Chapter 22: Chapter 22
The air in the cave had been sterile, electric. Up here, it was alive. It tasted of diesel fumes and impending rain, carrying the distant symphony of Gotham’s endless decay. Bruce stood at the precipice of a gargoyle, the city’s light painting the lines of the cowl in stark relief. He could still feel the phantom heat of her, the shocking confirmation of the scanner screen burned into his retinas.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
She emerged from the shadow of a water tower, not a silhouette but a solidification of darkness. Lady Shiva moved onto the roof’s gravel surface without a sound. She had shed her usual attire for a simple, dark sleeveless tunic and pants, her arms bare. The wind tugged at her black hair.
“The sample was conclusive,” he said, his voice the gravel-under-tire growl of the Batman. He didn’t turn.
“You sound like you’re giving a police report.” Her footsteps were deliberate. “It was a fuck, Wayne. A good one. The machine just confirmed what our bodies already knew.”
He finally turned. The discipline that usually held him rigid was strained, a cord pulled taut. “It wasn’t just a fuck. It was a strategic maneuver. You used the moment, the location, to prove a point.”
“Several.” A faint smile touched her lips. “That your fortress isn’t impenetrable. That your controls have vulnerabilities. That you,” she stepped closer, “are still a creature of flesh.”
He watched her, every muscle fiber aware of the six feet between them. The memory was intrusive: the cold metal of the scanner against his back, the punishing, perfect heat of her riding him, the raw, wet sounds of their coupling echoing in the sterile lab. The way she’d moaned, not in passion, but in triumph, as the screen flashed its verdict.
“You left your mark,” he stated.
“And you left yours.” She closed the distance to three feet. “It’s in the tubes in your cave. Our genetic material, beautifully combined. A more intimate merger than any corporate takeover.”
His jaw tightened. He should be pursuing the Flask case, tracing the smuggler’s route through the docks. Instead, he was here, on a roof, with her. Because she had rewired his focus. Because the animal part of him, the part he buried beneath the mission, wanted a rematch. On his terms.
“Why are you in Gotham?” he demanded.
“The same reason you are. Someone needs killing.” She tilted her head. “But my business can wait. Yours is standing right here.”
She moved then, not with an attack, but with an assumption. Her hand came up, fingertips tracing the symbol on his chest. He didn’t flinch. He felt the pressure through the kevlar weave.
“You want to know if it was just the machine,” she murmured, her voice dropping, losing its edge, gaining a dark, liquid warmth. “If the vibration was the trick. Or if it was me.”
His breath hitched, a tiny fracture in the armor. She heard it.
“Show me,” he growled, the command slipping out.
Her smile widened. She stepped back, her hands going to the tie of her pants. She didn’t undress with seduction, but with a brutal efficiency that was more arousing than any tease. The pants fell. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath.