Should I put her in a sequined push-up bra or something sheer?

Maybe black leather and lace is what you want her for.

” Even without a gun in her hand, she was scary as her voice got tighter and harder.

Nix’s smile was as charming as it could be. “She would be a pretty little thing no matter what she wore, but she’s going to spend her time in the office working on the year’s paperwork, so she should wear whatever will suit the air conditioning. She’s the kind that runs a little cold, I think.”

Jezebel studied him for another second and then nodded before glancing at me. “Paperwork? And here I thought you were above revenge. I’ll have to watch my back around you.” She spun on her heel and went back inside the metal gate to her compound’s courtyard.

Nix chuckled and unhooked the adapter to charge my car. “I’d be delighted if you were to set me up with a version of that hot little number you’ve got on, after all, Toni ’s not the only one who runs a little cold.”

I fingered the flap of my suit. “Remind me why I’m running with a cold-blooded shark like you?”

He slapped me on the shoulder, flashing that charming smile that matched Jezebel’s in a lot of ways.

“I’d never presume to know another man’s reasons for doing something.

The why is much less essential than the what.

As long as you’re the best videographer, you’re welcome on the team.

I don’t even care if you have a pink fetish.

” He climbed into his monstrosity and revved the engine a few more times before driving off, leaving me with nothing to do but climb into my own car and get to work.