PASTEL

After dinner that evening, I poured Logan a bourbon and got a glass of merlot for myself before I set about creating the right mood. Made a fire. Lit some candles. Put on some music. I have a big collection - the voices in my head have quite a varied taste in music - and I figured I couldn't go wrong there with the classics, especially seeing as how Logan was likely around when they were new songs hitting the charts. Even if he didn't consciously remember them, surely a little of that familiarity had stuck with him through the decades? Some Billie Holiday. A little Louis Armstrong. Some Johnny Cash... perfect.

Strangely enough, it seemed the more I tried to set a relaxing mood, the more uncomfortable he became. Looking back, I think it's because Logan prefers a natural reaction to something staged. He responds to sensuality over overt sexuality. He has seen too much of one in his life and not enough of the other. It's one thing when there is a deep emotional connection providing subtext to the encounter... but with us? New lovers? It was the casual touches that drove him.

I had the sense he would find an overt come-on rather lewd; that open sexuality with a stranger seemed rather coarse to him and yet sensuality drew him like a moth to a flame. A blush, the sight of a hard nipple under cloth, the graceful fall of a woman's hair, the gentle swell of her breast— these things drew an immediate reaction from him.

He was such an odd mix of old-fashioned reserve and intense physicality. Always touching me. Almost like he preferred to see with his fingers because they've had so few brushes with beautiful things. There is a sense of awe in how he touches a woman. Like a boy holding something up to the light with wonder in his eyes.

He can get overt sexuality anywhere. Sees it on the street every day and chooses to ignore it. His life has been full of ugliness. Men like Logan, they have seen such terrible things. Twisted things. Dark things. Things they shoulder to keep from touching the rest of us.

I wondered again about that pebble in his shoe and his overt physicality. We spoke intimately, but he shared little of his true self with me. The mountain's heart was guarded fiercely in a shelter of stone, pillow talk or not. He is not the sort to show his secret heart to a stranger, even if she is someone with whom he shares a complex history.

We talked some, but it was through touch that he expressed feeling. Sex was spontaneous and he backed off when it felt staged. Like there was a sense it was disingenuous, that he was being played. He likes a natural reaction, to know that desire and arousal are products of the spark between us and not some artfully crafted illusion. I felt the same way.

That sense of wonder, of tenderness with women... he expressed it physically because he only knows one kind of response. Like an animal, although that sounds cruel. He's the most human of men. I think he believes people see him like an animal. In some ways, there is a reason for that and he knows it... and yet he is also aware that he has finer feelings, even if he doesn't always understand them. I also had the sense that the one who mistrusts him the most is himself.

The Wolverine. He is an ocean of red granite.

He was surprised, I think, when instead of coming onto him in the quietly seductive mood I'd set, I got out my slim case of pastels and arranged myself at his feet. He drank. We talked. I worked on the sketches. The fire and the liquor worked on him. Slowly, naturally, he began shedding his clothes. Boots off. Belt off. Shirt unbuttoned and removed. Socks off. Jeans. By the time he was sitting up to pull that tight white tank over his head, I was fighting to keep my breathing and my hands steady.

His little smirk said he knew it too, the bastard.

Another quarter hour ticked by. It was the first time he'd undressed knowing my goal was sketching not lovemaking, and yet it happened so naturally between the talking and the touching that he remained open and comfortable with me. The Wolverine in repose. Not something I think many people ever get to see.

He was beautiful, heavily built and all male from the thick muscles cording his arms and chest and thighs, to the heavy stubble shadowing his square jaw. So many invisible scars. There was no part of him that didn't scream masculinity. From the crisp hairs on his forearms and legs to the dark tangle at his groin that framed the heavy droop of his genitals. God, I could even smell him... like some big warm male animal.

My hands trembled slightly as I added color to the sketch, blending it with my fingers... a bit here and there... touching the page as I wished to touch him. The slope of his thick neck. The shading of stubble on his throat. The curve of his shoulder. The heavy flesh between his legs that was beginning to rise against his belly.

