“Does my hair look okay?”
“It does. You know it does. But if you want me and Jubes to say it again for the umpteenth time “ “
“At the risk of dragging you into a headlock,” Jubes threatened on a gusty sigh, rolling her eyes.
“ “ at the risk of dragging you into a headlock, then we’ll say it again. Lorna, don’t do anything else. You look fine. You look great. Stop that,” Kitty demanded, smacking Lorna’s hand for emphasis when she attempted to pick up the comb.
“But I just ““
“No you just not,” Jubes countered. “Put. The brush. Down.”
“Make a wish,” Kitty added, turning Lorna to face her as she reached out to straighten the St. Christopher medal around Lorna’s neck, turning the clasp so it lay against her nape.
“I’m so fucking nervous,” Lorna fretted, picking at her nails. They were still painted their customary black, and she was still biting them down to nubs, but Kitty silently admired how…well, how normal she looked. Kind of.
Lorna looked wholesome.
“They’re coming to see you. It won’t matter how you look, just that you get to be with them. But you look really nice.”
In the past two months, her hair had grown to her shoulders, free of any hair dyes or tints that previously hid her natural green tresses. Lorna paired her black jeans with a simple pair of K Swiss white sneakers and a snug white mohair sweater. A hint of eye shadow replaced her previously heavy layers of kohl, and she looked fresh-faced and dewy. Marie joked with her that she just needed a white streak now, to complete her look. It was the true mark of any student who survived their first encounter with the X-Men.
Lorna said she’d pass.
“Quit pacing,” Jubilee quipped as she snapped her gum.
“I’m not pacing,” Lorna muttered as she rounded the edge of the living room for the third time as she stared out the picture window.
“When was the last time you talked with them again?”
“Two days ago.” Lorna felt slightly sick.
“They’ll be fine. You’ll be fine,” Jubilee reassured her, catching up to Lorna as she stopped by the window again and giving her a tight squeeze. Kitty flanked her other side and did the same; then the two of them pretended to have a tug of war with Lorna between them, making her bust out in nervous laughter.
“Shit! You’re demented!” she squealed. “Knock it off, knock it off!”
“She’s mine!” Jubilee crowed.
“Nuh-uh! She’s mine, mine, mine! See?” Kitty licked Lorna’s cheek, leaving it clammy with slobber.
“GAH!”
“Ew. Now I don’t want her,” Jubes tsked. “You ruined her for me.”
“That was the idea,” Kitty sniffed, struggling to hold onto Lorna, who was grimacing and struggling free of her grip. She frantically wiped her cheek with the shoulder of her sweater.
“Kitty germs,” she complained snippily, but her heart nearly stopped as they heard the sound of an engine cutting off in the circular driveway in front of the school. “Shit,” she whispered. Her hand flew up to her throat, grasping the small medal like a talisman. Her body felt limp and weightless, and she began to shake.
“Come on,” Kitty urged softly.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” Jubilee argued. “You’ve been waiting for this.”
“I’m so scared,” she rasped. “My mom, and my dad…they’re all I have, and all I’ve ever had…” Her voice began to break, and she fanned her eyes, trying to stave off the prick of tears. Jubilee rubbed her back soothingly.
“They’re here because they care about you. They missed you. You told us that before after you talked with them on the phone. You missed them.”
“I almost hurt them,” Lorna admitted. “I wanted to. It’s all so messed up.” She squeezed Kitty’s hand even more firmly as they heard the slam of car doors, but she wasn’t facing the window. She couldn’t.
“Wow.” Jubilee’s voice was full of awe. She even stopped cracking her gum. Lorna tried to follow her gaze out the window, but only saw feet disappearing around the corner of the post on the porch. There was a sharp knock on the heavy door. All three girls jumped.
“C’mon. Want us to ““
“Yes.” Lorna reached for both of their hands and resolutely dragged them stiffly after her. They made their way awkwardly to the door, and with her hand still shaking, Lorna turned the knob.
Any semblance of serenity in her parents’ faces disappeared as soon as they laid eyes on the vulnerable looking girl with pleading blue eyes.
“Daddy…” Lorna whispered. “Oh, God! DADDY! MOM! I’m…so…” Her legs went limp. Jubilee and Kitty both struggled to jerk her upright as she shrank back from Mark and Barbara Dane, even as her hands reached for them. Emotion hammered at her heart at the first sight of their faces, similarly pleading with her and glowing with the same need.
They loved her.
Her father had more gray hair swimming in his thick brown locks. People always said they smiled the same. Her mother’s brackets around her mouth had deepened since that day in the house, but her eyes brightened and filled as she rushed forward. She never took a breath.
