Silhouette

by Robin Hale

  I’d even felt the beginnings of a smile teasing at the corners of my mouth when an explosion split the air and rumbled through the building, shaking the walls and floor around us.

  Oh god. Oh fuck, no. Molly!

  “Colossal!” I barked, taking off at a run toward the last stairwell that separated us from the penthouse floor. “It came from upstairs!”

  I heard the rush of air that meant that Colossal was flying, speeding up behind me without any care for what his wake might do to the building around us. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care if it tore the damn place down. I didn’t even care when I felt his hand wrapping once more around the back of my belt, hauling me off my feet to carry me along with him. His flight was faster than my sprint, and all I wanted was to get to Fawn.

  It was the only thing that mattered.

  As we reached the landing, Colossal let go, and I skittered across the floor on my feet. The hall was obscured by a cloud of black smoke, dissipating quickly into the ventilation system but not yet gone. The walls, ceiling, and floor about halfway down the hallway were blackened; it was obviously the site of the explosion.

  “Fawn!” I called, my preference for stealth ruined by my raw panic and the proximity of Opal City’s own raging bull in a china shop.

  A thick, wet cough split the air, and then that beloved voice followed. “I’m here!” Fawn called back, and through the dissipating smoke, I could see her unmistakable figure staggering to her feet. “I’m here.”

  Fawn took a single, stumbling step forward and then I was at her side, hands supporting her elbows, resisting the urge to run my palms over her body, to search for injuries and reassure myself that she was safe.

  She flung her arms around my neck and pressed her lips against mine like my mouth was the first breath of air she’d had in an age of drowning. The shock passed easily, and I wrapped my arms around her waist and tugged her closer. God, how I’d missed the feeling of her body pressed against me. Her lips were soft, impossibly smooth even after the ordeal she’d been through, and I knew how she tended to bite them when she was anxious. She tasted like every bright, beautiful thing I never thought I’d get to taste again, and a noise horrifyingly like a sob escaped from my mouth.

  Fawn’s hands slid from my shoulders into my hair and she tilted her head, deepening the kiss and pressing against me like she wanted to be certain that I was really there. It was desperate and soft all at the same time. Strangely chaste, even though the touch seared me to my core.

  “You came back for me,” she breathed, and I tightened my arms around her waist.

  “Of course I did,” I whispered against her lips. “I know how you hate to have to get along without me, darling.”

  Her bright, musical laughter was interrupted by another round of coughing, and the smile fled from my face.

  “Fawn, the smoke —” I began urgently. How quickly could Colossal get her to a hospital if he fled through a window?

  Fawn’s hair, tumbling down from its ever-present bun, settled around her shoulders as she shook her head. “No, the brachnine…the heat from the explosion would’ve rendered it harmless. The smoke is,” she coughed. “No more dangerous than wood smoke. Which you really shouldn’t breathe, either.” She grimaced, but the panic that constricted my lungs yielded just slightly.

  From behind us, Colossal let out a surprisingly polite cough, as if to remind us that he was there. Heat rose along the back of my neck, and I braced myself for the feeling of Fawn pulling away. Surely she wouldn’t want to be entangled with me in front of a colleague. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t. And if I repeated that enough, I was sure I might believe it someday.

  But she didn’t pull away. Fawn slipped her arms down to my waist and rested her cheek on my shoulder, eyes fluttering shut. My chest went tight, heart wrenching in a strange and unfamiliar way at the realization that Molly wasn’t trying to hide from him. She didn’t care if he saw her clinging to me. “Hello, Captain,” she murmured. “I think I got him.”

  For the first time since rounding the stairwell landing and seeing the chaos in the hallway ahead, I noticed the slumped figure next to the elevator bank. Oh shit.

  Abel Johansson was a pile of charred clothing and rag doll limbs, and I tightened my grip on Molly just that much further. What had she had to do to survive being alone with Abel like that? The idea that she’d had to kill was too much to contemplate. It would hurt her to have done that, even if I’d have liked to go a few rounds with him myself.

