Alone Time

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Hellboy.

Summary: AU piece where Myers is a woman & Liz is just a friend of Hellboy’s. Late one night Hellboy sees a new side to Agent Myers.


Alone Time

Hellboy reclined on his bed, watching the array of television sets he kept turned on at all times. Not much for him to do between assignments, really, except sit around his room. He could barely even go for a walk around the Bureau unless Myers was there. That didn’t sit well with him. Why did he need a keeper, for God’s sake? Especially a keeper who was a foot shorter than he was, a lot less muscular, and a woman to boot? To be fair, he admitted she was quite good with a gun and threw herself into dangerous situations without a thought for her own safety, only for his welfare, but still she got on his nerves. How could she think he needed her protection? What’s worse, how could Father think he needed this woman’s help? He could crush her skull instantly if he chose to. His tail twitched in agitation and he turned over on the bed, away from the wall of TVs, pushing several cats out of his way. They leaped down, meowing, as discomfited as he was.

Now, see, this was one more reason he needed more to do between assignments. He started fretting over matters like this. He didn’t have anything against Myers, who seemed like a nice enough woman when she let her guard down, which was very seldom. She was supposed to be his best friend, but somehow she held him at arm’s length. For whatever reason that bothered him. Men and women couldn’t be friends, anyway. Was he supposed to tell her about being a virgin and how much that bothered him? About how he was never going to have a woman in his life because he was a huge red demon and what woman could ever find that a turn-on? The hell he was, and if he couldn’t talk to her about things like that, they could not be best friends. Besides, you wouldn’t catch her telling him about all her old boyfriends. Probably didn’t have any; work seemed to be all there was to her life, at least since she’d come to the Bureau. Being his keeper meant she lived here, and her comings and goings were preserved on tape and in triplicate. Agent Myers couldn’t very well list “gotta get laid” on the day-off request form as a reason for leaving the grounds. So, unless she was playing house with one of the other FBI agents assigned to the Bureau, and as far as he knew she wasn’t, she was just as alone as he was. The only difference was that she didn’t have to be.

Thing was, she was pretty. Real pretty. Maybe not like a model or anything, because he didn’t think she was skinny enough or tall enough for that, but she had a look to her that appealed to him. When she came to his room to deliver his meals, she always dressed in standard FBI issue, nice little suit, sometimes gray, sometimes blue or brown, but always the skirt that just covered her knees and the blazer over a white button-down shirt, a delicate gold chain around her neck that matched the little gold studs in her pierced ears. Her hair was long and usually she wore it in a bun at the nape of her neck, but that didn’t do anything to hide the color, sort of a maple-brown, and it looked really soft, too. Her eyes were blue, the color of a stormy sky.

The sound of the key sliding into the lock on the outside of his door brought him into a sitting position. He didn’t think it was Myers–it wasn’t time for him to eat yet. Instead it was Liz Sherman, one of the other talents the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense kept in their stable. “Hey, Red,” she said as she moved into the room and closed the door behind her. “How’re you doing today?”

“Could be better, Liz, definitely could be better.” He watched her push a ginger tabby out of the only chair in the room and sit down. “All this time off gets on my nerves.”

“Don’t be silly. You don’t have nerves.” She snapped open her camera and took a picture of him, the flashbulb blinding him for a moment. The picture whirred out the front of the camera and she removed it, waving it idly in the air.

Hellboy had a sudden thought. “Have you ever taken any pictures of Myers?”

“Yeah, sure. We hang out, talk. She’s really nice.”

“You think you could take one of her for me?”

Liz smiled a little. “What do you want it for?”

He shrugged, uncomfortable. Why did Liz have that look on her face? “I dunno. I just would like one. Is that too much trouble?”

A giggle escaped her and she shook her head. “No. I’ll get one next time I see her.”

“You guys hang out a lot?”

