“Rogue, I forbid you to get out of that bed!”

Jean had had enough of her young patient’s protests. “Your fever may have broken, but you are still too weak to stand up in a shower and you know it. I don’t care what you smell like. A sponge bath is as far as I’m willing to go.”

“For heaven’s sake, Jean, I haven’t washed my hair in a week and your sponge baths don’t address the, uh, personal hygiene issues, if you know what I mean. Please, you can sit in the bathroom with me if you want to, but I need a shower! C’mon, you’re a girl. Put yourself in my place.”

Well, the kid had her there. Jean hadn’t gone more than a day without a shower since she was fourteen. Eeww.

“Oh, all right, but you have to wait until after my next class,” Jean said, checking her watch. “I’ll be back at ten-thirty and we’ll get you in the shower then. Deal?”

“Deal! Thanks, Jean.”

“Need anything before I go?”

“No, I think I’ll just rest until you get back. Maybe read a little,” Rogue answered, picking up a magazine from the stack Jean had brought her yesterday.

“OK, see you at ten-thirty.”

As soon as she heard Jean’s footsteps descending the stairs, Rogue climbed out of bed. She had no intention of waiting to be escorted and chaperoned while she took her first shower since coming down with the flu. She’d spent the last seven days trapped in her room with Jean and Ororo hovering over her like a couple of mother hens. Until two days ago, she’d been too sick to mind, but once the fever had broken, her restless nature began to assert itself again. Now, all she wanted in the world was to scrape off the stench of sickness and to spend one glorious hour alone doing it.

Jean was right about one thing; she was wobblier than a newborn foal. But the longer she was up and moving around, the steadier she felt. By the time she had gathered her bathroom essentials and a towel, she was confident that she could handle not only the short walk down the hall to the bathroom, but also the hard-won shower itself.
-----

Logan was sitting in the kitchen finishing a plate of scrambled eggs when he heard it, a soft thud, like a book landing on a carpeted floor. But the sound had come from directly overhead—the upstairs bathroom—and last he checked there was no carpet in the upstairs bathroom.

Laying his plate and fork in the sink, he listened again. He heard water running and then a low moan of pain.

Rogue!

Logan climbed the stairs three at a time, reaching the bathroom door in mere seconds only to find it locked.

“Rogue! Are you OK?” he shouted as he tried the handle again.

No answer.

Sorry about the door, Charlie.

One hard shove and the door gave way, revealing a naked, wet Rogue collapsed onto the floor, unconscious.

For one full second, Logan was paralyzed by the sight of her nude form while the Wolverine’s eyes drank in every inch of her from her long, silky legs and her firm, curved bottom all the way to her full, ivory breasts with their dusky mauve tips. She was the most exquisitely beautiful creation he had ever seen.

Another moan hurled Logan out of his brief trance and into action.

His heart beating wildly, mostly out of fear, he reached down, grabbed her arm and flung it over his shoulder, then scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to her bedroom. It wasn’t until he laid her on her bed and stepped back that he realized what was missing.

The burn, the life draining pull of her skin. He hadn’t felt it, not for a second.

The only evidence that he had touched her at all was the wet splotch on his undershirt. He stood, dumbstruck, staring at his bare arms and exposed chest searching for the telltale redness, the veins rising to the surface. He didn’t have a mark on him.

Holy shit!

“Logan?” Rogue stirred on the bed, forcing his attention back to her—and her nakedness.

“Damn!” he bit off as he reached down and flung the bed covers over her just as she opened her eyes. Phew!

“Logan, how did I get—?“

“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back,” he barked and ran out of the room.

Returning to the bathroom, he turned off the shower, picked up Rogue’s towel and gave the room a quick once-over to see what might have caused her to fall out of the shower. Nothing appeared out of place, so he went back to Rogue’s room, already rehearsing his answer to the question he knew she was going to ask.

“How did I get in this bed, soaking wet and naked, Logan?” she shrieked, right on cue.

“Why do you have to ask me that question at all? Don’t you know what happened?” he snarled back, handing her the towel. The best defense, as they say, is a good offense.

She was momentarily stumped.

“Uh, I was…in the shower…and I got really hot all of a sudden…and dizzy,” she replied, dragging the memory out of the dim reaches of her mind. “I must have…fainted…I guess.”

“You guess?”

“OK, I fainted. But that doesn’t explain--”

“I found you passed out on the floor in the bathroom. You’re lucky you didn’t crack your skull open on the edge of the tub when you fell. You could have broken your neck, Rogue! Why didn’t you wait for Jean?” he demanded angrily.

He was still a little shaky from the sight of her out cold on the floor and the fact that he was this scared was really pissing him off. The Wolverine was fearless, right? Sure he was. But then why had the thought of something bad—something permanent—happening to Rogue just about brought him to his knees? So much for fearless.

“You don’t have to yell. And how did you even know I was supposed to wait for Jean? Did she tell you to check up on me or something?”

Oops. Now you’ve done it.

“Um, no, I just…um,” he stammered, unable to meet her gaze.

She realized there was only one explanation for that kind of hemming and hawing.

“You were listening! Dear God, Logan, what do you do, use that supersonic hearing of yours to spy on me all day long?”

“NO!”

Well, it wasn’t all day long. “No, just now and then since you’ve been sick.”

She just glared at him, but nearly cracked up when she saw him looking so—sheepish. On the one hand, it really was funny, but on the other, something about the Wolverine looking so vulnerable left her feeling like the universe had suddenly taken a sharp left turn. Certain facts were supposed to be irrefutable. The sun rises in the east; blue and red make purple; and the Wolverine is never vulnerable.

“Don’t give me that look. I was concerned about you, and since Jean quarantined you, I couldn’t come and see you for myself, so I ‘eavesdropped’ a little. So, yes, I happened to be paying attention this morning when Jean said you should wait for her. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t ask me to check up on you, considering how easily you caved in when she said you had to wait. I thought she knew you better than that. I certainly do.”

Rogue had to admit that if she had really been hurt, she would have been very glad for Logan to have found her sooner rather than later, and she told him as much.

“So thanks for coming to my rescue. What with me being ...well, naked…it was very brave of you to throw all caution to the wind and carry me out of there.” She flashed him a brilliant smile which quickly faded when he avoided her eyes again.

“Logan? Did I hurt you?”

“No. Not at all,” he said pointedly. This time his green eyes bored into her brown ones like emerald lasers.

“You mean, because it was just a few seconds, just a few steps from the bathroom to here?” she asked shakily. He couldn’t mean---

“No, Rogue, I mean not at all.”

“Not…at all?” she echoed weakly, barely able to speak as her mind locked on one thought that roared through her head like a freight train.

HE CAN TOUCH ME!

She sat bolt upright in the bed, the covers falling away from her bare breasts.

Logan was transfixed by the sight, unable to move or speak, until her hand shot out and clamped around his wrist.

“What are you doing?” he ground out as he pulled away from her. Breaking her grip was so much easier than tearing his eyes away from her body, but he finally managed both. He turned his back on her and stalked across the room to the window, all the while trying to convince himself that this wasn’t the happiest moment of his life.

“Logan, why are you so angry?” she asked innocently.

And that was exactly the problem—her innocence.

For nearly two years, since the day he’d found her in that hellhole up north, she had hovered around his heart like a hummingbird—dainty, fragile, untouchable in more ways than one. And he liked it that way. She was always there, always with him, giving him a reason to hope that he could be more than the Wolverine. With her, all that strength didn’t have to be lethal; it could be protective, even comforting.

Then Liberty Island happened and she proved she was anything but fragile. Now, God help him, he’d seen that she was no kind of dainty either; she was a woman full-grown if he’d ever seen one and he’d seen plenty. But none like her. Sweet Jesus, none like her.

Now he understood for the first time that what he really wanted wasn’t just the idea of Rogue—the possibility of her—it was Rogue herself.

As long as her skin was deadly, he could fool himself into believing otherwise. As long as every inch of that luxurious alabaster body was draped in fabric, he could still think of her as just a kid with a crush. Now that she had been stripped of those barriers, quite literally, what was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to explain that what he was projecting as anger was in reality pure, unadulterated panic, sheer terror that the one protection she had left--her innocence--would never be enough to keep the Wolverine at bay?

Roughly tossing back the covers, Rogue bounded out of bed and came after him, heedless of her nudity.

Without turning around, Logan let loose, stopping her in her tracks. “For God’s sake, Rogue, put some clothes on!”

“Is that what it’s going to take for you to talk to me?”

“Yes!”

Still looking out the window, Logan saw Ororo coming up the stone pathway from the fountain toward the front door. Before it even occurred to him to duck out of sight, she looked up and saw him at the window. Her eyes widened first, in shock, and then narrowed in blazing anger.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to be in Rogue’s room, because she was supposed to be sick, but Storm wasn’t usually quite so judgmental. Then he heard Rogue’s breath catch.

Oh, shit.

Logan closed his eyes, dropped his shoulders, sighed.

“Did she see you?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“And you’re still naked?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you better do something about that in the next ten seconds, ‘cause that’s how long you’ve got ‘til she—“

Bang. Bang. The old door rattled on its hinges from the force of Storm’s blows.

“—gets here,” Logan finished, adding under his breath, “Must have flown up the fucking stairs.”

Rogue scurried to the closet, grabbed a long-sleeved sweatshirt and sweatpants and pulled them on.

“Rogue, I hope you’re decent, because I’m coming in right now!” the weather witch announced as she thrust the door open and marched into the room. Some of the stress left her face as she glanced at Rogue and saw that she was no longer in the buff. Then she turned on Logan.

“You didn’t ask if I was decent,” he noted, trying to deflect the blow he knew was coming.

“That, Wolverine, would be a waste of breath,” she shot back.

Tell me something I don’t know, why don’t you?

“Storm, stop it! This isn’t Logan’s fault. Let me explain, will you?” Rogue interjected.

“No. I want Logan to explain what he was doing in your bedroom, alone, with the door closed, while you were stark naked!”

“I don’t suppose you happened to notice that I am fully dressed, did you? Or that I was eight feet away from Lady Godiva—with my back to her—when you saw me in the window?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call an undershirt and jeans ‘fully dressed’. You’re barefooted, too, but I’m more concerned about what she wasn’t wearing than what you are.”

Rogue had had all she could take. “Hello? I’m standing right here! Stop talking about me like I’m not even in the room. And Storm, just shut up for a minute and let me talk!”

Ororo’s steely gaze came to rest on Rogue’s flushed face. “OK. Talk.”

“I was in the shower. I got dizzy and fainted. Logan heard me fall. He found me out cold on the bathroom floor and carried me in here. I woke up. He turned around so I could get dressed. I had just gotten off the bed when you looked up and saw us both. Logan’s right; he had his back to me the whole time.”

As she spoke, she kept her attention focused on Ororo. But when she mentioned Logan’s name, she glanced at him, riveting her gaze to his for one split second and giving her head an almost imperceptible shake.

He got the message as clearly as if she’d shouted it at him: Don’t tell her.

His brow wrinkled in disagreement. She did that tiny head shake again and he gave her an equally sneaky nod. The whole exchange took place in the time it took Ororo to blink.

“You fainted? Are you all right?” Ororo moved toward Rogue, put an arm around her shoulders.

“Now that you mention it, I am feeling a little woozy again. I think maybe I should just go back to bed,” Rogue fibbed, stepping out of Ororo’s embrace and sitting on the bed.

“That’s probably a good idea. I’ll send Jean up right away. Logan, come with me. Now.” Her tone left no room for contradiction, so he fell in behind her as she left.

Before he closed the door behind him, he turned to look at Rogue. She was looking right at him and the joy in her eyes was unmistakable. It nearly killed him. He must have flinched somehow, and she must have noticed, because the glow he’d seen in her face just then disappeared, like someone blowing out a candle. Shutting the door at last, he wondered how long she was going to hate him for what he was about to do.

---End Chapter 2.

Ororo waited for Logan at the bottom of the stairs. And waited, and waited. Gray clouds gathered over the mansion and thunder rolled in the distance, an atmospheric manifestation of the roiling emotions the weather witch could barely contain.

Finally, he appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in his leather jacket, a black t-shirt, jeans and boots. He had the keys to Scott’s motorcycle in his hand.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed through gritted teeth as he approached.

Clearly, he was in no shape to handle a lecture from her, not now, not about Rogue. He came at her with both barrels blazing.

“Oh, you know, you’re right. I must have been out of my head to actually want to help her. Next time she keels over I’ll just leave her there on the tile while you go for a stroll in the goddamn garden!”

His voice actually cracked. She was sure of it. Cracked, like he was choked up and trying to yell at the same time. Her intuition went on high alert.

“Logan, did something happen that Rogue didn’t tell me?”

He didn’t answer her right away. He just stood there looking at her. No, more like through her, like he was in deep thought. Then his eyes focused on her again.

“No, nothing happened.”

If that was the whole truth, she’d smoke one of his disgusting cigars every day for a week. He was hiding something; they both were. She knew that much. What she didn’t know yet was whether it was something of any real significance or if it was simply their embarrassment at being caught in an awkward situation.

-----

Rogue leaned her head against the door, her palms flat, pressing on the polished wood. She closed her eyes and imagined his arms around her, his heart beating beneath her ear. She curled her fingers, uncurled them, pretending to play with the soft, dark hair on his rock hard chest. Would it only ever be pretend?

She was trying hard not to cry, not yet. First, she had to be heard and if she cried she wouldn’t be able to speak.

“Please, don’t tell her, Logan,” she pleaded, whispering like a lover issuing tender ‘touch me here’ commands to her beloved. “Please. Let it be our secret, my secret, just for a little while. Please. Run if you have to. I understand. Just please don’t tell her. Don’t tell any of them. Please, Logan. For me. For me.”

She went on begging, repeating herself again and again, until she couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. She slid down the door, collapsed on the rug and sobbed.

-----

Logan wrestled with his conscience while he dressed in his traveling clothes, but by the time he was on his way down the stairs he’d made up his mind to tell Storm the truth, regardless of the nodding he’d done up in Rogue’s room.

He’d never lied to Rogue, and he didn’t want to start now, but if something was happening to her, something she wasn’t controlling herself, then it was best to let the geeks in on it. What if losing her power meant that something was really wrong with her, that she was sicker than anyone realized? What if by keeping her secret he was doing more harm than good? The geeks would never forgive him. Hell, he’d never forgive himself.

But then, while he was yelling at Ororo, Rogue’s voice cut through the turmoil in his head like a lighthouse beacon through a heavy fog. The desperation in her words nearly took his breath away.

“Please, don’t tell her, Logan…Run if you have to. I understand…Don’t tell any of them…Please…For me, for me.”

And just like that, all his resolve vaporized and he knew he couldn’t do it. He told himself it was because, in the end, it wasn’t his secret to tell; it was hers. But the truth was simpler than that. He couldn’t deny her anything, least of all something she wanted—needed—this much.

So he lied for her.

“No, nothing happened.”

But he could tell Storm didn’t believe him anyway.

“Logan, did you touch her?”

That was it; the last thread of his tolerance unraveled.

Snikt.

The claws unsheathed before he could pull them back, almost as if they had minds of their own.

“What did you say?” The menacing chill in his voice surprised even him.

Ororo took two steps back, her dark eyes as wide as a midnight sky.

