Chapter 35: Fallout from a Kiss

After my initial shock that Victor was kissing me, I melted into his kiss. It was passionate, and possessive, and a little rough – his fangs grazed my lips. It was exactly what I had wanted, what I needed. If only that moment of perfection could have lasted. All too soon, I felt my mutation kick in and my skin began to absorb Victor.

Practically frozen with the rush of thoughts, feeling, and sensations that had seeped into me, I didn't push Victor away as I probably should have. After a couple seconds, he pulled back, clearly weakened and pale, and staggered a few steps back till he rested his heavy form on an old oak tree.

I smiled weakly at the lingering heat on my lips while I processed Victor's influence. He hadn't kissed me out of insatiable desire, much to my chagrin. He had done it for a far more pragmatic reason, namely to more efficiently hunt for any clues in the area by lending me his powers. But there was still a fair amount of lust directed at me.

I smirked at him and said with confidence, "You want me."

Using all his strength he pulled himself upright and gave me a look that probably made lesser men tremble. "And you want me. What of it?"

The smirk still firmly on my face, I sauntered over to him till nary a breath was between us. His eyes were cold and forbidding, and he didn't shrink from me even though he had just felt the full effect of my powers. I was searching for something sassy and sexy to say to him when I realized that despite our flaws, the deadly power at our disposal, and the overall destructive nature of our mutations, neither of us was afraid of the other. Suddenly, it didn't feel like a game anymore. Whatever connection it was that we had, it deserved more than mindless flirting. And so I let all pretenses die, hoping Victor would do the same.

Victor spoke plainly, "We got no time for your frail crap, we have work to do. Take a long, slow breath in, tell me what you smell."

I closed my eyes to focus on the scents in the air. I smelled Sabretooth, earthy, salty, and oozing with testosterone. The woods around me smelled crisp, with the decay of leaves, dirt, and the clearly different scents of oak and pine. Yet ever here and there, there was a scent of something amiss, unnatural. I turned towards one of the smells, something clearly metallic. "Metal, over there, not far." I opened my eyes to see Victor looking at me, a satisfied look on his rapidly recovering face.

"Looks like you got the hang of it. Let's split up, see what we can find."

I nodded and started to follow the metallic scent while Victor went off in the other direction at a far more brisk pace. It took me a couple of minutes to track down the metal, which was nothing more than an empty beer can. I became more adept at discerning scents and tracking their exact location as time went on. Whether I was refining my skills or Sabretooth was subconsciously helping me, I don't know.

After about half an hour, I could feel my feral senses in rapid decline, so I rushed over to Victor and asked him what he wanted to do about it. He said nothing, just gave me another deep, passionate kiss. Then he sent me on my way. If it weren't for the fact that I really did want to find some clues, I would have just wandered around the forest, going to kiss Victor every half hour. As it was, I was rather tempted by the idea.

I managed to keep my mind mostly on my work, focusing on hunting down anything that smelled like leather, fabric, or rubber, which I figured would be the best bets. There were plenty of beer cans and bottles to taint the scent of the wilderness, but I was looking for evidence of a murder, not teenagers drinking in the woods, so I did my best to ignore them. Digging up what ended up being my second ATV tire wheel, a little bit of Victor's psyche popped to the surface of my mind. His consciousness was different from anyone else I had absorbed. He was fueled by passions: anger, lust, conquest, gluttony. In many ways he was an animal, living on instinct, he was just an animal with the mind of a man. A surprisingly bright man, as it seemed. But long ago, he embraced the feral part of his nature, which he felt had the sort of honesty that mankind did not. I had to agree with him on that point. Animals could be mean, but they're never nice to your face, making you trust them, just to be extra cruel to you later.

"Huh," I muttered to myself, tracking down a mixed scent of leather and rubber, "maybe I don't want Victor, maybe I just need a pet." I laughed to myself as I knelt down on the ground and started to dig up what was destined to be another shoe. My nails were already shot to hell from tearing away at the clay soil. I wish I had had the foresight to bring a shovel. I sighed as I came across the sole of a shoe, but kept digging, just in case.

"I should collect all these shoes, maybe I'd be able to find matching pair eventually," I said loud enough so that Victor might hear. I couldn't see him from where I was, but I could sense he was close. The black, faded New Balance shoe was almost free of the ground, so I tried to pull it out, but met with some resistance. I yanked harder, and managed to dislodge it, but also managed to fall back on the ground with the effort. I growled at the shoe responsible for my predicament, but my growl ceased once I looked down at my quarry. Several bones filled the shoe, and from the hole I had dug a leg-bone protruded.

XvampiresXwolverineXOmG: Yep, you were right. But it's not like he had to kiss her to lend her his powers . . .

tx peppa: I kind of hate how they made Rogue from the movies middle-class. I liked that she was poor white trash that made something amazing of herself.

wiccagirl-2005: Rogue was probably thinking the same thing, about damn time he kissed her.