He woke her with soft kisses and the gradual peel of sheets away from her body, replacing the slight draft with his warmth. She “mmph”-ed her complaints until his fingers found her nipples, gently teasing them until they pebbled. Then her moans underscored his low chuckle.
“Someone doesn’t wanna wake up…uh-uh. No ya don’t, darlin’.”
“Too…early,” she protested sleepily, not letting her eyes crack all the way open. She made out the top of his dark head descending over her warm skin, then arched in response as his mouth engulfed one tingling tip.
“No it ain’t. Ya don’t even wanna know what time it is.”
“What?” That made her eyes snap open, before they fluttered shut again in pleasure. Drat that man and his mouth… Her fingertips trailed lazily up his broad back and tangled in his hair, thick and hopelessly disheveled.
“We slept in.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned, tugging his head back to meet his amused look. Her expression was stricken. “I missed a meeting.”
“Probably missed a couple.” He was nonplussed as he nibbled her palm. “Relax. I called into the office already.” She froze.
“What’d you tell them? What about Selene? Shitshitshit!” She struggled to move out from beneath him and find her clothes, but he looped his arm around her waist and help her captive. She cut her eyes up at him, which only made him laugh harder.
“Relax. Yer sick. Sudden case of whooping cough, measles and gout. Ya got a hold of a bad burrito last night.”
“Please don’t tell me you told Selene that. Oh, God…this looks bad. Very bad. You called her to tell her I’m sick. How does that look?” Logan shrugged, then sighed.
“Quit worryin’ yer pretty head, ‘Ro. I didn’t call Selene. I called Scott.” He rolled to his back and took her with him, plastering her against him and tugging the sheet over her to keep her warm. “What’s the point of havin’ a Client Service rep fer a best friend if he ain’t got yer back?”
“He won’t tell Selene I had gout?” Relief washed over her and he felt the tension leave her body.
“Bingo. Scooter’s good at last-minute excuses and tellin’ people what they wanna hear. Including Cruella DeVille.”
“Ursula,” she corrected him. “She’s more like Ursula. More cunning. Selene actually likes dogs, except they’re the small, ratlike, yappy variety.”
“Sounds scary,” Logan yawned. He kissed her temple and was rewarded by her burrowing snuggle.
“You feel cozy,” she murmured, content.
“Thanks.”
“And sexy,” she added, tracing his collarbones.
“Careful, ‘Ro; ya might give a guy the impression ya don’t wanna get outta bed.”
“Now where did you get that silly idea from?”
“Silly? Hey!” She tweaked his side savagely, and he gave her hip a little spank. “Stop that.”
“You make it too easy.”
“Do not.”
“You’re all yummy and sensitive. It doesn’t take much to push your buttons.” She punctuated her accusation with a nibble along his jawline, and he groaned in approval. “See?” He stared down into her face and smirked.
“Yer a mess.” She rolled her eyes.
“Thanks a lot.”
“I like it. This is how ya should look all the time.”
“What? Naked with a pillow mark on my face and sleep in my eyes?”
“The naked part’s fine. I just mean, unbuttoned. Not so uptight.”
“I’m not uptight!”
“Come again?”
“Hmmph…” He gently ran his fingertip over her pout, then stroked that tempting hair back from her face.
“Ya hold a lot back.”
“So you say.”
“Yer all business. When does Tory ever get ta come out an’ play?”
“When there aren’t numbers to crunch and flights to check into and meetings to dial into…” This time his finger shushed her. He shook his head.
“No talking shop. Not today. This is the unofficial start of yer vacation, ‘Ro.”
“What’s this ‘Ro stuff?”
“It’s yer name.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s part of it, yer first name,” he explained. “Instead of givin’ me yer middle one when we met, ya could’ve given me Ororo.”
“I wasn’t sure if I’d get to that part,” she pointed out. He drew ticklish lines up and down her arm, circling the crest of her shoulder.
“Ya should’ve given me a chance.”
“Can I have a do-over?”
“As many as ya want,” he husked, and he caught her hand that was roaming over his chest and slid it down toward his throbbing, twitching flesh between his legs.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” she argued, but her voice was full of seductive promise and lacked conviction. He guided her hand over his erection, molding it to him until she adopted the rhythm he craved. Ororo raised up onto her elbow and loomed over him, watching him arch and clench his eyes shut with each stroke and pull of her hand.
“Here’s yer do-over,” he rumbled. “Aw, yeah…” He bucked into her grip as she squeezed, and he felt stiff and hot, his head growing more swollen and flushed. She lovingly stroked away a pearly drop from the silky head with her thumb and bowed her lips to his nipple. Logan tangled his fingers in her hair, one of his favorite addictions, letting waves of it brush and tickle his chest.