“OhGodLornamybabyyou’rehereyou’reHERE,” she babbled in a hoarse string. “ImissedyouI’msorrydon’tleaveme,” she wailed, gathering her into her arms when Kitty and Jubilee tentatively stepped back. Lorna silently sank to the steps of the porch. Her mother cradled her like a child and wept into her hair, rocking her back and forth.
“I’m so sorry,,” Lorna moaned. “I’m so sorry, Mom.” She repeated it, unable to stop once the words were out, pent up for so long.
“We’re here,” her father soothed, embracing his wife and using his free hand to cover Lorna’s, which was clutching her mother’s coat sleeve. She grabbed him possessively and squeezed his fingers, needing the tactile proof that he was really there, watching her with forgiveness and love in his eyes.
“I wanted to die when you ran away,” her mother cried. “I died inside.”
“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you,” Lorna began. “I’m different…it’s not like before, I don’t break things anymore ““
“You’re a mutant,” her father explained for her. “We know. We know, sweetie, it was all over the news. That’s why we needed to find you.”
“Did you know about Erik?” Her father’s brow crumpled. Kitty and Jubilee braced themselves.
“Who’s Erik?”
“Magneto,” Barbara answered grimly. She stroked Lorna’s hair back from her face and cupped her cheek. “I read the papers.”
“Dad…he’s from Germany.”
“I know. They’ve been running press coverage about him all week “ “
“He’s from Wungadore. He lost his wife a long time ago, when she was pregnant.” Lorna swallowed. Her mother watched her speak with bated breath, somehow anticipating what she was about to say. “He thinks I’m his daughter. And, there’s something else. When…when this school found me, they used this computer. It’s hard to explain, but it’s called Cerebro…”
“Why don’t we go inside?” Kitty suggested helpfully.
“Bring your friends with you, too,” Jubilee offered, leaping forward from the porch to introduce herself to the young teens standing baffled on the lawn.
“Wow,” the girl answered, awkwardly watching the scene before them and hugging herself. “I feel like we shouldn’t be here right now.”
“It’s okay, Ali,” the handsome young man beside her replied, patting her back. “We’ll get our turn. We’re here to see Lorna. It’s what you’ve been waiting for.” Jubilee suppressed pangs of disappointment at the radiant look on his face revealed that he had been waiting, too.
First Piotr. Then Bobby. The cute young guys were always taken…
It was easy to see immediately that the girl was a friend of Lorna’s, if her attire and makeup were any indication. The girl answering to Ali was Goth’d out in black, wearing a shredded, cropped black tee beneath a fishnet mesh, long-sleeved top. Her black skirt was ankle-length and softly flared and she wore Docs on her feet.
Her hair was black and pink. Go figure, Jubilee mused. She offered her a tiny smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Jubilee fished in her pocket for a pack of gum and handed her a piece. Ali immediately unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.
“You’re a mutant, too?”
“Uh-huh.” The sounds of cracking gum underscored the emotional exchange on the porch.
“Whaddya do?”
“Make little firecrackers.” Jubilee pulled her aside and held her palm open. Tiny blue and red burst of sparks danced in her hand.
“That’s too friggin’ cool!” Ali gushed. “Okay! Okay, you’re gonna love this! Sing for me!”
“Dude…I can’t sing!” Jubilee giggled. The boy watched them with furrowed brows, feeling completely out of place.
“Just anything.”
“What, like Jingle Bells? Star-Spangled Banner?”
“Do-re-mi! Anything! Just go!” Ali flapped her hands at Jubilee to give her a few bars. Jubilee began humming the opening notes of a random song by Gwen Stefani, and was soon shocked “ literally “ speechless, and songless as her voice evaporated on her lips. Tiny pink orbs of light floated around Ali and danced in the sun, illuminating her gamine face.
“Wow,” breathed the blond heartbreaker behind them. He whistled in jealousy. “Man, my gift sucks…”
“Wait…you’re gifted?” Kitty piped up, glad for any excuse to let Lorna and her parents have time together. They’d already retreated inside the house.
“Tell me anything. In any language.”
“What, like, Yiddish? Pig Latin? Greek?”
“Any of them. All of them. Regular Latin. Basque. Tagalog.”
“Sooooo, if I took you inside, and showed you the cool language database we have, you could totally understand all of it without having to translate?”
“I can talk to computers, too.” Kitty’s mouth dropped open.
This guy was even cooler than Forge, if that was possible.
“Shut. Up. Oh, my God. You’re totally coming inside. This, I’ve gotta see!”
~0~
The scrap of paper showed signs of wear, nearly soft as velvet and curling around the edges from folding and unfolding it to reread its precious words. Erik held it up to the light and studied the girlish swirls of handwriting, so much at odds with the owner.
