6. The war without
She felt the moment he entered the bar. Her skin jumped to attention, and the noise of the crowd muted to the thump-thump-thump of her heartbeat. Rogue told herself it was hate that galvanised her like that, leaving her all a-shiver inside. Her own scent told her she was lying. Suddenly, the fight wasn’t enough.
Oblivion had been close, the cocktail of alcohol and adrenalin pushing her higher every time she landed a blow – hell, even taking one helped. She’d been nearly there, where it was all blackness and fury, until he paused at the door (a roundhouse that crunched into Joe’s back), worked his way to the bar (punch, mule kick, sidearm) and slid onto the stool closest to the cage. Gestured to the barman (roundhouse, drop, roll, side kick), taken a long swig of his beer (somersault, airborne kick) then turned his back to the bar and let his eyes find her (jab, jab, hook, spring kick). The ferocity of her attack increased, her opponent dropping under the flurry, then neutralised with a kick to the knee. (Sorry, Joe.)
She waited for the rush, the payoff, but it never came. Angry, she forced her attention away from him, telling herself she owed Jack her focus for the minutes she needed to finish this. The two brothers were used to having each other’s back, and the big Marine was vulnerable now. He knew Rogue well enough to know she wouldn’t hurt him too much … but he didn’t know Rogue wasn’t always in charge.
Usually, she let Wolverine run the fights. He was raw instinct, primal power, and lots of cunning. But the past twelve hours had left the other beast rattled, and his hate and outrage was somehow seeping out of the psychic cage Marie had built for him. It had served her well, today - her energy levels were higher than usual, the blows harder, the decisions a split second faster. She’d used him, and then put him back in his box. But echoes remained.
She found herself disabling Jack with a level of malice that was disturbing. She tried not to hit around the head – no point killing a man she had no quarrel with – but she wanted to end this. Quick punch to the temple, and he’s never gonna bore you again, a black whisper taunted her. She batted it away but the strategist in her supported the idea, and before conscious thought could intervene, she had swept her friend low with a helicopter manoeuvre, and landed a double punch to the side of his head.
Jack was bleeding from the ear, she realised with horror. Unconscious. All because you can’t wait to play with the Wolverine. She didn’t even bother to refute the suggestion, but the shivers running up her spine were from fear rather than arousal. So easy. Too easy for the animal to slip its chain and take over, if she was distracted. If she was tempted.
All the while, Logan was watching. Face carefully blank, but eyes shocked, and sad. Judgement. What had she done to earn that? Why couldn’t he simply hate her? It was defiance that forced her to claim the victory, and make a show of relishing it, even as the medic organised to have her friends taken to the hospital. And it was defiance that pushed her forward, out of the cage, across the floor, to him.
Bourbon, and beer, she noted, as she drew close, willing herself to concentrate on something other than the bulk of him, and his smell, and the lines of his body as he lounged, waiting for her. He’d traded in his yuppie gear for the delicious familiarity of worn jeans, a wifebeater, and a flannel shirt that she was pretty sure she’d worn a few times herself.
Her skin prickling with goosebumps after an early morning workout, the brush of warm flannel as it enfolded her in woodsmoke, cigar and Logan. The heat in his eyes as he saw her wearing it, the hand that came out almost reflexively to smooth her sweat-soaked hair, and glide down to the collar, tracing the placket downwards with dizzying slowness as his bunched fingers traversed her neck, her breast, lingered near her yearning nipple for a long moment of temptation, then was yanked away with a curse. Watching him stomp into the woods, but cuddling that feeling to her every time she found yet another shirt strewn across chair backs, or crumpled on the sofa, or tossed on the hook in the bathroom.
She had so many of them, those memories of restraint and near-misses and combustible moments, and once, they had been a source of comfort. Now, the what-might-have-been tortured her, because she wanted to call them false and lies, but she couldn’t. Something told her no, even as the resentment coiled in her stomach, and the rage boiled her blood – something told her to treasure that. Treasure them.
Rogue shrugged. Too many voices telling her what to do, that was her problem. They could all shut up for a while and let her enjoy this – beer, bourbon, and brave talk with a man who was good enough to eat.
“Well, hello stranger. What brings you to a fine place like this, tonight?” Sweet and southern, and let’s forget he’d just watched her beat two men to a pulp in a cage. Not to mention her stab at homicide a few hours earlier.
“Just admiring the scenery, darlin’. Heard the entertainment was good out this way.” He drew hard on a fat, pungent cigar and streamed a cloud between them. A literal smokescreen, she smirked. Logan wants to play.
Her tongue flashed out. She hardly needed it to taste the air, they both knew that, but his eyes darkened anyway, and his body tilted towards hers, as she rolled the flavours of the Cubano over her tongue and licked it from her lips.
“Mmm, uno Belicoso. Como muy … tentador.” Her lips wrapped around the adjective as if sipping at temptation itself. The cigar. Or something else she wanted to wrap her tongue around and taste.
She saw the moment he reached that conclusion, and used it to step into the lazy sprawl of his body. Becoming less lazy, and more tense by the second, she noted. Good.
