Logan waited impatiently for the mansion’s wrought-iron gate to open wide enough. The damned thing seemed to be moving slow as molasses, wide enough for the Jeep now but not yet for the trailer towing Logan’s motorcycle behind. Finally it clanked fully open and Logan started down the drive, just barely resisting the urge to gun the motor and send gravel flying. He wanted to see Marie again so badly his whole body was aching with it.
As dumb luck would have it, both Marie and Jean were outside as they pulled up in front of the mansion steps. Jean wore gardening gloves and Marie had mud on the knees of her jeans, and both of them seemed to be wrestling with a big bronze planter full of geraniums.
Both women straightened up, shading their eyes to look at the Jeep, and Logan saw the moment that Jean caught sight of his passenger. The blood drained from her face and she wobbled for a moment before Marie caught her arm, steadying her.
Next to him, Scott flinched back, his hand unconsciously flying up to his forehead.
“The connection, huh?”
Scott grimaced. “Yeah. She probably doesn’t even realize she’s trying to do it.”
Logan turned off the ignition and they sat in silence for a moment. The women seemed equally paralyzed, standing still at the bottom of the steps, gazing at the car, Marie bracing Jean with an arm tight around her shoulders.
Finally Logan leaned all the way back in the driver’s seat, stretching his legs out as best as he could in the footwell, and then turned to Scott.
“So...are you gonna let her in, or am I gonna hafta drive your sorry ass all the way back to Mexico?”
Scott turned slowly to meet his gaze, and then a smile started to creep over the corner of his mouth. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
“I’ve been told.”
Scott drew in a deep breath, and then slowly hissed it out through his teeth. “Here goes,” he said, closing his eyes. Within seconds he was spasming, arching backwards in his seat for a moment until it seemed to pass.
Logan turned his attention to Jean. She was on her knees now in the gravel, hair hanging down in a curtain over her face as Marie hovered worriedly over her. As Logan watched, Jean lifted her face. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes were locked on Scott’s face, and her expression was a mixture of grief and regret...and blossoming hope.
Without another word Scott pushed open the car door, his boots landing on the gravel drive with a crunch. In three swift steps he was to Jean. He held his hand out to her, and after a moment of stunned suspension, she grasped it. He pulled her to her feet. Logan stepped out of the car, stretching his back, trying to look casual while inwardly resisting the urge to pounce on Marie.
“Have fun, you two,” he couldn’t resist calling after Scott and Jean, snickering as Scott flipped him off over his shoulder without even turning around.
Finally, he allowed himself to focus his attention on Marie, his heart seeming to stutter an uneven beat in his chest as a smile spread across her face, sweet and slow.
He must have come towards her as well, because suddenly she was up against him, wrapped tight to his chest, his face buried in her hair. He breathed in the scent of her, and it felt like coming home.
After a long moment, he felt her arms squeeze him even tighter and then let go. He reluctantly loosened his grip on her as well, and she took a step back, tipping her head up to smile warm and wide at him.
“I have to admit...of all the possible scenarios, the one I didn’t figure on was you an’ Scott road-trippin’ it home together,” she teased, her eyes shining brightly.
He gave her a mock-growl, smiling inwardly at the way it made her eyes dilate and her breath come a little faster. “Jeannie’s lucky he made it home without a claw through him. Tightass wouldn’t even let me have one beer while I was drivin’...”
Marie’s soft laugh washed over him, managing to simultaneously soothe and arouse.
“Well...let’s get you set up, then, before you do somethin’ rash.” He followed her to the staff kitchen, raising a cynical eyebrow as she shifted aside a few bags of spinach and pulled a six-pack of Molson out of the back of the crisper. “For just such an emergency,” she said, holding it up triumphantly.
He must have been frozen for some time, staring at her, no thought in his head except, God, I love her. Long enough for her to drop her eyes, shifting her weight nervously before peeking up at him through the fall of her hair. “What?” she asked.
He carefully drew her forward, pulling the six-pack from her hand and setting it carefully on the island, before deliberately closing the refrigerator door and backing her up against it. Slowly, slowly, he advanced until he could feel her warmth up the whole line of his body, their clothes brushing, their faces inches apart.
She was staring up at him now, her eyes wide in anticipation, her head falling back against the refrigerator door as he leaned in, closer and closer.
“Careful,” she breathed, and he could feel it thrumming through her, smell it on her skin, the trepidation and exhilaration, warring with each other in her small soft body. He hummed an acknowledgement, watching her eyes fall shut, thick lashes dark against her creamy skin as he brushed his lips against hers for the first time.
It was a chaste kiss, barely a skim of his lips over hers, but it rocked them both. Her breath gasped out in a warm puff against his mouth and he breathed it back to her, moving in again to place little nips and licks all over her mouth. A soft sweet kiss to the corner of her mouth, right there, where a smile was still lurking, and then a quick lick to the cupid’s bow of her upper lip. He felt his own lips smiling against her as he sucked her full lower lip into his mouth for a moment, feeling her sigh.
He heard the rumble of approval rising up in his own chest as she started to reciprocate -- cautiously at first and then more boldly, her little pink tongue darting out to taste, to try, to sample him as he was sampling her.
