When was the last time she'd gone over to a guy's place just to have sex with him?

Never, she realized. She'd started to once, in high school, when Denny Herbert invited her with that passionate gaze of his, but she'd lost her nerve halfway there. It was one of the only times her courage had ever failed her. And that turned out to be a good thing, considering how Denny went on to treat the three of her friends that he did manage to seduce. Maybe it hadn't been loss of nerve. Maybe it had been a sudden intrusion of good sense.

If so, then where was that good sense now? If doing Denny Herbert would have been a mistake, then doing Megamind had to be a recipe for disaster, especially considering the warning he'd given her when he'd first propositioned her.

"This kind of pleasure can very easily go over into pain. Very easily and very suddenly. If we go forward," and he looked her firmly in the eye, "we will cause each other pain sometimes. We will not be able to help it." By the time he'd said it, she'd already tasted the kind of pleasure he was referring to, the thing that happened when his skin touched human skin. He'd explained it a little bit, something about different electrochemical balances and the exchange of electrons, a few nights ago when he'd taken off one glove and held her hand. Whatever it was, it made holding hands with him for ten minutes a more powerful experience than an hour of making out with any human lover she'd ever had. She wanted more of that. Lots more. She wanted it so much that the good sense or whatever it was that had warned her away from Denny was silent now; her feelings all the way over had been dominated by a warm glow of lust.

First, there was lunch. Minion had come up with an unusual meal. There was a great variety of flavors, colors, textures and temperatures, but it was all finger food, in little pieces meant to be eaten in a bite or two. Within ten minutes of sitting down, she and Megamind were feeding each other, with the inevitable touching of fingers and lips, so that the meal became a kind of foreplay. He was without gloves for a change, and except for his boots he wasn't wearing leather, just one of those stretchy fabrics of his own invention. That was okay; it was tight and that was sexy. They left the table with their arms around each other. She let him lead her into a room that hadn't been there last time she was here. There was very little in it yet: a grey carpet, a low bed with black bedclothes, a little table with a few things on it.

"I thought you didn't like beds," she said.

"I don't like sleeping on beds. This isn't for sleeping."

"Oh." She smiled, almost giggled, but then he closed the door behind them, turned to face her and kissed her again. She realized that now she would always think of his kisses as electron kisses, with that gentle energy that made her feel them so intensely that there was no thinking about anything else while his lips were touching hers. Touching, moving, caressing, mouths opening a little, then a little more. She put out a cautious tongue, ran it along his lower lip -

-Ouch! It felt like the kind of static electric shock you get in the winter if you walk across carpet and then touch a metal doorknob, except it was in her mouth! She had her face pulled away from his before she realized she was doing it.

"Tongues are dangerous, Roxanne," he murmured. "Let's save them for the advanced course, shall we?" She nodded. He pulled her into a hug, cuddling the side of his face against hers. Mmmm, electrons. So good. After a long moment, she lifted one hand from his back and put it against the back of his head. The electron thing worked there, too; her palm and fingers, everywhere they were touching him, glowed with pleasure.

"That feels so wonderful," he whispered. She moved her fingers a little, and a little was almost too much, too powerful. Hold still, get used to that. Okay, another little movement. Same thing. Now she moved her face against his, pushing the envelope just a little, sweet. She felt him move in her arms, breathing deeply.

He did what she had done, slid his long blue fingers up the nape of her neck and into her hair. She felt a shudder of pleasure start there, and he must have felt it, too, because he pulled his face away from hers at the last second so that she could move freely without any need to suppress it. They had a moment to smile, to lock eyes from inches away, and then they let their faces come back together very slowly, cheek on cheek, his chin sliding over her shoulder right along the neckline of her sweater, a tight little rose pink lambs wool sweater, short-sleeved and low-necked, chosen to make the most of her modest endowment. She'd bought it two days before with this afternoon in mind.

She noticed how close she was to his ear. The purple-violet color was something that had fascinated her since the first time she'd seen him. She slid her face a little closer to it, the pleasure of the sliding momentarily making her forget everything else, and then they rested, her mouth open and her warm breath emerging against it.

"If you're thinking about touching my ear, the right amount of pressure is barely any," he said. She took him at his word, ran her fingertip along the rim; it made a happy line of electrons around the edge, down to the lobe. "Mmmm," he said. She ran it halfway back and then, gradually, carefully, began to slide it between his ear and his head.

"If this starts to feel like too much, just say so and I'll back off," she whispered. She had a theory she wanted to test: she thought his ears looked thinner than human ears, almost like a cat's, and she wanted to feel whether it was true or whether it was an optical illusion caused by the color. She moved her thumb in, just touching the rim at first, then slowly sliding it into that delicate curve.

