Chapter 6: The Aftermath
The slam of the library door echoed through the Manor like a gunshot, leaving behind a silence that vibrated with hurt. Bruce lay on the rug, the ghost of Diana’s warmth still on his skin, the taste of her replaced by the copper-penny flavor of his own shame. He didn’t move. He deserved the chill seeping into his bones.
A tendril of purple mist curled from the dying embers of the fire.
It spiraled, lazy and fragrant, weaving through the still air. It smelled of crushed lavender, of salt, of ozone from a lightning strike too close. Bruce saw it from the corner of his eye but lacked the will to turn his head. To care.
The mist thickened, pooling in the center of the room, resolving into a silhouette that gained substance, color, life. Circe stood there, not as an apparition, but solid, undeniable. The library’s ambient light bent toward her, staining everything a deep, royal violet. The leather-bound books on the shelves seemed to recoil.
She inhaled, a long, theatrical draught of air. A smile, slow and ripe with satisfaction, touched her lips.
“Mmm,” she purred, the sound like honey over shattered glass. “I can smell her tears on you. And his…” she took a step closer, her heels silent on the Persian rug, “…your confusion. It’s delicious.”
Bruce finally turned his head. His eyes were raw. “Get out.”
“Or what?” She laughed, a light, tinkling sound that scraped his nerves. “You’ll throw me out? You couldn’t lift a finger right now. You’re pinned by your own guilt. It’s heavier than any chains I could forge.” She drifted closer, circling him where he lay like a fallen statue. “She left you. Just as I knew she would. The moment you showed her the crack in your perfect armor, the beast peeking out, she fled. Her love is conditional, Bruce. It requires a hero.”
“You did this,” he growled, pushing himself up onto his elbows. The motion cost him. The room tilted.
“I?” Circe pressed a hand to her chest in mock offense. “I merely… watered the seed. The seed of you. The dark, hungry thing you keep locked in that cave. I just gave it a face to fantasize about.” She stopped her circling, standing over him. Her green eyes gleamed in the witch-light. “And you did. Oh, you did so beautifully.I felt it. Every time you thought of my mouth while kissing hers. Every time you imagined my cunt while you were inside her. I was there. A whisper in the static.”
He lunged. It was pure instinct, a strike meant to shut out the words, to shatter that mocking face. But his body was leaden, his coordination undone by emotion and exhaustion. She didn’t even move. A flick of her wrist, and an invisible force caught him mid-air, suspending him a foot off the ground.
“Tsk.” She stepped closer, now eye-to-eye with his floating form. “All that violence, with nowhere to go.” She reached out, her fingers trailing down his chest. Where they touched, his skin prickled, not unpleasantly. A warmth spread, directly contradicting the ice in his gut. “Let me give it a direction.”
Another flick. His body was pulled upright, then slammed back against the mahogany desk. The impact knocked the wind from him. Leather-bound ledgers and a brass lamp clattered to the floor. He was pinned, spread-eagled, held by bands of shimmering violet energy around his wrists and ankles.
“Stop,” he breathed, but it lacked conviction. The part of him that was screaming no was being drowned out by the part that was already remembering the savage freedom of their last encounter. The part that was still achingly hard.
“Liar,” she whispered, her mouth inches from his. Her breath was sweet, like overripe fruit. “You don’t want me to stop. You want me to make you forget. To burn her out of you. Admit it.”
He said nothing, jaw clenched, veins standing out in his neck from the strain against the magical bonds.
“Very well.” She stepped back, her gaze a physical caress. “We’ll do it the fun way.”
With a lazy gesture, her own clothes dissolved into wisps of smoke, revealing her pale, flawless body. The violet light played over her curves, casting deep shadows in the hollows of her hips, gilding the tips of her breasts. She was magnificent, a sculpture of temptation. She approached the desk, running her hands up his thighs.
“You’re still wet from her,” she mused, her fingers finding him, circling, squeezing. He gasped, hips bucking involuntarily against the restraint. “But this… this is all for me, isn’t it? This hard, furious need. This is what I wake in you.”
She leaned forward, her purple hair falling like a curtain around them, and took him in her mouth.
It wasn’t like Diana’s loving, exploratory touch.This was conquest. Her mouth was hot, savage, expert. She used her tongue like a weapon, lashing the sensitive head, swallowing him deep until he felt the back of her throat. She sucked with a vacuum pressure that made his vision star. One of her hands cupped and squeezed his balls, just shy of painful. The other hand slid behind him, fingers digging into the muscle of his ass, pulling him deeper into that wet, relentless heat.
“Fuck,” he grunted, his head slamming back against the wood. The shame was still there, a cold rock in his stomach, but it was being engulfed by a rising tide of pure, animal sensation. This was debasement. This was exactly what he’d feared in himself. And he was helpless to stop his body’s roaring approval.
She released him with a lewd pop, a thread of saliva connecting her lips to his glistening cock. “You taste like her sanctity and my sin,” she breathed, her eyes blazing. “A cocktail I intend to finish.”
