"Smells good, kid."

Logan came in the back door, hanging his beat up cowboy hat on the hook and pushing Marie up against the kitchen island to steal a kiss or two before she sent him to wash up.

That was one of the things he liked best about living with her. Not that she cooked or that he regularly came home to the house smelling delicious, but that when he stepped in the door, it felt good because she was there.

"Whatcha makin' tonight?"

"Fried catfish with hush puppies and fresh slaw."

"Sounds damn good."

They no longer needed the veneer of the poker games now to share the intimacy of a home-cooked meal, but it was still fun to play from time to time. She still usually lost and he felt no guilt for dictating the menu on those nights. Tonight, however, was just an ordinary Tuesday.

"Beer's in the fridge. Get me one while you're in there," she called, grinning at him over a pan of golden catfish.

"I see whatcha did there."

"You're getting slow, old man."

"Yeah?" He took a long swallow off his beer and settled down at the table. He'd learned early on to stay out of her way when she was cooking. If she wanted something, she'd sure as hell let him know it.

"Yep. I made dessert, too."

He sniffed. Something chocolate. "The better 'n sex cake?"

Marie laughed at the hopeful note in his voice.

"Maybe." Her eyes danced. "Though I think it needs a new name."

She plated up their food. She liked serving up a nice dinner and he enjoyed how it felt to have someone care enough to want to prepare a meal for him and to share their day with each other while they ate it.

"A new name?" He stole a bite of catfish and cursed as it burned his fingers and then his tongue. "You don't think it's better than sex no more?"

"Sugar, the only way that cake would be better than sex is if you let me smear it all over you first." She'd been teasing, but a light went on in his eyes and was reflected in hers a few moments later. "You think that would work?"

"Hell, yeah."

"Where?"

"Back deck."

"Now?"

"Get the cake."

~ooOoo~

An hour later, they were back inside eating stone-cold catfish and grinning like idiots.

"You smell like chocolate, kid." Chocolate and sex, but he wasn't complaining.

"So? You have frosting in your beard."

"Least I don't have any up my—"

"Logan!"

He just chuckled at the scandalized expression on her face. She'd come a long way in the last few months and was much more comfortable both in her skin and sharing her sexual desires, but every now and then he could still make her blush and he enjoyed the hell out of that. His Marie was still in there under the Rogue's grit and the leather.

"Heh." His grin got bigger.

"Whatcha smilin' about over there, sugar?"

"S'Tuesday."

"All day."

A gruff chuckle rumbled in his chest. "Just wonderin' if they heard that."

"If who heard what?"

"The couple in the gazebo across the lake. It's their night, but I reckon we beat 'em to the punch... 'n your voice carries, baby." He loved how she just let go with him. Nothing held back. She liked what he did and she sure as hell let him know it.

"Oh. My. God!" Her face grew even pinker.

The Wolverine sat back in silence. His smug expression said it all.

After dinner, he washed up while she made the coffee and they found their way back to the table. Marie's thumb rubbed absently over three deep gouges at the edge of the tabletop as they talked.

"Sorry about that."

"Sorry?" She wasn't following.

"For fuckin' up the table."

Neither of them had expected what had happened that morning. She'd been making bread while he put the final coat of wax on the table. It had just been a bit of playful morning sex. One minute they'd been fooling around and the next, things had gotten completely out of hand. She'd smelled so good to him — peaking that day — and the next thing he knew, the Wolverine had joined the party and the Rogue was egging him on and then the claws were out and her skin was on and all bets were fucking off.

The marks had faded from their skin soon enough, but the ones he'd left in the table were there for the duration.

Marie reached across the table and took Logan's hand in hers. "You know, when I was three and still not the last bastion of grace that I am now," Marie smiled at Logan's grunt of amusement and kept going. "I smacked into the corner of our dining room table at a full run and was so angry at the table for being in my way, that I bit it. Hard. Right on the corner. Left a perfect set of little teeth marks deep in the wood."

"Heh." He could absolutely see her doing that. Girl had a temper on her, for sure. Apparently, she'd always been fiery, even as a small child.

"Daddy was furious. It was Ethan Allen." At Logan's blank look, she added, "Probably a couple of paychecks' worth of table, if you know what I mean."

"Shit."

"I got a hiding, for sure, but later it kinda grew on everyone. A story told and retold every time we gathered around it, ya know? Thanksgiving. Christmas. Naughty little Marie and a mouth that was always still gettin' me in trouble for one reason or another through the years. As I got older, sometimes I'd catch mama rubbing it with her thumb, remembering."

"S'real sweet, darlin'."

"Sometimes I wonder if she still does that, you know? Remembers me that way. How I was before."

"Hey…" He drew her into his arms and she gave him a watery smile. "Ain't nothin' wrong with how you are now."

"I know." Her voice was soft. There was a new certainty in her words that he'd never heard before. "These last few months with you have been amazin'. I feel better in my own skin than I ever have."

"But?"

"There's not really a 'but' in there. It's just sometimes I think we have to lose things or give up things to have room for different, better things."

That struck a chord with Logan, too. "Mmph." He'd lost more than most. Found more than most, too, and was ready to kill or die to defend it. He knew she felt the same. She was growing more comfortable with the Rogue every day. A little wilder. A little freer.

"It's the miles that make the man, sugar."

The Wolverine said nothing, but he squeezed her hand and pressed a kiss into her hair as he watched her fingers reach out and trace the deep gouges he'd left in the glossy tabletop.

