His mouth is just barely not touching her ear when he says, "I want to fuck you, hard." And she draws back and looks at him and thinks: this is not the Logan I know.

So when she cycles through possible responses in her mind, responses like "uh..." or "are you crazy?" or some stammered and humiliatingly shy refusal, she figures to hell with it and goes with the least likely of them all. She smiles slowly, and she says, "Okay."

They are being different people, after all; they're being strangers. She's good at that, and she knows she can be a girl he's never met before.

She tastes alcohol when he kisses her, his tongue driving into her mouth like a prelude to what (she thinks) is to come. In her fantasies it's never been like this. It's all been very innocent, with Logan taking the place of David on her bed back home, and when that doesn't seem quite right, the same scene only in his room here at the school and without, of course, the coma-inducing mutation factor.

Or – and it's this one that always makes her feel guilty, a guilt somehow deeper but less wrenching all at once than anything else she's gone through since she manifested – she pictures them in Bobby's bedroom, and he's the one bringing her some other woman's clothes, and he doesn't turn his back when she wants to change. She does it anyway, right in front of him, and then he's the one to kiss her, his hands sliding under the blouse she's just put on. That's where she always stalls out, though, because every time, she gets distracted with wondering what it might actually feel like to have a man's hands on her skin.

That, and being disappointed that she can't force her mind to concoct some other scene from that night. It always strikes her as a shame that she'd bought her nightgown in the midst of a silly daydream about him seeing it someday, and when he actually did the circumstances were less than ideal. Her imagination never has been all that great, so she can't help but wish things had been just different enough to help her along.

She never would have come up with this on her own. Logan just showing up, crowding through her door in the middle of the night and saying that, and kissing her like she never bothered dreaming of even after getting her skin under control. There's nothing to do but figure out, quickly, how to counter the insistent thrusts of his tongue, and grip his hips with her legs when he hoists her off her feet, and clutch his shoulders hard because at the back of her mind she's still afraid this is a dream and if she falls it will be like tumbling out of the jet. She'll blink and it will be over.

When he shifts his hold on her, one arm secure around the small of her back and the other shoving roughly under the shirt, skimming over her spine and unhooking her bra with a practiced twist, she knows she's wide awake. She tears her mouth away and stares at him for a moment, stunned, and then she stretches her arm over his shoulder to push her door shut. "Lo--lock it," she says. Her voice starts out a whisper and then gets stronger, adjusting mid-sentence to her growing resolve.

She's going to give him anything he wants, she decides, even if what he wants isn't really her.

He's perfectly still after she speaks, except for his fingers moving in small circles between her shoulder blades. She thinks she could get lost in his eyes, in the sudden seriousness of his gaze, in the sound of his voice finally saying, "Marie..."

She swallows hard and loosens her hands from his shoulders, slides her arms around him and leans in to speak right into his ear, just as he did. "Lock the door, Logan."

He lets out a hoarse groan and sets her down slowly. But she understands, and she takes the two steps he allows, pushing him along with her, and the sound of the lock clicking into place is like church bells on the hour, his claws sliding out, her feet hitting the pavement after she flew the first time. Something to file away, something to remember as amazing.

His hand covers hers while it still rests on the doorknob, slides a little to curl around her wrist. This time when he kisses her it's right between gentle and rough, convincing her that she's in control of her own utter submission. He tugs her bottom lip between his teeth and her breath hitches; he picks her up again to carry her to her bed and her body rolls against him instinctively.

He eases her onto the bed with all due care, but then he stands back and crosses his arms and says, "Undress," in that stranger's dangerous voice, a dare and a command and a plea all at once. She hesitates and he becomes Logan again, familiar and tried and true. "Come on," he says softly. "Let me see you."

So she closes her eyes and she breathes deeply and she pulls her shirt over her head, letting her bra fall along her arms as she lowers them. Three buttons undone on her skirt and she leans back to lift her hips, shove it down and kick it off to the floor. And then she stays there, lying back on the bed and forcing herself to be strong enough to look at Logan, who's staring down at her with an expression she doesn’t think she's ever seen before. "All of it," he says, and she can barely hear him. She closes her eyes again, and thumbs her panties towards the same fate as her skirt.

As soon as that's done his hands close around her ankles, tug her entire body along the mattress, toward him, until she can feel denim and muscle against the insides of both her thighs. She can't look, can't open her eyes when she's this exposed and spread wide.

She suddenly wants to cry. She didn't imagine much, and she never thought it would be like this. The air swirls around her and heat presses close, and then his breath grazes across her face. "What do you want?" he asks, just before his mouth closes over her earlobe.

"You," she replies, spitting it out quickly before she can do something stupid like stopping herself. "You," she says again, stronger. "Logan...please."

"Good girl," he murmurs against her skin – but then he's suddenly gone, and her eyes fly open to see him standing in front of her, arms crossed and eyebrow cocked in patient expectation. She stares up at him, trying hard not to tremble. "So come get me," he finally says.

"Wh-what?"

