On screen, the Tokyo hero team was engaging some kind of massive Aspect-generated threat. Explosions. Dramatic poses. The kind of choreographed action that Hiro would have called beautiful and I would have called impractical.

Felicity’s hand stayed on my thigh.

"You’re doing that thing," she said.

"What thing?"

"That thing where you notice everything I’m doing and pretend you haven’t decided how to respond yet." Her thumb traced a small circle on the inside of my thigh, and my whole body registered the sensation like an electrical pulse. "But you’ve already decided. You decided before I sat down. You just haven’t told me what the decision is."

"And what do you think the decision is?"

"I think you’re going to let me do whatever I want because you’re curious about what I’m going to do next." She leaned closer, her breath warm against my ear. "And because, deep down, you like being wanted. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it complicates things. The attention feeds something in you that you pretend isn’t there."

I turned my head, and our faces were very close. In the flickering light from the screen, I could see every detail of her expression. The calculation underneath the warmth. The genuine affection underneath the calculation. The hunger underneath both.

"That’s very presumptuous of you."

"Am I wrong?"

I could feel the weight of Sloane’s message on my phone. Celebration tonight. My room. 8pm. Wear something I can take off.

I could feel the Heroine Bond Resonance humming in my chest, the permanent connection to the woman who’d been first to claim me and had no intention of being anything less than primary.

I could feel Felicity’s hand on my thigh and her breath on my skin and her attention wrapped around me like a physical embrace.

"You’re not wrong."

She smiled. It was the real smile, the one she saved for moments when the performance dropped and the actual Felicity emerged. The lonely girl who’d learned to be charming because being charming was the only way to make people stay.

"Good." Her hand didn’t move higher. It just stayed where it was, warm and present, a claim staked without being pressed. "Then watch the movie with me. Let me be close to you without it having to mean anything. And when you go to Sloane’s room, you can tell her your best friend dragged you to a cinema and made you eat criminally good popcorn."

"So no matter what happens in this theater today," I said, keeping my voice steady, "we’re still friends?"

Felicity’s breath caught. Just a small hitch, barely audible over the soundtrack of whatever Tokyo disaster was unfolding on screen. But I heard it. I felt it in the way her fingers tightened on my thigh.

"Yes." The word came out softer than anything I’d heard from her before. No performance. No calculation. Just Felicity Hardy being honest about something she wanted badly enough to risk the answer.

I let the silence stretch for exactly three seconds. Watched the way the flickering screen light played across her face, caught the slight tremble at the corner of her mouth, noted how her pupils had dilated in the darkness.

Then I smirked.

"We aren’t going to be able to be just friends after this."

Felicity’s eyes widened. Her lips parted. And for maybe the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t have a clever response ready.

So she leaned in instead.

Her mouth found mine soft and tentative, nothing like the confidence she projected in every other aspect of her existence. The kiss landed gentle, questioning, giving me every opportunity to pull back and pretend this hadn’t happened.

I didn’t pull back.

My hand came up to cup the back of her neck, fingers threading through silky blonde hair that smelled like vanilla and expensive shampoo, and I deepened the kiss with the kind of deliberate intention that made her gasp against my lips.

"Mmm..." The sound vibrated between us, half surprise and half something hungrier.

She tasted like movie theater butter and cherry lip gloss. Her mouth opened under mine, tongue sliding against my lower lip with a question I answered by pulling her closer. The armrest between our seats became an obstacle, a barrier I could feel her straining against as she tried to get nearer.

"Lukas..." My name came out breathless when we broke apart for half a second. "We won’t know if we don’t try."

"Then let’s try."

I kissed her again, harder this time, and Felicity Hardy stopped being tentative entirely.

Her hands found my chest, palms flat against my shirt, fingers curling into the fabric like she needed something to hold onto. The kiss turned messy and urgent, all teeth and tongue and the kind of desperate sounds that the movie soundtrack couldn’t quite cover. She bit my lower lip and I growled into her mouth, felt her shiver at the sound, felt her whole body arch toward mine like a flower toward sunlight.

"Haah..." She panted against my jaw. "This seat situation is not working for me."

Before I could respond, she was moving.

Felicity Hardy climbed into my lap with the athletic grace of someone who’d been training for combat since childhood, her skirt riding up her thighs as she straddled me in the reclining theater seat. The movement put her knees on either side of my hips, put her hands on my shoulders, put her face inches from mine in the flickering half-light.

"Better?" I asked.

"Much better." Her voice had dropped into a register I hadn’t heard before. Lower. Rougher. The voice of a woman who’d decided to stop pretending she didn’t want exactly what she wanted. "Now shut up and kiss me."

I kissed her.

Her hips rolled against mine, a slow grinding motion that sent electricity shooting up my spine and pulled a sound from my throat I didn’t recognize. Her skirt had bunched around her waist, leaving nothing between us but the thin fabric of her stockings and my training shorts. I could feel the heat of her through both layers, could feel the way she pressed down and forward, seeking friction, seeking contact, seeking something that made her breath come in sharp little gasps against my mouth.

"Fuck..." The word escaped me without permission.

"Mmhm." Felicity smiled against my lips, smug and satisfied. "That’s the idea."