Chapter 63:
– Blake Himejima –
The fire in the hearth crackled low and warm, casting flickering orange light across the front room of our familia manor. The smell of woodsmoke mingled with the lingering scent of the celebratory feast Hestia had insisted on the moment we got back from the stadium.
Roasted boar, sweet potatoes, fresh bread from the bakery down the street, and enough wine to flood a small temple.
Tony was sprawled across one of the high-backed chairs with his feet propped on the coffee table, a half-empty goblet of wine dangling from his fingers, looking like a man who had genuinely enjoyed his afternoon. Shuri sat curled against him.
Pepper had been pacing slow circles near the window for the past few minutes, checking the watch on her wrist with increasing frequency.
I knew that look. That was the "we have a flight to catch" look, except there was no flight, just a portal I needed to open, and a freshman year of college that did not give a single shit about interdimensional familia warfare.
I was sitting on the couch with my back against the cushions and my legs stretched out, trying to enjoy what little quiet remained before the inevitable, when Hestia descended on me.
"Bllaaake." Her arms wrapped around my neck, her body folded into my lap, and before I could process what was happening, my entire head was being smothered against the soft, warm, perilously underdressed expanse of her cleavage.
I made a noise. "Mmmph."
"You can't gooooo!"
I made another noise. "Mmmf…"
"What was that?" Bell asked from somewhere nearby, sounding like he was trying very hard not to look directly at the goddess currently suffocating me with her chest.
"I think he said something," Tony offered helpfully. "Could have been his last words. Hard to tell through all that divine cleavage."
"Tony!" Pepper said sharply.
"What? I'm just saying, if I go out like that, nobody revive me. Let me pass peacefully."
Shuri laughed. Of course she laughed. My mother, the woman who should have been concerned for her son's oxygen supply, was standing off to the side with one hand over her mouth and the other resting on her hip, looking delighted by my suffering.
Bell, poor innocent Bell, looked like his soul was attempting to flee through the back of his skull.
"You're my first child and my boyfriend and my captain and my everything and you cannot just leave me." Hestia squeezed harder, and my face sank deeper into the warm valley between her breasts. The ribbon barely holding her dress together was making concerning straining noises directly against my ear.
"Mmmff." I could feel her heartbeat. I could feel several other things. "Hestia, sweetheart, you need to breathe," I managed, my voice coming out muffled against her skin.
"Nooo, you breathe. Breathe me in. Stay forever."
"Hestia…"
"Shhhh."
I heard the distinct clack of heels crossing the wood floor. The mattress, or rather Hestia, shifted slightly as someone approached.
Hestia froze.
I could not see Pepper because my face was still trapped in a divine canyon, but I could picture her expression perfectly. "Blake has obligations back home. He has school. Classes. A dorm room. A life that does not revolve entirely around fighting monsters in a magical death cave…"
Hestia made a wounded noise.
I finally managed to pry my face out from between her breasts, sucking in air. "Hestia," I said, gently resting my hands on her shoulders. "I'm not abandoning you."
Her blue eyes were huge and wet.
Damn it.
This goddess had known me for only a few days, and somehow she had already carved out a place inside my chest like she had always belonged there. She was clingy, dramatic, possessive, horny in a way she barely understood.
But she was also warm. Hestia felt like home.
I softened my voice. "I'll only be a portal away."
She sniffled. "That is not the same."
"No," I admitted. "It isn't. But it's not like before. I'm not getting yanked into random worlds by accident anymore. I can come back. I can visit. You can visit me."
Her lower lip trembled.
Pepper's expression probably twitched at that.
I continued before either woman could start another fight. "And actually, I think I might be able to do more than that now."
Hestia blinked. "More?"
Tony leaned forward. "Define more."
I glanced around the living room of the new Hestia Familia manor. It was a real home now. And I had the very weird feeling that I had accidentally become responsible for keeping several homes connected across realities.
"Back when I first started opening portals, it felt like punching a hole through reality with my bare hands," I said. "Messy. Exhausting. Temporary. But after Orario synced with my power, it started feeling different. More stable. My portal power has been stabilizing fast. I'm pretty sure that if we found the right space to anchor it in, like a room we could lock up and not disturb, I might be able to hold a portal open permanently. Between this world and ours."
Her sniffling stopped mid-breath. "Permanently?"
"Yeah."
"ALWAYS open?"
"Yeah…."
Silence hit the room.
Then Hestia's entire face lit up. She clasped her hands together against her chest. Her breasts pushed up so dramatically that Bell made a noise like a strangled mouse and turned to study the wall with religious intensity. "Then keep it in your dorm room!" Hestia declared. "I can come visit whenever I miss you!"
Pepper moved so fast I almost heard a whip crack. "No chance."
Hestia pouted at her. "Why not?"
"Because I don't trust you alone with Blake."
Hestia gasped. "Rude!"
Pepper's stare remained flat. "I especially don't trust you not to abuse the portal and sneak into Blake's bed every night."
Hestia froze. Her eyes slid away. Her cheeks turned pink. Then, very softly, she made the most suspicious sound I had ever heard. "Tehehehe."
Pepper pointed at her immediately. "See? That. That is exactly what I mean."
"I was not going to do that every night," Hestia protested.
Pepper narrowed her eyes.
Hestia fidgeted. "Maybe some nights…."
I rubbed my forehead with my free hand. It was not that Pepper was wrong. Pepper was, in fact, painfully and surgically correct. Hestia had absolutely been planning to sneak into my bed every single night. The fact that she had not even pretended to deny it was kind of impressive, honestly. There was a brazen confidence to being caught red handed and then giggling about it that I had to respect.
"Okay." I sighed. "Counter offer. The portal stays in Stark Tower. The penthouse has dedicated guest space, security, JARVIS keeping an eye on things, and it is not directly attached to my dorm bed."
"Acceptable," Pepper said immediately.
"Booooo!"
"Hestia, sweetheart, please."
"Boooo. Booo, I say." Hestia thumped her tiny fist against my chest. It landed with about as much force as a determined butterfly. "Pepper, you are mean. You are mean and tall and I do not like you."
"That is fine. I do not need you to like me. I just need you to not crawl into Blake's bed unannounced at three in the morning while he has an organic chemistry exam at eight."
"Hmph." Hestia turned her face back into my neck.
Shuri was outright laughing now, a low warm chuckle into Tony's shirt.
He reached up and patted her hair absently. "They're gonna be friends in like a month," he said. "Mark it. I am calling it now. Pepper hates her right up until they start collaborating, and then it is over for me."
"That is not happening," Pepper said.
"Tehehehe."
"Hestia, stop that."
"TEHEHEHE."
I gave in and laughed. I could not help it. There was something absurd about the fact that I had spent the afternoon dismantling an entire familia in front of fifty thousand spectators and the most stressful moment of my day was now happening in my own living room, with a goddess in my lap pouting about portal placement while my girlfriend played zoning commissioner.
"Alright." I stood up carefully, with Hestia clinging to me like a particularly soft koala. "Let's go pick a room. We'll lock it from the inside, set wards, and I'll anchor the portal there. That way you control access on this side and we control it on ours. Fair?"
Hestia's pout cracked. Just a little. "And you'll come through it often?"
"As often as I can. I promise."
We headed upstairs.
The bedroom Hestia chose was at the end of the second-floor hallway, currently empty except for a bed frame nobody had assembled yet. It was quiet. Private. Easy to lock.
We said goodbye for now.
Hestia clung to me one last time, no theatrics this time, just her arms wrapped tight around my middle and her face pressed against my chest. I kissed the top of her head, brushed her hair back, and tilted her chin up so I could kiss her properly. She made a small soft sound into my mouth and held on for an extra few seconds when I tried to pull back.
"Come back soon."
"I will."
"Come back tonight."
"Hestia."
"Tomorrow then."
"Maybe."
"Tomorrow it is."
Bell gave me a slightly nervous wave, which turned into a slightly nervous bow, which turned into him calling me "big bro" again and then ducking his head when Shuri immediately threatened to hug him a second time. He had not quite recovered from the first round.
I clapped him on the shoulder, told him to train hard while I was gone, and reminded him to listen to Hestia. "You're the only adventurer in the familia right now besides me," I told him. "Stick to the upper floors until I'm back. Do not go past floor five without me. Hestia will worry."
"Yes, big bro."
"And Bell."
"Yes?"
"You're going to be a great adventurer. I mean that."
His ears turned pink and he nodded fast, eyes shining.
Pepper walked through the portal first with the air of a woman who was making sure no goddess tried to dart past her and hide under my bed. Tony followed, dragging one hand along the edge of the portal until JARVIS calmly told him not to touch unknown dimensional boundaries with bare skin unless he wanted his fingers in two universes at once.
Shuri kissed Hestia's cheek before stepping through. "Take care of the house," my mother said.
Hestia straightened with immediate pride. "I will."
"...Master Blake," JARVIS said, "I have sealed the closet door from the outside and added it to a restricted access list."
"Thanks, JARVIS."
"You are welcome. Miss Potts has already requested a full security protocol draft for all interdimensional access points."
Pepper, standing just outside the closet with her arms crossed, gave me a look through the open door.
"Requested is a polite word," Tony said from behind her. "Commanded with terrifying efficiency is closer."
Pepper did not deny it.
I stepped out of the closet and into Stark Tower. New York stretched beyond the windows, alive with traffic, sirens, sunlight, and a million people who had no idea there was now a permanent magical doorway to another universe hidden behind industrial cleaning supplies.
Tony looked back at the glowing portal with the longing expression of a child being told he could not open his birthday presents yet. "That was a crazy world," he said with grin spreading across his face. "And I'm kind of bummed I didn't get to take my suit into the Dungeon, but there's always next time."
Pepper slowly turned toward him. "You are not taking prototype powered armor into a monster-filled magical dungeon without preparation, containment, legal review, medical backup, and at least seven conversations about cross-dimensional technological contamination."
Tony blinked.
Then he looked at me. "She said I can go after paperwork..."
"I heard that too," I said.
Pepper pointed at both of us. "That is not what I said!"
Shuri leaned against the kitchen island. She had been quiet since stepping through the portal, one hand resting lightly over the spot on her back where her Falna sat hidden beneath her clothes. "I wonder if we can still grow our Falna here," she said. "Away from Orario. Away from Hestia's world."
Tony's grin shifted into something sharper and more scientific. "Oh, I like that question. Experimentation is part of science, even if it's magical experimentation!"
