The words blurred as they sank into her brain. Left the page, danced in front of her eyes, then exploded with meaning. A revelation.

It was her.

He wasn’t in control of their relationship. She was.

He wasn’t disinterested, as remote as he pretended. He was playing a role.

Father. Brother. Benefactor. None of those things, but with shades of all three. He smiled benevolently, and she glowed back – shyly, of course. If his hands occasionally lingered on her back a little too long, they ignored it. If her spine arched into him, it was innocent pleasure, sensuality.

“Crap!”

Heads flew up from cubicles all around the reading room. She smiled – sweetly, of course – and held up the book. “Pop psychology,” she apologised, the disgusted tone eliciting a number of sympathetic smirks.

She murmured a quick prayer of apology to the author. Because there it was, on the page in black and white. That final piece that slides into the puzzle and clarifies everything. The proof.

It wasn’t Jean. Or that blonde in Vegas. Or even Ororo, though they’d been thrown together a lot lately.

It was her. Marie. Teenage, scared, soul-bared Marie. But eighteen. Voluptuous. Virginal. Nature had designed the perfect mate for a man who was a little more captive to his biology than most.

*

The bio paper started it. She chose evolution as her topic, and that meant natural selection. And then she discovered Darwin’s other mechanism, the one that most people seemed to forget about. Sexual selection. The Mansion’s library didn’t have anything particularly up-to-date on that front, so she trekked into town. And there, in one of those cubicles in the third floor reading room, she found the most useful book ever published.

It was certainly eye-catching. The couple embracing, bathed in red and black. His hand on her hip looked huge, possessive. And she was small. Nubile. (Young, her knowing mind whispered. Young.) And the title: “Strategies of Desire”. No beating about the bush there.

Well, Mr Buss wasn’t as exciting as he sounded. She’d worked her way through chapter one, and snorted a few times as he laid out “What women want”. Then came chapter three.

Men wanted beauty. Men wanted fertility. And most of all – because it was all the same thing, really – men wanted youth.

She stopped taking notes there. Checked her purse, counted out a couple of tattered tens and a handful of ones. Her fingers clenched around the book as she forced herself to drop it in the return bin on her way out, and she wondered if the woman at the information desk – older. Older! – could see the glitter of triumph in her eyes.

“Would you know where the nearest Barnes & Noble is?”

A practiced smile and the woman didn’t even attempt a reply - simply handed her a bookmark with both the library and Barnes & Noble marked on it, only four streets away.

Half a mile, four mocha lattes and three chapters later, Marie had enough material to return to the Mansion. The cursory notes of selection mechanisms and anthropological studies filling the front of the notebook had given way to a detailed, exhaustive plan of attack.

Logan was hers. Her alpha. Her mate. There was no point in reticence or passivity. This was Nature, red in tooth and claw.

*

“Logan?”

“Marie.”

“How much do you know about evolution?”

“Besides’ Wheels basic primer? Fuck all, sweetheart. Why?”

“No reason. I just found a few of the points really interesting, and wondered what you thought of the ideas.”

“About us being mutants?”

“No, actually. Human. What it means to be human.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Marie.”

His shoulders slumped as that mask slid over his face. Self-loathing hadn’t been her goal, but she wanted him to think. Think about him. What he was.

“Logan!” He looked up, unable to ignore her protest even as he slid into his usual funk.

“You are human. Your genetic code has everything everybody else’s has. It’s just built new things out of it, that’s all. And kept some old things other people have lost.”

He was unconvinced. She heard him mutter “an animal” as he turned away. She repeated it silently. An animal. Like every other Homo sapiens out there. But better.

*

“How’s that paper coming along?”

“OK. But some of the concepts are a bit complicated. Sex isn’t as straightforward as it sounds!”

“It’s not?”

“No! The scientists think sexual selection was one of the things that made us human – bipedal, hairless, etcetera. But then society comes along and puts a different set of rules on things. We could really be screwing ourselves up by going against nature!”

She watched his reaction through a curtain of hair, adjusting her sprawl at the desk to expose the line of her hip and the jut of her breasts. He was slouched in the door as had become the norm lately – words had been said, she suspected – but his eyes still travelled over her, soft and warm. And intrigued.

“Against nature?” He strode across the room to stand over her, and she hoped he wouldn’t ask any difficult questions, because his hip was grazing her shoulder, and if she straightened up a little …. He glanced down as the side of her breast slid slowly along his hipbone. He could smell her. She knew it, and her nipples began to ache as speculation flared in his eyes.

Speak. She had to speak.

“Uh, you know. Men choosing anorexic models, or women that look like children. Or older women, nearly past childbearing.”

“Instead of?” Was his voice strained? The question had an edge to it, she knew that. He was expecting to hear something he didn’t like.

“Women at the peak of their fertility. Younger and fatter than the current ideal, basically.” She was proud of that. Voice level, even somewhat flippant. And she hadn’t yelled “me, you fool!” the way she wanted to.