The feel of her hands on his chest -- first just skimming over the planes of his chest and then grasping, kneading, curling around his back to draw him in tighter -- almost brought him to his knees. He braced his hands firmly on the refrigerator door over her shoulders, leaning in to kiss her more deeply, his mind a chaotic tumble of home and Marie and love.
The thumping of her pulse drew his mouth down to where she was soft and warm and full of life. The scent of her filling his head as he laved the beat of her pulse, feeling it beat beneath his tongue in the same way she was beneath his skin now, part of him. She tilted her head even further back, murmuring the sweetest sounds he had ever heard, ohgod, and yes, and finally just Logan. The growl burst out of him and then he was truly lost, kissing her deeply, pouring everything he felt into her and feeling her match him in every way.
When he came to he was on the kitchen floor, his head in Marie’s lap. He could hear her voice, still thick with arousal but sharp now with fear and more than a little exasperation. He smiled.
“Stop grinnin’, you damn idjit!” He had rarely heard her accent so thick. “You said you’d be careful!”
He cracked his eyes open. Her cheeks were flushed with color, and her mouth was kiss-swollen. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his life, and he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face if he tried. “Worth it,” he croaked.
She pushed his head off her lap, letting it fall to the hardwood with a loud clunk.
“Ouch,” he grumbled, pulling himself to sit up.
Fear suddenly gripped him. She was sitting back now against the refrigerator, her knees drawn up. Her eyes darted back and forth beneath closed eyelids, and he suddenly realized what he had done. He lunged forward to kneel in front of her, grasping her elbow.
“Oh fuck, Marie. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize...” He was a goddamned asshole. He knew what she got from touch now, how could he have forgotten?
Her eyes snapped open suddenly, but instead of accusation, there was only joy -- with a hint of shock -- in the coffee-colored depths.
“You love me,” she said.
“Um,” Logan said. He cleared his throat, waiting for the right words to appear, with no luck. “Yeah,” he finally managed.
Marie’s eyes were still searching his face, her eyes wide and wondering. “You love me,” she repeated, with more conviction this time. “You love me, and...” her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Ew! You were thinking of me when you were with Jean? What the hell, Logan?”
“Um. Sorry?”
She smacked him hard on the shoulder, upsetting his still-unsteady balance to send him crashing down on his back again.
“Ouch!” he said again as his head got another crack, and then he forgot all about it because Marie was crawling up his body, straddling him, her elbows on his shoulders pinning him in place.
Her face was a mere inch from his, and he bucked his head up to capture her lips, groaning as she pulled back, keeping the slightest distance between them.
The smile was spreading across her face again. “You love me,” she told him again. “You’ve loved me for years, you jackass.”
He grunted. “Guess so.” She rewarded him with a soft, swift kiss and he couldn’t help smiling up at her.
“You love me too,” he said, a note of defensiveness in his tone.
She smiled wider. “Of course I do, you idjit.”
“Then maybe you could stop callin’ me names and smackin’ me around and go back to the kissin’,” he suggested.
She leaned back a bit, rocking against his groin, sending pleasure shuddering through him.
“I dunno,” she teased. “I think I have a few more names left to call you...”
“Marie,” he groaned, bucking up into her. "Please," he said, and finally she relented. She draped herself over his chest again, nibbling and licking at his mouth, until...
“Everything okay down there?” Jubilee smirked, craning over the kitchen island. “Did you and Wolvie slip on a banana peel or something, Roguey?”
Logan oofed as Marie jumped to her feet, blushing to high heaven. God, she was adorable.
“Everythin’ is just fine,” she said to Jubilee. Logan pulled himself to his feet, his limbs still heavy with the aftereffects of her mutation.
He looped an arm around Marie, pulling her close up against his side. “More’n fine,” he said with a grin. “Great. Me’n Rogue are just gonna head up to my room and...be fine up there for awhile.”
He drank in Marie’s little gasp of embarrassment as Jubilee looked from one to the other of them speculatively, popping her gum. “Uh huh,” she said blandly, as Logan started to tow Marie behind him toward the stairs.
“Logan, wait!” Marie pulled her hand out of his grasp and he wheeled around, his heart lurching. Was she having second thoughts?
Her eyes were bright with mirth. “Bring the beer.”
He looked back at the six-pack and then back at her. “God, I love you,” he said fervently.
Her smile was a promise. “I know.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
A few notes:
1. I'm sorry it's taken me so very long to finish up this story. I thought I'd just write a chapter or two of The Taming, and hadn't realized that once I got into those characters it would be so impossible to switch back to finish this up.
2. So, I just knocked out this chapter in an hour. It isn't at all what I expected it to be. It is super-foofy, but I figured it would make an appropriate Valentine's Day present. Maybe tomorrow I'll read it over and think it wasn't half as funny as it seemed to be tonight, but...oh well.
1. I'm sorry it's taken me so very long to finish up this story. I thought I'd just write a chapter or two of The Taming, and hadn't realized that once I got into those characters it would be so impossible to switch back to finish this up.
2. So, I just knocked out this chapter in an hour. It isn't at all what I expected it to be. It is super-foofy, but I figured it would make an appropriate Valentine's Day present. Maybe tomorrow I'll read it over and think it wasn't half as funny as it seemed to be tonight, but...oh well.
Chapter End Notes:
Please review! :-D