"Enough," he said when her thumb was opposite her index finger, positioned just right to tell that, yes, it was thinner, though not as thin as she'd thought. He hadn't said too much, so she didn't withdraw. Instead, she did the same thing they'd already learned to do together: move a little, pause, move a little, pause. It felt good, but her hand started to get tired from the awkward position. With all due slowness and carefulness, she pulled her fingers away.

Long pause. Then, on the far side of her head from where his cheek rested, making it glow, he took the edge of her ear between his thumb and forefinger and showed her what she'd been doing to him. Only more so.

On that earlier night, when she'd first seen and touched his bare hand, she'd discovered that the swirls of texture on the tips of his fingers were more raised and distinct than those of human fingerprints. She'd also discovered that those pads of texture were the mother lode of electron activity, not only for her, but for himself. This was a big part of the reason he wore gloves most of the time; he didn't want to share this sensation with just anybody. Now she was discovering what happened when the flesh of her ear, where it was thinnest, was touched by two electron sources, one on each side. And then he started sliding those fingertips along the rim.

She forgot to breathe. For so long that she started to grey out. She began to really understand that it was possible to die of pleasure.

When she recovered, he was touching just at the edge of her earlobe and saying "Can you take those out?" Her earrings, of course, the little gold seashell studs, pretty and subtle but not what's wanted in a situation like this. She took half a step back, just enough to give herself space to take them off without elbowing him. He let his hands drop to her waist. She had the earrings out in a few seconds. She tucked them in her pocket and expected to be pulled close to him again, but he'd gotten distracted. The thing that distracted him was the line of buttons down the front of her sweater. He put two fingers inside the neckline and flicked the top button with his thumb so that it popped open. He moved down to the next one, and the next, flick, flick, the backs of his fingers making a double line of pleasure down her torso, until they were all open and the garment hung limp from her shoulders. Then he turned his attention to her bra, beige silk with a front clasp. Equipment of all sorts was easy for him; he had no trouble understanding the clasp. In two seconds the bra was also hanging limp. He tucked his thumbs underneath both the shoulders of her sweater and the straps of the bra. Two lines of pleasure followed, over her shoulders and down her upper arms as he pushed the garments off her. She held her arms behind her so that when he got to her elbows the clothes just fell off. The movement had brought their bodies close again. She put her arms around his waist and kissed him, feeling the electrons move between their faces. Then she stopped kissing him because one of his hands was coming to rest between her shoulder blades and it was taking up all her attention.

"Breathe, Roxanne. In this state you need more oxygen than usual." She forced her lungs to work. After a few seconds, she had to admit he was right. With enough oxygen, the pleasure was not diminished but she could function instead of being overwhelmed by it. "Ready for more?" he asked. She nodded and his other hand went back to her earlobe and to the tender skin under her ear, just behind the hinge of her jaw. Her eyes went out of focus and her mouth fell open, trying to get more air. It was the most powerful thing she had ever felt, but after a moment she was handling it. She was even capable of reaching for a little more. She arched her neck so that the fingertips below her ear slid down onto the side of her throat.

Suddenly a horrible little lightning bolt of pain lanced from those fingertips into the flesh of her neck right down to her spine. She pulled away from him violently, her hands going to the spot. She realized she was weeping a little because it hurt so much.

"I'm sorry, Roxanne. We can forget about this if you like." He had one of his hands, the one that had touched her throat, curled against his chest. With his other hand, he picked up her bra and sweater and handed them to her. She shook her head.

"Just give me a few minutes, okay?" She went to the bed and sat down on the edge. She breathed as deeply as she could. "You did warn me." He came to the bed, laid her bra and sweater on the corner, then pulled up the top blanket and wrapped it around her. It felt comforting and safe. He sat beside her. As her adrenaline reaction faded out, she began to be glad he was there. She leaned against him. He put his arm around her, outside the blanket.

"I've found that the throat is the biggest minefield in the human body," he said. "I try to avoid it completely."

"Oh. Any other, ah, minefields I should know about?"

"The lower back, where the kidneys are. On some people, there's an area of the belly that's best avoided. Very rarely, I hate to mention this because it's more likely to go the other way, nipples."

"What do you mean, go the other way?"

"I've known one person who had the sharp pain reaction from my touching her nipple, but two that reached orgasm that way."

"Huh. So it's really individual."

"Yes, and sometimes it's defeatable. The ears used to be in that category until I figured out how to handle them." She smiled. Handle them. Yeah, he sure had that figured out.

"Tell you what. I'm going to put my bra back on, just for safety, and you're going to tell me how you get that shirt off."

"It zips up the back." She reached behind him and found the tab at the back of his neck. It was tiny, and the zipper was stiff. She pulled it down without being able to see it. As soon as it was open, he began pulling at his sleeves. She knew this was the moment to get her bra on, but she found herself sitting and watching. She had never admitted it to herself, but she'd always wanted to know what he looked like bare-chested.