Pepper closed her eyes. "Of course you think that."
Shuri tapped her chin. "Falna records excelia through experience, correct? It measures growth, challenge, hardship, victory, effort. If the blessing is anchored to our souls, then distance between worlds may not matter."
I felt my own Falna hum under my skin. It was faint, but present.
A week later, I had almost convinced myself that my life had something vaguely resembling routine again.
Almost.
Routine was a generous word when my week involved college classes, makeup assignments, portal maintenance, sparring with a former Russian super spy, regular check-ins with a clingy virgin goddess from another universe, regular check-ins with my two more emotionably stable ninja girlfriends in another another universe, and one very awkward conversation with Tony about whether Dungeon magic stones could power an arc reactor without creating "funny glowing cancer."
Pepper had vetoed the phrase funny glowing cancer.
JARVIS had added it to a private list titled Things Sir Should Not Say Near Investors.
Still, compared to getting dragged through a rainbow death tunnel into Orario, joining a goddess's Familia, becoming a Level Six adventurer, buying a house, adopting Bell as my accidental little brother, and humiliating Apollo's entire Familia in front of a packed stadium, sitting through physics lectures felt almost relaxing.
The problem was that missing classes at SIT was not like skipping normal school. Tony had poached half the faculty from places like MIT, Caltech, Oxford, and wherever else genius professors spawned when fed grant money and ego validation. These people did not teach like high school teachers. They taught like they were trying to determine whether you had lied on your admissions essays by making you bleed equations.
Thankfully, there was one extremely stupid advantage to having Tony Stark as a stepfather.
Nepotism.
None of my professors were quite willing to scold me too hard for missing class after the university's founder, largest donor, and walking public relations disaster had personally put me into several campus systems as "family priority." I still had to do the work. They were not letting me skate entirely. Dr. Vasquez in physics had made that clear with one chilly look that could have frozen a lesser man in place.
But as long as I turned things in eventually, nobody threatened to fail me.
Which was good, because "sorry professor, I was busy legally annihilating a divine stalker's Familia in another dimension" was the kind of excuse that either got you extra credit at SIT or a psychological evaluation.
By Friday, I had caught up on most of it.
Physics notes, done.
Economics reading, mostly done.
Engineering lab safety modules, done after Peter yelled at me for trying to skim them.
Foreign language assignments, technically pointless because everyone in that class with supernatural cheating bullshit already spoke every language, but still done.
The more unsettling part of the week had not been schoolwork.
It had been the girls.
Jean, Emma, Akeno, and Rias had been acting different.
Jean still sat with me in physics, but instead of brushing her shoulder against mine every five seconds or giving me soft, knowing smiles like she was quietly undressing my soul, she actually talked to me about the lecture. She asked what I thought about rotational mechanics. She argued with me about engineering applications. She laughed when I got a problem wrong and then helped me fix it without making me feel like an idiot.
Emma still appeared in economics like a blonde bombshell designed by capitalism to make every straight man and half the women in the lecture hall reconsider their life choices, but she had stopped casually touching my thigh under the desk. She still flirted, obviously. Emma Frost not flirting would have been a medical emergency. But it had changed to more normal topics. She also eased up on trying to push me into becoming the superhero she had in mind for me. It seemed like she was just happy to help me with my own non-existent plans. My superhero debut didn't go the way I thought it would have so I was currently in the re-evaluation phase.
Akeno had become the strangest one.
She still hugged me. Still kissed my cheek. Still called me otouto in that voice that made certain parts of my brain short-circuit in ways I absolutely did not want to examine in public. But she had stopped pressing every interaction toward the edge of something dangerous. Instead, she cooked with me. Walked with me. Asked about my childhood in New York. Asked about Peter. Asked about the foster homes without making me feel like I had to perform grief for her.
Rias had backed off too.
Which, honestly, made her more dangerous somehow.
A thirsty Rias was obvious. Gorgeous, terrifying, demonic royalty trying to seduce me out of an arranged marriage problem was stressful, but at least I knew what was happening.
A patient Rias was harder.
A patient Rias asked me to study with her. A patient Rias invited me and Peter to sit with her group at lunch. A patient Rias listened when I talked, smiled when I made jokes, and looked at me like she was building a case instead of just trying to win a war.
It was nice.
That was the dangerous part.
It was really fucking nice.
And I did not know what had caused it.
Which was why I asked Natasha.
The private training room beneath Emma and Jean's secret campus building smelled like rubber mats, disinfectant, metal, and the faint burnt ozone that never fully left places where I practiced.
The room itself was huge, with reinforced walls, impact padding, weapon racks, sensors hidden in the ceiling, and a combat floor that could shift between surfaces. Today, it was set to basic mat mode.
Natasha and I had been sparring for just over an hour.
I was noticing something interesting. My strength and speed felt smoother and easier to control since Hestia gave me her blessing. Fighting at human level had gotten easier. Before Falna, holding back had felt like trying to thread a needle while wearing boxing gloves. I could do it, but it required constant focus. Too much pressure and I broke bones. Too much speed and someone could not react.
After Falna, my control had improved.
Which was why I managed to sweep Natasha Romanoff's legs out from under her without accidentally launching her into the wall.
Her eyes widened for half a second as her balance broke. Then her back hit the mat. For one glorious instant, Black Widow looked surprised.
