Chapter Sixteen: The First Color of a Primitive Nature
"Will you live with me in the light?" Bane asked in strained tone, forcing his breathing into a controlled and staccato rhythm as he teased his scarred fingertips against her satin lingerie, the fabric snagging on his rough cuticles.
As Maureen cleared her throat, willing her heart to slow down its rapid thudding, back in Gotham City, newly elected mayor James Gordon hung up his phone, blinking in disbelief at the news he'd just been told.
The call Gordon ended was from the new Deputy Chief at the Gotham Police Department and had been mentored by Gordon his early days on the force.
Deputy Chief Teddy Mortensen had delivered the news that Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne had been found dead at Arkham Asylum, in addition to what was believed to be the decapitated bodies of Doctor Maureen Hightower and psych tech Boris Sellane.
After Bane had been driven from the Asylum with Maureen in tow, behind at the Asylum, Isaak had removed Boris's head and hands and put an Arkham-issued cotton pants and top on the body, burning the plastic-coated ID card and removed appendages.
As James Gordon clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking, back north at Cape Maybelle, Maureen dropped her hands to grip Bane's large wrists, attempting to squeeze her thighs together, trying to limit the scope of his seeking touch.
"Would you slow your pace if I asked you?" Maureen whispered, her tone threatening to collapse into frenzy.
Bane smoothed a hand to rest over her panty-covered softness, the warmth of her intimate flesh through the thin satin layer only fueled his lust.
"Are you asking me that?" he rasped hoarsely.
Maureen nodded.
"Ask me," Bane pressed, his tone urgent, just shy of a demand.
"Will you please slow down?" Maureen managed breathlessly.
Bane kept his hand still over her intimate center as he considered his answer.
He wanted to give her a resolute 'yes' but the thought of articulating 'no' was growing stronger. "She's stuck in the cycle of grief," Bane thought, barely suppressing a frustrated groan as he wanted to rip Maureen from the darkness she was unable to escape.
"She needs to be broken out of her shell of pain, I need to bring her into the light," Bane thought as he began to move his palm in slow circles over her clothed center.
"I know you're lonely, especially at night when you hear sounds outside and you're alone in that big bed," Bane murmured, shifting as his cock grew uncomfortably hard behind his zipper, nearly hissing from the pressure.
Maureen's full lips apart, initially no sound emerging. "Where did you hear something like that?" she scoffed
"It was written in your own words," Bane rasped.
"You took my journal," Maureen stated.
Bane nodded as he dragged his eyes away from hers and moved down the front of his body until he could bask in the glory of her barely clothed center and expanse of the creamy skin of her inner thighs.
Maureen licked her dry lips, looking for words as Bane didn't elaborate as to how exactly he'd acquired her journal.
If she'd asked, Bane wouldn't have disclosed how he'd milked every bit of information that Tommy McShane had on Maureen, how he'd wrung the small man with excruciatingly, exquisite patience.
He arranged for all of McShane's bullies to be hobbled, bottle-capped or simply put down in exchange for every minute detail, observation, or shred of knowledge that McShane held about Maureen.
"I'd like to return to some questions Maureen," Bane breathed on a growl.
"Guilty," Bane continued before she could agree to answering anything.
Maureen couldn't help but smile, "you, you're still guilty."
Bane couldn't help but echo her smile as he returned his gaze to apex of her thighs and began to dance his rough fingertips along the lace edge of her blue panties.
"Sex," he stated as he hooked his index finger in the waistband, toying with the thin fabric as he looked up and met her eyes.
"Pass," Maureen finally managed.
Her flippant answer irritated Bane unnecessarily, his raging lust turning him into Chernobyl at rest, his nervous system electric.
"Penis," Bane stated in a charged tone as his hand shot from her panty's waistband to capture her wrist and drag her hand to rest on his hardened length through his pants.
A fast blush filled Maureen's face at the feel of Bane's thick rigidity behind his zipper.
