Characters belong to DC
Selina did not just walk. She did not step. She swayed, she sashayed and she slunk like a cat through the haze of smoky jazz and shimmering fabrics. It was as if her feet never contacted the ground, working in perfect unison with the balance and grace of a dancer, yet the silent gliding deadliness of an assassin. She leant the ballroom a dreamlike quality. To his eyes it seemed unreasonable that she managed to float with such effortless grace and assurance. His if his own gawky yet confident stride was put on for show, he would still never achieve her level of careful precision. Where he stomped with heavy footfall, she stalked behind with barely a sound or a print to announce her presence. Unfortunate for her that he'd retained the ability to sense her by her aura alone.
He watched her swirl hypnotically on the dance floor, tapping into his deepest desires with a lingering stare in his direction. Bruce found himself struggling in vain to keep his eyes trained on her face, rather than straying to admire the figure so obvious beneath the flowing gown she wore. The sheer black allowed a glimpse at the short shift she wore beneath and he knew her transformation would be swift. It pained him on a subconscious level to know that he was not the only man in the room at liberty to notice such qualities. To notice the way her ebony hair curled just slightly in the muggy heat where it had come loose from her elaborate hairdo. The glimmering lock dangled at the nape of her neck like an invitation. He swallowed hard.
Clenching the stem of his wine glass in his hand, Bruce turned to the group of musicians raised on a daïs, glad for the distraction. Saxophones crooned despairingly in his ear as they started up a slow, mesmerizing ballad. The perfect backdrop to the trauma he was about to endure. Couples strayed to the dance floor to spin tight trance inducing patterns.
He heard rather than saw Selina laughing gaily to her current companion, and turned to see her head thrown back in amusement and her face graced with a flirtatious smile that he wished was reserved exclusively for him. Bruce tore his gaze away from her, no longer willing to submit himself to such delicious torture. He felt his eyes drifting shut as the hauntingly beautiful music rose to a climax and fell away over the constant babble of the crowd.
It did him little good. Despite his best efforts, he could not erase the memory of her coming to him on the rooftops. Smirking. That smirk, at least, was reserved exclusively for him. To this day even the barest scent of wildflower perfume preyed upon him when his guard was dropped. A trace of it idled in the surrounding air, taunting him. To subtle to be of much consequence, yet too strong to be merely a figment of his imagination. Bruce's eyes flew wide as he felt the palm of his personal demon settle on his forearm and her warm breath tickle his ear.
"Bruce," she murmured coyly, her voice poisonous with a sense of play. The kind of play a cat partook in with a mouse before devouring it whole.
"Selina," he acknowledged reluctantly with a slight inclination of his head, refusing to meet her eyes. He'd once heard that meeting the gaze of a panther may very well be the last thing you do. Bruce satisfied her haughty stance with a subdued greeting before retreating back a step, breaking the contact. Smirking, Selina wiped her hand on her skirt with an air of distaste and his eyes were drawn to the layers of black lace flowing from her hips and obscuring her legs. Elaborately dressed in mourning colours; the panther was apt.
A detached sense of anger ignited inside him, lighting his emotions with fire. This was deeply wrong, he knew that, yet he could not bring himself to care. Her delicate face inspired the great longing in him where it had once set distaste. Her porcelain skin and full lips awakened him where they had once repulsed him.
The fury evoked inside him was not his own to claim. It was simply a faint echo to the fury he felt when he put on that mask,
Bruce knew she had no business being here, acting the young and innocent kitten who could do no wrong because she was no such thing. She was a monster. She was his own personal nightmare, the perpetrator of his sins. She was not the kitten, she was the vengeful mountain lion.
Yet, he did not care. She would be waiting for him tonight.