This chapter continues IMMEDIATELY after the last one so you might need to refresh your memory of the last few paragraphs of chapter 7 for it to really flow right...
Chapter 8 – A Perfect Equilibrium
Sorry?
She was sorry?
When he realised what had happened, what he had done, Logan scrunched his eyes shut, dropping his head forward to bury his face into her hair, guilt overwhelming him.
No...please no...not that...
But her words had revealed as much...that Marie hadn't just absorbed the latter part of his memories as he had stupidly assumed, she had absorbed his nightmares too. The Lab. The men in masks. The torture and pain.
Everything.
In his desperation to spare himself a few miserable fuckin' words he hadn't thought his actions through, had acted impulsively.
Selfishly.
Remorse quickly gave way to anger. How could he have done it to her? The only light he had ever known in his sorry excuse for a life! He had practically forced her to use her mutation. Given her little choice but to agree...
And she was fuckin' sorry?
He reached for her arms and gently eased her from his chest, the sight of her tearstained face acting like an instant kick in the teeth.
"Christ, Marie, it's me who should be apologisin'. I didn't think. Didn't even consider..." His eyes were dark, almost black, with shame. "I never..." he tenderly, remorsefully, caressed her arms over her sweater. "Never wanted you to have the nightmares too."
Marie struggled with a smile. "You take the rough with the smooth," she shrugged in a cavalier fashion. "That's just the way of things."
"But I shouldn't have taken advantage -"
"Don't," she silenced, her delivery soft, whilst the underlying message was firm. "I wanted all of you inside me. Not just..." she faltered before adding: "well...you know...not just in a temporary physical way." She blushed endearingly at the memory but managed to resurrect her smile. "Guess I'm greedy, huh?"
His hazel eyes wandered over her face in disbelief. How did she do it, he wondered, feeling something bordering upon awe. How the hell did she manage to make everything all right in a few sentences? His pathetic struggle with words seemed to be magically remedied by her ease with them. Every time.
His hands swept up to tenderly cup her face. She felt so soft, so warm, so perfect against his skin. The faint rhythm of her heartbeat echoed up her long slender throat, pulsing a feather-light caress through his fingers. It seemed to match his own in perfect unison.
"You're so beautiful, darlin'," he growled huskily.
"Nah, I'm not," she protested shyly. "My lips are too big, my teeth are kinda weird and I'm far too short."
Her modesty genuinely took him aback. Was this kid for real? Was she genuinely not aware of what she did to a man? What she did to him? How she heated the blood coursing through his veins and twisted his gut with feelings that felt so alien he almost felt like he was losing a part of himself to her?
As he watched her, for a moment fascinated by the flecks of dark green anticipation smouldering in her beautiful brown eyes, he wondered just how sheltered a life she had led up until now. Was she that innocent?
That word had repeated over and over in his head like a mantra since the very moment he had first laid eyes on her: pure, pure, fuckin' pure...it was driving him crazy...but...entirely in a good way, as he found himself suddenly possessive of what she offered. Not a purity of body exactly, last night had proven that she was no chaste virgin, but of something that ran deeper, that cut straight to the soul.
"I aint talkin' 'bout that sort of beauty," he eventually whispered, a ghost of a smile sweeping his face. "I mean...inside."
"Oh." She lowered her gaze, embarrassed.
"But – hey - ya get top marks in that category too." His thumb brushed across her lips. "An' I happen to think these are gorgeous." He felt her shudder beneath his touch and his heightened senses noted the increase in her heartbeat as her eyes met his again.
"Perfect size for kissin'."
Eager to prove his point he moved in to claim her mouth again, claim those perfect lips, his senses quickly intoxicated by her sweet taste and willing tongue. He had never known a woman to excite him as much as Marie did, make him yearn for something more than just fulfilling a primal need. Once, he had only hungered for hard and dirty; quick emotionless fucks in seedy motels and back alleys, but Marie made him want to start over again, savour the simplicity of a teasing kiss or a tentative touch, experiences that he couldn't remember, had no memory of, no nostalgia to warmly recall.
The simple fact was, he had never known a time when he had been innocent. Twenty years was all his tortured mind would allow him, and it was dark.
So dark.
When they finally parted he was surprisingly breathless. "Yeah, I don't think a man could ever tire of that hot willin' mouth of yours."
Sighing, she briefly closed her eyes. "I could stay here forever," she murmured contentedly. "Straddling you like this, out in the middle of nowhere." Opening her eyes again she glanced out of the window. "Surrounded by this Winter Wonderland."
"Cold Winter Wonderland," he pointed out, amused.
She snapped her gaze back onto him and grinned. "I don't care. I'm gonna get used to it. Just you see."
Her smile was so honest, so natural and open, hiding nothing, ashamed of nothing that she was feeling. She was like a fresh mountain breeze when all he had known was suffocating stale air and rancid breath. She was the cleansing he sought when he retreated, every so often (although never enough), to his cabin in the Rockies when solitude was the only thing that could calm his tormented mind.
She appeared about to say something else when she promptly stopped and the smile he was devouring with distracted eyes was instantly gutted. Her features suddenly seemed to dim, lose their vibrancy.
She regarded him dejectedly. "But..." she struggled to swallow her emotions. "But you want me to go home?" she asked, hurt, and he guessed that she had registered one of his more recent thoughts.
"I want ya to be safe."
"I am safe," she insisted. "Here with you."
