Nighthawks
Hughie Campbell sat hunched over the counter of a rundown diner in Hell's Kitchen at two AM, staring gloomily into a cup of coffee. He still couldn't believe the swift turn of his life into purest shit. Annie—Starlight-fucking bitch—dumping him for…it didn't bear thinking about. For the past three days he'd done nothing but chew on the news of her betrayal in between helping the rest of Butcher's team move their base of operations and make any intel his former girlfriend could give up obsolete. But he'd controlled himself so well that Butcher had actually complimented him on it. "You're bearing up well. Can't be easy, mate," the older man had said. "Never saw it coming. But time heals and all that."
He wanted to snap back, Did it heal you? We're still trying to kill Homelander even after you found out he didn't kill Becca, just got her pregnant. Have you gotten over the need to murder supes? But he was Hughie, he was polite, and so he held his tongue. Frenchie and Kimiko and Marvin had all offered their condolences and he'd been equally polite with them.
Nobody knew the sickness and the rage churning inside him because he was the soft boy, the nice boy, the good boy. He was Luke fucking Skywalker, for Christ's sake, the one who never got the girl. All the bad boy had to do to take his girl away was show up and she fell at his feet. Hughie had wanted to ask her how long she'd been cheating, how long she'd been betraying not only him but Butcher and the others, but, again, too polite.
"I'm tired of living like a hunted rat. You'll never beat him, Hughie. Not you, not Billy. He's too powerful. You'll only die trying and I don't want that to happen to me. I want my life back, and he's going to give me that."
"Is he blackmailing you? Threatening me? Threatening your mother?" He cast about desperately for an answer to the current situation that didn't involve Annie being willfully unfaithful, of her own volition.
She laughed, a short and bitter laugh. "He didn't need to. He's forgiven me for betraying him. He loves me."
"He's not capable of it. It's a trick. How can you have dealt with him as much as you did and not see that?"
"It's not a trick. I've been sleeping with him for a while now. He could have followed me back to your base at any time, killed all of you, but I asked him not to and he respected my wishes. You need to do the same."
"Do you love him?"
"If I don't already, I'll learn to."
"Then go ahead. Go back to your psychopathic supe lover, Annie. Oh, wait—you're Starlight now, just another supe. I forgot." The fury locked itself behind his teeth and his stomach rolled over at how cold she looked. Had she always had that dead-eyed aspect to her and he'd overlooked it? Starlight left their base looking vaguely unsatisfied after their encounter. Maybe she'd wanted a bigger drama so she could run back to her new man, crying and feeling hard-done-by, and he could comfort her with his no doubt massive dick. Dick.
He'd decided to drop out of sight for a while earlier today because he couldn't stand their pitying looks anymore. So he'd been stupid. He'd believed a girl who looked like Starlight could ever love him. He'd believed she was good and pure and devoted to the cause. He'd believed he wasn't a placeholder lover until someone better-looking, richer, more powerful showed up. At least he'd stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago.
A flurry of motion at the corner of his eye caught his attention. "Is this seat taken?" asked a little redhead who didn't wait for an invitation to plop down next to him. "Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Campbell."
He was too surprised to answer her immediately. Ashley Barrett, in a bold tiger-print dress and red hair flowing over her shoulders, placed her Prada bag on the stool next to her and signaled to the counterman. "I'll have a coffee too." Silently the man placed the cup in front of her and she took a delicate sip, turning up her nose. "A little bland," she remarked before pulling a silver flask from her bag and pouring a generous dollop into her coffee. For the first time since she'd addressed him, she seemed to notice him. "Want something to put a kick in the java?"
The refusal was on his lips because Hughie wasn't the kind of man who drowned his sorrows in alcohol because he was responsible and adult, but he heard the word, "Sure," coming out of his mouth. Before he could take it back, Ashley tipped the flask over his cup and the level rose immediately.
"That's as close to an Irish coffee as I can get you, Mr. Campbell. I don't carry cream around with me."