He’d got the message, though.

She heard him swallow and felt the energy in the room splinter as he yanked his focus away. He picked up the black book, eyebrows shooting skyward at the risqué cover. “Strategies of human mating?” This is what you’re reading?”

“Buss is a leading worker in evolutionary psychology. And sex is what made us who we are, Logan. Especially us.”

Because she had some theories there. Theories about mutation and mate choice. And her mate had better be prepared to listen.

*

She got an A on the biology paper.

“This is remarkable, Rogue! Excellent work – truly insightful thinking!” Dr McCoy tried to hide his astonishment, but failed. “May I ask …” he faltered, unable to pose the question diplomatically. Not many students went from a D average to an A in one leap.

“I had never really put much effort into Bio before,” Marie shrugged, congratulating herself on avoiding the words “deathly boring”. She wanted to explain exactly why sexual selection was such an interesting mechanism, but she doubted Hank wanted to hear it.

She had identified more than 20 characteristics that were theorised to have been selected for via mate choice, rather than survival. Hairlessness. Skin colour. Eye colour. The waist-hip ratio. Penis size.

Logan had laughed when he read that passage, and when she stared pointedly at his crotch, gave her THAT look for the very first time. The one that said “play your cards right, baby, and maybe you’ll find out”.

She wanted to see that look more. Wanted more than just the look.

Mother Nature was beckoning, taunting her. “Time to take what’s yours, girl.”

Red in tooth and claw. What did that mean, exactly? Being ready to fight for what you wanted? Being so hungry you could taste it? Being willing to surrender to that part of you that was wild, pre-human?

It was. She was.

*

Her closet was depressing. Black. Green. Blue. Denim. Cotton. Knits. But at the back, never taken out of its bag, was the thing. A dress, no less. Dark red silk. Like a fall of blood kissing the curves of her breasts, the sweep of her waist and hips and legs. Swirling to mid calf in a way that exaggerated every step, every sway.

Taking it from the hanger, she hesitated, blushing. But the thought of it, of him, pushed her forward. She needed to own this. “A seduction,” she whispered.

“I’m going to seduce him.” Louder that time.

Her tongue darted out, her hair rippled around her shoulders, silver strands catching the light as she shifted to stare into the mirror. “Oh, Logan. I am going to seduce you.”

Her voice rang like a bell in the room, surprising her. The girl in the mirror looked different now. She looked like Marie, but her eyes shone with secrets and mysteries. The very set of her head spoke of joy and confidence.

It was time.

Marie dropped the dress over her head and shivered as the silk slid down, cool and erotic. Considered underwear, but after a moment of virginal panic, knew she had to go without. Tooth and claw … but tonight, her weapons would be her nipples, peaked at the feel of the silk, and the scent rising up, with nothing to disguise the slide and slick of bare thighs, bare mons, bare petals in between.

She dragged in a breath, smelt her own arousal, felt the slickness build. Boldness, it seemed, was its own aphrodisiac.

Her reflection stared back at her, gaze slumberous and heated. Marie smiled at that girl’s power, her liberation from other people’s mores. She stepped out of her room, locking the door behind, and headed down the hall to the garage.

She chose the Porsche, just for the feel of the leather on her bare ass. Fourteen miles of silk and leather and fast car; she was almost sorry when she pulled into driveway of the small house he had rented. He’d moved off campus after finally agreeing to teach full time; he was still at the Mansion fourteen hours a day, what with their extracurricular activities, but at least he was his own person at night.

She’d resented it, at first. Not now.

Now, she could slide from the car, walk to his front door, rap twice. A light burned upstairs, and she could hear the thump, thump-thump, THUMP of his nightly workout. When he lived at the mansion, she used to creep into the gym to watch him some nights. Since it was always after lights out, he would ignore her presence, choosing instead to address stray comments on technique to the punching bag. Did he know those nights had left her itchy in her skin? And later, a frenzy of masturbation so frantic that she couldn’t always make it back to her room? (One day, she would write a letter of thanks to whoever it was that had installed the first floor bathrooms right there, at the top of the stair.)

Not tonight. If he let her in tonight, her orgasm would be his gift. Her fingers would be busy elsewhere.

She heard him on the stairs before her knuckles had even impacted the wood, and she pushed herself to knock – loudly. Let there be no mistake. She was here; she was seeking entry to his den. Stalking in, like the lioness she was.

Marie was still smirking at her own conceit when he opened the door. The dim hall light didn’t allow her to see his features. (She knew them by heart, anyway.) Instead, it sculpted his form into mesmerising planes of light and shadow, with tiny sparks of light coursing their way down his bare chest and darkening the running shorts he wore. Sweat, she realised, her tongue darting out as if to taste.

“Marie?” He didn’t ask what she was doing here, or if she knew what time it was. Logan was never one to waste time on rhetorical questions.

