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“Steve, it’s okay.” Kara was using the tone of voice he’d once heard her use to talk a guy down off a ledge. “Really. It’s . . . fine.”
“It’s not fucking fine,” he snarled. “I can’t do that.”
“Well,” Kara looked almost annoyed, like she was a fourth-grade teacher hearing some ridiculous excuse about a missing writing assignment, “consider the alternative. Are you saying you’d rather die than . . . than have . . .”
He felt stupidly pleased to see she couldn’t say it, either.
They’d been waylaid separately, Kara en route to visit her sister, Steve outside Stark Tower. Whatever unearthly toxin had been injected had kept them both completely under for an indeterminate time—time enough, at least, to get them both off-world into a sleek little spacecraft that was apparently running with all shields up for it to have evaded detection this long.
They had woken in a shared cell, on separate cots, under the faint pink glow of a dilute red sun factor humming from the lightbulbs. Kara, deprived of her full powers, had been unable to force her way through the glass, and Steve had only bruised his hand trying.
Once they’d exhausted themselves in the attempt, their captor had spoken. The voice filtered through a system of speakers set in the wall. It was pleasant, moderate in tone, but utterly sexless, the androgynous result—Kara had guessed aloud—of some mechanical translation system.
Welcome Captain Rogers; welcome, Kara Zor-El. You are guests—
They had traded Looks.
—aboard the craft Somnambulist. This is one of the X-series crafts from the Delta Aurorae Galaxy—
“Wait,” Kara jerked around to stare at the approximate location of one of the speakers. “What?”
—whose primary source of energy is the sexual coupling of its passengers.
“Wait,” Steve blinked, “what?”
“I thought it was a joke,” Kara muttered, more to herself than him. “I found some files in the Fortress when I was looking for information on my escape pod. They mentioned this series of ships.”
Steve was still struggling with the second piece of information.
“Did it really say the ship is powered by—”
You have been elected to perform this office in order to generate sufficient power for the return journey.
Steve and Kara stared at each other in open, unabashed horror.
“He can’t be serious.”
“It,” Kara corrected automatically. “They’re a form of AI. Self-piloting spacecraft. Usually the passengers agree to provide the, uh, power necessary in return for the trip, and the whole thing just . . .” she gestured helplessly. “Takes care of itself.”
She looked back to the speaker in the wall.
“What happened to your passengers? They signed on for this. Why can’t they perform the . . . necessary rituals?”
Steve tried not to notice the way her eyes flickered back to him in the middle of the sentence before she abruptly looked elsewhere.
The passengers booked for this journey were of a life form incapable of generating sufficient power.
That seemed logical enough, except . . .
“And where are they now?” Steve wondered.
The spaceship didn’t hesitate to answer. That was kind of the worst part of the whole thing.
Life forms incapable of generating sufficient power are recycled into the wider power grid. The heat generated from their disposal is adequate for running search parameters on the nearest planet and recruiting new passengers.
“You killed them?” Kara whispered.
“New passengers,” Steve repeated. “That’s us.”
Yes, Captain Rogers. Search result output log file: average human life forms rate as overall inadequate to power the return journey. Humans not recommended as power source. Run alternate search for extranormal human life outputs. Search results: successful. Parse search results for extranormal outputs with existing sexual compatibility. Result: successful. Steven Rogers and Kara Zor-El ranked as capable of generating power sufficient to sustain the return journey.
“Existing sexual compatibility?” Steve echoed, but Kara was focused on the journey part of the message.
“Wait, no,” she shook her head quickly, “you can’t take us. We live here, on Earth.”
The necessary rituals may be performed in docking position and power stored. Forcible passenger transport is deemed appropriate only in times of war and extreme deprivation.
“Well,” Steve swallowed, “that’s thoughtful of them, I guess.”
“But it can’t only be us,” Kara muttered, still working through the rules like it would help her reason her way out of it. “Why us? We were a subset of the search result . . . but why would it say we were sexually compatible? Excuse me, Somnambulist?” she addressed the system. “What’s the criteria for sexual compatibility?”
Prior sexual contact is first consideration, the voice explained. In the absence of prior sexual contact, previous engagement in culturally-accepted overtures toward sexual contact are considered in the ranking.