"It's Hughie. And thanks—" He stumbled there because he didn't know whether to call her Ms. Barrett or Ashley.
"No problem-o. People like us have to stick together. And it's Ashley, if that's what tripped you up." She took a healthy swig of her spiked coffee and started coughing. "Not used to whiskey anymore. Should have taken lessons from Queen Maeve in that."
The shock of her appearance started to wear off. "Did he send you? You can tell him to go fuck himself."
Ashley started laughing. "I already did. It meant exactly jack shit to him. Now that he's got his little prize, the perfect blonde supe that was created by the universe itself to bear his perfect pure supe babies, the rest of the world can go straight to hell." She took another swig of coffee. "Gotta say, she must suck a mean cock."
Hughie took the cup out of her hands and was about to chew her out for talking about Starlight that way, but—the unwelcome idea dawned—she was right. Starlight had been cheating for God knew how long, so that massive dick must have made its way into her sweet innocent mouth. Correction, her sweet-looking, innocent-looking mouth. "What are you doing here?"
"Isn't it obvious? I've come to have a drink with you. Or coffee. Whichever. And I need my cup back to do that, Hughie."
He kept the cup away from her hands. "I meant how did you know where to find me?"
Ashley snorted, sounding a lot like Homelander. "I'm the CEO of Vought International, and the intelligence-gathering apparatus of that company makes the CIA look like two old women gossiping over a back fence. It took ten minutes to find you." Seeing the spasm of fear on his face, she gave a little laugh. "Don't worry, Mr. Butcher's base of operations is still secure. I assume he's moved it from the one that Starlight knows, if he has half a brain." Hughie didn't say anything and she kept talking. Did she seem nervous? "My boss doesn't even seem particularly interested in him anymore. For a while I was questioning his sexuality because he was so focused on Mr. Butcher I thought he wanted to fuck him."
"Yeah, I can see that," said Hughie before he thought. "I thought the same about Butcher."
"Perceptive as well. I wonder why none of that perception went into your relationship with the beauteous Starlight. Then again, I really don't wonder. She's a young, beautiful blonde, so men are basically hard-wired to want to fuck her. No personal flaws she has are enough to mitigate that evolutionary programming. It's nature, pure and simple." Ashley leaned over and captured her cup.
"What personal flaws would those be?"
"You can ask that? How about her fucking your worst enemy? How about the fact that she's dumb as a sackful of hammers? How about that she's—hang on a second." She put her cup down on the counter and tottered over to the jukebox—was she drunk? Had she been drinking before she got here? Sifting through her purse, she produced a dollar bill and fed it into the slot, then flipped through the songs for a while before settling on one. Unsurprisingly, it was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper singing "Shallow."
"Nice," he said when she finished dancing back across the room to him. She was surprisingly graceful in her spins, considering how drunk she'd looked while walking, and he wondered if she'd ever danced professionally. "Have you been drinking?"
"Not too observant, are you, Hughie? I poured some very good whiskey into both your cup and mine, so it would go without saying that I have imbibed."
"No, I mean, were you doing pre-drinking?"
"Pre-drinking for what? This isn't exactly a football game, you know."
"I don't know."
"Maybe I might have been drinking because I got dumped, just like you."
Hughie's mouth fell open. Ashley and Homelander had been fucking? They were even more of a physical mismatch than he and Starlight had been. But he remembered the Dawn of the Seven premiere and walking in on the aftermath of Ashley and Adam Bourke fucking in a men's room stall. Maybe Ashley had a boldness that Homelander might have been drawn to, as he doubted any attraction on his part had been physical. Any more than any attraction Starlight had had to him had been physical.
She saw him figure things out and lifted her cup in a salute. "Close your mouth. You're catching flies."
He did. "So you and Homelander—"
"Yup. It started right after Soldier Boy's attack, when your erstwhile girlfriend left. I wasn't smart enough to make connections because I'm a ropeless homantic. I mean a hopeless romantic. Hopeless romantics, here we go again," and he had to stop her singing by putting his hand over her mouth. When he let go, she gave him an annoyed look. "You messed up my lipstick."
