Crime Brulee In: the Temptation of Xs

Chapter 1.1

It was a rare, quiet morning in the bunker beneath the Worldwide, the casino from which the Villains Association ran their operations. Kurt and Moira were off touring the world and hopefully robbing it blind, Violet and Tweety were out stealing candy from a bougie designer shop that had just opened on the East Side, and Hacksaw Pete was…around here somewhere; his ‘work’ shoes were by the elevator–probably lounging by the pool with his new girlfriend. As for Connie Conway, otherwise known as the dastardly Crime Brulee? She was pacing the kitchen, waiting for the sound of the–

DING!

And there it was.

Bending down, she pulled open the oven and retrieved her prize–a tray of chocolate chip cookies. Narrowing her eyes, she watched them cool on the counter while a separate pot simmered away on the stove (mac and cheese), and when the steam stopped coming off them, she plucked one up and sampled it to make sure it didn’t suck. The edges had gotten a little crunchy–she’d gotten impatient and opened up the oven to toss a ball of fire inside halfway through the cook time–but she had no complaints about the flavor.

Dessert before lunch was one of the many perks of being a supervillain. Heroes, under the watchful eye of the Heroics Division, didn’t get to have dessert at all. When you were a hero, it was always ‘Save this citizen, arrest that crook, don’t eat the silica gel!’ Bad guys, though? Bad guys did what they wanted.

She put three cookies on a plate and arranged a tray of beverages: ice water, milk, juice, coffee. Options, right? Then, balancing it all in the palm of one hand, she padded her way to the bedroom in the compound she shared with her husband.

Frank Conway was known in the press as the fearsome Bone Appetit, with a ghostly array of powers and more than a willingness to rip the bones clean out of heroes and the authorities alike to bring a heist to completion. But in bed, underneath a warm blanket and a snoozing French bulldog, he was just her plump lump of sweetness.

She’d assumed she could set down the snack on the nightstand to hold him over in case he stirred before she was done making the pasta, but she never even got to take a step away from the bed before he reached for her wrist and pulled her, squealing, onto the mattress.

“Jesus, Bones!”

He looked up at her with a sleepy smirk. “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I thought you were asleep!”

“Yeah, I was, until my ‘wife’ senses went off,” he replied. Glancing from her face to the tray, he said, “Anyway, what are you doing out of bed? You should be resting, you know that.”

“Aw, c’mon, that Texas trip didn’t take so much out of me,” she lied. It had.

Her last high-dollar scheme had put enough in the Association’s vault for her to start instigating across the country, rallying others under the banner of criminal union. Unfortunately, that same scheme had left her changed. Wild, what being poisoned by a bunch of demented aristocrats onto her evil plot had done to her: it had only taken two days of negotiations in Santana to get the Villains Association: Texas Branch set up (her promise to provide new recruits with all the weapons they needed certainly helped), but those two days had run her ragged. There weren’t enough margaritas in the city to keep her from feeling seconds away from melting in the heat, and she’d probably expelled more than she’d digested, either through the attic window or cellar door. She’d been back in Blackwater City for a week, and she was still weak on her feet.

“You don’t have to act all brave for me, Connie,” said Frank, pulling her closer, both arms around her waist now. For a guy who could walk through walls, he sure did have a solid grip on her when he wanted. Or maybe it was just that she was so reluctant to wriggle away. How could she want to, when it was so comfy curled up against his soft body, her own brittle edges sinking so deliciously against his yielding rolls of flab through his thin white shirt? “And you didn’t have to slave away in that hot kitchen first thing in the morning, neither.”

“Slave away? Please, they’re from a tube,” said Connie. “And it’s two in the afternoon.”

“Perfect time for a snack, then.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

Just as she was about to pry herself back out of bed, he said, “I can’t get up.”

She rolled her eyes. “We both know you’re still perfectly mobile.”

“No, it’s not that. I mean…” He pointed towards General George, who’d stirred awake on top of him, but seemed in no hurry, at the moment, to go anywhere.

“You know you can move him, right? He’s not a cat. Now come on, I’ve got milk on the stove!”

But then Frank looked at her with those big, pleading eyes. “Don’t you give me that puppy-dog face! I swear, you’re worse than the real dog.” Nevertheless, she conceded to his will, reaching over for a cookie to hold to his mouth. His eyes fluttered shut with pleasure as he took his first bite, and she gave his dark, messy hair a ruffle that brought a low hum up his throat.

They both knew what came next.

Connie snapped her fingers. “Georgie! Down!”

Obediently, the dog hopped off the bed and trotted out of the room to see what else he could see…or perhaps to not see what he wouldn’t be able to unsee.

***

By the time the tray was empty, and Frank and Connie had managed to put their pants back on, her pasta had, thankfully, not burnt, nor crusted by the edges of the pot. “Smells delicious,” said Frank, but even still, he went straight for the freezer and one of the many pints of ice cream inside.

“Baaaabe!” Connie whined, with a grand gesture of her wooden spoon towards her mac and cheese. “You know I’m making lunch!”

Frank just shrugged and continued prying the lid off of the ice cream. “Yeah, I know. This is just a little appetizer.” As if cookies in bed didn’t count. God, she’d turned him into such a needy, greedy thing…and, tease him as she would just for play’s sake, DAMN was it sexy! “Got any of that milk left, Sweets?”

“Yeah, it’s in the fridge, why–what are you doing?” She studied him, watching him at work, as, rather than eat the ice cream straight out of the carton with the spoon like he usually did, he threw it in the microwave, nuked it for about a quarter of a minute, and then proceeded to dump it, half-solid, into the blender. After topping it off with some milk and a generous squeeze of chocolate sauce, he hit ‘frappe’, let it run, and went rummaging in the cabinets until he pulled out…

“What is THAT?” snapped Connie, her whole body seizing up. “What IS that?!”