I froze above her, one hand raised defensively, sweat dripping down my neck.
Natasha blinked up at me from the mat. Then one corner of her mouth curled. "Very well done."
I grinned. "Thanks."
"Of course, you're only learning this fast because I'm an amazing teacher." She held up a hand.
I reached down and helped her up. Her fingers wrapped around mine, warm and strong. She rose smoothly, close enough that I caught the scent of her shampoo beneath the sweat and leather. Something clean and sharp, with a hint of vanilla that did not fit her image at all and somehow made her more dangerous.
She did not let go right away. It was only a second. Maybe two. Long enough for me to notice. Long enough for her to notice me noticing.
Then she released my hand and stepped back like nothing had happened.
Natasha wore black training pants and a fitted dark gray tank top today, which was almost merciful compared to the catsuit she sometimes claimed was tactical. Her red hair was tied back in a loose braid, a few strands sticking to her damp forehead.
I grabbed a towel from the bench and wiped my face. "Can I ask you something?"
Natasha's expression shifted slightly. "That depends on whether the question starts with, Natasha, why did you hack the university security system, or Natasha, did you teach Asia how to disassemble a handgun."
I paused. "Did you?"
"Yes, but ask your real question, Blake."
"...Right." I tossed the towel over my shoulder and leaned against the edge of the bench. "What do you think is up with Jean, Emma, Akeno, and Rias?"
Natasha walked to the water station and filled a bottle. "That depends. Are you asking because you noticed them all acting differently this past week?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I was starting to worry that all the blood in your body had permanently relocated below your waist."
I choked. "Pffft. Jesus, Natasha..."
She drank from the bottle, looking unbothered. "What? You asked and I answered."
"I asked what was up with them."
"And I answered the underlying concern." Natasha smirked. "You live in a very anatomically confusing social circle."
I sighed.
She capped the bottle and leaned back against the wall, arms folding beneath her chest. "I had a talk with them."
I stared at her. "You what?"
"I had a talk with them," she repeated.
"What did you say?"
She shrugged. "I told them to ease up on how thirsty they were around you and start acting more like mature women who wanted to date you instead of just thirsty sluts."
I inhaled wrong. The air went down the wrong pipe and tried to kill me. "Khk, fuck, Natasha!"
She laughed. "You should see your face."
I coughed into my fist. "You called them thirsty sluts?"
"Not as my opening statement… But pretty much yeah." She lifted both hands, still smiling. "Sorry if I overstepped."
I rubbed my forehead. I wanted to say she had. Part of me even felt like she had.
My relationships, or the weird not-yet-relationships orbiting me, were complicated and personal. Having Natasha march in and lecture four women I cared about, two of whom were time-traveling telepaths and one of whom was my sister with feelings I was doing my best not to look directly at, felt like throwing a live grenade into an emotional fireworks factory.
But the problem was that Natasha was not wrong.
That was the worst part.
She was not fucking wrong.
Jean and Emma loved me. I knew that. Even if I did not understand the version of me they loved, I could feel the sincerity behind it. But they had been pushing a future onto me that I had never lived.
Rias needed help. She wanted freedom. She was also gorgeous, lonely, terrified of being caged, and smart enough to see me as a way out. That did not make her feelings fake, but it made them messy.
Akeno...
I swallowed.
Akeno was the one I had the least right to judge and the most reason to be careful with. Ten years apart had broken something in both of us, then shoved us back together as adults with too many missing pieces. She loved me. I loved her. That much was simple. Everything else was not as simple.
Natasha watched the thoughts cross my face without needing telepathy. "You're mad," she said.
"I don't know."
"That's fair."
"I think part of me wants to be."
"But?"
"But you weren't wrong."
She nodded once, accepting that without smugness.
That was another thing about Natasha. She could be teasing, seductive, merciless, and morally flexible in a way that should have been alarming, but when she got serious, she got very still. Very honest. Like she was setting down all the weapons she used to make the world easier to survive.
"I've seen where this sort of thing goes," she said. "Attraction is easy. Obsession is easy. Trauma bonding is easy. Beautiful people throwing desire at a confused young man with too much power and too many abandonment issues? Extremely easy."
"Wow. Thanks."
"You know I'm right."
I hated that she was.
She continued, voice calmer now. "You have something solid with Tsunade and Shizune. Strange, yes. Fast, yes. But solid. They trained you. Built routines with you."
She was right about that too.
Tsunade and Shizune had been chaos in their own ways, but they had become part of my life through a hundred normal things before sex had turned everything nuclear. Cooking with Shizune. Walking with Tsunade through strange towns. Talking about debt, death, homes, gods, and bad habits. Being patched up. Being teased. Being seen.
"Pepper too," Natasha said.
I looked up.
Natasha's expression softened a fraction. "You and Pepper started with a very physical first date. I'm not pretending otherwise. But after that? She built something with you."
I thought of Pepper sitting beside me in bed after Kokabiel nearly killed me. Her hand in mine. Her anger when I scared her. The way she pushed Hestia because she was trying to protect my life from becoming a total logistical disaster, even if she pretended it was just scheduling. "Yeah," I said quietly. "She did."
Natasha pushed off the wall and walked toward me. "I wasn't trying to decide anything for you. You're allowed to want who you want. You're allowed to make bad decisions too. God knows everyone else in your life does. For example, Tony Stark is his own category of bad decisions. You should read some of the files SHIELD has on him sometime…"
I don't think I wanted to. Instead I just said: "Fair."