“It was the date,” Steve said at once. “That goddamn . . . I mean,” he hastened to moderate his exasperation. “That pleasant afternoon.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Kara said impatiently, “that was a shitshow of a coffee date. I can’t believe the ship thought it counted.”
Well, if she wasn’t going to stand on ceremony, neither was he.
“Yeah, it was a disaster,” he agreed. “I mean, no disrespect intended.”
It would have been hard not to interpret disrespect from the comment, except Kara had been there, so she knew he was right. She just nodded.
They had met at some aggressively unbranded coffee shop full of people younger than themseves, all bent over their Macbooks trying to solve the world’s problems without having to actually talk to anybody about it.
The only people in the coffeeshop having an actual conversation had been Steve and Kara, and they both been so stammering and awkward and incapable of understanding one another that they’d ended up having four separate disagreements, each mounting in intensity until they’d both parted with clipped good-byes and an angry, unspoken intention to rip into Alex and Maria for suggesting the thing in the first place.
“If that’s sexual compatibility,” she said, “I might just swear off the whole dating thing for . . . well, ever.”
“Yeah, that isn’t gonna happen,” Steve assured her. He looked in the general direction of the wall speaker, and repeated himself. “Not gonna happen. Sorry.”
Your refusal has been recorded, the ship assured him. Please stand by for recycling.
“Re—wait, hold on!” Kara shouted. “Don’t record anything yet. It—Steve,” she turned to him, her face knit with new worry. “This isn’t just a request. The ship needs us to sustain itself. If we don’t agree, it’s going to recycle us and run another search. We have to.”
He knew, on almost every level, that she was right. But there was that other part of him, the part that refused to be knocked down and stay there, that insisted there had to be another way.
“We can’t,” he said. “I couldn’t . . . I mean, never mind me for a moment, I couldn’t ask you to do that either.”
Which was when she’d said, so calmly and reasonably, so very much in her “don’t take the jump, Sir, it gets better” voice that he half expected her to hold her hand out and promise a brighter, better tomorrow:
“Steve, it’s okay. Really, it’s . . . fine.”
Which was bullshit. It wasn’t fine. He said as much, but god damn her she was so reasonable. Did he really want to die rather than fuck her?
No, of course not. But even after their unmitigated disaster of a first date, he had still, in some far-buried part of him, thought they might get a second chance at this. Might get another shot at sitting down together over something other than coffee with an atmosphere other than that of the coffeeshop, and maybe . . . well. Who knew. But he’d thought they might get a chance to try again, and he definitely hadn’t thought it would be at the command of a spaceship.
He definitely didn’t want it to be.
“I . . . I can’t even imagine it being this way,” he tried to explain, and Kara lost a bit of her lifeline negotiator persona. She nodded sympathetically. Even smiled a little.
“I know. I’m sorry. But look, if it’s not us, what happens after this? We get recycled, and somebody else comes to take our place. And what then? What if it’s two people who didn’t even go on a date? What if it’s people who just smiled and nodded in the street? And what if one of them doesn’t even care if the other one isn’t into it?”
She moved closer until they were within arm’s reach, and set a gentle hand on the topmost part of his arms, crossed defiantly over the breadth of his chest.
“It could be so much worse than this. Don’t you think?”
Of course it could. That was at least half the reason he was so angry about it, and he said as much.
“The other half,” he finished hoarsely, “is that . . . well, it should be so much better.”
Her eyes widened in immediate comprehension, and a deep pink flush that had nothing to do with the red sun factor bulbs lit her face.
“Oh.”
“But,” he shrugged, looking around, “I guess if it’s got to be two people . . . it should at least be two people who can make sure it doesn’t get too bad for each other. Right?”
Kara smiled through the blush, awkward, encouraging, a goddamn superhero neatly disguised in her grey pencil skirt and turquoise peplum top, though her glasses had gotten lost somewhere in transit. He felt far less put together than she looked, but at least there was some grim mercy in his own street clothes. He didn’t think he could manage to do what he had to if he’d been wearing his cowl.
“Okay,” he swallowed, mortified to hear a faint crack in his concession, “okay, let’s . . . I mean, how do we . . . is there a . . . procedure?”
Kara bit her lip to cover most of her smile.
