[fic] 'All other fetters' (Bruce/Selina various, NC-17) 1/2
Title: 'All other fetters': Five (or Six) Orgasms, Some or All of Which Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne Almost Certainly Shared, Somewhere, In Some Guise or Other [title reference]
Media: Various Bat-books, in continuity and out.
Pairings: See title. Identity(ies) porn.
Summary: See title.
Rating: Adult, kitten.
Warnings: Bolshevism and BDSM, larceny and lust.
Notes: Enormous thanks to petronelle and thenotoriousg for betaing like champs and suggesting some of the best lines. Thanks also to those on my flist who put up with my wibbling anxiety.
Detailed (even loquacious) notes follow the fic.
Some kind of elemental process is taking place, where the living fabric of life is being transformed into the theatrical. (V. Shlovskii, 1922)
Full fic [85Kb] offsite, or read it here.
BLACK BOX
Other people would have wasted their money on theatrical trappings, ridiculous equipment, absurd mood-setters like red candles and studded leather cuffs.
Selina, however, trusts herself to set the mood. Now that she's free of Stan, this is all hers. The lights were rewired to a single dimmer switch and the room -- all four walls, ceiling and floor -- repainted a dull black. Industrial-grade chains and hooks provide all the flexible, ad-hoc equipment she requires.
This place is, then, much more a theater than any garishly decorated dungeon could have been. Not that she has to *act* all that much; every piece of scum and slime who crawls in here bring more than enough melodrama and outrageous emotion.
They want to whine and mewl. She's happy to yank those pitiful cries out of them.
The ones who want to be held afterward, their hair petted and cheeks kissed, do not, usually, return. But the blubberers, the martyrs, the headcases -- they come back for the whip, the steady gaze of her shadowed eyes, the castigation that comes to her lips as easily as breathing.
She's damned good at this. So if her wrists ache after a night holding the whip, if her ankles throb and wobble after just an hour in the stiletto heels, she's still far, far better off than she was picking up car dates or trolling hotel bars.
Nobody's getting fucked here, least of all her.
They come to her all fucked-up already, she plays with that for fifty minutes, and when they leave -- maybe they're better. She doesn't know, doesn't care. It's really not her concern.
The movies will tell you that every bitch, every whore, just needs to find the right one. A man who understands, who sees past what she has to do to survive, who can rescue her from the muck and lock her up in a tower.
They're wrong, but that's no surprise.
What *is* surprising is that this one came back. She hadn't expected him to return, quiet and disconcertingly *undemanding* as he is. There's no need in him, not that she can find. Tall and healthy, handsome in a bland way despite the gay-porn mustache, he's not -- quite -- like the others.
He takes everything she doles out. He's polite, too. To a fault.
"Yes, mistress." Lash across the shoulder blades, red to get lost in. "Thank you, mistress." Crop along the inside of his knees. More red, lacing up the back of his thighs, laddered, glowing hot as coals across smooth, well-nourished skin.
He barely breaks a sweat as she whips him. Never trembles after an hour spent hanging in the cuffs, his toes just grazing the floor.
Lash and crop do nothing to him, though his skin is flushed nearly to the point of bruising. Tonight, his third visit, he is on his knees, arms cuffed over his head, his chest working slow and regular as he breathes.
He's a problem, that's what he is. He doesn't want to be broken. He might already be gone. She can't hope to break him *harder*.
"Tell me something, Thomas --" She tilts up his chin and, good boy that he is, he keeps his gaze downcast until such time as she should permit otherwise.
"Yes, mistress?"
Like her room, Selina keeps herself plain -- black sunglasses, a blonde wig over her shaved head. Black corset, stockings, and those ridiculous stilettoes.
"Thomas." She drops to one knee and his gaze fastens, as she knew it would, on the string of pearls hugging her neck. "I don't change for just anyone, hmm?"
"No, mistress. Thank you."
He gave them to her on his first visit.
No.
He'd *left* them behind on his first visit.
It was her choice to take them, to read the note accompanying them (Please. If you would...), to wear them now.
"You don't like pain," she says.
When he doesn't answer, she slides her thumbnail over his lips. Makes her voice low, sharp. Warning. "Thomas."
"Yes, that's --" He looks at her, quickly, just a flicker that might be beseeching. It might be challenging. "I can take it."
"But you don't want it."
"I --" His jaw works under her hand. He's very young. Unlined, fresh-faced, yet inured already to pain. He could, if she let him, make her feel a thousand years old. "My needs are not. Relevant."
"Bullshit. Who's the one paying here?"
She shoves him away hard enough to make the chains sigh. He still does not flinch.
"You're fucking with me," she says. *That* makes him flinch.
"No, mistress. Never."
Nine lashes down his torso. She concentrates only on the effects: the song of leather cracking air, the marks sharpening beneath his chest hair.
"Thank you, mistress."
She would like to shake her head, but keeps her attention on her work. Candle-wax on his nipples, brushed across his balls, drizzled down his shaft. His hair sizzles and smokes as the skin flares pale, then darkens.
All he gives is a single sharp gasp, caught in his teeth. "Yes, mistress."
She slaps him open-handed across the rise of his ass, then plants one heel in the small of his back. Releasing the bar from the chains, she kicks him lightly in one kidney.
He collapses, but he makes it look deliberate. The others wheeze and twitch, flail and fall, but this one lands on his elbows and keeps his head down. His skier's hard ass rises to the ceiling, but he never forgets his goddamned manners.
"Thank you, mistress."
She locks his cuffs to the O-ring protruding from the floor and makes him wait. When she scrapes her fingernails down his spine, he exhales slowly.
"Cut the crap, Thomas."
"Yes, mis--"
"Shut *up*." All this goddamn fake *etiquette*, props and stupid, *bullshit* courtesy; it's just as bad as rides in johns' cars, alley sucks, standing fucks in the backrooms of bars.
"I --" he starts to say, then relaxes his shoulders and nudges his ass toward her.
She spanks him, bare-handed. While it can't hurt half as much as the other things she's done to him, he moans anyway. So she spanks him, harder, fast as a typist, until his ass is darker than red. Scores his buttocks and crack with her nails until blood pushes against the surface.
You need to adjust to the situation before it overtakes you, Ted Grant told her during their most recent training session. Make use of *all* your resources, not just your fists.
He's the one who taught her to crack the whip. To use her low center of gravity to flip away from the fray. To win, not just survive.
Not just your fists, she hears again. Winning the fight is about more than inflicting the most pain. It's about doing the most damage.
Selina takes a step back, hands on her hips. Thomas kneels there, ass spread, the cords of muscles in his thighs tight as concrete.
He is still as marble, perfectly controlled.
"You can take all of this," she says.
A beat, during which she molds her palm against his ass and the heat radiating off it. Then he says, quietly, "Yes."
"And this?" She doesn't say anything else as she cuts off the fake nails and slides on the latex glove. She slicks up her hand and pushes her index finger inside him.
He grunts, once, accepting her finger. For a moment, her mind reels at the *depth* and heat, at his bent head and exposed nape. She bites her lip and redoubles her attention.
More than inflicting pain. Use your resources.
He can't be broken. He's taking the pain she doles out and storing it away.
She moves her finger shallowly, watching his ribs expand, his shoulders bow, relishing the intractable *heat* in here. Tense boy like this, no wonder he's so tight. Maybe all those stories about rich boys at their boarding schools really are just stories.