"But those four needed to hear that if they wanted something real with you, they had to stop acting like you were a prize. They had to start treating you like a person."
I leaned back against the bench and stared at the ceiling. The reinforced lights hummed softly overhead.
"You need to decide what you want," she said.
I looked at her hand, then at her face. "And what do you think I want?"
Her eyes softened as she looked at me. "I think you should answer that before someone else does."
That landed harder than I expected.
Maybe because Natasha and I had fallen into a routine so easily that I had not noticed what it had become. Most days, I spent more time with her than almost anyone else. We sparred for an hour or two, sometimes longer. We talked afterward. About fighting. About SHIELD. About Asia. About all the ways my life was actively on fire.
It was weirdly comforting. Which was probably dangerous too considering she was a literal spy/assassin. But we did click.
She stepped back, grabbed her towel, and tossed it at my face.
I caught it.
"Break's over," she said.
I stared at her. "We just had a serious emotional conversation."
"Yes."
"And now we're going back to fighting?"
"Yes."
"Is that healthy?"
"No idea. But it works for us."
I snorted. "Fair."
Another week slipped by the way weeks did when life was, briefly, behaving itself.
I had been back to Orario, but not back to the dungeon. There was still a lot of funds saved up so Hestia and I just had dates in her manor. I spent some time giving fighting lessons to Bell as well.
I had been to Konoha twice. Once on Tuesday night, when Tsunade had basically declared a state of emergency over my absence and dragged me to bed before I had even taken my shoes off. Once on Wednesday afternoon, when Shizune had cornered me in the kitchen of the Senju compound, kissed me until my knees forgot how to do their job, and then very calmly fed me lunch while Tonton sat on my foot.
I had come back to my dorm both nights feeling like a man who was getting away with something.
The school side of things was actually working. Physics was hard but Jean made it easier in the most surprising, undramatic way, by simply being good at the material and willing to walk me through derivations without making it weird. Economics with Emma had become a strange highlight of my week, mostly because she had opinions on every market case the professor put on the board and was completely unafraid to say so, while leaning her chin on her hand and looking at me sideways with an expression that suggested she was paying half of her attention to me and getting away with it.
It was another Friday night…
"Stand still."
"I am standing still."
"You are not standing still."
"Rias, I am literally not moving."
"You are doing the thing with your shoulders."
"What thing with my shoulders?"
"The thing." Rias circled me, scowled at my reflection in the full length mirror she had wheeled in from somewhere on her floor, and gestured vaguely at my upper body. "The thing where you breathe and your shoulders go up. Stop breathing."
"That sounds counterproductive. I need to breathe to live…"
"Breathe less then!"
Akeno laughed behind me. "Otouto, just let her fuss. If you do not let her dress you, she will combust. You know she loves her cosplay and dressing you in this suit is like a prelude to one day having you dress up with her…"
I caught my own eye in the mirror and let them work.
The tuxedo was black. Emma had sent it to my dorm three days ago with a card that just said "wear this" in her handwriting, no signature, no further instruction. I had taken it to a mirror, held it up, and immediately understood that this was the kind of tuxedo a man wore when he wanted everyone in the room to know that someone with a lot of money had picked it for him.
Rias had taken one look at it on the hanger and informed me, with the gravity of a woman declaring war, that I would not be putting this on by myself.
She had been working on my tie for ten minutes.
"There." Rias stepped back, tilted her head, leaned in again, adjusted the knot a hair to the left, and then, finally, lowered her hands and breathed out a small satisfied "haaah." "There."
Akeno appeared at my other side. She tugged at the lapel, smoothed her palm across my chest like she was brushing off invisible lint, and tilted her face up to look at me. "You look so handsome, otouto."
"Thanks."
"So handsome." She repeated it more slowly.
"You look like a young James Bond," Rias said.
"I do not."
"You do." Akeno was smiling. She brushed her thumb along the edge of my jaw, gentle. "And I am unreasonably proud."
"And I am unreasonably jealous." Rias crossed her arms under her chest, which did unfair things to the line of her sweater, and pouted at the mirror. "I cannot do this with you. Public dates. Limousines. Restaurants where people take photographs. If a Phenex agent saw me on a celebrity gossip site, that would be the end of everything. I have to date you in dorm rooms and study lounges and that one Thai place on the corner that has the dimmest lighting in Manhattan."
"I am taking you to that Thai place tomorrow."
"You are?"
"I am."
"Oh." She blinked, briefly, like she had not expected the easy "yes." "Well. Good. That, at least, is something."
"It is something," I agreed.
"You're going to make every woman in that restaurant stare," Akeno said, her voice warm and teasing.
Rias sighed dramatically from the chair. "I'm still jealous…" Rias corrected. "Of the fact that Emma Frost can take you out in public without worrying that a demonic tracking network, a furious family, or a smug immortal rooster with delusions of ownership will find her."
"Riser is still in Antarctica," I said.
Rias's pout softened into a smile. "Yes. That thought has brought me a great deal of comfort."
Akeno laughed behind one hand. "Poor Riser."
Rias and I both looked at her.
Akeno's smile turned wicked. "I said poor Riser because he has not suffered enough yet."
