Forsake Your Vows 2 (Patreon)

“Hello, Eddie—can I come in?” Mary Jane asked, sounding not her usual spontaneous self but rehearsed, like she’d been practicing what to say.

She stood on the very edge of the porch, wearing a pair of shorts that Eddie was convinced were just like the ones in the picture. Her stylish halter top was perfect for the larger chest she’d developed since having Annie May. She had sandals on, her feet almost bare, leaving her legs bare up to her supple thighs—and her legs were so long that the exposed skin gave an impression of luscious nudity, even with her being fully dressed.

“Yeah, sure. My door is always open.” He motioned her inside and held the door for her, suddenly ashamed of the housekeeping in his bachelor pad. “Sorry about the mess. I was thinking about getting a maid, you know. If I can find one that works cheap. Not that I’m cheap, I just don’t like to splurge, not on my budget. But a clean house… it’s nice…” he finished lamely.

“It is nice,” Mary Jane nodded, and Eddie thought of her in a maid outfit, dusting the place, bending over to scrub the floors. Not that he’d ever get her to go for that, but it was a sweet thought.

“What brings you here, MJ?” he asked cautiously, trying to be as inoffensive as possible, like he was talking to a skittish deer. After all, it wasn’t every day that Mary Jane Watson graced his home.

He didn’t sit down and he made no offer of a chair for her. She probably wouldn’t want to touch any of the surfaces in his place anyway. He really had to get that maid, at least one day a week…

“It’s Peter,” she began. “I got hurt and now he’d forbidding me to go out on patrol with him. He wants me to heal, but I’m afraid he’ll eventually cut me out altogether. He’s working with Felicia and she’s been doing this for so much longer than I have—I want to beat her at her own game,” Mary Jane admitted with a sudden vehemence. “If you could teach me, show me what I’m doing wrong, then by the time Peter lets me hit the streets again there’ll be no way he ever benches me again.”

Eddie tried to conceal his smile. “You know… Peter may have a point about you. It’s not so bad to rest up when you get hurt. And if you stop going out on patrol, so what? You spent a long time being just a civilian. You could go back to it easy enough.”

“No, Eddie, I can’t go back to sitting and worrying—not when it’s both Peter and my daughter going out there. Either I make this work or… or I won’t be able to live with myself.”

***

On the roof of Eddie’s building, he stripped off his shirt. Glancing, Mary Jane got a good look at his body. His pecs bulged out from broad shoulders and his chest hair was thickly matted, fanning out above the waistband of his pants. She could make out his member pressing against the groin of even his loose, drawstring trousers, pushing the loose fabric out. It was larger than she would’ve imagined.

“First thing you’ve got to do is forget about the powers you borrow from Parker,” Eddie told her. “They’re a crutch. You can’t rely on them. You need to get down the basics, so you know exactly what you’re doing when your strength gets ramped up.”

“I know how to throw a punch,” Mary Jane told him. “Peter showed me.”

Eddie shook his head. “That’s technique, it’s theory.” He tapped his skull. “That’s up here. You need to get into the moment, into the adrenaline. Once you’re comfy being in the shit, then you can worry about whether you’re holding your stance right.”

“You think I’ve never been in the shit?” Mary Jane asked. “You were one of the people who kept kidnapping me.”

“Uh-huh, and I got you too, didn’t I? Never understood how Parker could keep trusting himself to protect you…”

“Hey!” Mary Jane shouted. “He has always kept me safe.”

“But not protected,” Eddie argued. “You need to know how to defend yourself and you wouldn’t be here if he’d taken care of that. Would you?”

In sullen silence, Mary Jane conceded the point.

“So we’re going to ease you into getting the shit kicked out of you—get you used to it, stop being afraid of it. Come at me and try to hurt me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Best way of learning is doing.”

“I’m not Malibu Stacy, you know. If I hit you, I’m going to do some damage.”

“Go ahead then. Not like I don’t have it coming.”

With an inward shrug, Mary Jane charged him, swinging hard. Eddie turned into the blow, intercepting it before the impact was fully formed. Then giving Mary Jane a shove that knocked her back so hard, she tripped over her feet and went down on her ass.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Eddie told her, like he was back in kindergarten, pulling the pigtail of the prettiest girl in school. “Just because of all that damage you did to me doesn’t mean we have to quit.”