“Do you not know the procedure, Steve? I mean, I’ve heard the jokes about Captain America having half the country lusting after him, and him not knowing what to do with either half of that half, but . . .”
He colored a red that he hoped the pinkish hue of the lights at least partially concealed.
Kara’s smile suggested his hopes were in vain.
“I know the procedure,” he said stiffly. “I just mean . . . the procedure with the ship. If we’re supposed to power it, how does that work?”
Her answering smile was equal parts apology for the timing of her joke, and sympathy for his willingness to make the effort.
“The ship gives us what we need. The details in the records were a little sketchy, but once we tell it we’re ready to proceed, it . . . takes care of things. I don’t know how exactly, but I think it’s going to be fine. Or at least as fine as it could be, under the circumstances.” She hesitated, searching his face with the most uncertainty he could ever remember seeing from her, not as Kara or Supergirl.
“It doesn’t have to be that bad, does it?”
God, trust Supergirl to try to encourage him and end up making him feel like a complete fucking heel.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “No, of course it doesn’t. I’ll try . . . I mean, we’ll do our best, right?” He found a smile somewhere within, crooked, anxious, but sincere. “I’m kinda good at giving things my—my best effort, anyway. I can promise you that much.”
She scrunched her nose, pink and pleased.
“Okay. So . . .” she swallowed. “Okay.” There was only a slight tremor in her voice as she raised it. “Somnambulist? We will render the necessary assistance.”
“Like two drivers with a set of jumper cables, right?” Steve offered, and she actually giggled, which made him feel ridiculously accomplished.
Stand by for power supply conduits.
The cables appeared via a small portal set in the wall, and though Steve did give it an experimental span with his palm, it was too small for Kara to fit through. He doubted it would have even accommodated his upper arm.
You will find the conduits labelled in your native language. Kindly affix them as instructed, and begin the necessary rituals appropriate to your species. The program will assist as required.
They needed to undress to obey the command. Steve flushed as he read the labels, and wished they were not in his native language. He was more than a little jealous of Kara, who was afforded a degree of privacy by the Kryptonian symbols on her own little bundle of wires and suction cups. All things equalled out pretty soon, though, as she had to lower her underwear just the same as him.
He looked away as he stuck the last of the cups in place, and was surprised that once they were attached, he couldn’t feel them at all.
“This is—well,” he shrugged. “It’s not great, but . . .”
“But it’s not uncomfortable,” Kara finished, echoing his unspoken conclusion aloud. He nodded, pleased to find they were on the same page—and in doing so, he looked at her.
He hadn’t meant to look at her (though he wasn’t sure how he planned to avoid it, either) but once he started, he couldn’t stop. She was so damn perfect. Her hair fell in luscious waves over her shoulders, granting her some partial modesty in the way it obscured the upper curves of her breasts. But everything below that was smooth and taut and . . . then the smoothness disappeared in a neatly-trimmed profusion of dark honey curls, and yeah, he really couldn’t stop staring.
He also couldn’t help responding, and because he was staring, he saw the exact moment she registered the fact that she was making him hard. He wanted to apologize, but her smile was so reassuring, the “sorry” died on his lips.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Do . . . do you want to touch me? Or, would you like me to . . .”
She bridged the gap between them. He didn’t see her walk to do it, but in a moment she was there. He couldn’t tell what happened to the wires. Everything was going a little hazy, a little strange . . . he felt her hand cover his pectoral muscle. He thought he heard her gasp, thick and fevered, and then . . . the spaceship faded away.
The birds chirped beyond their window, aggressive in springtime chorus. Steve sighed and rolled over in bed, listening to the staticky crackle of the radio filter in from the room beyond the bedroom door. It was the local station playing a rerun of last night’s broadcast; even through the door he could hear the slightly degraded quality, though it was still nothing next to how awful the other local sounded when they ran their syndication.
It was all normal. Ordinary. Cheerful, even. But there was something off about it, and Steve was struggling to remember what, and why, when his wife called his name.
“Darling?” Kara’s voice, cheerful and just a trifle sharp in its accents, like something from an old movie, filtered through the door. “Steve, are you up yet? I’ve made coffee.”
