Chapter Fifteen: Speaking to God
Bane shook his head, a faint mechanical growl emerging on a hot exhale though the front of his mask to brush against her face. He knew he had no claim to her voice as he dropped his hands and retreated without a further word to the living area, turning the television back on to a news broadcast in progress.
Gwendolyn watched Bane stalk to the living area and sit heavily on the sofa.
She was filling a cup with tap water when she heard her father's voice spilling from the surround-sound speakers.
"Please turn that up," she said as she practically skipped into the room, joining him on the sofa, not thinking that she was deliberately placing herself closer to the jaws of the land-dwelling carnivore.
Bane pressed the pad of his thumb on the volume button, only looking at Gwendolyn as her father pleaded with whomever had abducted his darling daughter.
He watched her smirk to herself at the sight of her father's bouffant, not a single piece of fucking hair out of place.
As the world fell away while Gwendolyn watched her father plead with her abductors and throw laurels at the feet of his daughter, back at Wayne Enterprises, Talia sat behind Bruce's desk, going through the computer's hard drive when her phone rang.
She saw that it was Gordon from the caller ID and picked up the call before the third ring, answering in the dulcet, liquid velvet voice of the benevolent Miranda Tate.
"Yes, Commissioner Gordon, have you heard anything about the cause of this senseless tragedy?" Talia asked as she answered.
Gordon always felt like a bumbling fool even over the phone with the exotic Miss Tate and stumbled over his carefully planned words.
"Miss Tate, I apologize for bothering you at this hour, but we've stumbled upon some possible answers," Gordon began, wanting to be the first to kiss Miranda's shapely ass, not realizing he was feeding the tigress a newborn baby.
Talia kept her Miranda façade firmly in place as Gordon spilled the beans about the parking pass on the van from the surveillance footage and how they were organizing Gotham's SWAT team to scale, surround and invade the mall.
She gushed her gratitude to Gordon, keeping all panic from her voice until she ended the call, reaching for one of three burner phones and dialing Bane.
Bane's phone was on silent but began to vibrate in his pocket when Talia's call connected.
He glanced over at Gwendolyn, finding her lightly sleeping at the other end of the sofa, the water glass threatening to slip from her hand. She'd lapsed into a light sleep when her father was done pleading her case for his ratings and the news stories began to repeat themselves.
Talia began rattling off orders without taking a breath the very nanosecond that Bane answered the phone.
"Take her to The Tri-Towers," Talia ordered, "I won't be able to meet you there until the end of the week. I want her pliable and ready to enlighten Gotham to the coming consequences of their actions."
Bane said all the right and expected words to Talia's edicts and ended the call with a trill to his nervous system, an electrical charge that he needed to smother in its sleep. He couldn't allow himself to give voice to the thoughts born at Talia's orders to whisk Gwendolyn from the mall.
The Tri-Towers were nearly in the adjoining state, construction had begun before the fall of the housing market, and they were left partially finished. The occupants were now society's unwanted, people that wanted to remain unseen and those on the run looking for a temporary place to rest their heads.
Bane narrowed his eyes at Gwendolyn's sleeping form, his forehead pulling into a frown when he saw her supple skin discolored over her hip where her stained blouse had ridden up.
Her father's voice spilling from the surround sound speakers broke his concentration for a moment and he turned towards the flatscreen television.
Behind his mask, Bane's lips curled into a dangerous smile at the sound of OWL Newsgroup's CEO and right-wing warrior Robert Ales begged with the abductor's who had his beloved Gwennie.
"He's begging me," Bane thought as he picked up the remote control and cut off Ales symphonic bullshit.
"He's directly imploring me," Bane thought as he shifted and slid across the sofa towards Gwendolyn. "He's pleading with me, not Talia," Bane thought as a low mechanical growl leeched through the front of his mask.
The flush of power thrilled him to the core as he reached out a hand and traced the callused tip of his index finger along the bruising that stippled her side.
His touch forced Gwendolyn to rapidly ascend to the conscious world, if she'd been a diver rising to the surface, she would've imploded from nitrogen gas filling and expanding her vascular system.
"What …," Gwendolyn started to say as Bane smoothed his hand fully over her marred flesh, his scarred fingertips slipping slightly under the waistband of her wrinkled pencil skirt.
"Did I cause this?" Bane asked on a wheeze, tugging at her clothes.
Gwendolyn dropped her hands to clutch at his large wrist as he shushed her protests with a mechanical growl, struggling to keep his touch from turning overtly aggressive.
"Look at me," Bane demanded, melodically seething as Gwendolyn turned her face away from him, staring anywhere but him as he pinched her chin with a few of his fingers, pinching the soft skin.
