Title: Odalisque

Author: Tempest

Email: mortal_belleza@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable from “X-Men” or any of its affiliated comics, movies, etc, and I guess that should go without saying that I don’t own the comics, movies, so forth and so on either. Marvel™ et al own everything. I make no money off these works; I do this simply as a means of entertainment. No copyright infringement intended. In other words, please, don’t sue the broke college student.

Foreword: Alternate movieverse. No powers here, people. If there are any mistakes present, I apologize in advance. I suck at beta reading my own stories, and I haven't found anyone to beta any of my stories. :(

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Chapter One
The Odalisque


You get a lot of time to think when you’re handcuffed to a bed, and right now, Ororo was thinking about how she ended up in this predicament. Not just handcuffed to the bed, but the state of things in general. She knew exactly how she had ended up handcuffed to the bed.

An hour earlier, Ororo had been sitting in her bed; the one that she always complained was too high; the one that made her feel like she was freefalling when she tried to get out of it. She promised herself a thousand times that she would get rid of that bed. She didn’t need such a large bed when it was just her in the house. Hell, she didn’t need that house for the same reason.

That house was meant for children; that house wasn’t meant for single, children-less divorcees. She should sell the house and get her an apartment somewhere. Maybe, she would even leave the city, the state, the country. Her mood lightened considerably as she thought about moving to France or Spain. She could become a flamenco dancer. She could see herself dancing in one of those gaudy, low cut flamenco dresses, the frills of the dress shaking as she threw herself into dance, her hair pulled back in a bun, exotic flowers adoring her hair.

“Olé!” She called into the empty room, throwing her head back, positioning one arm over her head and one across her belly. Yes, she would make a great flamenco dancer.

She could fall in love with a Spanish man, a dancing partner maybe. Someone who made her feel as if they were making love when their bodies moved together on the dance floor. Someone who would whisper in her ear in Spanish and tell her everything would be okay, even if it wouldn’t. They could laze around feeding each other grapes or olives or whatever it was they grew in Spain. They wouldn’t have to tell each other they loved one another; they would know in their hearts. They wouldn’t have to get married. She’d already been there and done that. She just wanted companionship.

The more she thought about the idea of moving to Spain, the better it sounded. She could call the real estate agent tomorrow; she could hold a yard sale and sell everything in the house. She would take the clothes on her back and the money in her pocket with her to Spain. She wouldn’t tell anyone she was leaving. She would just leave, forget this old life, and start a new one. She would… Ororo’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted when she thought she heard a door open and close downstairs.

Ridiculous, she scoffed to herself. The only other person that had a key to this house is gone. Gone. The word had never had such an air of finality to it until she had gotten divorced.

She turned the television off and tilted her head toward the door. She thought she heard the shuffle of feet on the first floor, and she quickly turned off the lamp. She scooted across her bed, sliding silently to the floor, pressing her stomach against the soft carpet. She heard the noise again, and this time she was certain that someone was moving about in her house. Her breath shortened at the thought of someone else being in her house. She knew who it was, though; he told her he would come for her.

He didn’t want anything in the house; he just wanted her.

She took a couple of deep breaths in an effort to steady her shaky breathing. She heard footsteps on the stairs. He was coming up! She pushed herself under the bed, her chest contracting tightly causing her breathing to quicken even more. She didn’t like having to hide under the bed. For once, she thanked the Goddess that she had a bed that sat so high off the floor, but still the thought of being under the bed in such a confined space made her feel smothered. She didn’t like that feeling, just as she didn’t like the feeling of being hunted.

Her breathing sounded abnormally loud in her ears, and she would’ve sworn that it echoed throughout the house. As if confirming her fears about her breathing, he entered the room, a throaty chuckle escaping from his throat. She heard the adjoining bathroom door open. Next, she heard the closet door open. She tried to hold her breath as she watched the bottom of his shoes pass her bed. He paused for a moment, and she feared that he would look under the bed and find her, but he didn’t. He exited the room, and she heard footsteps on the stairs, again. He was going back down.

She slid across the carpeted floor, peering from under the bed, expecting to see a leering face even though she had heard him go back downstairs. Relieved, she slid from under the bed, crawling across the floor. She could no longer hear him moving around in the house. Was he gone? Or was he waiting for her to make some fatal mistake? He could be hiding in her own house. An elaborate game of cat and mouse. He was baiting her, and it would only be a matter of time before…

She crawled to the nightstand, groping vainly for something that wasn’t there. He’d taken the phone. The sneaky bastard. She could imagine him gripping her cordless phone smugly while she began to panic. She knew one thing. She couldn’t stay in the bedroom. How long would it be before he realized that he hadn’t checked under the bed? She could lock herself in the bathroom. But he was a crafty man; it wouldn’t take him long to get inside.