"Sorry."
"Yeah, whatever. See, I'd had a crush on him for a long time—Madelyn kept the information about what a drooling psychopath he is from me, for which I hope she's rotting in a corporate hell where no one returns her calls. Had to find out when he deafened a supe in front of me on no provocation whatsoever."
"Who was that?" Hughie had never heard anything about Homelander deafening another supe.
Ashley gave him an exaggerated wink. "A supe named Blindspot who was auditioning for the Seven, right after I got hired for Madelyn's old job. I'm sure Mr. Butcher can track him down. He seems to be a man of many talents."
Hughie made a noncommittal sound. Ashley went on. "In fact, I admire him quite a lot. I'll never understand how he managed to get you and the other members of the team to subordinate your own personal grudges to his. Like you, Hughie. Your grudge was against A-Train for killing your girlfriend, but all of a sudden you're more interested in killing Homelander than avenging your dead girlfriend. Admittedly, Homelander doesn't know how to help himself. People skills could use serious work. And your friend Marvin—his grudge was against Soldier Boy, yet he still ignored that to work with him to try to kill Homelander. And Kimiko's grudge was against Stormfront, but again she's fully on board the let's-kill-Homelander bandwagon, just because Mr. Butcher wants it. Big cult-leader charisma there if he can suborn you to adopt his goals and make you think it's your own idea. I really should meet him at least once. Just to satisfy my curiosity. However, I doubt if I'd survive the meeting."
"Jesus—what?"
She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You never thought of it that way? I know he's an asshole, but Homelander didn't kill your girlfriend. He just fucked one of them."
"No, how did you know about everyone?"
"Again, Vought puts the CIA to shame. Were you not listening to me?"
"Can we not talk about this anymore? I don't want to discuss her or your wild theories about—"
"The group of killers you belong to?" She waved a hand. "Whatever, it's fine. Not like it interests me now. Do whatever you want to him, launch him into the sun, it doesn't matter anymore." Ashley took a deep drag on her coffee. "The worst thing is how stupid I was."
"I can't imagine you being stupid."
She looked at him, surprised. "That's sweet. But of course I was. I knew what he thinks of humans. I knew what he thought of me. But I still fucked him. How could I have expected anything to happen except what did?"
"At least you weren't completely blindsided like I was. I thought she was…"
"Perfect. A little bundle of hot sweet blonde perfection, with all the virtues rolled into one. Right?"
He sighed. "Right."
"At least she didn't do anything before this to tip her hand. He did, lots of times. The worst thing…" She stopped, and Hughie thought she might be trying to control tears. "Did you know I have trichotillomania? That's compulsive hair-pulling. It triggered due to the stress I experienced working with him and the other supes. I was about ninety-five percent bald when your group and Soldier Boy attacked Vought Tower. Did you ever wonder how many people died when the façade of the building shattered?"
That startled him. He hadn't thought anyone died, or rather he hadn't thought about the possibility. All that mattered was Homelander dying, which he hadn't. "People got killed?"
"Eleven. Cut to shreds. Some stragglers leaving the building and a group of employees at their evacuation point, waiting for transport. The Sikorsky was full. I couldn't have saved anybody." She set the coffee cup down and took a delicate sip directly from her flask. "But that's all shit to Billy Butcher and your people. I don't know why you think killing Homelander will solve your every problem, but you're in for a disappointment. Some other supe will assume his power because nature abhors a vacuum, and all the innocent people who died and will die mean jack shit to any of you."
"You run the company. You enabled him." It was a weak thrust, as he knew Ashley had no real power that Homelander didn't allow her and no way to stop him, and if it hadn't been her it would have been someone else because the supe got his way, always.
She looked at him, pitying. "You tell yourself that. Do you have any thoughts that Mr. Butcher didn't put in your head? But I guess revenge is all you have left, now that your hot little blonde is getting her brains fucked out by my ex-boss."
"And ex-lover."