She knew what it was, and he knew she knew. She still woke up shivering with nightmares of the island where she’d been poisoned–nightmares she’d confessed to Frank about while she was still half-drunk: that maniac room service girl hijacking her mind, forcing her to overpower Kurt and shove a tube down his throat while he squirmed helplessly in her grip…

And it had been months since she’d come home from that mission, so she thought it was stupid of her to still be having such a visceral reaction to the simple sight of the object. Didn’t mean she could shake herself out of it, though.

“You know what? Better questions,” she corrected herself. “Where did you get it, and why do you have it?”

“Internet,” he said, turning off the blender. “And it’s for–what did Hacksaw Pete call it? ‘Exposure therapy’?”

Connie forced herself to scoff. “Oh, so Pete put you up to this?”

“Relax, he’s a doctor, remember?”

Okay, if Pete was a doctor, it was in the same way that she was a businesswoman. Sure, she trusted him with her life. Didn’t change the fact that when he’d pulled her wisdom teeth, he’d done it with street novocaine and vodka for painkillers.

“So, ‘exposure therapy’, huh? Sounds legit enough,” she said, though her eyes wouldn’t leave the…contraption…he was holding, and she had to work to keep her voice steady. “But you’re going to have to explain it like you would to a middle-school dropout to convince me I didn’t marry a madman.”

“Well, it’s easy. You just take the thing you’re scared of and you get a grip on it.” He crossed the room and pressed the funnel and tube into her hand, closing her fingers around the part where the base connected to the plastic hose. “In this case, literally.”

“Okay, whoa, in case you need reminding: I am the DASTARDLY Crime Brulee, and I ain’t afraid of nothin’!”

“Yeah?” Backing off, he pulled out a kitchen chair, decisively took a seat, and cocked his head towards the blender. “Then show me what you got.”

Deep down, she knew she was lying to him. To herself. That she was still a wreck inside after all that had happened on the island. That she needed help. She also knew that look she’d see on his face, like a poor kicked puppy, if she denied him the opportunity to help her. So, she strode across the kitchen and took the blender jug in hand, wanting to do this…for them.

Only, once she made it back to the table, the trouble started. He opened his mouth eagerly for her, and when she acquiesced, he clutched the end of the flexible tube between his teeth with that same eagerness…even a dare in his eyes. She was going to start to pour.

But then she couldn’t! She just couldn’t!

“Oh, Bones, don’t make me do this! I don’t want to hurt you, not like…not like she made me hurt Kurt…”

He took out the tube himself. “Take a deep breath, Sweets.”

So she did.

“Relax,” he said. “I know my capacity.”

“But what if we hit your limit and you can’t tell me–”

“Then we use a safe-signal.”

That’s right: he’d told her before, the 90’s were wild for him. She should have guessed he meant all kinds of BDSM.

“Now,” he said, “If I need you to stop, to pull out the tube, I’m gonna give you two taps on the leg right here, like this, alright?” He gave her outer thigh a couple of slaps. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m hurt. It just means I wanna stop. Also, I’ll clean it up if we spill it on the ground. Do you want to try this with me? If not, we can just have a normal lunch.”

“I’m not scared. And I wouldn’t lie to you about that,” she repeated, lying.

But she had a feeling he knew. “You don’t have to not be scared. But you don’t have to do it, either. It could be fun, though…”

And that’s when she saw the bulge in his pajama pants as he leaned back to let his belly retreat an inch or two off of his lap.

Oh.

OH.

“Now you’re getting it.” He gripped her hips and brought her down into his lap, her legs straddled over one of his plump thighs. “Don’t keep me waiting, Sweets. I’m still hungry.”

“Mmkay…but PROMISE you’ll signal out if–”

“I promise.” With that, he took the end of the tube back and placed it between his lips.

Then, he waited.

She still didn’t know if she could do it.

So he worked the tube out with one hand, and with the other, took her around the waist and pulled her close, so her little stomach crashed against his soft one, her thigh confronting his growing erection. “I promise,” he said again. “Now please. I’m craving some sweets about now.”

Nodding, almost breathless, she obeyed. At first, she went slow, aware of each gulp making its way down his throat. He swallowed so pretty, and his stubbled cheeks bulged so nice with each mouthful. She was still scared…but that faded away as she realized he definitely wasn’t.

When the jug was half-empty, he nodded and gave her this fixed, encouraging stare: continue.

And then it was over. He’d sucked it all down without hesitation, and for a moment, after she removed the tube and tossed the funnel onto the kitchen table, he panted, and she worried. “Too fast? Say something!”

“Fast, for sure.” He took her hands in his and guided them to the sides of his stomach, letting her feel it swell forth with his every breath. “Exhilharating though. I liked how it all landed heavy like that…” He looked up at her with the half-lidded eyes of a man pleasantly placated, and yet, his gaze still held a sharpness. “I wanna do it again sometime, if you do. And I can’t wait to see where it all goes. Any guesses?”

All this time, she’d been rocking against his thigh, and aware of it, but trying to keep her head.

But then he pulled her closer, hooked one arm under her knee, and pushed the bottom of his belly right against the center of her pleasure. Then, she came undone, pressing her forehead into his shoulder and gripping his cushiony sides, her breathing labored and shuddering.

“Good girl.”

“Good boy,” she replied, falling into him.

Then, “Thanks, Bones. Seriously, thank you.”

Then the pot of pasta boiled over, the fire alarm went off, and they both got doused with a spray of water from above.

And they laughed together.