"There she is," I said with a nod. I expect nothing less from Akeno.
Akeno winked. She looked up at me through her lashes, and for half a second, I forgot how breathing worked. Akeno leaned up onto her toes and kissed the corner of my mouth. A soft press of lips right at the edge between innocent and absolutely not.
My whole body went still.
Akeno pulled back with a smug little smile, her violet eyes gleaming. "Have a good time with Emma tonight, otouto."
"But not too good of a time," Rias added from my other side, with a pout that could have peeled paint off a wall. "Just enough of a good time. A measured good time. A respectable good time."
"Rias…"
"I am pouting in a fully adult way. You will respect the pout."
"I will respect the pout."
"Thank you!"
I looked between them, both of them watching me in the mirror, both of them beautiful, both of them not climbing me. Both of them just there, with me, dressing me for a date with another woman, in a tuxedo, like we were a normal thing. Whatever normal was, in this room, with these people.
I had a sudden, ridiculous impulse.
I followed it.
I turned my head and kissed Akeno on the cheek. She made a startled little "oh" and her cheek went pink under my mouth.
Then I turned, and I kissed Rias on the cheek too.
Rias's eyes went enormous. Her mouth opened. Her face went the exact shade of red her hair was, which was a feat of biology I had not been previously aware was possible. She made a sound like a teakettle being switched off mid whistle.
"Bye."
"You. Hnh."
"Goodnight, ladies."
"Hnh?"
I grinned, grabbed the cuff of my own jacket to settle it, and walked out of my dorm room with the sound of Akeno's delighted noises chasing me down the hall when her brain finally caught up.
The limo was waiting at the curb in front of my dorm.
It was a black stretch, long enough that it took up nearly the full length of the loading zone, with discreet chrome accents and tinted windows so dark you could see your own reflection in them.
A driver in a charcoal suit stood at the back door, hat tucked under his arm, the picture of professional invisibility. He inclined his head when I approached. "Mr. Himejima."
"Hi…?"
"Miss Frost is inside."
"Of course she is."
He opened the door for me, and I slid in.
The interior of the limo smelled like leather, like a faint white floral perfume I did not recognize, and like the particular cool freshness of climate control set to the exact temperature of a high end hotel room. There was a small bar built into the partition, with crystal glasses and a chilled bottle of something pale and gold.
And there was Emma.
I, fully and without dignity, gaped.
She was sitting at an angle on the long leather bench, one ankle crossed delicately over the other, one arm draped along the back of the seat in a pose that looked accidental and was extremely not. The dress was white. It clung to her from her chest to her hips and then fell in a long fluid line to the floor, with a slit running so high up her left leg that the only thing concealing her from the hip down was a single careful drape of fabric. Her platinum blonde hair was pulled up off her neck in a complicated twist that probably had a French name I would butcher.
The side of the dress, the side, was almost not there. The cut went deep, all the way down past her ribs, exposing a long, pale, breathtaking sweep of skin that included exactly the amount of side boob a woman wore when she had decided to ruin a man on purpose. There was no bra. There was no possibility of a bra.
I forgot how to speak for what was probably two full seconds. "Bnh."
"I know," her voice purred into the inside of my skull, warm and amused, while her actual lips just curved up at the corners. "I know I look amazing. You really do not have to say it, darling. I can hear you spelling 'oh fuck' in three different ways."
"Hh."
She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth lifting further, and let me catch up to my own breathing.
I caught up to my own breathing. "You're beautiful," I said. Out loud. Because I wanted her to actually hear it with her ears, not just pick it out of the static.
Her smirk softened. Just a touch. A real thing, briefly, before she folded it back into the performance.
"Thank you, Blake."
"You're welcome."
I slid down the bench until I was beside her, close enough that the heat of her bare shoulder was a real, present thing against my arm.
The driver closed the partition with a soft, polite click and the limo rolled smoothly into traffic.
I cleared my throat. "Okay, so. Don't take this wrong. I am very happy to be here. I am very happy to be in this limo, in this tux, with you, looking like that. I would, on the record, like more nights that involve me being in this limo, in this tux, with you, looking like that. But..."
She smiled softly. "But?"
"Why a public date? You usually like to keep things private. We've done dinner in your suite. We have done the entire economics study group at my place where you sat on my lap on purpose to scandalize Peter. Public is not, normally, your thing."
Emma laughed. She lifted her free hand and waved it once, slowly, in a small "you got me" gesture. "It is, normally, not my thing."
"So?"
"So there are reasons."
"Care to share?"
She watched me for a moment, her eyes that pale ice blue, the dim limo lights softening them. The amused mask was still up, but I could see the second face under it, the careful one she only showed when she trusted you to look. She was deciding how much to tell me.
These last two weeks, with both her and Jean, had been the easiest two weeks of our entire short, strange relationship.
The pressure had bled out. The pressure had been replaced by something I had not realized I had been starving for, which was the chance to actually know either of them.
Emma was, I had learned, terrifyingly funny when she was not trying to seduce me. Jean was, I had learned, quietly devout about her engineering homework in a way that bordered on monastic. Both of them had, I had learned, opinions about everything, and almost no patience for the version of me that pretended to be smaller than I was.
"There are rumors," she said. "Online. That I am 'taken.' That phrase, by the way, makes my skin itch, but it is the phrase that is being used, so I will use it."