In his mind’s eye, he pictured her work-worn, slender hands stroking the nearly ancient photograph of a young boy with a Radio Flyer wagon and spinning her most precious possession, a silver claddagh ring, slowly around her finger.
He drove away one woman who needed his protection and strength, and he’d left the one who’d offered him hers. Erik made a sound between a laugh and groan and rubbed his eyes. They ached from fatigue accumulated from dreams that wouldn’t release their strangling grip, and he fell asleep counting the unknown number of days until he wouldn’t wake up. Clocks were his enemy, if not for the minutes of his life that he wouldn’t get back “ it bent his mind out of shape, pondering it, really, there went another minute “ then for the infernal ticking.
Erik was a man who time stopped for, once. In a literal and figurative sense; all clocks using a wind-up mechanism stopped at magnetic north when he lingered in the vicinity. Magda cursed him many a time for ruining her casseroles whenever they’d overcook. He’d kissed her, enjoying the familiar warmth and softness despite the heckling. Every moment was precious in those early days, when the gloom from that dark night in the woods tugged at him. His thudding heartbeat echoed forward through time to choke him. He was still huddled in the brush, cold. Shoeless. Shorn and marked and holding onto the woman who was his life to preserve it. Preserve her. Take back the life the Reich told him he didn’t deserve. A yellow Star of David burned at his chest as the silvery, twinkling bodies in the sky mocked him, beckoning to him. There’s danger down below. Come fly with us, Erik!
He’d learned how far too late.
So there it was. The only gift he’d bequeathed to his own blood in the fleeting hopes that she’d never make that run for her life. Power was her birthright. His power. Erik’s legacy.
“Still broodin’ in there, are ye, lad?” Her voice was lilting and throaty, thick with her customary brogue. She was still a handsome woman, petite and firm despite the emotional ravages of losing an abusive husband and a son who Charles couldn’t reach. Erik shared in that failure; Kevin MacTaggart flew in the face of every rhetoric Erik conceived for why no mutant should be limited by anyone but themselves. Kevin’s power wasn’t merely “out of control.” It was uncontainable.
The Rasputin boy was a fledgling, new to the senior squad when Charles ordered him to put Kevin down. In Lorna, Erik saw the same burden of duty trapping her. Her life sprawled miles ahead of her. Too late he realized that she shouldn’t be fighting so hard to save it, only to live it.
He couldn’t make his daughter fight his battles for him. Lorna was young. Impressionable, eager to please. So much, in her way, like Anya would have been had she reached her pubescent years. She deserved to choose her own path.
Moira’s smile was beneficent and teasing. She sighed as she slumped into her favorite chair beside the containment chamber.
He’d inherited it from Kevin. Erik could still feel some vestige of the boy’s essence resonating inside, strangely welcoming.
Where metal was Kevin’s bane, it fortified Erik, thanks to his mutant gift. Moira had reconfigured the chamber with help from Forge following his surgery. It had been a labor of love and need, carried out by two of the most brilliant minds in the fields of genetics and mechanics.
“What do you want now, Moira?”
“Och, but yuir in a mood,” she tsked.
The chamber once contained metal in its design, acting as a buffer to Kevin’s ability manipulate both the environment and other people’s awareness of it, causing vertigo, illusions and occasionally, madness. It was now devoid of those same elements but made use of vibranium, generously donated by the same distributor who sponsored Charles’ Cerebro project in its infant stages.
“Why ye dinna write back t’the lass is beyond my ken,” she muttered helplessly as she rose from the desk and opened a tall cabinet across the room. He wanted to ignore her, but he secretly enjoyed her visits, the same way he’d savored those from Charles. Moira understood him more than he wanted to admit.
She was a baseline. Yet she sired a mutant child, and she still loved and cherished him enough to want to save him, even at the expense of her own safety and her soul. That made Moira the “exception to the rule” that he’d wrongly assigned to Aleytys when he argued with Henry McCoy. Not that Aleytys wasn’t exceptional.
“I swore to uphold my end of this ridiculous agreement. What I do while I’m here is none of your business.”
“Dinna bite the hand that feeds ye, boyo. Especially not when we’re havin’ beef stew tonight. And Eilish made her famous blueberry muffins. So behave yuirsel’.” She laid out the old, ornate game box on a nearby table and emptied its contents. The chess pieces were lovingly lacquered and preserved, a gift from Charles while they were still engaged. Erik had been an impartial intermediary when his two best friends broke it off, pitying them both and longing to wring their necks. Charles, for going off to help the humans fight their silly war; Moira, for throwing her own dreams aside for a horrid marriage and to assume control of her family estate.
“And it is na’ much of an ‘agreement’ when ye had no choice in the matter,” she continued. He sneered at her smugness.
She stuck her tongue out at him from the safety of the barrier between them.
