Chapter 1: Claiming the Cat
The storm didn’t rage; it presided. It filled the sky over Gotham, a rolling black authority punctuated by silent, skeletal flashes of lightning. In the penthouse, the only answer was the hammering of rain against glass, a chaotic rhythm against the room’s sterile silence.
Bruce watched it, a silhouette against the city’s wet, phosphorescent glow. The towel around his hips was the only concession to softness in a room of hard edges and cold surfaces. He could still smell her on his skin—jasmine, adrenaline, and the faint, metallic hint of the city they’d both been prowling hours before.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
Selina’s voice was a smoky thing, unspooling from the darkness of the bed. He turned. She was a nest of rumpled sheets and shadow, one arm flung above her head, the clean line of her throat pale in the intermittent light. Her eyes, when the lightning flashed again, were wide-open and fixed on him.
“I’m not thinking,” he said, his voice low. “I’m waiting.”
A slow smile touched her mouth. “For what?”
“For you to stop pretending you’re tired.”
She laughed, a short, breathy sound that dissolved into the rain. In one fluid motion she pushed herself up on her elbows, the sheet pooling at her waist. The single candle by the bed guttered, painting gold across the dusky slopes of her shoulders, the dark fall of her tousled hair.
“Maybe I am tired,” she said, but the challenge was back in her gaze. It was always there, that live-wire tension. It was why this worked, and why it was unsustainable. “You wear a person out, Bruce.”
He moved then, a predator’s quiet advance. The space between the window and the bed vanished. He placed a knee on the mattress, the frame giving a faint groan under the shifted weight. The air crackled, not with the storm outside, but with the one they generated themselves. He caged her in, hands braced on either side of her head, his body a wall of heat over hers.
“You started it,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “On the east side. That little wave from the gargoyle.”
“That wasn’t an invitation. It was a critique of your form. You’re getting heavy.”
“Liar.”
He dipped his head, but didn’t kiss her. He brushed his lips along the line of her jaw, down the taut cord of her neck. She shivered, a full-body tremor she couldn’t suppress, and her hands came up to his shoulders. Not pushing, not pulling. Just holding.
“You’re in my way,” she whispered.
“I am your way,” he corrected, his mouth finding the hollow of her collarbone.
He felt her nails bite into his skin, a sharp, welcome punctuation. Her head fell back, offering more. He took it. His mouth was relentless, mapping territory he knew by heart but always found new. He shifted, one hand sliding down her arm, fingers interlacing with hers. He pinned her wrist to the mattress above her head. Then the other. Held there, in his unforgiving grip, she was utterly open to him.
“Bruce.” His name was a gasp.
He ignored it, tracing a path lower with his mouth. The swell of her breast, the frantic beat of her heart against his tongue, the tight peak he drew into his mouth until she cried out. He traveled down the plane of her stomach, feeling the muscles quiver under his lips. She tried to arch, to seek friction, but his grip on her wrists was absolute.
“Please.” It was torn from her, stripped of all its usual cunning.
He released her wrists only to hook his hands behind her knees, dragging her down the bed, opening her completely. The candlelight caught the sheen on her skin, the desperate rise and fall of her chest. He looked at her, this vision of want, and for a second the sheer magnitude of his need for her was a vacuum in his chest.
Then he lowered his mouth to her.
She shattered instantly, a sharp, broken sound escaping her as his tongue found her. He was thorough, merciless, mapping every fold, every sensitive point with a focus that was almost clinical in its devotion. He built her up again with slow, languid strokes, then ripped the foundation away with a sudden, ruthless intensity. Her thighs trembled against his ears. Her hands fisted in his hair, not guiding, just anchoring herself to the storm.
“Don’t you stop,” she panted, her hips rolling against his mouth. “Don’t you dare—”
He didn’t. He drove her, relentlessly, over that second peak. Her climax was quieter this time, a deep, internal convulsion that he felt through his entire body, a long, helpless sigh that melted into a moan as he gentled his touch, drawing out the last shivers.