“I don’t know about a lot. She gets a little...claustrophobic sometimes, I guess. Joanna’s really kind of a loner, and it’s hard for her to be here. Sometimes she needs her privacy and...there isn’t that much here. It helps to go out, sit in the park...have coffee. People don’t pay attention to you in the park.” Her eyes didn’t leave him for a second.

“What do the two of you talk about?” Now that he knew Liz was friends with Myers, he had to find out how well they knew each other. A lot better than you know her, his mind told him.

“Just stuff. The past. The BPRD. Nothing special.”

He didn’t believe that for a second, but he let it go. “What’s her area of expertise?”

Liz smiled. “You should try talking to her, Red. I think all you’d have to do would be ask.” Seeing his impatience, she laughed. “Abnormal psych. She has a doctorate...was going to become a psychiatrist before she joined the FBI. Before Professor Broom picked her to come here, she’d applied to the Behavioral Science Unit. That’s the serial killer unit. Very hard to get into, from what she says, especially for someone with no previous law-enforcement experience.”


“So she wanted to be a profiler?” Hellboy vaguely remembered some movies he’d seen about the subject.

“Yeah. Professor Broom told me that she’s a limited empath. Not strong in it the way we’re strong in what we do, but she could have made a success out of herself there.” Several cats curled about Liz’s legs and she picked up a Siamese, rubbing noses with it.

“So she’s a freak too.” If he remembered right, an empath was someone who could put themselves in someone else’s place, think the way they did, feel the feelings they did. That struck him as creepy. Why would she want to put herself inside a killer’s mind? How could she do that without losing a little of herself in the process?

“Can I ask you something, Red?”

“Ask away.”

“Why don’t you ask her for a picture yourself? She probably has some lying around.”

He shook his head. “It would be too personal.”

Liz left, shaking her head. For some reason that annoyed him. He didn’t want to bother Myers, that’s what it was. Who wanted to root around in her belongings for a picture to give someone she didn’t even really like? He was being considerate of her, yeah. That thought restored his lost good humor, which continued until Myers arrived with his last meal of the day.

For a change, she wasn’t in her FBI uniform. She was wearing a long dress, black with tiny pink flowers scattered all over it. He didn’t know what the fabric was called, but it was gauzy and at least semi-sheer. The scoop neckline just reached the tops of her breasts and the dress clung to her body before belling out just past her hips into a floaty kind of skirt. It was long-sleeved and didn’t show much skin, but he still found himself somewhat uncomfortable looking at her. It was like seeing her in her nightgown, for God’s sake. What happened to the little suit? As she wheeled in the big cart and began lifting the huge bowls of noodles onto his table, he found himself asking, “What are you dressed up for, Girl Scout?”

She looked up at him for a second as she put down the last bowl of noodles. “I’m supposed to be going out.”

“With who?”

Myers reached down to the bottom shelf of the cart to get Hellboy’s beer. That left her behind sticking up in the air and he found the sight impossible to look away from. Damn–when you got her into something besides a power suit, she looked hot. “An old boyfriend of mine. Hansel’s his name.”

“Hansel! Jesus, did you meet him in a fairy tale or something?”


Her lips compressed into a tight line and he knew he’d pissed her off again. “I met him while I was in college.” She set the twenty-four pack down next to the noodles and turned the cart around. “So, if you don’t need anything else, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Myers!” She stopped for a second and looked back. Did he see hurt in her eyes? Nah, this was Myers. She was tough as an old shoe. “Have a good time,” he finished lamely.

“I’ll try to.” Then she smiled at him a little. Myers was pretty when she smiled, that was for sure. After she left, he found himself thinking that he now knew something about her: she did have old boyfriends, and one of them had a truly stupid name. Plus, he was sniffing around her again. Hellboy hoped she remembered that working at the BPRD meant having no personal life, because he figured her jerk ex sure wouldn’t.

It must have been after midnight when he heard the key in the lock of his door. He sat up in bed and wondered what was going on. Couldn’t be an attack, though–no alarms. As quickly as he could he pulled on a pair of jeans and turned on the lights. When the door opened he was surprised to see Myers, still in her pretty dress, her hair loose around her shoulders. It curled a little when she wore it down. “What are you doing here, Myers? Thought you had a hot date.”

