Chapter 7

I can hardly concentrate on the kiss because electricity zings through my body, alighting every one of my sensory receptors. My toes curl, my skin goosebumps, my nipples harden, all as a rush of warmth floods through me.

His lips are soft, but his kiss is commanding. His hand on my cheek tilts my head back to give him the perfect angle to dip his tongue into my mouth and brush against my own. The moment his tongue touches mine, it unlocks a new level of tingly current between us.

I fall off my stool as I move to get closer to him. Without the slightest of faltering in our kiss, he swoops me up and against him, definitely using some of his superpowers in the process. I wrap my legs around him and push closer until we’re so close that our hearts beat up against each other.

By painfully slow degrees—almost like he’s trying to stop himself—he lowers his hand to grip my ass. When he does, he groans and slumps with the release of tension. It’s just enough of a change of position for me to feel his spandex-clad erection brush just the faintest bit against me.

If there was electricity when we kissed, the feel of his cock against me is an all-out storm. Like a woman possessed, I squirm to get a better angle of him against me. When I finally do, when I finally grind the tip of his cock against my clit, I shudder in the ecstasy of a core-clenching sigh.

A sigh that’s cut too short when he suddenly pulls away and sets me down onto the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” he gasps, turning away to stalk towards the balcony.

I follow him, swallowed up in the magnetic pull of our attraction, led on by the pull of my heady lust.

“Why are you apologizing? That was the best kiss of my life,” I say to his fleeing back.

For a brief second, I think I’ve gotten through to him. He pauses mid-step and turns his body just a fraction towards me. If he continues to turn, I can see how it will all go: he’ll swoop me up into his arms and kiss me until my lips bruise. He’ll throw me down onto the island and touch me until I scream. Then, he’ll bend me over against one of the stools and fuck me until I’ve had the most toe-curling orgasm of my life.

That doesn’t happen, though. With a snarl of frustration, he turns back towards the balcony and continues to walk.

I catch up with him when he reaches the glass door. Reaching forward, I grip his hand in mine. The connection startles me as energy streaks through us. Evidently, it feels the same for him.

He turns, staring first at our connected hands and then into my eyes. His face softens into an impossible vulnerability. He’s trying so hard not to give into whatever this is between us that it’s causing him almost pain. It’s almost enough for me to let this lie.

Almost.

“This sort of thing, this connection, doesn’t happen for me,” I say, letting my guard impossibly down. “I don’t connect with people. With you, though…”

“You’ve had a traumatic experience,” he says, but I notice he doesn’t pull his hand out of mine. Instead, his thumb slides up and down my own in a movement that I had no idea could be so erotic.

“I did,” I admit. “But that’s separate from this. I promise I’m thinking clearly. I’m good. I just want to take that horrible experience and turn it into something else. Instead of dying in that building, you saved me. The first actual superhero to ever exist, probably, just happened to be where I needed one and saved me. That’s something to celebrate. I want to celebrate. I want you.”

His thumb stops roving along my own.

A couple of long seconds pass by in silence.

“I didn’t just happen to be there,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“I was sort of following you.” He tries to run his hand through his hair and then shakes it out when he can’t penetrate its shell. “I was flying around when I saw you walking. It was like a thousand explosions went off inside me at once. I was pulled to you in a way that I’ve never felt, that I never thought anyone could feel, so I followed you. Even once you were inside the building, I waited. I couldn’t leave. Knowing you were in the building tethered me there. No, it more than made me stay. It took everything I had not to break through the windows myself and try to find you.”

I should be scared. I know I should be.

I’m not. If anything, I’m even more drawn towards him. There’s something between us that’s not in my imagination.

He tilts his body towards me and I step towards him. The hand that’s not holding his reaches up to rest on his shoulder, tracing a light path up his arm as it goes. It’s an unconscious movement, like it’s being pulled towards him by its own version of gravity.

But isn’t that just the way with us?

After all, after the first quake, something pulled me to look out the gaping hole that was once a window instead of heading for the concrete-lined stairwell. I had thought I’d wanted to see the devastation, but now I recognized the feeling for what it was: him.

“I felt you, too.”

He shakes his head, looking into my eyes with an intensity that makes me shiver. It’s a shift from his earlier care-free attitude.

“Not like this. Can’t be. I’m crazy with need for you. That’s why we can’t do anything tonight. If I were to even have a piece of you, even just my fingers inside you, I’d need to take all of you. The monster inside me would be loosed and I’d ravage you in a way that you couldn’t handle. Not tonight. This need for you that I have inside of me doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘gentle’.”

If he’s trying to talk me out of this, he’s doing a terrible job. I’m so wet, aching with the need for him, for release, that I can barely think straight.

Except, luckily for me, my lawyer brain never takes a day off. As I replay everything he said to me, pulsing with more and more need with every spiral, I stumble on a loophole.

