Page 28 of Fuse

I don’t miss Reece’s side-eye toward his lieutenant or the look Sawyer flicks in return. Obviously, sending the tech team down for research has already gleaned vital information. As the same conclusion wallops Reece, he jabs at the mute button on the phone.

“They’re controlling him?” he spits out. “In what fucking ways? With what sophisticated technology?”

“We’re working on it.” Sawyer’s riposte is all teeth and complete business.

The second Reece unmutes the line, it’s taken over by another enraged grunt. “That doesn’t help me, gentlemen,” the mayor barks.

Reece steps in again. “All right. What can we do?”

“You can get your Team Bolt asses to City Hall!”

“Finally.” Sawyer whips his head to the side and mutters it under his breath. “Was thinking he’d never ask.”

Reece isn’t so cavalier and immediately explains why. “Troy, I’m an hour out.”

“The hell you are,” the mayor rebuts. “I’ll patch you through to the Chief of Police, and she’ll get your coordinates. We’ll have a chopper up in three minutes.”

“We’ll be ready.” Reece nods at Sawyer, who mirrors the action.

“I’m going with you.”

And why am I not stunned when my insistence is matched, word for word, by the woman who steps in with her supermodel legs, blond wig newly reaffixed, and huge green gaze brimming with intense “concern” to “help”?

And don’t I give in to the fire in my belly now, ordering me to go ahead and rip out with a scream of fury, frustration, and exasperation?

Answers all too easily given.

As soon as Reece dips his stare back down to me again.

And drenches me in the bright love, edged all around the dark regret, in his eyes.

“Velvet.” He turns his back on everyone else, cupping my face and pushing in until he consumes every fraction of my vision…until his desperate energy consumes every electron of my nervous system. “You need to understand…”

“No.” I wrench against his grip. He holds tight. Really fucking tight. “You need to understand!” I try to twist again. He’s even more unrelenting. “You say we’re partners?” I use the only weapon I have now, my gritted seethe, to fight him. “You say we’re in this together? You say you want me by your side forev—”

He halts me with a steel hammer of a kiss that radiates raw shockwaves through my system. I sway in place, probably looking like the Valhalla maiden just tamed into place by the conqueror Viking, and I long to clock him for it. And, damn it, jump him for it. Holy shit, even now. Bastard.

“Goddamnit,” he growls. “I want you alive more.”

And now, bastard doesn’t even cut it. I can’t even call him on not playing fair, because he isn’t playing. As a minute stretches by—at least I think it does, because Sawyer has finished giving the coordinates of the clearing behind the house to the police chief and starts nervously pacing—Reece doesn’t move. The edges of his gaze thicken with emotion. The whites of his eyes are bright cobalt tumults, begging me to understand but telling me it’s not going to matter if I don’t. In less than fifteen minutes, he’s going to take off for a war zone. Without me. Without a clue of what he could be facing.

But with the best team he can possibly gather around him.

With the intention of not becoming a casualty of that war.

Yes. I see that in every tormented flash in his eyes too. More than that, I know it in all the throbs of my heart and all the fibers of my soul. And the rest of me may hate the crap out of that certainty, but right now, none of that matters. I have to slam my rubber against this awful road, give up both my hands on the steering wheel of this speeding car, and surrender them to an unknown neither Reece nor I can know or predict.

And worst of all, I’ll have to do nothing but watch. And pray.

And keep hoping he feels the force of the words I give him now, as I yank on the back of his head so he’s bent low for my lips to be at his ear.

“Come back to me, you big ox.” My voice cracks before I kiss his neck hard. “Do you fucking understand me?”

“Yeah, baby. I do.” He rolls his head, finding my forehead with his. And I hate him all over again because he knows how much I melt when he does this. How much I wish we’d just melt together like this and be fused until the end of time.

But that’s not what I get here. Not what I signed up for when accepting his presence in my life, his engagement ring on my finger, his place in my soul.

I fell in love with a superhero. So that means pulling myself back, no matter how fast the sweet fusion turns back into bitter tears, and forcing even harder words to my lips. “Go, damn it. Save the city, Reece Richards.”