Power Trip

Title: Power Trip
Author: Jordanna Morgan (librarie@jordanna.net)
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG if you read it right…
Characters: Beast, viewed from the perspective of my original character Nora Tanner.
Setting: Sometime after my story titled Beast.
Summary: Being Hank McCoy’s lover was all about power.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. I’m simply playing with them.
Notes: A four-hundred-word drabble. It’s a bit of a racy departure by my standards, exploring the attraction Hank holds for Nora—my OC from Beast. I highly recommend reading that much larger story before this one.

Power Trip

Being Hank McCoy’s lover was all about power.

Even as a mutant, his professional achievements and personal charm still made him a man of great influence. Several phone numbers for Capitol Hill were on his speed dial. Famous authors and artists had sought his discerning critique before unveiling their work to the world. The front row was his accustomed place at every theater on Broadway, and he commanded the best table at restaurants so exclusive, mere mortals didn’t even know they existed.

Of course, for the lady who walked into those theaters and restaurants on his arm, sharing his VIP treatment was a nice perk—but that wasn’t what made Nora Tanner fall in love with him again every night.

She loved everything about him, and she always had: his intelligence, his humor, his compassion, his dedication. But there was something else about him that attracted her, on a far more basic level.

It was physical power she had a jones for.

It was the power of Hank’s arms when he held her close; the power of his lungs as he breathed quick and hard, breathing in the scent of her. It was the power of his heart, thudding eagerly against the strong solid ribs beneath his fur. In those intimate moments when his self-conscious restraint slipped away, the raw primal energy of him was power at its most intoxicating.

That power was always a part of Hank, even before he had the fur and fangs to give outward evidence of it. Nora had sensed it from their first kiss, filling her with a keen thrill of realization that she had found something special—someone special. Someone passionately alive beyond all natural standards of intensity. A force of nature in a designer suit.

Aware of those depths within himself even then, he had hesitated to fully share them with her; but now that his physiological changes had progressed even further, his instinctive responses were sometimes too strong to resist.

And Nora was just fine with that—because it wasn’t only about power exerted. It was also about power subdued.

Hank’s massive clawed hands could easily shatter bones, but they touched her and held her with complete tenderness. His sharp teeth were designed for shearing through flesh, but when he kissed her, there was only soft sweetness on his lips.

In Nora’s arms, the Beast was tamed… and that was power.