DC – I am Batman

Single knock. Hard, precise. One knuckle.

The book slid off his chest. Persian military strategy, one of Ra's's, and he'd been reading the same paragraph about cavalry flanking for ten minutes because he kept thinking about the spot where her jaw met the space behind her ear. The lamp was oil. The cot was narrow. The stone was warm from underneath.

He knew who it was before he opened the door. Talia knocked differently from everyone at the compound. League students didn't knock at all. Shiva didn't come to his quarters. Ra's sent people. Talia knocked once and expected the door to open.

He opened the door.

She was standing in the frame in a silk robe. Dark green, tied at the waist, the fabric catching the lamp light from behind him. No combat gear. No sword. Her hair was down, loose past her shoulders. She was barefoot on the warm stone.

He'd never seen her like this. The robe was thin enough that the lamp light showed the line of her through the silk and she was standing in his doorway at night with her hair down and no weapon and her eyes were on him and the expression on her face was looser than he'd ever seen it.

"I didn't come to talk about my father."

He stepped back. She walked in.

His quarters were small. A cot, a shelf, a chair, the lamp on a hook in the wall. The book was open on the bed where he'd left it. The Persian cavalry were still mid-flank. She didn't look at the room. She looked at him.

"Close the door."

He closed it. The room got smaller.

She stood in the center of the floor and reached for the tie of the robe. Pulled it. The silk fell open and she shrugged it off one shoulder, then the other, and it slid down her arms and pooled at her feet and she was standing in the lamplight in nothing and she was waiting.

Her chin was level, her shoulders back, and her eyes were on his face and she was reading him and she was going to stand there until she got what she came for.

His breath caught. His hands opened at his sides. His eyes went to her and stayed. The lamp light on the slope of her shoulder. The line from her collarbone down. Her breasts, the nipples tight. The flat plane of her stomach and the sharp cut of her hips. The dark hair between her thighs. Her legs, long and lean and the same legs that had pinned him to the training yard floor and held him there for three seconds past the yield.

Her mouth softened. Just the corners.

"Good," she said. Quiet.

She stepped forward. Put one hand on his chest and pushed. Firm. He went backward until the backs of his knees hit the cot and he sat and she was standing above him and her hand was still on his chest and the heat of her palm was coming through his shirt.

She leaned down and kissed him.

Precise. Controlled. Her mouth on his, warm and closed for the first second, then opening, and her tongue touched his lower lip and the taste was tea and warmth underneath. Her hand was still on his chest, holding him in place, and her other hand came up and her fingers went into his hair and gripped and she was angling his head where she wanted it and he let her because this was hers and she was running it.

He kissed her back. Softer than she expected. Her fingers tightened in his hair when his mouth went gentle instead of hard, when he didn't push for more and just kissed her. Slow and careful and paying attention to what her mouth did when he changed the angle.

She pulled back an inch. Her breath was on his lips.

"You're being gentle."

"Yeah."

"I didn't ask for gentle."

"You didn't ask for anything. You knocked."

Her mouth twitched. Then she kissed him again and this time there was more behind it, more weight, her hand in his hair pulling his head back, and her knee came up on the cot beside his hip and then the other knee and she was straddling him, bare thighs on either side of his hips and the heat of her through his training pants immediate and specific.

He put his hands on her waist. First time his hands had been on her skin without clothes between them. Warm. Smooth over muscle, the same body that threw combinations he couldn't block and ran mountain trails without breathing hard. His thumbs found her hipbones and the ridges were sharp under thin skin.

She made a small sound. Just air, pushed out through her nose, when his thumbs pressed into the hollows beside her hipbones.

He kissed her neck. Found the spot below her ear that he'd been thinking about since the balcony, the place where the cold skin met the warm skin, and he put his mouth there and her whole body tightened. Her thighs clenched against his hips. Her hand in his hair went rigid. Her head tilted away from him to give him more of the neck and the tilt was involuntary because she corrected it and then stopped correcting because he was still there, mouth on that spot, and her breathing was wrong.

"Nn-"

Quiet. Almost nothing.

He didn't move from the spot. Just stayed. Lips on her pulse, which was faster than sixty-four now. Her heartbeat against his mouth.

Her hips rolled. Forward, against him, through his training pants, and the contact was blunt and warm and she was wet through the fabric. She ground against him once and the sound she made was louder than the first one and her jaw tightened but her hips rolled again anyway.

He kept his mouth on her neck. His hands stayed on her waist. His thumbs on her hipbones.

She pulled his head back by the hair. Kissed him hard. Her tongue in his mouth, her hips grinding against him through the fabric, and the pace was hers and the angle was hers and his cock was hard against her and she rocked against it deliberately, testing the shape of him through the pants.

"Ah-" Low, into her mouth. His hips pushed up to meet her and she smiled against his lips. Her mouth curving against his while she kissed him.

She pulled back. Her hands on his shoulders. Pushed him flat on the cot and held him there and looked down at him with her hair hanging around both their faces and her breathing uneven and her eyes dark. Her bottom lip was wet and her cheeks were flushed.

She leaned down. Kissed him once, soft, on the mouth.

Then she bit his lower lip.

Hard. Her teeth closed on his lip and pulled and the pain was sharp and real and he tasted copper and his hips bucked up against her and the grind that produced made both of them freeze because the angle was right and the pressure was wrong and if either of them moved an inch they were past the point of stopping.

She held the bite. Her eyes were on his. Then she let go. Licked the spot she'd bitten, copper and warmth, and sat up straight on his hips and looked down at him with her hands flat on his chest and her hair around her face and her breathing fast and shallow.

He was hard. Through the pants, pressed against her. Her weight settled directly on him.

She ground against him one more time. Slow. Deliberate. Watching his face while she did it. His hands tightened on her hips and his jaw clenched and the sound he made was bitten down and she caught all of it.

Then she lifted her weight off him. Stood. Picked up the robe from the floor. Pulled it on. Tied the sash. Hair pushed back. Shoulders straight. Chin level.

She looked down at him on the cot. His lip bleeding, his pants tented, his hands empty, his breathing wrecked.

"Tomorrow," she said. "I want you rested."

She turned toward the door. Opened it. The corridor was dark and cold beyond the lamp's reach.

She looked back over her shoulder.

"Don't touch yourself tonight." Her eyes dropped to where his hands were gripping the wool blanket. "That's mine."

She walked out. The door closed. Jasmine in the room, on his hands, in his hair where her fingers had been.

He lay on the cot and stared at the ceiling and his lip was bleeding and his cock ached and the book about Persian cavalry had fallen on the floor and the lamp was guttering and the stone was warm from underneath.

He didn't touch himself.

He thought about it for a long time. But the word mine was still in the room and his hands stayed on the blanket and his pulse eventually came down and the lamp burned out and the room was dark and warm and he fell asleep with copper on his tongue and jasmine in the air.