He shakes. That's all he gives her, a clench in his thighs just before they spread, and a tremble down his arms. She crooks her finger a little deeper while running her free hand over his lower back.
He has goosebumps. Good.
"Speak up, Tommy," she says as she fucks her finger slowly in and out.
"Thomas."
"I've got my finger up your ass and *you're* calling the shots?" She'd laugh if -- if she were anyone else, anywhere else.
"Tom -- Tommy is --" He rolls his forehead against the floor and something, slight and minor, eases a little inside him. So hot in here, even through the latex; this must be where all the pain goes to hide. She bites the corner of her lip and speeds her thrusts. "Someone else. Please. Call me --"
"Thomas." She adds more slick and the next finger. He's as tight as anything, quivering now, breathing a little faster. She twists her fingers and he grunts alto-high.
"Ye-es," he breathes.
She pauses, just for a moment, to admire her work: he's a good-looking young man, even with the (probably dyed) sandy hair and ridiculous mustache. And he's bent over in front of her, pushing back on her hand, a little more insistently each time. He's taking this, letting her push like this, forgetting his control shred by precious shred.
He's forgetting himself, more and more, the longer she fucks him. When she crosses her fingers and adds more lube, he breathes in a whinny and the chains whisper with his rocking. Three fingers now, the middle one grazing his prostate when she really reaches. The trembles in his legs run up and down, heedless and endless.
"You never answered the question." She swats the fading marks on his thighs, then pinches his sac until he wheezes. "Can you? Can you take this?"
"I. I have to," he gets out.
He's still bullshitting. His body, however, cannot. When she crooks her fingers, deep inside him, reaching farther, all the breath leaves his body. His buttocks lift and spread farther, the red skin of his crack shining brighter than any bruise, and she's more certain than ever that he wants this.
"Greedy, greedy," she says and gives him more. "You have to. But do you want to?"
"What I -- what --." His shoulders rise and hunch, up around his ears. "What I want is --"
Irrelevant, she knows. That answer is still bullshit. He *does* need this, even if it would break him to tell the truth.
"Enjoy this," she says, and it comes out like a whisper. Whether he can even hear her or not is debatable, but he seems to --. Comply. Obey.
Is it obedience if she's *giving* this to him? She's sworn, several times, that she'd never give another handjob for money, but here she is, forcing pleasure into him, riding the thrusts of his ass. She reaches around to stroke him off. In and out, up and down. Her arms are wrapped around him like a wrestler; she fucks and pulls until he folds in on himself, stretching the chains taut and --.
Begging. Finally, fucking *at last*, he's asking, he's telling the truth. "Please, no, please don't stop, I can't -- don't --"
He comes in her hand like a goddamn fountain, a series of hard splashes that leave him whimpering as she milks the last of it out of him, as she slows her fingers inside until just her fingertips remain there. She spreads her fingers, widens him further, and waits.
He presses his cheek to the floor and sucks on the air until he's still.
Reluctantly, she pulls free from his body.
She knows he won't be back.
Anyone, even a man, who's this scared of pleasure, who needs something he can't even *name*, will never admit it a second time.
After unlocking him, she tosses a towel at him. His hair is wet with sweat, hanging like daggers into his eyes. She starts to push it back and he freezes, his mouth twisting.
His eyelashes are dark and thick; they don't match the hair on his head. His eyes shine as they slide away from her.
When she kisses his forehead goodbye, one hand on the pearls, he shudders again.
She really needs to find a better way to pay the bills.
SILK CUT
Selina has promised herself this wouldn't happen again. The last time she relented and went out with Bruce Wayne, the evening ended with her kneeling on the floor of his limousine, hand up Vicki Vale's skirt while they kissed him.
She has a way of...acquiescing to him, around him, that she *hates*. The last time they saw each other -- it was no date -- she actually asked him to come to Rome with her.
As if she -- or a part of her -- wanted to *be* with him, spend time with him. Believed that, somehow, that could possibly be a good idea.
Much of the time, she hates how she feels with him. She's better than...this, better than what he makes her feel. She is smart and sophisticated, refined and elegant; she's much better than the airheads and foolish sluts he usually escorts.
She *needs* the trappings of wealth, all the little tells and hints that the privileged let drop as easily as breathing. It's more than armor, something closer to an iron lung, both inevitable and deeply, vitally *necessary*. She flourishes in this world with its interlocking sets of customs, expectations, and institutions.
Wealth promulgates more wealth, security glitters in the jewels and across the silks, deep in the burnished wood.
Selina is supposed to be a part of this world, but Bruce Wayne *is* this world. It's bred into his bones, his long, athletic limbs, his handsome, patrician face.
Yet around him, before him, under his hands and mouth, she feels -- coarse. Inelegant, certainly, as well as hungry and grasping. He makes her feel needful, greedy, a caricature, almost, of the girl she might have been.
She finds herself wanting to do things to-for-with him. Things that no good girl should even *know* about. Hence, Vicki's spread legs, and any number of other unfortunate peccadilloes.
More than anything else, the *force* of her desire, when she's around him, scares her.
He *is* charming, there's no doubt about that. He'll turn his lazy smile on her, and then suddenly narrow his eyes, sharpen that smile into something...else. Then, she will feel, for the length of several heartbeats, as if she alone shares the world with him.
Tonight will be different.
Everything will be different, now that Bruce has been out of touch for *months*, long after she returned from the Continent.
Now that he's gone and gotten himself a *son*.
As she enters Wayne Manor's ballroom, having passed her wrap to a smiling Alfred, she adjusts the hang of her dress and tosses her hair. She's wearing an emerald-green cheongsam tonight, her hair loose over her shoulders. A quick scan of the crowd assures her that no one is wearing the same shade. No one looks *remotely* as good as she does.
The room glitters with countless lights, splashing everyone with gold, etching them in dark, wavering outlines.
Bruce is at the far end of the room, hand on a young boy's shoulder, chatting with Devlin Davenport and a few glittering socialites.
Selina touches the seed pearl in her ring and accepts a flute of champagne. She makes small talk with Mrs. Fox and some braying investment-banking whiz kids, several city councilmen, two aged debutante sisters who appear ready to audition the sequel to Grey Gardens, and other passersby.
All the while, she keeps watch on Bruce and his..."ward", they are calling the boy. He's a fierce-looking little thing, all beetled brows and hunched shoulders. He's patently uncomfortable in his Brooks Brothers jacket and grey-flannel pants; he looks a miniature tennis ref.
He might be Bruce's natural son, one of the Jackie-clones whispers to her, but Selina doesn't believe it. Alimony and child-support, private-school tuition for eighteen years, hands off and no public contact, are *far* more Bruce's style than adoption.
Other than Selina herself, Bruce is the last person she would nominate for Parent of the Year.
"Ah, Selina. How *wonderful* to see you again --" Bruce smiles when she slides through an opening in the crowd. Boredom evaporates from his tone as he squeezes her hand and kisses her cheeks. "Dick, this is --"
"Selina Kyle," she finishes for him, offering her hand to the boy.
He scowls at her. "'lo." When Bruce clucks his tongue, Dick sighs and takes her hand, staring at it like it's a fish. "I don't have to kiss this, do I?"
"Ah-*ha*, no," Bruce says, and he's back to using the same lockjaw drawl he always uses in public, as he pinches Dick's cheek.
