She woke sweating, blood rushing in her ears, her beating heart pumping like a rickety engine. A tangle of dense muscle surrounded her, and glimpses of a constricting snake flickered in her mind before fading in the darkness. Her tattered breathing slowed and steadied as she remembered where she was. In the gloom - she wondered vaguely about the time - she found his face looming just over her shoulder, his left arm draped over her, his right arm her pillow.

"You were having a nightmare."

Fuzzy images of violence and panic hovered just beyond her recollection. "Yes," she whispered although she did not remember it.

Her eyes were slowly adjusting but even so, as she turned her head to look at him, he was still in shadow. It disconcerted her to know that with his eyes, he could see her perfectly. She shivered, and his left hand rose to her shoulder, turning her on her back to face him.

"It was about me."

"No," she refuted though she couldn't remember. "I don't know. No, I don't think so." But then after a beat, "I don't know."

Her head lay in the bend of his elbow, cradled between forearm and bicep. His left hand now gripped her side gently, holding her firm against him. Noticing her lower body was still twisted to the side, he straightened her out, turning her knees toward him, and then, after a moment of consideration, lifted her legs and draped them over one of his thighs which he had slid snugly up to her buttocks. An interlocking puzzle of arms and legs, she felt comfortable, and yet not completely at ease.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," he said, his shadowy face providing ironic contrast to his words. Again, she shivered but said nothing, considering his words, considering the day and the events that had propelled her into his arms. As if he were following her thoughts on a reel, he spoke again just as she was remembering his anger, the ripping of her clothes, the madness in his eyes when he bruised her flesh. "I'm sorry...for before."

She remained silent, considering, still considering. "Victor," she finally said, "there's a part of you that wants to kill me." It was a statement, because it was true. She knew it was.

He ceased his kisses, but kept his mouth pressed into the soft skin behind her ear. "No. There isn't."

Twisting to look at him, she saw only a grey mass with caverns for eyes and turned back almost immediately in discomfort. She didn't like this, his clarity while she squinted in the dark. "Don't lie to me. Jean and Professor Xavier both said that all of you feelings toward me are ones of rage."

"The mindfuckers said that, did they?" At the tensing of her body, he amended his words. "I mean, the telepaths."

"I'm not stupid, Victor. Don't lie to me, and don't say some foolishness like you feel rage but it doesn't mean you want to kill me. I know what rage is to you."

"Do you?"

He was full of endless diversions, and she wasn't going to follow. She closed her eyes and tried to clear the remnants of nightmare from her mind so she could return to sleep.

Feeling her begin to drift away, he spoke again. "It's a tactic, Ororo." She ignored him breathing deeply, turning her head by millimeters farther away from him. "When I sense someone in my mind, I fill my thoughts with something easy and believable. Something they would expect."

She felt herself being drawn back; she wanted answers. "But there was much more anger toward me than anything else they asked you about."

"Asked me about?" he growled. "I like these little euphemisms you've come up with to talk about those fu..telepaths." She closed her eyes again at his outburst. "Okay, okay. Look, what they saw was because I really didn't want them seeing what I was thinking about you."

"And what were you thinking?"

His lips smiled against her neck. "Well, I wasn't thinking about killing you." Another slip. She sighed and closed her eyes. "All right. I was thinking about this."

"You mean you were thinking about sex," she said without opening her eyes. Now, it was his turn to fall silent. She could tell he wasn't sleeping because his lips slid by the barest of degrees up and down her neck. Finally, he muttered a half-hearted 'yeah,' then lifted himself up so that his face hovered above her again. Though she couldn't see him, she felt his eyes bore into her.

"Ororo, you don't have to be afraid of me. I'm not interested in…hurting you." But as he said the words, they sounded creepy, what a serial killer might say before committing a heinous act. She turned into herself, folding her arms protectively over her chest. "Ororo, I swear…"

He leaned down closer to her, his lips grazing her forehead. "What happened before won't happen again." They slid down her temple. "I swear to you. I swear to you." His hot breath was on her cheek, and then at her neck. The heat began rising in her groin again, and she wondered if he would be able to smell the fresh arousal.

When his fingers crept between her knees, slowly spreading them apart, she knew he had. His hands slid up her thighs to her apex, his claws gliding faintly back and forth. "You smell so sweet," he said, retracting his claws so his fingers could stroke more firmly. "Why don't you let me make you feel good?" She tried closing her legs, but he silently and firmly pushed them apart again, spreading her even more the second time. His hands went back to their insistent caresses when one of the hard nubs of his claws breached her folds and ran across her clitoris, drawing an involuntary gasp from her. "Oh yeah, Sweets. You know I make you feel good." Fingers pushed inside while his thumb orbited her pleasure center, and she found herself helplessly grabbing him for support, her right hand going to the arm beneath her head, her left clawing into his chest. His body rumbled in response.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," he murmured as she felt herself being taken away. "I'm not going to hurt you. You don't have to be afraid."