A Few Quick Thanks:
First HUGE thanks to all readers and reviewers and I'm glad you're enjoying the series so far. :-)
Vegeta7423, thanks and I'm very glad to have my Evo story ideas working again. Hopefully I'll be back in the swing of the fandom with this series.
Desert-Rose6, just all around hugs to you 'cause you're a major driving force behind my being able to write this story. ((HUGS))
Pyromaniac666, no need for tears I've updated! Hope ya like the chappie. :-)
Wittyfantom12, *hmmm & noncommittal smile at the Ororo kiss suggestion* Thanks for the review and keep those chipmunks away. :-P
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Say Cheese
"I cannot believe you did that," Tabitha continues to gaze at me in awe as we walk away from Kitty's room.
"Don't tell me you weren't thinking of doing it yourself," I give my friend a knowing smile then giggle again as Shadowcat's reaction to my kiss replays in my head. "I wish I'd had a camera!"
"Oooh, great idea," BoomBoom exclaims excitedly while grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the bedroom we share at the institute. "I know I've got one of those disposable ones around here somewhere," she declares as soon as we enter the room.
"Everything's always 'around here somewhere' with you," I shake my head in resignation and move to help her search through her disorganized belongings in search of the camera. "It's no wonder you can't find anything when you need it."
"Hey, I know it looks like a mess, but I've got a system," she defends the chaos of her side of the room and rummages in her closet for what they want.
"Some system," I scoff as she fails to find the thing in the closet and I have no luck locating it in her dresser.
"I didn't say it worked," she moves to the bed and drops to the floor to look underneath it, "just that I had one," I roll my eyes at that typical response then watch as she jumps back to her feet with a triumphant shout. "I knew it was here! And look," she hurries to my side and shoves the camera at me, "a full roll."
"You don't really think we'll use all 24 do you?" I ask, knowing the answer just by the way she was pointing out the fact that the thing hadn't been used yet.
"We can certainly try and, hey," she grins mischievously, "it's all for Kitty's experiment. You wanna do all you can to help a fellow X-Grrl, right?"
"Who are we going to get first?" my eyes light up with the possibilities.
"I say first come first serve."
"The guys should be hanging out in the rec. room about now, talking about sports and all that boring junk," anticipatory smiles curl both our mouths as plans begin to form.
"You are such a bad girl."
"Takes one to know one," we share a laugh at that then I bring us back on track. "Let's go shut up some boys!"
With that we rush from the room, down the hallway and to the stairs intent on reaching the first floor of the mansion where we'd find the guys and talking excitedly along the way about who each of us wanted to kiss. She called dibs on Ray, while I tagged Bobby for myself and quickly added Sam before she could list him. That began an argument on exactly how I'd be able to get Sam, who was really rather shy around all the girls, to talk enough to qualify as a test subject for the experiment.
"I'll get him to talk about that racing stuff he likes to do," I say after a moments thought. "You get that boy started about dirtbikes and he forgets all about the fact that he's talking to a girl."
"True," Tabitha concedes with a groan that speaks of the time she made the mistake of asking him about that hobby of his. "Will that count, though? I mean if you ask him to talk about something then how much can you really want to shut him up?"
"Like you care about rules," I come to a stop and scoff at her again.
"True," she looks at me with a shameless grin that makes us both laugh and we continue quickly toward our destination.
Still wrapped up in our discussion neither of us notices the man at the bottom of the staircase as we begin racing down it. Which is why all three of us are surprised when I plow into his back causing Tabitha to crash into me and the momentum from the combined impacts sent us tumbling down the last two steps to land in a tangled mass in the foyer. A familiar growl of aggravation from the hard male body beneath mine tells me instantly that I've just taken down the Wolverine. Cringing inwardly I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself this isn't really happening. Then Tabby untangles herself, gets up off my back and helps me to my feet and I force myself to face the prone man before us.
"Sorry 'bout that, Badger, we didn't see you there," I hear her say to Logan as he pushes himself back to his feet and turns to glare at us.
Wanting very much to strangle her for provoking him with that nickname she tends to favor on top of everything else, I close my eyes again and wait for the fireworks to begin.
"There are rules against runnin' in this place to prevent accidents like this," he growls at us both, ignoring Tabitha's words. "Someone could have gotten hurt or something broken."
Gasping at the words 'something broken' I turn and glance worriedly at the camera in BoomBoom's hand to make sure it wasn't damaged in the fall. Seeing it still in one piece, I relax and then tense again upon realizing she's not done trying to irritate the bristly man before us.
"Hey, no harm no foul, ease up on the stern glares, Growly Gus," the blonde orders with a careless air. "It was only, like, two steps and that isn't enough of a fall to crack an egg. I'm sure your hard head survived it."
"Tabitha," I whisper, frantically trying to shut her up before that vein in his forehead explodes.
"That's beside the point, Smith," each word comes out slowly from between his grinding teeth. "Someone could have been hurt, which is why there are rules against runnin' inside tha mansion."
"Geez, Louise, all this place has is rules. How am I supposed to remember them all?"
"Here's an easy way for you to do just that. Know that if it's something you want to do, it's against the rules here."
"Well, then, the rules here are just meant to be broken."
"The rules here are in place for your safety, kid," he growls and begins on a lecture I've heard him give Tabitha many times before. "I don't go around makin' them up for my own amusement."
