Nigh Invulnerable

Author's note:

See part 1 for blurb. Also, if you haven't already read parts 1-3, I strongly recommend doing so before proceeding.

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

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This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author (except for the use of brief quotations in a review).

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, products, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Twenty-Nine

"This place is incredible," Yasmine breathed reverently.

Quinn seemed similarly impressed and whispered, "I feel like if I order an appetizer, you're going to call that my quarterly bonus."

"Would you stop," Isabella gushed. "I can't wait until you finish this app and go to work for Greg so you can knock off this oppressed proletariat bullshit."

Quinn looped an arm around Isabella's waist and said, "You know I'm only fucking with you...boss."

"Why I outta..." Isabella growled as she hurried ahead to the hostess's stand of the decidedly upscale restaurant in downtown Philadelphia.

Quinn guffawed and Yasmine hid a smile behind her hand while Felix, who was still not entirely certain how a low-key lunch with Yasmine had turned into a luxurious dinner with all three women, followed a comfortable distance behind. He intentionally kept his focus on Yasmine rather than her companions, the lingering guilt he felt over their transformations and an almost total inability to avoid staring at their quite literally otherworldly beauty combining to convince him that things were just easier that way.

They were quickly seated in a private room, thanks to Isabella's not insubstantial influence across the tri-state area. As they perused their menus, Felix was amazed at the dynamic which seemed to have grown between the women during his extended absences from their presence. Had he not known differently, he would have sworn they were lifelong friends. Or, at the very least, former college roommates who had quickly become permanent 'besties'. Isabella's brash confidence made her the natural ringleader, but her perpetually playful nature ensured neither of her companions ever took lasting offense to her occasional jabs. Quinn was the group's motivator with her tireless drive. The group's conscience was Yasmine, with her quiet determination and indefatigable spirit. It would have been easy to also dub Yasmine the group's brains, but the truth was that all three women outstripped Felix by a comfortable margin in the intellectual horsepower department.

"What shall we drink to?" Isabella asked joyously from her spot across the table from Felix as their cocktails were delivered.

"To no more nights worrying about if Felix is going to come home," Yasmine murmured softly as she held forth her cucumber gin smash.

Quinn raised her shaken margarita and nodded somberly before adding, "To getting our friend back, hopefully for good."

"Here, here," Isabella announced, lifting her glass of chianti high.

Felix hoisted his glass of bourbon served neat in salute and said, "To cherished friends."

"We're a bit more than friends," Isabella said mockingly, her eyes darting playfully down to where her full breasts filled out her alluringly cut dress for emphasis. "Unless I'm having a particularly vivid, very lengthy, andthoroughlywonderful hallucination."

"I said cherished," he replied lamely.

"Speaking of which," Isabella continued after taking a healthy swig of her wine. "When are you finally going to take our dear Yasmine to bed? I feel certain the budget she drew up at the beginning of the year didn't include buying a new vibrator every other day because she can't stop thinking about how it will feel when your magnificent penis fills her up."

"That's not happening," Felix muttered.

"Why not? Isn't she pretty enough?"

"Please..." Yasmine whispered fiercely.

"No," Isabella retorted forcefully. "I've held my tongue long enough. You're amazing, my dear. And its patently obvious that you're thoroughly besotted with our dear hero."

"That was a low blow," Felix growled angrily. He turned to Yasmine and said, "You're gorgeous, my dear. And you're amazing in every other way I can think of. You must understand this has nothing to do with you."

"The old,it's not you, it's meschtick," Isabella observed sotto voce.

"Isabella," Quinn warned. "That's enough. You're embarrassing her."

"Me?" the feisty Italian complained. "What about him?"

"We're not having this conversation," Felix said before polishing off his drink and looking around for a waiter.

Isabella turned to Yasmine and whispered, "I'm trying to help you. Just trust me."

Yasmine sighed and dropped her gaze to her lap.

Quinn looked around the table helplessly before saying to Isabella, "Didn't you say a few of your nieces and nephews were coming to visit this weekend?"