“Yes, Logan. It’s time.”

He smiled, amused and indulgent, but a bit wicked, too. Raised eyebrows demanded she elaborate. Marie laughed, because she was no longer ashamed to be young and inexperienced. There was power in that.

“It’s time for me to claim you.” Mother Nature didn’t sit around waiting to be claimed. Nor would she.

When his jaw dropped, she could only assume it was her boldness that did it. They had always been honest in all things, except this. This they had avoided with a ten-foot pole.

“I’ve realised a few things. Things I always knew, but wasn’t ready to face,” she explained.

“One. I’m yours. I always have been, from that first night.”

She gazed steadily into his eyes, refusing to be cowed by the panic that lurked there.

“Two. You’re mine. Not Jean Grey’s, not Ororo’s, not any barfly or bimbo or random blonde who crosses your path. You’ll be leaving them alone now, and they can get their hands the fuck off!”

Yeow. Had she yelled that? Bottled it up for too long, probably. He looked a bit shocked. Her little tirade had killed the panic, and hello, that was much better. His eyes had shot down to her breasts, rising and falling with her anger, and her nipples stood to attention. He noticed.

“Three. I’m old enough. I’m ready.” Was he still panicked? Thinking about running?
“I’m naked under this dress, and I know you can smell it, and do you really think you can hide your hard-on in those shorts?”

He opened the door wordlessly, and turned his back on her to walk down the hall. Marie stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and followed him into the depths of the house. Enough of this silent shit. He had to commit to this too.

She found him in the shower room, flicking on the faucet.

“Logan?” She tried not to hear the touch of fear in her own voice, or the longing that was always there.

He gave a little huff, rueful. Resigned?

“You said it, Marie. I’m yours, always have been. Even when you were too young, too vulnerable to even look at an animal like me, I was yours. I thought if I stayed away, kept away, you might grow out of it, but … I’m not going to fight you.”

Anger boiled up. Words threatened to spill out, but she bit her tongue. Handling a wounded Wolverine was delicate work.

“Let me have a shower, and I’ll see you downstairs. We’ll open a bottle of wine, talk about this like adults.”

She stepped into the shower, turned it off. Wet silk, she discovered, felt like a wet dream. Worked like a dream, too, as she watched his cock jerk, and grow even further in the confines of the lycra.

Now. She had to claim him now.

She didn’t bother to turn around. The memories she’d ignored too long whispered of how he loved a woman’s shoulder blades, the tantalising line of vertebra that took a man south, the glory of buttocks high, and firm, and round. Logan could stare at a woman’s breasts for hours, loved to measure the span of a waist with his hands, but for hard and fast and goddamn wild … that was from behind.

Marie dipped to seize the hem of her skirt, and shimmied to lift it clear of her knees, thighs, the globes of her ass. Moved backwards, capturing his hardness in the cleft, and began to undulate. Damp lycra, hot skin above it and hard, hard, hard down below.

As she moved against him, his hands grasped her waist. To restrain her, she expected, but they caught in the red silk that bunched there, so were forced to move lower, to the jut of her hipbone. And once there, his fingers gripped as if in spasm. And soothed, and stroked. She put her hands over his, moving them lower still, but it was his fingers that slid forward, tracing lines of heat across her groin. Meeting in that dangerous territory between bellybutton and pubic bone, and stroking there, circles and dips and prelude to the dance.

Marie braced herself on spread legs and threw her head back to look into his face.

“Touch me, Logan. No more pretending.” It was a request, not a demand.

She felt the growl as it ripped from his chest, only to be muffled as he sunk his teeth into her shoulder. Not a bite, really, more possession and instinct and finality and reason at last. Together, at last. His fingers plunged deep inside her, collecting the juices to draw patterns on her abdomen, her thighs. His mark.

The feel of her skin under his fingers seemed to distract him, momentarily. Marie took the moment to gulp in the air she had forgotten to breathe. He stooped to run his lips across the nape of her neck and along her collarbone, soothing the fast-forming bruise with his tongue. She felt him smile.

“Your skin, Marie. I’m touching your skin.” She could hear wonder in his voice, and for the first time, she didn’t hate it. Hate her skin. Hate the Cure for taking it away.

“And here am I, still wearing silk!”

It was the wrong thing to say. Snick … and the cold kiss of adamantium pushed its way between them, the blunt edge of his blade tracing vertebra after vertebra down to where the skirt lay bunched above her waist. He flicked his wrist, and red silk pooled on the floor of the shower, blood swirling down a plughole. Marie was trying to focus, maybe protest the fate of her dress, when she felt the blades again. Tracing her sides with such tenderness that tears welled in her eyes. Arousal, she had expected, but this was reverence. A consecration.