Josef had bountiful intellect but was painfully below average between his thighs.
Bane's engorged and confined cock had the feel of a farm animal strutting in the pasture, a bidding war for buying the breeding rights of his impressive vascular manhood.
"Sex," Bane wheezed, struggling to keep his tone even.
"Power," Maureen breathed, feeling his cock pulse with its hardness behind his pants zipper.
"Power," Bane rebutted quickly, never blinking as he kept Olivia in paralyzed stasis under his penetrating gaze.
"You," Maureen whispered on a shuddering exhale.
"Fear," Bane lobbed at her, manipulating his hold on Maureen's smaller hand in order to grip the metal tab of his zipper, tugging it down, his cock demanding to be released from the pants confinement.
"You," Maureen murmured, "you scare me," she added on an embarrassed admission.
Bane's fingertips froze on his zipper's metal tab, feeling her supple skin practically vibrate from her energetic nervous system and the electrical intersections racing under her smooth flesh.
Bane truly felt a hot coil twist his insides at her admission of fear.
"I regret that I've made you feel that way," Bane grumbled, the words reverberating through his broad chest, continuing as he kept her hand pressed to his impossibly hard, thick length. "I want to tear you away from the past that you're living in, bring you here, now."
"I'm here," Maureen heard herself saying, adding as she raised her free hand to cup his jaw. "I'm nowhere else but here."
Bane closed his eyes at Maureen's touch as he shook his head, giving her a gentle smile as he opened his eyes. "You're married to a memory, stuck in an existence that you can never return to," he stated easily.
Maureen took in a sharp breath as Bane resumed tugging his zipper open, keeping her hand a complicit hostage in freeing his rigid masculinity that pulsed with unfulfilled need and wet, basal wants, only able to shake her head at his words.
"You've lingered long enough in the darkness," Bane continued in the wake of her silence. "I'm sure in your line of work you've heard of unorthodox methods of confrontational therapy," he added.
"That's a reductive view of my education," Maureen sniffed, reverting back to being offended that he was questioning that part of her, even though she knew her dedication to her oath was fragmented beyond repair at this point.
"I didn't mean to offend you," Bane growled lowly as he shifted her until she was further underneath him.
Bane resumed pulling at her panties with renewed purpose, no hesitation this time as he raggedly added. "I'm going to bring you out of the darkness Maureen."
"What if I'm not ready to leave?" Maureen managed to ask on a stilted staccato tone, every part of her fighting not to let her eyelids fall closed, her sparkling irises threatening to roll back in her skull from the mounting pleasure of Bane's touch.
Bane tore his eyes from hers and down to the junction of where her thighs met.
Maureen soon heard the sound of the thin fabric rip under Bane's assertive touch.
He began to near a state of hyperventilation as he tugged away the shredded remnants of her panties.
As Bane's eyes widened, his orbs exploded in spectacular rust-colored fire, becoming molten, nature's first color in explosive synergy behind his pulsing orbs, fueled by lust, back in Gotham city, back on the outskirts of Gotham city, at Arkham asylum, newly elected mayor James Gordon adjusted his tie and brightly dyed blue carnation in his lapel as he jogged up the steps of the Asylum, flanked by his armed bodyguards.
Before Gordon's police-escorted arrival, Gotham PD and the special tactical unit had secured the Asylum, contained the inmates that were uninjured and triaged the remaining before Gotham's forensic unit began a thorough sweep, checking the very the grout lines of each cell to find out what in the wide world of fuck had occurred under the roof of the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
As James Gordon bowed his head in respect while the black, body bagged, fully exsanguinated corpses of Selena Kyle and billionaire bat boy Bruce Wayne were wheeled past and loaded into the waiting Gotham City Coroner vans, back at Cape Maybelle, the roiling surf pounded the shoreline as Bane fumbled at the buttons of Maureen's blouse until he could pull the fabric apart. Bane smoothed his large, scarred hands over her flat belly, continuing to slide upwards to cup her full breasts.