“No…here’s my do-over,” she said, letting her words trail over his skin, against his taut pecs and the broad cage of his ribs, meeting the drum of his heartbeat. Her tongue dipped into his navel and made his abdomen jump. “And here…and here…”
“Ororo…”
“Say it again,” she whispered as she lapped at the tip of his sex.
“Nngh! ‘Ro…baby…Ororo!”
“That’s what I like to hear.” She took him inside the lush heat of her mouth, and he was lost. Her name spilled from his lips again and again, in one form or another. She lost count.
Lost count, she chided herself. I’m an underwriter!
He pulled her back up to meet him and rolled Ororo onto her back, intending to finish what she started. “No work today. We’re playin’ hooky.”
“Okay,” she agreed on a moan as he entered her in one neat, hard thrust.
By the time he’d brought her to completion, the sun shifted another five degrees across the sky.
*
They ate breakfast for lunch, sharing one plate of scrambled eggs that had “everything but the kitchen sink” thrown into them as they lazed on the couch. Ororo snuggled under the blanket as she sprawled across his lap. Logan channel-surfed with the remote, earning him a low snort.
“What?”
“None of it’ll look any better if you flip so fast through it that you can’t even tell what’s on.”
“There’s nothin’ on,” he insisted.
“You can’t tell!”
“Sure I can.” He flipped the channels at an infuriating pace, just fast enough for her not to be able to protest when something looked familiar, but slow enough for her eyes to track the image and recognize what she was looking at.
“Don’t make me take that away from you.”
“Not on yer best day, Sunshine.”
“Hmmph.” She pouted at him, then savagely bit into the wedge of strawberry-smeared toast he offered her. Logan grinned, wiping away a fleck of it from the corner of her mouth and sucking it off his thumb. “Quit playing with your food.” He feinted, evading her attempt to take another bite, then poked it against the corner of her mouth again.
“Oops.”
“Logan!”
“Lemme get that…” This time he took a more direct approach, lapping it straight from her lips, and she moaned into his kiss. She stared up at him in a mixture of aggravation and amusement.
“Go ahead. Watch ESPN if you want. Or something with titties and explosions. Doesn’t matter to me.” She settled herself more comfortably, huddling into his borrowed flannel shirt. It felt so soft against her bare skin, like a security blanket, and Ororo felt like she could doze off again.
“I get to watch titties?” He sounded incredulous. “Man, I’m lucky.”
“Typical.” Logan felt affection tug at him as he stared down at her, looking completely at home against him.
“Ro?”
“Hm?”
“Yer beautiful.”
“Flatterer.”
“Ya are.”
“Thank you,” she yawned. “So’re you.”
“Pffft…”
“You are,” she argued dreamily. “Didn’…wanna…admit…” Her voice drifted off, and Logan turned down the sound on the set until it was almost on mute. He studied her silently, taking in minute details that he never had time to enjoy. She liked sleeping on her side, with her arms crossed over her chest. She was just old enough to have the beginnings of laugh lines, when she actually laughed. He wanted to hear her do it more often.
Their time in bed gave him the chance to study her body in the warm pool of sunlight that settled over them when he first woke up. Her belly intrigued him, taut for the most part, but with the tiniest hint of softness, yielding to the slight depression of his fingertips. The skin just below her navel was slightly ruched, seeming tattooed with a deeper brown, jagged mark whose origin he could only guess. It wasn’t a scar.
The sides of her breasts had tiny, transparent stretch marks that he traced with reverent lips before she fully woke. He loved their weight and fullness and how perfectly they filled his hands.
Logan sighed, finally deciding on Pardon the Interruption as he finished the last crust of toast. Part of him felt guilty at urging Ororo into such a lazy day, but she felt so good sprawled across his lap.
*
“Ya don’t hafta do that.”
“You cooked.” Ororo plunged the empty, oily plate into a sinkful of soapy water.
“Yer my guest.”
“I’m not a slob.”
“Yer desk says different.”
“I hate paperwork,” she admitted. “I’m hopeless at filing, except for my stuff at home.” Logan embraced her from behind.
“No paperwork today.”
“Did you have anything else you had to do?”
“You.”
“Besides me.” His arms tightened around her waist.
“Anything ya want.”
“Talk.”
“Darn,” he grumbled. “Sure I can’t talk ya back into bed?”
“You know I’ve been holding this in. I know you have been, too.”
“Whaddya have on yer mind?”
“Twenty questions. Me first.”
“Shoot.”
“Were you a little relieved when I left that day?”