He moved up her body, a slow crawl of heat and intent. He kissed her stomach, her sternum, the pounding base of her throat. She was pliant, boneless, her eyes hazy and half-lidded. He notched himself at her entrance, and her green eyes finally focused, sharpening on his.
He pushed in, one slow, devastating inch. She was so wet, so warm, so tight. He swallowed his own groan, burying it in the curve of her neck.
“Look at me,” he breathed.
She did. Her gaze was clouded with pleasure, but clear with that defiant intelligence. He began to move, a deep, grinding rhythm that had her biting her own lip. He wanted to consume her. To have every part of her, in every way. The thought was a dark, possessive tide in him.
Her legs locked around his hips, pulling him deeper on every thrust. The bed rocked with their rhythm, a counter-beat to the rain. She met him move for move, her breath coming in hot pants against his cheek.
“What is it?” she gasped, reading the tension in his jaw. “What do you want?”
He drove into her, harder. The words were out before he could cage them. “Everything.”
She stilled beneath him, even as her body clenched around his. Her eyes searched his face, the mask completely gone. Here, in this room, there was only Bruce. And he had just shown her his throat.
A slow, catlike smile spread across her swollen lips. She lifted her head, bringing her mouth to his ear. Her voice was a thread of sound, a secret for the rain to drown.
“You sure?” she whispered, her hips making a slow, torturous circle. “Everything’s a big commitment, Bruce. What if you get more than you bargained for?”
He thrust, deep, claiming. “Try me.”
She laughed, the sound rich and dangerous. She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him so close their breaths mingled. Her next words were a deliberate, calculated provocation, delivered between kiss-bruised lips.
“Careful. You keep fucking me like this, you’re going to get me pregnant.”
The world went white at the edges.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a detonation. A fantasy so forbidden, so utterly final, that it short-circuited every rational process in his brain. A heir. A child. A tiny, vulnerable piece of her and him combined, running through these echoing halls. The possessiveness it unlocked in him was primal, terrifying in its intensity.
He saw the shock in her eyes as he froze. She’d meant to tease, to fluster the unflappable Bruce Wayne. She hadn’t expected the raw, naked hunger that flooded his gaze instead.
With a growl that came from the deepest part of him, he flipped her onto her stomach. She gasped, the breath knocked from her lungs. He pulled her hips back, angling her, and plunged into her again, deeper than before. The pace was brutal, unforgiving. It was no longer just about pleasure; it was a brand. A claiming.
“Say it again,” he demanded, his voice ragged, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
She couldn’t form words. She was a symphony of moans and shattered cries, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the slick sheets. He leaned over her, covering her body with his, his mouth at her ear.
“Say it.”
“You’d…” she choked out, “you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Having me like this. Trapped. Heavy with your child.”
He bit her shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to make his point. “You’re never trapped.”
“Then what is this?” she cried out as he hit a spot that made her see stars.
“This,” he panted, driving into her, each thrust a punctuation mark, “is you choosing to be mine. Completely.”
The third climax took them both violently, a cascade of sensation that ripped a shout from his throat and a silent, open-mouthed scream from hers. He collapsed over her, spent, the thunder of his heart echoing the storm.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the fading rain. He rolled off her, gathering her against his side. She came willingly, her body soft and damp against his. The candle had nearly drowned in its own wax.
She traced the scar on his ribs, her touch feather-light.
“You know I can’t be owned, Bruce,” she said quietly, into the dark.
He stared at the ceiling, at the shadows the dying flame threw. The fever-dream of her words still pulsed in his blood. Pregnant. He saw, with brutal clarity, the fork in the road. The path of the mission, clean and solitary. And this other path, fraught with unimaginable risk and a promise of a life he’d never allowed himself to want.
He tightened his arm around her.
“I know,” he said.
But the word felt like a lie, and from the way her breathing hitched, she heard it too.