“Oh, Hansel never was all that hot.” Turning, she closed the door behind her and walked past Hellboy to sit down on his couch. “I just needed a reminder of why I’m not still with him.”

“And why is that?” The air in his room suddenly felt heavy with something, but he couldn’t figure out what. Myers had brought it with her. He realized this when the scent of her perfume touched him, all gardenia and some musky undertone he wasn’t familiar with. Had she ever worn perfume before? Not that he could remember. Never before had she seemed soft the way she did now, either. In those suits she was an FBI agent, impersonal and tough. In that dress, though, she was a woman first.

Her head leaned backwards until it rested on the couch. “Well, if you really want to know, he just wasn’t for me. We didn’t fit each other. He wanted a flashy armpiece to make him look good, which wasn’t me, and I wanted someone I could have a long-term relationship with, which wasn’t him.”

“Want a beer, Myers?” he asked.

“What did I bring you earlier, Miller, Michelob? Normally I drink bottled Corona with lime, but for tonight I guess I can make an exception.”

“Heineken.” He plucked a can out of his refrigerator and tossed it to her. She snatched it out of the air like a sensei capturing a mosquito with chopsticks. “Good catch.” He sat down next to her.


“Thanks.” She popped the top and took a drag from the can, then rolled it back and forth over her cheeks, then her forehead, then her throat. A little sigh of pleasure escaped her. He could see the condensation gleaming on her skin.

The sight gave him a shaky feeling, so he asked a question to cover it up. “So what are you doing here, Girl Scout? Why aren’t you at Hansel’s place with him? Date go badly?”

On any normal day that would have gotten her back up, but tonight she just looked at him with those stormy eyes and seemed a little sad. “I wouldn’t say it went badly. There just was nothing left there, no passion, no love, not even nostalgia. We were like strangers. God, I thought once I was going to marry him.”

Married? Myers the workaholic? Liz was right; if he wanted to find out things about her, the best way was to talk to her. “Why didn’t you guys get married?”

“Because I decided to join the FBI. My training and my job weren’t going to let me follow the circuit the way I would have had to. I hadn’t thought about it, but if I’d become a psychiatrist, that wouldn’t have let me be his groupie either.” Groupie? What was this guy, some kind of rock star? She grinned and took another swig of beer. “God, my thinking was happening south of my belt back then, I can tell you.”

Hellboy didn’t know whether to laugh or faint. The Girl Scout admitted she had areas south of the belt in working order, and to him of all people. The silence stretched out until he felt he had to say something. “What did this guy Hansel do?”

“He’s a pro surfer. I met him when I was getting my doctorate at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. I guess he was an antidote to school; everybody there was so serious, and he was carefree. Frivolous. He taught me how to surf, made me forget the bad things. I needed that so much.”

“And you don’t anymore?” He decided not to ask about the bad things she wanted to forget. Not tonight, anyhow.

“Not that way.” She smiled and looked down at her hands. “I think I’ve gotten better at handling things. I can cope without having to fuck my way into oblivion.”

This was a night for firsts. Button-down Agent Myers, on top of the rest, says the word fuck in front of him. He couldn’t think of what to say, so he settled for, “Do you want another beer?”

“Yeah.” She set the empty can down on the table in front of them and leaned toward him until their faces almost touched. “I get drunk very easily. On an empty stomach I can get drunk off one can of beer.”

“Did you eat anything tonight?” He was having trouble breathing.

Myers spoke with slowness and care. One can of booze had gotten her half-smashed. “Hansel and I did have dinner, so I think it would take more than that. But I feel I must warn you that I’m already a little tipsy. I don’t want to embarrass you. But mostly I don’t want to embarrass me.”

He gave her the fresh Heineken he retrieved from his fridge. “You won’t embarrass either of us. Nobody’s here. You can say what you want and do what you want. I won’t say a word.”