“I’ve had my fill of humans with their cells, yet here I am.”
“I always hoped ye’d come back tae Kinross,” she informed him crisply. Moira began setting up the pieces, arranging the white ones on her side of the board. Erik was always black. “And I always prayed ye’d recover yuir senses, Erik, an’ stop all this rubbish of ‘the war on humans’ and this strange need to treat the world at large like it was Canaan. Yuir a brilliant man, and ye had so much tae give o’ yuirsel’ tae the children at the school. They looked up tae ye, Erik. Now all ye’ve done is make ‘em afraid, as much as the humans you hate.”
“Are you going to lecture me all night, Moira, or are we going to play?”
“Bite me bum,” she answered smoothly. She moved her first pawn.
Erik pressed a small plate of many inlaid on the table top by his side, highlighting a block on Moira’s computer screen. She smiled at his choice and moved his pawn to the designated square. More vibranium and plastic. This innovation, he could enjoy.
“Where on earth were you raised, Moira, a saloon?”
“I’d be happy tae send off a letter tae San Francisco for ye, Erik.”
“It would pass through too many hands. I already said my goodbye.”
“Then how about contacting the wee colleen, and letting her know yuir all right?”
Silence. Erik pressed the plate for his next move.
“So bluidy stubborn.”
“She went back to her parents. Those humans.” It was almost a question.
“Aye. She did. Henry’s been keepin’ me apprised. The lass is thriving wi’ her peers.”
”You’ve ruined me.”
“I’ve saved you.”
McCoy and Cassidy spelled out the terms of his confinement bluntly and quickly: He was to leave for Muir Isle, or he would be handed over to local authorities and held on Death Row.
He wasn’t to have further direct contact with Lorna Dane. He wasn’t to further any agendas using her power or her relationship to him. He couldn’t manipulate her emotions or her need to please him, or prove her filial loyalty.
McCoy took no pleasure in the voyage on the Blackbird, nor in locking him in shackles. Erik couldn’t feel the resonant song of the metals of the jet; all he could feel was the roar and scream of the engines as they soared through the clouds.
He had no platitudes or words of comfort. He didn’t chastise him or gloat over his reversal of fortune. All Henry did was fly the jet.
~0~
“Ya didn’t come down fer dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Kids miss ya. Ya oughta come down, anyway.” He gave up on lingering in the doorway and ambled inside the loft.
It was echoingly empty. All Ororo’s plants were gone. Logan noted their absence with a heavy heart.
~0~
Two days ago he’d walked in on her wrapped in a fit of rage that had been brewing for weeks.
She’d been stoic. She’d been quiet. She was cool and perfunctory during lessons and took leave of every room once her presence wasn’t needed, never staying for a second longer.
He didn’t know what trigger sent her screaming through her loft, hurling her belongings across the room, even out of the bay window. Shit. Someone might as well have asked her “how’s the weather up there?” It was like lighting a match to a can of kerosene.
The drought lasted several weeks. The kids were sweltering, taking refuge in the indoor pool, since the Olympic-sized one outside wouldn’t stay cooler than eighty-five degrees; it was like dogpaddling in bath water.
She wasn’t fertile ground anymore for the goddess’ gift. Ororo was barren.
Keepsakes and precious objects and gifts met with destruction. Her plants flanked her, sprawling over every surface and hanging in planters from every wall. They met with tearing hands and kicking feet; she broke her toe punting an enormous pot of creeping Charlie so hard it shattered against the wall, spraying her hardwood floor with loamy soil.
Logan bolted up the stairs before Jubi even cried out, “Logan, she’s going nuts up there! Do something, quick!” The kids were scared. Blue was on Muir Isle. And Ororo was having a meltdown.
Calm the fuck down, ‘Ro!
Why? Her voice was hollow, like her eyes. Their cerulean blue dimmed to slate in the wake of her accident, as though her lost connection with the sky forbade her to share its brilliance. They looked bruised and sunken; days of poor appetite and a refusal to go outside
Don’t ya see what yer doin’?
I think you should leave now.
Uh-uh.
I said you should leave!
What part of ‘fuck, no’ don’t ya understand, darlin’?
I’m tired. Can’t you see that I’m just tired?
This ain’t tired, ‘Ro. This is givin’ up.
How astute of you.
Fuck astute.
Get out.
We covered that with no.
They’d just about brawled. She lost none of her coordination and wiry strength through her ordeal and practically handed his ass to him until he swept her leg and sent her crashing down to the bare wood floor. Ororo was a creature of habit. Her legs were her weak spot in defensive fighting, every time. He could deal with it if she hated him for exploiting it again, but he needed to reach her.
He was panting…PANTING…when he finally gained leverage, kneeling, straddling her ribs and locking her wrists above her head.