Ashley shook her head. "That implies love, and there was never any of that on his side."
"What about yours?" He took a mean pleasure in the spasm of pain that marred her face before she could smooth her expression.
"Stupidly enough, yes. But I hadn't finished telling you about that day. So I was almost completely bald from my hair-pulling and wore a wig so people wouldn't know, so I could hide how much damage he'd made me do to myself. I was also stupid enough to think he didn't know about it. We—the Deep, A-Train, and I—were having a meeting with Homelander after Starlight had called in that warning, and he'd just killed Black Noir." Hughie couldn't hide the surprise; Butcher hadn't mentioned this fact to any of them, if he'd known it. "His best friend, and he'd killed him because he'd 'kept secrets,' I think was how he worded it. He got some concession out of the Deep to prove his loyalty—I don't know what it was except that Deep thought it could be treason—and I guess what he asked of me was a loyalty test too."
"What did he make you do?" Hughie had lurid visions of Homelander making her strip off in front of the other men, maybe fuck them, maybe blow him in front of them.
"He made me take off my wig. He made me show them how ugly I am, and he looked more pleased with that than anything else I'd ever done for him at the company. I got my own back a little—no need for you to know how—and then, in a weak moment, I started fucking him. God knows why, other than that stupid little crush that just wouldn't die even when I found out he wasn't the Boy Scout I'd thought he was. I've racked my brains for the reasons a thousand times and that's all I can come up with."
It seemed like a minor thing to Hughie compared to the treason that she said Homelander had insisted on from the Deep, but he didn't say anything. Ashley read that in his face. "He has a way of finding your weak points and pushing. It wasn't the hair for you, just your precious little girlfriend. And he got the side benefit of possible pure supe children. I wonder how long it will take him to throw Ryan away for that pesky half-humanness."
"He didn't think enough about me to attack me. He just wanted Starlight. Maybe those babies you mentioned." And that was probably Homelander's most vicious attack—not attacking at all.
"Well, we're a pair because he didn't even think enough about me to hurt me for telling him to go fuck himself. He was too wrapped up in your ex-girlfriend's pussy, although at least she wasn't there to see him humiliate me. Probably would have blown him on the spot for it—she always hated me because I was the one who had to make her mind, toe the Vought line, and she's just as arrogant as Homelander in that respect. I think she was actively trying to get me killed when she tried recruiting me to spy on him."
"She did that?"
She nodded. "Right inside Vought Tower. I wonder how she thought I was stupid enough to go for her little indirect murder ploy. Very disappointed when I didn't leap eagerly to do her bidding and die."
Hughie opened his mouth to protest, then wondered why he should even bother. Clearly he hadn't known Annie very well, if at all. Starlight and Annie had not been the same person, and the supe had won the inner struggle for supremacy.
Ashley went on, heedless of his own turmoil. "They belonged together the whole time. The public knew it when they insisted we team the two of them. The blonde, blue-eyed, Aryan supercouple. Did you ever hear that saying about how if you don't look right in bed with Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston, you should have your feet pierced and be left to die on a mountainside? I may not remember that exactly, but that's the gist of it. I'd have been dead atop a Catskill a long time ago."
"You and me both. Everybody in Butcher's group pities me now, the dumbass nice boy who didn't see that his girl was getting deep-dicked by the enemy. I'm unofficially AWOL for a while until I think they've gotten over the sorrow and the pity."
"At least I always knew he didn't love me, even if I was silly enough to think what we had could grow into something else. I was into possibility there." She shook her head and took another delicate sip from the flask.
"Can I ask you something personal?" Hughie decided to throw caution to the wind.
"Sure."
"How big is Homelander's dick?"
Ashley guffawed. "Interestingly enough, I could have told you that before I fucked him." Hughie raised an eyebrow. "It's a long story. That certainly is a personal question, but you're lucky that I don't give a shit about him anymore. It's not John Holmesian, but definitely on the big side. Was your next question going to be how was he in bed?"