Her eyes kept their focus on his face. When they first met, she had stared like that at his horns and he had gotten annoyed with her, but this was different. Now she looked at him like–well, he didn’t exactly know what she was looking at him like, but he didn’t feel like a freak now. Instead, he became almost painfully aware that all he had on was a pair of jeans. Now, Myers had seen him like that before, but not when she wasn’t wearing her power suit armor and he was thinking of her as a woman. “I know you won’t. I trust you. You can be a jerk when you feel like it, but you’re not a liar.”

“You think I’m a jerk?” That kind of hurt, even though it came from Myers. Hell, especially because it came from Myers. Tonight she had acquired the power to hurt him. He didn’t like that.

Her voice stayed quiet, dark, as she put a finger over his mouth. “I said you can be. So can I. It’s called having a well-rounded personality. Did you hear the important part of what I said, or did the jerk comment distract you?”

He opened his mouth and felt it move against her finger as he tried to speak. Nothing came out, so he took a breath and tried again. “Would you repeat it?”

“I said I trust you. Enough to get drunk with you. Enough to tell you about Hansel. Nobody but Liz knew about him before tonight.” Abruptly she leaned back against the couch and drank some of the fresh Heineken he’d given her. The connection between them stretched but didn’t break. “Liz is a nice girl. Beautiful, in fact. Would you agree?”

“I guess.” Liz had inspired the occasional–well, okay, so maybe not just occasional–fantasy to inspire him while he was jerking off, but taking their friendship to a new level seemed unrealistic. At least she looked normal. She could find herself a man who looked normal too.

Putting the beer down on the table, Myers leaned back toward him and placed her hand on his face. “I know you think you’re ugly, Hellboy, but you’re not.” So she’s a mind reader, too? “Ugly is in the soul. You take a little getting used to, but you aren’t unattractive. I always thought you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.” Her fingertips moved over the planes of his face and he forgot to breathe. The sensation of her fingers on his skin caused blood to course into his cock. He hoped she didn’t notice. God, did he want to kiss her. Those soft lips were parted slightly as she touched him. What would happen if he just leaned over and covered her mouth with his? Then her hand moved down to his neck and shoulders, where the etched markings on his body apparently fascinated her. With the concentration of a diamond cutter, she traced the curved lines down his chest, leaving paths of fire in his blood, until her fingertips brushed his nipple and he had to gasp. Nobody had ever made him feel this good, this alive.


Sudden awareness shot through her eyes and she jerked away from him, covering her mouth with both hands. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Her voice was almost a sob. Myers got up from the sofa and almost fell over the table. He jumped up to grab her, keep her from hurting herself, but she pulled away, never taking her eyes off his face. “I’m so sorry, Hellboy. So sorry.” Then she turned and tugged the door open, fleeing out into the corridor toward, he supposed, her room.

He looked after her and saw her vanish into her room, three doors down the hallway from his. Close in case he had nightmares, he guessed. In her agitation she hadn’t bothered even to close the door. He did it for her; if Manning knew she had left him free to escape from the BPRD, she’d get in trouble. No matter what happened between them, he didn’t want to get her in trouble. Not when he could still feel her touching him. Not while he was still hard for her.

What had happened there? Why had she stopped? And why had she been so upset? He paced around the room, trying to compose his thoughts. Had he done something to offend her? No, he didn’t think so. She had not seemed angry, just shocked and upset. Maybe he hadn’t responded well enough to her and she thought he didn’t want her? That didn’t sound right either. Whatever was bothering her had not been his fault, he was reasonably sure. I should have kissed her when I had the chance, he found himself thinking. Who knows when another woman will touch me like that again? But the mystery of Myers’s departure ate at him, so he did something he almost never did.

He accessed the security cameras inside the BPRD.

