Temptress by Lola Dodge Page A

stole over her face. As the shadows tugged at her mind in the present, I remembered something too. A superhero turned serial rapist, who’d abducted women by plucking them from the street. They couldn’t fight back when a fall meant death.
    Ending his life had wakened Jenny’s powers.
    The memory dissolved with Jenny frozen on the ledge. Did she realize then that she could fly, or did she wait alone until she was found? I wanted it to end, but Drake hadn’t arrived on the scene. Where did he come into this disaster?
    A new image rose, and Jenny looked more rumpled this time, with deep circles under her eyes. She knocked on an office door’s frosted glass. “Professor Darring?”
    “Come in,” a familiar voice called.
    Bookshelves filled with comic books and glossy texts ringed the room at waist height, and framed posters of supers crowded the walls. The man’s back was to Jenny as he fingered through a stack of comics. “You’re here about your term paper grade?”
    “No.” Jenny fiddled with her scarf. “I’m not one of your students. But someone told me to talk to you…you’re head of Super Studies and I need…”
    The man tensed and set down his comic. It was Drake before the dye job, in reading glasses and a tie. “Have a seat. What can I help you with, Miss…?”
    “Ray. Jenny Ray. I think I’m…” She gripped the chair back but didn’t sit. “There’s something wrong with me.”
    Drake came around the desk. He took her hand and pulled her into the chair. As he patted her hand, she gazed at him like he’d just thrown her a lifeline.
    Fucking bastard.
    The memory slipped, and a series of images shot me like machine gun fire. Professor Drake Darring seduced Jenny, slowly turning her into an object for his pleasure. One scene lingered longer than the rest.
    A ragged guy with a scraggly beard was tied to a chair in a room jammed with space heaters. Bits of frost clung to his fingers, but it was too hot to form ice, and water puddled from his feet, submerging the floorboards.
    Jenny wore clingy leather and Drake had ditched the reading glasses and tie. He hovered behind the guy, clutching his shoulders. “Do it, Jenny. For us.”
    “I…” She hesitated at the edge of the puddle.
    “You have to test this. Do you know what it means if you can take his powers? We can turn the city around, and with me hiding you, no one could touch us.” Drake dug his fingers into the guy’s shoulders. “The world could do without one more criminal, and you’re the only one who can stop him for good.”
    She took a deep breath and splashed through the water. “I have to know if this is real.”
    “You can handle it,” Drake said.
    She leaned in, and as her lips touched the bound man’s, her expression broke my heart. It was a mix of disgust and terror, her eyes as hollow as they’d been when she crouched alone on the ledge.
    The man jerked as his energy bled away, and Jenny jumped back as he slumped. She lifted a hand and stared in horror as tiny ice crystals blossomed on her fingertips. “I didn’t think it would work.”
    Drake pulled her from the room and sat her on a couch with a blanket. “You’ll be fine, Jenny. You were born for this.”
    “Born to steal other people’s powers?” Her voice trembled.
    “No.” Drake grabbed her chin and forced him look in his eyes. “Born to reclaim them from people who don’t deserve them.”
    “I’m not God, Drake. I didn’t even know I had pow—”
    Drake cut her off with a kiss. She melted into him, dropping the blanket, clinging to him like she would to anyone who offered her a hand.
    It should’ve been me.
    “Relax,” Drake said. “I’ll take care of you. We’ll do this together, okay?”
    Jenny nodded, and the scene blurred into a hundred others just like it. She didn’t want to steal powers, but Drake convinced her every time. This one’s a criminal, and that one’s dangerous . It was always, “You’re the only one who can stop them,