The older woman's face lit up and she said, "On Friday after school. But we'll be at my place in the city. The youngest is nine and I'm not sure he could be trusted to keep quiet about the gigantic man staying in the guest room who looks exactly like the superhero the news keeps talking about."

"Don't be silly," Felix interjected. "I'll just go back to my apartment."

"No!" all three women said at once, thoroughly startling the waiter who was delivering their entrees.

Quinn continued, "It's too dangerous, Felix."

Isabella nodded and said, "It really is quite all right. They get bored out in the country fairly quickly and start asking uncomfortable questions."

Yasmine smirked and said, "Like... about the birds and the bees?"

"No," Isabella replied with a throaty laugh. "More like, 'when will we be old enough to drive the four-wheeler?' or 'will you buy me sexy underwear?'. Or, my favorite, can my significant other come visit?'."

"Sounds like a blast," Felix observed pithily.

"They're actually really great," Isabella said gushingly. "I wish they came and visited more often."

"I remember that picture in your hallway," Yasmine said with a warm smile. "How many siblings do you have?"

Isabella's face fell somewhat, and she said, "None. I guess it's a bit of a fabrication to call them my nieces and nephews. They're actually my cousins' kids. My family tends to go big, historically at least. My mother wanted a big family as well, but that all kind of went up in smoke when she died in childbirth."

"I'm so sorry," was all Yasmine managed to reply, tears springing immediately to her eyes as she made to get up.

Isabella's hand snaked out to grab Yasmine's arm and hold her fast. The former said, "Don't sweat it, honey. I tried to tell you guys about my family tons of times, but it's not like it's easy to organically bring up that both of your folks were dead by the time you graduated from high school."

An awkward silence loomed for several moments before Felix tentatively asked, "What happened to your father?"

"Technically, it was heart disease. But the truth is that he just kind of broke inside when my mother passed. He did as good a job as he could raising me, but big families ran in my mother's side of the family. He agreed to have kids for her sake, not because it was something he always wanted. He got the diagnosis when I was a freshman in high school, I suspect he figured I was mature enough to manage without him. Between the time of his diagnosis and when he was rushed to the hospital with the heart attack that ended his life, he never once saw a doctor."

"Jesus," Quinn breathed. "I'm so sorry, honey."

Isabella sniffed and said, "Thank you. But don't be too broken up by it. After all, that was two-and-a-half decades ago. I took the inheritance he left me and made a life for myself. One that affords me the ability to have my wonderful nieces and nephews visit me often, not to mention being able to harbor the world's first superhero who just so happens to fuck like a porn star while still being an unfailing gentleman."

"And Yasmine's blushing again," Quinn quipped. "I've never seen someone with your skin tone blush so frequently."

"I'm actually very light skinned for my family," Yasmine offered quietly. She pulled her phone from her purse and, after flipping through her photo album for a moment, passed it to Quinn. The picture shown was of a seated middle-aged married couple with three teenagers standing behind them. True to her word, Yasmine's warm golden-brown skin was by far the lightest. Her father's skin was a deep umber, and the family spanned the difference between them with her mother being the second lightest.

"You have a beautiful family," Felix said as the phone made its way around to him. "Do you see them often?"

"Not as often as I'd like. They're all still in Dearborn."

"Forgive me for asking," Quinn began hesitantly.

Yasmine chuckled and said, "I propose a new rule. We stop beginning conversations that way. It seems to have become something of a habit with us."

"Fair enough," Quinn allowed as she pushed back her plate. "What I was going to ask, likely indelicately, was if you were made to stay away because of... religion."

Yasmine snickered in spite of the weighty subject matter at the look of disquiet on Quinn's staggeringly beautiful face. At length, however, she got control of herself and said, "What do you mean?"

"Your family is obviously middle eastern in origin."

"We say Persian. My grandparents fled the Shah's reign of terror."

"Were they religious refugees?"

Yasmine smiled and said, "They had always dreamed of coming to America. The crisis merely provided the impetus for them to take action. But my parents' faith is significantly more tempered than my grandparents. The same held true for the following generation. They do not reject me because I chose to not be one of the faithful, despite the fact that they would certainly prefer things were otherwise. They do not, in point of fact, reject me at all. The only reason I don't see them more often is because it is expensive to make the trip across five states. But I do miss them."