When he first arrived at the Bureau he had trouble connecting with the ordinary human beings around him. They treated him like a freak, and to him they seemed like freaks themselves. Professor Broom, seeing what was happening, gave Hellboy limited access to the security monitors in every room of the BPRD building. “But you must never truly invade anyone’s privacy,” the older man had told him many times. “Only use this to try and understand the people around you.” Maybe Father hoped he would become comfortable with humans, and he supposed he had, to some degree. He couldn’t remember the last time he had used the cameras. Tonight, though, he was going to break a promise to the man he’d considered his father. It didn’t sit well with him, but he had to know what was happening with Myers.

He punched his authorization code into the computer and the machine opened for him like a flower. Finding the designation for Myers’s rooms, he clicked on that and the camera fed the picture into his monitor.

The first thing he noticed was that her room looked hospital clean, especially next to his. Her bed was neatly made, a lavender comforter turned down, two pillows sitting atop them. The pillowcases were bright tie-dye. Did she have tie-dyed sheets on her bed? He would have pegged her for a tasteful flower design. He panned the camera around the room and noticed a framed photograph sitting on her dresser. A zoom revealed it was Myers, noticeably younger than she was now, standing on a beach somewhere with an attractive man behind her. The man in the photo was much taller than her, with long wavy blond hair that looked wet from the ocean. That must be Hansel, he thought. He wore a black wetsuit of the kind that Hellboy knew surfers wore. In one hand he held up a big trophy and the other arm encircled Myers’s waist. Her hair was long and wet, too, but she had on a tiny red bikini that reminded him of three coins on strings. When she did her morning laps at the BPRD’s pool, she always wore a racing suit that hugged her like skin but exposed very little. Her hand rested on his chest and both of them were laughing, happy in a way he had never seen her. And she had kept the photograph, kept it out where she could see it. That didn’t bode well for Hellboy.

Myers emerged from the bathroom, drying her face with a towel. She looked tiny and defeated with her sad eyes. He hated seeing her that way. “Smooth move, Joanna,” she said to herself. “You got drunk and came on to him. I don’t know how you could possibly have fucked up any more, unless you’d actually fucked him. At least you had the brains to stop before you did that.” She threw the towel onto the dresser and covered up the picture of her and Hansel, then walked back into the bathroom. He switched the camera feed to the one in the bathroom and saw that she now stood in front of the mirror, looking hard at herself. “You are an FBI agent, Myers,” she told her reflection. “You have to act like one. You cannot become emotionally involved with anyone you are guarding or anyone you work with. It will compromise your effectiveness as an agent. Your decisions will become unreliable and you will be a liability to anyone you work with. You have to keep your distance from him from now on. It’s the only sensible thing to do. You could get him killed if you keep behaving this way.”

Man, she was a lot more talkative by herself than she’d ever been around him. So this was about protecting him, like everything she did in the field was about keeping him safe. Didn’t she understand that he didn’t need to be protected from her? He trusted her to be his backup, nobody else. He didn’t need or want a nursemaid here. He wanted things to be the way he sensed they could be while she ran her fingers over his skin.

She returned to her bedroom and by the time he’d switched the camera feed over, she’d unzipped her dress and let it fall off her body to the ground. The time when he could have looked away from her existed somewhere between the dress falling and striking the carpet. He knew this was dead wrong, that he was violating her privacy in exactly the way that Father had told him never to do, but he couldn’t help it. If she wouldn’t let him touch her, he could look at her. And what there was to look at...

When she dressed earlier that evening, she must have expected to get laid. That was the only reason he could think of for the black lace bra that barely concealed her breasts and the matching bikini panties that rode low on her hips. And on top of that, she wore sheer black stockings held up by a black lace garter belt. Jesus, she beat the hell out of any centerfold he’d ever seen. And she had touched him. And he knew she had liked touching him despite her reservations about her job and his protection. Thank God Hansel had been as stupid as his name and hadn’t slept with her. If he had, she never would have come to him, they would never have talked, and he would not be looking at her right now. All that milky-smooth skin under the black lace–man, his cock was just about ready to burst through his jeans and she wasn’t even naked.