  “I’m sure the police chief will agree that you didn’t have any choice,” Colossal said, his voice firm and calm. I was grateful for it. I didn’t have the energy to win a fight with Captain Colossal. I felt like I’d burned out every last bit of my reserves in the past two hours, but if he’d made her feel worse for dropping that monster I’d have tried to throw Colossal down the open elevator shaft.

  What happened next happened quickly. One breath, Fawn was sleepily looking up at me from her perch on my shoulder and Colossal was alerting the police that the building had been cleared and we required hazardous material containment. In the next, Abel Johansson was staggering to his feet. A knife glinted in the wrecked overhead lighting, gleaming as he released it from his hand in a smooth throw aimed directly at Molly’s back.

  I didn’t have time to think. Barely had time to react. With what remained of my strength, I lifted Molly off her feet and whirled the pair of us around, covering Fawn’s body and pushing her back against the wall.

  Molly’s eyes went wide as every muscle in my back tensed, preparing for the feeling of a knife separating my skin — but it never came.

  A heartbeat. Two. The knife should’ve struck. I struggled to release my locked-up arms and look over my shoulder back toward Abel.

  The sight that greeted me was shocking. Colossal held the Gravedigger’s son up against the wall with his left hand spanning the villain’s throat, his right hand closed around the blade of the knife where it had been sailing through the air.

  “Holy hell,” I whispered as the adrenaline finally crashed through my system and set my limbs shaking.

  “That’s quite enough of that, Abel Johansson,” Colossal said in his booming, authoritative Hero Voice. “Molly, do you have hand ties on you?”

  I tugged a pair from my belt and handed them wordlessly over to Colossal, staring at his right hand where a single drop of blood was falling to the floor.

  “Thank you, Silhouette.” Colossal’s attention returned to the Gravedigger’s son and his blue eyes narrowed. “One word out of you and I’ll let the Silhouette do what she likes. Understand?”

  It was an empty threat, I was pretty sure, but I was still staring at Colossal, wide-eyed like I’d seen the face of god.

  “He just,” I whispered to Molly, unable to tear my eyes away, miming the grab weakly. “He just grabbed it out of the air.”

  “And if he’d practice, he could do it without grabbing the blade,” Molly remarked placidly. Her fingers were on my jaw, turning my face back to hers, and the emotion shining in her eyes was so pure, so unreserved that I felt the air steal out of my lungs. “You tried to die for me.”

  Heat rushed into my face and I was struck with sympathy for Fawn’s predisposition to blushing. “I wouldn’t say I was trying to die, darling.”

  The heel of her hand pushed against my shoulder even as her other arm tightened around my waist and pulled me close. “I love you,” she whispered, brushing her mouth against my jaw. There were tears in her eyes. Her fingers wrapped around my shoulder, my belt, and I could feel the first shudders of what might grow into wracking sobs building in her perfect body. “You can’t die.”

  “I love you too.” The words seemed less terrifying there in the ruined hallway of some evil moron’s ultimate destruction. They felt inevitable, so obvious that I was almost embarrassed that I hadn’t said them before. “And I’ll try not to.”

  Fawn huffed a laugh against my neck and clutched me tighter.

>   “You know, Silhouette, you’ve got a knack for this heroism thing,” Colossal said from his perch above Abel’s grotesquely still form. “I’d be inclined to overlook some of your past behavior, if you could commit to playing on the right side of the law from now on.”

  The grin that spread across my face, splitting my lip back open, was not entirely kind. I looked down at Molly in my arms, at the amused glimmer in her eyes, and winked. “Sure, Captain.”

  Pearly white teeth bit into Fawn’s lip as she tried to stifle a laugh.

  THE TRIP back to my apartment was strangely quiet, as though Fawn and I could only talk about the things we needed to talk about surrounded by walls, away from prying eyes. There was something difficult to be done. Something so fragile and important that we didn’t want to risk ruining it by being careless on the walk back.

  Opal City was silent at that hour of the morning, and we slid through the stillness like sharks cutting through water.

  “Still pretending this is a safe house?” Molly’s soft mouth was quirked into half a smile and her eyes shone in the half-light.

  I closed the front door behind us and huffed a laugh.