For a moment he couldn't meet her eyes, although he could feel their intensity upon him, searching for answers that were always too much of a challenge for him to give. "This mornin' everythin' felt so right," he confessed gently. "You and me and the open road." He scrubbed a hand across his forehead and back through his hair. "But after discoverin' about Treena -"
"Yeah," she interrupted sadly. "I know."
"I just can't walk away from this, Marie. That fucker is gonna pay for what he did."
"The police will find him," she promised, although he could detect the doubt in her words. Even she wasn't convinced.
The claws of his left hand shot out before he could stop them and the fact that she scarcely flinched touched him profoundly. Made him feel less of a freak somehow, less of an animal. She made him feel normal. Trusted. Just a man...
Just Logan, the guy who liked to watch hockey with a good cigar and bottle of Molsen; who liked walking in the snow at first light when the world was still sleeping...
"I doubt it," he blurted heatedly. "And even if they do, the law won't finish the job." His eyes bored into hers. "I want him dead."
Just thinking about it stirred the Wolverine within, provoked the bloodlust that both excited and disgusted him. "An' it aint gonna be safe for you to stay with me whilst I'm huntin' the bastard down."
He waited a few seconds for the Wolverine to retreat. "You know me now. You've got me in here." He lightly tapped her forehead with his claw-free hand. "I aint no saint. These things have tasted blood and are gonna again. I don't kill without good reason but I have killed. An' I won't rest until these are knuckle-deep in that fucker's chest." He retracted his claws again. "I owe it to Treena."
Marie was silent for a long time, at least it seemed to stretch forever when it was probably only half a minute, and he wished he could read the emotions sweeping her face.
"I know you loved her a great deal," she began sympathetically. "I can...feel it...know it instinctively, now that I have you in my head."
He nodded once, fleetingly, and it was only then that he acknowledged just how much Treena had actually meant to him, that he had loved her. She had been a kindred spirit, someone who had known, all to well, that vicious cycle of depravity; that twilight world of bars and violence and casual sex. Someone who had also yearned for escape, even though she had never admitted it to him. Yet it was only now, remembering that look in her painted eyes...
It pained him to accept that she had looked to him for hope when he had been seeking it from someone else.
He had failed her.
But he wouldn't fail her again.
"Let me help you," Marie whispered and Logan focused back upon her with a start, immediately picking up a trace of nervousness in her scent. She lifted her hands up before him and he stared down at them in puzzlement. "These can kill too, you know."
"No!" he cried out, her declaration burning through his senses like acid, and he instantly enveloped her hands in his. "Don't ya even think it. Don't ya dare. Not you. Never you!"
"I'm not a kid, Logan, and I make my own decisions," she insisted firmly, a hint of annoyance flaring up into her tone. But then she sighed, relented. "OK, perhaps I don't want to use my mutation to hurt anyone but I'm not going home and you can't make me." She slipped her hands from his and reached across to brush a stray lock of hair from his forehead. "I know that you're divided, that you're struggling with what you feel is best, but the stronger part of you wants me to stay with you. It's all in my head now so you can't deny it. You're right – it does make things easier. You can't hide from me any longer.
"But you can't see in my head so I'm gonna share something with you now. The fact that I've never done anything of consequence in my life. Nothing that meant anything meaningful. That made me feel like I was really living...
"Until I met you." Her eyes flared with a passion that had little to do with desire and everything to do with hope.
That hope again, Logan realised. The one thing that seemed to be steering their lives, dictating their every emotion.
"You've got ya whole life ahead of ya," he reminded her.
"Have I? You don't know that. I could die tomorrow."
"Marie -" he frowned, disappointed, whilst deep down the idea ignited a new fear inside him.
"David made plans," she continued regardless. "Plans for the future. Our future. He didn't know that he had so little time left."
"I'm sorry, baby."
She smiled sadly. "I know you are, but it doesn't change the fact that David is dead. If there's one thing I've learnt from this past hell of a year is that you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. So you've got to live for now. There's nothing else.
"And right now I'm burning, Logan. You make me burn. You make me burn with a fire that I've never known before. I feel more alive when I'm with you than I ever have. And I like it. More – much more - than you know."
She leaned in closer, so that her lips brushed his ear provocatively. "Actually, I think I'm already addicted," and he had to suppress a groan as her warm breath shivered across his skin.
Her long hesitation, as she lingered tantalisingly close, had him seriously considering taking her then and there, but she spoke before he could get his brain into gear.
"So, I say, let's both be selfish. Just take what we want."
He felt her scent change again, become angry. "But if you abandon me now they'll be no turning back. It'll be over. We'll be over."
The strength in her words, the determination in her tone, the demand of her scent, proved to be an overwhelming cocktail, and Logan knew then, beyond any doubt, that he had found his true mate. She was everything he desired, and more. A mind-blowing contradiction of all that there could be in a woman. She craved his fire just as he craved that goodness within her. It was light joining darkness to create a perfect equilibrium.
He had already known that he would not be able to let her go, even if it meant she might be safer. He had just needed her to make him see it, accept it. Needed her to rise to the challenge and meet him as an equal.
Manhandling her off him as carefully as his sudden urgency would allow, he waited until she had slipped back into her seat, then demanded: "Buckle up."
Reaching for the steering wheel he pulled the camper van back out onto the highway, turning with a slight skid to head back the way they had come. Back to Laughlin City.
"Right then," he announced, voice more animated than usual, sparking with eagerness to get going, to seek justice...to hunt. "I think some questionin' is in order. Startin' with the bartender."