Of Heroes And Villains: The Ties That Bind By Minikisa An assassin. A fallen hero. An unlikely meeting. The road to redemption is long and hard and filled with explosives.

Psy nervously tugged at his long sleeve, glancing down at himself as he made his way past narrow waterways. He bit his lower lip when he saw his erect nipples poking through the shirt. They’d been on high alert ever since he’d woken up – right in the middle of Founder’s Creek. The frigid morning air wasn’t helping.

He hadn’t quite thought through what seeing her would actually mean. In his dream, he’d only wanted Caroline.

Except that he was in her body.

And she would be waiting for him in his.

Stephen had tried picturing nude men, half-hoping, half-dreading that being female might give him the hormonal cocktail necessary to be attracted to that. He’d felt nothing but the instinctive distaste that the thought of kissing another man always brought. He just didn’t really understand what was supposed to be appealing about the male form when compared to softly flaring hips and smooth skin and her sweet taste and her breasts and...

He shook his head to clear it, skin still tingling with the pleasure of their shared dream, his fingers itching to bring himself the relief he craved so desperately.

Psy groaned in misery as he craned his neck to look at the hotel he knew she was staying in.

Even if he had been attracted to other men, he still didn’t have the required levels of narcissism to be attracted to himself.

This was going to get beyond awkward.

The bored receptionist barely gave the disheveled, barefoot woman striding toward the elevators a second glance. Their wealthy clients were eccentric, and that was something not said lightly in Paragon City.


***


Caroline paced the length of her room, absently rubbing a towel over her head, her short hair still wet from the icy cold shower. Not that it was helping. Walking past the mirror, wearing only a pair of jeans loosely slung over narrow hips, she caught a glimpse of her bare, muscular chest.

And that was all the invitation her crotch needed to start stirring again.

As much fun as she’d had with it, she had long since decided that she did not like her dick’s attention whoring.

At least it kept the voices at bay. Being so focused on the sensations of her body meant she had no attention to spare on what they were whispering to her.

Although.

One voice was getting louder.

Few thoughts were distinct enough to form actual words or sentences; most were just a series of vague snippets imprinted with emotional subtext. The voices weren’t really voices either – there was no particular pitch associated with any one of them, yet they were strangely distinct nonetheless in their cadence and patterns.

Caroline knew that voice.

She knew it intimately well.

Caroline crossed the room with a few long strides, yanking the door open. Her breath left her. Her own self was standing outside the door, hand raised as if poised to knock, blinking up at her with pale blue eyes that carried a warmth and uncertainty they usually didn’t.

Her other self was also barefoot, wearing loosely fitted clothes covering her from head to toe. Her long hair was windswept and curled messily around her shoulders. It should have made Caroline’s inner fashionista wince, but it was strangely adorable. She also couldn’t help but notice that the long-sleeved shirt, likely meant to be as modest as possible, only accentuated the swell of breasts all the more.

Caroline thought that she looked kind of hot. Was she getting vain?

“Hi,” said Stephen in a breathy voice. His eyes briefly dropped to her bare chest and back up again. Caroline felt a sliver of discomfort emanating from him.

“Hi.” Her voice was a low rumble.

The tension between them grew unbearable as they silently stared at each other, a confused tempest of emotion churning inside of her. She couldn’t tell if it was hers, or if she was picking it up from him.

Then she guffawed, because she couldn’t help it. “This is really fucking weird.”

He joined in on her nervous laughter, relieved, the tension broken. “Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of weirdness in my life, but this… this is definitely up there.”

Caroline’s gaze dropped down to Stephen’s neck and her heart painfully skipped a beat. In place of her brand there was a scar, old and faded as if it was months old. She reached out and traced the raised pink skin with long fingers.

The touch sent a jolt of pleasure down her spine, and she realized it was Stephen’s. She moved her hand to rest her palm on his cheek and he leaned into it, gazing up at her through long eyelashes.

“Thank you,” she whispered and dipped down her head to draw him in for their first kiss.

His skin was too soft, too smooth. Caroline liked the rough texture of stubble on men, which was why she hadn’t bothered shaving, approving of what she saw in the mirror. But she was regretting that decision now; Stephen was likely hating the sensation.

Except he wasn’t.

He was hungrily kissing her back.

And as Caroline’s hand instinctively reached to squeeze his plump ass, she realized she didn’t hate the way this felt either.


***


Stephen moaned into Caroline’s mouth, his arms wrapping around her neck to draw her closer. There was stubble scraping his jaw and she tasted different, like no girl he had ever kissed before.

That was because she wasn’t a girl.

Psy was kissing a man. It really, really should have bothered him.

Instead, he was eagerly molding his soft and curvy body against Caroline’s hard and lean one. When her hand came down on his ass, squeezing possessively, he moaned again, not able to help himself. And even though his battered sense of masculinity kept protesting that this was wrong on so many levels, he delved deeper into Caroline’s mouth, chasing that addictive flavor.

“More,” he pleaded, breathless, and shivered at the sound of her voice.

His reaction to having something hard poke his abdomen should not be a deep, aching hunger. And he should definitely not instinctively grind against it, and it should not cause a spike of ecstasy to shoot directly to his groin like a lightning bolt.

Oh.

Oh!

While Psy had only been in this body a few days, he had experienced enough to know that female arousal did not feel like this.

He buried his long nails in Caroline’s back and raked them down. She bucked against him with a muffled yell, and Stephen felt an echo of pain and pleasure radiating from his own back.

He was feeling what she was feeling.

Which included her desire for his own body.