She bumped open the door with a hip and beamed down at him, a steaming cup balanced on a small plate. Her hair was pulled back from a side part in soft, carefully-shaped rolls and her lips flashed cherry-red around white teeth. She looked like a toothpaste commercial fresh out of the morning paper—bright, new and now, a modern 40s gal.
He was up, all right.
She saw the tent in the sheets and flashed him a smile that was pure sin.
“Oh honey.” She set the coffee down on the nightstand and arched a knowing eyebrow. “If you wanted to stay in bed, all you had to do was ask.”
He groaned, reaching out to capture her waist in the crook of his arm and pulling her onto the bed. She spilled over him, laughing, touching, soft and lightly scented with powder and whatever that stuff was she put in her wash water. He trailed a row of sleepy, hungry kisses from the back of her neck around to her collarbones, then stopped at the neckline of her snug green sweater.
“Can’t have this keeping me from what’s mine now, can we?” he teased, easing open the pretty little imitation mother-of-pearl buttons.
We’ll get you real ones someday, baby. Once I’ve got a good position, they’ll see I’m a keeper. Then watch out! Sky’s the limit.
She gasped, sweet and low, as he rubbed the thick pad of his thumb over her breast. Even through the sweater and the undergarments below it, there was no mistaking the fact that her desire for him matched his for her. When he slid a hand up her thigh, tracing past the ribbons of her garter belt to seek the heat nestled at the very centre of her, he confirmed it.
“You’re soaking wet,” he whispered, right by her ear. She shivered deliciously at the tickle of his breath on her neck.
“What are you gonna do about it, huh?” she wondered, turning to look up into his face.
Her eyes shone clear and blue like the storybook sky just barely visible beyond their window. It was a good, clean sky—country-wide, none of the Brooklyn smog that had thickened his lungs as a child. They’d moved out here after he demobbed, and he was making a go of it at the sawmill. She wanted to get a job too, and he wanted to support her in that, but it stung to think he couldn’t support them both just yet. So she stayed home to sop his poor ego, and her sacrifice made him feel even worse.
But today there was no pity in either of them, just the joy of a lazy Sunday with Kara’s body pressed up against his as he peeled her out of the pretty green sweater and brown tweed skirt until she lay on the bed in front of him like a living, breathing pin-up girl. Her breasts heaved in her brassiere and she trailed an inviting hand over her belly. He traced its path with his eyes, then knelt to follow it with his lips.
“You wet for me, baby?” he growled, and her breath hitched in response.
“All for you. Only for you,” she promised, drawing his face up her sternum, over her collarbones, until his lips met hers. “So you gonna do something about it or what?”
“Mmm.” He pressed his erection against her thigh, watching the way her eyes lit and her lips parted slightly. “What do you think I should do?”
She traced her hand over the edge of his jaw.
“Show me how glad you are to be home.”
“But I’m not,” he said. He waited til the hurt and confusion flickered across her face before he finished, “home. Not yet.”
He fit his thumbs under the edge of her garter belt and whispered, “wanna leave this on for me?”
She grimaced, then grinned.
“It’s not gonna look too graceful in the process, but sure, I think we can manage that.”
Turned out she did have to shuck it off halfway to struggle out of her underwear, but true to her word, she hooked it all back up afterward, leaving her cunt bared to him with her stockings held in place by the garters, and the garter hooked demurely to the belt.
He drank in the sight of her as she flopped, winded, good-humored, back into place beneath him.
“You like that?” she challenged.
“See for yourself,” he retorted. His cock stood free, aching desperately for everything he knew awaited him between her legs.
She propped her head up on one hand and reached out with the other, wrapping her fingers gently around the length of him and trailing a gentle thumb over the very tip. He hissed at her touch and she brightened, glorying in the power she had over him.
“Can I kiss it?” she asked softly. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. She bent her head forward and pressed the lightest, sweetest kiss to the warm velvet of his cockhead. “Mmm,” she sighed, like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted. He groaned.
“You think you can give a girl everything she’s hoping for?” she wondered. “You look about ready to pop, honey.”
“Is that a challenge?” he panted. Her eyes sparked an affirmative, so he caught her round the waist and pushed her back into the bed, growling his answer.
She laughed, even as he brought his face down to her breasts and tugged the brassiere off with his teeth. Her nipples he suckled to hard, aching points until she was crying out, plaintive, sweet.