Mesmerised, her eyes followed the gleam of adamantium as his claws kissed every part of her. Down the sides of her breasts, sliding under as if to test their weight on the blade. Inching over her nipples, so slowly the super-smooth metal seemed to drag like sandpaper. Twin tracks of sensation, either side of her sternum, parting to embrace the swell of her stomach. And joining together again, nudging aside her outer lips to allow the metal to touch her inner folds. She swallowed.

“Don’t move.” A growl so rough she knew he was at the edge of his control. The muscles in his forearms were tensioned like cables as he maintained perfect stillness.

Marie could not.

She jerked her hips, and a trickle of blood bloomed on his innermost blade. The same colour as her dress, she mused, as her hips bucked again, as if unable to believe that sharp pain could feel so good. But it was the thought of it that sent her over. His hands on her, his claws in her, sweat and silk and blood and blackness as the pleasure took her.

*

“Marie!”

He was cradling her, legs either side of her and arms crossed protectively over her midriff as they sat on the floor of the shower. She opened her eyes slowly, and immediately searched for his hands. No more claws. Her moue of disappointment chased the alarm from his face.

“You have a thing for my claws, little girl?” His voice had dropped an octave, rougher and harsher than normal. It was Logan, but the Logan that belonged to this new Marie.

“You have a thing for little girls, baby?” She could tease. Even with that, the ugly rumour that was never mentioned in their presence, for fear of a rabid Wolverine or vengeful Rogue. This woman, Marie, could sashay in and make it hers.

“Only one. And I’m thinking she ain’t such a little girl anymore.” His voice had regained its customary introspection, and there was a question there, too.

“No. I haven’t been for a while, but I clung on to it too long. It was safe.” School, jeans and t-shirts, even her trademark gloves still got worn occasionally. Mostly, though, it was the risk of losing him that had stopped her taking the final steps towards adulthood. Logan, father figure, in her life had seemed better than no Logan at all.

Marie lifted her head and looked straight into his eyes. They were beautiful in their softness, a green-gold glow that spoke of tenderness and happiness and even contentment.

“Thank you for looking after me for so long. Now it’s my turn to look after you.”

She meant metaphorically, of course. Spiritually. Physically, if he would allow her.

But he was a man, and when his cock leapt against her, she ignored his shame-faced protests and dropped her gaze.

She had memories that would help with this.

*
to be continued ...

Sometimes Marie forgot that knowledge and experience were different things. Logan’s memory, Jean’s memory, Pyro, Bobby, a random trucker, a clumsy waitress … the line stretched right back to poor Cody Robbins, and several of those people had received blow jobs.

Jean, naughty girl, had given quite a few in her day, too. But seeing that, even feeling their emotions, wasn’t quite the same as being down on your knees in a shower cubicle, feeling the pulse of the man you love as his cock disgorged into your mouth.

Marie was thinking about that now, as she stood under the shower. She had opened the faucet to full, liking the feel of the water rocketing down on her over-sensitised skin. Her hair was clean, her body tingled – and her mind kept churning through the previous hour like a hamster on a wheel.

She hadn’t exactly liked it. She wasn’t comfortable on her knees – physically or psychologically – and her gag reflex would have preferred Logan wasn’t quite so well endowed. And then there was the semen.

Salty, viscous, warm. The taste was quite neutral, and as for the texture … well, now she knew why men wanted women to eat oysters. She might have called it disgusting if it hadn’t been for that surge of greed that demanded she swallow every drop and lick around the head in search of more. The compulsion had shocked her and she was still trying to understand exactly what had happened. She had felt … possessive? Proprietary?

And Logan. What was he feeling, right now? Was he even here, or had the shower drowned out the noise of the Harley as he dealt with the fast-developing relationship in his usual fashion?

He was embarrassed, she knew that. After demolishing several of the bathroom tiles as he came, Logan had raised her up and wrapped his arms around her in a full body hug. He had been shaking as they stood there, enmeshed, for long minutes. Then he cleared his throat and released her.

“Thank you, Marie. You shouldn’t have to do that for me, for anyone, but …” he stopped, obviously pushing up hard against one of his self-imposed boundaries.

“It’s OK, love,” she whispered, rising to tiptoe to speak directly into his ear. “A good girl never says it aloud, but … I always wanted to do that. To try. You taste good, Logan. You felt right in my mouth.”

And then there was that weird thing with your cum, she added mentally. What was that about, Mother Nature?

He had left her, then, to “find a few things downstairs”. His composure, most likely, Marie thought, as she stood under the stream of hot water. He was as shaken as she had seen him, and all through the power of one little blowjob.

Perhaps he’d thought about it before. There was a well of memory she kept cordoned off from herself. The way he thought about her and his reactions to her, especially those way back, before they became Logan and Marie. It was privacy, of a kind. She was tempted to peek and see whether he’d ever thought of her that way, fantasised perhaps.

No. This was a relationship. They would have to learn to communicate like any other couple. Talk, even.

