"I'm going to regret saying this, but…" I winced, just thinking about the pain I was about to endure. "I have a sewing kit in my evil pack."

Elijah raised an eyebrow, and the color returned to his face. "A sewing kit?"

"Hey, us girls all wear leather. You never know when a button is going to pop off. How inconvenient. That'd ruin the bad-ass chick look, don't you think?"

He pulled out the little black plastic kit and quickly threaded a needle. "I haven't done this before. Do you trust me?"

"Trust? No… but I don't have a choice."

"You never finished. Tell me more about this master plan of the great Ladies in Leather."

"More small talk, huh? This is going to hurt, too—OUCH!" The needle pierced my tender flesh. "Fine. Each of us lost someone we loved when WynGlo Chemical exploded from the superheroes' diverted missile. We ran many ideas through our heads… some of them darker than I would like to admit, but that's not who we are."

“No, you’re definitely not as dark as I am.”

I took a deep breath. "I will admit that having experienced pain like we did, gave me a little understanding of what motivated you to do what you did. Anyway, The Ladies in Leather settled on a master plan of exposing the Superzeros so the city can see they are not as perfect as the public believes. Just like you and me, the superheroes have flaws. OUCH!"

He chuckled.

"You're enjoying causing me pain."

"No, no," Elijah said in a deep, sexy voice. "I've just missed your whining. It's like music to my ears."

"You're such an ass… OUCH!"

"From where I am, it's not my ass that we should worry about."

I held my mouth shut, stopping myself from throwing out a string of curse words as he continued to sew.

"So, you in?" I asked.

"The needle is through. Not in."

"That's not what I mean." I sighed. "Are you in with our plan? Will you help us?"

"I have little choice. If I run away, you might do something stupid and get yourself in trouble."

"I would never."

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"No. You'd never get shot. You'd never need a bullet removed from your backside."

"I learned my lesson. Won't happen again."

Elijah changed the subject, and that was fine. He could figure out what he wanted to do once we were out of the forest, dry, and rested.

"What's your villain name, anyway?" he asked.

"Work in progress."

"That's not a good name."

"Fine. I haven't really decided yet. The other girls have such cool names. Hannah is the Storm Singer and Jasmine's the Mind Mistress. For me… I was thinking… Dark Sky Diva."

He laughed. "You're no Diva. At least not to me. I find you very easy to please."

"Haha. Then what?"

Elijah didn't hesitate. "Darling. Dark Sky Darling."

I didn't mind that name, but didn't want to tell him.

Finally, Elijah gave one big tug on the thread that had an "Ouch!" escape that I couldn't control, even though numbness was setting in.

"There. All done. That was exhilarating."

"More like exhausting." I laid my head on my forearms, letting my heart calm as the extreme agony dissipated, not like I wasn't still in pain, but it was controllable. "What do you think, Doc? Am I going to live?"

This past eleven months, I had torn myself up, over and over again, about what I saw in him. Why, after confessing to me his special abilities on the night before our wedding, did I still choose to marry Elijah, knowing he was the villain.

Only, I hadn't seen him as the villain. I had been optimistic that I could change him. That his little obsession with the superheroes was just a healthy delusion. I was foolish and in love.

But it looks like he changed me instead.

Under the rain, Elijah brushed the hair that was plastered to my cheek away. He looked at me with that tenderness I fell in love with less than five years ago. The love we shared rushed back, reminding me what I had seen in him that made me marry him after only knowing him for three months.

I took in his rain drenched hair, the smear of my blood on his chiseled cheeks, and those bright green eyes framed by his dark eyelashes.

For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me with that love-drunk expression, but he righted himself, turned his gaze back to my butt, then said, "We should keep moving before they find us."

"Yeah, yeah we should." I chuckled weakly. "Sounds like a plan. Just let me catch my breath and put my pants back on first."

Did he still care about me?

Or was I just his ticket to freedom?

And the most daunting question: did I still care about him?

A siren pierced the silence of the forest.

Elijah helped me and my pants up, which was quite difficult. Wet leather. Bad idea.

Especially when a sharp pain shot through me as I put weight on my leg. "Damn!"

"Can you fly?" Elijah asked, embracing me in his muscular bare arms that gave me a whiff of his pheromones beneath the scent of rain.

"Probably, but I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to carry us both."

"Then we'll walk. I'll help you until you recover."

That was almost sweet, but if Elijah still cared about me, wouldn't he have sent me off to fly home, leaving him in the woods? I was injured and he always could take care of himself, even if the forest was surrounded by police and superzeros.

But Elijah wanted to keep me–his escape plan–close.

And that was okay at the moment. I didn't care if he still cared about me or not. I had bigger problems to worry about than my suppressed feelings for my criminal ex. Besides, if he had kissed me moments ago, I wasn't sure what I would have done.

Probably pushed him away, but not before enjoying his touch for a second or two.

Two steps deeper into the forest and one of those bigger problems surfaced.

The blinding golden light engulfed us suddenly, forcing us into action. I gritted my teeth against the pain and widened my stance, ready to fight, but Elijah pulled me protectively close, and I fell against his rock-hard body.

We had finally found the third wheel of the mighty superhero threesome.