Maureen lost the ability to suppress her moans as he squeezed his fingers into the dense flesh, the scratchy fabric of her bra was pleasantly abrasive against his palms. Bane's thumbs came to rest in the center of her chest where her ribs met, rubbing the rough pads of his thumbs in slow, counterclockwise circles over her bony xiphoid process, massaging the center of her sternum as he raised his eyes back to find hers.
He moved his eyes upwards at a snail's pace, lingering to drink in the dip of her skin stretched taut over her collar bones and up the flushed skin of her neck. Bane teased his index finger under the strap of her blue bra, seeing how blown her pupils were from the overstimulation and remembrance of dormant intimacy that his touch elicited.
"Your body now," Bane murmured as he lifted one hand from her breast. Without breaking eye contact, he moved his hand to finish freeing his heavy, hard length. "Later, your love," he found himself close to asking, unaccustomed to even asking a question, let alone wait for an answer.
Maureen slipped one of her hands down to join his as he stroked himself impossibly harder.
"Love later," she echoed and couldn't help but issue a sharp gasp and feel a jolt in her center at the feeling of his throbbing rigidity.
Bane lowered himself down to one elbow as he moved the smooth head of his cock through her wet, silken folds, making her gasp lightly each time he danced over her clit which grew more sensitive with each touch.
"Look at me," he hoarsely rasped, his tone unable to conceal the naked vulnerability of his wants and needs.
Maureen met his eyes the moment Bane lowered his face, crushing his lips to hers.
Bane swallowed Maureen's strangled moans as he sank his rigid length inside her, so slow that she could feel her intimate center having to stretch to accommodate his heavy thickness.
Maureen's breath left her body as Bane filled her, leaving her electrical system vacillate in the space between each of his thrusts which grew with increased urgency.
"Maureen?" he growled as he lifted his lips from hers, dropping his weight as he urged her to spread her thighs wider, bringing him as close as possible, their intimate flesh wetly kissing.
"What?" she gasped, her breath hitching at the end of each stab of his thick cock, making her feel as though he was rearranging her reproductive organs with the depth of his rapid plunges.
Bane remained wordless; his breathing ragged as he gripped her chin.
For a few moments in time, the only sound were their bodies wetly meeting.
"Do you feel me?" Bane asked raggedly as he released her chin and smoothed his large hands up her forearms until he could capture her hands and link their fingers together.
Maureen felt a fresh wash of tears sting the backs of her eyes, his intimate invasion made her remember being touched and teased. She'd forgotten what it felt like to have someone want, need, and love you.
"I feel you," she murmured breathlessly as Bane captured her lips, increasing his rhythm, knowing his climax was imminent, feeling a surge of frustration that his body was going to betray him from the inundation of potent pleasure that he was finding within Maureen's exquisite body.
Bane felt himself reaching to the veritable peak of pleasure, so much sooner than he would've preferred. He grunted as he dropped his hands to her hips, massaging the supple flesh as he increased his firm, rigid, flesh pistoning in and out of her.
He knew that he was going to lose the footrace and stumble into body-wracking pleasure long before Maureen would be able to keep pace with him.
Bane dropped his head to the warm curve of where her shoulder and neck met as he breathed in gasping grunts against her flushed skin, feeling her racing nervous system under his scarred lips.
He groaned lowly and clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he couldn't keep his cock from spasming a few times before spurting hot, sticky threads of come deep inside her.
As Bane's cock remained rigid, allowing him to easily keep sliding in and out of Maureen's warm, tight center, back on the outskirts of Gotham City at Arkham Asylum. Gordon was led to at this point, the presumed bodies of Bane and Doctor Maureen Hightower.
Gordon tisked as he shook his head, looking down at the in actuality dead pharmacy manager Sara Carlton and psychiatric technician Boris Sellane.
