Chapter 634 | My Legs Do What They Want

Chapter 634: 634 | My Legs Do What They Want

Her boot caught the wet rail at an angle her frictionless field could not compensate for, and she went sideways with a yelp that echoed off the brick. Her arms pinwheeled against the orange streetlight, and for one perfect second she hung in the air like a cartoon character who had just realized there was no floor underneath her.

Then she dropped.

I was already moving before she finished screaming. Blitz fired through my legs and I hit the base of the fire escape in time to catch her around the waist, my forearm hooking under her ribs and my other hand grabbing the rail above my head for leverage. Her momentum slammed us both into the iron lattice hard enough to rattle the bolts, and the back of my skull rang against a support strut while her thighs wrapped around my hips on pure reflex.

Her constrictor strength clamped down immediately. Three hundred and forty PSI, according to the interface, which meant my pelvis was going to be sore for a week even with the Demigod trait running cleanup.

"I had that," she gasped against my neck.

"You were falling."

"Tactically."

"Into a dumpster."

"It was a controlled descent toward garbage, and I resent your implication."

She did not let go of my waist. Her legs stayed locked around me while she caught her breath, and her chest heaved against mine in a way that made her neoprene bodysuit creak with every inhale. The plunging neckline had shifted during the fall, and I was now looking at a lot more pale skin than the designer had intended. Her corset belt had ridden up under the swell of her breasts, pushing them together and forward like an extremely aggressive shelf.

? Compromising Proximity Event Logged. ?

? Heroine is currently wrapped around the host like a decorative python. Temptation Gauge: 11%. The interface notes that the host’s heart rate has exceeded cardio justification parameters. ?

"Your heart’s doing that thing again," she said into my collarbone.

"Still cardio."

"You’re a really bad liar for someone with a girlfriend who can detonate a city block." She pulled her head back far enough to look at me, and her goggles had fogged completely from her breathing. "You could let go of me, you know."

"You could unwrap your legs."

"I’m still in shock, my legs do what they want."

Her legs did not appear to be in shock. They appeared to be grinding slowly against my hips while she pretended not to notice. The emerald scales on her outer thighs caught the streetlight and threw green sparks across the wet asphalt below us, and where her scales met bare skin above her stockings I could see the iridescent shift from reptile to human in a gradient that should not have been attractive but was absolutely destroying my composure.

The second heartbeat kicked again.

"There it is," she breathed, and her pupils dilated into dark vertical slits against the acid green of her irises. "That’s twice now, golden boy."

"Maybe I have a condition."

"Maybe you like snakes."

"I like not being arrested for vigilantism."

"That’s boring, we already covered boring." She reached up and pushed her goggles onto her forehead, revealing the full scope of her face for the first time. Her eyes were huge and bright and framed by smudged eyeliner that made them look even bigger. Her cheekbones were sharp enough to cut paper, and the scales at her temples glittered faintly with residual moisture from the earlier rain. She was beautiful in the specific way that venomous things are beautiful, the kind of beautiful that makes you forget you are holding something that could kill you. "Tell me something interesting instead."

"You’re still crushing my pelvis."

"Something interesting about you, not about my thighs." She shifted her weight and her hips rolled against mine, which was either an accident or a very targeted attack on my remaining brain cells. "You caught me twice now. Most people can’t catch me once."

"I’m faster than most people."

"You’re something, that’s for sure." Her tongue flickered out and touched her lower lip, a quick pink dart that was not quite human and made my spine light up like a circuit board. "Why are you here, really? Dralun didn’t send you, or you would have called him already. The girl on the hill didn’t send you, or you wouldn’t have let me keep the watch. So why did the golden boy from the dome run six blocks to catch a thief in a borrowed wetsuit?"

I did not have a good answer for that.

The honest answer was that I had heard the dispatch call and felt something in my chest that was not the second heartbeat, something older and heavier that had to do with forty-seven doors and a dragon who showed up at minute one. The honest answer was that I wanted to see her again, the girl who played Robin Hood in a costume held together with safety pins, the girl who left strawberry-scented notes in dryer number four and disappeared before anyone could thank her properly.

The honest answer was that she had been doing this job longer than I had been in this body, and she deserved better than getting arrested by the one Hero who actually cared about the Eastside.

I said none of that.

"You used me as a delivery boy," I said instead. "I wanted to know why."

Her smile went crooked. "Because you were there, and you were pretty, and I needed someone to carry the bag into the laundromat while Dralun was upstairs. It wasn’t personal."

"It felt personal."

"Everything feels personal when you’re cute. Get used to it."

She unwrapped her legs from my waist and dropped the remaining three feet to the alley floor. Her boots landed without a sound, her frictionless field absorbing the impact and dispersing it across the wet concrete like ripples on water. She straightened her neckline with both hands and tugged her corset belt back down to her waist, though the adjustment only made the situation marginally better and drew my attention to parts of her I was trying very hard to ignore.

The pocket watch bulged in the pouch on her hip.

"I’m going to deliver this now," she said, and her voice had lost the purr entirely. She sounded like a nineteen-year-old girl who had been caught doing something kind and was embarrassed about it. "Teodor lives six blocks west. If I hurry, I can get there before his wife makes him go to bed, and he can wind it in the morning when he waits for the nine."

"That’s very specific knowledge."

"I pay attention." She flicked her bob out of her face and started toward the mouth of the alley. "Don’t follow me, golden boy. One rooftop chase per night is my limit."

"What about the favor you owe me?"