He moved toward her, but managed to keep the claws pointed at the floor instead of her throat. It wasn’t easy.

“You think I’d do that? Take advantage of her while she was passed out. You think I’d hurt her that way?”

Hell, no, but you’d take her every day of the week if she were willing, wouldn’t you, Bub? And twice on Sundays. Oh, fuck. Why couldn’t his conscience be on his side for once?

Ororo finally found the breath to answer him. “Of course not! I know you’d never hurt Rogue, ever. I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Logan. I was actually thinking that you might have been hurt, by her skin, when you carried her.”

“Oh.”

Snikt.

“I’m fine, Storm. This is me you’re talking to, remember? I’m sorry I got so worked up, but—“

“It’s OK, Logan. I’m sure it was upsetting to find her like that. I don’t blame you. I can see how you might have misunderstood my question, especially since I misread the situation before I had all the facts.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I do have all the facts, don’t I, Logan?”

This time he smiled and lied right to her face, calmly and without a hint of regret.

“Yeah, you know all there is to know.”

She let go of his arm. He turned and headed for the garage.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I need fresh air and beer in large quantities,” he called over his shoulder. “When I’ve had enough of both, I’ll be back.”

And that was when he learned that lying got easier with every one he told.

-----

The sound of a motorcycle roaring down the driveway stirred Rogue from her sleep.

She’d waited for several agonizing minutes there on the floor listening for Ororo’s footsteps on the stairs, waiting for the onslaught of questions and examinations to begin. But when the dreaded knock on her door didn’t come, she had crawled into bed, her heart overflowing with gratitude—and love.

He heard her. He listened. He lied.

Knowing that she was safe, for now, she had dozed off.

As she woke, she listened to him leaving and cursed herself for what she’d said.

Run if you have to. I understand.

She did understand, much more than he realized, but that didn’t make his leaving any easier to bear. She hadn’t missed the want in his eyes before he turned his back on her. Nor had she misunderstood his pained expression when she’d looked at him like a starry-eyed teenager staring at her first crush. She had given herself away with that look, told him every impossible dream she’d ever had about the two of them becoming so much more than friends.

And with his leaving he had told her that with or without her mutation, those dreams would always be impossible.

It wasn’t fair, dammit! She couldn’t help being young any more than he could help being the Wolverine. He was so sure she couldn’t handle who he really was. Ha! Had he forgotten Liberty Island? She had the Wolverine traipsing around in her head 24/7—and Magento, too!—for chrissake! And it hadn’t sent her screaming into the night. At least, not yet. Of course, there was the occasional nightmare that caused that reaction. Still, even the professor had said she was handling everything ‘remarkably well’.

Well, if Logan was gone for good, then fine. He’d just never see that she could handle this too. It was his loss. He’d never know that she was more than capable of handling the Wolverine in her bed every bit as well as she handled him in her head.

Maybe his leaving was a good thing after all. If she had needed a reason to take charge of her own life, her own destiny, now she had one. He wasn’t here to rescue her anymore; she’d have to do that herself, starting now, with keeping her secret for as long as she could.

She didn’t want to become the class experiment. She couldn’t stand the idea of being poked and prodded and studied. She honestly didn’t care why her power had seemingly disappeared. All that mattered to her was that she was no longer ‘Rogue, the untouchable’. Oh, she’d continue to go by that name, and live by its rules, until she chose to do otherwise, but in her heart she would know that once again she was ‘just Marie’ and that was just fine with her. It was all she really wanted.

And then that same heart betrayed her, exposed her for the liar she was, with one simple truth:

So, I guess this means you’re throwing away the dog tags, right? Yeah, uh-huh, didn’t think so.

-- End Chapter 3.

“Hey, Jack, you still got that room upstairs?” Logan asked the bartender, plucking the cigar from his lips.

He watched as the burly man poured another pitcher of beer and set it down in front of him. He’d switched from bottles to pitchers when he realized that he couldn’t drink enough bottles fast enough to get drunk. Sometimes having regenerative powers was a real bitch.

“Yeah, why? The little woman throw you out?”

No, actually, she invited me in. So, naturally, I ran out on her as fast as that damn motorcycle would go.

“Something like that,” Logan hedged. Apparently, not everybody spilled their guts to the bartender. “Can I use the room for a while or not?”

“Sure. You wanna do the same arrangement as before for the rent?” Jack’s close-set blue eyes glowed with the memory of the small fortune he made the last time the mysterious Logan had crossed his path.

“I thought the cops had shut down all of the cage fighting around here.” Logan took a long drink from the pitcher and welcomed the buzz he hoped—please, God, just this once—would lead to an alcoholic oblivion deep enough to make him forget the sight of Rogue, bare breasted, her long, wet hair covering her smooth shoulders, water drops sliding along the curve of …Oh, fuck!

He finished the pitcher in several long gulps, handed it back to a wide-eyed Jack and nodded toward the tap. Jack refilled the pitcher, put it back in Logan’s waiting hand, and watched in disbelief as the guzzling continued.

“Uh…only the operations they could find. They confiscated my cage, but I’ve got a new set up a couple miles past the city limits, way off the beaten path. Local cops got no jurisdiction and the staties and the feds have bigger fish to fry, so they’re not interested.”

“I’m not sure how long—belch--I’ll be staying,” Logan replied. He knew he wasn’t going back to the mansion anytime soon, but he didn’t really want to be the star attraction in Jack’s fight club either. This was just the first stop on what could turn out to be a long ride.

“How about I just pay you in cash for a week up front?” he continued as he peeled five twenties off a wad of folded bills and laid them on the bar. His intention was to stay drunk for as much of the week as he could; he figured it would take all his remaining cash to make that happen.

Jack flexed his fingers back and forth twice, indicating, Keep peeling.

Logan’s eyes bulged. “Holy hell, Jack, it’s the size of a goddamn prison cell and the bed is an old Army cot! I have to come down here to use the bathroom, for crying out loud!”

“Well, you could always throw yourself on her mercy and beg her to take you back. Or you could save your pride—and your cash—by earning your keep. What’ll it be?”

Her mercy? Hell, throwing himself on her was what he was trying to avoid.

“How many nights will this buy me?” Logan asked, nodding toward the cash on the bar.

Jack started to say “One,” but changed his mind when he recalled what most of his customer’s opponents looked like when he was done with them. He figured he shouldn’t push his luck.

“Two. I’ll even throw in one meal a day, whatever Smitty’s special is.”

Logan shoved the money across the bar.

“I’ll take the two nights, but Smitty can keep his specials. I’m allergic to road kill.”
---------------

“Rogue? Is that you?” Xavier called out through the open door of his office.

Silence.

“I know you’re there, my dear. It’s quite pointless to hide from me,” he scolded softly, rolling toward the hallway where Rogue stood, stock still, just to the left of his doorway.

“Then why did you ask if it was me if you already knew?” Rogue shot back. She was in no mood to cut anybody any slack, even Fearless Leader. She hadn’t been sleeping or eating well since things changed. At the moment she was cranky and her stomach was growling.

“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, hoping you were willing to abide by the conventions of polite society.” He smiled knowingly, one eyebrow went up. “For a change.”

Damn, why did the old guy have to be so cussed charming? She softened toward him, in spite of herself.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I wasn’t hiding from you in particular. I’m just bad company right now.”

“Nonsense. I was just about to have some tea. Would you care to join me?”

The last thing on earth she wanted right now was a cup of tea—a shot of Jack Daniels, now that was an idea—but she knew she was being tested, so she said, “Of course. That would be lovely.”

“Marvelous. See? That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” he asked as he rolled back toward the small table where the silver tea service waited, gleaming in the morning sunshine that streamed through the tall windows of his office. The wheels of his chair hummed softly as they rotated over the thick carpet. The sound, small as it was, focused her attention on Xavier’s state-of-the-art personal chariot. For the first time, she saw it as something else—a prison.

“Do you ever wish you could get out of that thing and walk again? Do you ever feel trapped?” she asked with genuine interest as Xavier poured her a cup of tea and then added milk to the one he’d poured for himself earlier.

Xavier grew quiet. The hand stirring his tea stilled.

“You know, I don’t believe anyone has ever asked me that before,” he answered candidly, picking up a plate of pastries from the tray. “Scone?”

“So you’ve never thought about it?” she nudged, sitting in the chair across from him and taking one of the triangular delights. She stifled her urge to shove the entire thing into her mouth. Instead, she only nibbled a small bite and laid the rest on her saucer.

From anyone else, Xavier might have thought such a personal question rather rude, but he found Rogue's guileless probing both refreshing and revealing.

“I’ve never really had to. Thanks to this chair and our various X-vehicles—the jet in particular—and, of course, Cerebro, there is nowhere in the world I cannot go. So, then, I suppose the answer to your question is no, I don’t feel trapped.”

“Oh, right, I hadn’t thought about Cerebro.” She wanted to ask him if he pictured himself in the wheelchair when he used Cerebro, or if he saw himself walking or flying or shimmering in and out of places, like the crew of the Enterprise on “Star Trek.”

But Xavier spoke before she could form the question on her lips.

“Now, can I ask you a question?”

In the five days since her mutation had gone missing, Rogue had been practicing the technique the professor had taught her for shutting down the parts of her mind inhabited by Logan, Magneto and anyone else she’d ever touched with her bare skin. She’d gotten pretty good at it and had even added her own twist, constructing a mental barrier to hide her secret from prying minds. She’d had a ten-minute conversation with Jean yesterday at breakfast and the telepath hadn’t gotten so much as a glimmer from her.

However, the professor’s power was a far cry from Jean’s. She sensed that her new wall was about to be truly tested.

“Of course,” she replied. Shields up, Mr. Sulu.

“Why do you think you are bad company these days?”

These days? Not just right now, today?

She shrugged her shoulders and picked up her tea cup with both gloved hands, stalling while she analyzed his choice of words. Was he trying to tell her that he knew she was different, had been different for days? Or was it simply an expression with no particular significance?

Breathe, girlfriend, just breathe. Shit!

Unable to think of a neutral answer that wouldn’t betray her one way or the other, she silently sipped her tea and looked out the window behind Xavier’s massive desk. She could see the garage from where she sat. One door was open and the red fender of Scott’s car peeked out at the morning sunshine. She couldn’t help remembering the heartbreaking sound of Scott’s motorcycle speeding down the driveway.

Oh, Logan.

At the mere thought of him, the walls came tumbling down.

“We all miss him, my dear.”

Rogue’s head swiveled sharply, returning her gaze to the man in the wheelchair.

“Pardon?” she muttered, shocked that she had any composure at all, let alone enough to exhibit even that small degree of social grace. Was that really all he read in her head—that she was missing Logan?

“The wistful look in your eyes when you saw the garage gave you away. Please don’t fret, Rogue. He’ll come back. He always does.”

Xavier’s eyes glittered with an alertness that belied his comforting tone. He watched her intently as he continued.

“Is his leaving the reason you are out of sorts? Or is there something else?”

Shields up, dammit! UP! UP!

“Marie…?”

Xavier’s voice whispered inside her mind, calling to her as if she were someone he knew long ago, someone he wasn’t entirely sure he recognized. His expression never wavered, but she could have sworn she saw something resembling pity in his eyes.

For an instant, she considered vehemently insisting that he was wrong, that she was in no way different—or, rather, less—than what he had always known her to be, but what was the use? She was exhausted, not just from the mental strain of walling off her secret, but also from all the sleep she had lost crying over Logan and the dreams he killed when he rode away.

A memory floated back to her. She was on a train, alone at first, and scared, and then Logan sat next to her and she was no longer afraid—or alone.

“There’s not many people who’ll understand what you’re going through, but I think this guy, Xavier, is one of them. He seems to genuinely want to help you. And that’s a rare thing…for people like us.”

She looked up into the professor’s knowing eyes. Whatever she had thought was pity had been replaced by a deep compassion.

“He was right, you know. I do want to help you. I always have. Will you let me help you, Marie?”

She managed to set the tea cup down on the tray without spilling it, a small miracle considering that she could barely see through the tears flooding her eyes. She tried to force words past the lump in her throat, but couldn’t, so she simply nodded. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed uncontrollably.
---------------

Later that same night, in a broken down barn a hundred miles from Xavier’s office, Logan had just finished off his sixth opponent when Jack sidled up to the outside of the cage and announced in a hushed voice, “I’ve got two Marines lined up next, but they want to fight you as a team. You okay with that?”

“As long as I get a double share of the take on this one, bring ‘em on,” he answered, twisting his chin up and to the left until he felt the metal-coated bones in his neck pop.

“No problem. Their entire unit must be in here and they’ve all got money falling out of their pockets. I didn’t know the military paid that well. You need a bathroom break before I bring ‘em over?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Logan opened the gate and jumped off the platform onto the concrete floor of the huge barn where Jack and Smitty had built their new cage fighting enterprise. The two redneck moguls had sunk all their money into the cage, the platform and a whole television studio’s worth of state-of-the-art video production equipment, which left exactly nothing for improvements to the structure itself. The bathroom, Logan had discovered, was a hundred-year-old outhouse. He usually opted for a thirsty-looking tree, which is how he ended up standing in the woods with his fly open contemplating the sorry state of his life.

Getting drunk had proved to be expensive and pointless, so he’d spent most of the two ‘cash rent’ days riding Scott’s motorcycle through the countryside, wondering if Rogue had been able to keep her secret in a school run by a guy who could read minds. Not likely, which meant that the geeks probably already had her under a microscope, something he knew she would hate with a passion. And he’d left her there, alone, just her and the geeks.

He relieved himself at the base of a large tree outside the reach of the spotlight on the barn’s back corner. Unbidden, Rogue’s plaintive cry echoed in his head.

Don’t tell any of them. Don’t tell them. Them.

As much as the professor and the teacher’s pets liked to think Rogue belonged to their happy little mutant family, Logan knew she didn’t, not really. Of course, neither did the Wolverine, although Professor X and his pals had never been the least bit deluded about that.

No, he and Rogue had both been brought to the school out of necessity, not any desire on either of their parts to join the fight for truth, justice and the American way.

Still, he had been sincere that day on the train when he told Rogue that Xavier genuinely wanted to help her, that she should give the geeks one more shot.

You also promised her you’d take care of her. Remember that, Bub? Fine job you’re doing. Really.

When he wasn’t out riding, he was lying on that miserable old cot, listening to all manner of insect and rodent vermin—his roommates—cavort in true vermin fashion in every corner and behind every wall. It was better than listening to that nasty little voice in his head that kept reminding him what an asshole he was for running like he did, even if she had said she’d understand.

As if he needed reminding.

This was why he was a lone wolf, no ties, no commitments, no promises, nobody depending on him, nobody to disappoint when he couldn’t live up to their expectations. You can’t fail if you’re not expected to even try, right?

And then a beautiful dark-haired girl had looked up at him with tears in those deep, brown eyes and he fell all over himself making promises he had no idea how to keep. All he knew was that she made him want to try when no one else ever had.

How could that ever be enough for her? How could he let her settle for that?

She deserved better than him. She deserved somebody steady, somebody who knew how to keep promises because they had a long and storied history of doing just that. Somebody like Iceman, or even Cyke-o-geek; they didn’t come a whole lot steadier than good ol’ Scott. Hadn’t Jean christened him ‘the good guy’?

Guess you know what that makes you, huh?

And that just opened up a whole other can of worms. Shit.