"Clothes, Marie. Take 'em off me."

She nearly chokes, and wonders if he'll leave if she tells him the truth, that she doesn't think she can.

She's pretty sure he will. So she keeps her mouth shut and she sits up, and her hands shake wildly as she reaches slowly for his belt. "Do me a favor," she whispers, just as her fingers touch the warm metal.

"What do you want?" he asks. The echo of his earlier words startles her. She lifts her eyes to his face and it helps, to see the familiar softness in his gaze. Logan, she tells herself. He's playing some kind of game, but he's still Logan. "Talk to me?" She bites her lip for a second, and steels her nerve and unbuckles his belt "Just...just talk. I want to hear your voice."

His low chuckle seems to vibrate the air between them, and she can certainly feel it all the way up her arm as she pops the button on his jeans. "You're gonna have to help me out a little. I'm not the sort to chatter on command."

Rolling her eyes, she yanks his zipper down. "I don't *know*. Tell me stuff."

"Like?"

"Like –" and she slides her hands across the sides of his hips, fingers skimming under the waistband of his jeans, and stills. "Tell me why you're here. Why you're doing this."

He takes a long moment to respond, and she doesn't move during it. "At all, or like this?"

"Either. Both."

"Because I want you," he says after another pause. "That's why at all."

And that raises another batch of insistent questions, but she bites them back. She stares at her own hands, moving down and taking his jeans with them, and she swallows hard and forces herself to look up at him. "You can have me."

He smirks at her, but the way he lifts his hand and passes his thumb across her lower lip keeps it from being smug. "I know."

Maybe it's smug after all, but she doesn't particularly care. She blinks at him and curls her fingers around the backs of his knees. "So why...why like this?"

"That's a little trickier." He bends a little and swats her hands away, and a couple of kicks have his jeans flying a few feet across the floor. And then he crowds her again, pushing and leaning forward until she has nowhere to go but back, onto her back, Logan pinning her at the hips with only thin cotton boxers and a shirt separating them. "I want you to know that you can have me." He dips his head and grazes his mouth across her neck, under her ear. "That it's okay to take whatever you want from me."

Her heart nearly stops at that; her breath catches and she moans a little, unable to stop it. "I just want you," she whispers shakily. "*Now*."

His low chuckle fades into a groan when she lifts her hips against his, feeling bolder with every passing moment. She's waited so long for this, it seems, so long to hear those kinds of things from him, and if assertive is what he wants...okay. She can do that. She can be that, for him.

So she pushes her hands under his shirt, determinedly shoving it up until he takes over and yanks it off. The same with his shorts, and then it's done and she can feel every inch of him that's in contact with her.

"Kiss me," she murmurs and he does, messy and demanding, lewd and wet and, after a few minutes, in perfect counterpoint to the rocking of his body against hers, the rub of his erection against her skin. She tightens her thighs around his hips, trying to encourage him to do what she can barely dream of putting into words.

But then, if he did it why can't she? "Logan," she gasps, tearing her mouth away, her breath coming in short pants. "I know what I want. Specifically, I mean."

And it's like she's said the magic word. The smile he gives her is slow and suggestive, and between that and the fingers he's somehow eased between them, between her legs, she can feel a low, tight heat curling in her belly and spreading through her body. "Yeah? What's that?"

She can't quite say it, not then, not with the sparks of sensation let loose with every flick of his fingers. She jerks beneath him, her body suddenly reacting to things far beyond her control, and she focuses for a moment on pulling in deep gulps of air. "Oh god," she gasps. "Logan..."

"Let go," he mutters against her ear. "C'mon, baby. Let go and tell me what you want."

And his fingers speed up and her thighs tense and her back arches and she thinks that if she died, right here and now, she would have absolutely no complaints.

Except for one. Shuddering through the aftershocks, she clings to him and passes her mouth wildly, desperately, across his shoulder and neck, trying to somehow communicate her feverish gratitude straight through his skin. "I want you to fuck me," she finally mumbles, when her breathing is closer to being under control. "Hard."

Logan tenses and stills for a moment, exhales hard. "You got it, darlin'," he says in a tightly controlled tone, but when he shifts a bit and starts to slide into her it's easy and slow and careful. She thinks she should be scared, or worried, or something, because it's all so new, but she stares up at Logan and sees his concentration, his clenched jaw, his eyes watching her for signs of discomfort, and she can't be any of that.

Because this is no dream and Logan is no stranger, and if she can't quite figure out all the nuances of what is going on between them, she just doesn't *care*. Logan moves to nuzzle under her breast, bite gently at a nipple, lick the hollow of her throat – and then comes back to kiss her gently, lazily, as easy and deliberate as his smooth thrusts into her body.

And it's not what either of them spoke of out loud, but she's not going to protest. It feels too good; it feels like what always should have come next in every different fantasy. It's Logan taking care of her, making it good for her, filling in the blank spaces in her life and her mind.

It's Logan, giving her everything she never quite dared to dream of.

**end**