"We could all go together," Isabella offered. "After my family leaves."

"Thank you," Yasmine responded warmly. "But I think we have more pressing business here."

"Anytime you want to go," Isabella continued. "Say the word and I'll make it happen."

"I couldn't ask that of you."

"You didn't ask. I insisted. You're my good friend, Yasmine. And I have too few of those to pass up the chance to do something nice for one of them."

"Thank you," Yasmine said reverently. "I feel the same way."

"Then stop trying to fuck off to your apartment every chance you get. Not only are you welcome at my place, Iwantyou there." She glanced around the table and added, "All of you." Isabella's eyes then fell on Felix, and she said, "Well?"

"Well, what?" he asked in genuine confusion.

She waved around the table and said, "We're all sharing. It seems to me you know a hell of a lot more about us than we know about you."

"What is there to know? I enlisted in the Star Troopers; fought in enough battles to recognize it was hopeless; volunteered for a suicide mission that instead sent me almost a quarter millennia into the past. Then I met you lovely ladies."

"Surely there was something to your life before you enlisted." Isabella prompted. "Other than the miserable cunt who duped you into enlisting in the first place."

Quinn looked at him apologetically and said, "Sorry. We were just hanging out drinking one night and I mentioned Ursula. I thought you'd already told them."

Felix shrugged and said, "I have nothing to hide. She used me. End of story. It's not like any of you could be capable of anything like that."

"Are you sure?" Isabella asked pointedly.

"Of course. Ever since we were in school together, she had never hidden the fact that she only cared about herself. In truth, it was my fault for allowing myself to believe she had changed."

"I meant," Isabella pressed, "are you sure that you don't believe that any of us is secretly evil and trying to use you for selfish reasons?"

He looked severely around the table before saying, "You three, along with my parents, are the bestpeopleI have ever known.Noneof you hasanythingin common with her."

"Well," Quinn interjected teasingly. "Yasminedoeshave really spectacular boobs."

"She is very beautiful," Felix agreed. "But while I can't disagree with the sentiment that you are all four women,shewas certainlynota lady. Whereas you three are without compare."

"So why are you being such an insufferable bastard?" Isabella asked pointedly.

"Forgive me," Felix replied tersely. "It was not my intention to offend."

"Oh, you profoundly irritating, spectacularly attractive, annoyingly self-sacrificing man."

Felix looked around helplessly and said, "Tell me how to make this right."

"Love us," she replied simply. She then saw the look on his face morph from anguish to abject fear and hastily added, "Not happily ever after love, Felix. Although I doubt any of us would say no to that. I just meant the lots of orgasms type of love."

He looked toward Yasmine worriedly and said, "But..."

Quinn tossed down her napkin and said, "Come off it, Felix. It's obviously up to the two of you, but do you honestly think that she gives a damn about the Conditioning? She wantsyou, you dumb jerk. Not what could happen to her if you actually got over yourself and made her happy. If you're so fucking worried, use a goddamned condom."

"Here, here," Isabella announced a little too loudly. "And after you give her a go, I want next. Unless my performance was so subpar that I don't deserve an encore."

"Don't be ridiculous," Felix huffed. His eyes flitted to Quinn for the briefest of seconds before he added, "Our afternoon together was, with one exception, the greatest experience of my life."

"Same," she replied coquettishly. "Save I don't need the qualifier." Her glance then fell on Quinn, and she added, "But I know you, Felix. You very much like Yasmine. And, as you said, we had a glorious time together. It would be a terrible shame if we didn't find hundreds more orgasms together. None of that will happen, however, until you and Quinn figure things out."

"What?" Quinn and Felix asked in unison.

Isabella finished off what remained of her wine before saying, "You obviously love each other. There's no point in denying it even though I can tell by your faces that you will. I just know that you two have to figure things out between yourselves before either of us will get a shot at the aforementioned orgasms."

"I can't believe you're doing this to me," Quinn muttered.