  “No, not pretending this is a safe house.” I glanced around, looking with no small amount of embarrassment at the mostly empty bottle of whiskey I’d left on the counter, the notes and blueprints that were scattered over the table. Even the pizza box was left where I’d tossed it, careless and angry and not expecting to have Fawn in my home where she could see it.

  The confidence that I’d felt in the penthouse had fled from me, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands, where to look, how to comfortably stand in Molly’s presence.

  “I’m sorry,” I said at last, all of my churning and worry leading back to those two simple words. I swallowed hard and kept my eyes on the floor, unwilling to look at Fawn’s face. I wasn’t ready to see how she might respond. “I shouldn’t have — You don’t have to wear the pendant. It was meant to be a gift, not a burden, and I shouldn’t have expected you to do it just because I’d like it. I — I do understand, darling, how difficult this is for you. And I don’t want to ask for things you don’t want to give me.” I dragged my eyes from the floor to Fawn’s face, feeling as naked and vulnerable as I had ever been. “I’ll take what I can get. I love you and that’s enough for me.”

  Fawn’s face was a study in aching hope, and I held my breath on a possibility that was too painful to consider. She looked beautiful like she always was, but there was something new in her eyes that made her look...attainable. Like all I’d needed to do was tell her that I wanted her.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” she said, the words a rush of breath as she crossed the room. She took my hands in her own like she couldn’t stand not to be touching me. “I was —” She swallowed and cast around like she was looking for the right words in the air around her. “I’ve never had someone who made me feel like it was safe to be in love with them. It’s only ever…it’s only ever been a way that someone could hurt me.” Her eyes went liquid with the threat of unshed tears. “I’ve been carrying around this heartache like…like a shield, not letting anyone get past it. I thought I could keep myself safe. I thought I could keep myself distracted with something superficial. But I can’t. And I was afraid. I shouldn’t have — I shouldn’t have put that on you. I’m so sorry, Lana.”

  Her hand dipped beneath the neckline of her sweater and she pulled a fine gold chain out. The pendant. She was wearing the pendant. My heart gave a fierce double beat and a choked laugh fought its way out of my throat.

  “I love you and I’m not ashamed of you. I just…had trouble believing that you really wanted me. And that’s on me. Not you.” Fawn bit that distracting lower lip of hers and I couldn’t help it, I had to kiss her.

  She tasted of home and victory and heat. She tasted of all the best things, all the things I’d never had in one person before.

  “I want you. God, Molly, I can’t remember how to want anything else. But I’m not going to stop stealing,” I warned her. “Colossal might not be completely useless, but this isn’t my origin story as a hero.”

  Fawn’s laugh was like sunshine and I just wanted to bask in it. “I know. And I won’t help him catch you, but I won’t stop him either.”

  “Darling, if Captain Colossal manages to arrest me without your help, I will so thoroughly deserve it that I will deliver myself to the OCPD without protest.” My fingers traced over Molly’s jaw, her cheeks, the softness of her hair still wild and loose around her shoulders. She looked wanton. Perfect. I desperately wanted her in my bed. “Am I allowed to keep you?” I asked in a whisper, and it was somehow harder to say than ‘I love you’ had been.

  Molly’s fingers tangled in the hair at the base of my skull and she pushed so close to me that I was enveloped in her warm, intoxicating scent. “Please,” she breathed. “Please keep me.”

  The words painted lines of electric desire from every place my skin touched hers directly to my core, heat pooling low in the cradle of my hips. The press of her lips against mine as I tugged her flush against my body was like coming home after a lifetime of exile. I’d spent a long time chasing the rollercoaster of emotion that my string of one or two-night stands brought me. I liked the hunt, the chase. I liked learning a new body. I even liked the crash when we just didn’t fit together anymore.

  But none of those things could hold a candle to this. None of those experiences had prepared me for what it was like to let someone in. Molly stood in my living room like she belonged there, and she did. I suddenly had my heart back in the right place, and it was amazing that I had survived it being gone.

  “Come to bed with me,” I whispered against Molly’s rose-colored lips, brushing my mouth against hers with each word.

  She nodded, clutching her fingers in my hair once more, and followed me to the bedroom.