Gwendolyn pushed at his hand, incoherently yelling as she continued to refuse to meet his penetrating gaze.
"See me," Bane wheezed in a strangled melody as he forced her face to meet his.
"What more can you honestly want from me?" Gwendolyn shouted before her words died in her throat as his touch grew more assertive.
"I want you to see only me," Bane growled, forcing her chest to tighten, her breathing becoming labored when he pushed her skirt up past her waist, followed by fumbling her panties down her thighs, past her knees and off, tossing them to land soundlessly on the floor.
"Wait," Gwendolyn stammered, struggling as he stripped her remaining clothes free.
Bane slowed, but never stopped his hands dropping down to pull her further under him, using his weight to pin her to the sofa.
His thoughts were flooded with her father's pleads for her safety. "This is the price," Bane entertained, letting his wet, dangerous desire roll between the hemispheres of his brain.
Bane's breathing climbed until his chest heaved as he smoothed his large hands down to rest on the supple flesh of her inner thighs, pushing her legs far apart until all of her intimacy was exposed to his penetrating gaze.
Bane kept the pressure on her thighs firm, locking Gwendolyn under the weight of his powerful gaze as he pushed his hips forward until he could tease the sensitive head of his cock just shallowly inside her tight center.
Gwendolyn felt a fine tremble start in her limbs as he circled the smooth tip of his thickness in circles just inside her tight femininity, unable to look away from his eyes that bored into hers.
Their eyes pulsed with the battling pyroclastic waves of his burnt amber flecked stare and hers, an endless cerulean blue.
"You won't stop," Gwendolyn managed on a choked breath.
Behind his mask, Bane smiled dangerously, "no Miss Mourn," he purred in a ferocious melody before thrusting forward once, impaling her opening, stopping only when their intimate flesh kissed before he pulled his hardness back and resumed making shallow circles.
At the moment that Gwendolyn got back some semblance of control on her breathing, Bane thrust forward with controlled passion, delivering two impossibly deep stabs with his hard thickness.
Gwendolyn didn't know where to put her hands and ended up reaching for and grasping his upper arms as he plunged himself inside her fully, stealing her breath.
Bane growled at the feeling of her fingers grasping his muscular outer arms, not caring she needed his body for physical stability.
He smoothed his hands flat to the inside of her thighs, pushing her legs as far apart as her body would allow, giving him the ability to watch himself slide in and out of her.
Gwendolyn squeezed her eyes shut and gripped his arms harder as he changed his rhythm, plunging hard enough that she couldn't form a single, coherent word, stealing her breath as he watched his thick cock disappear inside her wet center.
Bane grunted on a series of low notes as he smoothed his hands up her sides, coming to rest on the rounded caps of her shoulders, the angle allowing him to enter her deeper, punching in and out of her as he knew there was a countdown for when he needed to have Talia's toy whisked away to the perception of safety.
Gwendolyn found herself tingling from head to toe, an electric jolt rocked her core every time he filled her completely, their flesh wetly kissing. She watched the visible veins and arteries began to stand out on his body and his eyes squeeze shut before his whole body tensed and he nearly collapsed over her.
Gwendolyn was forced to slide her hands further up the outside of his arms until her palms were resting in the center of his shoulder wings from where he remained between her thighs, filling her, his whole-body shuddering from the power of his climax.
Bane dropped his head to the warm curve of Gwendolyn's neck as his mechanical breathing hitched out of sync with his heaving chest as he tried to corral his pounding heart.
Gwendolyn's senses were just as keen, her journalist's sixth, seventh and eighth sense were all aware of the change in Bane's breathing the moment his fingers touched her bare skin. She felt the fine shudder that ran through his vast musculature, could hear his blood cells until they were bloat with unrequitedness, his soul speaking his needs.
"I regret time is not a luxury at the moment Miss Mourn," Bane finally rasped as his cock softened and slid out of her wet center.
Gwendolyn adjusted her clothes back into some semblance of order as Bane tucked his length back behind the zippered closure of his pants, not wanting to see her cover her naked skin.
Bane tried in vain to soften his expression as he rose to his full height and held out his hand towards her, unable to ask her to accept.
Gwendolyn stared at his outstretched hand for a few heartbeats before eventually allowing him to close his hand around hers and pull her to her feet.
Bane picked up her designer bag, tracing the rough pad of his index finger over the embroidered L and V, surprised for what people pay, that it didn't come filled with blood diamonds, still dripping wet.
"Gather up your few possessions, it's time to go mobile," he murmured and watched her retreat to the bedroom area.