Illicit (Parts 9 and 10)
Title: Illicit
Disclaimer: They belong to DC, not me.
Feedback: Appreciated.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Rose Wilson/Mar'i Grayson, Lian Harper/Cerdian, Damien Wayne, Chris Kent, Iris West, Olivia Queen
Summary: Rose and Mar'i get a little hot and heavy, but someone interrupts. Will their secret remain secret?
Rose didn’t know how long she’d been kissing Mar’i, but somewhere between the time their lips first touched and the present, she had found herself straddling Mar’i on her cot. Mar’i leaned into the kiss, pressing and rubbing herself against Rose with a passionate yearning. A tongue much like sandpaper found itself in Rose’s mouth and while the texture was strange, it was also somewhat arousing. She sucked on Mar’i’s tongue, drawing a purring moan from the younger of the two females.
Finally, they broke the kiss, Rose gazing at Mar’i with a smoldering blue eye. Mar’i’s emerald eyes smoldered as well and she pulled Rose into another kiss. Rose would have gasped at the passion Mar’i was demonstrating, but her mouth was otherwise occupied. She somehow found the strength to pull away, but Mar’i’s mouth instead attacked the hollow of her throat. Rose gasped out Mar’i’s name, the sound of it music to Mar’i’s sensitive ears.
Before they could go too far, both their ears caught the sound of footsteps making their way toward the infirmary. Rose reluctantly removed herself from Mar’i and sat back in her seat, while Mar’i resumed lying down on the cot. Mar’i turned in her cot and saw Damien enter.
“You’re glowing,” Damien spoke.
“What is it, Damien?” Rose asked.
“We were attacked,” Damien replied. “They were working for the Cheshire Cat. That’s all I managed to get out of the last one left standing before the Cheshire Cat set off his kill switch.”
“Kill switch?” Rose echoed. “They were androids?”
“No,” Damien contradicted, “cyborgs.”
“Is there something you’re not telling us?” Mar’i asked.
“No, what?” Damien asked defiantly.
“You met someone, didn’t you?” Mar’i surmised.
“I did, so?” Damien asked.
“What would Helena say if she knew you were gallivanting about in San Fran with some other girl?” Mar’i asked.
“We’re not together,” Damien replied bluntly. “And I don’t intend to get together with this one, either.”
“Why not?” Mar’i asked. “Nothing wrong with making a friend while you’re down here.”
“I don’t need friends,” Damien answered.
“But you have Chris,” Mar’i rejoined. “And you two are pretty good friends . . . or are you saying that you don’t need friends because you and he are more than friends?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Damien replied stonily before walking out of the infirmary.
Mar’i and Rose had a good chuckle. “I wonder how long it’ll take before he figures it out,” Rose remarked.
“That he and Chris go together like Butch and Sundance?” Mar’i finished.
“Except which one’s Butch and which one’s Sundance?” Rose asked, prompting a musical giggle from Mar’i. She looked upon the half-Tamaranean with a serious expression. “We’ll have to keep this a secret, Mar’i.”
“That Damien and Chris want each other badly?” Mar’i surmised. “That’s not too much of a secret.”
“No, between us,” Rose amended somberly. “We can’t be public with this.”
“Why not?” Mar’i asked softly, a look of hurt on her face.
“I’m supposed to be mentoring you,” Rose replied. “To anyone else, a romantic relationship between us will look like I’m taking advantage of you.”
“Didn’t stop you from going after my dad all those years back,” Mar’i retorted.
“I was 16 years old,” Rose answered. “So are you. And I’m getting close to thirty.”
“Why did you kiss me back, if you were so certain that this was wrong?” Mar’i questioned, her emerald eyes burning into Rose.
“Because I want you,” Rose replied. “Because I’ve wanted you since I saw you again. Because somehow, the wrongness of what we’re doing just excites me like not many things have in years.”
Mar’i’s eyes narrowed and then she sprang from the bed like a big cat, pouncing on Rose and kissing her with enough force to bruise her lips. Yes, they were supposed to keep their relationship a secret, but the bruises would fade soon. For the moment, Rose simply surrendered to the ecstasy of the moment, gasping Mar’i’s name as her nerve endings were set ablaze by Mar’i’s kisses.