Zipping his jeans, he went for a short, uncharacteristic wallow in self-pity, beating himself up for failing to keep even a promise to himself, specifically the one he made when he swore he was only staying at Jack’s for two days and he was not—no fucking way—getting in that goddamn cage of his.

He wasn’t the same mutant who fought his way through a meaningless existence day to day, cage to cage, like he had before he met Rogue that fateful night in Laughlin City. Like it or not, he had changed during his time at the school. He was an X-man, and while he’d rather cut off his own head than admit it to Scooter, wearing that stupid leather suit and being part of something worthwhile had come to mean something to him. Not nearly as much as Rogue meant to him, but something all the same. So taking Jack up on his offer seemed like more of a step backward than he was willing to make.

He actually got as far as bidding Jack and Smitty farewell on the morning of the third day, climbed on the bike and roared up the road. But when he reached the turn off that would have taken him to the interstate, the pathway to anywhere but where she was, he found himself easing off the throttle and stopping to stare helplessly at the road sign that pointed the way back to Westchester at the top, and forward to all points north at the bottom.

In the end, he had taken the high road, turning the bike around and driving back to Jack’s place, because the thought of being any further away from her than he already was made him ache in ways he couldn’t begin to describe, let alone understand.

Still shrouded in the darkness of the woods, he looked toward the barn. Through the big, sliding doors at this end, he could see about a hundred people milling around, placing bets, ordering drinks, operating the film equipment. In the center of it all was the cage, his second home.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out how he ended up back in that monstrosity. He’d had a weak moment and Jack seized on it like a lion taking down a wounded antelope. Logan had to admit to a certain grudging respect for the guy; if their roles were reversed, the Wolverine wouldn’t have hesitated to pounce on a golden opportunity either.

For the first few fights, he had still been numb, he recalled, shell shocked to discover that he could no more leave Rogue, really leave her, than he could fly to the fucking moon. She was welded to his soul, as much a part of him as his adamantium claws.

When had that happened? He’d walked away before, gone a lot farther and been away a lot longer than this little jaunt to Bumfuck Nowhere, without it feeling like he’d used his guts for a drive belt. Oh, he had missed her on those other journeys, but he’d never let himself acknowledge the fact while he was gone. It usually hit him like a baseball bat the minute he walked back into the mansion and saw her for the first time in however long it had been.

“Hey, kid, you stayin’ outta trouble these days?”

“What do you think?”

And then she would hug him. Not just a quick, arms around the shoulders hug, but a full on, God-I’m-so-glad-you-came-back embrace that made him feel like the world’s biggest idiot and the luckiest man alive all at the same time. An idiot for leaving in the first place; lucky because he knew there was no one else on earth she hugged like that.

Who the hell was he kidding? He knew exactly when and why everything had changed. A vision of Rogue’s naked form floated up from the deepest part of his mind, where he kept that precious image hidden most of the time. On the rare occasions when he slept, he surrendered all control and she danced in his dreams –vivid, erotic fantasies from which he awoke so hard he hurt.

No matter how many layers of clothing she wore to cover herself, he would never look at her again without seeing her perfect body--her creamy, untouched breasts, her long, flawless legs, her exquisite ass—Damn! His heart was racing and his dick was growing just thinking about her. He was a hundred miles away from her, for Christ’s sake! How could he ever be in the same room with her again, let alone touch her, without losing his mind—or worse, his control?

But it wasn’t just her nudity that fueled his lust; it was that look in her eyes as he was leaving her room, the one that stared him down in every one of his dreams, the one that said she was his for the taking.

And that was exactly why he had to stay as far away from her as he could get. She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her, and with her mutation being on the fritz, there was nothing to stop either of them from acting on their urges. He couldn’t let that happen, because once it did, she’d be doomed. She’d give him her heart right along with her virginity only to have him cut it to ribbons the first time he took off and left her. And he would leave eventually; he always did.

He had never wanted any woman as much as he wanted her. Well, maybe Jean, once, a long time ago. But he wasn’t so blinded by lust that he couldn’t see Rogue wasting her life, wasting her love on him. Maybe if he stayed gone long enough she would finally get tired of waiting and share her secret with the Drake kid, or some other boy who had more to offer her than a Wolverine ever could. Then, she would belong to him—

No! She’s mine!

Rage seared through his veins with such force it knocked the wind out of him. His chest hurt and his knees buckled. He had to brace himself against the tree to keep from falling into the puddle he’d just pissed on the ground.

He wanted to howl with the pain that came with imagining her in another man’s arms, another man’s bed, but instead he shoved it down deep inside, where the Wolverine would feed on it and gain strength for the coming fights.

Striding back through the crowd toward his chain-linked domain, Logan had a sudden flash, a vision of himself inside the thing. Only this time, it wasn’t a fight cage; it was a metal wheel and he was the rat running for his life.

Now that just won’t fucking do.

The Wolverine was no damn rat in anyone’s trap! But where was he going to go? Hitting the highway had proven impossible and he sure as shit couldn’t go back to the mansion. She’d greet him at the door with that mischievous smile and heart-melting hug. Then he’d haul her up to his room and in the time it took to tear her clothes off, throw her on the bed and quench this unending thirst, he’d simultaneously ruin her life and wear out his welcome in Xavier’s world forever.

He couldn’t have her and he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else touching her.

He couldn’t go back and he couldn’t get away.

The teeth-grinding frustration generated by those irrefutable truths propelled him up into the cage where the two Marines were waiting. With their hard bodies and their superior military training, they appeared smugly confident that they would succeed where lesser men had failed.

He heard one of them whisper to the other one, “We took everything they threw at us on Paris Island and came back for more. I don’t care how tough Jack says he is; this guy hasn’t got a prayer.”

Logan just smiled as Jack slammed the gate shut behind him.

You think Paris Island was tough? Compared to me, boys, Paris Island is gonna look like fucking Disneyland.

“You mean this happened the day she passed out in the shower? And we’re just finding out about it now?” Jean was all but spitting with fury.

Storm was only slightly less upset than Jean. “I knew they were hiding something, but I never imagined—“

“The fact that she kept this from us isn’t important now,” Xavier maintained. “We must focus our efforts on learning how it happened. For that matter, we need to know what happened. Rogue is convinced that her skin is no longer deadly to anyone, but I’m not so sure. All we really know is that Logan was unaffected by her skin during one incident last week.”

“And he took off and just left her to deal with this all by herself? That seems low even for him,” Scott put in.

“He said he’d be back. His clothes are still in his room. I doubt he took much of anything with him,” Storm offered.

“He took my bike—again,” Scott bit off. If he could have devised an explosive lock for the bike that would vaporize Logan without destroying the bike he’d have done it long ago. Sadly, he hadn’t had time to create one that could discriminate between mutant and motorcycle.

Jean went to her computer and began making a list of medical tests she intended to order for Rogue.

“We’ll need to begin testing her right away—blood work, brain scans, MRI—“ Jean rattled off.

“Yes, yes, those are all necessary, of course,” Xavier broke in. “But they are also the very reason she kept this a secret. We cannot subject her to a battery of invasive tests without her consent. And she has no intention of giving it. Not now, anyway.”

“Well, that’s just too damn bad!” Jean retorted.

The entire group looked at her like she’d just beheaded a puppy.

“Let’s not forget that she had an unidentified flu virus thriving in her body for the better part of a week. What if that’s what caused this? Flu viruses have been known to mutate, too, you know. What if it’s contagious?” She let the implications of that possibility sink in before she continued. Understanding dawned almost simultaneously for all three of her companions.

Scott said what they were all thinking, “Oh, shit.”

“The least we should do is quarantine her here in the Med Lab,” the doctor insisted.

“Is that really necessary? I mean, she’s been in class every day since Monday. Today’s Saturday. If others had been infected, surely we’d have seen symptoms by now,” Storm reasoned.

“Are any of the children ill?” Xavier asked her.

“No, none.”

“Jean, we must convince her to be a willing participant in this, especially if she’s wrong about her mutation being completely…off. She could be dangerous if we try to quarantine her or force her to be tested,” the professor affirmed.

“Well, then how do we convince her to cooperate?” Jean posed.

“We don’t,” Xavier said. “I think it’s time to locate the Wolverine.”
---------------
Three hours later, Scott parked the red convertible in the gravel lot in front of a dingy gray two-story clapboard building with a rusted metal roof. Two rickety looking steps led up to a small wooden porch where the front door stood open. Scott wasn’t sure if that was to let fresh air in or the stench out. Probably both.

“Jean, how about if you just wait here while I see if this is the place the professor was talking about? This can’t be the only scuzzy-looking watering hole on this road,” he said.

“He’s here, Scott.”

Cyclops sighed audibly, hating the hint of excitement he caught in her voice. He might be blind without his visor, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that Jean loved him. She would never leave him for Logan, but that didn’t mean that the bastard didn’t still stir her blood now and then.

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into letting me go in alone, could I?”

“No, you couldn’t,” the red-head said as she exited the car while Scott held the door for her. She stepped closer, pressing her body the length of his lean frame, her intense gaze darting from his covered eyes to his beckoning mouth. After slamming the car door shut, he wrapped his arms around her waist. She twined hers around his neck. Their lips touched, softly at first, and then with more heat as Scott’s hands traveled up and down her ribcage and finally settled on the high curve of her ass. They tightened their hold on one another simultaneously, bringing their bodies into greater intimate contact.

Oh, how he wished they’d brought the Hummer, with its roomy, collapsible back seat, instead of a two-seater convertible.

“Yes, that would have been nice,” Jean said, reading his thoughts, “but, like it or not, we are here to collect Logan—‘by any means necessary’, to quote the professor. Whatever I say in here, you just back me up, OK?”

“I’ve always got your back, sweetheart. But whatever you have in mind, I doubt it will be necessary. Logan will do anything to help Rogue, even put up with me.”

He gave her another quick kiss and then they walked, hand in hand, up the steps and through the open door.
---------------
He opens the door to his room at the mansion, tosses his leather jacket on the bed and pulls off his black t-shirt intending to head for the shower.

“Hi, sugar,” a familiar voice calls from the semi-darkness of the opposite corner of the room as he flings the door shut.

She’s sitting in the big leather chair in the corner, one knee draped over the thickly padded arm of the chair, her bare foot dangling toward the floor. She’s wearing one of his white undershirts and the skimpiest pair of white lacy panties he’s ever seen. She must have just come from the shower, because her hair is wet and the shirt clings to her damp breasts, revealing her taut nipples.

The sight of her in her tantalizing outfit takes his breath away. He nearly falls to his knees on the spot, but manages to stay on his feet long enough to stumble across the room like a marooned sailor approaching the long-awaited rescue boat.

Dropping to his knees at last in front of the chair, he whispers her name, soft as a prayer on his lips.

“Rogue.”

He watches her eyes glitter in the half-light. The scent of her arousal surrounds him, so palpable it takes on a life and limbs of its own, seeming to reach into his pants to stroke his cock. He closes his eyes and revels in the sensation.

When he opens his eyes he sees that it isn’t some phantom hand stroking him, it’s hers. His fly is undone and she’s freed him completely, her long, slender fingers wrapping firmly around his considerable girth.

“Close your eyes again, darlin’. I’m in control this time. I’ll take care of you, I promise,” she whispers as her hand moves over his length with a touch that is as much a squeeze as it is a pull. From base to tip, again and again, she smooths her fingertips along the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock. His hips buck involuntarily as his body strives to complete the act her hand is mimicking.

But he doesn’t want to come, not yet, so he tries to pull her hand away, but she only grips him tighter. The pleasure is so keen it’s almost pain.

“Keep your eyes closed. You can do whatever you want, sugar, just don’t open your eyes.” Her voice is soft, seductive. He would do anything—anything—that voice asked of him.

And then she lets go of his cock. Obviously, she needs him to stay hot and hard for some reason. He groans as his imagination runs wild.

He dives forward, blindly, trusting her to guide his mouth to her waiting breast, and she does. He latches onto one protruding nipple, sucking for all he’s worth right through the flimsy cotton stretched across her ample bosom. His hands slide beneath the shirt to caress the smooth expanse of her back. This close, he can hear her heart beating like she’s running a marathon. Her breathing is ragged and shallow. She moans as she buries her fingers in his hair and tugs it gently, directing him to the other nipple which he rolls between his tongue and his top teeth until she is squirming beneath him.

He grabs her hips with both hands, pulling her panties off as he drags her down onto the carpet. His eyes are still closed as he settles himself on top of her, stroking a hand across her stomach, using her belly button as a landmark on his journey to her dark V and the precious flesh it covers.

He hears her feet scrape back on the carpet as she raises her knees to give him access. His control is slipping, so tasting her juices will have to wait. He has to be inside her. Now.

But he can’t do this blind. He has to see her eyes when he takes her. She has to be looking into his eyes when he makes her his own.

So he opens his eyes and stares directly into the deep, brown eyes of Jean Grey.

Logan jerked awake so hard he nearly threw himself off the cot.

Holy shit! Where the fuck did she come from?

He flopped back down on the cot and tried to get his heart rate back out of the stratosphere. Even after his breathing calmed and his pulse slowed down, his hard on raged painfully as the images from the dream continued to haunt him.

He’d been with Rogue—at first. It was her hand clenching around him, her voice directing him. Wasn’t it? Yes, it was, definitely.

Then why was Jean in his dream at all? And why, if it was only a dream, was Jean’s scent wafting up the stairs?

He rolled off the cot and grabbed his jeans from the floor where he’d dropped them the night before. Grimacing as he shoved his woody into his pants and yanked up the zipper, he cursed Jack for the hundredth time for not putting a bathroom upstairs. In lieu of a cold shower, he took several deep breaths and mentally groped for something—anything—else to think about. The first non-erotic thing that popped into his head was a list of his favorite names for Scott Summers, so he silently recited them until he had calmed down enough to walk without doubling over.

One Eye, Scooter, Dickhead, Super Dork, Cyke-o-Geek…One Eye, Scooter, Dickhead, Super Dork…

It was early afternoon, judging by the angle of the light coming in the filthy window of his cell, which meant the bar would be virtually empty, even on Saturday. The joint didn’t start jumping most nights until well after dark.

Before heading downstairs, Logan sniffed the air again. Jean’s feminine scent stuck out like a sore thumb among those of Jack, Smitty and the old trucker sleeping off his binge in a corner booth. It was no dream; she was definitely here. And so, his nose told him, was One Eye.

Lovely. Just lovely.

“…I’m telling you, I don’t know anybody by the name of Logan,” he heard Jack insisting as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Listen, buddy—“ Scott started, fisting Jack’s shirt, intent on hauling him bodily across the bar.

“It’s OK, Jack,” Logan cut in as he sauntered up to the bar. “Scooter here is harmless, but if you piss the little lady off she’ll raise the roof—literally.”

His steady voice masked his racing pulse. Why had they come after him? Xavier would have had to use Cerebro to find him in this godforsaken hole in the wall. What could be so important? Surely not a mission. They had plenty of firepower without him. That left only one possibility.

Rogue’s secret was out.

“Jean, if you missed me enough to come after me, what the hell do you need him for?” Logan asked, knowing this wasn’t about Jean, but unable to resist a chance to needle Scott.

“I came to get my bike. Where is she?” Scott cut in.