She contemplated trying to make a break for it. She could run down the stairs, swerve into the kitchen, and out the kitchen door. Would he have time to catch her? Of course, he would. He would hear her thundering down the staircase. He would catch her at the bottom of the stairs, and even if she did manage to elude him and make it to the kitchen, she would still have to fumble with the lock on the kitchen door. A weapon. She needed a weapon. With a weapon, she could make that much needed break to the kitchen.

She crawled to the closet, feeling around blindly. Her hand wrapped around something hard and distinctly wooden. She pulled it from the closet, kissing it as if it were her savior. A bat. She crawled out the door, taking care to keep her body close to the wall while she held the bat securely. Cigar smoke wafted on the air. He was downstairs smoking, biding time. She could almost see the end of the cigar glittering in the dark room while he furrowed his eyebrows.

She caressed the bat again and stood slowly, feeling a renewed confidence in herself. She broadened her shoulders, raising her chest in premature triumph. She felt powerful with the bat in her hands. What chance did he stand against her, now? Yet, she still crept along the wall until she was in front of the staircase. Closing her eyes, submitting silent supplication for a safe escape, she stood looked down the stairs to freedom.

She ran down the steps, and he cut her off at the edge of the steps just as she expected. The hunter and the hunted coming face to face. She raised the bat, preparing to strike him with everything in her being, but he struck before she could, wrestling her to the ground, throwing the bat to some shadowy corner. He did all this without a word. He was holding her down, now. One hand restraining her hands above her head, one hand cupping one of her breasts, roughly, roughly enough to make her protest.

They struggled for a moment. She tired herself while he seemed to take pleasure in watching his prey squirm. His free hand was now bunching her gown up around her waist. She jumped when she felt cool fingers touch her inner thigh. Higher and higher they climbed like creeping vines up her thigh. A lump formed in her throat as she bucked under him. She had to think. She relaxed for a moment, willing herself to ignore the curious fingers. She believed that there was always a solution to a problem, an escape when none seemed possible.

She planted her feet firmly against the floor, raising her hips. His weight shifted, allowing her to have the momentum. She turned her body, and he fell off her. She rolled away from him and stood up quickly. He was already standing, facing her. They eyed each other like a couple of bar brawlers waiting to see who was going to make the first decisive move. She backed away from him until her heel hit the back of the stairs. She turned abruptly and started to run up them. She nearly fell backwards when she felt the tail of her nightgown being tugged.

Without looking, she kicked back. “Shit!” She heard him curse when her foot made contact with what she didn’t know, but he held tightly to the gown. She pulled the gown straps away from body, feeling the gown slide away from her body. She heard him make a noise akin to surprise, and then she heard him sliding back down the steps. She ran up the stairs, running in one of the guest bedrooms. She closed the door and locked it. She knew a locked door didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to him.

“Don’t make me chase you,” he called out in the hallway. His first real words other than the uttered profanity.

She rummaged through the drawers, finding an old shirt, sliding it over her partially naked frame. She licked her lips thinking of another escape route. She could hear him jiggling the doorknob. She looked around the room. She could surprise him when he opened the door. The attic. If she could make it to the attic, she could… The door swung open and he stood blocking her way.

She moved across the bedroom, making a quick dash for the guest bathroom that connected it to another room. She tried to slam and lock it behind her, but he was already yanking on the door. She skittered across the floor and out the door that led to the other guest bedroom. She opened the door of the guest room, running out the door. She turned in the hallway back toward the staircase. Her mind reeled. She could run down the stairs and to the kitchen, or she could run to the opposite end of the hallway, to the library and escape to the attic.

She didn’t get a chance to make her final decision, as he appeared in front of her. He circled around and cut her off at the path. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all. It reminded her of something she heard someone sing before. Watch me; I’m weightless. Though, I’m on the ground. She beat against his back. He’d probably taken worse beatings than that. She was sure he had. He carried her to her bedroom were the only exit was the way they came in. He deposited her on the bed.

The keen clack of metal against metal made her grind her molars. She hated that sound. Then, she found herself restrained. She didn’t really know how it happened because it happened so fast. One minute she was wincing at the sound of metal connecting, and then she couldn’t move. Two sets of handcuffs, one for each arm enslaved her to the bed, and she didn’t even know how it really happened.

Now, those handcuffs were clawing into her wrists. Her arms spaced equidistance from each other on the wrought iron bed that had too many posts for its own good. He would’ve never had a chance of handcuffing both hands to the bed if she had a normal bed instead of the Gothic style monster that looked like it belonged in medieval England. She chewed on her bottom lip lightly, groaning as she sat struggled to sit up in the bed.

