Helena took a deep breath and something shifted in her eyes. She seemed to either come back to herself or force herself into a role: "
Chi cazzo credi di essere?"
she swore. "Fuck you!"
Bruce didn't retort, though his narrowing eyelids conveyed he felt the same sentiment in return. "Punishment it is, then. Shut your mouth and take your clothes off," he ordered, his eyes burning with an angry calm.
"
Vaffanculo!
" she cursed, and started to raise her fists when Bruce backhanded her. The force of the blow slammed Helena down to the catwalk, her lip bloodied.
She stood more fired up than ever, her blood up, her eyes wide and reddened. She looked into Bruce's eyes and saw the icy control that shamed her own wildness. There was no reasoning with him. He was decided.
Batman would punish her, but calmly, coolly, as exacting as a machine. And he would be merciful in the same way. There was rage in his eyes, but it was tightly held, harnessed, controlled in a way Helena wished she could contain herself.
She knew there was no fighting that combination of glacier and volcano that could perhaps only exist in the Batman. It intimidated her. It excited her.
"Your clothes off. Now," Bruce said, deathly quiet, and Helena didn't think to disobey him now any more than she would think to stop breathing. With trembling hands, she undid her cape and let it fall to her feet.
But while her defiance had cooled, her hesitance was still a problem. She wasn't going fast enough to satisfy Bruce. He took matters into his own hands. His gloved fingers lashed out, seized vise-like grips of Helena's costume, and liberally ripped it from her supple body.
Helena should've felt a whip-fast anger at this indignity, but all she felt was an exhilarating fright. She stepped backwards and tripped in unthinking clumsiness, topping over onto her back. Batman leaned over her, pulling her panties down her long legs, then tearing away her bra. Now she was naked: her gloves and boots and mask the only thing he let her keep on.
While Helena thrilled with terror, Bruce jerked her arms to either side, making her grip the struts of the catwalk's railing, then cuffing her wrists to them. He did the same with her legs: pulled them open, then bound her ankles to keep her from closing her legs.
"What are you going to do to me?" Helena gasped, feeling a dizzying climb inside herself, like her stomach would move around while she rode a roller coaster.
Batman's eyes coolly drank her in, both savoring her nudity and planning out the attack he would make on her vulnerable body. Helena felt like he knew all her secrets, all her weaknesses, everything he could do to her and what effect all of it would have.