"Was he gentle with you?" He knew he was just flagellating himself at this point, but he needed to know everything she could tell him.
She considered it for a moment. "I'm not sure I'd call him gentle. He was careful not to injure me. Since I'm human, he knew I couldn't take the warp speed jackhammer banging that your former girlfriend is now enjoying. He must have hated being careful, wanted a woman who could take all his strength. But he never gave me a clue that he wanted more than I could give as far as sex went. Technically, he was very proficient, and he really wanted to please, but it was just for his own ego. There was no real feeling behind it. He was actually pretty passive. I had to initiate sex every time, but he was fully on board whenever I did that."
"I wouldn't have pictured him as passive."
"And since I answered your questions, you can answer some of mine. How was Starlight in bed?"
"He asked me that once."
"That figures. He was checking you for weaknesses, and didn't he find one. So how was she? And take the time to think about it. Don't give me a gut-level response."
He let an angry sound escape and she clapped. "Finally! Hughie Campbell showing some negative human emotion! I was beginning to think you were that perfect nice boy that Starlight always made me think you were."
"Bitch."
"Yup!" She raised her flask in salute. "So how was the perfect hot little blonde between the sheets?"
Hughie composed his thoughts with care. Part of his mind couldn't believe he was actually doing this, and he didn't know whether it was the anger or the whiskey that made him answer Ashley. "She was—not experienced. I know she'd had a relationship with Supersonic before she was with me, but she didn't seem to have learned anything from him. Maybe they were both virgins when they got together. Starlight was not technically proficient, and after the first time she tried I couldn't let her give me a blowjob because she was just too clumsy and couldn't keep from using her teeth."
Ashley winced. "Yikes! I get that. Appendages don't grow back."
"I also couldn't go down on her because—"
"You didn't want permanent dents in your skull from her thighs."
"Right." His voice kept on going, far ahead of his mind and judgment. "She tried to manage her strength but she couldn't always do it. I never got any broken bones or the like, but when she came she tended to flail around a lot and I had big bruises under my clothes most of the time. She always felt bad about it, but I guess that's when she decided she needed to fuck a supe, and then she decided on Homelander."
"So she'd never have to worry about being too strong and hurting the man she's fucking again. Weird, but I'm sure Homelander felt the same way about me."
"I'm tired of talking about them. Let's go back to your place and fuck." Hughie couldn't believe those words had just come out of his mouth.
Neither could Ashley. He saw a gleam of humor in her eyes when she said, "Why, Hughie Campbell, was that a proposition or an order?"
"Whichever works better for you." He couldn't believe he'd said that either.
"You should drink more often," she said. He was about to apologize when she gathered up her flask and purse and said, "Let's go."
They took a cab back to her apartment on West 89th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. It surprised him that she didn't have a driver from Vought, but then he imagined she didn't want Homelander being able to spy on her more than she could prevent. They didn't talk, which he couldn't decide was due to her rethinking her decision or a security-conscious strategy to keep Homelander from tying Hughie to Ashley.
In the elevator the silence finally overpowered his hesitation, and he took her by the shoulders, pushed her against the wall, and kissed her deeply. He'd been looking at her soft, full mouth for the entire trip to the Upper West Side, wondering what it would feel like, and it was as soft and sweet as he'd hoped. She kissed him back, hard, and they only broke the kiss when the doors opened on her floor. "Want to change your mind?" she asked.
Hughie put his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her again. "No."
Ashley laughed and planted a quick kiss on his lips before taking his hand and leading him down the hallway to her door. Inside, she stepped in front of him and pushed him against the door. "Hey, Hughie, remember this?" And she was unzipping his pants, fishing his half-hard cock out, and sinking to her knees to take it into her mouth.
His eyes rolled back in his head. The sensation of her tongue caressing him, the knowledge that he didn't have to be vigilant because she wasn't going to castrate him with a careless spasm of her jaw, hardened him completely. Hughie's hands went to her head, but she pulled back. "Put your hands on my shoulders. I don't want to worry about my wig."
