Author's Note: Thanks again for the continued support! Thanks to Amy Hunt, Beezzi, Cronus100, Fat ppl are harder to kidnap (lol), growlscout, and poegrrll for favoriting this story. Thanks also go to Canucklehead Cowgirl, MrMoaksy, and Wynterheart for following.

Growlscout—thanks so much for pointing out the inconsistency in the previous chapter. You're absolutely right that she does bite Logan on the neck when she changes him over (thanks to those little nanobots, he doesn't stay that way). I'll try to address this in a future chapter.

This is one of my favorite chapters from the story so far. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Chapter 6:

They spent the next week following a simple routine: waking up just a little earlier each day, spending their time sparring inside or outside, taking leisurely runs through the forest, and doing chores like lugging water from the pond to refill the house's tanks or chopping firewood. Every morning and evening, Jubilee would drink Logan's blood out of a ceramic mug.

In the hours before they went to sleep, they read or reminisced about missions and people from their pasts. As the day that marked the third week of her visit neared, Logan was relieved to see none of the normal signs of discontent that would signal her preparation to leave. There had been some dark moments where she'd reverted to her moody self or went off by herself for hours in the forest, but she'd always come back. She was definitely improving, and he'd found that she had begun to laugh more and take a part in telling some stories. Where he had first done most of the talking, it now seemed as if they were truly dialoguing as they relived some of their more amusing mishaps. Now she was the one starting conversations and even revisiting moments from their former lives.

Neither of them mentioned what had happened the previous week, though there were occasionally tense moments when they bumped into each other in the small bathroom or when their bodies were locked together in combat. Those instances were never mentioned, despite Logan's initial comments about not avoiding the subject.

Time and time again, Logan had caught himself looking at her in a different way, whether it was noting how certain falls of light cast deep shadows in her cheekbones to give her a regal quality or admiring the way some of her new clothes outlined her softly curved body. He dreamed of her, and although he didn't always recall the dreams, he woke covered in sweat, his body hard and ready. He struggled with the new attraction to her that was so different from any of the feelings he'd had for her in the past. It seemed foreign, and he felt guilty, almost as though he were taking advantage of her in some way.

Tonight, he'd opted to run on his own, telling her he'd be back later. He pushed his body to the limit as he crashed through the underbrush, ignoring when his sweatshirt snagged on a skeletal tree branch or bush. He had to come to terms with his emotions, he'd realized the night before when he'd found himself standing outside the bedroom door, fighting the urge to take action on some of the fantasies he'd been having about her.

He began to run faster, fighting through snow drifts that were topped with fresh powder from the previous night's storm. Get over it, he lectured himself, she thinks of you like a father. He startled a rabbit that had been hiding in the underbrush, and for the fun of it, he gave chase, following the bobbing white tail ahead of him.

But did she? Wasn't that the larger issue he'd been dealing with for over two decades? She wasn't the same girl that had saved him from crucifixion or even the girl who had lost her mutant powers. She was a completely different woman now. A woman he wasn't sure he knew, understood, or could read.

He lost interest in the rabbit when he scented a pack of wild wolves off to his left. He veered toward them instead, figuring they'd give him more challenge and might provide a welcome distraction.

She was different, he had to admit to himself. He was beginning to learn more and more about the new woman she was. Their conversations had been deeper, and she'd commented on things that had happened in their past in a new way, a more mature way. She didn't focus on the excitement and adventure that had captivated her as a teen. Now she talked more about the larger issues around what they had been fighting for, holding her own in philosophical debates about good and evil and the mutant cause.

He could hear the yipping ahead of him and realized he was close. He released his adamantium claws in preparation, fighting the inner voice that tried to argue that perhaps she didn't view him as a father figure any longer. There had been a few times where he'd thought he had caught her looking at him in a different way as well. Once had been when she'd joined him while he'd been shaving. He'd not had a shirt on at the time since he'd just finished showering. He argued with himself, knowing it had to have been his imagination, but he could have sworn her gaze had clung to the muscles of his chest and stomach longer than was appropriate. And when he'd bent to lug firewood into the house, he'd turned in time to catch her admiring his backside before she'd flushed red and dashed back into the cabin.