"Okay."
"I would like them to be impossible to dismiss. Hence." She gestured down at her own dress with the same easy hand. "Hence the limousine. Hence the restaurant. Hence the fact that there will be no fewer than three dozen photographers outside the front entrance of our venue, all of whom have been very gently tipped off that the youngest billionaire in America will be arriving at eight on the arm of a tall dark haired young man who is, also coincidentally, Tony Stark's stepson."
The limo took a slow corner. Manhattan slid by outside the tinted window in a wash of gold and red brake lights.
"Okay," I said. Slowly. "I'm in. I want to be in. But you're not telling me the whole thing."
Emma's mouth tucked up at one corner. She let her head rest back against the leather. "All right. Before I murdered my evil father in this new life of mine, the man had, in his typical paternal style, been arranging an engagement for me. A man. A real piece of shit man. My father had not yet announced the engagement publicly when I, ah, expedited his retirement."
"That's one way to phrase it."
She smirked. "...In any case. With Father dead and his fingers no longer in the company, I took over Frost International. I had, in theory, ended that engagement when I ended Father. In practice, the gentleman in question does not appear to have absorbed the message."
"He's still around?" I found the words coming out possessive.
Emma grinned, she seemed to really like that tone in my voice. "...He is still around. He sends gifts. He invites me to galas. He had his assistant call my assistant last week to 'check in' about the 'understanding between our families.' He cannot, openly, be told off, because of certain pieces of board influence he still controls and certain old men in certain old clubs whose support I would prefer not to lose just yet. So I have been required, for the last several months, to be politely, infuriatingly, ambiguously single in public." She tipped her head sideways to look at me. "I am very tired of being politely ambiguously single in public. Plus I have seized enough control of my company now that I don't need to be wary of this man anymore even if—when—he does throw his little possessive tantrum finding out I am taken."
"And tonight is for that?" I asked her.
"Tonight is partly for that. I will not pretend otherwise to you, Blake." She lifted one shoulder, and the dress shifted with her in a way that I tried, valiantly, not to notice. She was, anyway, reading my mind, so the valor was entirely for show. "The second part is that I just want to have a nice time with you."
I felt my face go warm. I could not do anything about it.
Her smirk widened.
She faced forward, composed, the picture of a young billionaire on her way to dinner. She slid her hand across the leather and let it rest, palm up, on the seat between us.
I put my hand in hers.
Her fingers closed slowly. Her thumb traced one small slow arc across the back of my knuckles, exactly the way Natasha's had at the end of sparring. I wondered, briefly, if these women coordinated?
I decided I did not want to know.
– Emma Frost –
Emma Frost had arranged every detail of the evening.
The restaurant. The reservation. The limo. The dress. The photographers outside. The angle of the front entrance. The timing of their arrival. The discreet leak to the gossip columnists who were exactly unscrupulous enough to run with whatever narrative she placed in front of them, provided the lighting was good and the people involved were rich enough to matter.
By tomorrow morning, every tabloid in the country would have Blake Himejima and Emma Frost splashed across its front page.
"Young Billionaire Heiress Steps Out With Tony Stark's Adopted Son."
"Emma Frost's Mystery Man Revealed."
Emma despised tabloids.
She also used them.
That was the difference between being a victim of public perception and being its architect.
The restaurant was called Aurelia, which was exactly the sort of name wealthy people loved because it sounded expensive before anyone had to explain what the menu looked like. It occupied the top three floors of a renovated pre-war building near Central Park, all marble, brass, private elevators, and views of Manhattan arranged to make everyone inside feel as though the city existed for their entertainment.
A six-star restaurant, technically. Ridiculous branding. There was no actual six-star system that mattered, but rich people enjoyed inventing new ladders once they got bored standing at the top of the existing ones.
Emma approved.
When the limo pulled up outside, the photographers were already waiting.
Flashbulbs erupted the moment the door opened.
The staff greeted them like royalty, which was to say they smiled without showing too much surprise and pretended the photographers outside were an ordinary weather pattern. The maître d' bowed his head, called her Miss Frost, and led them through a private elevator to the top floor.
Blake looked around as they walked. He tried not to. That was the charming part.
But Emma could feel his mind catching on details. The price of the wine wall where nothing was under four digits. The fact that one table contained a film actress he recognized from posters and another held a senator whose campaign Emma had considered funding purely because his opponent had worse tax policy.
Blake thought rich people were weird.
Emma smiled into her champagne. He was correct.
The evening settled after that.
To Emma's mild surprise, it became lovely. Emma laughed more than she meant to.
Blake confessed that he still found most rich people terrifying because wealth seemed to make them invent new ways to be insane.
Emma told him that was accurate, but incomplete. Wealth did not create insanity. It removed the need to hide it.
It had been a good two weeks.
Natasha Romanoff's advice, while irritating, had been correct. Emma disliked admitting that. By the end of the half hour Natasha had reduced her, Jean, Akeno, and Rias to four embarrassed adults sitting in a row on the bench of a campus medical office, with a redhead in scrubs telling them all, with a clipboard nowhere in sight, that they were behaving like thirsty sluts.