“Define ‘relieved.’”
“We didn’t have to do that awkward little dance that people do first thing on the morning after.”
“Then no. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even thinkin’ that far ahead. I just wanted ta know what ya liked for breakfast.” He nuzzled her as she set a clean glass in the rack. “It coulda been like this.”
“It could’ve,” she admitted. “Sorry.”
“S’okay.”
“Your turn.”
“Ya said something that won’t quit nagging me.”
“Shoot.”
“The best part of you. Ya said ya lost it.” She stiffened, then carefully disengaged herself from his arms. “Ro?”
“You don’t want to know about that.”
“Not if ya don’t wanna tell me,” he complied, “but I wish ya would, darlin’.” He felt her close up and cursed his own mouth. The air between them fogged up and thickened, and he watched her deflate, hugging herself.
“Logan…I…”
“It’s all right. I’m sorry. Ya don’t hafta explain. I can give ya another turn.”
“No,” she protested, and her voice was husky and thick, slightly garbled as she spoke around her fingers. He knew she was trying without success to hold back the words, trying to contain something she’d locked up too long.
“Ororo…it’s all right.” He gently took her shoulders and tried to turn her around to face him, but she fought him. He settled for stroking her back.
“It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault,” she told him shakily. “It’s no one’s fault,” she repeated, as though she was trying to convince herself. She felt him embrace her again, and her arms covered his locked around her waist. She stroked his knuckles and gathered her thoughts.
“We were going to name him Nate. He was due on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t my favorite holiday before we were expecting him. I hated it in high school. And…I don’t like it now anymore, either. We were so excited. So excited.” Dread crept over him as she continued to speak. “He was going to be beautiful. Our Nathan. I had his room all ready. Car seat picked out. I already sent out the thank-you cards from the baby shower.” Logan mouthed the word “shit” and closed his eyes, wincing. She just continued to stroke his knuckles, and he felt a warm tear drip onto his skin. “Vic didn’t want me anymore. I knew that. But he wanted Nate. We both did. That was the only good thing about staying together.”
“No. You were the good thing, ‘Ro. He was going to be beautiful, because you’re beautiful. Everything about you.” She took no comfort in his words.
“He didn’t want me.”
“Then he was a fool.”
“There was something wrong with me. He got tired of me. I wanted too much from him.”
“There wasn’t anything wrong with you.”
“Yes, there was.”
“His cheating was the only thing wrong. That wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t, darlin’.” He needed to see her face, to look into those limpid blue eyes and see that she was hearing him, feeling what he had to say. He guided her to a chair, where she tried to sit with her back to him. Logan knelt in front of her and took her hands, squeezing them to get her attention. She shook her head and stroked his hair.
“I’m okay.”
“Okay.” He insinuated himself between her knees and wiped away her tears, cradling her face. “I’m here.”
“It still hurts.” He nodded, and more tears slicked his palm. She closed watery eyes and bowed her lips into his hand.
“I’m here,” he repeated, and she finally gave in, wrapping her arms around him so tightly he feared they’d snap off.
*
Logan couldn’t remember the last time a one-night encounter lasted twenty-four hours.
Ororo ran his errands with him. They enjoyed the fresh air and took a stroll through Quincy Market, sharing a Greek spinach pastry and watching jugglers outside in the court. They skipped the rest of their twenty questions game and just talked, and talked, and talked, filling in the gaps left by their arguments and workplace banter. They briefly checked their emails and made one or two return phone calls but skipped the teleconference requests. It felt too good to be lazy, and it was completely out of character for both of them.
Ororo told him she envied him having a full-sized tub in his apartment. He ignored her protests as he brought back the bottle of dishsoap and began to fill it with water just shy of being too hot. Minutes later they eased into the tub and let the heat engulf them, lapping at their lax bodies. They listened to each other’s breathing and the sound of the thick suds disintegrating a little at a time.
“I’m not that uptight,” she murmured.
“Nah,” he agreed.
“You’re not a jerk.”
“True.”
“I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“Good.”
“Ororo?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s…never mind.” She tilted her head back from where she lounged against his shoulder and frowned at him.
“What?”
“It’s okay.” He eased her head back and kissed her temple. “It was nothin’ important.”
*
I don’t just like you. That’s a big flamin’ lie, darlin’. I love you so damned much it hurts.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Summary: James and Ororo finally take care of unfinished business, at least in one regard.
Additional Note: I’ve been so BLOCKED! Sorry for the delay. It’s taken this long for my muse to wake up and smell the espresso.
Additional Note: I’ve been so BLOCKED! Sorry for the delay. It’s taken this long for my muse to wake up and smell the espresso.
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