The answer turned out to be, pretty much human, except for his color, which she suddenly found lovely, and his almost surreal thinness. She'd heard muscles described as "corded" but his really were like rope, with fibers forming strands forming cords. She wanted to touch them. She thought he might have an extra set of ribs. Would he let her count? He dropped the shirt, sat up, turned to her.

"You're beautiful," popped out of her mouth, even though she hadn't been intending to speak. The look of amazement and wonder on his face told her it hadn't been a mistake.

"You really...?" She nodded before he could finish his question, and raised one hand toward his chest.

"Can I touch?"

"Please." She laid her palm on the place where his pectoral and shoulder muscles met, letting her fingers trail up over his collar bone, feeling the electrons flowing between them.

He reached past her and picked up her bra. She shook her head.

"Changed my mind. I'll risk it."

The embrace that followed took a full seven minutes to achieve, seven minutes of increasing skin contact, pausing, hyperventilating, repeating. There was a tense moment when her nipple first touched him, but the result was neither as painful nor as pleasurable as they'd anticipated. What it did was amp up the specifically erotic element of everything they were doing. She was aware of how hot and swollen her labia felt, and the fact that her panties were sticking to her. She wondered whether there was a bulge in those tight black pants of his, but just as she was about to look, he took her earlobe in his mouth and suddenly it wasn't such a high priority anymore.

The decision to lie back was mutual, and wise. He brought up the leg nearest to her and began to undo the buckles on his boot. She joined in, discovering the existence of a zipper, loosening the lower part from his foot. He put it down and pried the boot off with the other one while she kicked off her sandals. When he brought up his other leg, she drew it toward herself until it rested across her thighs. She insisted on undoing the boot herself. What she wanted was to handle his grasshopper legs with their inhumanly slender ankles. While doing so, she couldn't help noticing that, yes, that was definitely a bulge pressed against her hip. As he lowered that leg and pried off the boot, he touched the top button of her beige satin trousers and raised his eyebrows. Understanding this as a request for permission, she nodded. He unbuttoned, unzipped, and discovered that the panties inside were blue. He met her eyes with a sidelong smile, which she returned. Then, sitting up, he put his hands gradually, carefully inside the panties and slid both layers down her body, while she breathed deeply to manage the sensation.

Then she was naked and it was his turn. He rolled onto his back.

The tight black pants had no zipper and no belt. They seemed to stay up by clinging. She started with the obvious: she pulled the waistband away from him and down to his thighs to clear the bulge. There was, of course, no underwear.

If she'd longed to see his bare upper body, she'd been kind of afraid to see what was in his pants, afraid it would be too strange, too far from human. It wasn't. Thinner than the standard issue, like the rest of him, and that was good. Serious thickness would be asking for an electric shock in the tenderest of all possible spots. The tip - could she call it the tip, given that it seemed to extend about halfway down his length? - was purple, a deeper purple than his ears. And was that what she thought it was? Yes, around the hole there was a little of the same texture she'd found on his fingertips.

She finished pulling the trousers away. Then she cupped him in her hand, caressed him, closed her hand around the column of him and, oh, the electrons got busy. He whispered her name. She paused a moment, expecting some warning or instruction, but there was no more. He'd just said her name for the sake of saying it. She passed her thumb over the tip of the tip, over that little circle of texture. Suddenly his hips jerked and he cried out. She pulled her hand away, afraid she'd really hurt him, but it was just the opposite. He was ejaculating, gasping, his hips moving a little with every spurt. Then he was done, lying still, his breath slowing down until he seemed to have passed out.

Damn. I hope that's not it for the night. She was kicking herself for misjudging how aroused he was and what effect that little stroke with her thumb would have. At the same time, so much about him was so strange, maybe being able to judge him that well, this first time, was just expecting too much.

A few drops of his cum had gotten on her hand. She held it up to examine it. Looks like what human men put out. Smells the same. She tasted, started in disbelief, tasted again. She'd had a vegetarian boyfriend in college who had told her that the sexual fluids of vegetarians tasted sweet. It would have been more accurate, she had argued, to say that the sexual fluids of meat eaters have a bitter taste that you don't find in those of people who haven't eaten meat for a while. Vegetarian fluids did taste better, but the best description for the flavor would be salty and bland. But Megamind's fluid was literally sweet. What kind of metabolism do you have inside that blue skin? With that thought, she looked at him and was startled to see him looking back, alert and smiling, as if he hadn't been in refractory crash just a minute ago.

"That," he said softly, "was hot." She gave him a little bedroom-eyed smile as she licked off the last bit. He rolled toward her, leaning on one elbow. "I want to do for you what you just did for me."