"Hi, Dick," Selina says and withdraws her hand. "Welcome to..." She glances around and smiles. "Well. The madhouse, I suppose."
Dick grins at her, fast and *sharp*. The expression is full of pointy little teeth and bright blue eyes. He *does* resemble Bruce, now that she can take a closer look. "Pretty boring for a madhouse."
"Dick --" Bruce clears his throat.
Selina laughs and puts her arm around Dick's shoulders. "He's bored out of his *skull*, Bruce. Can't you see that?"
"I'm all right," Dick says stoutly. The effect of his assertion, however, is belied by the huge yawn that suddenly escapes his mouth. He glances quickly at Bruce. "Sorry!"
"It *is* past your bedtime," Bruce starts to say. Dick sniggers lightly until Bruce shoots him a look Selina cannot read. "Selina, would you mind following us? I'd like to..."
He doesn't finish the sentence.
Somehow, Selina finds herself caught up in his speedy exit from the room. Dick runs up the stairs, two or three at a time, ahead of them. Bruce moves much more leisurely, winding his arm around her waist and tipping his face into her hair.
"You look absolutely enchanting," he says and Selina swallows. In the third-floor hall, he kisses her cheek and says, before chasing after Dick, "This will just take a moment."
The gossip pages would, she knows, have a field day were they to learn that Dick's bedroom is located just opposite Bruce's own. Selina, however, turns to wander down the hall, pausing at the door to one of the manor's many unused rooms. Her fingers trace the ornate carving on the door as she reminds herself sternly that tonight will be, *must* be, different.
She used to believe that Bruce was different when he was around her.
Absence, however, has made her doubt this. *She* was the one who was different; Bruce was always, reliably, himself. Reliably *unreliable* to a fault, clumsy as a colt, absent-minded and so handsome it hurt, frequently, to look at him full-on.
Her doubt, however, vanishes when Bruce reappears, padding down the hall in sock feet, to embrace her from behind. "I've missed you," he says against the back of her neck. "I've missed you very much."
She covers his arms with her own and rocks back against him. "Have you?"
His lips trace a warm, wavering line behind her hair. "Yes."
"Because, to all appearances," she says and turns in his arms, backing up into the dark room, "you've kept yourself quite busy."
Bruce laughs, low in his throat. The sound is so rich and liquid that she wants to kiss it out of his mouth. So she does, tasting him all over again, wrapping one arm around his neck and going up on tip-toe, until she can no longer breathe.
Bruce tips her onto a chaise lounge, covering her briefly with his body before he slides to his knees.
"Bruce, I --" she starts to say. "We ought to --"
But his hands are sliding up her legs, parting the slit in her skirt, and she has to fight to concentrate.
"Selina..." he says, dreamily.
She pulls at his hair, just to get him to look at her. "You're not, I hope, in the market for a mommy for Dick," she says. "Not looking to complete the set?"
Bruce shudders and bites his lip at Dick's name. "Don't -- not *now* --"
"Yes, now," she says. They've never, quite, managed to have a full conversation. Not at any one time; there have been discussions that stretched over mornings in bed, debates dropped, then picked up again the next weekend, but never --. "Just tell me what you want."
He blinks and looks down. He spreads his hands on her knees and squeezes. "I --"
"I'm no one's mother," Selina says and kicks off her shoes.
The look Bruce shoots her is terrifically sharp. His mouth thins down as his eyes narrow; *this* is the Bruce she knows, abstracted from cocktail parties and meaningless flirtation.
After several moments, he nods shortly and loosens his hold.
Selina cups his cheek. "As long as that's clear --"
"Selina." His eyes are wide, slightly shining, in the dim, diffuse light from the windows. "You. I've missed *you*. This isn't -- I mean, I'm not --"
His lips part under her thumb and she smiles at him. "All right."
"Just --" He kisses the pad of her thumb, sucks it lightly, then meets her eyes again. "Please don't mention -- *him* -- while I'm --"
"Understood." She leans forward to kiss him again, widening her legs, hooking them lightly around his waist. Bruce kisses as he always has, eagerly and skillfully, with the slight, thrumming undercurrent of *surprise*.
She's seen him kiss other women. Even, one New Year's Eve, the district attorney. She cannot imagine it's much like this at all. Then, with others, he was always -- he looked *hard*, hungry and sharp-toothed. And she has certainly felt those sort of kisses from him, but it's these sort, wet and soft and *deep*, that she associates most with him.
He kisses her mouth with as much attention as he lavishes on her...pussy. And the fact that she's thinking in these terms *already* only goes to show what kind of effect he has on her. When Selina hitches up her skirt, Bruce presses his face against her underpants, sucking on the crotch and stroking the backs of her knees, the tops of her garters, until she's quivering.
His mouth is red, his eyes bright, when he looks up again. "I've missed...you. Want to taste you again, please, I --"
She strokes the hair off his forehead, her thumb grazing a new scar high on his temple. "Yes, do it --"
Her panties are discarded, just a moment before he spreads her with his *face*, and --. She loves this, she's open to him, one leg over his shoulder, his fingers stroking her hole while his mouth fastens on her inner lips and he *sucks*.
His hum travels into her, breaking against the back of her throat, sounding echoes in her gasps.
She tried to time this, once, just to see how long he was willing to spend between her legs. She felt, however, like the worst kind of whore for checking the clock. Then, anyway, she lost track of time.
Just as she's doing now, feeling herself *undulate* before his mouth, her hips rocking against his nose, the silk of her dress rasping over the upholstery. Time comes in heartbeats and slick sucking sounds, impossible to measure.
She is -- she feels -- wholly open against his mouth, pushing against his tongue, clutching his hair to hold his lips in place, her breath coming in fragments, torn-off shreds of...*something*. He hums back at her, shakes his head, his one visible eye blinking blearily at her as his hand reaches to cup first one breast, then the other.
Selina tries to focus on his fingers, dark against the silk of her dress. Bruce murmurs *into* her, tongue curling around her clit, and she bucks up hard.
He isn't in love with her, no matter what breathy poetry he whispers in her ear on the dance floor, no matter how many dozens of white roses he sends her or checks he writes to the Humane Society in her name.
She's fairly sure that she isn't in love with him, either. In the heat of the moment -- in his bed, on the dance floor, out on some marble terrace, *here*, wet and gasping -- she can think, however, that she *could* be.
Perhaps he shares that belief; she cannot tell.
Whatever they might half-believe in, occasionally hope for, the truth is that they both love...*this*. She loves what he does to her, in equal proportion to how much, later, she'll hate him for it. He, clearly, loves being with her. When he *is* with her, that is, when he can see her, before he forgets. Right now, as she rises and falls and knots her fingers in his hair, as he laps and nibbles and sucks, that's far more than enough.
Lights shower through her body, heat spiralling outward and overcoming her, and Selina rides the waves of pleasure, heedless -- for now -- of anything beyond him, his mouth --
"*Bruce*, oh, *God* --."
He covers her body with his own, hand cupping her mound, kissing her hard. He pulls back, just enough to shake the hair out of his eyes, and the set to his mouth mirrors that of his shoulders. Tilted, sharp, *imposing*.
"Bruce?" She tries to swallow the inflection that makes it a question, and fails.
He curls two fingers against her and kisses her shallowly. "Selina --"
His face is wet with *her*, she has come five, maybe six times, and she is spent as anything when he finally rises to his feet.