“Ah . . . Mar’i . . .” Rose uttered with breathless arousal.
“Am I interrupting?” a silky voice asked, causing Mar’i to pull herself off Rose and glare jealously at the intruder. Rose twisted in Mar’i’s arms to look at the intruder. “Sorry to spoil your foreplay.”
“Olivia,” Rose greeted, “what are you doing here?”
Rose and Mar’i looked upon the intruder, who was none other than Olivia Queen, the Hypertime-tossed daughter of Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance. The blonde was dressed in a black leather half-jacket over a skintight sleeveless black motorcycle suit with blue siding. The motorcycle suit was partly unzipped, just far enough to reveal her cleavage, and clung to every sensuous curve and line on her body. The irony was that chronologically, Olivia was far too young to be wearing such attire or be such a temptress.
Olivia should have been only eight years old, except being lost in the timestream with time-jaunting vigilantes had made her closer to Rose’s age. When she had returned to her native timeline, it had only been days since her disappearance, but she was 18 years old, enhanced by cybernetic implants, and a deadly fighter on the level of either of her parents or her adoptive sister Sin. To the shock of her parents, she had returned solely to kill Deathstroke, as she had been convinced that Deathstroke would be responsible for a crime that would devastate Earth’s heroes.
The Arrow and Bat clans had come together to try to stop Olivia, only to discover that Olivia was every bit as tenacious as her parents. Despite their best efforts, Olivia had made her way to Deathstroke, only to find him defended by Jericho and Ravager, who did not want to see their father die despite the crimes he had committed. In the process of that particular battle, Olivia’s time-jaunt equipment had been damaged. As a result of that, she had been trapped in this time and reality, leaving her parents to adjust to the fact that their baby girl had become a young woman before her time.
It hadn’t been an easy transition. Ollie and Dinah were beside themselves trying to figure out how to deal with a daughter that they didn’t quite recognize. Despite that, it wasn’t that hard to see elements of themselves in her. She had her father’s eyes, a spirited green but customarily highlighted by black eye shadow, and her mother’s smile . . . when she did smile, that was.
Olivia Queen, presently Black Queen’s Knight of Checkmate, smirked with black lipstick-coated lips at Rose and Mar’i. “Why, Rose, I didn’t know you liked them young,” she remarked.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Rose retorted.
“I’m here with information,” Olivia said. “On the Cheshire Cat.”
“Spill,” Mar’i spat.
“The brat went after Sin,” Olivia answered. “Nearly killed her, although to be fair, she quite nearly ripped his throat out.”
“He went after Sin?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” Olivia confirmed. “And she wasn’t even the last on his list of targets. He also slashed my mother’s vocal cords and sucker-punched my father out a window.”
“Are they all right?” Mar’i asked.
“They’re both getting treatment from Dr. Mid-Nite as we speak,” Olivia replied.
“Damien, Lian, and Cerdian were attacked by a gang of cyborgs working for the Cheshire Cat,” Rose supplied.
“He’ll eventually make his way to Roy and Dick,” Olivia said.
“Then we have to get to them before the Cheshire Cat does,” Rose concluded.
At that moment, the other Titans entered the infirmary. “Olivia . . . what are you doing here?” Lian asked.
“Warning you,” Olivia replied. “The Cheshire Cat went after Sin and my parents. And he’ll eventually go after Roy and Dick.”
Lian was beside herself with horror. “Why . . . why is he after me? Why is he going after . . . ?”
“It’s his sick little strategy,” Olivia replied. “He wants to break you before he kills you. As for why he wants you dead, does the name Thomas Nguyen ring a bell?”
“Thomas Nguyen?” Lian repeated. “He’s the Cheshire Cat?”
“Yes,” Olivia confirmed. “And guess how you two are connected.”
Lian’s eyes widened with horror. “Cheshire . . . my mother . . . had another kid?”
“Yes, your half-brother,” Olivia supplied. “Raised to be the killer Cheshire wanted you to be.”
Lian clenched her fists so tightly blood began to seep out of her palms. “He’s not going to get to my father and Uncle Dick. I’ll make sure of that, even if I have to put an arrow through that twisted piece of crap he calls a heart.”