Gordon nodded where appropriate as the detectives on scene tried to construct a timeline of what they believed occurred under the Asylum's roof.
Every presumption that seemed like it held water was full of more hole's than the brain of one with end stage Alzheimer's.
Gordon would do enough previous colleague opinion-shopping and what he could see with his own eyes before he held a press conference addressing the carnage under the roof of Arkham Asylum.
As Gordon, misled by what Isaak wanted and staged for him to see, cleared his throat, and misled the press and listening masses, up north in Cape Maybelle, Bane shuddered as his cock softened and slid from her wet center, bringing hot spilled semen to coat her inner thighs.
"You're cold," Bane murmured before effortlessly rising from the reclined chaise lounge and returning after a few minutes with his arms full.
"Here," he murmured as he set one of the grocery store bags next to Maureen along with a folded grey afghan.
"Thanks," Maureen said as she peeked into the bag and couldn't help but smile at the half-eaten bag of chocolate candy he'd tossed in, along with the opened bottle of liquor.
She drank directly from the bottle as she watched Bane stack some thin strips of wood and torn newspaper into the terracotta firepit.
Bane was patient with the sea breeze blowing in as the tide crawled up the sand, the fire taking its sweet time to catch a spark and start.
Once he had the hungry flames busy eating a pile of larger wood pieces, Bane returned to settle next to Maureen on the chaise lounge.
He smiled and accepted her offer to share the thin blanket despite his body temperature being warm enough to melt the very Arctic shelf.
Bane adjusted the blanket until he could drop his arm around Maureen and tug her against his side, the blanket was not a very effective shield against the biting salt air.
He waited until the small fire began to spill warmth, giving her a firm squeeze before dropping to his knees in front of her.
Maureen let out a startled sound as Bane smoothed his hands up and down the outside of her thighs, most of the fabric pushed away, his strong fingers finding her succulent bare skin.
"What are you doing?" Maureen whispered on a dry-mouthed husk when Bane traced his hands down one leg until he could cradle her heel, tracing his thumb around the thickened ridge of scar tissue above her heel.
"Tell me more about this," Bane demanded as he dragged the rough pad of his thumb along the scar's length.
Bane looked up as Maureen took a long swallow from the bottle before answering.
He knew most every word she said next was based on a lie.
Bane listened impassively as Maureen began further to unravel the lie, a nuanced story with colorful bits of her actual childhood injected. The hints of truth speckled about, made it more palpable, made it fall easier from the tongue.
As Maureen described a Fourth of July picnic, everyone kept warm by the raging bonfire, Bane kept one hand smoothing up and down the length of her foot, tracing his thumb along her high arch as he reached behind his back with his other and tugged her marbled blue and white journal from his rear waistband.
Maureen's words died in her throat as Bane opened her journal to one of many dog-eared pages. He set the journal down next to her on the chaise lounge and tapped his fingertip on an entry she'd made after one of their sessions.
"Tell me the truth Maureen," Bane growled easily, his expression neutral as he resumed massaging her foot and lower leg.
Maureen read her own written words to herself before returning her attention to the bottle and take a few fast swallows.
Maureen's written words remained permanently seared behind her eyes.
"He was looking at your ankle today. It only gets easier to tell the same easily digestible summer lie. Everyone likes hearing about happy memories with the family."
"Tell me the truth Maureen," Bane stated, his tone not inviting even a breath of hesitation.
Maureen set the bottle aside and rubbed at her tired eyes, smudging the last of her mascara under her eyes.
"It was our first wedding anniversary, I had to work half the day but while I did, Josef set up a cabin we have towards the Canadian border. I made great time and didn't notice how quiet it was when I got there," Maureen started to say before she trailed off.
Bane massaged her heel, urging her to continue.
Maureen took another long, burning swallow as she remembered taking the wood, creaky steps two at a time, flying through the open front door and abruptly skidding to a halt, her heart leaping into her throat as her gut soured at the sight that greeted her.