He reached for the glass of bourbon on the counter, and she smiled at the miniscule retreat before doing the same. Tasted it, and wanted it to be him.
“First time we’ve had a drink together, darlin’.” She wanted to remind him of countless nights of beers, and joints, and even a misadventure into hard drugs they’d taken together, but she knew what he meant. “I shouldn’t be letting you do this shit,” he’d said, uncharacteristic worry in his voice. “You’re too young. Too young for all of it. One day, we’ll have a drink in a bar together. We’ll toast each other and we’ll pretend I haven’t spent years fucking corrupting you. We’ll both be adults and we’ll be fucking civilized about it and maybe then we’ll do what consenting adults do.”
He was watching her mouth, she realised, and the strange look on his face made her wonder if he was reliving the same memory.
“What are we drinkin’ to?”
Oh, but she just had to.
“You, fucking my brains out?”
“Think that’s a good idea?”
“Excuse me? Mr “ride my cock like a cowgirl?” Bit late for playing hard to get now, sugar!” She wanted to keep it there, lewd and flirty and a just little bit nasty. She leaned close, bringing the full length of her body to brush against his. “Yee, fucking haw, cowboy. You really gonna pretend you don’t want that?” Her hand stroked down between their bodies to find him huge and hard. He couldn’t pretend that away.
“Nah. Instead I’m gonna pretend that you don’t hate me for some reason I am completely fucking oblivious to. That you didn’t leave me hanging from a fucking wall while you got off on my blood. Or, here’s a good one: that you didn’t betray your new friends and try to kill me.”
“Then I’m gonna pretend that I didn’t fuck you up in the first place, didn’t take advantage, and didn’t turn you into the mean little bitch that just nearly killed a guy for kicks.”
“Then I’m gonna pretend that you’re actually in control of your life, and not at the mercy of a bunch of freaks running around in your head, and that you are actually choosing to do this, and that Marie is still in there somewhere.”
Her hand stilled, then. That was altogether too much honesty for one night.
Rogue stepped away without a word. Spun on her heel, and crossed the floor to the cage. Climbed the stairs and stood there, until every head in the room turned to watch.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight The Pen has a real treat for you. You all know me, I am the Rogue. And no one has ever beaten me in this cage. Few men have balls enough to challenge me, and those that do … I send them home in pieces.” She blew a kiss towards the door, where another pair of sentries had taken over for Joe and Jack.
“But tonight, there is someone who can challenge me. Might even be able to beat me. Once, they called him King of the Cage. And when I was a little, bitty girl, he taught me how to fight.” She laughed, shattered glass even to her own ears. “He taught me lots of interesting things, none of them legal.” And just in case the entendre wasn’t quite clear enough, she brought a hand to her chest, and let it linger a moment before it drifted downward in a parody of a man’s caress. He growled then, a sound full of disgust and annoyance, and banged his glass onto the table before rising to his feet and pulling on the battered jacket he’d thrown on the chair next to him.
“I’m not fighting you, kid,” he told the room – if she’d been closer, he would have waggled that accusatory finger under her nose, she was sure.
“We’ve been there, done that, got the friggen’ postcard. There’s nothing to prove.”
He turned to leave.
She felt blackness sweep over her, and suddenly, her senses were screaming. Rage, pure and black. Hate. Him. Always him. Him in the big house. Him with the doting daddy. Him, with her. Him with her!
Victor’s pain. Sabretooth’s rage. And hate that obliterated every boundary that kept her sane.
The voice was a familiar, husky contralto, but it had been stripped of its Southern cadence, and the warmth that even Rogue shared.
“Yes there is, runt. You never could beat me. Out there, or in here – I’m all she needs.”
*
Logan knew their détente was over when she took her hand off his cock. He could almost hear the Wolverine howling in disgust, and it was hard not to agree with him as Marie’s exquisite ass waltzed itself back into the cage.
He snorted as she challenged him in front of the whole bar, and then proceeded to defame him. (Yeah, his conscience jeered. You were very careful not to step over the line into statutory rape. Not like you didn’t give the line a damn good nudge, though.) But he wasn’t particularly angry, just sad and disappointed. He’d been enjoying her so much, hot eyes and her slide into Spanish bringing back the month they’d spent in La Habana. “Run out of cigars, Logan?” Matter of fact, he had. And she needed to learn to speak Spanish, and this was to the place to do it. Something else she needed to learn, too, and he had a few ideas about how to teach her. And if it needed a month by the pool with her wearing next to nothing, well, he was up for that. Heh. He’d worked on Marie that month, finding out who she was and who she wanted to be. And he’d seen her again, tonight, the girl who laughed with delight as she made him climb the walls with hunger. That girl was so close to the surface, when she laughed and teased like this, and even when Rogue mouthed his own crudities back at him, she did it with Marie’s lips, and Marie’s scent, and Marie’s desire.
Then he heard Victor, speaking from her lips. Claiming her. The Wolverine screamed inside, and the tumult obliterated reason and sentiment like a giant wave. Unstoppable. Control splintered and fractured, and he barely heard his own roar as he leapt forward, tearing off his shirts as he went. He cleared the steps to the cage in one bound, and thrust his face up close to hers.