When she left for Spain, she was going to have a bed that no one could chain her to. Better yet, she wasn’t going to have liaisons with men who treated her like a high priced courtesan.

She stopped moving in the bed and tried to scan the dark room with her eyes. The room was an austere obscurity, save for the slither of moonlight that peeked through a crack in the curtains. The moonbeams danced across her naked thighs, caressing her brown skin with their silver kisses. Loose tendrils of hair fell into her face as she shifted again on the bed. Other than that, she saw nothing. There was no sign that anyone other than herself inhabited that room.

Across the room, she could hear Janet’s voice flowing from the radio. “That’s the way love goes…” What did Janet know, anyway? Janet wasn’t the one chained to a bed, wondering if she would ever get out of those cuffs. Everything wasn’t about love. Some things were more visceral, more animalistic, than love. She strained to hear over Janet’s decree of “the way love goes”, hoping to hear some indicator that he was still in the nearby, at least, but there was none.

He’d walked out of the room after cuffing her to the bed. She wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t heard him move around in the house, but she knew that he could be as quiet as a church mouse when he wanted to be. She would’ve never known he was in the house unless he had wanted her to, and he had wanted her to know that he was there. He could’ve just as easily snuck up on her, but he enjoyed the chase… the game. That’s all it was to him “ a game. He was the hunter and she was his prey. He never tired of it.

The handcuffs were something new, and she wasn’t entirely sure she liked it. She wasn’t entirely sure she even liked playing that game anymore. It was becoming too personal. She knew she didn’t mean much to him, but she thought she was starting to care for him. How could she care for him? It was obvious that he didn’t value her for anything other than sex. She could hardly get him to say two words to her when they weren’t fucking each other’s brains out. Hell, she could barely get him to say two words then.

They had mind-blowing sex, she fell asleep (depending on where they were), and when she woke, he was long gone. Sometimes, she chose to believe that these sessions, as she liked to think of them, were nothing more than a dream. However, those handcuffs were a concrete reminder that they were more than just a dream, and now she thought she was falling in love with the bastard. She didn’t want to fall in love with him. If she fell in love, she knew that she would never leave. If she fell in love, she would pretend to be happy with the way things were when she really wasn’t.

She didn’t want to be treated like someone’s whore. She wanted to find a life and a love of her own. Divorces tend to make people cynical, but she still believed in the power of love. She just didn’t want that “power” to center around Logan. She wanted someone who would make love to her mind as well as her body. Besides, she couldn’t exactly call what she and Logan did “making love”, and it certainly wasn’t intellectually stimulating unless you counted the time she spent regretting it and thinking about the way things were “ such as now.

It was funny. She never thought of him by his name. She thought of him as Him or He most time. When they were at work, she had a habit of saying, “Go ask Him,” or “He said such and such.” Most times, people knew who she was talking about, but sometimes, she would have to specify. Then, she would loathingly say his name. It came off like a quick staccato snap on her tongue.

When she talked to him, she tried to avoid using his name. She would just look in his general direction and hoped he realized she was talking to him. The only time she ever called his name (or at least, the only time she tried to call his name; sometimes, calling him was unavoidable) was when she really needed his attention or when they were… No, she wouldn’t think about that. Now was not the time to let her thoughts wander to sex. So, she thought about the handcuffs instead and how she was supposed to get out of them.

She wouldn’t panic; he wouldn’t leave her handcuffed to the bed all night. At least, she didn’t believe he would. Would he? She never really knew what to expect when dealing with him. She opened her mouth to say something to speak into the dark at him, whether he heard her or not. Then, she thought better of it. She rested her head against the headboard and closed her eyes.

Spain, flamenco dancing, idle afternoons in Barcelona, she chanted to herself. This was her new mantra. Something to remind her that things would get better, that there was something out there for her. She heard approaching footsteps, and her emotions went into a war, loathing and loving what was about to happen.

“Bright lady, please send me a sign…” She mumbled under her breath as he approached the bed. She needed to know that this was the right thing she was doing, that her newfound dreams of leaving should be actively pursued. And she needed that sign soon...

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Author’s Notes: Third story in the last week. Damn, I’m on a roll. I blame the muses who won’t let me sleep at night unless I jot something down, school for being so mundane most days, and my boyfriend who works all kind of crazy hours (like 4am in the feckin’ morning and he always feels obligated to call and wake me up when he gets to work just to say that he’s bored). Without those contributing factors, none of this would be possible. ;)





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