Bane listened without interrupting Maureen as she described Josef sitting in one of the straight-backed dining room chairs that he'd dragged over in front of the fireplace. He'd left his suicide note on the chipped kitchen counter before getting comfortable on the rickety wooden chair and sticking the titanium barrel of the .357 revolver into his mouth, the cold metal making his salivary glands gush before his body was nearly drained of blood.
Josef had pulled the trigger and blown off the entire top of his head.
Maureen stared down at her foot cradled in Bane's large hands as she described walking towards Josef and inexplicably checking the pulse of his very obviously, very dead, near bloodless corpse.
The blood that soaked the woven area rug was tacky, almost black from where it had pooled and dried.
Maureen had made the very first sound that day on the day of her and Josef's first wedding anniversary. It wasn't a cry of joy but a shout of pain as a piece of glass embedded itself in the skin above her ankle, it turned out it was glass from the broken mirror that the bullet had shattered after exploding out of the top of Josef's skull.
"I couldn't save him, I didn't know how broken he was," Maureen choked before she covered her mouth. Her words further broke on a shattered exhale, "I wasn't strong enough to keep him from breaking," she added, dropping her eyes to her lap.
"I am strong enough for both of us," Bane murmured raggedly as he gathered up her hands and pressed his lips to the center of her palms. "I won't break," he promised as he lifted a hand to grip her chin and urge her to meet his eyes.
Maureen sniffed hard as she met Bane's unblinking gaze, reaching up to press her fingertips against his mouth, tracing the rigid scar tissue that bisected his lips.
"I know," she finally said, failing to suppress a shiver from the sea air's cold touch.
Bane pulled the blanket tighter around her lithe form and pulled Maureen to her feet as her tears subsided. He smoothed a few strands of hair off her forehead, seeing the fatigue cleaning to her ethereal beauty, before nodding towards the open sliding glass door.
"It'll be warmer inside, would you like to clean up while I extinguish the fire," Bane suggested despite not wanting her to be out of his sight.
Bane sat with the fire as it died while Maureen closed herself away in the bathroom with the last of the hot water from the small capacity water heater.
As the fire turned to embers, Maureen peeled away the scraps of her remaining clothes, finding blood smeared on the inside of her thighs, mixed with his spilled sticky seed, and combined slick body fluids. The deep ache was a painful reminder of how long since someone had touched her intimately.
As Maureen shuddered with a residual pleasure as she ran a sudsy washcloth over her sore femininity, on the other side of the bathroom door, Bane stared at the warped wood, imagining Maureen standing under the weak spray of water.
As the shower water continued to run, Bane closed all the curtains, shutting off the view of any nocturnal voyeurs or insomniac seagulls.
Bane folded back the bed linen and lit a quartet of short, fat misshapen candles before turning off all of the room lights. The candles spilled a warm, wan light and bounced off his body as he stripped until he was a carved, breathing statue of shaped, musculature in his powerful nudity.
Inside the bathroom, Maureen reached into the decorative conch shell and pulled out her tissue packet of opiates. She popped one of the tablets in her mouth and chewed it, cupping water into her palm to wash down the slightly sweet drug.
Maureen stared down at the rest of the tablets before dumping them into the toilet, she flushed them away, thinking that she didn't need the pills as a contingency plan anymore.
Maureen opened the bathroom door, one of the large towels wrapped around her wet body and for a moment forgot how to breathe when she was confronted with Bane's naked form.
His bulk ate the light while his strength blotted out the stars.
"I need something to sleep in," Maureen started to say before Bane initially interrupted her without words as he tugged at her towel.
"That need can wait," he murmured in a tone that smoldered a tad less than purely pyroclastic.
Maureen's body twinged in wet remembrance as Bane pulled her across the bathroom's threshold and towards the bed, anxious to taste, fill, own and fully possess her.