Logan jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Out back. Here—“ He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Scott who caught them easily. “Why don’t you take her for a spin while Red and I chat?”

Scott shot a questioning look in Jean’s direction. She nodded. He left.

“Not that I don’t miss you, Logan, because I do,” the willowy red-head offered, her voice a wee bit too low and breathy. She let the thought hang, waited.

“But…?” Logan supplied, wondering what the hell was up with the semi-seduction. He might have been excited if he wasn’t so confused. On the heels of the dream he’d just had, the combined effect was unsettling.

“This is really about Rogue. Something has happened to her.”

In a split second, Logan’s whole world went dark. The way Jean said it turned his adamantium knees into wet noodles. His head swam in disbelief. He gripped the bar so hard for support the thick wooden slab popped and snapped like a pine log in a campfire, sending Jack cringing backward against the glass doors of a cooler filled with bottled beers.

“What--?” Logan managed.

“Well, I thought you were there, when her mutation, uh…”

Relief swamped him, immediately followed by blistering anger. He let go of the bar, which to Jack’s unending relief stayed in one piece.

“Holy Christ, Jean, I thought you meant something else happened, something worse!” he shouted at her. He was furious, partly with her for scaring him like that, but mostly with himself for letting her see how devastating her words had been to him.

Jean smiled inwardly. Her little play on words had worked perfectly. Scott was right. Logan would do anything to help Rogue.

Confident her method of persuasion wouldn’t be necessary, Jean simply stated the facts.

“We need to know what happened, Logan. She needs to know, too, but she’s reluctant to let us do the necessary tests. The professor wants you to encourage her to cooperate in the investigation.”

Logan gaped at her. Did she have any idea what she sounded like? Fuck, even the Nazis showed more compassion than she did.

Stamping down his disgust, Logan said, “Rogue is a big girl—over eighteen, last I checked. She doesn’t need me—or anyone else—to do her thinking for her.”

OK, so this wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. Jean softened her tone and tried again.

“She’s too scared to think straight, Logan. She's not just scared of the process; she’s afraid we might find out that what happened with you was a fluke, a hiccup, in her mutation, and she doesn’t want to accept that. She wants to believe she’s ‘cured’, that her skin is no longer harmful to anyone, but the professor and I doubt that’s the case. The only way she will ever know for sure is to let us do the research. Otherwise, it will be as though nothing had changed for her at all.”

“Aren’t you missing a rather obvious alternative?” Logan inquired.

“You mean she could just touch someone and see what happens? Yes, she could, and in fact that’s a necessary step in the testing, but it needs to be done in a controlled environment under specific conditions. Frankly, I’m a little surprised she hasn’t already tried it on her own. When I asked her why she hadn’t, she said she didn’t think it was right to use her friends as guinea pigs.”

“Good for her.”

“Of course, good for her. She’s too good a person to deliberately risk hurting someone else for her own benefit, which is why she has to let us help her. Logan, she won’t listen to any of us, not even the professor and you know how much she respects him. You’re the only one she trusts.”

And how long would that last if he talked her into doing this and it all went south? His nightmares were filled with needles and wires and mind-bending pain. He sensed that Jean and the others were nothing like the men who experimented on him, but it still gave him the willies to think of Rogue being poked and prodded and scanned for however long it would take to find the answers they were looking for. But, what if there wasn’t a medical or scientific explanation? What if it just happened, without rhyme or reason? Knowing Jean, she wouldn’t quit until she solved the puzzle. Rogue might end up living like a lab rat indefinitely. No way in hell was he going to let that happen.

“Then again, how are you going to protect her from us evil geniuses if you’re a hundred miles away?” Jean whispered conspiratorially, dovetailing on his unspoken vow.

“Knock it off, Jean,” Logan growled. The last thing he needed was her snooping around in his head. His latest dream was way too fresh, in every sense of the word.

“You can’t honestly believe we want to hurt her. For Christ’s sake, Logan, we only want to help her!”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be helped. Maybe she doesn’t care how or why this happened. Maybe she’s just fine the way she is.”

He knew better than that. He knew she had to be scared and confused, and it killed him to think of her there all alone, facing down a bunch of well-meaning geeks itching to get their knowledge-hungry hands on her. She’d obviously been able to hold them off so far, but how much longer could she do that by herself, especially if her power really had abandoned her?

His mind picked that moment to replay a scene on a train.

“So, what do you say? Give these geeks one more shot? C’mon. I’ll take care of you.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I promise.”

Hearing his heavy sigh, Jean smiled brightly. The professor’s lessons were paying off. She was getting better at projecting thoughts and images into other people’s heads.

Logan noticed her grin, saw the knowing glint in her eye.

“Oh, neat trick,” he quipped sarcastically. “I know you don’t believe it, but I actually do have a conscience. So for the last time, get the fuck out of my head!”

“OK, Logan, no more head games. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say we skip all the medical testing. Your presence is still required.”

“How so?”

“It’s the most basic principle of science. Repeat the experiment. Confirm the findings. Aren’t you the least bit curious? Don’t you want to know what will happen the next time she touches you?”

Before he could clamp shut the lid on the whole Pandora’s Box of fantasies he had about that particular moment, one of them escaped, streaked across his consciousness and lodged in his eyes in the form of a lusty spark. Which might not have given him away entirely, had it not been for the guilty look that immediately followed it.

“Good God, Logan, you can’t be serious.” Jean stared at him incredulously.

“Stop reading me, Jean!”

“Oh, Logan, that wasn’t reading; that was pure female intuition.”

“Which must be why I have no idea what you girls are talking about,” Scott chimed in, having returned from his ride.

Shooting Scott a warning glare, Jean continued. “Logan, you have to come back and help us—help Rogue--understand what’s happened to her, but you can’t seriously be thinking about…getting involved…with her. She’s just a baby!”

“No, Jean, she isn’t. She grew up while we weren’t looking,” Logan stated dryly.

It was Scott’s turn to look shocked as the gist of the conversation dawned on him.

“Logan, if you touch her, I swear—“

“Wait a minute! I thought that’s what you wanted me to do, what you were here begging me to come back and do—touch her!”

“Not like that, you son of a—“

“Stop it, both of you!” Jean barked, stepping between them and placing her hands on Scott’s chest.

After they all took a couple of deep breaths, Jean said, “Scott, honey, I’m parched. Would you please get us a pitcher and some glasses? Logan and I will be in that booth by the kitchen.”

Scott did as she asked, albeit with a black cloud over his head.

In the time it took to walk the few steps to the booth, Logan made two decisions. One, he was going back. He couldn’t leave Rogue there to go through all of this alone. He owed her so much more than simple protection, but at least he knew he could give her that. Which led him to the second decision—if the evil geniuses, as Jean so aptly referred to them, made one false move, he would grab Rogue and run as fast and as far from all the X-men as they could get.

That kind of road trip would require lots of cash. He’d made good money the past few nights in the cage, but the real big spenders were expected to show up tonight. If he could buy himself and Rogue one more day, he could go back with a king’s ransom and two tickets for an around the world cruise in his pocket.

Scott came back with the pitcher and glasses and slid into the seat beside Jean.

“Have I ever told you two what a cute couple you make? No? Good,” Logan teased as he poured beer into two of the glasses. He started to raise the pitcher to his lips but stopped when he saw two pairs of eyebrows shoot up, followed by four eyes glaring at him. Scowling, he filled the third glass and set the pitcher on the table.

“Speaking of cute couples, Wolverine…” Scott said with venomous emphasis on Logan’s alter ego.

“Oh, do go on, Scooter. You were saying?” Logan challenged.

“You can’t seriously think she wants you, and even if she does, you’re way too old—old enough to know better than to let her get all starry-eyed over the likes of you.”

“And too thick-skinned to be insulted by the likes of you. But guess what, Super Dork, this time I actually agree with you.” Logan let Scott chew on that revelation while he downed his beer and refilled his glass.

“That’s why you ran off so fast, isn’t it? You didn’t trust yourself to be around her with her mutation…missing,” Jean said softly, thinking out loud, forming each word as it came into her head. Her eyes were sad when they met his. So many things about the strange relationship between the young beauty and the ancient beast suddenly made sense.

It was going to sting his pride something awful to spill his guts in front of Scott, but it couldn’t be helped. If he was going back to the mansion, he was going to do it with all the cards on the table. Well, except maybe for an ace shaped like two cruise tickets.

“Don’t get all misty on me, Jean. Like I said, whether you like it or not, Rogue is a grown woman and she can make her own choices—about the testing and about who she…” He was suddenly at a loss for words. Dates? Sleeps with? Loves? Loves?!? “…uh, well, about her personal life,” he finally managed, somewhat relieved.

“It’s not Rogue’s choices I’m worried about,” Scott shot back.

“Bullshit. If you were treating her like an adult, trusting her to make her own decisions, you wouldn’t even be here now, so spare me the ‘big brother’ act, OK? Here’s what you need to know. One, I will come back to the mansion as requested, but not until tomorrow morning. Don’t ask why, ‘cause it’s none of your business and I’m not telling you. Two, you will not, repeat not, do or say anything to Rogue with regard to this situation until I get there. Three, I ain’t the goddamn Gestapo. When I get there, I won’t be telling Rogue to toe the party line; I’ll be encouraging her to do what she thinks is best for her and, make no mistake, I will stand by her, whatever decision she makes.”

“You and her against the world, huh, Logan? I guess it’s been like that for a long time, hasn’t it?” Jean posed thoughtfully.

“Well, you said it yourself, she trusts me. I don’t think there’s another person on this whole planet that I can say that about, present company included. She and I have been there for each other through some pretty rough shit in the past few years. That means more to me than you’ll ever know,” he admitted. He was more than a little surprised at how easily the words had come to him.

“If that’s true, then why would you take off and leave her when she’s facing probably the biggest thing that’s happened to her since her skin turned deadly?” Scott asked with genuine interest.

“I’ll let Jean explain it to you on the way home, Scooter,” he said, shooting Jean a look that said he appreciated her understanding. Then, unable to resist getting in one last dig, he continued, “Or maybe she can tell it as a bedtime story tonight with your cookies and warm milk.”

“Fuck you, Logan,” Scott returned as he flung the motorcycle keys at him, just out of his reach.

Snikt.

Logan’s middle claw shot out and snagged the key ring in midair. He turned his hand so the claw pointed up in an unmistakable hand gesture.

“Right back at ya, Bub,” he said, smiling as the keys clanked to the bottom of the claw.

Scott smiled back in spite of himself and there was more genuine camaraderie in it than any of them would have expected.

“Well, see you tomorrow morning then,” Jean said as she and Scott made their way to the door with Logan trailing behind them and pocketing the keys.

When they got to the porch, Scott headed down the steps toward the car, but Jean suddenly spun around, grabbed Logan’s face in both her hands and kissed him like her life depended on it.

What the…?!!

Logan froze. Even his lips didn’t react for the first heartbeat or two. Then, he kissed her back, but with none of the intensity she had brought to the exchange. He placed his hands over hers and lifted them from his cheeks.

Their eyes met and Logan realized she had used the kiss to look past his head to his heart. Her sympathetic smile told him she had seen everything.

“Nice kiss. Wrong girl,” Logan said.

“Just checking. I had to be sure,” Jean returned. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do. And now so do you.”

She nodded.

“You still want me to come back?” Logan asked, leaning against a porch post.

She turned and went down the steps to the car. As she climbed into the passenger seat beside a slack-jawed Scott, she called back to him, “Logan, you may not believe this, but I know you’ll do the right thing by Rogue. It simply isn’t in you to do otherwise.”

“Yeah? You might want to tell him that before he does something he’ll regret,” he said, pointing to Scott who had closed his mouth but was now resting two fingers on the side of his visor, like he was thinking about giving Logan a taste of his ruby red glare.

Jean laid a hand on Scott’s arm and said in a soothing tone, “Easy there, honey. He’s no threat to you anymore.” Then she quickly added, “Not that he ever really was.”

Scott shot her a puzzled look as he started the car and backed away from the bar.

“Just drive, baby, I’ll tell you all about it on the way home.”

With that, they drove off in a cloud of dust, leaving Logan standing on the porch with Jean’s words echoing in his head.

I know you’ll do the right thing by Rogue.

Of course he wanted to do the right thing by her. Now, all he had to do was figure out exactly what that was. Going back was no longer the issue. The question now was what was he going to do when he got there?

But he didn’t have time to ponder it now. Now he needed to go find Jack and Smitty and renegotiate his share of the night’s receipts. He figured if he got half instead of a third, combined with the money he’d already made, it would be enough for he and Rogue to live on for quite a while. Of course, Jack and Smitty might have a few objections to changing the split, but Logan had razor sharp reasons they should see things his way—six of them, in fact.

End Chapter 5.

Knock. Knock.

She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to know.

Knock. Knock.

Something was telling her it was now or never.

“Storm? Storm, are you awake? It’s Rogue,” she whispered in the pre-dawn darkness of the hallway.

No answer.

Well, that wasn’t too surprising, since it was barely six o’clock in the morning and she had knocked with all the force of a dying gnat.

Maybe she should just go back to bed and wait for Jean to come talk to her like she said she would when she and Scott got back yesterday evening from wherever they had been for half the day. She had her suspicions, based on the touchy-feely body language and contented expressions the couple displayed, but she kept them to herself. If Scott and Jean wanted to enjoy a little ‘out of school’ lovin’ that was their business.

She moved away from Storm’s door and started to walk back to her own room, but then it hit her again, that feeling of urgency that had awakened her from the first sound sleep she’d had since Logan left. Like an invisible hand, that sense of ‘do it now, right now’ had pulled her out of bed and down the hall to the staff quarters. Initially, she’d gone to Jean and Scott’s room, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to knock on their door. What if she interrupted something?

So she came to Storm’s room instead, partly because her teacher had always been so compassionate and partly because she slept alone, when she slept at all. Everyone knew Storm was something of a night owl.

She knocked again, this time with more conviction.

KNOCK. KNOCK.

A light appeared under the door and Rogue heard what sounded like a low groan that was more pain than annoyance.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” the weather witch barked, adding sarcastically, “It’s not like I was sleeping or anything,” as she flung open the door to her bedroom.

Rogue opened her mouth to apologize again, but her view of Storm’s bed took her breath away, rendering her speechless.

There, sprawled on the cream-colored silk sheets was a battered and bloody Wolverine, shirtless and sound asleep.

A thousand questions flooded her mind. Why did he come back? Why didn’t he come to her? When did he get back? How long had he been in Storm’s bed?

Anger, jealousy and betrayal rose up to do battle with the fear and concern that gripped her heart, each one vying for dominance in an emotional cage fight that threatened to rip her insides to shreds.

For one agonizing moment, Rogue was paralyzed, unable to do anything but stand there looking from Storm to Logan and back again, her eyes filled with tears and accusations.

By the time Storm realized what had shocked the young girl so, Rogue had found her feet and was running down the corridor, back to her own room in the next hallway.

“Rogue, wait!” Storm called to her, stepping out into the hall and trying not to raise her voice loud enough to wake the entire student body. “Rogue! Come back! It’s not what you—“

Slam!

Storm winced at the ferocity of the sound that echoed through the entire dormitory wing. Clearly, Rogue had shut her out for now, if not for good.

Closing her own door softly, she turned to the unconscious figure on the bed.