"If you're still upset tomorrow," Isabella replied confidently. "I swear I will genuflect before you and sincerely beg your forgiveness. But that's tomorrow." She reached into her purse and extracted something. She held it firmly in her fist before she added, "Tonight, I very much hope that you'll remember just how much you care about each other and allow yourselves to seek the happiness you both very much deserve."

She reached her fist forward and gently placed an envelope which obviously held a key card to a hotel room on the table before she collected Yasmine with her eyes and both women departed without another word.

Thirty

"Can I get you something to drink?" Felix asked haltingly from his spot on the bed.

Quinn smiled shyly from the couch across the room and said, "No, thank you."

Another awkward silence descended. The seventh, by Felix's reckoning, since Isabella had dropped the key card for the adjoining hotel on the table and left with Yasmine. He was having difficulty choosing between gazing at Quinn in wonder and avoiding her eyes altogether. Both had their pros and cons, and the committee in his subconscious responsible for keeping him out of trouble in such instances had yet to deliver a final report.

"So," he huffed. "How's it going working for Isabella?"

"Great," Quinn enthused. "The app I'm building is really cool and she's giving me total architectural freedom. I also think it's going to help her tenants, especially the low-income ones who rely on their phones to do everything."

"How many units does she have, anyway?"

"Hundreds, across dozens of buildings. She told me she started with a single building near where she lived with her dad and just kept reinvesting the profits in more buildings. And she's a good landlord, despite her wealth. Since I started helping her, the feedback option we put into the first version of the app has allowed her to identify and terminate three superintendents who were embezzling and another who was being a racist asshole."

He mimed a gun pointed at the side of his head and said, "Terminate?"

"Fired, you dork," she corrected with a throaty laugh. "How is it you're from the future and yet you're still a caveman?"

"I can't escape the Y-chromosome."

"There is that," she agreed before she gave him a deliberate once over. "But it's not all bad."

"How do you figure?"

She appeared to hesitate for a moment before patting the couch next to her and saying, "Come here."

He hefted himself off the bed and, after snatching a bottle of water from the minifridge for each of them, crossed to the couch and sat on the opposing end. She frowned at the space between them before sighing wearily and turning to face him. She accepted the offered bottle and took a long swig before setting it on the table behind her. The movement brought her newfound curves into stark relief as her dress pulled snug against her much larger breasts and the pronounced curve of her hips above her delightfully rounded derriere. As she turned back to face him, he was somewhat tardy averting his eyes and thus found her grinning slyly when he finally lifted his gaze.

"You needn't be so afraid of looking at me Felix."

"I know," he agreed. "If for no other reason than as a reminder of what I'm capable of."

"Would youpleasestop?" she snapped. He looked away in shame but said nothing. She groaned softly before continuing. "Every day I regret what I said the day you found me. You had already loaded yourself up with a heaping helping of self-loathing, and my anger supercharged it like throwing dynamite in a campfire."

"I don't understand,' he muttered. "You had every right to be angry at me. Ursula made mention of a change, but I was so angry over her telling me to fuck off I never bothered finding out what she meant. If I had, if I had been less self-absorbed, this never would have happened."

"But what if you told me everything that could happen, and I had still asked you to make love to me?"

"I," he began haltingly. "I don't know."

"It's hardly academic, Felix. Isabella spoke the truth tonight. Yasmine cares for you deeply, and she desires you like no one she's ever met."

"I can't do this to her."

"Why not?" Quinn snapped. "Because I jumped down your throat at the ball game?" Felix shrugged helplessly, prompting her to add, "I'm sorry I reacted the way I did. It was selfish and unfair."

"How can you say that?"

"Because Ilovethe way I look now. It's as though a guardian angel had been carefully taking notes of every passing fantasy I'd harbored over the last decade and made it all come true. I've always felt like I was a little too bony, but never could manage to motivate myself to go to the gym and do something about it. I hated how pale I was, but genetics had decided long ago that it was either that or be sunburnt. Thanks far, far, far northern European genes. And I was definitely always super self-conscious about the fact that I basically looked like a twelve-year-old boy unless I was wearing a swimsuit. Even naked, my tits were barely recognizable."

Nigh Invulnerable Pt. 04

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