“Steve, God, please, honey . . . I can’t wait.”
He would have gloated, but he couldn’t wait either. He parted her thighs with a knee and spared a moment to bend and kiss the sweetness of her there. She arched into his face, desperate, wanting. He took it as a challenge and focused on the sweet little bud just above the wet folds. He tongued and licked and nipped, gently, until she had no recourse but to surrender. Even as she came she begged him to wait, her fingers tangling in the longest part of his hair almost angrily.
“No, sweetheart, please, I want you inside when I—oh—ohh!”
Her muscles locked in the sweetest agony of her release and he kept nibbling ruthlessly at her, not giving her quarter, so that she came again, sobbing helplessly at the latent rolling heat of her second orgasm, and then, because he was feeling especially wicked this Sunday morning and his wife tasted like the garden of fucking Eden, he ate her into a third weeping, wailing climax, at the end of which she could only lie there, limp, sated, and pant “god damn you, Rogers.”
“Someday, maybe,” he agreed, propping himself up to grin at her between her knees. “But not before I’ve had my turn.”
She nodded, eager for him even through her post-orgasm fatigue. He leaned up to brace a hand on either side of her head, his erection twitching hungrily against the inside of her thigh, and drank in the sight of her.
She was flushed pink, hair tousled out of its neat arrangement, and her lips were still parted like she wanted to breathe him in as much as possible. He bent and pressed a soft kiss to her bottom lip, as light and gentle as the one she had pressed to the head of his cock, which was now almost painful in its readiness to plunge into her.
“You mind if I’m a little . . . impatient?” he hedged, pressing the tip to the entrance of her. The pure wet heat of her nearly undid him then and there; no sooner had he got himself under control than she smiled archly up at him and nearly undid him all over again.
“You wanna fuck me hard, honey? You go right ahead.” She spread her legs in warm welcome. “I don’t need to go anywhere today. Might as well make sure I remember you were in there.”
So, he guessed church was a write-off, then.
Not that he cared much for church himself; not when Heaven was waiting for him right there in his bed, looking like an angel, smiling like a seductress straight outta the pit.
Some days he was gentle; tender. Cradled her, touched her, teased her as he entered with exquisite care, like she was somehow fragile in her femininity, like she hadn’t been forged with a core of steel that kept her going the whole time he’d been gone, running their little household, writing letters to him an ocean away full of news gentle and light, each one fused with its own kind of bravery as she worked in a factory and he bombed them overseas.
Then other days, like today, it felt like he couldn’t take her hard or fast enough to suit him. Like she was nothing but the cunt between her legs and he needed it, all of it, and felt her respond to that need with a roaring hunger more than equal to his own.
She was sobbing under him again as he thrust into her and he almost slacked his speed to check that she was okay, but her hands were at his shoulders and she was pulling him to her just as fast and fierce as he could make her take it, so that was fine. This was one of those days, where living itself carried a kind of sheer desperation within it, and somehow living together this way, their bodies fused at the hips, his sweat streaming off him and hers glistening on her brow as she both flinched under his assault and also begged him to go harder, harder, please Steve . . . was the only way to make it bearable.
Whatever she’d suffered the years he’d been gone; whatever he’d had to endure . . . they didn’t talk about it. They couldn’t. Instead they lived their lives in the sunlight of days like this one, ignoring the wheezing wartime shadows that loomed at their backs.
(Wheezing? No, more like humming. What was that humming sound? Metallic, smooth, modern . . . the harder he tried to hear it, the more it slipped away)
The springs of their little bed creaked and groaned beneath his desperate, merciless battering of her cunt. It clutched greedily at his cock with every withdrawal, and he heard in the sweet, thin note mounting behind her sobs that she was getting close once more.
So was he.
The pressure building at the base of his spine made him groan into her ear. She tilted her hips up in frantic response, needing more of him, all of him, before he was done.
“Please honey,” she begged, “please, Steve, harder. I need—”
She could so rarely say it out loud, but today he needed her to. Forced himself to slow, slack his pace, needing to know this was okay for her; at least, as okay as anything would be for them.
She struggled through the shame of it, but managed to say it out loud, for his sake.
“I need you to hurt me. A little. Please?”