“Oh, Logan, now look what you’ve done.”
---------------
Rogue flung herself on her bed and sank her teeth into her pillow to keep from screaming. She didn’t give a shit about waking people up; she was afraid that if she started howling like she wanted to she’d never stop. And then what would she be? A mental patient, that’s what, a candidate for the nut hatch.

Who’s the human siren?

Oh, that’s just Marie. Used to be one of those mutant X-Men superhero types. Way I heard it was she lost her powers and then one night she just went crazy, started screaming and hasn’t quit since.

Poor thing. Pass me some of them ear plugs, will ya?

Her sad attempt at humor was really just her mind’s way of protecting itself from the pain, raw and fierce, that threatened to ravage her soul, smashing her childish dreams of a life with Logan to smithereens. Oh, she’d tried to tell herself that she didn’t need him, that his leaving was a good thing, because without him around to protect her, she would have to grow up, take responsibility for herself. But one look at his dog tags had laid that lie to rest and resurrected all her hopes that one day soon he would come back to her, like he said he would, and that he would see her as the woman she had become instead of the kid she used to be.

But that day was never going to come. Logan didn’t want her, not now, not ever. The truth was simple and the proof was overwhelming. He’d wasted no time in leaving her that first day. She’d been touchable for barely an hour when she heard him ride off to God knew where. He’d stayed gone a week without as much as a phone call to find out if the secret he’d lied to protect was still her own. And last night he came back, but not to her---to Storm.

She should have seen that coming. If he couldn’t have Jean, then it made perfect sense that he would be attracted to the gorgeous weather witch, with her soft, cocoa-colored skin, snow white hair and warm, kind smile. But she hadn’t seen it coming, not at all. Not until it hit her right between the eyes.

Christ, could it get any more humiliating? Just yesterday she had poured her heart out to Storm, literally crying on her shoulder about how much she missed Logan, how lonely she was without him, how she would always love him.

Well, not anymore. He’d made his choice. Now she had to make hers—stay here and live a miserable, empty life watching Logan find happiness in another woman’s arms, or hit the road and live a miserable, empty life on the run—alone. It wasn’t even a contest. She was outta here.

She should probably stay long enough to find out if her power had skipped out on her permanently or if what happened with Logan was just a ‘hiccup’ like Jean thought it might be. She’d give them a day or maybe two to figure things out, but then she would go and this time there would be no reason to come back, not even if Logan came after her. Especially not then, because now she understood that taking care of her and being with her were two very different things to him and she didn’t want one without the other.

She was done bleeding for Logan…bleeding…Logan…

Something about that stuck in her mind, wouldn’t let go, kept repeating.

Logan…bleeding…Logan…bleeding…Logan is bleeding!

Holy shit!

The image slammed into her conscious mind like a race car impacting a brick wall. She had been so caught up in whose bed he was in that she hadn’t fully registered the fact that he’d been beaten to a pulp. Flashing back to those horrible moments in the hall outside Storm’s room, she forced her mind's eye to narrow so that she could see only him. He was covered in blood and bruises. And was that a footprint on his chest?

She was off the bed, across the room and out the door before she even felt her feet touching the floor.

What the hell happened? How long ago had he been hurt? She knew his healing power sometimes worked slowly, especially when there were internal organs and intricate networks of nerves and blood vessels to repair. The healing always happened from the inside out, so cuts and bruises could potentially stay open to infection for hours if allowed to wait until his body did its own work. He was unconscious last she’d seen him, obviously in no shape to tend his own wounds.

She had to help him.

More than that, she had to assure herself that he was actually healing, that whatever or whomever had done this to him hadn’t pushed his healing ability too far. Until last week, she would never have even considered that possibility, but that was before she had seen her own power seemingly vanish without warning. Absurd as it seemed, she couldn’t take the chance that his mutation might have abandoned him, too.

As she rounded the corner to head down the staff corridor, she froze in her tracks as she watched Storm enter her room carrying a small basin of water and some clean towels.

He doesn’t need you. He has her.

She leaned against the hallway wall, her heart cracking into a thousand pieces. A sob clawed at her throat, struggling for release. She closed her eyes in a vain attempt to keep the tears from falling. Briefly, she fought to remain upright, denying the urge to give in to the anguish crushing down on her, but it was too heavy. Her knees started to bend as she leaned into the hallway wall and she felt herself sliding down the smooth wooden surface, expecting to collapse into a helpless heap on the carpet.

Startled by a pair of strong hands gripping her shoulders and hauling her to her feet, she felt a surge of hope zing through her veins.

Logan!

But then she opened her eyes and hope died yet again as she found herself staring not into Logan’s caring eyes, but at her own tear-streaked reflection in Scott’s dark glasses.

“Rogue? Rogue, what happened? Rogue!”

She didn’t hear a word he said. Instead she slumped against his chest and welcomed the oblivion that claimed her troubled mind.

---------------

Logan lay on Storm’s soft, cool bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, slowly sporadically, becoming dimly aware of his surroundings for a few minutes and then slipping back into the blackness in his head that was never completely quiet. In one of the moments when he could almost see the light pushing against his eyelids, he thought he heard Storm calling to Rogue.

No, Storm! Don’t let her see me like this!

He was still healing from the beating he’d taken in the cage. He’d wasted no time in leaving Jack’s establishment after his last and bloodiest brawl. He probably should have waited until more of his internal injuries were healed, but as soon as he was able to handle the motorcycle, he was on it, heading back to the mansion—to Rogue—as fast as that damn bike would go. With every mile, he drew closer and closer to her and that as much as anything else gave him the strength to keep riding through the night—through the pain—zooming along the nearly deserted highway.

But almost two hours later, when he reached the outskirts of the school property, he was forced to stop. The vibration of the bike had escalated the pain in his lower back from an annoying throb to a constant excruciating squeeze on what Logan guessed were his kidneys. Before leaving the barn for good, he’d visited his favorite tree and pissed a river of red, proof positive that six angry Marines constituted a force to be reckoned with, even for a Wolverine.

The six soldiers were from the same unit as the two he had brutally dispatched the night before. Aware that the Wolverine was more than he appeared, they demanded a shot at him, all at once, six against one. Jack had refused at first, but then Logan proposed that if each man would pay double the entry fee, he’d take them all on as a unit. Not one of them had hesitated even for a second to fork over the five hundred dollar fee, cash on the barrel head. All of them fought with rock hard fists, steel-toed boots and a raging desire to avenge their comrades who Logan had toyed with like a cat torturing a pair of mice before delivering the final knock-out blows.

His regenerative power had been pushed to the limit and then some, but in the end, the Wolverine prevailed, mostly because his bones were unbreakable and theirs weren’t. He left three of them unconscious on the floor of the cage. Two were sporting shattered knee caps and the last one gave up when Logan dislocated both of his shoulders.

Jack and Smitty tried to talk him into waiting until morning, but he told them he’d just as soon collect his share and go. They paid him not only his half of the night’s receipts, but every penny of the Marines’ entry fees.

“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that in my whole life, and probably never will again,” Jack had told him. “You more than earned this.”

He had waved good-bye and, after a bit of a shaky start, pointed the bike south and kept going until the pain in his back demanded he get off the damn thing. The geeks weren’t expecting him until morning anyway, so he had decided to just rest there in the woods—a mere stone’s throw from where his Rogue slept—and let his body heal as much as possible before daylight. He wouldn’t be of any use to Rogue if he arrived at the mansion broken and bruised.

It never occurred to him that Storm might find him first.
---------------

“Logan,” Storm tried again. Nothing.

She cursed herself for a thoughtless fool for flinging the door open like she did and letting Rogue—of all people!—get an eyeful of Logan sprawled out on her bed.

“Logan.”

She’d been calling his name every few minutes since she’d found him about two miles from the mansion, lying against a tree along the two-lane road that intersected the main drive. He’d been coherent enough to really answer her only once, when she had asked if he was strong enough to get back on the motorcycle.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Great. Climb on the back. I’m driving.”

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s either that or I fly ahead of you, wake Jean and the professor and let them take care of you in Med Lab.”

“Fine. You drive.”

Storm had been on one of her midnight flights, her answer to warm milk and a weighty book, when she found him. He looked like he’d been chewed on by wild dogs, and she tried to ask him what had happened, but other than that once, he hadn’t spoken.

By tacit agreement, she had helped him up to her room, peeled off his jacket and shirt and was just about to gather what she needed to wash the blood from his not yet healed cuts when Rogue’s knock had interrupted her.

Storm was back now from gathering water and towels and her heart went out to Rogue as she began washing the body of the man the young girl loved so much. She wondered silently if the Wolverine knew, let alone appreciated, what Rogue felt for him.

Still gently moving the soft, damp cloth over his skin, Storm was all but hypnotized by the combination of her swirling motions and the quiet rhythm of his chest rising and falling with each breath. So she nearly jumped out of her own skin when his hand suddenly clamped down on her wrist.

“That spot’s clean enough. Hurts. A lot. Let it go,” he croaked, his voice rough but stronger than when she first found him. His eyes remained closed.

“OK. Sorry.” She lifted the cloth from the boot print on his chest and replaced it on his shoulder where a deep cut still oozed red. “Is this alright?” she asked, applying as little pressure as she could and still get him clean.

He grunted. She took it as a ‘yes’.

“Storm?”

“Yes, Logan?”

“Don’t let Marie see me like this, OK?”

She started to tell him the truth, but decided against it. For his sake, because he needed the rest and the healing more than he needed the truth, she did for him what he had done for Rogue. She lied.

“I won’t. You rest now.”

No answer.

“Logan?”

He slept and she continued her careful ministrations, smiling as she realized that the Wolverine not only appreciated Rogue’s feelings for him, he returned them as well.

---------------

Rogue came to just as Scott reached Med Lab. She knew instantly that the arms that carried her, though strong and confident, weren’t the ones she had dreamed were holding her, protecting her, come what may. No one felt like her Wolverine.

But he’s not your Wolverine anymore, is he?

She couldn’t stifle the groan that escaped from her throat as she shifted in Scott’s arms, trying to wrap herself into an even tighter ball against his chest.

“Rogue, we’re in Med Lab. You need to let go so I can put you on the bed,” he told her.

She kept her eyes closed, but she unwound her arms from his neck and let him set her gently on what was really more of a gurney than a bed, with its thin mattress and metal rails. The stark white sheet literally crackled when she pulled her knees to her chest and turned away from him.

So now it would begin, the questions, the probing of her mind and her body, all in the name of ‘helping’ her. Oh, well, the sooner they got started, the sooner she could skedaddle.

She sat up and looked around the room. Jean was there, on the other side of the gurney, adjusting some machine or other. Scott was talking to the professor. It looked like they were disagreeing about something.

Rogue’s voice drew everyone’s attention.

“OK, everybody, let’s get this over with.”

---------------

“Read it for yourself, Scott. I’ve done it and re-done it, twice. There’s no mistake,” Jean said, more than a little exasperated with her man for doubting her ability to read a simple DNA test result. Who’s the doctor here, hmm?

“Nothing? Not even one marker, not one allele out of place, not even by some microscopic fraction?” he queried.

“No, hon, whatever has changed, it isn’t showing up in the basic structure of her DNA, which for the moment, leads me to believe the event was a fluke, a ripple in the time-space continuum, an episode of the ‘The Twilight Zone’, whatever. What it wasn’t was a reason to give Rogue any hope that her skin is no longer deadly.” Jean spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard by her patient, who was currently doing her best to lay motionless in an MRI tube while it mapped every inch of her skin.

“We’ll have to wait and see if the scan reveals any anomalies on or directly under her skin,” Jean continued, “but if that comes back normal, too, then it looks like we’re going to have to go through with the professor’s idea, whether you like it or not.”

Even from behind his glasses, Jean could see Scott’s expression darken as he shouted, “We can’t do that! It’s barbaric!”

Jean scowled at him and tipped her head toward the MRI machine.

He lowered his voice again. “I don’t care if they do volunteer; we can’t knowingly put students at risk like that, Jean. What if she panics or just simply holds on too long? She could kill someone! Has anyone thought of what that would do to her, let alone the poor ‘volunteer’?”

“Undoubtedly, it would devastate her,” Xavier interjected as he rolled up next to where the couple was talking. “Which is why the first volunteer will be me.”

Both Jean’s and Scott’s jaws actually dropped, simultaneously. Jean recovered first.

“Professor—Charles—you can’t do that. What if—“

“Jean, I am well aware of the risk. I am also aware that I am the only one powerful enough to force her to break the connection without doing any real damage to me. The worst that should happen will be some fatigue on my part and a short-term gain in psychic ability for her. That is, of course, if her mutation is still intact.”

“Well, we should at least wait until you’ve had a chance to teach her some control. You said she asked you about helping her, like you helped Scott and Storm and me,” Jean reasoned.

“Listen to yourselves! This is exactly what Rogue said she didn’t want to do to her friends, remember?” Scott pleaded.

“Scott, we are out of options and out of time. She plans to run. She’ll give us today, maybe tomorrow, to find an answer one way or the other, but then she will go. I can’t turn her loose on the world in her present condition. We all have to know. This is the only way.”

The MRI machine began to whir and beep. Jean went to check on its progress, leaving Scott and the professor to hash out the ethics of the few choices left open to them.

“What about Logan? He’s back and he’s the other half of this…problem, anyway. Why not use him instead?”

Scott knew Logan was back because Jean had told him. He hated that she could sense that mongrel from ten miles away, let alone three doors down.

Choosing to ignore Scott’s apparent lack of concern for the Wolverine’s well-being, Xavier said calmly, “For the very reason you just said. He’s the other half of the equation, so if she touches him and nothing happens we will still be at square one.”

Scott sighed, resigned to the fact that his mentor and his lover were about to embark on what might arguably be one of the most dangerous missions they’d ever attempted—and they wouldn’t even have to leave Med Lab to do it.

End Chapter 6

By mid-morning, Logan was almost back to his old self. Having repaired all the internal damage, his body was working now on the flesh wounds, only the worst of which were still knitting together from the inside out.

He’d taken a shower and was checking his reflection in Storm’s bathroom mirror, thinking that the jagged cut, small but deep, over his left eye added a sort of ‘outlaw’ element to his usual ‘bad ass’ look, when he heard his least favorite person calling his name.

“Logan! It’s time to rise and shine, Sunshine. The professor wants you in Med Lab right away,” Scott informed him.

“Tell the professor I’m fine now. I don’t need Med Lab,” Logan returned, making no move to exit the bathroom.

“Who said this was about you?” Scott shot back.

Logan strode from the bathroom to the bedroom door and ripped it open. He gave no thought to his total nudity.

“Well, it sure as hell better not be about Rogue or I’ll—“

“You’ll what? Streak down there and brow beat everyone with you pr—“

“NO! I won’t! I CAN’T!”

Rogue’s voice rose up from the bowels of the mansion, exploding in Logan’s ears like a fire siren. He lashed out at the handiest target, wrapping one big paw around Scott’s throat.

“What the hell was that about?” he demanded, not realizing Scott hadn’t even heard her yell.

“Let go…Logan…Oh, shit…Can’t talk…” Scott choked out as he tried to peel Logan’s fingers off his windpipe.

Logan let go, letting Scott catch his breath while he searched the room for his jeans and pulled them on. Without shirt or shoes, he pushed past a still wheezing Scott and ran for the elevator, zipping his fly as he went.