Damn you.
Ya listen ta me. Yer goin’ outside. Now.
Get OFF!
Fine, then. Get up.
Go to hell.
Get the fuck up and march down those stairs, or I carry ya out.
You wouldn’t dare…
Be that way, ‘Ro.
He was done tiptoeing around her. Dignity be damned; he dragged her screaming like a banshee down the stairs. Sean later admitted she almost deafened him with her histrionics and dramatics, but like Logan, he was just so grateful to see her showing signs of life.
What the hell is wrong with you??
He wanted to tell her “You’re what’s wrong with me.” Except she wasn’t.
Ororo was always what was right with him. She was his water and air.
Yer a claustrophobe. Ya need light and air. Ya hate closed up spaces, and ya go and lock yerself up inside, up high where no one can reach ya, like yer fuckin’ Rapunzel. Know what that tells me? That yer tryin’ ta die. Ya take away a plant’s air, its light, and it dies. Pretty simple, when ya think about it.
Don’t school me, Logan. I’m not in the mood. And I’m going back inside.
Not til ya look at that. She tried to turn her head away from where he pointed until he roughly grabbed her jaw and forced her to look at the scraggly flower beds. I know exactly what kinda mood yer in. And I know this is yer doing, woman!
The hell you say.
Everything’s felt wrong since you were hurt, Ororo.
Shut up.
Why? Ya got hurt. Ain’t so hard ta admit. Say it. ‘I got hurt. I lost my power.’
Don’t say anything. Shut your mouth.
Yer not a mutant anymore, Ororo.
I won’t hear this. I’m not listening to you, damn it, so just shut “
Ya’ve got a clean slate. Yer not a mutant anymore, Ororo!
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME, WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE…ME…ALONE!
Because I can’t! Damn it, I can’t! Yer not a mutant! Fine! But yer still Ororo Munroe.
I don’t know who that is anymore.
I do.
You don’t know me!
His grip on her arm was punishing and implacable as he dragged her through the gardens until they reached the cenotaphs. She fought him, struggling to look away from the inscriptions on the marble slabs. Jean’s still managed to stab her heart.
Don’t ya think Jeannie would’ve been better off if she’d taken the Cure?
How dare you. How DARE you.
She’d be alive. She’d be the same woman we loved. No one chasing her or hunting her down fer bein’ a mutant. No provin’ that she’s worthy ta live, because she’d have her life back the way it was s’posed ta be…
You think this is the way my life was supposed to be, Logan?
Maybe ya aren’t thinking straight about who that woman is that ya could’ve been, and who ya can still be.
I won’t listen to this from you.
Ya need ta listen, and listen good. Do ya know the kinda man I would’ve been, ‘Ro? Do ya? If I wasn’t a mutie?
Stop.
Not a fuckin’ science experiment. Maybe dead. I don’t know how old I even am anymore. But do ya even know how long I’ve wanted ta do nothing but die?
She winced at the sound of tearing flesh and the sliding metal plating of his claws extending out of their sheathes. She watched them gleam in the harsh sunlight.
Even if those fuckers did this ta me, I wouldn’t be alive ta tell about it. And maybe then I wouldn’t have taken so many lives. I wouldn’t have these. I wouldn’t have nightmares that eat me alive every night and spit me back out. But all of ‘em are nothing against seein’ ya kill yerself like this. I haven’t woke back up from that, yet, ‘Ro, and it’s killin’ me.
They both screeched and roared at each other as they paced around the marble benches and statuary in the garden.
The winds and lightning wouldn’t come. She was vulnerable and exposed. Logan wouldn’t back down, and she hated it. Wanted to kill him. Silence him.
Run from the mirror he held up so she wouldn’t have to see how far she’d fallen.
Yer always about fuckin’ control, woman. Ya don’t hafta worry about not bein’ able ta feel too strongly anymore. Ya can laugh. Ya can cry. Ya can tell me ta go ta hell. And the sky ain’t gonna fall, the world ain’t gonna end, and ya aren’t gonna hurt a soul. Ya can just let it go.
You think you’re so wise…
Gotta be some benefit ta bein’ this fuckin’ old. Gimme some credit, ‘Ro.
You think you know what I’m feeling. And you think you can talk about feelings, and locking them up! You’re so hard, Logan, and all you can ever say is that life made you what you are, and that it’s a done deal.
She’d flipped it on him, and it wasn’t about him.
Their voices grew hoarse; they were out of breath and their throats ached from their battle for dominance.
This ain’t how I wanted ta be. Ya know how long I’ve been alone, ‘Ro? Do ya have any idea what it’s like ta have ta close up shop and move so often that I ain’t got a home? A family? Even a past I can share with anybody? Ya really think I wanna be hard?