"Sure," he muttered before she swallowed him up again and he abandoned himself to the sensations. How long had it been since he could let his guard down and just enjoy the dick-sucking he was getting? Since before Robin died. Christ, he'd missed this. He pulled his shirt off over his head and threw it in the direction of the living room. "Don't make me come, Ashley. I don't want to wait to fuck you."
She let his cock slide out of her mouth. "But I want to, Hughie. It's been so long for you. Don't tell me you don't love the idea of shooting your load right down my throat."
He let out a gasping sigh. "I do, but—"
"No buts. Since I think it's also been a long time since you've done the other, you can go down on me after I make you come. Then we can fuck. Sound like a plan to you?"
"Yes. Yes." Hughie gave up on any attempt to be chivalrous. He'd save that for when he was making her come with his mouth.
"You're so agreeable. I just love men who are agreeable." Ashley took his cock back into her mouth to tease.
His hands locked onto her shoulders, and he dimly noticed that he couldn't feel any bra straps under the fabric of her dress. The idea of her braless excited him more, and his hips started rocking as he began fucking her mouth. Ashley felt the change in him and abandoned the use of her tongue to tease and stimulate and began sucking. "It's so good, Ashley," he groaned. "It's so fucking good."
Now he was the one who had to restrain his strength, not fuck her mouth too deeply or hard in case it might be too rough for her, even though he couldn't imagine Homelander hadn't given her more of his strength than this. "Oh God, suck me, Ashley. Suck me till I'm bone dry."
Through the roaring lust he thought he heard someone knocking on her door, then realized he was striking it repeatedly with his fist to distract himself from what she was doing. It was a tactic to keep himself from coming, prolong the pleasure she was giving him, but it only worked for a very short time. Even though he wanted her to keep sucking him, keep surrendering to her mouth and tongue, he felt the climax bearing down on him and he wanted it, wanted it more than he'd ever wanted to come in his life, and he gritted his teeth against the desperate urgency pounding through every nerve, but it did no good, no good at all, and he cried out as he came, knowing that he was filling her mouth with his come as she sucked his cock, swallowed and swallowed, and he'd never enjoyed an orgasm this much.
Drained and gasping for breath, he leaned all his weight against her front door as she sat back on her heels. "Was getting blown as good as you remember, Hughie?"
"Better. It was fucking awesome."
"You're welcome," said Ashley as she stood up. He put his arm around her waist and nuzzled into the side of her neck, kissing and sucking until he knew she'd have a hickey tomorrow. She almost purred with pleasure and rubbed herself against him.
"Bedroom," he murmured when he could bring himself to release her neck. "It's time for you to get yours."
"That sounds so menacing." He heard the laughter in her voice.
"Only if you're afraid of orgasms."
That got her to laugh and she led him down the hall to her bedroom. It was pretty spartan, even by the standard of someone who'd spent the past year or so living in spare rooms at Butcher's various bases of operations. The only furniture was a dresser and nightstand that looked as if she'd found them in the street and the big antique brass bed with its wine-red comforter. "You don't have much furniture."
It wasn't a question, but she replied, "Less to abandon that way."
Hughie thought he might want to question her about that, but the notion slipped out of his mind as she reached behind her to find the zipper of her dress. He brushed her hands aside and pulled the zipper tab down the length of her back, revealing that his earlier suspicion of her bralessness was correct, but when he slid his hand up her skirt to the joining of her thighs, he found out she wasn't wearing panties either. "Naked under your dress, Ashley? You must have been pretty sure of me."
"I knew I wanted you. Why bother with anything more than the bare minimum of clothes? They'd just get in the way." She closed her eyes and made a sound of pleasure as his fingers began exploring her.
"That's why you're the CEO," he told her as he found her clit and caressed it, pulling a full-on moan out of her.
"God, it's so good to be with a man and not have to worry about whether he's going to kill me accidentally in bed. Or on purpose, for that matter."
