Chapter 9: The Aftermath Confession
The dawn was a liar. It painted the sky in weak gold and peach, a watercolor wash over Gotham's concrete scars. Selina watched it from a rooftop three blocks west, the cold seep of the morning through her suit. She should be halfway to the docks by now. She should be planning the next score, the next flawless exit.
Instead, she was here, smelling jasmine and gun oil on her own skin.
She’d dropped the drive. The why of it was a closed door in her mind she wouldn’t open. The act was enough. But the number… 10-24-18. A discharge day. A death of an old life. Kate had given her a wound to steal, and Selina had pocketed it. That was the real theft, and it sat in her gut like a stone.
She found herself moving not away, but back across the rooftops, a silent shadow against the brightening grey. She bypassed the main entrance, the biometric locks. She went up the service stairwell of the adjacent building, leaped the chasm to the penthouse’s lower balcony, and picked a simpler lock on the utility door. She was inside within ninety seconds. Sloppy. Predictable.
The penthouse was silent. The bed was a wreck of black silk and damp velvet. Empty.
Selina stood in the middle of the room, the scene of the crime. Her crime. The scent of their sex was still thick in the air, mixing with the bitter coffee now brewing from the kitchen. She followed it.
Kate stood at the counter, her back to the room, wearing a black robe. Her red hair was damp from a shower. She was staring at the coffee maker as if it contained the mysteries of the universe.
“You came back,” Kate said, not turning around. Her voice was raw, stripped.
“I left something,” Selina lied, leaning against the doorframe.
“You took something.” Kate finally turned. Her face was clean of makeup, sharp and pale. The mark on her collarbone was a lurid purple in the morning light. “You took the drive.”
“And tossed it in a gutter. Hastings can rot. Your secret’s safe.”
Kate absorbed this. No relief. Just a slight narrowing of her eyes. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“Since when do I follow deals?” Selina pushed off the frame, walking into the kitchen’s sterile glow. “You gave me a combination to a box holding your worst day. You didn’t want a thief. You wanted a priest.”
“Don’t.” The word was a slap. Kate’s hand tightened around her mug. “Don’t psychoanalyze me. You’re not here for absolution.”
“Then why am I here?” Selina was close now, within arm’s reach. The space between them crackled.
“Because you’re scared.” Kate set the mug down. It clicked too loudly on the marble. “You stole something real, and you don’t know what to do with it. So you came back to see if you could give it back. You can’t.”
The truth of it was a physical ache. Selina laughed, a short, harsh sound. “You’re a piece of work, Kane.”
“And you’re a fucking ghost.” Kate reached out, her fingers closing around the front of Selina’s suit. Not to push. To hold. “You haunt everything you touch. You leave cold spots. You took that day. Fine. Keep it. But don’t stand in my kitchen and pretend you’re doing me a favor.”
Selina looked down at the hand fisted in her suit, then up into Kate’s eyes. The loneliness there wasn’t an ocean anymore. It was a void, and Selina was tipping over the edge. She covered Kate’s hand with her own. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop lying.” Kate pulled her closer. “Just for five minutes. Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself.”
Their mouths met, and it wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A confirmation. Kate’s robe fell open. Selina’s hands pushed inside, finding the hot, bare skin of her waist, her back, pulling her flush. The taste was coffee and salt and a deep, yielding exhaustion. They stumbled from the kitchen, a graceless, connected mass, into the blinding gold light of the bedroom.
Kate tore at Selina’s suit, the clasps giving way under her urgency. Selina let her, shrugging out of the top, kicking the pants away. They fell onto the bed, into the valley their bodies had made hours before. The silk was cool, the light was warm. Kate was on top, her knees bracketing Selina’s hips, her robe a dark pool around them.
She looked down, her shadow falling across Selina’s face. “No games this time. No rope. Just you. Just me.”
“Just us,” Selina said, and the word was foreign, terrifying.
Kate nodded. She leaned down, kissing Selina’s throat, her breasts, her stomach. Her mouth was everywhere, hot and worshipping. Then she moved lower, spreading Selina’s legs with a firm, possessive push. Her breath was a damp heat against her.
“Look at me,” Kate said, her voice a low rasp. “I want you to watch me while I do this.”
Selina propped herself on her elbows, her heart hammering against her ribs. Kate’s blue eyes locked onto hers as she lowered her mouth.
The first touch of her tongue was a shock of pure, undiluted sensation. It wasn’t the frantic devouring of before. This was deliberate. Studious. Kate licked a slow, flat stripe from Selina’s entrance to her clit, her eyes never wavering. She did it again, and again, mapping her, learning the rhythm of her shaking breaths.
“Fuck, Kate…” Selina whispered.
Kate answered by sucking Selina’s clit into her mouth, applying a steady, perfect pressure. Her tongue flicked over the stiffened peak. One of her hands came up, fingers sliding inside Selina with an easy, practiced curl. She found the spot, that deep, aching place, and pressed.
Selina’s head fell back. A strangled moan tore from her throat. Kate fucked her with her fingers, deep and slow, while her mouth worked its relentless magic. The dual sensations were overwhelming, too much, not enough. Selina’s hips began to move, fucking herself on Kate’s hand, meeting the thrusts.
“That’s it,” Kate murmured against her, the vibration shooting through Selina’s core. “Let go. Come in my mouth. Let me have it.”
The permission, the raw command in that filthy request, detonated something. Selina’s orgasm ripped through her, a white-hot wire of pleasure that snapped every thought. She cried out, a sound she didn’t recognize as her own, her body arching off the bed, her cunt pulsing around Kate’s fingers. Kate didn’t stop. She drank her in, gentling her touch as the waves subsided into tremors.
Before Selina could even breathe, Kate was moving up her body. Her skin was fever-hot. She kissed Selina, letting her taste herself on Kate’s tongue. It was profoundly intimate, more than any act that had come before.
“My turn,” Selina gasped, rolling them over.
Now she was above, looking down at Kate, at her flushed skin, her parted lips, her eyes dark with need. Selina positioned herself, kneeling over Kate’s face. Kate understood. Her hands came up to grip Selina’s thighs, guiding her down.
Selina lowered herself onto Kate’s mouth, a slow, deliberate sink. Kate’s tongue was there, waiting, diving into her as she settled. Selina braced her hands on the headboard, riding the feeling, setting the pace. It was control, but of a shared, mutual kind. She looked down, watched Kate’s face, the intense focus, the surrender in her eyes as she served her.
Selina came again, faster this time, a sharp, clenching crest that made her thighs shake. She climbed off, collapsing beside Kate, both of them breathless and glistening in the dawn.
For a long time, they just existed in the quiet. The sun cleared the distant rooftops, flooding the room with uncompromising light. There were no shadows left to hide in.
Kate’s hand found Selina’s, their fingers tangling. A simple, devastating connection.
“It doesn’t fix anything,” Kate said to the ceiling.
“I know.”
“This city… it’ll demand everything back.”
“I know that, too.”
Kate turned her head. “So what happens at midnight?”
Selina met her gaze. She saw the future there—the Batman-shaped complications, the heists, the military ghosts, the unbridgeable gaps between a thief and a soldier. It was a disaster in the making. A beautiful, inevitable wreck.
She brought their joined hands to her lips, kissing Kate’s knuckles. “At midnight,” Selina said, “we lie to each other again. But for now… for right now, this is enough.”
Outside, Gotham woke up and began to roar. The day demanded its due. But in the wreckage of the silk sheets, in the space between their bodies, they held onto the fragile, silent truth of the morning for as long as they could.