It was the hardest thing for him to do, but he also knew she never meant it more than when she found the strength to say it. He nodded once, grim, resolved, and grabbed her hips.
The final pounding her gave her drove her into a fourth screaming orgasm and he came, spent, shattered into the bruised depths of her cunt.
He fell on top of her as he came, driving her down into the mattress. She lay unprotesting under him, crying softly, broken, grateful.
“Thank you sweetheart,” she wept, kissing his neck. “That was perfect. You did it just right Steve. Thank you.”
After that the sunlight dimmed around them, like he was falling asleep. There was only the sound of their breathing, heavy, sated . . . and again that smooth, emotionless hum of machinery.
(just before it all went dark, he thought he heard her whimper in the cool echo of an empty room . . . but surely that was a dream)
Somnambulist monitored the heart rates and power output of the subjects engaged in the specimen room. The product generated was incredibly potent, already sufficient to power half the journey back to the home world.
One remaining simulation should be sufficient to achieve the desired result.
Kara Zor-El had not always enjoyed the process of making a name for herself that stood out alongside that of her mother, distinct enough to warrant its own form of recognition that had little to do with Alura’s impressive litany of accomplishments, but on nights like this one, she forgot the struggle in the light of her success.
“To my daughter,” Zor-El said proudly, inviting the guests in attendance to join him in saluting her. “On the eve of her appointment to council. May she forge a legacy that will be remembered for generations to come.”
The guests united in recognition of her and she accepted their salute with what she hoped was becoming composure. Her mother pressed a cheek to hers, and her father echoed the gesture. Then she was free to move about, accepting the polite greetings of their guests, engaging in the expected courtesies, not especially caring who she greeted first, second or fifteenth.
One, though, she was careful to save for last.
He was standing half in shadow near a side door, dressed at the edge of formality for the occasion. His outfit was not quite as dark a shade as protocol might have demanded, but then that was to be expected, when you had only just left your own work in time to arrive at the celebration of your paramour.
“How did you get in?” she wondered, under cover of the appropriate gestures of meeting and congratulations.
“What,” he teased, “do you think I took down the guards with my bare hands?”
She hadn’t, until he suggested it. She found the idea made her breath come a little faster. He saw it, she saw him see it, and he smiled.
“I told them I lost my invitation. They’ve seen me around here enough that they didn’t question it.”
She smiled back, half-embarrassed by the simplicity of his reply, and risked a glance over her shoulder to make sure her parents hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t exactly forbade her to see Steve, but they’d also made it pretty clear they expected her to focus on more important things than a regrettable dalliance that, in their opinion, ought to have ended when her schooling did.
“You’re moving into something very big now,” her mother had explained gently, petting her hair that night not too long ago, as Kara challenged their chilly reception of her beau. “He’s a dear young man of course, but I’m not sure he’s capable of elevating himself to the level we’d like to see in your . . . special person.”
She had considered arguing, sobbing, begging them to see reason, but even as each notion entered her head, she’d known they’d use the emotion of them to dismiss her as unable to make this decision for herself. So she’d nodded, pretended she was willing to consider moving along with her life, and instead they’d toned down the openness of their relationship to such a degree that she might have fairly called it a secret.
And somehow, they agreed, that just made it hotter.
“Come on.” She caught his hand in hers, pulling him deeper into the shadows of the doorway. “Let’s step out for a minute, okay?”
“Won’t they miss you?” he wondered, but he let her pull him along, and she could almost feel the heat of the smile he aimed at her back.
She would have liked the corridors to be darker, but they were shadowed enough for her purpose. She pulled him away from the chatter of the company until they were perfectly alone, and then she nudged him into an even darker alcove, where she lost sight of everything but the very faintest outline of his form, tall and broad, more than her equal in height.
“I’ve thought about you all day,” she whispered. “Touch me?”
It shouldn’t have come out as a question. She meant to sound commanding and regal, like her mother before the courts. But he knelt as though he’d heard the tone she’d intended, smoothing his hands almost worshipfully down the fine stuff of her gown, exploring the intricate details of stitchwork and seams until he found the means to part the skirt and bare her to the evening air.
“I want to have you under the stars sometime,” he whispered, like it were the most deadly of sins, to imagine her under starlight. “Nothing on your skin but the night air and . . .”