“Hey Logan, did you used to think of me giving you a blowjob?” might not work just yet, she thought.

Drying on a man-sized towel of chocolate brown (he had good taste, she realised with a shock), Marie wondered whether to find something to wear and join him, or just … silk. Silk sheets on the bed. She towelled her hair to an acceptable non-drenched state, and then groaned with pleasure as she climbed between the ivory sheets. Silk. The world should be made of silk, because she was about to die with pleasure.

A quiet chuckle from the door alerted her to his return.
“Thought it was appropriate,” he said, nodding towards the freshly made bed. “Shame they’re not red.”

She grinned; sliding her arms and legs up and down as if she was trying to make a snow angel. “This is way more tasteful,” she pointed out. “Just right for a sophisticated woman like me,” she pouted, batting her eyelashes at him.

His chuckle turned into a belly laugh and he flopped down beside her. As the moment passed, they turned to face each other, eye to eye, and silent. They drank each other in, made love without touching. Vows without speaking.

Then it was time for words.

“I would look at you every day and think – one day. One day you would be done with school and the team and all this mutant rights crap and then, maybe, if you wanted that, you might be mine.” He lifted his hand, oddly naked without the claws, and traced her cheekbone, following it down and around to her lips.

She kissed the finger and made her own confession.

“I would think, one day, I’ll be grown up enough. But it was just about being brave enough. Being enough, basically. I had to earn you.” He went to protest and she hushed him.

“Not for you, but for me. I needed for me to be enough for you.”

“Then I had a revelation. I was enough. I was everything you needed. Wanted, even.” She didn’t need to tell him her revelation was in the pages of a book, or that sometimes she seemed to be channelling Mother Nature.

“So I came, and here we are.”

“Definitely enough,” he murmured, spearing a hand into her hair as he lowered his lips to hers. “More than enough.” His lips were slow and gentle, tasting their way around perimeter of her mouth and sucking her top lip into his mouth before his tongue delved inside hers.

Tasting became taunting and then thrusting as he rolled her over and stretched his length above her as they kissed. Marie felt Logan imprinting himself on every cell in her body: his cheek to her cheek, tongue to tongue, hands to hands. She wanted to lose herself in that kiss, drift off in a haze of delighted sensuality, but her body was starting to make other demands. Impatient baggage, it was.

He laughed as her moans turned into demands, but shut up quickly when she grabbed his hands and dragged them to her nipples, so hard and tight they hurt. They seemed to burrow right into his palms, and when he tweaked one between thumb and forefinger, the buck of her hips nearly dislodged him.

“This one’s obviously jealous,” he smirked, lowering his head to the opposite nipple. She held her breath as his mouth closed around it, and nearly passed into delirium as he used teeth and tongue to alternately savage and soothe the proud flesh.

It felt so good she barely noticed when his hand burrowed its way between her legs, and with a few gentle prods, spread her wide. Almost overlooked the gush of wetness that greeted him, and the smile that crossed his face. Might have complained when he lifted his mouth from her breast and kissed her sternum, then belly button.

“Oh.” His tongue inside her, playing. His teeth rasping, pulling a little.

“Oh my God.” His lips closing on her clitoris. Sucking.

“Oh my fucking GOD.” Teeth again. He sucked hard. Fucked her with his tongue. It was building, building.

“Please ...” she wanted something, but couldn’t quite remember what. Something important! But the wave …

“Please, Logan, pl..” she was close, so close, but this was Logan, and as the wave crashed over her, he just KNEW, and plunged into her, hard and fast and right down deep. And God, it HURT, but it hurt so goddamn beautifully and that wave was turning her over and over and over …

“Hi.” He was looking down at her, smug. She wondered if he came this time or had her moment of unconsciousness robbed him of that? Was it polite for the newly de-virgined to ask?

“Hey, sugar.”

“You’re mine now.” Serious face. Possessive. Her alpha.

She should argue, really. She’d claimed him, after all.

“You bet, sugar. Every last inch of me.” Her hand on his cock told the other story, though. Every last inch was hers.

*

She sat bolt upright, sleep having fled with a sudden realisation. He had been sleeping too, but this was Logan, and he was still able to cock an eyebrow in question even when dragged from the depths of slumber.

“A condom!”

He understood immediately, and the flush that crept over his face told her this was something that had never occurred to him. Never been a problem for him.

“God, Logan, where did you spend the 90s?” she snapped, annoyed. She knew he didn’t have to worry about disease, but how many little Wolverines might be running around with an attitude like that?

She swatted away the annoying voice that wanted to cheer at the thought of little Wolverines and focused on the fact that she was mad. Furious! Not just with him - she had braved the convenience store and managed to choose between ribbed, flavoured and contoured, and then proudly popped them into the miniscule red silk bag that had hung around her wrist … until she had taken it off to leave the car keys in, downstairs on the hall stand.

The hallstand! Had the sight of Logan’s bare chest fried the last of her brain cells?

