[[Author's Note: This is... fairly graphic and inappropriate for younger readers, as per the M rating. If you've read Our Lips Are Sealed, this is more... ahem... potent than that. And kind of disturbing.]]

He can't even eat her out.

Bane's good with his fingers, and since the first night Talia crept into his bed- quietly, of course, it wouldn't do for her father to find out- he's let her rut against his thighs and kiss his mask, he's finger-fucked her and rubbed her and even held her down to feign the motions of intercourse until the pressure of his mutilated groin against the full, lush wholeness of her cunt made her cry out and spasm under him.

He doesn't let her go back to her own bed unsatisfied.

But even when he's got three fingers buried in her and his hand is wet to the wrist, his mask only lets the faintest memory of scent through; the ruin of his tongue quests against the surgical steel that invades his mouth, hungry to taste her and knowing he never can.

It's the fantasy he torments himself with, the focus of his thwarted sexuality, because he doesn't dare think about what else he's missing. He knows he fucked a few women once, before the pit, but he was nineteen and naive and it was so, so long ago that he only revisits it in rare dreams, false memories of plunging into Talia and riding her until he explodes, an orgasm (he imagines, in his sleep) so much more intense than the frantic jerking-off he used to give himself in the pit.

So when Talia comes under him, impaled on his thick clever fingers and curling her toes into his thighs, he lets her pleasure be the fulfillment of his own starving desire, and when she is gone- always with a kiss to the bare skin of his face, always with a leaving look of sorrow and guilt- he lies awake and strokes his own skin, hipbones to nipples across the thick corded muscles where once he could feel nothing but ribs, and he thinks he would trade this life of power and plenty in the League's dojo for a mere handspan of flesh, and he aches.

She's not blind to his frustration, though, and Talia is nothing if not resourceful, and she comes to his bed one night with a bundle of leather and metal that confuses him at first.

It's made of wood, an androgynous phallus smaller than his had been, and it's wrapped in soft leather- he thinks he recognizes the gloves she's made it from- and mounted to a set of straps that she puts on, carefully, watching his eyes to gauge his reaction.

Surely she's insane.

But this is Talia, and her pleasure is everything he burns for, so he lets her finger him (gently, with oiled fingers so slim and nimble that the first one feels like nothing at all) until he's relaxed, until he thinks that he could learn to enjoy this someday. He doesn't expect to feel anything but violated, and only the thought of Talia's pleasure- of her soft sensitive flesh riding against the leather- holds him psychologically sound while she rests against his upraised knees and breaches him.

He's right: it hurts. It burns, and when she draws back (slowly, gently, still watching his eyes for a flicker of anything but trust, which he will never show her) it feels wrong, and he arches a little, drawing back.

The next stroke is worse, stranger, filling him up and stretching him open, and he gasps into the metal of his mask as she pulls back out, thinking he cannot possibly bear this until Talia's completion, wondering if this too is perhaps something a whole man might enjoy.

Then she grasps his buttocks and tilts them up, and her next thrust seems to angle toward his navel, and she strikes something inside him that turns his world white. He feels his eyes hood, feels his tattered mouth widen, feels blood surging and pooling in his abdomen, but if he makes a sound he can't hear it over the thunder in his ears. Talia smiles, wicked and dark, and this time when she draws back she rocks across that knot of flesh inside him and he is absolutely lost.

"Faster," he says, not quite believing how quickly the retreat of her cock has ceased to be a relief and become a torment. "God, faster."

She doesn't speed up, though; she's found the place she wants to hit, and her movements stay slow and intense, adjusting until she's rolling across it with every shift of her hips. It's unbearable, it's entirely new; Bane reels with it, shaking and arching and groaning and snarling, trying to spread himself wider and take more.

He's in an agony of bliss by the time he realizes that the liquid on his thighs is not oil, but Talia's wetness, coaxed from her cunt by the rocking pressure of the false cock and smearing over his skin with each thrust. Her face is flushed, her eyes deep, her lips parted; she looks more aroused like this, plowing him with careful strokes and watching his breathing stutter and his hips jerk, than she ever has with his hand buried in her and his thumb expertly circling her clit.

By the time it occurs to him to wonder what's the point of this why even bother with me he's so far gone he doesn't care if this goes on forever with no resolution. He just wants more, he wants all of it; even before the pit and the beatings and the men with their crude stone knives he knows he never felt pleasure like this, never felt waves of confused sensation colliding and washing through his body.

There is no focal point for his pleasure, no balls drawing up in preparation to shoot, no cock to grow harder and darker as he approaches orgasm. His entire body is awash in it. Every inch of his skin is electric; he runs his tongue against the mask just to feel the sensation of it, to explore the metamorphosis of mere skin into liquid bliss.

Now, though, now that his groans have become gasps and his body is shivering under Talia's onslaught, now she speeds up, and her strokes are snapping and brutal. His asshole burns and he doesn't care. Her cock feels like it's plunging through his body, pushing against his diaphragm, except that with each smack of her thighs against his buttocks (his knees are raised and spread so far, his feet clutching and stretching) she is pounding that place inside him and he is on the verge, he is on the verge-

There is no sling of hot come against his belly. There is only raw pleasure, unbearable intensity, an agonizing pressure, as if he is shooting and it's being blocked somehow, and it goes on and on until his heels kick against the floor and he convulses, head drawn back and hands gripping Talia's arms tightly enough to bruise. The head of her false cock is resting against that spot, pressing hard, and each jerk of his hips rocks it back and forth, milking him until he thinks he will die. He has never come like this; perhaps, if this is what orgasm is meant to feel like, he has never come before. It aches; he burns. There is nothing in his world but this, and Talia, and the cock buried in his ass.

Afterward he discovers that she has climaxed as well, driven by his pleasure; it shocks him, humbles him, that she derives as much from his ecstasy as he does from hers. She curls up against him, still wearing her false cock, and he thinks that every loss in his life has been worth this moment, and that he will destroy the whole world if he ever has to give this up, to give her up.

They cannot avoid discovery forever, he knows, but now he does not dread discovery. He is a whole man, and he will die gladly when his time comes to die, if he can have this one thing, if he can have her at his side.