Grinning bashfully, he tucks her panties into his pants pocket -- "A keepsake, if that's all right..." -- and, with that, reassumes the decadent playboy role.
She hates that twerp from East Egg via Central Casting, yet all Selina can do is laugh.
She *could* be in love with him. If things were different, very different.
COLD RAIN
If she had any superpowers at all, Catwoman would growl. Hiss and *spit* at his ridiculous cape and arrogantly crossed arms.
The Bat is a hypocrite. A hulking, self-righteous, self-denying *bastard* of a hypocrite. He lectures her, every chance he gets, expresses earnest hope and faith in her rehabilitation, wishes aloud that she'd just be a good girl.
And all the while, as he's lecturing and hectoring her, every single fucking *time*, he's got her bent over or clutched against him, sucking kisses out of her mouth and thrusting against her. Fucking her, making her back arch and voice cry hoarse, and she -- she bites him, scratches him, holds on tighter and fucks him *back*.
Tonight, he's holding her wrists, both of them, in one huge hand. The lecture's starting early, just as soon as Robin has disappeared, sent back to whatever little nest the Bat keeps him in.
"Good night, then," Robin says, almost spitefully, before he flies away, bright scraps of color against the polluted gloom.
"You ought to be more careful. You'll stunt his growth, keeping him out all night like this," Catwoman says. "Little boys deserve bet--"
Batman tugs her forward. His voice is gravel, crushed ice, in her ears. He calls her "Selina", smugly and plaintively all at once.
She twists one hand free and throws an angry punch. He dodges it neatly, an efficient drop to his shoulders that looks like it required no energy at all.
She's nearly out of breath -- she ran from the Diamond Exchange over the rooftops of the West Quarter, hitched a ride on the express bus to the Sprang for several blocks, then ran down the alleys of midtown before he caught up with her. Her leap up the fire-escapes merely delayed the inevitable.
"You don't *call* me that," she hisses.
The Bat just stands there. She gets one foot up on the cornice of the roof -- they're high above midtown now, on the Gazette's roof -- and prepares to jump.
But there's a hesitation in her step, or he's simply too damn good at this, or --. It doesn't matter, because the Bat's got one arm around her waist, yanking her back.
"Catwoman," he growls, and his gloves slides against her satchel, heavy with Quaraci diamonds. "Give those back."
"Make me." She bends at the waist, kicking out into a cartwheel that sends the Bat stumbling back.
She lands on the balustrade in time to see him wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "You're not getting away this time."
She laughs. He isn't a dark figure of justice, or whatever it is he styles himself as. He isn't a *man*, either, beset by doubt and worry, human and vulnerable.
He's a cartoon, a boy playing dress-up. A kid playing tag, pulling her pigtails at recess because he *likes* her.
She knows that as well as she knows her own name (names) and he knows that she knows.
Every chase is a dance that ends here. He grabs, she feints, he grabs again and spins her around.
Here, his hips grinding against her ass, his breath rattling against her neck, the sound of it faster and *truer* than any of his bullshit words.
"Catwoman --" he says again, pinning her arms behind her back and glaring down at her. "Please, just --"
The blood softens his mouth. Just for a moment, as a zeppelin passes overhead, his face goes pale as his lips work silently.
Laughing, she jumps forward, wrapping both legs around his massive, solid waist and pushing her tongue into his mouth.
His cheek is bleeding under her claws, his mouth is full of blood, and she's wet, hungry, *needy*. But never so much as him -- she can never match the flex of his hands on her, the insistent grind of his crotch, the open, pleading expression on the bared half of his face.
They're fighting for something that neither of them can see. It's no less real for being invisible.
"Go on," she says, pushing the panels of her skirt out of the way, unlatching the codpiece on his costume. "Tell me how you can't let me get away with this. How *naughty* I'm being, how I just need to see --"
He kisses her, hard, teeth closing on her tongue. His cock springs into her hand, huge and hot, when she shoves aside the jock. She can't say anything else as she pulls herself upward and opens wide. He's pushing her against the struts of a water-tower, cock riding her slit, teasing her open and wetter.
The chase never really ends. It simply shifts into something faster and closer as he grinds her against the rusting metal, bites at her mouth and bends his knee.
"You're -- a criminal," he says, then contradicts himself, pulling her hair and rubbing his mask against her breasts, teeth running over her nipples. "You're different, you could be -- so much -- more --"
She's certain he does believe that, but equally sure that he's *made* himself believe it. That he needs to believe that what he wants from her, what he *gets* from her, is justified, rationalized, *acceptable*.
She wiggles against his hold, grabbing hold of a strut above her head and hanging there, twisting. Turning, until she's got her back to him and she's pushing against him, rubbing her ass against his cock, pulling his gloves back to her breasts.
"You like it this way," she reminds him and drops her head. He sucks on the nape of her neck, panting. So does she, but he -- probably already knows that. And if he doesn't, he's not going to hear it from her. "Pretend I'm Robin, make me squeal --"
"Don't." He slaps her ass and hauls her backward, against him, *onto* him, the wet head of his cock nudging her inner lips, riding her hole. His anger is making him tremble, making him slip up, and this is better than she could have dreamed.
"Don't?" she echoes and breathes out against the *heat* and stretch in her hole. Her fingers are already slightly numb from the tenuous grip. "Don't talk about Robin?"
He covers her mouth with one hand and drops her onto the gravel. She's bent over the struts now, one hand gripping her knee, her other between her legs. Her clit is swollen between her fingers, pulsing harder no matter how fast she rubs.
"Don't. *Ever*. Mention him again --" And he's inside again, just like that, a rocking creak that sends a shower of red lights behind her eyes and makes her knees blink in and out of existence.
She bites the palm of his glove and shakes against him, changing the angle, *mewling* when he speeds up.
"You want this --" He bites her ear and pulls his hand off her mouth, shoving it down the V-neck of her costume.
"Fuck you," she says, "fuck *you*, oh -- *fuck*, harder --"
Hands on her hips, he lifts her effortlessly. They both grunt when he pulls out. Dizzily, she turns to face him; as he leans down, she clutches at his neck and jumps upward again, legs wrapped around his thighs.
Catwoman *moans* into his mouth, swallowing down his answering groan, as she pushes her hips downward and takes him inside again.
They're still fighting; they're always fighting. His skin tastes like blood and sweat, cordite and ozone. She snaps her hips and rises, bearing down, twisting and clenching until he cannot stop moaning. The sound makes him shake, drives him deeper. He pushes her hand away and runs the smooth, alien material of his gauntlet back and forth over her clit until she feels like she's falling, arching backward and coming around him, *on* him.
His mouth is open and dark as she comes back to herself, his lips swollen, the welts from her claws pink in the dark. He really is a child, staring at her like she's the first woman he's ever seen, his hand on her breast squeezing before moving to her throat, tracing a line, testing her pulse.
When he fucks her, she gets to keep the night's spoils. It's...an arrangement, of sorts, that she prefers not to examine too closely. It might mean she's victorious.
It might mean she's, simply, an especially talented whore.
That logic, however, depends on her accepting that he *is* the embodiment of law and justice and all things Good and Right in this city. He can have that delusion; Catwoman prefers the logic of, well. Reality.
"Til next time, big guy?" She slides down, straightening her costume and checking the contents of her satchel. "I can't say it's ever --" She glances over her shoulder and grins. "Less than fun."