"Nice to be appreciated. Lie down, Ashley." She leaned back and pulled the comforter down, then stretched out across the bed, her legs hanging over the edge. He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her closer to the edge, lifting her legs until they hung over his shoulders, then sank his fingers into her ass and began working on her swollen clit with his tongue.
She tried to buck off the bed but he wouldn't let her, held her there while he stimulated her and wrenched the most satisfying moans and cries from her. The fact that he could hold her down with ease, that she couldn't hurt him while she was climaxing was also very satisfying. He discovered he'd liked being at least a little physically dominant. Hughie hasn't realized how much about sex he hadn't been able to indulge in with Annie—Starlight—that he had taken for granted in his other relationships. Ashley had given sex back to him, and he wanted to give back to her.
"Hughie. Hughie. Hughie." She gasped his name like a mantra as his tongue caressed her, teased her the way she'd done with his cock while she writhed against his face, and he thought that if she kept this up, he'd be able to go again a lot more quickly than he'd thought.
He felt her hands go into his hair, her fingers tangle in it, felt her quivering under his tongue the instant before she came, crying out his name as her entire body stiffened and then began shuddering. A good start, he thought as he let her rest a little before he started over again. He didn't know how many times Homelander had made Ashley come in a session, but he intended to top the supe's personal best.
The blood pounded in his temples as he lost himself in the act, in her body and its convulsive ecstatic responses, barely conscious of his fingers digging into her ass and the bruises he could be leaving as he held her in position to take the merciless pleasure he was giving her, the pleasure he had never given Annie—Starlight. She'd never felt his mouth between her legs. Just Homelander's, he was sure.
"Please, Hughie, please. Fuck me. I need you to," Ashley was whimpering by the time he decided to ease off, let her recover from the rapid-fire chain of orgasms he'd forced out of her. He moved up her body and put a hand on her face.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded, still gasping. Once she came down a little more, she rolled her eyes at him and gave him a big smile. "Seems I have an eye for talent. That was—almost spiritual. In a very carnal way."
"Thank you, Ashley." Hughie felt glad she didn't ask him what he was trying to prove, and to whom. Or who he was trying to blot out of his mind, or hers. He didn't think either of them would like the answer.
Her hand slid between his legs and he groaned as she found the hard, hot length of him. "I think you've recovered from your first blowjob in years. Years?"
"Yeah."
She tsk-tsked. "Poor baby. Don't let it go that long again. Your balls should have turned into raisins with how much you came in my mouth."
"You bring out the best in me." Hughie smiled a little when Ashley pulled him up her body and kissed him. He knew she could taste herself on his lips, and he could taste himself in her mouth, and that sent a jolt through his dick. "Ready to fuck?"
"I've been ready, Hughie. If you fuck like you give head, I might as well call in sick to work tomorrow because I'll be too exhausted to show up."
"Want me to take it easy on you?" He slid her back up the bed and knelt between her legs.
"Just leave me semi-conscious at the end of it." Her blue eyes—he pushed away the memory of a pair of brown eyes as fast as he could—sparkled up at him and he tried to relax, let go of the sudden intrusion of Starlight. This was his exorcism of her, though; he had to expect she would fight her expulsion.
"Wait a second." Ashley contorted herself to reach the beat-up nightstand, opened the drawer, and came out with a foil packet. "We don't know each other well enough for babies."
"You must have been a Girl Scout, Ashley. Always prepared." He tore the packet open with his teeth and rolled the condom onto his aching dick. What did it say about him that he'd been ready to rawdog her without one thought about any consequences? He wanted to ask her if she'd made Homelander wear a condom when he fucked her, but the question slipped his mind when she wrapped her legs around his waist.
"Fuck me now, Hughie. I need you inside me. I want to come with your cock inside me."
The words excited him enough that he had to stop for a moment, get himself under control, before he pushed himself into her, slowly, the sound of pleasure she made sending a twinge through his dick. "You all right?"
"Yes. Fuck me. Fuck me." Her teeth were gritted together as she spoke and her nails dug into his ass.
