Chapter 10: The Embrace
The world dissolved into a blur of shouting and blue light. Hands grabbed her, so many hands, swarming over her like insects. Lia bucked, her shoulders knocking two officers back. A third latched onto her arm, his grip futile against her corded bicep.
“Don’t! Don’t you touch me!”
“Stop resisting! Get on the ground!”
They were ornaments to her rage. She could have plowed through them, could have painted the walls with their bodies. But the look on Lewis’s face froze her for a critical second. He stood by the shattered door, holding a blanket someone had given him, his eyes wide with a perfect, terrible belief. He believed them. He believed her.
That hesitation was all they needed. A Taser prongs bit into the small of her back. The voltage coursed through her, a buzzing, incapacitating shock that made her muscles scream and lock. She didn’t go down, not like a human would, but she staggered, roaring in pain and fury. They swarmed again, leveraging her moment of weakness, forcing her massive arms behind her back.
The heavy-duty polymer cuffs clicked around her wrists, tight enough to strain her green skin. The humiliation was a colder, deeper shock than the electricity.
“Lewis!” she bellowed, her voice echoing off the ruined walls. He flinched. “You look at me! You’re gonna regret this! You’re gonna dream of me and wake up screaming!”
An officer jerked her toward the door. “That’s enough! You have the right to remain silent—”
“I’ll come back for you!” she screamed over him, her heels digging grooves in the hardwood as they dragged her out. “You hear me? I’m coming back! She’s a liar! She’s poison!”
His face was the last thing she saw—pale, confused, already receding from her—before she was manhandled into the hallway, swallowed by a scrum of uniforms.
Back in the apartment, an eerie quiet descended, broken only by the crackle of police radios from the hall. An EMT was asking Lewis if he was hurt. He just shook his head, staring at the spot where Lia had vanished.
Yeji sat curled on the remnants of the sofa, a shock blanket draped over her shoulders. She was shuddering beautifully, her green form already softening, shrinking. The fierce giantess was melting away, leaving a seemingly traumatized woman in its wake. The officers gave her a wide, wary berth.
“Sir, we need to take your statement,” a detective said to Lewis, her voice low.
“In a minute,” Lewis mumbled. He walked toward Yeji, the blanket falling from his own shoulders. The detective gave a reluctant nod and stepped away to direct the forensics team.
Lewis knelt in front of her. The green was fading from her skin like a receding tide, leaving behind the familiar, perfect cream. Her size diminished until she was just Yeji again, clad in torn clothes, looking small and shattered.
“Yeji?” he whispered.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were huge, wells of fake tears. “Lee,” she choked out. “It was so… I could feel her… inside my head.”
“It’s over. She’s gone.”
He reached out, a gesture of comfort, to wipe a tear from her cheek.
Her hand shot up, faster than anything human. It wasn't a gentle touch. Her fingers closed around his wrist, tight enough to make him gasp. The fear vanished from her eyes, replaced by a glint of hard, amused possession. With her other hand, she reached up and curled her fingers around his throat. Not squeezing. Claiming.
He froze, his breath catching. This wasn’t the Yeji he knew. This was something else, something that had been hiding just beneath the skin.
“Lee,” she whispered, pulling his face closer to hers. Her voice was a low, intimate hum, no trace of the earlier tremor. “All that noise. All that drama. Just for us.”
She applied the slightest pressure to his throat, a silent command. He didn’t pull away. The confusion in his eyes was slowly drowning in a darker, more compelling tide.
“I’ve always wanted you,” she breathed, her lips almost brushing his. “Since the first day you walked into the office with your stupid tie and your sad coffee. You were always too good for her. Too… gentle.”
She released his wrist and let her hand slide down his chest, over his stomach. A shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with fear.
“But… what she did to you… you’re changing,” he stammered, his voice strained under her gentle, threatening hold.
Yeji laughed, a soft, seductive sound. She leaned in, nuzzling his ear. “Don’t worry about that, baby. The She-Hulk doesn’t spread to males.” She paused, letting the word hang in the air, laden with meaning. “Emphasis on she.”
She kissed him then, hard and possessive, biting his lower lip until he groaned. When she pulled back, the last vestiges of pretended vulnerability were gone, stripped away like the last of the green from her skin. What remained was pure, unveiled hunger.
“She’s gone,” Yeji said, standing, pulling him up with her by the hand still at his throat. She led him, stumbling, toward the bedroom, the only intact room left. “Now it’s just us. The people who really understand each other.”
She kicked the door shut, muting the chaos beyond. The room was dark, lit only by the pulsing emergency lights from outside casting rhythmic stripes across the walls. She pushed him back onto the bed and climbed over him, a silhouette of command.
What followed wasn’t love. It wasn’t even really lust. It was a consolidation. A victory lap. Every move she made was a negation of Lia, an erasure written on his body. She used him with a focused intensity, her whispered words in his ear a running commentary.
“See? This is what you needed.”
“No more timid little girl, right?”
“You’re mine now. Say it.”
And he did, the words torn from him in gasps, a surrender that felt perversely like liberation. She rode him with the same calculated precision with which she had performed her transformation, her eyes never leaving his, ensuring he was utterly, completely won.
In the harsh, fluorescent-lit back of the police transport van, Lia sat hunched, the cuffs cutting into her wrists. The rage had banked, leaving a cold, crystalline clarity. She could hear Yeji’ voice in her memory, the lie smooth as glass. She could see Lewis’s believing eyes.
The van hit a pothole, jolting her. She looked down at her massive, green hands, at the powerless strength they contained. A slow, grim smile touched her lips, unseen in the dark.
He thought this was over. He thought she was contained.
He had no idea what was coming back for him.