As he had that thought, she sighed and reached behind her, unclasping the bra and letting it fall off her to join her dress on the carpet. The breath left his lungs. Myers was absolutely perfect in every way. Her breasts were bigger than he’d thought they were, the blue-veined white of marble, topped with dusky-rose nipples that hardened in the chill of the room. Hellboy wanted to suck those nipples more than he’d ever wanted anything. He could imagine how they’d feel brushing against his lips, how she would moan as he licked them, sucked them into his mouth. His hand brushed against his cock and his hips arched. He was so hard he hurt. Even knowing this was much, much worse than just looking at her, he reached down and unzipped his jeans, freeing his straining flesh. Pre-come already leaked out of the head. Here’s how it was going to be: he was going to look at Myers while she undressed and jerk off. He would have to be a saint not to, and the horns and tail sort of spoiled the saintly effect.

Myers placed one foot on the seat of the chair in front of her vanity and unfastened her garterclasp. Then she repeated the process with the other leg. Sliding off the garterbelt, she tossed it into the growing heap of clothing in the center of her room. Her stockings remained on as she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and pushed them down her legs, then kicked them into the pile. Hellboy’s hand enclosed his hardened cock as he began to move it up and down. She was naked. Myers was naked except for those stockings, but somehow they heightened her beauty, made her even sexier than if she’d been fully nude. Her legs were long and muscled from swimming, the perfect frame for the patch of dark hair between them. Staring at that, he moved his fingers over the head of his erection, pretending they were her fingers, and the rush of pleasure forced a growl out of him. He had to slow down or he’d be finished in thirty seconds, and he didn’t want to waste one second of her luscious nakedness.

Reluctantly he took his hand away and tried concentrating on her instead of his throbbing dick. Her hair brushed softly against her back as she moved over to the bed and switched on the lamp next to it. It made him want to run his tongue over her spine. Then she walked back across the room and turned off the lights. Watching her walk, the sway of her pale satin ass as she moved, the way her thighs brushed together and her breasts bobbed, he tried to memorize every moment so he could remember them forever. He had never seen any woman as beautiful as she was and he had never felt such lust in his life, not even for Liz.

She pulled back the lavender satin comforter and let it fall off the bed. He had guessed right–she did have those tie-dyed sheets, a bright burst of red and blue and yellow and green. In her private room she could be herself, not a power-suited FBI agent. Who besides him suspected the existence of those flashy sheets? No one. He felt a surge of possessiveness at the thought. Running her fingers through her hair, she stretched out on the bed. Now, Hellboy knew, she would pull the sheet over herself, switch off the light, and go to sleep, while he satisfied himself with the memory of how she had looked.

But he was wrong.

Instead of turning off the bedside lamp, she slid her hands over her face, down her throat, and over her upper chest until her hands came to rest on her breasts. A sigh escaped her as she slid her fingertips over their fullness. Her eyes closed and after a few moments of caressing their flesh, she took her nipples and gently began to pluck at them. Over the camera he heard her moan. His erection twitched in response. Was she actually going to get herself off? He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this, but he wasn’t going to question his good luck. Oh God, those beautiful breasts. They would fill his hands. But for now he settled for replacing his hand on his cock. The pleasure thrummed throughout his body as he moved his hand, never taking his eyes off her.

One of her hands left her breasts and began tracing delicate patterns over her belly. Her skin must have been sensitive there, because she gave a little gasp and her hips moved involuntarily. Hellboy made a note of that for later. Then her hand moved downward, but didn’t immediately dip between her thighs, as he’d assumed it would. Instead she parted her legs and trailed her fingertips over the inside of one thigh, from the top of one stocking, brushing over the delicate folds of her pussy briefly, then trailing back up the inside of her other thigh until they reached the edge of her other stocking. Myers–no, it wouldn’t be right to keep calling her Myers while he watched her pleasure herself–Joanna repeated this action over and over until he could see her trembling. A thin sheen of sweat gleamed on her skin under the light and he had the urge to lick it off her skin. From where the camera was positioned, at the foot of her bed, Hellboy got a good view of what she was doing. She was all pink and soft there, not really like a flower, but the folds did remind him of petals. There was something else he wanted to lick. What would she taste like there? Finally she placed her hand on her pussy and started caressing her clit. Her hips arched upwards and her face–he’d never seen rapture before, but that was the only word he knew for her expression. The noises she made kept getting louder and they were unbearably arousing. He had to strain to keep from coming. Even if she didn’t know about it, he didn’t want to come before she did. A soft “Ohhhhhhh” escaped her lips as her hips rocked in rhythm to her hand’s movements between her legs.

