Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(76)

“Not permanent chaos,” she said. “Just…temporary.”

“Just long enough for you to sell whatever you stole from Nyssa to the highest bidder?”

Again, he heard that smile in her voice. “Perhaps.”

He opened his mouth, but she asked, “Don’t you ever get bored of fighting for the good side?”

“No. It was a part of who I am long before I ever put on this suit.”

Her hands explored down his chest, to the scar down his torso. Luke shuddered as her fingertips whispered over the thick scar tissue. “Such a noble hero.”

She dragged a finger over that scar again.

“Why are you here?” Not in Gotham City—but in this room. With him.

Her fingers paused. And as her breath fanned over his mouth, he realized how close they’d drifted. Felt every inch of her thigh pressed against his, the warmth seeping from her. Not the coldblooded creature of shadows that she appeared, but someone alive and burning. “I can not be here, if you want.”

She started to rise, and Luke’s body barked in protest as he lunged for her, grabbing her arm and dragging her back to the bed. The suit beneath his hands was flexible, yet hard, some material he couldn’t place. But the shape of her body beneath it—“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?” she purred.

“Don’t leave me in the dark,” he said quietly.

She knew he didn’t mean the request as simply what it was: Don’t leave me alone in the darkness. This place where we both exist, yet serve different callings.

Her fingers ghosted over his face. His nose, his mouth.

As she made to pull her hand away, Luke gripped her fingers in his, interlacing their hands, and kissed her.



* * *



—

The kiss was soft, yet left no room for questions.

And Selina realized she might very well have lost her mind as she leaned into it. Answering his kiss with her own.

Warm—he was so warm.

She could not remember the last time someone had held her.

When she’d seen him on the roof, when he’d swayed and she’d spotted the blood leaking from his side, it had been blind instinct to save him. Just as it was now blind instinct to slide her arms around his neck and press close.

Here in the dark, in the silence, she let him. Breathed him in.

His tongue traced the seam of her lips in quiet request, and a small noise came out of Selina as he tasted her. Gently—then deeply.

His scar, that brutal scar slicing down his chest…

She wanted to tell him. That she knew.

And that she also knew that they were as unlikely a pair as—

He nipped at her bottom lip.

Every thought eddied from her head.

She didn’t care. Didn’t care about any of it, anything beyond this room and this man before her, and—

No. That wasn’t true. Would never be true.

He sensed the shift in her, and pulled back, his lips hovering over hers. “You okay?”

His breathing was a jagged, uneven rasp.

Not yet. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes yet.

Selina leaned forward to kiss him. Once. Twice.

His hands buried themselves in her hair, his body shuddering as he seemed to yield to that kiss, to her.

She slid into his lap, his hands now grazing down her back, lower—

He didn’t react fast enough, didn’t seem to realize that the click in the forearm of her suit meant all was not well.

By the time the small needle punctured his neck, by the time he grunted in surprise, she’d leapt off him.

“You—” he started.

Stopped.

In the pure dark, she couldn’t see, but she could hear as his breath left him in a rush and his powerful body fell back onto the mattress. Unconscious.

Selina scooped up her helmet, setting it on her head but opting to keep the lenses away.

It had been an unspoken promise of trust—not to look.

So she didn’t. Even as she opened the bedroom window and vanished into the night.





Harley’s hideout in an abandoned underground subway station was precisely the sort of place Selina would have imagined for her: chaotic, colorful, and stocked with various weapons.

It seemed that the circus was the prevalent theme. Amid the various worn pieces of furniture were vibrant old posters of fire-eaters and tightrope walkers, strands of lights strung up across the vaulted stone space, and what seemed to be an old red-yellow-and-blue-striped tent canvas had been converted into a curtain to conceal a tiny bathroom in the far back of the round chamber.

Selina didn’t even know what she was doing here. It was past three, and they were likely asleep, but…She needed to talk. To someone. Anyone.

The thought of returning home to her apartment, to pacing across the immaculate floors for the remainder of the night, had been irritating enough that instead of heading north, she’d come here.

Ivy had answered thirty seconds after Selina knocked on the dented metal door.

Her red hair was up in a messy bun, black-rimmed glasses were perched on her pert, freckled nose, and an old sweatshirt with faded letters that read Plants Are People! dangled off one shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Selina had leaned against the grimy doorframe. “Can’t a girl say hi?”