“She is mine, Victor. Mine!”
Rogue simply smiled at him, flat black eyes spitting ancient hate, and bowed slowly, a mocking parody of the respect she had once paid her sensei. Then she struck, her hand moving so fast he failed to see it. Three gouges, running parallel, from cheekbone to chin.
And she was licking his blood from her fingers. Again.
He roared and threw himself at her in a full body assault that should have knocked her to the floor beneath him. Instead, he had to drop and roll, because she had danced backwards, out of range, with inhuman speed. He swallowed his surprise and sprung to his feet, only to find her already there, attacking.
Wolverine was in the lead, kicking and thrashing and raging his way through the fight, but Logan’s consciousness lurked in the background, analysing it. Her moves were fluid and chaotic. Well, good. He’d worked hard to get her to abandon those sequences she loved. Kick, punch, stomp – she’d been so fond of it, her whole weight had fallen onto the wrong foot when he asked her to do it in reverse. Now, she could lead from either leg, and strike from any direction. Oof. Nothing like a boot in the back to remind a man to focus.
He stumbled, and suddenly she was upon him, banging his forehead into the floor, one knee behind his neck and the other pinning his arm to the ground. Well, kiddo, you forgot one thing, he thought. You are as light as feather ….
And I am not, he smirked, as he propelled himself upwards with one arm, then sprung to his feet to lift her high into the air. She was still gripping his hair, and it fucking hurt, but it was better than digging holes in the floor with his face. And he had about 2.5 seconds to grab the advantage.
He catapulted himself backwards as he felt her legs lock around his waist, slamming her into one of the uprights of the cage with a tremendous thud. He felt the air leave her body in a huff, and the spasm of shock that went through her, and used it to spin around, catching her with the front of his body before she could begin to slide. Legs, those lean, delicious legs, around his waist now, and that was better. That was really fucking good, in fact.
Logan wasn’t sure whether it was him or Wolverine that bucked a few times, but he figured it was good strategy anyway. If Marie wasn’t in charge, he had a chance with Rogue. Victor had started this fight, but he’d been damned if he’d let his sadistic bastard of a brother finish it.
He needed Rogue, and he was pretty sure he knew what Rogue needed.
The heat between them was building as he immobilised her, catching her deadly fists in one hand and using the other to pin her neck back against the netting of the cage. He lowered his head until they were forehead to forehead, and emphasised their position with another thrust that told her she was exactly where he wanted her to be.
“Got you wanted, did you Rogue? Are you so friggen’ desperate for me you have to make fight out of it, kid? Couldn’t have just waited to see where we might have ended up?”
Might have, that is, if Rogue hadn’t got scared at the thought of being honest. Being Marie, he reckoned.
“You don’t need those freaks to win, you know. Rogue has the skills, and she’s a fucking tough little bitch. She can win this all by herself. Wolverine just makes you rash and Sabretooth – well, you don’t wanna be catching that sort of stupid, darlin’.”
The growl that rose from her throat was pure, pissed off menace, classic Sabretooth, and the Wolverine in him howled at the chance to dominate his nemesis. Logan knew better, angling his head to kiss her, hard and fast and brutal, but full of want.
Their tongues tangled together, and he slid the hand at her neck into her hair to get closer to the miracle of her mouth. Inside, Rogue’s dark, spicy taste was dominant, but undertones of Marie were still there. Still unbearably, immeasurably sweet. He’d only tasted her once, and it had made him bolt for sanity, because that sweetness was so fucking seductive he knew he’d never be able to give her up if he ever kissed her again.
But that had turned out so fucking well, he reminded himself as he lifted his head. Giving her up turned out to be the biggest mistake he’d ever made. He’d always known he needed her, but maybe it was time to face the fact that she needed him as well.
In more ways than one. Needed him as an adult. Needed him to step up, and pull her out of the game they’d trapped themselves in.
“Rogue,” he moaned into her mouth. “Marie.”
She stilled, and he could feel her heartbeat galloping, her scent transmitting lust, and anger, exhilaration, and panic.
“Rogue,” he corrected, sliding his tongue down over her ear. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t want her.” He pressed closer, his hardness nudging her somewhere that made her convulse and gasp. “But I can’t pretend I don’t want you either.”
He lifted his face away from hers and looked deep into her eyes. Brown, again. Dark chocolate, stippled with honey and amber. Marie’s eyes.
“But you need to get control. Whoever’s in there, you aren’t them. You sure as hell aren’t him. And until you put him away, we can’t do this.”
He rocked his hips against her once more. “Don’t make me wait too long, darlin’. I’ve waited long enough.”
Spinning away from her, Logan went into a crouch and watched Rogue drag in deep breaths on her way to equilibrium. Her way back to him - to their fight. The room was completely silent, he noted, and his mouth quirked in amusement. He’d never seen a clinch quite like that in the cage either.
***
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I apologise in advance for my possibly execrable Spanish. I spoke the language once, but it was a long time ago, so I'm unsure of my grammar these days. Anyone who is a fluent speaker who wants to beta the next section for me, drop me an email! (We might just be off to Habana ...)
Chapter End Notes:
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