Mary Jane came up, ruefully rubbing her bruised buttocks, then she raised her fists. Readying herself to have another try with Eddie.

This time, she was too cautious. Her lack of speed allowed Eddie to swoop down and sweep her legs out from under her before she even made her move. Mary Jane grunted when she hit the ground and came up spitting fire.

“Is this honestly supposed to help or do you just want to take out your frustrations on me?”

“What do I have to be frustrated about?”

“The same sob story as always,” Mary Jane recalled, counting on her fingers. “No job, no girlfriend, ex-con, but Peter has a perfect life, so you might as well come gunning for him.”

“If you really believe that, then what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know!” Mary Jane cried, throwing her hands up. “I thought you’d have me… knocking a punching bag around or something!”

“Punching bags don’t hit back,” Eddie said. “Your husband, he doesn’t either. You know he’d go easy on you.”

“And you won’t,” Mary Jane said resentfully.

“No, I won’t. Because I know a bruise here might save your ass out there. But if it’s too much for you, then maybe you shouldn’t be a superhero.”

Mary Jane jerked toward him suddenly, throwing a haymaker that slammed into his right pec and knocked him back. Then Eddie had his defenses up, blocking her one-two-three punches before lashing out himself—grabbing her by the shoulders and hauling her to the ground for his knee to come down on. Pinning her in place with no way up.

After a moment, she stopped struggling. “That was good, right?”

Eddie let her up. “Yeah. Works better when you don’t telegraph what you’re going to do to me.”

“Suppose I should’ve asked why you’re doing this.”

“Whatever you are to Parker, you’re an innocent. I won’t let you get hurt if there’s anything I can do to prevent it.”

Mary Jane nodded. “Bet you wish you could talk me into just staying home, like Peter.”

“I do,” Eddie said. “But I know you don’t care what I think. So I might as well just teach you what you want to know.”

***

They went at it for hours, as long as Mary Jane dared stay away before going home to mother Annie. Even though Eddie went easy on her, it was the most roughed up MJ had been since becoming Spinneret. All his pulled punches and hip-tosses onto the mat still took their toll. She ended up bruised, battered, maybe even a little cracked, but with a far greater appreciation of physical force than she’d ever had before.

Peter had told her that his power wasn’t an all-in-one tool, but she’d never understood that until she tried to do what he did without it. She’d always been caught between being wary of his borrowed strength and using it no-holds-barred, nothing held back because she was fighting something powerful enough that she didn’t care about blasting it into the next zip code.

Eddie got her far more comfortable with sheer damage; both taking and receiving it. She felt sure now that she knew how much force would incapacitate someone—how to hold back from using so much she would do permanent harm.

More training ground that knowledge into her. A little at a time, Eddie let her draw on Peter’s power and build up her comfort level with being faster, stronger, all the other myriad improvements that Peter’s abilities brought.

Inch by inch, she learned her limits. How to use this power like a scalpel and not like a hammer. And Eddie had no complaints about serving as a punching bag. No matter how many times she knocked him down, tossed him around, landed a hit on him, he never complained. Only took a strange pride in how her reflexes were being honed to a razor’s edge.

Learning what worked and what didn’t, what her body could do and what it absolutely excelled at. She saw now that Peter only really knew what worked for him. It had to be by training and training and training that Mary Jane uncovered what worked for her.

If Peter noticed her growing tiredness, bruises, and absences to leave him watching Annie, he didn’t mention it. He seemed to know she was still incensed at being benched and it was like if he didn’t think about her, then her anger couldn’t affect him. Mary Jane tried not to think herself about how well that worked out for what she was doing.

He did ask why she was pulling a Spinneret and drawing on his power. Mary Jane told him, honestly, that she was practicing. Peter believed her. After all, there were no Spinneret sightings.

She didn’t tell him she was spending her training sessions with Eddie. Or how often it was now that she noticed his bold physique—so much more extravagant than Peter’s lithe, compact musculature—or how many times she’d noted the size of his cock, obvious through the thinness of his skintight costume.

Mary Jane told herself it was nothing to be ashamed of, her attention. Eddie’s prick was ten inches long, as thick as her forearm. Of course she noticed it! But as to why it kept drawing her eye, again and again, long after she should’ve been used to the sight of it… she couldn’t say. It wasn’t like the symbiote were getting thinner. There had to be as much of it as ever on Eddie’s body, right?