He finished the sentence in deed rather than word, trailing kisses up her thigh, coming to the highest point of her leg. She arched her back into the contact, accepting his caress, sweet and gentle as a lover’s ought to be.
“Would you let me kneel for you too?” she asked huskily. His ministrations stuttered, and stopped.
“Would you like to?”
“What if I commanded it?” she whispered.
“You know you only need to ask.”
“Then stand, please. Let me taste you too.”
He stood, though she thought his knees seemed less than equal to the task. She had more trouble gaining access to what she sought, but when she finally worked out the cut of his trousers and freed his cock, she cradled it in reverent triumph. It was warm and large and surprisingly heavy in her hand; she had touched him before, but not like this, deprived of sight, working by her other senses alone.
Boldly, shrouded by dark, she ran her tongue down the length of him and exulted in how she made him twitch in her hand. She kissed every part of his cock that she could find, trailing her tongue over the head, then fitting it, experimentally, between her lips.
He braced his arms on the wall above her, and she definitely hadn’t been imagining it: his knees were shaking.
“May I?” she asked sweetly; far more sweetly, in fact, than was her usual tone.
He groaned. She took that as assent, and took him in her mouth.
It was surprisingly easy to figure out how to suck him. She’d had some notion she’d have to work out how to breathe and such, but he was exquisitely careful not to thrust at her even slightly, so she had time to solve the rhythms for herself, taking him in over the flat of her tongue, drawing back to inhale, then forging in again.
She’d never done anything more exciting than this. She’d never felt more power than she did in this moment, tightening every muscle in his body simply with the touch of her tongue. He was breathing harshly above her now, and she could tell he didn’t have a whole lot of time left. Rather than ask him to change positions, she rucked her skirt up over her legs, braced herself against him with one hand on his thigh, and pressed the other to the top of her cunt.
He was perfectly still above her, save for the strangled, choking gasps of a man brought perilously close to the brink of no return. She closed her eyes and let the sounds fill her head: his helpless lust for her, his surrender to the feeling of her mouth on his cock, and the quick, practiced touch of her own fingers to the sensitive little bead of her clit.
The senses swirled together, an eddy of erotic impossibility that she was suddenly uncertain of her ability to master. She wanted to say his name, ask him for his assurance, but her mouth was full of his cock and she could make little sound around it.
She lifted her eyes to the solid darkness, and thought somewhere, very far away, she heard him . . . pained.
(no, not pained. Gasping. Panting. A rude, desperate parody of his deep, longing breaths above her now. Why would she think she heard him like that? It was cruel)
She didn’t want to hurt him. Didn’t move her teeth at all. But something about her must have changed against him because she felt him shift and become present in a way he hadn’t been earlier.
“Kara?” he whispered into the heavy shadow. His voice filled the narrow recess she had found them in the wall of her childhood home. “Are you all right?”
And suddenly, she was. The warmth of his touch on her cheek, the sweet, solid timbre of his voice . . . yes. She was just fine.
She sighed around his cock in the affirmative, her fingers resumed their rhythm once more, and so did the gentle bob of her head.
She was closer now, the thick pure promise of her orgasm building steadily in the core of her even as his breaths came in ragged gasps. She deliberately held off, though, until she felt him tighten and surge forward against her, spilling thick, hot semen into her mouth, down her throat, bitter, welcome, and—there.
She pinched her own clit almost cruelly in permission and came moments after he did, her thighs shaking, whimpering around his softening cock as she slicked the palm of her own hand with the gratification of her release.
She crouched there and he leaned against the wall, both panting in the dark. It took her a good minute or two before she trusted her own knees to help her join him, standing, to lean against the wall.
“You’re really something, Kara. You know that?” he murmured.
She laughed and kissed his lips proudly, sucked his tongue, made him taste himself on hers.
“Do you think you’re ready for the party now?” she wondered. “Or would you prefer a second round before we go in?”
He had strength enough, it proved, to pull her to him and kiss her soundly in return.
Round two it was.