He's closing his mouth, hardening again, but she jumps free before she has to see that.
continues in 2/2
Media: Various Bat-books, in continuity and out.
Pairings: See title. Identity(ies) porn.
Summary: See title.
Rating: Adult, kitten.
Warnings: Bolshevism and BDSM, larceny and lust.
Notes: Enormous thanks to petronelle and thenotoriousg for betaing like champs and suggesting some of the best lines. Thanks also to those on my flist who put up with my wibbling anxiety.
Detailed (even loquacious) notes follow the fic.
Some kind of elemental process is taking place, where the living fabric of life is being transformed into the theatrical. (V. Shlovskii, 1922)
Full fic [85Kb] offsite, or read it here.
BLACK BOX
Other people would have wasted their money on theatrical trappings, ridiculous equipment, absurd mood-setters like red candles and studded leather cuffs.
Selina, however, trusts herself to set the mood. Now that she's free of Stan, this is all hers. The lights were rewired to a single dimmer switch and the room -- all four walls, ceiling and floor -- repainted a dull black. Industrial-grade chains and hooks provide all the flexible, ad-hoc equipment she requires.
This place is, then, much more a theater than any garishly decorated dungeon could have been. Not that she has to *act* all that much; every piece of scum and slime who crawls in here bring more than enough melodrama and outrageous emotion.
They want to whine and mewl. She's happy to yank those pitiful cries out of them.
The ones who want to be held afterward, their hair petted and cheeks kissed, do not, usually, return. But the blubberers, the martyrs, the headcases -- they come back for the whip, the steady gaze of her shadowed eyes, the castigation that comes to her lips as easily as breathing.
She's damned good at this. So if her wrists ache after a night holding the whip, if her ankles throb and wobble after just an hour in the stiletto heels, she's still far, far better off than she was picking up car dates or trolling hotel bars.
Nobody's getting fucked here, least of all her.
They come to her all fucked-up already, she plays with that for fifty minutes, and when they leave -- maybe they're better. She doesn't know, doesn't care. It's really not her concern.
The movies will tell you that every bitch, every whore, just needs to find the right one. A man who understands, who sees past what she has to do to survive, who can rescue her from the muck and lock her up in a tower.
They're wrong, but that's no surprise.
What *is* surprising is that this one came back. She hadn't expected him to return, quiet and disconcertingly *undemanding* as he is. There's no need in him, not that she can find. Tall and healthy, handsome in a bland way despite the gay-porn mustache, he's not -- quite -- like the others.
He takes everything she doles out. He's polite, too. To a fault.
"Yes, mistress." Lash across the shoulder blades, red to get lost in. "Thank you, mistress." Crop along the inside of his knees. More red, lacing up the back of his thighs, laddered, glowing hot as coals across smooth, well-nourished skin.
He barely breaks a sweat as she whips him. Never trembles after an hour spent hanging in the cuffs, his toes just grazing the floor.
Lash and crop do nothing to him, though his skin is flushed nearly to the point of bruising. Tonight, his third visit, he is on his knees, arms cuffed over his head, his chest working slow and regular as he breathes.
He's a problem, that's what he is. He doesn't want to be broken. He might already be gone. She can't hope to break him *harder*.
"Tell me something, Thomas --" She tilts up his chin and, good boy that he is, he keeps his gaze downcast until such time as she should permit otherwise.
"Yes, mistress?"
Like her room, Selina keeps herself plain -- black sunglasses, a blonde wig over her shaved head. Black corset, stockings, and those ridiculous stilettoes.
"Thomas." She drops to one knee and his gaze fastens, as she knew it would, on the string of pearls hugging her neck. "I don't change for just anyone, hmm?"
"No, mistress. Thank you."
He gave them to her on his first visit.
No.
He'd *left* them behind on his first visit.
It was her choice to take them, to read the note accompanying them (Please. If you would...), to wear them now.
"You don't like pain," she says.
When he doesn't answer, she slides her thumbnail over his lips. Makes her voice low, sharp. Warning. "Thomas."
"Yes, that's --" He looks at her, quickly, just a flicker that might be beseeching. It might be challenging. "I can take it."
"But you don't want it."
"I --" His jaw works under her hand. He's very young. Unlined, fresh-faced, yet inured already to pain. He could, if she let him, make her feel a thousand years old. "My needs are not. Relevant."
"Bullshit. Who's the one paying here?"
She shoves him away hard enough to make the chains sigh. He still does not flinch.
"You're fucking with me," she says. *That* makes him flinch.
"No, mistress. Never."
Nine lashes down his torso. She concentrates only on the effects: the song of leather cracking air, the marks sharpening beneath his chest hair.
"Thank you, mistress."
She would like to shake her head, but keeps her attention on her work. Candle-wax on his nipples, brushed across his balls, drizzled down his shaft. His hair sizzles and smokes as the skin flares pale, then darkens.
All he gives is a single sharp gasp, caught in his teeth. "Yes, mistress."
She slaps him open-handed across the rise of his ass, then plants one heel in the small of his back. Releasing the bar from the chains, she kicks him lightly in one kidney.
He collapses, but he makes it look deliberate. The others wheeze and twitch, flail and fall, but this one lands on his elbows and keeps his head down. His skier's hard ass rises to the ceiling, but he never forgets his goddamned manners.
"Thank you, mistress."
She locks his cuffs to the O-ring protruding from the floor and makes him wait. When she scrapes her fingernails down his spine, he exhales slowly.
"Cut the crap, Thomas."
"Yes, mis--"
"Shut *up*." All this goddamn fake *etiquette*, props and stupid, *bullshit* courtesy; it's just as bad as rides in johns' cars, alley sucks, standing fucks in the backrooms of bars.
"I --" he starts to say, then relaxes his shoulders and nudges his ass toward her.
She spanks him, bare-handed. While it can't hurt half as much as the other things she's done to him, he moans anyway. So she spanks him, harder, fast as a typist, until his ass is darker than red. Scores his buttocks and crack with her nails until blood pushes against the surface.
You need to adjust to the situation before it overtakes you, Ted Grant told her during their most recent training session. Make use of *all* your resources, not just your fists.
He's the one who taught her to crack the whip. To use her low center of gravity to flip away from the fray. To win, not just survive.
Not just your fists, she hears again. Winning the fight is about more than inflicting the most pain. It's about doing the most damage.
Selina takes a step back, hands on her hips. Thomas kneels there, ass spread, the cords of muscles in his thighs tight as concrete.
He is still as marble, perfectly controlled.
"You can take all of this," she says.
A beat, during which she molds her palm against his ass and the heat radiating off it. Then he says, quietly, "Yes."
"And this?" She doesn't say anything else as she cuts off the fake nails and slides on the latex glove. She slicks up her hand and pushes her index finger inside him.
He grunts, once, accepting her finger. For a moment, her mind reels at the *depth* and heat, at his bent head and exposed nape. She bites her lip and redoubles her attention.
More than inflicting pain. Use your resources.
He can't be broken. He's taking the pain she doles out and storing it away.
She moves her finger shallowly, watching his ribs expand, his shoulders bow, relishing the intractable *heat* in here. Tense boy like this, no wonder he's so tight. Maybe all those stories about rich boys at their boarding schools really are just stories.
He shakes. That's all he gives her, a clench in his thighs just before they spread, and a tremble down his arms. She crooks her finger a little deeper while running her free hand over his lower back.
