Page 10 of 3013: SAVIOR

Up close, she was even more stunning. Her skin looked like it had been brushed with gold dust, and she had a face that had been blessed by the gods. Focusing on her injuries, he noticed her skin was raw and abraded in several spots, but it didn’t look too bad. Despite that, he still wanted to punish whoever had hurt her.

Unable to help himself, he rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of her wrist since he was still holding onto her. He felt more at ease when he felt the steady beat of her pulse, confirming she wasn’t a robot. Not that he’d really thought she was, but it was better to be sure. His own pulse started to beat faster as desire surged through him.

Touching her had been a bad idea.

Or it could have been the best thing he had ever done.

When his gaze rose to meet hers, he was instantly mesmerized by her glowing silver eyes. She was almost the same height as he was, making it easy. His gaze strayed down to her lush lips, and he wondered what they would feel like pressed against his. He caught himself leaning toward her and was grateful he had stopped before making a complete fool of himself.

He blinked in surprise when he noticed that she had fangs. That was certainly unexpected. Something about that pushed at his memory, but it slipped away again before he could make sense of it. Maybe she was a vampire. Or perhaps they had something to do with whatever superpowers she had.

While the sight of fangs should have been alarming, it didn’t freak him out as much as he thought it would. In fact, he discovered that it didn’t bother him at all. It just made him more intrigued by her.

“Who are you?”

“Jecca.”

“Jecca,” he repeated, savoring her name. “Just Jecca?”

“Aye. Until I can remember the rest.”

That made him frown. Fuck, he’d almost forgotten about her head injury.

“I’m Zack Keller, and these are my friends Nico Artane, Travis McClain, and Lina Z’Mar. We were…”

His words trailed off when she tilted her head back and stared intently up at the dark sky. Something had caught her attention, which had him following her gaze. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t see anything. He searched for several seconds, then he sucked in a harsh breath when he caught a faint trace of a trail of light in the sky.

“Incoming!” he shouted. “Take cover!”

He grabbed Jecca’s hand and dragged her with him away from the street as the flare exploded into a large firework overhead. The bots used the firework flares that exploded low in the sky to signal to any others in the area that they had discovered supers that needed to be captured and taken to one of their testing facilities.

As sparks rained down close to where they’d just been standing, he noticed that his friends had fled in the opposite direction. He had been so focused on protecting Jecca that he’d forgotten about his team for a moment. Pushing the guilt aside, he called out to them.

“We’ll meet you back at headquarters.”

Getting nods of agreement, he watched as they disappeared into the shadows before he led Jecca away from the scene. He realized that she was easily keeping pace with him as they ran. He didn’t let go of her hand, though. She had to be scared and confused since she had no memory due to her head injury, but he couldn’t take the time to explain everything to her right now, and it was safer to keep quiet until they reached safety.

If a bot had sent flares out, they had already targeted their location.

That meant they were calling in reinforcements.

As he thought that, another flare exploded, this time directly overhead. Zack cursed as he pulled Jecca down and shielded her body with his as the sparks rained down around them. He braced himself to feel the burn of those sparks on his back, then blinked in confusion when it never came.

Added to that, he no longer sensed the rain pouring down around them either. That was strange enough to have him glancing around. He saw that they hadn’t escaped the fallout from the explosive.

Something was protecting them.

No, not something.

Someone.

While he’d done his best to shield his new obsession with his body, it hadn’t been necessary. Jecca had a hand out as she used her powers to create a dome of protection around them. The dome flared with light where sparks from the firework rained down on it. Seeing the shield had something flickering in his mind, but trying to recall the elusive memory was like trying to capture smoke in his hand.

“That’s a pretty awesome power you have.”

Jecca smiled at him over her shoulder, and his body stiffened in reaction.

Damn, she was fucking sexy.