Hellboy slowed his own rhythm down to match her speed. If he had not closed and relocked the door to his room behind her, he could have gone to her right now, been with her the way she needed. He could have touched every inch of her, kissed her, slid his cock into her and experienced what it felt like to be enveloped by a woman’s body. He let out his own moan when he imagined her long swimmer’s legs wrapped around his hips.

The hand that still played with her breasts slid down her body and Joanna circled the opening of her pussy for a few seconds with her fingers before she drove two of them deep inside herself. She murmured with pleasure, but Hellboy muttered, “You’ve got tiny little hands, Girl Scout. I think you need something bigger than that.”

She continued finger-fucking herself for a little while before she withdrew her fingers. Gasping, she reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer, pulling out an object Hellboy had never seen but recognized instantly. “A dildo?” he asked the monitor in amazement. It was made out of some transparent rubbery substance, not as big as he was, and was lavender in color. “It should be red,” he muttered. He still couldn’t quite believe she knew what a dildo was, much less had one and was willing to use it.

Carefully she slid the dildo inside. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of her being filled to the brim. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Don’t stop.”


So she was having a fantasy herself? About that jerk Hansel, most likely. If you liked the brain-dead surfer-boy look, he was okay. He stifled an irrational flare of jealousy. Hey, whatever got her off was whatever would get him off, too. Besides, jealousy was too hard an emotion for him to hold onto while he watched her, all aching and passion. She would be like this with him, if he ever could manage to get around her reservations. Then it would be his cock inside her, pounding away, not some device. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to control himself. “Hellboy,” she whispered.

His hand stilled instantly on his hard-on. Jesus fuck, had he heard her right? Did she really say what he thought she’d said? He stared at the image onscreen, Joanna with her legs spread wide, pumping into herself with the toy, mouth open for air, every muscle straining toward release. He had no experience, so he couldn’t tell when she was about to come, but he was determined to wait for her. Had she said his name? Was she imagining him inside her, fucking her to orgasm? He ran his fingers across the head of his cock, rubbing with his palm, moistening himself with the liquid it was weeping. He wanted to fuck her more than he wanted to live.

The movements of her body had grown more jerky and intense, her hips thrusting hard at the source of her satisfaction, her moans growing into cries that a disconnected part of his mind worried would attract the attention of anyone outside in the corridor. But most of his mind was centered in his eyes and his cock, soaking up her arousal and holding back his own climax. Then her body lifted off the bed, back arched, and she screamed with the force of her orgasm. “Oh God, Hellboy, yes!”

That did it. Oh Jesus, he was coming, right now as he saw her body release its tension and collapse back onto the bed like a puppet with its strings cut. Semen shot out of him in thick spurts over his hand and stomach, shaking his body with every spasm, so hard the world receded, his vision and hearing graying out until all that was left was the pleasure, God, the pleasure of coming, of seeing her and knowing that thinking of him aroused her and satisfied her. It seemed to last for hours before he came back to himself, still sitting in the chair before his computer, feeling more satisfied than he ever had in his life and too exhausted to move.

On the screen she had finally done what he assumed she’d do long ago: pulled the sheet over herself, turned out the light, and gone to sleep. It was a good idea, and he cleaned himself up with a washcloth and towel before he released his access to the cameras and turned off his computer. Taking off his jeans, he crawled back into bed and lay there with his hands behind his head, thinking. There had to be a way to her. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. But how? Then his face cleared. Maybe Liz was right. Maybe all he had to do was ask.