He ached to be tender for her. She wasn’t having it.
It’s convenient for you, being this bad boy and blaming it on being the Wolverine. Blame it all on Wolverine. Never mind murder, Logan. You can get away with pleading amnesia or insanity or just being pissed off to do whatever you damned well please.
I can, huh?
He wanted to shake her.
So yer gonna do the same thing and blame not bein’ a mutant anymore for just walking away from yer life? Roll over and give up the ghost? He extended his claws again. Ya want help, ‘Ro?
Don’t push me.
I ain’t. That’d mean that it’s worth the effort ta try. Ya’ve got yer heart set on checking out.
No. I don’t. It’s already been ripped out. I’m going inside, now.
And his was bleeding.
~0~
“The kid’s parents are here. They brought along two of her friends. Both mutants. Might be expanding the ranks around here.”
“Call their parents; have them arrange a meeting with Henry.”
“Yer the headmistress. It’d be better if they met y-“
“I’m offering the position to Sean.” Logan’s stomach dropped into his shoes, and he tasted metal.
“God, ‘Ro.”
“God and I aren’t on speaking terms right now, Logan. Take your prayers somewhere else.”
They stared at each other and floundered in the silence.
“Yer leavin’ me.”
“No. I’m just leaving the school.”
“Then that means yer leavin’ me.” His tone was brusque and matter-of-fact.
“Give me one reason to stay here, Logan.” His gut wrenched when he saw how flat her eyes were, heard the hard edge to her voice. That wasn’t his ‘Ro.
“Ya don’t have any family anywhere else.”
“That never stopped me from coming all the way across the ocean with Charles when I lived with my tribe, did it? It’s the exact same thing.” She’d said it to hurt him and make him share her pain, disavowing him and everyone else at the school as her family. She wouldn’t stop at stripping them of that privilege.
“The kids-“
“They have you. They have Henry. Everything they need to learn is in their textbooks and in the Danger Room. I just take attendance.”
“That’s bullshit, ‘Ro.”
“Fine.” He hated it. Her passiveness baited him, making rage and frustration boil so hot in his chest that his skin erupted with a ruddy flush.
“What if I say I need ya here?” She sighed, but he felt the change in her. Guilt. Regret.
“Logan…”
“Ya said ya loved me.”
“I did say that.” Panic mingled with anger when she left it in past tense.
“Then were ya lyin’, Ororo?” His voice rose, and his body became animated, no longer feeling like his own as he paced the loft. “Ya tell me ya love me, get my clothes off, and now it’s so long, eh?” She stared at him like he’d just farted.
“Goodness, listen to you. Take the sex and run. I doubt it’s ever been a problem before.”
“That was before you.” She snorted.
“Please.”
“Yer not listenin’ again.” He crossed the room and gripped her shoulders, not bruising but firmly enough to hold her immobile. His gaze was naked and held nothing back. He felt her shrink back in her seat, but her eyes were riveted on him, taking in the details of his face.
The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper; she told herself this wasn’t possible. Logan never aged, never looked weary thanks to his healing factor. Yet here he was, haggard and drawn, looking so much like the person she saw in the mirror every morning before she had to turn away. He was very much a man struggling not to let his inner light be snuffed out.
She felt the strength in his hands, tension drawing his body so tightly that it thrummed like a plucked string.
She felt it, then. Warmth. Just a trickle, at first. That first breath of heat after coming inside from the snow, beckoning you through the door. She’d been so cold now. Brittle.
Barren.
“Ya’ve gotten under my skin. I think of nothin’ but you. I feel nothin’ but you. Ororo. Not Storm. Yer my reason fer gettin’ up in the morning. I love ya, darlin’. And if ya wanna act like that’s something I just throw around every day, and like I’m just feedin’ ya lines, then ya don’t know me very well.” Her throat closed up, but her eyes never left his. “And yer the only one who knows me better’n anyone else, Ororo.”
Her breathing sped up. It matched his, stunning her. He had that effect on her, this uncanny ability to make her respond so strongly to him. Slowly her nerves began to itch, like the excruciating thaw of warming frozen limbs and extremities from frost bite, or seedlings emerging from the frozen crust to greet the light.
“Ya didn’t love me very much if ya think we’re through just because yer hurtin’, ‘Ro. That’s what ya do when yer in love. Their pain becomes yer pain, and neither one of ya feels whole when one’s bleeding.”
“Hurts. Hurts so much.” His eyes drew the words out of her mouth. He felt her shiver, and he continued to clutch her. His breath warmed her cheeks; that’s how close they were. Her trembling worried him. His hands rubbed her arms the way they would if she’d just stepped in from the cold.
“I know, baby, I know!”