  It was absurd. We’d both been awake for far too long, and the small hours of the morning weren’t really the time for the athletic lovemaking I’d had in mind for makeup sex, but I wasn’t capable of not touching her. The exhaustion that had seeped into my bones fell away from me with the first stroke of Molly’s fingers along my neck. All I wanted was to feel her coming apart in my hands.

  The sound of Molly’s glasses clattering against the nightstand brought my mind back to the moment.

  “If I recall correctly,” Molly said, lifting her sweater over her head and dropping it unceremoniously onto the floor. “You were too injured to let me touch you properly, the last time I was here.” She was different than the last time I’d had her in my bedroom. More confident, less worried. She escaped from her clothing like she was dropping senseless restraints, rather than the armor she’d once hidden behind. The look on her face said that she knew exactly what the sight of her did to me, and the heat in her eyes sent an answering wave of desire through my body so intense that it was almost painful.

  Molly crossed the small space between us — naked in the moonlight and utterly perfect — and wrapped her fingers around the hidden zipper pull on my suit, lowering it enough to slip her hands inside. She painted fireworks across my skin, every nerve aching to press closer to her touch.

  “Healed now,” I gasped more than whispered, canting my hips forward helplessly at her sudden grin.

  “Glad to hear it.” There was a glimmer of amusement in her eyes that matched the heat in her touch. “You know, as your doctor.” Molly leaned forward, brushing her lips against the underside of my jaw. She found the buckle of my belt and slid the whole thing to the floor as I hastily kicked my way out of my boots. “And as your doctor, I should probably make sure it’s healed properly. I’d hate for there to be any…complications.”

  I nodded helplessly, practically flinging my gloves and goggles across the room. Molly’s confidence was mesmerizing, fascinating. I spared a moment to worry that all of this had been an elaborate, guilt-driven dream. That I’d concocted this scenario in which I was able to play hero and win h
er back…and that I would wake to find myself alone in my apartment, reeking of alcohol and despair.

  Molly peeled me out of my leather suit with a single-minded focus that gave me a glimpse of what she might look like alone in her lab. It struck me, then, that Izzy would laugh to see it. She’d see in Fawn what she saw in me when I dove deep on some plan or problem, and then she’d throw her hands up and say we deserved each other.

  My stomach clenched, and warmth flooded my chest. Fuck, I hoped we deserved each other.

  Gentle hands on my shoulders pushed me back onto my bed, letting me sink into the covers and following me down. Molly’s thigh slotted between my legs while she trailed careful fingers over the red scar tissue on my hip.

  “Like I said, healed now,” I whispered, somehow hesitant to risk shattering whatever spell Molly had woven with her confident touches and careless nudity.

  “It’ll fade some, but you’ll have a scar here,” Molly murmured, still petting my hip, all pretense of medical interest abandoned. Her thigh pressed between my own, pushing against me in a smooth motion that had me riding the wave of her thrust and grinding my clit down as hard as I could.

  “Fuck,” I gasped, sucking in a sharp breath as Molly’s hips rolled again. The rhythm of it was perfect, agonizing and exactly what I needed to thoroughly melt my brain out of my skull. I was slick in moments, skin practically humming with the need to be touched by the gorgeous woman in my bed.

  Her chuckle was soft and sweet and it ghosted along my skin as she leaned down to kiss me again. Her tongue opened my mouth like a flower blooming in sunlight, and a shiver tore through me. How had I gone so long without this? How had I been able to stand being alone like I was, cut off from everyone except Izzy, when this connection was out in the world waiting for me?

  Every new touch kept me off-balance. She painted my skin with the stroke of her clever fingers. She stole my breath with every rock of her hips, her thigh against my pussy. Her lips teased my neck until I was out of my mind with the unpredictable waves of pleasure that broke over my flesh. I was lightheaded. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the entire world for what was happening to me right then, let alone in my apartment. My hands were fumbling, useless like a rookie out to snatch their first score, lockpicks a foreign weight in their hands. The silken slide of her skin beneath my palms was addicting, and I couldn’t stop myself from petting her everywhere that I could reach.