"I love these. One day when we've filled these benches with little butts and raised them and it's just you and me alone at this table again in whatever place we've found ourselves—" They both knew the school wasn't the right place for them forever. "We're gonna touch these marks and remember the morning we put them here."

He smiled at that. A lot of women had wanted him over the years. Marie wanted to make a life with him. It still stunned him, even now. "I like that real good."

"But I swear to God, that's one story about Naughty Marie that better not be retold if you ever want a repeat performance, cowboy."

"Heh. Giddyup." He slapped her ass and she blushed all the way down.

~ooOoo~

"SHITFIRE!" There was a crash and a feminine yelp and the muffled crunch of breaking glass. "GODDAMN SONOFABITCH!"

Logan's eyes flew open and he charged down the loft stairs, claws out and ready to go. Blood pounded in his ears, a wild roar that brought his every enhanced sense to the fore.

"Kid?" He sniffed, eyes alert and darting from one end of the dark, open space to the other. Not a thing out of place. Moonlight streamed in the windows but there was no sign of Marie. "KID?!"

His sharp hearing caught the sound of struggling in the bathroom along with more cursing and what sounded like a shriek of pure rage.

"Dadgum!" Her accent was always stronger when she was riled up.

"Baby?" Four big strides had him at the door and he immediately ducked as Marie's favorite Yankee candle flew past his head and shattered against the far wall.

"Peckerwood! DIPSHIT!"

She smelled angry rather than scared. He put the claws back in but kept the defensive stance, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. She was fiery and unpredictable on a good day, but what kind of inciting incident could there be in the middle of the night, for christsakes? He couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary, besides the remains of the lavender candle.

Logan raised his arm to block a direct hit from her curling iron and missed the bottle of perfume that shattered on the tile behind him. The pungent scent of vanilla lemongrass made his eyes water.

"Jesus! What the fuck?!" he roared.

"I am gonna murder you!"

"You can try," he grunted, annoyed by the drama and the heavy scent that was making him lightheaded.

Marie appeared at the bathroom door, naked and wet from her hips down. Logan was momentarily distracted by long creamy legs with a flash of dark hair between.

"My FACE is up here," she spat, glaring at him as his eyes swung upwards. She was the picture of pissed-off female. He probably shouldn't have been aroused by that, but he was — there was no hiding that, even if he had been wearing pants - and that clearly pissed her off, too.

"Well, the rest of you is naked and heavin' and sexy as hell. Bitch all you want, sweetheart, but I'm sure as fuck gonna look if you're gonna put it out there."

"God! You ARE a fuckin' caveman."

"Damn straight. I looked at my own crazyass woman and got hard. Better string me the fuck up for that transgression, huh? Jesus. What. The. Fuck, Marie?"

"I fell in!"

"Fell in what?"

"The dadgum TOILET, sugar."

Logan was stunned for a moment and then almost laughed but the touch of murder in her eyes stopped him.

"What?"

"Hello? I didn't ask you to put the seat down half a dozen times just to hear myself say it. Christ on a cracker!"

"I thought that was like an urban myth or somethin'. That the worst that could happen was, ya know, like a bare ass on cold porcelain."

"Nope."

Shit.

"Why didn't ya just look first?"

"You are making this so much worse for yourself. You know that, right?"

Logan shrugged. "S'fair question, ain't it?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Because I was sleepy and distracted."

"Distracted?"

"Yeah, distracted, sugar. I'm tired. I had to pee and I had a freakin' river of you runnin' down my leg." Logan winced a little at that. They'd gone one round under the stars down by the fire pit and then three more upstairs in the loft. The new mattress had been worth every penny. She was probably swimming in him. He liked that more than he probably should, and the look on her face said there was no way she'd missed the flash of gold in his eyes just now.

Well, he sure as fuck wasn't apologizing for that.

Stalemate.

"Won't happen again," he finally allowed.

"Thanks."

"Plus it's just a damn good excuse to piss outside."

"God!" Marie rolled her eyes. "Doesn't all that knuckle-draggin' hurt?"

"Nah. They're adamantium." She laughed in spite of herself. Logan's particular brand of twisted humor was hard to resist. It was macabre and tended toward the profane, but was definitely there.

Raising an eyebrow, he stepped around the glass and disappeared back upstairs before reappearing with the down comforter from their bed. She was still standing in the bathroom doorway, surveying the damage.

"Where you goin'?"

"Gonna sleep on the deck. Smells like a goddamn cathouse in here." Between the sex and the broken perfume bottle and whatever else she'd destroyed in the bathroom, he could barely breathe.

"Well, you'd know, cowboy."

"You would too." He smirked at her, thinking of that night at The Red Door.

He stepped over a big chunk of candle and opened a few windows to air the place out before heading for the door.

"You're really goin?"

Logan eyed the wreckage with a critical expression. "Yep. Shit ain't my mess."

Marie waved a hand in the general direction of the feminine parts he still really couldn't keep his eyes away from. "This is."

"Fair enough. You want help cleanin' that up, call me. I reckon you'll be finished with the glass and ready for a shower about the time I'm finished with this." He grabbed a cigar from the pocket of the coat hanging nearby and shoved it in his mouth, saluted her smartly and stomped out the back door with a snort of masculine amusement.

Up next: Sledgehammer. Now that they're more comfortable with each other, they're ready to kick things up a notch. The Rogue starts something the Wolverine can't help but finish…

This is a wild one. Y'all have been warned!