(and if she heard him breathing again in the back of her mind, sounding more lost and afraid than she had ever imagined he could, she convinced herself it was nothing worse than an echo)
The ship brought them out of their dream state gently enough, Kara supposed. She wished she’d read the files she’d found closely enough to warn Steve that this is how it would be done . . . the heightened emotion of the day-dream, coupled with the waking sensations of their intercourse, would be what translated into fuel for the ship.
The problem with having been really fucking through their shared imaginings was the way they eventually had to wake to the sensations the dreams had spared them. She found that she was raw and sore between her legs, and Steve looked worn ragged—she couldn’t ever remember seeing him look so much as tired before. The sight of him now, pale, peaky, sweating and trembly . . . it scared her.
“Steve?” she moved to touch him, then drew back at the look of horror on his face. “What is it?”
“Kara, you—I—I’m sorry.”
She looked down, following his gaze to see her bare breasts marked with bright red half-moons.
Bite marks.
“Oh!” she said, and tried to determine if they hurt. They probably did. In truth her whole body felt like one, swollen bruise, so it was hard to isolate a single source of discomfort. She managed to shake her head and smile at him. It wasn’t like he’d had control over himself any more than she had.
“It’s not—I mean, it will be fine. Once I get back to Earth I’ll heal right up, you’ll see.” She paused, considering. “Or I mean, you won’t see. But I can tell you that it has. If you want to know.”
Offering to describe your breasts to Captain America was actually a misdemeanor in two states, but she figured if he’d already seen them you could probably qualify for an exemption.
He was shaking his head, like he needed to clear it of a whole lot of things in a hurry.
“We . . . there wasn’t even a condom, Christ, Kara. I’m so sorry.”
It hadn’t occurred to her until he mentioned it, but once he had, it sent a bolt of cold fear lancing right to the pit of her stomach. She got it under control with an effort.
“We’ll . . . talk about that, too,” she said vaguely. “After. Look, Steve, you don’t look so . . . are you okay?”
She had to take his chin in her hand to make him look at her, and the guilt, remorse and utter self-loathing she saw on his face was almost enough to make her drop it again. It didn’t help that the red sun bulbs were impeding her healing ability, so the darkening marks on her flesh were cast in painful evidence everywhere he looked.
“Kara,” he said, “please believe me. I am so sorry.”
“Steve,” she cupped his face in both hands now, and tried not to think about how weirdly familiar it felt, doing this, “I know you are.”
Then she kissed him. Just once. Gently, on the cheek, like an old friend. When he drew back he still looked battle-fatigued, but better somehow, like a wound deep inside him had already started to close.
“Now let’s get out of here,” Kara said firmly. “I think we’ve given it everything it needs. No reason for it not to let us go.”
The Somnambulist did let them go. It restored them to the very locations from which they had been stolen, at—somehow—the exact time of their original abduction. Kara jerked to herself on the sidewalk, then nearly crashed into a hot dog stand in disorientation.
Steve came to himself outside Stark Tower, and had to wait only moments before Supergirl blazed down in a streak of red, gold and blue to land beside him.
They stared at each other on the bustling sidewalk. Kara made sure to lift her chin so that he could see the marks on her neck had already faded almost beyond memory. His expression grew lighter at the sight.
“Supergirl,” he said, and nodded, like they were on their way to work together and just happened to share a cab. “Good . . . morning?”
“In your timezone,” she said cheerfully, “yeah. I think it is.”
They looked at each other a moment longer, then Supergirl looked around, like she was sizing up the street corner and finding it wanting in some respect.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t want to suggest coffee, but . . . maybe there’s someplace around here we could go? Together?” She moved forward, her smile so bright and hopeful it made fireworks ignite deep in the pit of Captain America’s stomach. “I know the first two dates were pretty awful, but I’ve got a good feeling about our third.”
Date? Steve blinked, then considered. What was it they said? Third time’s the charm? He found himself nodding westward.
“There’s a little park,” he said. “Just two blocks that way. They’ve got an ice cream stand.”
Kara’s whole face lit up like the fourth of July.
“I love ice cream!” she gushed. “Come on, Cap. I’ll race you.”
Which was patently unfair to say, Steve thought, when you had superspeed. But there was just something about Kara Zor-El that made you kind of okay with that. So he broke into a run, grinning as he wove in and out around pedestrians, chasing the bright, shining beacon of her down the street, all the way to the park.