He touched me too, absently stroking his thumb over the tender flesh of my instep, slowly drawing me closer and closer to him as the evening progressed. Pushing his hand up under the edge of my skirt to stroke the back of my knee while I stroked the page, shading and blending.

It was like this downward spiral, falling together into two very different sorts of intimacy. At one point, I leaned forward to get another color from the tin and he frowned at the mark I left behind on his flesh when I removed the steadying hand I had on his shoulder.

I looked at my hands. Each fingertip a different vibrant color and I had smudges on the backs of my hands where I had been less than careful. Probably had some on my face too from tucking my hair behind my ear or rubbing at the tickle I'd felt on my cheek earlier.

I felt a blush rise. It had been so long since anyone had witnessed me lose myself so deeply in my work. I felt desire rise, too, as he responded to my blush by growing even harder. His body was so beautiful like this, flushed with desire, dusky and engorged with a rush of heated blood.

More red.

I wanted to touch him, to stroke my fingertips along the length of his erection, but I thought better of it at the last moment and pulled my hand back, unsure of his reaction. My hands were stained with rich color. He was starting to sweat. It would transfer.

Beautifully.

His eyes were on the pulse beating wildly at the base of my throat. It was strange - despite the wild things he'd probably done, I had the sense that for all its naive simplicity, this experience might be outside the bell curve of what a man like Logan considered acceptably kinky. It would certainly be unfamiliar. Maybe he wouldn't care to be marked so obviously. He'd never even seen real artist's pastels before in his life, much less had their vivid color rubbed on his naked flesh.

I moved to rise so I could wash off the color staining my fingertips, but his hand shot out and caught me before I'd moved more than a few inches. I could feel the heat of his palm. He wrapped his thick fingers around my slender wrist and spoke only two words.

"Touch me."

We pitched headlong into the abyss, falling on each other in a sensual tempest. It was highly erotic but not wildly out of control. I felt the heat of his mouth, felt the sweet stretch as he entered me, felt the blunt pressure of his sharp, even teeth, but neither of us left any marks that couldn't be washed away after. Sweaty-slick, we slid against each other, rolling from the couch to the floor... over the sketches that had been forgotten in our haste to touch and kiss and taste.

I clung to him, to his thick neck and wide shoulders as he drove me higher, to that place where I can see the colors that only exist in the kaleidoscope that plays against my eyelids when I come so hard the world threatens to go dark.

I don't know if his eyes were closed when he came. He'd flipped me beneath him, pushing in deep from behind while he entwined our fingers and panted out his coming against the smooth skin of my back. He held me afterwards, his arms wrapped around me so tightly. For a long time we lay there in silence, our breathing slowly returning to a normal, even rhythm. The fire burned low. Eventually, I turned over to look at him.

Three steps forward. Two steps back. He was closed again, expression guarded and unreadable... However, his body read like a road map of places I'd touched him. Matched with the colors still staining my fingers, you could tell exactly what part of me had touched exactly what part of him.

There were fingerprints on his throat and forearms, smears of purple on his left side and blue on his right. Both colors blended at the base of his spine where I'd held on tight, urging him deeper. Smears of vivid colors were everywhere, but concentrated in certain places. Arms. Hips. Cock.

With a start, I realized it was all over me too, transferred to my body from his by sweat and friction. He kissed me then, slow and sweet and deep. Opening back up a little, but clearly still a little uncomfortable. Not soon after, he left to shower alone while I slipped on his shirt and put the room to rights; cushions back on the couch, blanket refolded, righted the potted plant we'd overturned when we rolled into the legs of the coffee table.

I was kneeling on the floor, returning the pastels to the tin and gathering the scattered sketches when I heard the shower cut off. I looked down and smiled. In my fingers, I held images of the same man who was responsible for the sweet ache in my body. I brushed my fingertips over the nude image I'd captured as I felt his come seep from me in a warm trickle.

My smile got softer.

It was a very sensual feeling. Like stained fingers sliding over sweaty skin. Like a lover's touch. Like the way pastel kisses paper. Like the way a man kisses a woman.

Like the way a Wolverine kisses a Rogue.

Up next: Charcoal. Their days were slipping away faster and faster, but they made time for more than just the painting...