“You’re not pregnant.” His voice was flat and unaccountably angry, but also very sure.

“How do you know? Even a pregnancy test wouldn’t be able to tell me yet!”

“Wrong time. You’re not ovulating.” He tapped his nose and smiled wearily. Marie stared at him and wondered how long she had managed to avoid that little nugget of information.

“So you know … huh. Handy.” She smiled, relaxed. And the image of little Wolverines came dancing back into her head.

She slapped it away. She had chosen her mate, but Mother Nature would have to wait for the rest of the equation. Marie pushed the debate away and snuggled into his side in a bid to go back to sleep. Her eyes had just drifted close when he spoke quietly into the darkness.

“I’d never force you to carry my children, Marie. No one deserves to have a monster inside of them.”

She reared up to look at him, to protest, but the words wouldn’t come. Tears did, though. Shock and sadness and the agony of realisation. So far to go. They had so far to go.

She had won the first battle, but forgotten she was riding into war.

*
to be continued ...

His smell, surrounding her. His taste, still in her mouth. His leg, thrown across her waist to pin her to the bed. The pins and needles were all hers.

“Logan.”

She hadn’t bothered to whisper. This was a man who awoke at the sound of a door closing anywhere in the mansion.

“Marie.”

“Morning sugar.” She pressed her tear-stained cheek into the curve of the hand that lay beside her on the pillow. Had he known why she was crying? He hadn’t asked, simply held her – chest pressed to her back, knees bent into the crook of her own, one arm curved over her head and the other wrapped around her waist. She had slept, eventually, and so too had her guardian.

She jiggled her foot a little to force some sensation into it.

“Jesus, Marie, I’m crushing you!” He moved away as if stung. She followed him as quickly as a dead leg would allow, and pinned him with a steady stare.

“Yes, you were. And I loved it. Apart from the not being able to move part. And I loved the way you held me when I cried. But do you know why I was crying?”

His face closed, unwilling to broach the subject. Marie pushed on regardless.

“Tell me, Logan!”

“It’s 0600 hours, Marie. Far too early for this type of conversation. I’m hitting the showers.” Brusque, depersonalised. His back was ramrod straight when he rose naked from the bed: he was the drill sergeant that appeared when the team screwed up a mission, or some kid defaulted on an assigned punishment.

The drill sergeant had a secret, though.

“Does this mean you’re going to finally get around to fucking me in the shower, Sergeant Logan?”

“Because it the was the only thing I could think about after all those workouts at the mansion. You would pretend I wasn’t there, and I would tiptoe into the showers after you … and watch. You were always so hard, weren’t you Logan? Hard for me?”

“And you would soap up and I’d listen to you groan. You would touch yourself, and I wanted to be that hand, Logan. I wanted it to be my hand. I wanted to feel how hard you were and how hot it was and what it felt like when you came. All over yourself and the shower cubicle.”

She had risen from the bed as he fled into the shower, and now stood in front of him, naked, on the other side of the clear glass door. As she spoke, she leaned forward and pressed her body against the cool glass. And began to sway, in a dance that had no rhythm except the brush of her nipples on the cold glass, the lines and patterns they drew, and the sharp buds that rose to the sensation.

His face was still thunderous, but Logan’s hands rose to join the dance, tracing the twin patterns left by her nipples. When she lingered, his hands stilled too, as if they could transmit their heat through the glass. Locked eyes, locked frames, they stared at each other.

He left the water on as he opened the door, yanked her inside and bent her over in one smooth motion. She was aroused, but not yet slippery as the thrust of his hips buried his cock inside her. It hurt.

Logan froze at her gasp. “We don’t have to …”

“Fuck off, Logan. We do have to. We have to do this each day, every day, five times a day for the rest of my life as far as I’m concerned. Are you scared yet?”

He threw back his head and laughed as her mock-fierce growl was combined with an enticing wiggle that nearly unseated him. He pulled back a little, then slid forwards. Back again, forwards once more. Marie could feel herself opening, slickening, drawing him in as the burn transformed itself into friction of the most delicious kind.

She endured a moment more – the slow slide that left her empty and aching, the even slower filling – before bracing herself on the tiles in order to propel herself backwards onto him, fully onto him, deeper than he had ever been inside her. Deeper than she had known it was possible to go.

This time, when the tears welled, it was from the beauty of it. Of feeling him inside her, stretching her, filling every gap within her with his power. It was like looking down a hall of mirrors, her dazed brain suggested. Logan, Marie, Logan, Marie, Logan … he surrounded her, covering her with his body, inside her body, inside her mind, in her every waking thought.

She fancied she could see them, there. A man and a woman, bent double in the ancient act that had defined their species. Around them, chrome and porcelain and glass – not to mention hot water – but inside them, wild souls that paid no heed to civilisation, scrabbling madly to touch, to feel. To mate.