I start blocking him out after that because the words aren't really directed at me and even if they were I know them by heart. 'The rules are to keep you from getting hurt by your own careless stupidity,' 'they help keep the institute in one piece so we don't all have to live in a wreck like the Brotherhood house,' and so on and so on and so on.
Then it occurs to me that we're being given the perfect opportunity to test Kitty's theory again. A quick look at Tabby tells me the blonde is well aware of that fact and that she's planning on being the one to kiss him into silence.
"You can't," I whisper with a hand going to her wrist to hold her back when she would have made her move toward him. "Rogue'll kill you."
"Oh, puh-lease," she casually waves off my words. "You think I'm afraid of Miss Angst?"
"No," I reply with a knowing glance at my friend, "I know you're afraid of her. She could so kick you butt and we both know it. She made it very clear that he's off limits to you."
"She's not in charge of me and she'll never know unless you tell her."
"Remember your brilliant 'take a picture' idea?" I lift her hand up to draw her attention to the camera she's holding. "It's going to be rather obvious what happened and if you do it to him she'll freak. I," a wicked smile curls my lips as I cast a sideways glance toward Mr. Logan, "on the other hand was given no warning to keep my hands off him so I get to do it."
"No way. It's my turn," she argues, very obviously wanting to lock lips with the big guy herself regardless of how Rogue will react to her doing so.
"This isn't about turns, it's about opportunities."
"Fine, then. This is my opportunity."
"No, it isn't."
"Yes, it is. He's lecturing me."
Mentally conceding that she had a point there, I pause and hear Logan continuing his lecture in the background, apparently uncaring of the fact that we were both ignoring him. Taking a page from Tabitha's book on ways to incur the Wolverine's wrath, I turn to the man and very firmly tell him to, "Shut up."
He stares at me in shock for a split second then breaks off his 'reason for rules' speech to Tabby to begin giving me his 'respecting your elders' lecture.
"He's lecturing me now," I point out with gloating satisfaction.
"That's cheating!"
"All's fair," I shrug without a shred of guilt at using such a dirty tactic to win the debate.
"I get Sam for this," she huffs, silently giving me permission to kiss away on our current subject. "And if he's half as good as he looks I'm taking Bobby as well."
"Just don't forget to take the picture. I know I'm going to want to proof of this one," I order, focusing my attention on Logan and making a mental note to deal with her conditions later.
She gives me an abrupt nod of agreement then jerks her head toward the man we'd been arguing over with an unspoken prodding for me to hurry up and kiss him.
Not having a whole lot of experience with kissing guys I'm not about to be rushed through this process. So slowly he probably doesn't even realize I'm doing it, I move in closer to Logan, carefully avoiding his hands when he gestures with them expressively. He's a lot bigger up close than I ever really noticed, though he's not a very tall guy, so I have to take a moment to figure out the best way to get my lips up to his. With a gleam in my eyes I come to the decision to go about this in the most shocking way possible to make sure he's indeed silenced.
While he's preparing to move on to the next sentence in his lecture I jump up on him, throwing my arms tight around his neck and locking my legs around his waist, vaguely aware of Tabby calling out something like 'Ride 'em cowgirl' as I do so. The second he opens his mouth to question my actions I yank his head down to mine and press my lips to his. I move my mouth tentatively at first, twisting my head from side to side to find a comfortable angle that didn't bump our noses together.
Then I've got things just the way I think they're supposed to be and I let my tongue in on the action while my hands move up to muss his always kind of wild hair. I explore his teeth, almost cutting myself on his surprisingly sharp incisors, before delving deeper to flick my tongue over his. My eyes pop open in shock when I feel his tongue moving against mine, but the second I focus my gaze on his face I can tell he's only using it to try pushing mine out of his mouth, not to return the oral caress.
His eyes are wide open with a look of utter disbelief in their really rather attractive dark brown depths, his black eyebrows have shot up to almost touching his hairline and I can feel his hands trying to push me away from his mouth and unwrap my legs from his waist at the same time.
Not really a flattering reaction, I pout inwardly as I slowly withdraw my tongue and unwind my limbs from his body.
My cheeks feel a bit hot and I'm pretty sure I've got a nice red blush on them as I touch my feet back down on the ground and step away from him. He looks at me without saying a word and I fidget a moment before dropping my gaze to the floor, a tad awkward now that it's sinking in that I just kissed the Wolverine.
Touched tongues and swapped spit with him, as Tabitha would call it.
I hear a clicking sound behind me and turn to see my friend lowering the camera she's just snapped and giving me a thumbs up to indicate that she's captured the moment on film as promised. Biting my lower lip I look back up at Logan, wondering how he'd react to the other girl's actions, but he seems to be focused on coming to grips with my kissing him and doesn't even notice that his picture's been taken. After a moment of just staring at me, he shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair which was spikier in places thanks to my fingers then moves past me to climb back up the stairs we'd bumped into him coming down.
"You are going to love the pics I got of that!" BoomBoom exclaims excitedly as she moves to throw an arm around my shoulders.
Pics? Plural? I think with a gulp.
"You took more than one?"
"Hell yeah! I got the look on his face would you jumped up on him and a great picture of the kiss and then that last one of his expression when you let him go. Priceless!" the blonde gives her camera an enthusiastic kiss. "So," she turns to me with a gleam in her eyes, "what was it like?"
Kitty, you've created a monster, I think watching her and forgetting for the moment that I myself had been equally enthusiastic about this project until moments ago.