It had to be his imagination, he argued with himself. If it was anything, it was the fact that they'd both been alone together in the wild for almost three weeks. He groaned in frustration, flexing his fingers as he ran harder. If he wanted to stay sane, he was going to have to take a trip into town to see one of the women he had built casual relationships with over the years. Perhaps that would clear out these intense emotions and direct them in a more acceptable direction. When he heard distant footfalls, human footfalls, he slowed, realizing someone was pursuing him. No one would be out on the mountain unless they were looking for him. He stopped running as he realized that wasn't the truth any longer. Whoever was here could also be looking for Jubilee.

He stopped, turning and dropping into a crouch as the sounds came closer. He widened his stance and braced himself, his arms spread wide in preparation of a fight. When he caught her scent, he relaxed his stance and withdrew his claws. As he watched Jubilee jog into sight, he sighed, "I thought you were stayin' back at the-" He was cut off in mid-sentence as she launched herself at him feet-first, easily toppling him over into the snow since she'd caught him off guard.

He didn't stay down for long, easily rolling in an attempt to pin her beneath him. Somehow she managed to draw her knees into her chest, and with a thrust of her legs, she sent him flying off of her. He flipped in the air and landed on his feet as she rolled to hers as well. She had a wide grin on her face, white flakes clinging to her body, hair, and even her eyelashes from their tussle in the snow.

He feinted to the left before diving to the right, his claws unsheathed now. She didn't fall for the maneuver and instead ducked beneath him to flip him over her head. He used the momentum to catch a tree branch and swing up a few yards onto a higher branch. She laughed in pleasure but didn't attempt to follow him up. Instead, she took up a defensive stance and waited for him to continue to take the offensive.

He crouched on the thin branch, one hand resting lightly against the bark to help him maintain balance. "Get lonely back there all by yourself?" He asked as he caught his breath.

She grinned up at him and shrugged, watching him for a few moments before growing bored and rushing forward to slam hard into the trunk of the tree, sending tremors along its length. She succeeded in causing him to lose his balance, but she was disoriented when a heavy shower of snow fell from the higher branches to bog her down and obscure her vision. He was able to catch a limb as he fell and swing himself toward the trunk where he sunk his claws in deep to slow his slide back to the ground.

He used the moments where she was trying to struggle out of the deep snow to launch himself at her, claws first. He was able to drive her deeper into the snow and pinned her to the ground, his claws slicing through her shoulders and upper arms and into the frozen earth beneath her. She wasn't so easily beaten though. When she realized she couldn't move her arms since they were literally pinned down, she twisted and turned beneath him, trying to get her legs into position so that she could kick him off her. In response, he twisted the claws into her shoulders until he heard her grunt with pain. When she still struggled, he lowered his body more fully onto hers, trapping her legs with his own.

When she stopped moving and swore, he grinned down at her, "You know the rules," he taunted, "Say 'Uncle'."

She said something quite unflattering about his character, and when he only just laughed and shimmied his shoulders so that more snow fell down onto her face, she mumbled the word quietly.

"What was that?" he teased, "I must be getting hard of hearing in my old age."

"You lousy, no good…" she trailed off and lifted her face to yell "Uncle!" in his face, her red eyes sparkling in anger.

He laughed and released her. He got to his feet and offered her a hand. He was only half-surprised when she swept a leg under his to knock him back into the snow. He continued laughing and looked in her direction. He couldn't see her until he pushed the white, fluffy mounds out of the way, revealing her self-satisfied smirk. "You are such a sore loser," he complained.

She made a derogatory sound and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and you're not?" she asked, "I recall you serving me a mug of blood with a healthy dose of salt in it when I trounced you a few days ago."

He laughed at the memory of her expression when she drank and pushed himself into a sitting position, shaking his head to try to knock some of the snow off of himself. "All's fair in love and war," he quipped as he got to his feet again.

This time, she accepted his hand and tried to brush some of the snow off of her shoulders and arms. After a moment of just spreading it along her clothes instead, she laughed, giving up the sour-grapes act. Still chuckling, she said, "You should have seen your face when I came running up to you. It sure took you long enough to realize I was behind you. I wasn't even running at full vamp speed. What were you thinking about to be so distracted?"

He shrugged, definitely not wanting to share those thoughts with her. Instead, he just started off at a light jog back toward the cabin, "I dunno, but now I'm cold and wet. First one back to the cabin gets the hot shower first."