"Please," she replied. He slid closer. First his thighs touched hers. (Pause, breathe.) Then his groin pressed with great care against her hip. (Couple of iterations of pause, breathe.) She noticed that his bulge had shrunk until it almost looked like a third testicle, and lost its purple color; it was now a slightly darker blue than the surrounding skin. It hadn't lost its tactile intensity, though. Where it touched her, there was a little core of electron pleasure. He pressed his ribs to hers. (Pause, breathe.) One of his arms slipped in gradually under her back, not around her waist, but going up along her spine. It stopped with his hand spread out between her shoulder blades, pleasure radiating from each of his fingers. (Long pause, breathe some extra.) At last he settled his face on her shoulder, the other bulge - his head - resting against her cheek. Mmmm.

He reached out his other arm above her body. The index finger extended to almost touch her right nipple. Almost and then barely, just a few electrons, a little of that good feeling. The nipple was coming erect, seeming to strain toward his touch. His finger came in for a landing on the very tip, then went off to give the left its share of attention. And then some. He took it between his thumb and forefinger and held it for a moment. Breathe, Roxanne. Back he went to the right, touched it with the tips of four fingers at once, and then he reached down to her fur. He touched the outer labia with his thumb and third finger and she didn't feel anything but pressure because he wasn't actually touching her skin. Then he spread the labia and put his index finger right where they came together, at the top of the tender pink inside. The feeling seemed to radiate through her entire mound. After two full breaths, he put the tip of his second finger just a little lower than his index finger. At the rate of one Roxanne breath per step, he walked the two fingers down the line of her inner labia. At the step before he got to her clit, she could feel an orgasm building. When he touched it, she went right off. Her hips moved involuntarily, and his fingers moved with her, neither driving in too hard when she pushed upward nor losing contact when she settled back down. His lower body pulled away from her hip and thigh. It was a good thing they did or there might have been some serious electron overload there. She kept moving, kept cuming, and she knew she was making the little whiny noises that some of her previous boyfriends used to tease her about. Then it was ending and he brought up the other finger so that there was one on each side of her clit and they were kind of clasping it, with the same electrons-from-both-sides effect that he'd used so well on her ear, and she came again, deeper than the first time.

He took his hand away. She lay there panting and quivering for a long moment. Then, as she started to get her breath back, he whispered.

"I can be inside you now, if that's what you want." If that was what she wanted? It was all she'd been thinking about for the last few days. She nodded. He rolled onto his back. "Better if you're on top," he said. She took him at his word, rose to her knees and straddled him. They were touching only where the insides of her legs and thighs pressed against his flanks. Their eyes met and for a moment they held still, knowing that something was about to change forever. Then she reached under herself, took hold of his erection by the base, and angled it upward so she could sink down on it in slow fractions of inches. This was what she wanted, what she'd been waiting for, this deep, sweet pleasure in the core of herself. He lay still, watching her face, letting her control this, still fearful that it could all turn over into agony so deep that he would lose her forever. She breathed deeply as she pressed more of him inside her, feeling that, feeling it so much, like nothing ever before in her life. The tip of him reached the place she thought of as the sweet spot and she felt the deep pulsation that always signaled the onset of her most intense climaxes. She started to move with it - and felt the electron pleasure begin to overload, to go into pain. She made herself stop, but then her orgasm started in earnest. She felt as if she had to move, and as if she didn't dare move, and as if the two needs, to move and to hold still, would tear her apart. She arrived at a kind of involuntary compromise, allowing herself, not to move exactly, but to twitch with every pulse of her body, keeping her just short of the edge of pain. She discovered that this edge was also where the orgasm would keep going far longer than even the deepest ordinary climax would. She was breathing as hard as she could, certain that this ecstasy could only end in sheer physical exhaustion.

She was wrong. He whispered her name again and she knew that meant something, predicted something, but she couldn't focus enough to remember what it was. Then he had his hand under her thigh and he was lifting, pulling her off of him, too fast, too much, and for a moment she was over the edge. The pain seemed to radiate all through her lower body - but the orgasm didn't stop. She screamed with everything she had, pain and pleasure combining in a single second of sensory overload whiteout.

And then it was over and she was tumbling over onto the far side of the bed as normal reality reasserted itself. Her body was still feeling the residual twitches while something in her was insisting that what she'd just felt could not possibly have happened. She ignored it. She knew what had happened and she knew she was glad of it, all of it, even the pain. She found her way under the covers and stretched out on her back. She felt as if she could sleep for a long time.

He rolled over to her.

"Roxanne, I'm sorry. I, I waited too long. I -"

"Don't be," she answered. "I'm not. It was all worth it. We'll do better next time." She saw his expression of anxiety smooth out into joy. "Love you." He leaned down to kiss her. By the time he sat up, she was asleep.

"Love you, too," he whispered.