Temptress by Lola Dodge

won’t come for you,” Drake said. “Temptress isn’t the rescuing kind of girl. I made sure of that.”
     
    No? I smiled. “You don’t know her as well as you think.”

Chapter Nine
    My skull throbbed, and a really annoying bird kept screeching in my ears. I shivered. Night had settled in, and I lay on the balcony in nothing but a string bikini.
    Deena was screaming.
    Red marks scored her legs, but no amount of clawing was going to get her free. I bet the points of her heels poked through the ceiling below us.
    I wrenched myself to my feet and staggered for her. The bitch tried to slap me, but I grabbed both of her wrists. “Before I do this, I have to say that you’re really not my type.”
    She tried to turn her head, but I lunged, head-butting her as I stole my kiss. Her perfume made me cough, but I held on until her powers rushed into me. As the energy left her, she slumped. With feet stuck, her knees bent back until her shoulder blades touched the ground.
    That had to be uncomfortable.
    I spat. I should’ve interrogated Deena before taking her powers, but I wasn’t in the mood for reason. Where was Tank?
    I could picture him in the moment he’d frozen, inches away from a kiss that I was pretty sure would’ve rocked my world. The penthouse was quiet without him. It had only been a few days, but I was already used to having Tank around.
    I wanted him there permanently.
    But how was I going to find him?
    At the thought, one of my powers resonated, and I pulled it from my internal pile. It still smelled vaguely of perfume.
    Deena. What was her power?
    I rolled it around, but it was hard to say when I’d never seen Deena do anything. She mostly stood around or chased after people.
    Chasing. The power gave another throb of resonance. Was that what she did? I eased into the ability and thought of Tank. Dark, caring eyes, muscles for days and his fabulous waffles.
    It was like gazing down from a satellite. An office building grew in my vision. It was in Manhattan, surrounded by a haze that reminded me of Drake’s invisi-bubble, but Deena’s powers cut through like clear air. A security force armed with assault rifles guarded doors and hallways, but the ones without guns were more worrisome. Supers. Dozens of them. I recognized them from the federal database. Mostly petty criminals or ones that hadn’t been seen in a while.
    They shouldn’t have been working together, and there was no way in hell an operation like that could go unnoticed in the middle of Manhattan. The picture zoomed to an office on one of the upper floors. Drake sat surrounded by computer monitors, while Tank thrashed against the ropes binding him to his chair. I jerked so hard the power slipped from my grasp and stumbled under a wave of dizziness.
    Why did Drake want Tank? Between the vision of our past and the sight of Tank helpless, I didn’t have a choice. It was my fault he’d been taken. And I’d be damned if I didn’t get my kiss.
    I had to go after him.
    Leaving Deena where she’d collapsed, I stormed inside. Tank’s coat still hung over a chair in the kitchen. I clutched it, inhaling his cologne. It was strange how he’d rooted himself in my life so quickly.
    A weight shifted in the coat’s pocket, and I reached in, coming up with his cell.
    Calling for help wasn’t in my playbook, but even at one-hundred percent I’d be hard pressed to take down that kind of force. Scratch that. I could do it, but there wouldn’t be any survivors. I needed allies, and lucky for me, Tank had a ready set of them.
    I punched the first number in call history: Red Ruin.
    “Brother,” Ruin answered after a ring. I could hear the other heroes clamoring in the background. “You were supposed to call. We—”
    “This is Temptress speaking,” I lowered my voice, making it as sultry as a phone sex operator. “Ruin, right?”
    “Where’s Tank?” The background noise went silent, in a coiled kind of stillness. Tank’s buddies were not going