“Come on!” Logan yelled as the elevator failed to respond instantaneously to his request for entry.

Scott caught up just as the door opened and both men plunged through it. Logan had to fight the urge to take a claw to the ‘Down’ button, but he managed to contain the impulse.

“What the fuck is going on down there, Scott?”

“Something I hope you can put a stop to.”

“Gladly.”

Snikt. Double snikt.

The Wolverine emerged from the elevator into the stark metallic hallway in full attack mode, ready to open up a whole can of adamantium-flavored whoopass on whoever was messing with his Rogue.

Taking his own life in his hands, Scott grabbed Logan’s arm with one hand and the earpiece of his glasses with the other just before the Med Lab door slid open.

“Go in there with claws blazing and I will blast you into next week. These are people we love, you idiot,” Scott uttered with menacing calm.

Logan actually blinked as the meaning of Scott’s words sunk in. Yeah, One Eye was right; the claws were a bad idea. He didn’t really want to hurt anyone here, but he couldn’t ignore the anguish he’d heard in Rogue’s voice. Someone was in big trouble.

Snikt.

“OK, no claws,” he capitulated and proceeded to punch Scott squarely in the jaw with his huge fist, knocking him across the threshold and into the medical treatment area. Scott landed in a heap at Jean’s feet.

“Which part of ‘don’t do anything until I get there’ did you not understand?” Logan hollered down at him as he stalked by and then shot a glare at Jean, too, just for good measure. He looked around for Rogue, but didn’t see her anywhere.

“Where is she and what is it that she can’t or won’t do?” he asked both of them as Jean helped Scott up off the floor. A large bruise was quickly forming on the left side of Scott’s jaw.

“I’m not saying word one to you, Logan, until you calm down,” Jean replied in a tone normally reserved for recalcitrant children. Logan got the feeling that if she’d known what they were, she’d have used his middle and last name in the scolding, too.

Logan Something Something, you settle down this instant or I’m putting you in time out!

“You want me to calm down? Then show me Marie, dammit!”

As if by his command, a window at what he had thought was the back wall of Med Lab lit up to reveal the figures of Rogue and Xavier seated across from one another in the room on the other side of the glass.

Logan saw that the professor had removed his suit jacket and tie. His white dress shirt was open at the collar. Rogue was wearing a black tank top and a pair of gray sweat pants. Their gazes were locked together, serene expressions on both of their faces. They might have been about to play Scrabble, but something told Logan a more dangerous game was afoot.

He moved toward the window. Jean grabbed his arm.

“Don’t. He’s preparing her for what might happen when she touches him.”

“When she what?!?” Logan almost shrieked in disbelief. He looked from Jean to Scott and back again. “Are you people crazy? She could kill him!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them all morning,” Scott said.

“Whose cockamamie idea was this?” Logan posed, staring daggers at Jean.

“His,” the couple answered in unison as they both pointed at the bald figure in the next room.

Logan watched in stunned horror as Rogue reached out with her bare hand and laid her fingers into Xavier’s outstretched palm. Nothing moved, not even air; no one breathed. A heartbeat passed, then two.

Neither Xavier nor Rogue seemed affected at all by the contact. One more heartbeat and the hope Logan had denied for so long began bubbling up inside him. He wanted so badly to let it fill him up, let it overflow and drown out the fear that held him now in its icy grip. But he’d been where Chuck was and he knew he couldn’t afford to hope, not yet.

The first sign of trouble was the blood vessels rising, red and angry, to the surface of the professor’s bald scalp. Then their hands, still touching, began to tremble. Xavier grimaced in pain and seemed to shrink further into his chair.

“She can’t let go!” Jean yelled. “He’s telling her to let go and she can’t!”

Logan was through the door, across the room and grabbing Rogue’s wrist to break the connection before Scott or Jean could yell, “Don’t!” But they yelled anyway.

Hauling Rogue up by one arm, just like he had that day in the bathroom, he slung her against his chest and carried her out to one of the empty examination tables. Scott had scooped an unconscious Xavier from his chair and laid him on the table next to Rogue.

“Rogue? Marie, darlin’, can you hear me?” Logan spoke softly at her ear, leaning over her, unwilling to release her from his protective arms.

Her eyes were open, rolling wildly as if desperately searching for something or someone to focus on. With one arm still wrapped under her shoulders, Logan used his other hand to direct her face toward his.

“Marie! Marie, baby, look at me. Can you see me, darlin’? I’m right here. I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he soothed, stroking her cheek with his long fingers while his thumb held her chin captive, keeping her head still. He had no idea how he managed to keep his voice calm when his heart was beating him to death from the inside out.

Jean and Scott had already removed the professor’s shirt and hooked him up to the monitors that would display his vital signs. They were working on fitting him with a clear plastic helmet-like contraption to monitor his rather unique brain waves when Jean reached over and touched Logan’s shoulder.

“Leave us alone!” the Wolverine growled.

“Logan you’re not helping. She can feel how scared you are. It’s hurting her. Let her go!”

With no protest whatsoever, Logan gently removed his arm from behind Marie’s back and stepped away from the exam table. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

For the first time in his life, Logan wished he was a telepath instead of a walking weapon. He’d give anything to be able to reach Marie now, but he didn’t need a sixth sense to know Jean was right about one thing. He could smell the fear oozing from not only his own pores but those of everyone in the room—except the professor.

Logan’s head snapped to the left, his gaze bouncing from Xavier’s contented expression—was he actually smiling?—to the brain monitor. All the lines were crisp, even and almost flat.

“Jean, look!” Logan barked, nodding toward the monitor. “Does that mean…?”

Jean smiled. “No, Logan, he’s not dead, or a vegetable. He wants me to tell you to take deep breaths and calm down—so do that.”

Before he could calm down one iota, he had to know Marie was going to be OK. He looked back at her, expecting to see her still struggling with whatever was careening through her mind. Instead he saw that she was sleeping, or looked like she was. Another sniff revealed her fear had subsided considerably. At the moment, she had that same almost-smile on her face as Xavier had.

“He’s taking care of her, isn’t he? Are they talking to each other?” Logan asked, a hint of wonder in his voice.

“Yes to both questions,” Jean answered, “but neither of them is sharing their conversation with me, so for now, all we can do is wait.”

Thanks, Chuck, was all the mental message Logan could get out before Scott spoke up—loudly.

“Oh, no, it isn’t! We can do a whole helluva lot more than wait, by God!” he snapped from the opposite side of Xavier’s sleeping form.

Jean sighed. “Scott, really—“

“Did you see what happened just now? Did anyone besides me notice that he—“. One finger stabbed in Logan’s direction. “He held a scantily clad Rogue against his bare chest for several minutes and hasn’t so much as flinched, let alone died?!?” Scott was all but shouting by the time he stopped talking and stalked around the exam table to stand chest to chest with Logan.

“I’d say it’s your turn for a thorough examination, Wolverine! What do you think?”

The truth was Logan had definitely noticed that he wasn’t dead. Now that he knew Rogue wasn’t in any immediate danger, he was as anxious as Scott was to find out why he was still breathing.

“I say let’s have at it. I’ve even got my shirt off already. Try not to get too excited, darlin’. You either, Red.”

And that was when Scott found out that his fist was no match for an adamantium chin.

---------------

I’m so sorry, professor! Oh, God, I knew this was wrong. I’m just evil—

Nonsense, Marie. If anyone is to blame, it is I. I should have prepared you better, waited until you had more control.

I tried to hold it in, like you showed me, but something...it felt...you felt so...peaceful. And it’s been so long since I’ve felt anything like that...I just couldn’t let it go...so soon.

I should have anticipated that. Please don’t blame yourself for wanting a little peace of mind, Marie. Next time, you will know better what to expect and you won’t be so desperate to hang on.

Next time? You mean I have to do this again?

Marie, please try to stay calm. If our friends see your heart rate jumping sky high, it will worry them unnecessarily.

Do they know we’re OK?

Yes, I’ve told Jean that we are both perfectly fine. I could wake both of us up at any time with no lasting effects, but I’m rather enjoying this. Aren’t you?

Yeah. Yeah, I really am. So you said we would be doing this again? Why? Apparently, Jean was right. What happened with Logan was just a...goof.

If you want to learn to control your power, dear, you are going to have to practice. But I can teach you some ways to do that using your mind without any touching involved, at least not right away.

My power was never really gone, was it?

In all my years, Marie, I have never heard of a mutant whose powers just simply vanished. They do, however, evolve and change, usually into stronger, more beneficial powers. I believe that is the case here.

But if my power is stronger, won’t it be that much harder for me to control it? Does this mean I can hurt people by just being close to them, without touching them?

I wasn’t talking about YOUR power, my dear.

Oh…OH! You mean--?

Yes. I’ve given this a great deal of thought. I ‘volunteered’ today so I could test my theory and now, especially in light of how long he was able to hold you afterward, I am sure I was right.

But that means he’s...that he can...that ONLY he can...touch me?

Yes.

Great! Just great! Now I’m totally screwed.

Good heavens, that is a rather harsh, and I dare say, vulgar assessment of--Marie?...Oh, dear, don’t cry. That really will frighten them. Jean! Jean, dear, don’t panic. Rogue is a bit upset. Nothing I can’t handle. Just don’t let Logan see--

“What do you mean ‘nothing’s wrong’? She’s crying, dammit!” Logan’s roar bulldozed the walls of the little mental fortress within which the professor had been keeping Marie calm after their ordeal.

I’m sorry. He saw her before I could— Jean tried to apologize.

It’s alright, Jean. Try to calm him down. I’ll handle Marie.

Haven’t I been ‘handled’ enough? Leave me alone, professor.

“Logan, the professor has everything under control. She’s in a very fragile state right now; it’s a delicate process. Think of it as him doing for her what your healing factor does for you. He’s repairing both her mind and his own. You must let him finish! Maybe it would best if you left for a while,” Jean said, knowing she was wasting her breath.

“No way, lady. Tried that already and look where that got us,” he shot back, waving his arm in a gesture meant to encompass all the events of the last hour. He looked over at Marie, who was stirring on the exam table, her serene expression a thing of the past.

“I didn’t mean you should leave the mansion,” Jean clarified, “just Med Lab, just for a few minutes until he can settle her down. Please, Logan, he knows what he’s doing; you can trust him.”

Logan’s eyes never left Marie’s face. He could see her eyes moving furiously under the closed lids. He fought the urge to try to get inside her head with Xavier by telling himself he wouldn’t know what to do once he was in there anyway. Probably just make things worse and he sure as hell didn’t want to do that.

Rogue’s head was spinning, despite the professor’s attempts to exert some control over her whirling emotions. If she had known a week ago that Logan was the only man on earth who could touch her, she would have done anything and everything to keep him from leaving, including offer him her body right then and there to do with whatever his heart desired. Then it would have been Storm getting an eyeful, wouldn’t it?

Storm? What does Storm have to do--? Oh. I see.

And he did. Xavier saw all of it, the confrontation last week in Rogue’s room, her tearful confession to the weather witch about her feelings for Logan, and then the final blow, finding Logan in Storm’s bed. He flinched at the pain he felt pouring off of Marie as she stood in that hallway.

Oh, Marie, I’m so sorry.

The professor’s compassion was the last straw for Rogue. She couldn’t bear his sympathy, his caring. She didn’t deserve it, not when she would likely have killed him, had it not been for Logan. She let go of Xavier’s calming thoughts—more like shoved them away—sat up, opened her eyes, and wailed at the still form on the table next to hers with all the anguish of a woman cursed with knowing that fate had twisted what should have been her greatest joy into her cruelest torment. She had discovered that the man she loved was also the singular being, human or mutant, who she could truly have in every sense of the word, and still she would die alone and untouched, because he was in love with someone else.

“He doesn’t want me! Don’t you see? Logan doesn’t want me!”

In the next instant, a shadow fell across her and she turned around to find Logan standing behind her, his expression a mixture of shock and anger.

“I don’t want you? Just who the hell told you that?”

He shot an accusatory look at Xavier.

Instinctively, Marie sought to protect her shattered heart using the power she had so recently acquired. Calling up every memory she could think of containing Logan’s back, getting smaller and smaller as it traveled away from her, she hurled them into his consciousness so viciously the force nearly gave him whiplash. Not satisfied that he would catch the symbolism, she sent a more damning image—the Wolverine sprawled across Storm’s bed—accompanied by all the fury of a woman scorned.

Logan fell to his knees, holding his temples, his breath coming in ragged gulps. He could feel the pain and betrayal rolling off of her as her dark eyes glowed with rage. The images played over and over again in his mind as if they were being rewound time and again and replayed for his viewing torture.

Her message was unmistakable, but she shouted it into his ravaged brain anyway.

Who do you think told me, you big oaf?!?

Scott reacted first, lunging toward Marie, both hands aimed at her waist in an attempt to grab her and pull her far enough away to loosen her hold on Logan’s mind.

But even under her mental barrage, Logan was faster, diving in front of Marie and slamming one massive fist into Scott’s ribcage, knocking him backward six or eight feet.

“Don’t touch her!” Logan shouted. “Let her be!”

Jean tried to break into Marie’s mind, hoping to stem the flood of painful emotions, but it was no use. The psychic energy pouring out of the younger woman was like a waterfall of agony that drowned all Jean’s efforts instantly. When her own attempt failed, she sought help from the professor.

Help him! Help them both!

This is between Marie and Logan. She won’t be able to keep this up for much longer. I won’t let her go too far, I assure you. Right now, you should see to Scott.

Jean turned to where Scott rested on his hands and knees, wheezing like a broken accordion. She ran to him and knelt down to check his ribs for fractures.

“I’m get…getting…damn…tired…of this,” he managed.

“I don’t think he broke anything, but we should get you to x-ray to be sure. Wait until you can breathe more easily before you stand up or you’ll pass out,” she advised.

Scott looked back at Logan who was standing near the foot of the exam table facing Marie, a look of unmitigated misery on his face.

“What is he doing? Why is he just standing there?”

Jean paused for a moment then smiled knowingly. “He’s letting her have her say, letting her get it out. He knows better than to argue when Rogue is on a rampage. And some part of him believes he had it coming.”

Jean slid an arm around Scott’s waist as he straightened up, helping him walk out the door and across the hall to the school’s state-of-the-art infirmary.

Scott hoped he didn’t have any cracked ribs, but even if he did, he figured he’d heal faster from those than Logan would from the world of hurt he was in right now. He almost felt sorry for the mongrel. Almost.
---------------
Logan stood there letting Marie bombard him with images of him leaving and of her crying herself to sleep every night. Underlying all those images was a deep, deep sadness that was as mysterious as it was overwhelming. She was unloading it with the ferocity of the Twin Towers collapsing and he was feeling it like he was at Ground Zero. What had left her feeling that lost, that desolate?

He felt lower than whale shit for running out on her. She had no one else. Even worse, she’d never asked him to take care of her; he’d volunteered. Yeah, he’d nearly died saving her life on Liberty Island, but what the hell good had he been to her since then? According to the mental movie that played on a continuous loop in his head, all he’d done had been leave her and make her cry. Shit, even he thought he was an oaf.

He was willing to accept his punishment for leaving her, but when she conjured up images of him in Storm’s bed again, he rebelled—vehemently. If he’d actually fucked the weather witch that would have been different, but he hadn’t and no way was he taking a beating for a good time he’d never even had.