He didn't bother answering her except with his body, thrusting hard into her, drawing back, driving his hips forward again, deeper into her, and she cried out with the sensation. He wanted much deeper inside her, as deep as he could possibly go, and lifted her legs so her ankles were over his shoulders, and his next forward movement broke his control. His body took on a life of its own, pounding her as she braced herself and found his rhythm, her wit and words lost, nothing but moans and gasps from her that aroused him wildly. Her muscles tightened around him, and for a second cold rationality reasserted itself and he wondered if he would have bruises on his dick again from her orgasm, then he remembered this was Ashley. Ashley wouldn't hurt him. She felt good. She felt fucking wonderful.
Her body arched and she screamed as he put a hand between their bodies and gave her clit a lingering stroke, pushing her into coming, and her response triggered his own and he was shooting his load, the pleasure so intense the world grayed out for a second or two, but he managed to keep himself together long enough not to collapse onto her with all his weight, but slide his dick out of her and roll off to rest at her side.
Ashley stretched luxuriously and said, in a fake Southern accent, "Why, Mr. Campbell, I must thank you for the fucking that was both excellent and thorough." Then she dropped the Scarlett O'Hara voice and sighed with happiness. "It's been so long since I was able to let go without worrying about what bad things might happen."
"Think nothing of it, ma'am," he replied in a John Wayne drawl. "I know how it is not to be able to relax during…this."
"Sometimes it's very, very nice to be with someone else who's human."
"It would be nice if either of them thought so. But I guess we're just their leftovers." He peeled the condom off. "Where do I-"
She reached over one side of the bed and came up holding a garbage can. After he'd disposed of the used condom, Ashley propped herself up on her elbow to look at him. "Hughie, everybody in our little love…hell, I guess our love dodecahedron is taking someone else's leftovers. Homelander's taking yours, you're taking his, I'm taking Starlight's, and she's taking mine. Why don't we let go of them and try concentrating on the here and now?"
He lifted his hand and ran a finger over her face, from her forehead to her chin. "I'd like to concentrate on you some more. Is this something you'd want to do again?"
She nodded. "You're welcome to visit me every night between now and Friday. Hell, if you're hiding out from your friends, you can stay here if you want."
"What happens Friday? Do you turn into a pumpkin?" asked Hughie.
"It's time for me to exit stage left." Ashley raised her head from his chest to regard him. "If anyone ever asks, you know nothing."
"I'm Jon Snow."
The weak joke made her chuckle. "On Friday I'm taking a commercial flight to San Francisco for a meeting with—it isn't important. I'll check into the Fairmont on Friday afternoon, with a departure date of Monday. I've told my secretary that I want to spend a couple of days there relaxing. They'll expect me back at work on Tuesday morning. Only I won't be there. When I don't check out of the hotel and miss my flight back to New York, they'll get worried and call the police, who will find my rental car parked on an approach to the Golden Gate Bridge with a suicide note in the glove compartment. I'll have a three-day head start before they even begin looking for me."
"Where will you go?"
She smiled. "Don't worry about me, sweetheart. My exit plan's been ready to go for months. I own a sweet little house in a faraway place under a different name, along with several numbered Swiss bank accounts, and the interest alone on those accounts will keep me comfortable for the rest of my life. I just have to kill Ashley Barrett to get it."
"Aren't you worried about him coming after you, tracking you down?"
"Oh please," she scoffed. "Homelander will believe it absolutely—it's tailored to his arrogance and narcissism. He'll believe without question that I couldn't live without him. Anyway, now that he has his pure blonde supe incubator, he'll barely notice I'm gone, and the rest of the Board of Directors hates my guts. They'll all be happy to see the last of me."
"I won't." And it was the truth. She was the only one he'd exposed his pain and anger to and she'd accepted it without a qualm. Hughie thought he might have served the same role for her.
She smiled and placed a gentle kiss on his mouth. "Like I said, Hughie, we still have almost a week."
"I still don't think he—"
"Stop thinking about Homelander, or Starlight. Concentrate on me."
So he did.