She climbed onto the desk, straddling him. She didn’t guide him inside her. Instead, she positioned herself over him and sank down, taking him in one slow, excruciating inch at a time. She was impossibly tight, searingly hot. A damp, silken fist squeezing the confession and the guilt right out of him.
“There,” she sighed, seated fully, her inner muscles fluttering around him. “Now you’re home.”
She began to move. Not with passion, but with a ruthless, grinding ownership. She rode him with the focused intensity of a jockey breaking a stallion, setting a brutal, deep rhythm. Each downward slam drove the desk legs into the floor with a thud. The sound of their flesh meeting was wet, obscene, louder than the storm outside.
“This is what you wanted,” she hissed, leaning over him, her breasts swaying above his face. Her scent, that lavender and salt, was everywhere, smothering. “When you were fucking the Princess, pretending to be her noble knight. You were dreaming of this. Of being used. Of being mine.”
He wanted to deny it. He screamed it in his mind. But his body betrayed him, meeting her thrust for thrust, his hips straining against the magical bonds to drive up into her. A groan, ragged and desperate, tore from his throat.
“Say it,” she demanded, riding him harder, faster. The desk was rocking. “Say whose cunt you belong in.”
He bit his lip until he tasted blood.
She laughed, a wild, triumphant sound. She slammed down, grinding her clit against his pelvis in a tight circle. “You don’t need to say it. Your cock is screaming it for you. It’s so hard for me, Bruce. It’s begging.”
Her words were a catalyst. The coiled tension in his gut snapped. With a roar that was part agony, part surrender, he came. It was a violent, wrenching expulsion, hotter than shame, a flood of pure physical release that left him seeing streaks of violet light. He pulsed inside her, each spasm a little death.
She milked him through it, her movements becoming slower, more sensual, drawing out every last drop. When he was spent, limp and hollow, she leaned close, her lips brushing his ear.
“Good,” she whispered. “Now you’re empty for me.” She kissed him, deep and possessive, her tongue claiming his mouth. He could taste himself on her.
Then, with a subtle shift of her hips, he felt it. A new, desperate hardness stirring within him, magical, unnaturally swift. A restorative heat flooded his veins. The fatigue vanished, replaced by a jittery, incessant need.
“What…?” he mumbled, still dazed.
“A little gift,” she said, rising off him only to turn around, presenting herself to him. She bent over the desk, looking back over her shoulder, her green eyes alight with wicked promise. “Our first time was for me. This one is for you. For the part of you that wanted to ruin her on that rug. Do it. Take what you need.”
The bonds on his wrists and ankles vanished.
He was free. And he was painfully, magically hard again, a throbbing, urgent pressure with only one possible outlet.
For a second, he hesitated, staring at the elegant curve of her back, the perfect invitation. The ghost of Diana’s heartbroken face flickered in his mind. Then it was gone, burned away by the violet fire Circe had lit in his blood.
With a guttural sound that came from a place deeper than reason, he grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. He positioned himself and thrust, not into welcoming heat, but into a tight, resisting clutch that made them both cry out.
This was different. This was raw.Primal. He fucked her with a frantic, driving rhythm, each plunge a punishment—for her, for himself, for the world. The slapping sounds were sharper now, punctuated by his grunts and her sharp, encouraging gasps.
“Yes!” she cried, pushing back against him.“Like that. That’s the Batman. That’s the real you! Fuck me! Fuck her memory out! Claim what’s yours!”
He obeyed. He lost himself in the physical abyss, in the breathtaking friction, in the liberating horror of it. He gripped her hair, pulling her head back, exposing the line of her throat. He bent over her, his sweat-slicked chest pressed to her back, his mouth on her shoulder, biting down.
“Tell me,” he rasped, his voice unrecognizable. “Tell me you planned this. Tell me you made me do it.”
She met his thrust with a fierce rotation of her hips. “I opened the door, darling,” she panted, a laugh in her voice. “You charged through all by yourself.”
The second climax built not as a wave, but as a detonation. It ripped through him with no sweetness, only a stark, devastating power. He roared, emptying into her again, his body convulsing, his mind a white blank of pure sensation.
He collapsed over her, spent, the magical energy dissipating, leaving him utterly drained. Truly empty this time.
Circe gently extricated herself. She turned, looking down at him where he lay slumped against the desk. She was glowing, radiant with stolen vitality. With a gentle, almost maternal hand, she brushed the damp hair from his forehead.
“See?” she said softly, her voice now a velvet murmur. “No more guilt. No more conflict. Just the truth. You are a creature of appetite, Bruce Wayne. And I am the only one who isn’t afraid to feed you.”
He had no strength left to argue. His eyes were already closing, a deep, magically-induced sleep pulling him under. The last thing he saw was her smile, tender and terrible, as she dressed herself not in clothes, but in shimmering bands of light.
The last thing he heard was her whisper, “Sleep now. When you wake, we’ll begin your real work. The world has too many heroes. It’s time for a king.”
She faded into the violet mist, leaving him alone in the wreckage of the library, the scent of sex and sorcery hanging thick in the air, a new and frightening peace settling into his bones.