He has goosebumps. Good.
"Speak up, Tommy," she says as she fucks her finger slowly in and out.
"Thomas."
"I've got my finger up your ass and *you're* calling the shots?" She'd laugh if -- if she were anyone else, anywhere else.
"Tom -- Tommy is --" He rolls his forehead against the floor and something, slight and minor, eases a little inside him. So hot in here, even through the latex; this must be where all the pain goes to hide. She bites the corner of her lip and speeds her thrusts. "Someone else. Please. Call me --"
"Thomas." She adds more slick and the next finger. He's as tight as anything, quivering now, breathing a little faster. She twists her fingers and he grunts alto-high.
"Ye-es," he breathes.
She pauses, just for a moment, to admire her work: he's a good-looking young man, even with the (probably dyed) sandy hair and ridiculous mustache. And he's bent over in front of her, pushing back on her hand, a little more insistently each time. He's taking this, letting her push like this, forgetting his control shred by precious shred.
He's forgetting himself, more and more, the longer she fucks him. When she crosses her fingers and adds more lube, he breathes in a whinny and the chains whisper with his rocking. Three fingers now, the middle one grazing his prostate when she really reaches. The trembles in his legs run up and down, heedless and endless.
"You never answered the question." She swats the fading marks on his thighs, then pinches his sac until he wheezes. "Can you? Can you take this?"
"I. I have to," he gets out.
He's still bullshitting. His body, however, cannot. When she crooks her fingers, deep inside him, reaching farther, all the breath leaves his body. His buttocks lift and spread farther, the red skin of his crack shining brighter than any bruise, and she's more certain than ever that he wants this.
"Greedy, greedy," she says and gives him more. "You have to. But do you want to?"
"What I -- what --." His shoulders rise and hunch, up around his ears. "What I want is --"
Irrelevant, she knows. That answer is still bullshit. He *does* need this, even if it would break him to tell the truth.
"Enjoy this," she says, and it comes out like a whisper. Whether he can even hear her or not is debatable, but he seems to --. Comply. Obey.
Is it obedience if she's *giving* this to him? She's sworn, several times, that she'd never give another handjob for money, but here she is, forcing pleasure into him, riding the thrusts of his ass. She reaches around to stroke him off. In and out, up and down. Her arms are wrapped around him like a wrestler; she fucks and pulls until he folds in on himself, stretching the chains taut and --.
Begging. Finally, fucking *at last*, he's asking, he's telling the truth. "Please, no, please don't stop, I can't -- don't --"
He comes in her hand like a goddamn fountain, a series of hard splashes that leave him whimpering as she milks the last of it out of him, as she slows her fingers inside until just her fingertips remain there. She spreads her fingers, widens him further, and waits.
He presses his cheek to the floor and sucks on the air until he's still.
Reluctantly, she pulls free from his body.
She knows he won't be back.
Anyone, even a man, who's this scared of pleasure, who needs something he can't even *name*, will never admit it a second time.
After unlocking him, she tosses a towel at him. His hair is wet with sweat, hanging like daggers into his eyes. She starts to push it back and he freezes, his mouth twisting.
His eyelashes are dark and thick; they don't match the hair on his head. His eyes shine as they slide away from her.
When she kisses his forehead goodbye, one hand on the pearls, he shudders again.
She really needs to find a better way to pay the bills.
SILK CUT
Selina has promised herself this wouldn't happen again. The last time she relented and went out with Bruce Wayne, the evening ended with her kneeling on the floor of his limousine, hand up Vicki Vale's skirt while they kissed him.
She has a way of...acquiescing to him, around him, that she *hates*. The last time they saw each other -- it was no date -- she actually asked him to come to Rome with her.
As if she -- or a part of her -- wanted to *be* with him, spend time with him. Believed that, somehow, that could possibly be a good idea.
Much of the time, she hates how she feels with him. She's better than...this, better than what he makes her feel. She is smart and sophisticated, refined and elegant; she's much better than the airheads and foolish sluts he usually escorts.
She *needs* the trappings of wealth, all the little tells and hints that the privileged let drop as easily as breathing. It's more than armor, something closer to an iron lung, both inevitable and deeply, vitally *necessary*. She flourishes in this world with its interlocking sets of customs, expectations, and institutions.
Wealth promulgates more wealth, security glitters in the jewels and across the silks, deep in the burnished wood.
Selina is supposed to be a part of this world, but Bruce Wayne *is* this world. It's bred into his bones, his long, athletic limbs, his handsome, patrician face.
Yet around him, before him, under his hands and mouth, she feels -- coarse. Inelegant, certainly, as well as hungry and grasping. He makes her feel needful, greedy, a caricature, almost, of the girl she might have been.
She finds herself wanting to do things to-for-with him. Things that no good girl should even *know* about. Hence, Vicki's spread legs, and any number of other unfortunate peccadilloes.
More than anything else, the *force* of her desire, when she's around him, scares her.
He *is* charming, there's no doubt about that. He'll turn his lazy smile on her, and then suddenly narrow his eyes, sharpen that smile into something...else. Then, she will feel, for the length of several heartbeats, as if she alone shares the world with him.
Tonight will be different.
Everything will be different, now that Bruce has been out of touch for *months*, long after she returned from the Continent.
Now that he's gone and gotten himself a *son*.
As she enters Wayne Manor's ballroom, having passed her wrap to a smiling Alfred, she adjusts the hang of her dress and tosses her hair. She's wearing an emerald-green cheongsam tonight, her hair loose over her shoulders. A quick scan of the crowd assures her that no one is wearing the same shade. No one looks *remotely* as good as she does.
The room glitters with countless lights, splashing everyone with gold, etching them in dark, wavering outlines.
Bruce is at the far end of the room, hand on a young boy's shoulder, chatting with Devlin Davenport and a few glittering socialites.
Selina touches the seed pearl in her ring and accepts a flute of champagne. She makes small talk with Mrs. Fox and some braying investment-banking whiz kids, several city councilmen, two aged debutante sisters who appear ready to audition the sequel to Grey Gardens, and other passersby.
All the while, she keeps watch on Bruce and his..."ward", they are calling the boy. He's a fierce-looking little thing, all beetled brows and hunched shoulders. He's patently uncomfortable in his Brooks Brothers jacket and grey-flannel pants; he looks a miniature tennis ref.
He might be Bruce's natural son, one of the Jackie-clones whispers to her, but Selina doesn't believe it. Alimony and child-support, private-school tuition for eighteen years, hands off and no public contact, are *far* more Bruce's style than adoption.
Other than Selina herself, Bruce is the last person she would nominate for Parent of the Year.
"Ah, Selina. How *wonderful* to see you again --" Bruce smiles when she slides through an opening in the crowd. Boredom evaporates from his tone as he squeezes her hand and kisses her cheeks. "Dick, this is --"
"Selina Kyle," she finishes for him, offering her hand to the boy.
He scowls at her. "'lo." When Bruce clucks his tongue, Dick sighs and takes her hand, staring at it like it's a fish. "I don't have to kiss this, do I?"
"Ah-*ha*, no," Bruce says, and he's back to using the same lockjaw drawl he always uses in public, as he pinches Dick's cheek.
"Hi, Dick," Selina says and withdraws her hand. "Welcome to..." She glances around and smiles. "Well. The madhouse, I suppose."