“So, what if you don’t go inside me then?”

His warm, chocolate eyes harden into a steel gaze. With his hand not holding mine, he moves his hand to play at the apex of my thighs, just a breath away from where I need it most. Through the thin fabric of my tights, every brush scorches at my skin.

“Yeah?” he asks, letting his knuckles whisper at my core and his fingers continue to work my thigh.

“Yeah,” I answer, with the most enthusiastic nod known to mankind.

In a heartbeat, he whirls me around so that my back is pressed up against the glass wall. He hooks his fingers into the waist of my tights and underwear and pushes them both down with one smooth motion.

His eyes drop down and he moans. His fingers move to touch me, over my clit and past to where I’m positively dripping. He brings his fingers up to his mouth and sucks off every last trace of me. He groans, closing his eyes briefly at the taste of me.

“Such a pretty pussy,” he rasps.

He moves his fingers back to my pussy, working my clit as I step out of my pants. Not exactly easy since I have to pull them off my feet and shoes, as I’m being stroked to a blinding bliss.

“Should we move this somewhere more… accessible?” I ask.

He smirks. “Are you up for something a bit unconventional?”

Since there’s been absolutely nothing conventional about us up until now, I see no reason to start.

“Define unconventional,” I say as evenly as I can, despite the fact that my hips are bucking every time he does this swirling motion against my clit with the pads of his fingers.

“I don’t fly so much as I control the direction of different people or objects’ gravitational pull.”

He nods his head backwards to where the stools are now floating.

“Okay…” I say, still not fully understanding what he means by this.

The next moment, though, I’m the one floating. Rising higher and higher, my stomach jolts as my feet leave the ground. When my hips are in line with his face, I stop rising and he pushes me back against the window. He hooks each of my legs over his broad shoulders so that I’m spread out wide and waiting for him.

“Such a pretty pussy,” he whispers again. Then leans forward to inhale the scent of me like he’s a starving man about to devour a world-class meal.

Then he pauses. He looks up at me with those brown eyes of his with a sweet nervous look.

“My name’s Grant,” he says, a lopsided half-smile touching at his lips.

“Grant,” I whisper, savouring his name on my tongue. It suits him. Much more than the Garnet Defender. Certainly more than the Crimson Streak.

“It’s very nice to officially meet you, Hailey.”

Before I can say anything, he dives into my pussy.

His tongue finds my clit immediately and he lavishes attention on it in broad, swooping strokes. Within seconds, my body starts to hum with the familiar anticipation. I wrap my legs around his head and splay my hands against the glass to brace myself as my body tenses with building pleasure.

Except, just as the feeling approaches its crescendo, he moves. His tongue leaves my clit to swoop down to my sopping entrance. He licks my needy center, devouring every drop, while being careful not to dip inside.

Even though I really want him to dip inside.

I want him inside me so badly it’s practically imprinted into my DNA. Every last atom of me wants him to fuck me and fill me up.

“Grant,” I moan, an argument with why he should fuck me roughly right here and now locked and loaded to go.

As if he senses where I’m going, he shuts me up by moving his fingers to my clit. While his tongue swoops and licks at my core, his fingers move in tight, perfect circles on my clit.

Words abandon me. I never had a chance. All I can do is beat my hands against the window as my orgasm detonates. My body seizes to an impossible rigidity, every muscle flexing, as pleasure pulses to every cell in my body. My orgasm runs hard and deep, leaving me panting as it runs its course.

His fingers stop moving when my body starts to shudder with sensitive bucks, but his tongue continues to lave my entrance, drinking down every last drop of my life-changing orgasm.

Then, when my body goes slack with the release of tension, Grant lowers me to the ground and envelops me in his arms. Once again, I’m lulled by the steady beat of his heart against my cheek.

“Do you want to—” I start to ask, feeling his granite cock against me.

“Not tonight.”

He reaches down and helps me into my pants, holding my shoes in one hand.

“But—” I protest.

“You need rest. You’ve been through so much tonight.”

As he says that, it’s apparent that it’s no longer truly night. The sky has begun to lighten, even if it hasn’t started to glow with its morning blush.

He scoops me into his arms as the door flies open. We’re off flying into the night as I curl against him, feeling safer than I’ve ever felt. I go to protest that we should stay at his place, that I won’t be able to sleep anyways, but with the soft morning breeze in my hair and the warmth from his chest on my cheek, the need for sleep covers me like a warm quilt.

By the time his penthouse is just a prick of light, one amongst a cityscape of electric stars, I drift off to sleep. I sleep feeling safe and unworried, like everything in my world is perfect.

It’s a stark contrast to the feeling that I feel when I wake up hours later in the afternoon light.

I wake up alone and in my own bed, even though I’m certain that I neither let Grant in, nor did I ever tell him my address.