Logan’s fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her head back as he sank his teeth into her shoulder. It was still raw from the night before, but something within her knew he needed that, needed the connection of blood and flesh and teeth. The control it gave him.

She submitted. And as he surrendered control with a hoarse shout, Marie also began to shake. Pleasure spiralled through her body, starting in her loins but exploding out until she could feel the blood hammering at her temples, fingertips vibrating, toes curling. Glory, glory … everything obliterated except the need to writhe and shatter.

They stood there, shaking, under the stream of water. Too exhausted to even turn around, Marie could feel aftershocks coursing through her with every tiny shudder. When he moved as if to withdraw, she protested, throwing an arm backwards to clasp him to her.

He chuckled noiselessly and dropped an array of kisses in her hair. His mood seemed lighter now – Marie wondered if it was just the sex, but then dismissed the idea. Logan had never gone without.

“You know I love you, don’t you Logan?”

It wasn’t a question, really. It was an assumption – surely he knew.

Silence.

“Logan – I love you. This isn’t about sex. Or you keeping me safe, or some silly crush. This is about me choosing you.”

He had frozen, refusing to acknowledge her words or even breathe. But the wave of yearning that washed over her was so strong, Marie wondered if she was developing a secondary mutation.

“Me choosing you, choosing our life together. Choosing to bear your children, and love your children and love whatever life brings us.”

He took a breath, then, a ragged gulp that swallowed all the pain that was about to spill forth.

She had more to say.

“You think you’re a monster. Perhaps you are, love. Frankenstein’s monster. What they made you do, what they did to your body … those were monstrous things.”

“But they’re not you. They couldn’t take away the parts that made you a good person, an honourable person.”

His hoarse laugh erupted into the charged space.

“They didn’t have to, Marie. Because that guy, he’s not in charge. He’s just a fuckin’ passenger. Sometimes I let him drive, but the man you love,” his lips twisted into a sneer, “there’s nothing good about him. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about ‘good’ or ‘honourable’.

Logan paused, his eyes looking through her as if he was seeing someone else, far away. His claws slid out, and he stared at them, his face twisted with what might have been revulsion as he slowly rotated his hands.

“So beautiful, these. Always sharp, always ready.”

He slashed one set upwards, opening his arm from palm to elbow. Marie could see the wicked adamantium architecture intertwined with human nerves and muscle, fibres already beginning to knit and reform around the wound.

“Stupid, dumb body. Won’t quit. Won’t die. Won’t be told what to do.”

He watched the blood flow lessen as muscle and skin grew over the gaping hole. His arm was whole, shiny new skin marking the incision, before the blood had cleared from the floor of the shower.

Marie surfaced from her shock to grab his hand and scatter tiny kisses along the line of new skin.

“Why, Logan? I know that hurts, even your claws coming out hurts you! Why would you do that?” Brown eyes huge, she pleaded to understand.

“Hurts like fuck, sweetheart. But – I can feel it. I’m feelin’. When …” he stopped, unable to go any further. Marie bowed her head to kiss his arm once more. She would not pressure him into telling her more than he was ready to.

A huge breath reverberated through his chest, and she felt the words spill from him even before she heard them.

“There’s nothing there. When I fight. Just … a blank. No pain, no emotion. No pity. Just this body, doing what it was designed to do.”

He swung his gaze to her, and they burned so fiercely, she nearly took a step back.

“What the fuck was nature thinking when it created me, Marie? What place is there in the world for something that can’t be killed, can’t be stopped?”

She opened her mouth to answer him – God knows what she was going to say – when he spoke again.

“It feels good! Feels like fuckin’ bliss. To be in that place. So fuckin’ powerful that nothin’ can stop me. And not to care. About any goddamn thing.”

She had seen his joy at the kill, the exultation in mindlessness. She had seen, but not quite believed. Instead, she had clung to an ideal – that night in the mansion’s hallway, he had chosen honour, chosen to protect his friends rather than lose himself in the battle.

A chill swept over her as the self-deception crumbled.

He hadn’t cared. The kill had been impossible. The battle had moved elsewhere.

The machine needed to move on.

She wondered, now, when he had returned to her. In the car? At Bobby’s house?

“It was your nightgown.” He gave a bitter chuckle as she started, surprised. “You were breathing so fucking hard you were just about falling out of it. Sweet little tits, hard little nipples … not much can bring me back from there, but apparently the urge to fuck a little girl senseless does it.” He spat the words like poison.

“Wanting to fuck you kinda led to wanting to keep you alive, and my brain was working again by then. Figured we might as well keep everyone else alive, too.”

He shrugged, as if those lives were of no import. He had saved 12 children that night. Had it all been on a whim? For lust?

Marie could feel the disappointment welling in her chest, fighting with the need to understand this man. He was still spewing venomous words, intent on lancing the boil of his herohood.