Dick grins at her, fast and *sharp*. The expression is full of pointy little teeth and bright blue eyes. He *does* resemble Bruce, now that she can take a closer look. "Pretty boring for a madhouse."
"Dick --" Bruce clears his throat.
Selina laughs and puts her arm around Dick's shoulders. "He's bored out of his *skull*, Bruce. Can't you see that?"
"I'm all right," Dick says stoutly. The effect of his assertion, however, is belied by the huge yawn that suddenly escapes his mouth. He glances quickly at Bruce. "Sorry!"
"It *is* past your bedtime," Bruce starts to say. Dick sniggers lightly until Bruce shoots him a look Selina cannot read. "Selina, would you mind following us? I'd like to..."
He doesn't finish the sentence.
Somehow, Selina finds herself caught up in his speedy exit from the room. Dick runs up the stairs, two or three at a time, ahead of them. Bruce moves much more leisurely, winding his arm around her waist and tipping his face into her hair.
"You look absolutely enchanting," he says and Selina swallows. In the third-floor hall, he kisses her cheek and says, before chasing after Dick, "This will just take a moment."
The gossip pages would, she knows, have a field day were they to learn that Dick's bedroom is located just opposite Bruce's own. Selina, however, turns to wander down the hall, pausing at the door to one of the manor's many unused rooms. Her fingers trace the ornate carving on the door as she reminds herself sternly that tonight will be, *must* be, different.
She used to believe that Bruce was different when he was around her.
Absence, however, has made her doubt this. *She* was the one who was different; Bruce was always, reliably, himself. Reliably *unreliable* to a fault, clumsy as a colt, absent-minded and so handsome it hurt, frequently, to look at him full-on.
Her doubt, however, vanishes when Bruce reappears, padding down the hall in sock feet, to embrace her from behind. "I've missed you," he says against the back of her neck. "I've missed you very much."
She covers his arms with her own and rocks back against him. "Have you?"
His lips trace a warm, wavering line behind her hair. "Yes."
"Because, to all appearances," she says and turns in his arms, backing up into the dark room, "you've kept yourself quite busy."
Bruce laughs, low in his throat. The sound is so rich and liquid that she wants to kiss it out of his mouth. So she does, tasting him all over again, wrapping one arm around his neck and going up on tip-toe, until she can no longer breathe.
Bruce tips her onto a chaise lounge, covering her briefly with his body before he slides to his knees.
"Bruce, I --" she starts to say. "We ought to --"
But his hands are sliding up her legs, parting the slit in her skirt, and she has to fight to concentrate.
"Selina..." he says, dreamily.
She pulls at his hair, just to get him to look at her. "You're not, I hope, in the market for a mommy for Dick," she says. "Not looking to complete the set?"
Bruce shudders and bites his lip at Dick's name. "Don't -- not *now* --"
"Yes, now," she says. They've never, quite, managed to have a full conversation. Not at any one time; there have been discussions that stretched over mornings in bed, debates dropped, then picked up again the next weekend, but never --. "Just tell me what you want."
He blinks and looks down. He spreads his hands on her knees and squeezes. "I --"
"I'm no one's mother," Selina says and kicks off her shoes.
The look Bruce shoots her is terrifically sharp. His mouth thins down as his eyes narrow; *this* is the Bruce she knows, abstracted from cocktail parties and meaningless flirtation.
After several moments, he nods shortly and loosens his hold.
Selina cups his cheek. "As long as that's clear --"
"Selina." His eyes are wide, slightly shining, in the dim, diffuse light from the windows. "You. I've missed *you*. This isn't -- I mean, I'm not --"
His lips part under her thumb and she smiles at him. "All right."
"Just --" He kisses the pad of her thumb, sucks it lightly, then meets her eyes again. "Please don't mention -- *him* -- while I'm --"
"Understood." She leans forward to kiss him again, widening her legs, hooking them lightly around his waist. Bruce kisses as he always has, eagerly and skillfully, with the slight, thrumming undercurrent of *surprise*.
She's seen him kiss other women. Even, one New Year's Eve, the district attorney. She cannot imagine it's much like this at all. Then, with others, he was always -- he looked *hard*, hungry and sharp-toothed. And she has certainly felt those sort of kisses from him, but it's these sort, wet and soft and *deep*, that she associates most with him.
He kisses her mouth with as much attention as he lavishes on her...pussy. And the fact that she's thinking in these terms *already* only goes to show what kind of effect he has on her. When Selina hitches up her skirt, Bruce presses his face against her underpants, sucking on the crotch and stroking the backs of her knees, the tops of her garters, until she's quivering.
His mouth is red, his eyes bright, when he looks up again. "I've missed...you. Want to taste you again, please, I --"
She strokes the hair off his forehead, her thumb grazing a new scar high on his temple. "Yes, do it --"
Her panties are discarded, just a moment before he spreads her with his *face*, and --. She loves this, she's open to him, one leg over his shoulder, his fingers stroking her hole while his mouth fastens on her inner lips and he *sucks*.
His hum travels into her, breaking against the back of her throat, sounding echoes in her gasps.
She tried to time this, once, just to see how long he was willing to spend between her legs. She felt, however, like the worst kind of whore for checking the clock. Then, anyway, she lost track of time.
Just as she's doing now, feeling herself *undulate* before his mouth, her hips rocking against his nose, the silk of her dress rasping over the upholstery. Time comes in heartbeats and slick sucking sounds, impossible to measure.
She is -- she feels -- wholly open against his mouth, pushing against his tongue, clutching his hair to hold his lips in place, her breath coming in fragments, torn-off shreds of...*something*. He hums back at her, shakes his head, his one visible eye blinking blearily at her as his hand reaches to cup first one breast, then the other.
Selina tries to focus on his fingers, dark against the silk of her dress. Bruce murmurs *into* her, tongue curling around her clit, and she bucks up hard.
He isn't in love with her, no matter what breathy poetry he whispers in her ear on the dance floor, no matter how many dozens of white roses he sends her or checks he writes to the Humane Society in her name.
She's fairly sure that she isn't in love with him, either. In the heat of the moment -- in his bed, on the dance floor, out on some marble terrace, *here*, wet and gasping -- she can think, however, that she *could* be.
Perhaps he shares that belief; she cannot tell.
Whatever they might half-believe in, occasionally hope for, the truth is that they both love...*this*. She loves what he does to her, in equal proportion to how much, later, she'll hate him for it. He, clearly, loves being with her. When he *is* with her, that is, when he can see her, before he forgets. Right now, as she rises and falls and knots her fingers in his hair, as he laps and nibbles and sucks, that's far more than enough.
Lights shower through her body, heat spiralling outward and overcoming her, and Selina rides the waves of pleasure, heedless -- for now -- of anything beyond him, his mouth --
"*Bruce*, oh, *God* --."
He covers her body with his own, hand cupping her mound, kissing her hard. He pulls back, just enough to shake the hair out of his eyes, and the set to his mouth mirrors that of his shoulders. Tilted, sharp, *imposing*.
"Bruce?" She tries to swallow the inflection that makes it a question, and fails.
He curls two fingers against her and kisses her shallowly. "Selina --"
His face is wet with *her*, she has come five, maybe six times, and she is spent as anything when he finally rises to his feet.
Grinning bashfully, he tucks her panties into his pants pocket -- "A keepsake, if that's all right..." -- and, with that, reassumes the decadent playboy role.