“They tried to take you from me.” She sounded stunned. “They almost did. Henry told me about how you would have died, Logan, if they took away your healing.”
“Ya remember what happened with Rogue?” She nodded, wincing at the memory of finding him like that, seizing and gasping for breath. “I know what they left inside me, ‘Ro. All I remember is barely walkin’ away from it and wantin’ ta die. Adamantium’s unbreakable, but my heart ain’t. I’d rather die than watch you walk away from me. It’s just hell on earth without you, ‘Ro.”
“They can’t take you. I won’t let them.” Her voice was shaking yet implacable. It hit him hard that she cried those same words that night outside Harry’s. That night in her loft, when she told him she loved him.
“I ain’t convinced. Ya tell me ya love me, but ya still wanna pack yer bags. Who’s ready ta leave the table now?”
“I do still love you.” Her fingertips grazed his chest as she balled her hands up in his shirt.
“I ain’t just a piece of pie, ‘Ro.”
“Don’t parrot me.”
“Then don’t keep tellin’ me over and over why it’s a good idea fer ya ta take off and leave me!”
And suddenly she ran out of reasons why.
They struggled for a moment. Her eyes wavered and finally flitted away before he could see them fill, but he wasn’t having it. She feinted away from his mouth when he moved to kiss her; his lips steamed her temple and nipped the crown of her cheek, evoking a hoarse gasp. Her body defied her brain’s demands to just unwrap her hands from him and tear herself away.
Ororo’s heart reminded her brain that it wasn’t the one in charge.
“I won’t let you do this, Logan, do you hear me?” She pushed feebly at him, covering his lips with trembling fingers, but he bathed them in the heat of his mouth with growing need. He no longer hovered over her, lowering himself to his knees, insinuating his body between hers. “You won’t make me change my mind. You’re just wasting your time doing this.”
“I’m done wasting time. I’m where I wanna be, ‘Ro. Already wasted years of fuckin’ time before ya came into my life.” Every time her hand moved to shush him, he tasted it, teased it, and leaned into a caress that gradually became less reluctant, more needy. She ducked her mouth time and time again, but his lips chased them, landing wherever they may along her face and neck, making her lean into his touch that she craved. Her stomach fluttered, and every nerve ending in her body came alive as his hands crept around her waist and traced the column of her spine through her thin cotton top.
“Don’t…bother…with this, just stopohhhhmygod!” she shuddered. Her knees convulsed and clamped around his hips in one sharp snap, pinning him as he painted her throat, lapping greedily at her soft skin. Hands that were supposed to be pushing him away were twining themselves in his hair and exploring knots of muscle.
The next sound she made was shapeless and inarticulate, somewhere a moan and a gasp. Hungry and desperate, it slid free from her lips and stroked him. Her voice was a deep, rich, husky breath saturated in lust. The sound, coupled with the sensations rushing through him, was amplified by the shift in her scent and the rapid pulse throbbing in her neck.
It was a mating call.
“I’m gonna give ya,” he muttered against her lips, “all the damn reason ya need why yer not leavin’ this house.” Their argument died a silent death amid the hail of frenzied kisses and her abbreviated cry of his name.
They engaged in a tug of war where they couldn’t get close enough, fast enough. Her hands tore at his clothing, popping buttons off his white guayabera shirt as she worked it down his arms. The neckline of her knit top buffeted her chin as he jerked it over her head and chucked it into the corner. His touch was hot and sang through her body, making her tingle with every graze of his fingers. She tipped her head back in surrender, offering her throat to him once more to devour; his fingers tangled roughly in her skeins of hair to hold her immobile. She felt the rasp of his stubble and the heat of his lips. His voice was a rough caress.
“Damn it, ‘Ro!” She emitted more of those lusty, sexy sounds when the tip of his tongue snaked along the whorls of her ear. Ororo was on fire, wet and desperate.
“I hope you didn’t like that shirt,” she apologized, backing away only long enough to yank at the button of his jeans. He huffed at her strength as the denim abraded him. The zipper separated with a loud rip, and she hauled him more tightly against her to invade his mouth.
He’d created a monster…
“C’mere,” she moaned into his mouth as her feet wriggled and twisted into the waistband of his pants to shove them down to his knees.
“Shit!” Arousal drew his sac up tightly into taut, stiff golf balls, and he was rock-hard. No, he decided, every part of him that could get hard, was hard.