So much rage. Stryker, the government, his haunted past, to be sure. But Professor Xavier? Scott? Herself?

“You looked at me and saw something worth lovin’, Marie. You looked inside my fuckin’ head and felt what I felt and STILL you didn’t see me. You saw some hero you needed me to be. And I am fuckin’ sick of being that man. Livin’ up to that man.

“Cause I’m me, Marie. Not even a man. Just an animal that can walk and talk. Sometimes. And sometimes I choose to be something else altogether, and whatever it is that I am … I like it. I need that. But you and Chuck and fuckin Ororo – there’s no room in this life for that man. He’s no fuckin’ X-man, no fuckin’ teacher.”

She had heard variations on this theme before: they all had. Logan’s bellyaching. Grumpy old Wolverine. They would smile, and redo the rosters, or up the settings in the Danger Room for a while.

They had been killing him, she realised. While she was busy falling in love with her hero, the real man - the raw, hurting man inside - had been dying. Not even the most magnificent weapon ever created could slash its way free of the bonds of obligation, desire and the need for redemption.

Marie would have to do it for the both of them.

*

They left at dawn.

Ororo stood on the steps, unable to ignore a last opportunity to point out how stupid this was. How immature.

“At least she ain’t still talking about “inappropriate”,” Logan drawled as he slid into the driver’s seat of the second-hand Ford they had bought a week earlier.

Marie laughed. Once the decision had been made, they had enjoyed scandalising the entire school. They hadn’t planned on getting caught in the gym like that, but … it would add to their legend.

Wolverine and Rogue. Figments of their past, now. Logan and Marie were heading north: Alaska, maybe Canada. Somewhere vast and lonely. Where no one would see a man running naked through the snow, or a girl whose skin was starting to prickle and jump with human contact.

And nature would be allowed to take its course.

*

Marie tried to relax as her body attempted to turn itself inside out. She was panting, and humming, and even took a moment to admire the bell-like tone in her “Ommmmm” when, suddenly, everything changed. The pain was gone, replaced by a tremendous compulsion to push, and a burning sensation she didn’t want to think about.

Not that there was any thinking to be done. Mother Nature had grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and demanded she get on with it. Their baby was coming.

She looked around frantically for Logan, finally finding him at the foot of the bed, between her legs. He had tears in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but a choked sob was all that came out. He tried again.

“You’re crowning,” he told her, awe in his voice.

“He’s crowning,” Asha corrected gently. “Marie, would you like to turn your powers on now? It should relieve your pain and ease his way into the world.”

Decision time. The midwife had been carefully selected for her knowledge of psi mutations, as well as her natural birthing experience, but even after weeks of discussion, it had been the one gap in their birth plan. Every other preference had recorded for Logan to guard throughout her labour. But to activate her mutation while her son slid from the birth canal into the world, to nestle against her deadly skin … the prospect was terrifying.

And right. Something inside told her it was right, even necessary. This was her child, hers and Logan’s, and she needed to welcome it in her natural state. She had denied it for so many years, taken her choice away with the so-called Cure, and then suffered as it returned slowly, in bits. Tingles where there had once been lightning; mild discomfort for her “victim” instead of near-instant death; it had been humiliating, but instructive. Controllable.

Had her journey been leading her to this? Even through the pain and the horror of loss and the tumult of teaching Logan to live? This moment, this knowledge: he needed her as she was.

They needed her just as she was.

Marie relaxed into her receptive state and felt sensation flood her skin. The slick surface of the plastic sheet underneath her. The death grip Logan was exerting on one ankle. The feel of her son, pushing his way towards light and air and consciousness.

She relaxed further, and joined him in his journey.

Pressure. Darkness. Pressure. Brightness. Pressure – relieved! Noise! Brightness! Her skin, speaking of safety and love. Her voice. Strange, distorted, but her voice. Her. Her. Her. Milk. Milk now!

Marie’s mouth hung open as her son scrabbled his way up her body and clamped on to the nipple she was still struggling to expose. Butted her a few times – hard! – then settled to suck. Little mewling sounds. He reminded her of the newborn puppies she had once seen, or a piglet, fat and pink and new.

“A little animal,” she murmured, glancing at Logan. He had cut the baby’s umbilical cord, placed the child on her belly, and then collapsed beside her in the double bed, overcome. He simply stared, unable to tear his eyes from the child’s frantic suckling.

“Hungry little bugger.”

Marie could barely answer, the hormones flooding through her lulling her into a sleepy daze.

“Your son. And mine. Hungry AND fierce. And happy.”

She pulled his hand to cover their tiny son’s wrinkled backside.

“He can feel us both. Mostly, he’s just hungry and wants the milk, but he’s happy, too. Happy to be here. Happy to be out in the world with his Mommy and Daddy who love him so much.”

Marie relaxed the psychic bond with her son in order to kiss her husband, and then closed her eyes.

Sleep now. Life later.

Fin