Thanks to the advantage of vampire speed, Jubilee won the race. In fact, she was almost finished in the steamy bathroom when she heard him stomping the snow from his boots on the front porch. She slipped out of the shower and into a silky-smooth robe decorated with a peacock feather design. She was towel drying her hair as she walked back out into the bedroom and he walked in. He stopped for a moment at the door, and she paused in rubbing her hair dry as she felt his gaze rake over her form, pausing at the places where the robe clung to her still-damp body. The moment was over so quickly, she could have sworn she imagined it.

In the next instant, he was gesturing to the pile of her wet, bloody clothes. "Shoulders heal okay?" he asked.

She nodded and rotated one arm, "Yep. It was all healed up before I was even back home."

He nodded and slipped past her into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. She brushed her wet hair back into a ponytail and pulled on one of the pajama outfits the boutique owner had so helpfully supplied. It was peach cotton and satin. The bottoms where shorts edged with lace, and the top was a tank with an empire-waist seam so that it billowed beneath her breasts.

Had she imagined his gaze lingering at her breasts? She gazed at the mirror in front of her that only reflected the room behind her. Possibly. More than likely it was just wishful thinking. Since that night… she sighed. She'd been thinking of him a lot, dreaming of him, watching him in ways that was in no way acceptable based on the history of their relationship. Annoyed with herself for going down that path again, she turned away from the looking glass. She had been trying to talk herself out of her attraction to him for over a week but was coming to the conclusion that it was no use.

She heard the shower turn off as she entered the large main room. She curled up in the corner of the couch and picked up the book she'd been reading. He emerged from the room in a pair of navy sweat pants, the towel still hanging around his neck and over his bare chest. He headed for the fridge for the beer she knew he enjoyed after a good spar. She pretended to focus on the book, but instead took advantage of his back being turned to let her gaze linger on his muscled back and backside. Her fingers tightened on the book and she bit down on her bottom lip. When he turned, she forced her gaze back to the text in front of her. She didn't know how she'd spent so many years in his company, so often in states of undress such as this, and had never noticed just what a fantastic body he had.

He collapsed onto the couch next to her and took a long drink before setting the beer down on the table. He rotated his head a few times to stretch his neck before lifting the towel to rub against his blue-black hair, causing it to stick up around his head. She smiled and glanced back down at the text attempting to reread the same paragraph she'd been on since he'd come into the room. From the corner of her eye, she watched as he finger-combed it into some semblance of order and opened the carved box on the table to pull out a cigar. He cut the end off, tossing it into the fire as he stood and headed to the kitchen. He lit one of the burners on the stove and bent to light the cigar before flicking the range off and returning to the sofa.

She dropped the book in her lap, giving up the ruse of reading. He raised an eyebrow as he puffed on the cigar, tugging the towel from around his neck and tossing it in the general direction of the washer/dryer combo that was in a closet off the kitchen. She grinned, feeling playful and relaxed. "Don't you know that smoking's bad for your health?" she asked.

He grunted and puffed again, blowing a stream of smoke in her direction. "Yeah," he responded, "but everyone's go their vices, right?" He paused, a devilish gleam in his eyes, "At least I don't drink blood."

She laughed in response, "So you're trying to tell me that blood is worse than beer and cigars?"

He nodded with mock seriousness and then took another drink and another drag from the cigar as if to prove his point. She
grinned and pushed herself to her knees, moving closer to him. "Well, if you are indulging your vices, then it's only fair that I do as well."

When he shrugged, she took the opportunity presented to her. She took the cigar from his hand and set it in an ashtray. She paused in the act of bringing that wrist to her mouth. After making a split-second decision, she placed his arm on the back of the couch and moved closer to him, kneeling close to his side. When he met her gaze, she couldn't read what was in his dark eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low and husky, "Tryin' again?"

She held his gaze and nodded, letting one finger stroke the rapidly increasing pulse at his neck. She wasn't sure how he would react, but she felt nervous, excited tension begin to course through her body. Not breaking her gaze, he carefully leaned forward to set his beer on the table and then leaned back against the cushions. The way he deliberately held her gaze and moved slowly, allowed her to realize that they both knew what they were getting into. He was giving her a chance to change her mind and back down. Very slowly and purposefully, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.