Caroline growled low in her throat and yanked him forward, slamming the door shut behind them with a kick. Then she caged him against the wall, and her mouth dropped to his slender neck, giving the scarred skin a scorching lick. Stephen’s breaths quickened and Caroline’s gaze dropped to his chest, watching the rise and fall of his breasts with an intensity that was entirely out of place for a straight woman.

A hand slipped under his shirt, pushing up the hem, and rough fingers started kneading his right breast, groping him with all the unpracticed fervor of a teenage boy who’d just discovered that breasts were awesome.

Psy let his head fall back, panting, and he rhythmically grinded against the bulge in Caroline’s pants, fingers clutching her firm ass to draw her even closer. His clit was throbbing with the echo of just how fucking good that felt. With a groan, she dropped her head, pulling away his bra to reveal a pink nipple, and started sucking eagerly, too rough, too intense, and yet just right.

He made a strangled noise somewhere between ohgodyes and keepdoingthat, the words colliding to form an incoherent barely human sound. But she understood him anyway, because she could read his mind the way he could read hers.

Feedback loop.

He felt her pleasure and she felt his.

Anything either of them gave the other was reflected back, growing in intensity with each grunt and thrust and touch.

Stephen laughed breathlessly at that realization, at the possibilities such a link could offer. He reached out to stroke her through the thick fabric of her jeans and she bucked against his palm and some crazed part of his mind proposed that it would be awesome to have that thing inside of him, right now, while another screeched in protest, lodging a formal complaint on grounds of that being a fucking dick which had no business coming anywhere near his insides.

Caroline let go off his aching nipple with a pop, lovingly giving it one last lick, and then took the decision out of his hands entirely. “Undress for me.” It was an order, short and clipped, and he whimpered in response, his hands instantly dropping down to tug away his jeans.

Then he reached to do the same to Caroline, shaking fingers undoing the zipper while she gazed down at his hands. When the fabric was peeled back to reveal the thick, hard shaft beneath, she licked her lips and then Psy had to fight the urge to sink to his knees to take her cock into his mouth. But knowing that the impulse was Caroline’s, that this was what she would do to him if only she could, made his insides clench with heat and lust and an aching need.

“Want you,” she grated and suddenly he was thrown onto a soft mattress, bouncing slightly at the impact. He hadn’t even noticed her telekinetically dragging the bed to the entrance of the hotel room. Maybe she hadn’t either, and it had been entirely subconscious. Either way, it was there, and so was Caroline, looming over him.

Warm skin pressed down against his and strong hands were tracing the lithe curves of his body. Psy was suddenly intensely aware of the size difference between them – she was so big, and so heavy, and his own hand clutching her shoulder blade was so small and it should have been intimidating but instead he found himself easing open his legs, spreading his thighs for his lover. And then he felt it, that hard cock pressing up against his soaked underwear. He rocked his hips, all that restless craving finally coming into focus as a deep, aching throb between his legs that told him yes, yes, I want you inside of me.

Caroline groaned in response and the words I want to be inside of you flashed clearly in his mind.

“Please,” he whispered and that was all the invitation she needed to tear away the last barrier of fabric between them and to align herself along his slick entrance. She paused, panting, gazing into his eyes for a long moment. Psy flashed a grin, equally breathless, taking a moment to confirm that yes, this was bizarre as fuck but he did not care because this was Caroline, no matter what she looked like, and she returned it with a small smile of her own. Then she thrust and his back arched and dear god, he was so full that it hurt and throbbed but in the best possible way and he clawed at her ass to draw her in deeper and she groaned and he sighed with satisfaction when she fully buried herself inside of him.

Caroline withdrew, and he wrapped his legs around her narrow waist, grunting when she drove into him again, harder. Psy knew, in the abstract sense, what sex felt like to a woman, having caught fleeting glimpses of it in the minds of his previous partners, but nothing, nothing had prepared him for this.

She tried to be gentle, at first, but soon enough she lost herself in instinct, in the pleasure that echoed from him to her and back again, endlessly building on itself until their bodies were slamming together and there was a wonderfully dirty soundtrack of grunts and moans.

He could not tell where she ended and he began.

She fucked him hard, every last vestige of restraint gone and when she bit him, he felt the pain, but also the hot skin in his mouth, and he felt himself growl, the sound muffled with the delicious taste of Caroline.

Ecstasy like he had never known washed over him. His vision went white.

When Stephen opened his eyes, he was no longer pinned down. His face was buried in Caroline’s neck, long hair tickling his nose. He heard her sigh happily.

His skin still tingled with the force of their orgasm.

And nothing had ever felt more right than this.

He licked the red bite mark he had left, a different sort of brand covering her old one, and his voice was a deep rumble when he said, “I love you.”

A moment later panic clawed at him; he shouldn’t have said that, it was too soon, they never liked it when he said it so soon. But Caroline smiled at him, pale blue eyes sparkling with happiness, and then he felt it, inside of her head, and saw it in the colors swirling around her. The kind of love he’d always wanted, the one that wasn’t the result of weeks and months of subtle manipulation but the kind that grew on its own.

She tilted her head up and drew him in for a kiss. Caroline tasted so wonderfully sweet.

“I love you,” she whispered back and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, careful not to crush her beneath his weight even though he knew her small frame was far stronger than it appeared.

“I can cut the link now,” he murmured and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the sting of discomfort. Once he closed their connection, it would go back to being one-sided. She knew him now, but Psy would know her forever, while the years would make him drift away from whatever mental image she had of him until all she knew him by would be his carefully chosen words.

“Wait!” Her response was instant and vehement before she continued more softly, “Wait. Do we have to?”

Stephen cracked open one eye, gazing at her.

She bit her full red lip and smiled shyly.

“I like having you inside of me.”