She had, instead, gone home that night, sat on the edge of her bed, looked at the half written explicit text she had been about to send Blake, and deleted it. She had then opened a chat with Jean and typed "fuck, she's right, isn't she" and Jean had replied "yes" and then the two of them had spent forty minutes very quietly hating Natasha Romanoff together while privately rearranging every plan they had.
Two weeks of measured restraint later, the result was undeniable.
Emma had covered more ground with Blake in those two weeks than in the entire previous several months of texts and pictures and increasingly thirsty study session ambushes. He looked at her differently now. He laughed at her differently. He held her hand the way he had in the limo, calmly, like it belonged to him for the duration of the gesture, which was a sensation Emma was not entirely sure she had felt since dying once.
He still, of course, loved the photographs.
She had, just to test, sent him one nude photo on Sunday. Carefully cropped to be artful rather than aggressive. His response had been a single line that read "Emma…" and nothing else, which she had translated through her own telepathy with great satisfaction.
She was, in fact, gorgeous. She knew. She had a face that had been used to ruin dynasties, a body that had not lost its argument with gravity in two lifetimes, and she had earned every inch of her own appraisal of herself.
And then the back of her skull went cold. It was not a sensation she had felt in this lifetime.
It had been, in the other life, a sensation she had associated with one specific man and almost no one else. Emma's brain ran on the low murmur of every consciousness around her, even at her lightest touch. There were always voices. Always thought. Always the white static of other people's heads.
And then, at the edge of her senses, there was a hole.
A confident, walking, breathing hole, with the shape and weight of a man, and absolutely no surface for her to skim.
Blake, across the table, was halfway through saying something about Peter and a vacuum cleaner, and his mouth was still open and the candle was still flickering and the rest of the dining room was still doing its quiet, expensive thing.
Inside her head, she swore in three languages.
She turned her head.
The maître d' was leading a party of two across the dining room. A man and a woman. The woman was tall and brunette and beautiful in the catalog way, the way of women selected to be on the arms of men who collected women. She wore an emerald cocktail dress and a small forced smile. Emma did not bother to read her, mostly because she did not need to. She was just some random gold digger.
The man however was a cold, hard, unreadable void wrapped in smugness, appetite, and violence.
Sebastian Shaw.He was steered, with absolutely no coincidence at all, to the table closest to theirs.
Her glass clicked softly back onto the table.
Blake paused and then looked at her in concern when he noticed her expression change. "What's wrong?"
Emma did not answer immediately. She turned her head slightly.
Sebastian Shaw handed his coat to the attendant, turned slightly, and looked directly toward Emma's table.
Their eyes met.
His smile widened as if he thought intruding on her date had won him something.
Emma's stomach turned cold. But it was not from fear. She refused to call it fear. He wasn't even close to a threat to her in this lifetime. Just the old memories… perhaps.
In her first life, Sebastian Shaw had been the monster her father tried to sell her to. Literally. A man immune to her telepathy, immune to her pleas, immune to anything except force.
And her first Blake had saved her from him. That had been where it started. She had loved Blake from that night.
Emma turned back to Blake. For one breath, she almost told him. She almost said the name. Almost explained that the man seated too close had once been the end of her choices. Almost told Blake that in another life, Sebastian Shaw had been the hand closing around her throat, the door locking behind her, the future her father had tried to sell her into.
Almost. But no. Not tonight. Not while Blake was sitting across from her looking handsome enough to make half the room stare, listening to her, laughing with her, letting her have something close to normal for the first time in two lifetimes.
Sebastian Shaw did not get to take that from her.
"Nothing is wrong," Emma said, and was pleased to find that her voice came out smooth as silk over broken glass. "In fact, I am having a wonderful time."
Blake's eyes searched hers. He did not believe her.
Smart boy.
She placed her glass down with delicate care. She was not interested in Sebastian Shaw. She was not interested in his little Hellfire Club.
Sebastian wanted to sit close enough to watch?
Fine. She would give him a performance worth choking on.
Emma leaned forward over the table.
Blake blinked, clearly not expecting it. "Emma?"
She caught the lapel of his tuxedo between two fingers, careful not to wrinkle the fabric too badly. Akeno and Rias had done good work. It would have been rude to undo all of it at dinner.
Then she pulled him toward her and kissed him.
Blake made a small, startled sound against her mouth. "Mmh?"
Emma smirked into the kiss. It was not a polite kiss. Not chaste. Not a sweet little publicity gesture for the cameras that were no longer there. It was warm and slow and possessive enough that anyone watching would understand exactly what she meant by it. Her painted blue lips parted against his, soft but deliberate, and Blake's surprise melted after half a second into a low spark of lust that she felt bloom through his thoughts like lightning under skin.
Emma let the kiss linger one more beat, long enough for the restaurant around them to blur into murmurs and clinking glass and the distant rhythm of wealthy people pretending not to stare.
Then she pulled back.
Blake's eyes opened slowly.
His face was flushed. His lips were faintly tinted from hers. He looked dazed in a way that sent a pleased little curl of satisfaction through her chest. "That," he said, voice rougher than before, "was unexpected."
Emma smiled. "Was it?"
His smile turned playful. "Only a little. I feel so used…"
Her smile widened playfully as well.
In her head, she was purring with satisfaction.
She did not need to turn her head to see Shaw's expression. She did not need to read his mind, because she could not, and because it did not matter. She knew Sebastian Shaw was seething after watching that display.
Good.
XXX