She hates that twerp from East Egg via Central Casting, yet all Selina can do is laugh.
She *could* be in love with him. If things were different, very different.
COLD RAIN
If she had any superpowers at all, Catwoman would growl. Hiss and *spit* at his ridiculous cape and arrogantly crossed arms.
The Bat is a hypocrite. A hulking, self-righteous, self-denying *bastard* of a hypocrite. He lectures her, every chance he gets, expresses earnest hope and faith in her rehabilitation, wishes aloud that she'd just be a good girl.
And all the while, as he's lecturing and hectoring her, every single fucking *time*, he's got her bent over or clutched against him, sucking kisses out of her mouth and thrusting against her. Fucking her, making her back arch and voice cry hoarse, and she -- she bites him, scratches him, holds on tighter and fucks him *back*.
Tonight, he's holding her wrists, both of them, in one huge hand. The lecture's starting early, just as soon as Robin has disappeared, sent back to whatever little nest the Bat keeps him in.
"Good night, then," Robin says, almost spitefully, before he flies away, bright scraps of color against the polluted gloom.
"You ought to be more careful. You'll stunt his growth, keeping him out all night like this," Catwoman says. "Little boys deserve bet--"
Batman tugs her forward. His voice is gravel, crushed ice, in her ears. He calls her "Selina", smugly and plaintively all at once.
She twists one hand free and throws an angry punch. He dodges it neatly, an efficient drop to his shoulders that looks like it required no energy at all.
She's nearly out of breath -- she ran from the Diamond Exchange over the rooftops of the West Quarter, hitched a ride on the express bus to the Sprang for several blocks, then ran down the alleys of midtown before he caught up with her. Her leap up the fire-escapes merely delayed the inevitable.
"You don't *call* me that," she hisses.
The Bat just stands there. She gets one foot up on the cornice of the roof -- they're high above midtown now, on the Gazette's roof -- and prepares to jump.
But there's a hesitation in her step, or he's simply too damn good at this, or --. It doesn't matter, because the Bat's got one arm around her waist, yanking her back.
"Catwoman," he growls, and his gloves slides against her satchel, heavy with Quaraci diamonds. "Give those back."
"Make me." She bends at the waist, kicking out into a cartwheel that sends the Bat stumbling back.
She lands on the balustrade in time to see him wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "You're not getting away this time."
She laughs. He isn't a dark figure of justice, or whatever it is he styles himself as. He isn't a *man*, either, beset by doubt and worry, human and vulnerable.
He's a cartoon, a boy playing dress-up. A kid playing tag, pulling her pigtails at recess because he *likes* her.
She knows that as well as she knows her own name (names) and he knows that she knows.
Every chase is a dance that ends here. He grabs, she feints, he grabs again and spins her around.
Here, his hips grinding against her ass, his breath rattling against her neck, the sound of it faster and *truer* than any of his bullshit words.
"Catwoman --" he says again, pinning her arms behind her back and glaring down at her. "Please, just --"
The blood softens his mouth. Just for a moment, as a zeppelin passes overhead, his face goes pale as his lips work silently.
Laughing, she jumps forward, wrapping both legs around his massive, solid waist and pushing her tongue into his mouth.
His cheek is bleeding under her claws, his mouth is full of blood, and she's wet, hungry, *needy*. But never so much as him -- she can never match the flex of his hands on her, the insistent grind of his crotch, the open, pleading expression on the bared half of his face.
They're fighting for something that neither of them can see. It's no less real for being invisible.
"Go on," she says, pushing the panels of her skirt out of the way, unlatching the codpiece on his costume. "Tell me how you can't let me get away with this. How *naughty* I'm being, how I just need to see --"
He kisses her, hard, teeth closing on her tongue. His cock springs into her hand, huge and hot, when she shoves aside the jock. She can't say anything else as she pulls herself upward and opens wide. He's pushing her against the struts of a water-tower, cock riding her slit, teasing her open and wetter.
The chase never really ends. It simply shifts into something faster and closer as he grinds her against the rusting metal, bites at her mouth and bends his knee.
"You're -- a criminal," he says, then contradicts himself, pulling her hair and rubbing his mask against her breasts, teeth running over her nipples. "You're different, you could be -- so much -- more --"
She's certain he does believe that, but equally sure that he's *made* himself believe it. That he needs to believe that what he wants from her, what he *gets* from her, is justified, rationalized, *acceptable*.
She wiggles against his hold, grabbing hold of a strut above her head and hanging there, twisting. Turning, until she's got her back to him and she's pushing against him, rubbing her ass against his cock, pulling his gloves back to her breasts.
"You like it this way," she reminds him and drops her head. He sucks on the nape of her neck, panting. So does she, but he -- probably already knows that. And if he doesn't, he's not going to hear it from her. "Pretend I'm Robin, make me squeal --"
"Don't." He slaps her ass and hauls her backward, against him, *onto* him, the wet head of his cock nudging her inner lips, riding her hole. His anger is making him tremble, making him slip up, and this is better than she could have dreamed.
"Don't?" she echoes and breathes out against the *heat* and stretch in her hole. Her fingers are already slightly numb from the tenuous grip. "Don't talk about Robin?"
He covers her mouth with one hand and drops her onto the gravel. She's bent over the struts now, one hand gripping her knee, her other between her legs. Her clit is swollen between her fingers, pulsing harder no matter how fast she rubs.
"Don't. *Ever*. Mention him again --" And he's inside again, just like that, a rocking creak that sends a shower of red lights behind her eyes and makes her knees blink in and out of existence.
She bites the palm of his glove and shakes against him, changing the angle, *mewling* when he speeds up.
"You want this --" He bites her ear and pulls his hand off her mouth, shoving it down the V-neck of her costume.
"Fuck you," she says, "fuck *you*, oh -- *fuck*, harder --"
Hands on her hips, he lifts her effortlessly. They both grunt when he pulls out. Dizzily, she turns to face him; as he leans down, she clutches at his neck and jumps upward again, legs wrapped around his thighs.
Catwoman *moans* into his mouth, swallowing down his answering groan, as she pushes her hips downward and takes him inside again.
They're still fighting; they're always fighting. His skin tastes like blood and sweat, cordite and ozone. She snaps her hips and rises, bearing down, twisting and clenching until he cannot stop moaning. The sound makes him shake, drives him deeper. He pushes her hand away and runs the smooth, alien material of his gauntlet back and forth over her clit until she feels like she's falling, arching backward and coming around him, *on* him.
His mouth is open and dark as she comes back to herself, his lips swollen, the welts from her claws pink in the dark. He really is a child, staring at her like she's the first woman he's ever seen, his hand on her breast squeezing before moving to her throat, tracing a line, testing her pulse.
When he fucks her, she gets to keep the night's spoils. It's...an arrangement, of sorts, that she prefers not to examine too closely. It might mean she's victorious.
It might mean she's, simply, an especially talented whore.
That logic, however, depends on her accepting that he *is* the embodiment of law and justice and all things Good and Right in this city. He can have that delusion; Catwoman prefers the logic of, well. Reality.
"Til next time, big guy?" She slides down, straightening her costume and checking the contents of her satchel. "I can't say it's ever --" She glances over her shoulder and grins. "Less than fun."
He's closing his mouth, hardening again, but she jumps free before she has to see that.
continues in 2/2