Clearly the lecture and pep talk helped…and it helped him, too. Life was good…
He drank from her unquenchably once her clothes lay among his in a tangled heap. The first shock of her satiny skin rubbing against his sent his heart pumping and set his body into motion, undulating and grinding against her. He wasn’t in control of it anymore. Every molecule craved ‘Ro. When he tried to hold back to tease her with the rosy, plump head of his cock, slicking her pearl with her juices, she would have none of it. She thrust her hips off the bed, working herself along his shaft even as he gripped it in his hand. He didn’t bargain on her lower body strength as her legs scissored around him and pulled him down to her, and with a savage twist of her body she enveloped him. His face contorted in pleasure and surprise at the sudden immersion in her snug, moist heat. His hips worked of their own volition when she thrust up at him again.
“Move with me.” Typical, bossy Storm. Even when he clamped her wrists above her head, she continued to work, pumping him and taking him on a slippery ride.
“Fuck!” He bucked and thrust, rutting into her helplessly, unable to hold back any longer when she felt too addictive and looked so sexy beneath him. Her nipples scraped against his chest, tingling with the contact and tempting him. He bathed one, clamping it lightly between his teeth and drawing on the sweet nub like one of his Cubans. This time Ororo’s hips pistoned and jerked with the sensations he gave her, letting himself slam into her harder, faster. It was so good. So right, when they were together.
They changed positions when she leaned up to bite him. He cried out harshly at her temerity and gave her enough leverage to roll him onto his back. She was proud and sleek astride him, testing his hardness with a roll of her pelvis. Her fingertips danced over his nipples and pecs before she rippled and moved over him mercilessly, giving just as hard as she got and making the mattress bounce.
“HolyshitholyshitholyshitshitshitFUCK!”
He was incoherent. He was glowing and flushed, every muscle completely taut as he gripped her hips. He was aroused and lust-hazed and staring up at her with so much love in his eyes. He gave up on speech (even profanity) as his climax mounted and threatened to undo him.
Her hands were planted over his heart, feeling it pound for her.
“Logan!” she rasped. Every shunt rubbed her pearl and created friction that made her move faster, harder toward her own fulfillment.
He was hers. Hers.
“Come,” she panted, feeling his cock stiffen and cramp within her.
“Shit, ‘Ro…”
“COME, LOGAN!” She leaned over and braced herself against the headboard, ceasing its banging against the wall, and she gave him everything she had left. She reached her own ecstasy above him, twitching and shivering even while her hips worked him, pushing him over the edge. Frantic voices inside her head were hushed right about the point when they reached Coming. Coming…gonna come, gonna come…yes. Yes. Yes. YES -
So Logan did as he was told. He came. Before she could come down from her high, he roared in a mixture of pain and bliss. His hands gripped her ass as he jerked and bucked, eyes wide, beseeching her to tell him truthfully, was it really that incredible? Had she really loved him up, down, inside-out til he couldn’t see straight?
Yes, she had.
After the awkward effort was made to disengage himself “ being that even the slightest shift of his spent member made him jerk, and that he hated to leave her slick, sticky warmth “ they basked in the silence of the loft. Ororo stretched out beside him and palmed his heartbeat. Her hair tickled his lips. Her scent was all over him, and he was exhausted.
He heard laughter in her voice. Brat.
“I guess you expect me to stay now.”
“Pfft. Don’t flatter yerself, woman.” He drew idle pictures on her flesh with his fingertips, making her sigh in contentment. Their legs tangled together with the tumbled sheets.
“Admit it. You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
“Will not.” His grip on her was possessive. “Soon as ya put yer clothes back on, I’m unpackin’ all the other ones ya have. Shit, I might skip that altogether and just run off with all of ‘em. Keep ya up here nekkid.”
“There’s rules against that, you know.”
“We’re already outlaws, darlin’. Screw rules.” She paused in stroking his chest and burrowed more deeply into it. He felt the change in her mood and looked down into her eyes. He nuzzled her briefly. “Whatsamatter, darlin’?”
“I’m just plain folks now,” she murmured.
“Where’d ya come up with that shit? There’s nothin’ plain about ya, ‘Ro.” He tugged a lock of her hair to punish her impudence.
“When they took my powers, I felt…unwhole.”
“How do ya feel now?”
“Alive.”She leaned up onto her elbows and traced the fine lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes with her fingertip, then her lips.
“Ya scared the shit outta me.”
“You, too.”
“When ya jumped in ta protect Lorna, my fuckin’ heart stopped. My whole world stopped.”
“It’ll be a while before I jump out in front of anything, any time soon. Or off of anything…do you know how disjointed it feels not to be able to fly, Logan? I was standing out on my balcony yesterday, and I suddenly got dizzy from the height!”
“Now ya know how I feel. I hate heights,” he admitted.
“You didn’t mind flying with me!”
“The hell I didn’t. Eh…scratch that. It was with you. But my stomach wasn’t thankin’ ya.”
“Duly noted. Mental note: Logan hates to fly,” she mused.
In the meantime, how would she cope with not being able to again?
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