He launched himself at Marie, grabbing her with both hands on either side of her face and forcing her to look into his eyes. He yelled at her through gritted teeth.

“Stop it! Knock that shit off right now, Marie! I did not sleep with Storm. I didn’t do anything in that bed other than lay there and put myself back together. You think I want her? Is that what this is about? Well, think again, darlin’, ‘cause she’s not—“

Logan’s outburst seemed to snap Marie’s concentration and the images in his head disappeared like someone switching off a TV. He let go of her, but before he could say another word, Marie’s eyes drifted shut and she lay down again on the exam table.

“Marie? Marie! What the hell just happened?” he roared, shaking her shoulders none too gently.

“She’s fine, Logan,” Xavier said from his place on the table behind Logan.

Spinning around to face the professor, Logan wasn’t about to let it go at that.

“Are you kidding? Fine? She passed out for Christ’s sake!” A terrible thought occurred to him. “Did I do that?”

“No, she simply went back to sleep—at my suggestion. She needs the rest and you and I need to talk, but first I will require your help with removing this equipment,” Xavier said, indicating the wires and patches on his chest, as well as the brain monitor.

Logan divested the professor of the wires and helmet-shaped contraption and laid them on the table holding the various monitoring machines. Then he retrieved his abandoned wheelchair from the next room and carefully lifted him into it.

“Would you mind helping me locate my shirt? I don’t know where Jean put it when they took it off of me,” Xavier said, glancing around in search of the garment.

Logan noticed the professor had a respectable six pack, well-developed pecs, and biceps to match, not the physique he would have expected for a telepathic philanthropist who spent his days in a wheelchair.

“Just because my mutation involves mental acuity rather than brute strength doesn’t mean I have to have a geeky body,” Xavier stated.

“Hey, did I say anything?” Logan shot back.

“No, but you were think—“

“You telepaths can be real pains in the—“

“No need to finish that thought.”

“Ass. And sensitive mother grabbers, too,” Logan returned, then added with a grin, “I always finish what I start.”

Throughout the friendly banter, Logan wandered around the room and finally located Xavier’s shirt behind the stack of machines that had been monitoring him. He handed it to the professor who quickly put it on.

“That’s much better. I was freezing!”

Just then Marie stirred on the exam table, turning onto her side away from the two men. Xavier and Logan held their breath like a pair of new fathers afraid of waking a napping baby. The seconds dragged by as they waited, listening to her breathing even out again. Finally, satisfied that she was still sound asleep, they let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Perhaps we should finish our talk in my office,” Xavier offered.

“No, right here’s fine. I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up.”

“But—“

“I ain’t leavin’ her, Chuck.” Logan’s tone added an unspoken coda to his statement—not again, not ever again.

“Hey, you got any blankets around here?”

“Top drawer of the exam table,” Xavier directed, smiling inwardly at how Marie had managed to tap into the Wolverine’s nurturing capabilities. It was obvious that more than just Logan’s mutation had moved to a higher level, although Xavier doubted he was ready to admit as much.

Logan pulled a fluffy white blanket from the drawer and spread it over Marie’s still body, tucking it in around her shoulders. The urge to kiss her was monumental, but he shoved it away. When he finally did kiss her, he didn’t want an audience. But the need to make physical contact wouldn’t be denied, so he opted instead to brush a strand of white hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear.

“Sleep tight, darlin’” he whispered before turning back to Xavier who was smiling in spite of himself.

“What?”

“It’s just a very...surprising side of you, Logan. Pleasantly so, but surprising all the same,” Xavier answered.

“Holy hell, Chuck, you said you were freezing. I just thought she might be cold, too. No big deal,” Logan protested, shrugging off Xavier’s compliment. Fearless Leader’s approval of how he cared for Marie was neither requested nor required, but Logan couldn’t help feeling a tinge of pride at the professor’s obvious admiration of his gentler side, even though he’d never admit it. Hell, most days he wouldn’t admit to having a gentler side, let alone being proud of it.

“OK, everybody’s comfy now, so spill it, professor,” Logan prompted.

“Alright then, what I believe has happened is that you have become immune to Rogue’s skin,” Xavier stated.

It took Logan a minute to sort out exactly what Xavier meant by ‘immune to her skin’. God knew he wasn’t immune to the sight of her skin or the smell of it; both haunted him night and day. No, he meant it in the medical sense.

“Immune? As in it can’t hurt me?”

“Precisely.”

“But how…?”

“We may never know exactly how or when the change occurred, but I think your mutation is the key to why it happened to you and no one else. Think about it, Logan. Between that first time, when you accidentally clawed her shoulder and she touched you to heal herself, and the much longer exposure you shared on Liberty Island, she has touched you more times and for longer than anyone else, even Magneto. And yet, here you stand. I think that somehow you’ve built up a resistance to her power.”

Logan stared at him stupefied.

“Because of your healing factor,” Xavier continued, “you are probably the only being on the planet who could withstand her touch for long enough to make that happen and still keep breathing. Anyone else would have died from that much contact.”

He paused to make sure Logan was still following his explanation. He could tell by the feral’s furrowed brow that he was struggling a bit with the concept.

“Does that make sense?” Xavier asked.

“Yeah, in a geeky sort of way,” Logan answered.

“The only other explanation would be that the power she’s absorbed from you reacts differently when combined with her own power, weakens it perhaps, so that when she touches you, your power counteracts hers on contact. Either way, the result is the same. She remains untouchable to everyone but you.”

That last part Logan needed no help interpreting. He, the Wolverine, was the man, the singular being—the one in a billion—who could kiss the unkissable Rogue. He alone could touch her, hold her, make love to her.

Hot damn! Hot damn! HOT DAMN!

His heart did a little happy dance inside his chest, fluttering against his ribcage and leaving him just a touch lightheaded. He couldn’t wait to tell Marie. This was just too damn good to be true. It was almost enough to make him propose marriage. It was almost enough to make him believe there really was a God.

But the euphoria didn’t last for long. Xavier’s next words brought him crashing back to reality.

The professor’s eyes were solemn as he told him, “Logan, she already knows this. It’s what caused all that sadness.”

There it was again, that deep sadness, that yawning black hole of hopelessness that she had shown him. Was that how she really felt about him being the only one who could touch her? How could that be?

“What? Why?”

“She doesn’t believe you have, uh, those kinds of feelings for her, or did you miss that somehow in all that she showed you?”

He forced himself to think back through the images she’d hurled at him, reliving the whole vicious nightmare in a sort of bizarre instant replay, all the way back to the first thing she’d said.

He doesn’t want me. Don’t you see? Logan doesn’t want me!

Logan turned back to the sleeping Marie, scooped her off the exam table and started for the door.

“Logan, where are you going?”

“Chuck, I have to make her understand how wrong she is about me not wanting her. I only know one way to do that—“ Logan started before the professor cut him off.

“You can’t project your thoughts directly to her, but I can pass along the message for you.”

Logan stopped and turned around, Marie still cradled against his chest, snoring lightly.

“Uh, thanks for the offer, Cyrano, but this ain’t exactly the kind of message that can be delivered through a third party.” Logan turned to go, hoping the professor caught his meaning. He really didn’t want to have to be any more blunt.

“Oh?”

No such luck.

“Yeah, uh, it kind of involves more show than tell…um…” Logan fumbled.

“Really?” came the puzzled reply.

“Aw, c’mon Chuck, for her sake, please don’t make me have to say it.”

“Oh, Oh! Of course. Forgive me, I, uh…”

“Forget it. Really. You going to be OK if I leave now?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll check on Scott and Jean in the infirmary, let them know you and Marie are, uh, upstairs.”

Logan walked toward the door, but the professor had one more thought to share.

Be gentle.

“I already knew that, Chuck,” Logan called over his shoulder in answer to the psychic nudge.

“I’m glad to hear it, but I wasn’t exactly speaking to you,” Xavier clarified a split second before the door slid shut. He was sure that the Wolverine had heard him loud and clear. He hoped for Rogue’s sake he would act accordingly.
---------------
“Put me down this minute! I mean it, Logan! I don’t want to go with you!” Marie hollered as she slammed her fists into his chest She’d awakened to find herself being carried into the elevator by the last person on earth she wanted to have carrying her anywhere.

But instead of releasing her, he rolled her even tighter against his chest, trapping her hands uselessly between their bodies. He buried his face in her hair and spoke in a hoarse, sexy whisper against her ear.

“Liar. You’ve wanted me to carry you to my bed since Liberty Island. Well, darlin’, today is the day you get your wish.”
---------------
Marie loathed her traitorous body for how it reacted to Logan’s pronouncement. Her nipples went hard as cherry pits, poking through her tank top to graze his bare chest. Warmth swirled in her belly, spreading lower and lower until it reached her very core where it became a hot ache that had her wishing somebody would just shoot her and put her out of her misery.

Damn him! Damn him to hell for making her weak when she wanted to be strong, for crushing her resolve to finally be the one doing the leaving this time; and for keeping alive the impossible dreams she so desperately needed to see die.

When they reached his room, he shifted her weight so he could hold her with one arm while he opened the door. Once inside, he closed and locked the door behind them before setting her on her feet and stepping away.

She just stood there staring at him in wide-eyed disbelief.

“What?”

Curse her wayward eyes for straying to the bed!

Curse him—twice—for noticing.

“OK, I admit the thought of just throwing you on the bed and ravishing you did cross my mind,” he confessed with a half-smirk, “but I think we need to talk first. However, if you’d rather…” He lowered his shoulder as if he were going to lift her up again.

Skittering backwards out of his reach, she tripped and fell, landing hard on her bottom on the floor at the foot of the bed.

The son of a bitch actually laughed at her. Out loud.

“Oh, how I hate you!”

“No, you don’t,” he argued, reaching to help her up. She slapped his hand away and got to her feet on her own as he continued, “You probably hate that you still want me after the way I treated you, but you most definitely do not hate me, Marie.”

“Don’t presume to tell me how I feel, Logan!” she scolded as she attempted to walk to the door.

Before she’d taken her second step, he caught her from behind and wrapped her in his big arms, pulling her against him. She could feel the hard heat of his erection pressing against her bottom as his fingers slid slowly, one by one, across both of her taut nipples, fanning the flame in her loins into a conflagration of burning desire.

“Shall I tell you how you feel, Marie?” he whispered as he planted the first of several kisses along the column of her neck, sending her pulse skittering in all directions. He smiled to himself when he heard her breath catch and then watched her tilt her head back so he could scrape his teeth across the sensitive spot right where her neck met her shoulder. Oh, yeah, she hated him, alright.

“Your heart is beating so fast right now your breath can hardly keep up. I know because I can hear it. Your tight, virgin pussy is wetter than it’s ever been. I know because I can smell it. Your skin is so hot it’s all you can do to not tear your own clothes off. I know because I can feel it. Do you understand, Marie? I can feel you.”

His big, strong hands moved lazily down the outside of her tank top along her ribcage and then in one swift, surprising motion he spun her around to face him. His eyes were almost black with lust as he pressed one hand against the small of her back, bringing her pelvis in to meet the bulge in his jeans and grinding against her with a slow, intimate rhythm.
“You belong to me, Marie, just me, and no one else. I am the only man who can touch you this way, the only man who can ever have you. Can you feel how that excites me?”

For a second, maybe even two seconds, she fought the urge to melt into him, holding back only long enough to be able to congratulate herself later for not giving in the very instant that he touched her.

Her arms wound around his neck as she closed her eyes and raised herself up on tiptoe, expecting him to meet her halfway. But he didn’t.

Instead of kissing her, he slid his hands under her ass and lifted her off her feet. Her eyes flew open to find him grinning at her like the fucking Cheshire cat. She went from aroused to furious to humiliated in a heartbeat.

Angrily twisting her body and pushing with all her might on his shoulders, she broke free and landed on her feet. Clenching her fists at her sides, she loosed her fury with bitter tears in her eyes.

“You smug bastard! After everything else, do you really have to tease me, too? Fine, you proved your point. Go ahead and laugh. Ha-ha. It took all of thirty seconds for the great Wolverine to seduce the pitiful little virgin. Not much of an accomplishment, considering she wants him so bad she’d belly crawl naked over ground glass just to have him make love to her even once before she dies. There, I said it. Are you satisfied? Can I go now? Or maybe you’d rather be the one to leave—again!”

She whirled away, turning her back on him. She stood there, crying, wishing the floor would just open up and swallow her. She sensed him moving toward her and she took a step away, hoping one minute that he would just leave her alone and praying the next that he wouldn’t.

He followed her, reached out and gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

“I wasn’t teasing you, Marie, I swear,” he said softly, his rich baritone smoothing the edges of her broken heart. “I was smiling because I am happy—-all out, crazy, Christmas morning happy. I guess I have to smile more often so you get used to it being about something good and not just some sarcastic smart ass joke.”

“So, all this new found happiness of yours, is it because of what’s happened with…us?” she hesitated on that pronoun, still not sure if there was an ‘us.’

He felt that tiny silence like a slap in the face, one he richly deserved. He’d promised to take care of her, but instead he had left her, more times than he cared to remember. She had every right to doubt his feelings for her, to wonder if he would ever want her enough to stay and live up to his promise. He had his work cut out for him.

End Chapter 8.

“Marie, darlin’, look at me, please,” he said, tugging gently on her shoulder.

She did as he asked, turning to face him. Her big, brown eyes looked up at him from beneath damp, dark lashes. He silently swore this was the last time he’d make her cry anything but happy tears.

“The simple answer to that question is yes. It is all because of what is happening with us,” he told her, taking a step closer and cupping her face in his hands. “I know you think I suck at keeping promises, so I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’m going to tell you this anyway. I know I hurt you, darlin’, but I never meant to and if you’ll let me, I will make it up to you, even if it takes the rest of our lives.” He hoped the trust she’d placed in him so long ago hadn’t been completely destroyed, that some part of her still expected the best of him instead of the worst, like everyone else.

She searched every syllable for even the slightest hint of insincerity and couldn’t find any, then did the same with his eyes and got the same result. He smiled again and her last doubt disintegrated, but she couldn’t resist testing him just a little.

“I want to believe you, Logan. I really do, but I’m not sure I can without some sort of proof…something…tangible…?” she challenged, purposely leaving the thought open to his interpretation.

Saucy for a virgin, ain’t she?

Another country heard from. Logan resisted the urge to slam his mouth down over hers and let the Wolverine show her just how ‘tangible’ his need for her really was.

With a tenderness that amazed even him, his left hand relinquished her cheek, tickled a trail over her bare shoulder and down her arm. Taking her hand in his, he lifted it to his chest and pressed it palm down directly over his heart.

“Do you feel that?” he asked, his gaze locked with hers. “That’s as tangible as it gets, darlin’. Every beat is for you, belongs to you, and no one else.”

As she felt the proof of his desire for her thundering under her hand, she was transported back to the agonizing moments when she leaned against her bedroom door, pretending he was holding her, imagining the very sensation she was experiencing now, as she begged him to keep her secret.

She huffed out a little laugh.

“Did I say something funny?” he asked.

“No, I was just thinking that you feel so much better than my bedroom door.”

Logan looked down at her, raised one eloquent eyebrow.

Marie laughed again, a deep throaty sound that zinged him right in the groin.

“The day this all started, I leaned against my door while I was pleading with you to keep my secret. I pretended that you were holding me and I was listening to your heartbeat. I remember wondering if it would only ever be pretend.”

“Come here, baby, and live the fantasy,” he said invitingly as he drew her against his body and wrapped his powerful arms around her. She laid her head on his magnificent chest and ran her fingers through the dusting of dark hair that tickled her ear as he ran his own fingers through her long sable and white mane. They stood there for a long while, holding each other, eyes closed, her listening to his heartbeat and him wondering what he must have done in the part of his life that he couldn’t remember to deserve such a miraculous moment.

So, Aristotle, are you gonna fuck me or what?

Logan’s eyes flew open. He looked down at his precious, innocent Marie to find her looking up at him with a lusty leer that would have made a porn star blush. Instantly, all such higher-level philosophical thoughts vanished from his head. Hell, it was all he could do to think anything at all.

Christ Almighty! He had thoroughly underestimated her, a mistake he had no intention of making again—ever.

“Oh, honey, I’m gonna do a whole lot more than that,” he promised, “starting with the kiss I’ve wanted to give you since the day I first laid eyes on you.”

He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers, intending to initiate her slowly in the ways of using lips and tongues to reveal their innermost desires. He slid his hard lips against her smooth moist mouth, gradually increasing the pressure as he ran the tip of his tongue along her lower lip, barely touching, testing her awareness of his ultimate intent. She didn’t miss a beat, parting her warm, responsive lips, accepting him, welcoming him into her mouth so eagerly it made his head spin.

He slid his hands into her hair and anchored her to him as he plundered her mouth, gorging himself on the sweet taste of her. How could he have denied himself this even for a minute, let alone a whole week?

She accepted his hunger, reveled in it, tangling her tongue with his until she felt him moan into her mouth. Her heart roared with the knowledge that she could bring him such pleasure, that he wanted her—Marie, his Marie—above all others and she grew bolder still.

Breaking the kiss, she slid out of his arms, leaving him with a look of such utter confusion and hurt on his handsome face that she abandoned the idea of doing a slow striptease and instead shed her tank top and sweat pants in nothing flat.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Marie…” he whispered, his eyes raking her with a look of pure male appreciation. The first time he’d seen her naked had been a life changing experience, to say the least, but it had also been an accident. Now she had bared herself to him intentionally and somehow that made her even more amazing, more alluring than he remembered. Was that even possible? Then she grabbed his shoulders, drove her hips forward and boldly rubbed her furred mound against his bulging fly. Oh, yeah, it was very possible.

“You won’t believe the things I know are possible, sugar,” she said, as if she’d just plucked his thought right out of his head. That was when it hit him.

“So, can you just read my thoughts, or can you control them, too, like the professor?”

She slid across his hip, wrapping one leg behind him and trailing one finger lazily down the center of his chest all the way to the snap on his jeans. She had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at the full body shiver her touch elicited.

“I don’t need the professor’s power to control your thoughts, Logan.”

Holy fuck, wasn’t that just the understatement of the century?

He’d thought of nothing but her since the day he’d discovered he could touch her without dying. Now she was pressed against him, all of her, naked and soft, with her hair smelling like jasmine, and he knew he’d die if he didn’t touch her.

He kissed her again, hard and deep, as he bent down to sweep her off her feet. Cradling her in his arms, the scent of her arousal assaulted his nostrils and he growled low in his throat as he realized how close her crotch was to his face.

Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

Without knowing or caring where the thought came from, her own mind or his, Marie imagined him putting his cock where his tongue was, or better yet, using that delectable tongue to pleasure her pussy. She loosed her wanton nature and decided to live both fantasies at once.

“Can you guess what my favorite number is?” she whispered as he laid her on the bed and followed her down, covering her with his big, hard body.

His shocked expression lasted only a microsecond, the exact amount of time it took for his cock to go rock solid.

Note to self: Lover reads minds. No more surprise birthday parties.

“Oh, darlin’, I want you so much I’m gonna let you think that was actually your idea,” he said as he let go of her long enough to tear open his fly and shuck his pants. He sighed audibly as his ferocious erection was freed from its denim prison.

“You’re such a gentleman, sugar, always so considerate,” she purred.

Try to remember that when I’ve got my face buried in your pussy and I’m struggling to not shove my cock down your throat.

Her cheeks glowed crimson as his erotic thought burned through her mind.

“I take that back. You, sir, are no gentleman,” she chastised him with a smile, even as her body quivered with anticipation.

Her blush brought him up short. Maybe she wasn’t as ready for all this as she wanted to think she was.

“Marie, I want you something fierce, and that’s just how I’ll take you unless I make an effort to do otherwise. Once the Wolverine takes hold, it will be too late. Now, I’m more than willing to go as slowly as you need me to, but up until that gorgeous blush you just flashed, I wasn’t exactly catching ‘go slow’ vibes from you.”

“Logan, in case you missed it, I love you, and I have never wanted anything in my whole life more than I want you—all of you—right now. My body may never have done this before, but don’t forget, darlin’, I’ve got a big chunk of your sexual history right here,” she explained, tapping her temple with her index finger, “and I’ve had seven long, lonely nights to do nothing but lay in bed and relive it, thinking all the while that it would be all I ever had of you. Oh, no, sugar, don’t let my little old pink cheeks stop you. Don’t hold him back; I need him. I need the Wolverine.”

With that, she grabbed his face in her hands and dragged him down to her hot mouth, kissing him like she’d die if she didn’t.

Logan rejoiced in her aggressiveness. It soothed his conscience to know that she was as desperate to give him her virginity as he was to take it from her. And yet, a part of him couldn’t help wondering how much of her feisty behavior came from her and how much was some manifestation of the part of him that she carried inside her head day in and day out. Then again, did it really matter?

Hell no, but it does give a whole new meaning to ‘go fuck yourself’, huh, Bub?

Still kissing him like her life depended on it, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her bare body against his, burrowing her taut nipples into the soft dark fur on his chest. She clung to him like she couldn’t get close enough to him, couldn’t feel enough of him to quench the desire raging through her like wildfire.

Subtle changes in her scent told him that her juices were flowing and it took all he had to keep from reaching between her legs to sample her readiness. He knew what he’d find, and he knew the Wolverine would be unstoppable once he’d felt her tight, wet entrance, so he had to delay, just a little while. He’d waited years for this; he’d be damned if he would rush through it now.

He began moving his hands over her skin, slowly, studying every inch of her with his fingertips. He learned the curve of her neck, etched her shoulders and her upper back into his very soul, and committed every rib, every vertebra to memory.

Her breasts were like velvet, so soft and smooth they were almost fluid, except for the hardened tips that jutted against his palms. Reluctantly, he released them, silently vowing to return as soon as he had completed his tactile tour of her lower body.

Smoothing his hand across her silken belly, he heard her breath catch as he circled her navel with his fingers. She arched her back in anticipation of an intimate caress as he combed ever so slightly through her dark thatch.

“Hold that thought,” he whispered as he stroked his way down each of her thighs to her calves and all the way to her toes. Just beneath the smooth, pliable surface he could feel muscles like steel bands. His eyes rolled back in his head as he envisioned all that strength wrapped around his hips while he plundered her pussy with the most demanding erection he’d ever had.

His touch was driving her mad. He worshiped her with his hands, perusing her flesh with all the reverence of a blind priest studying a Braille Bible. The tenderness in his touch and the awe in his eyes were more than she could bear. When he skimmed over the dark triangle below her belly, she choked back a sob of joyous anticipation and then fought back real tears when he made her wait while he finished his journey from her hips to her toes.

Touch. Skin to skin. So simple, so essential, so long denied.

“Come here. Now,” Logan commanded in velvet tones as he lay down again on his back.

She slithered up his body and he kissed her long and hard. Molding his hands to her perfect breasts, he plied their soft roundness with his palms before tending to each dark nipple, glorying in the gasps escaping her lips with every pinch and tweak his fingers performed. His hands abandoned her breasts momentarily, leaving her roiling with disappointment, until she felt him grasp her shoulders and haul her up to align her torso with his mouth.

The feel of his warm, wet mouth on her nipples set her mind reeling and her pussy twitching as some mysterious connection opened up between her breasts and her clit. As he licked and suckled her breasts, echoes of the magnificent sensations he was creating shimmered across her pulsating bud, driving her wild with unfulfilled desire. She loved his mouth on her hard tips, but her pussy needed attention. Now.

With that, she got up on all fours, and started to turn around to face his feet, dying to achieve the position she had suggested earlier.

But he stopped her with a hand on her arm. She looked at him expectantly.

“On second thought, I want to make love to you right side up, the first time. We can move on to the, uh, more advanced maneuvers later,” he said.

“Bullshit.”

“Pardon me?”

“Logan, just because I blushed at the thought of us going down on each other doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. Now, get ready, ‘cause I’m about to sit on your face.”

Logan barely had time to get his hands up to catch her thighs as she lowered her glistening sex to his lips. And then he was lost, completely lost, as he feasted on her tender flesh, licking each fold hungrily, purposely avoiding the throbbing bead in the center, saving the best for last.

Like the cherry on top of the sundae. Oh, very punny.

Each time she tried to grind down on him, to position her clit directly over his tongue, he stopped, waited for her to surrender all control to him before resuming his maddening ministrations.

“Oh, God, Logan, please! Please!”

“Oh, no, darlin’. You asked for this, remember? You taste so good.” Lick. “Mmm. Too good.” Lick. “And I want every last drop,” he declared, holding her still above him. “Get comfortable. This could take a while—a long while.” The word ‘long ‘was delivered as one smooth sweep of his tongue from her moist opening to just below her swollen clit.

We’ll just see about that.

Determined to make him as crazy as he was making her, she braced her hands on either side of his hips and took the tip of his upright cock into her mouth. She heard him hiss, felt his hips lurch as she swirled her tongue around and around the dusky head. Banding his shaft firmly with one hand, she worked her mouth up, down and around his cock, licking and sucking, savoring his velvety hardness like it was a double dip of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Her delighted groans sent vibrations buzzing down his entire length, making it utterly impossible for him to keep from moaning into her pussy, a delicious humming that in turn transformed him into a mutant vibrator that inspired more groans, and on and on and on…

And then, using every ounce of control he could muster to keep from exploding into Marie’s mind-blowing mouth, he turned his attention to her neglected clit. He flicked his tongue across it once and she nearly jumped off the bed. Before he licked her again, he gripped her hips tightly with both hands.

“Marie, honey, let go of my cock; I need it to stay in one piece,” he advised, knowing that what was coming next would have her forgetting what planet she was on, let alone what she had between her teeth.

“Spoilsport,” she panted, flashing him a lusty grin over her shoulder.

“Hold on, darlin’, here we go.”

In the next instant she understood that he meant ‘hold on’ quite literally, as Logan began lapping at her pussy like a cat drinking a bowl of milk, his tongue curling up to deliver quick, repetitive strokes directly onto her clit.

Her climax was nothing short of volcanic, an eruption of indescribable pleasure that had her fisting the bed sheets and screaming her throat raw. Logan never let up, using his expert tongue to wring every last shred of sensation from each shuddering wave of ecstasy that gripped her body, until she was sobbing his name and begging him to release her.

He reveled in her response, happier at that moment than he had ever been, and even a little proud, not only that he had given her such a cataclysmic experience, but also that he’d kept the Wolverine leashed long enough to accomplish it.

She stirred above him, drawing her legs up and over him and turning around to lie face to face with him. She had never looked more enticing, with her lips red and plump from sucking his cock, her hair in a wild jumble and her eyes glazed over in utter satisfaction.

His hard on raged at the sight of her, demanding its own satisfaction and a familiar voice growled impatiently, ’Be gentle’, my ass! Take her! Now!

Marie saw the light in his eyes shift, taking on a steely glint, like moonlight on a gun barrel, and she knew the Wolverine had come for her at last.

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, searching one last time for even the smallest sign that she wasn’t ready for the onslaught he was about to deliver. What he saw made his heart stop. Love, deep and pure, shone from her soft, brown eyes and right in the middle of it, surrounded by it, was his own reflection—the Wolverine in all his feral glory. He had his answer.

He came at her like the animal he was, like the predator she longed for. Slamming his hard mouth down on hers, he shared her musky juices with her as she opened herself to his voracious lust. She felt his thick cock poised at her center, ready to claim her once and for all.

“I can’t hold it back, honey. I’m sorry, but this is gonna hurt!” His hips drove downward as he sank into her, his powerful thrust piercing the barrier of her innocence in one burning stroke.

Her eyes flew open and she cried out as the pain spiked for one blinding moment and then was consumed in the initial waves of her second orgasm.

In that split second, his gaze locked with hers as he began to move over her, inside her, drawing her climax out longer and longer until she was writhing beneath him and leaving claw marks on his back that would have done his own claws proud.

The Wolverine took her then, completely, thrusting hard and fast, driving for release. He pulled her hips against his and told her to wrap her legs around him. She matched his rhythm perfectly and he felt the first tremors of his orgasm spiraling through his body.

“Yeah, that’s it. Oh, God, yes! Hold on, baby, hold on!”

Her fingers sank into his biceps. Her long legs tightened around his hips like adamantium bands as he buried himself to the hilt in her tight, wet core, again and again. His whole world was reduced to the sweet heat of her as her inner muscles clenched around him, wrenching from his body an orgasm so profound that it stole his voice, leaving him arched above her, every muscle taut as a bow string, his head thrown back in a silent scream.

A seemingly endless series of white hot spasms stroked her inner walls, sending another climax searing through her, this one reaching so deep inside her that she howled with the bone-crushing force of it.

Finally, he collapsed, miraculously remembering at the last second to brace himself on his elbows so as to not drop his entire weight onto her quivering body.

He lay there, unmoving save for the heaving of his chest. After a minute, his breathing slowed and he was able to gain the strength to lift his head, kiss her—gently, this time—and tuck a strand of white hair behind her ear. His smile lit up the room as he watched her eyelids flutter open and realized that she’d actually fainted from the intensity of their mutual climax.

“Welcome back, my love,” he whispered as her eyes focused on his once more.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him like she thought he might disappear if she let go.

“Easy, darlin’,” he soothed as he rolled them both onto their sides. He rubbed her back and felt her begin to cry against his chest.

So my little hellcat is really still just a kitten after all. Good.

“Oh, Logan, is it always so wonderful? It felt like the sun exploded and I was surrounded by billions of bits of light and the next thing I knew you were smiling down at me—“

“Honestly? I wish I could tell you it was always like that,” he said, wiping away a tear with his thumb. “But this was…special…amazing. I hope to God you are never disappointed in me, but as inspiring as making love with you is, I can’t promise the sun will explode every time.”

“No, Logan, you could never disappoint me. Besides, I should think that would be hard on the universe. It wouldn’t be fair for us to go blowing up the sun two or three times a day, would it?”

“Two or three times a day? Lady, I love you like crazy, but even my regenerative powers would be taxed on a schedule like that. How about once a day and twice on Sundays?”

“Hmm. Maybe.” She grinned mischievously. “What day is it today?”

He gave her a roguish smile as his hips began a slow rotation, grinding against her still sensitive center, arousing her to fever pitch instantly.

“I do believe,” he murmured, “it’s Sunday.”

“Hallelujah!” she sang out.

“Amen,” he growled.

It was the last word spoken in that room until Monday.

THE END