by Glamour Ghoul
Part One
~telepathic communication~
Westchester, New York
In an alternate universe where Jean chose Logan over Scott.
Jean had been standing at the kitchen window for more than a few minutes already when Betsy joined her. “Something fascinating on the lawn?”
“Logan and Remy. Again.” Jean wasn’t sure exactly how many times she had seen the two men engaging in serious conversation, but she was pretty sure that 99% of them had taken place within the past month.
“Fighting?”
Jean laughed and shook her head. “No, not this time.”
Betsy leaned against the counter next to her, watching silently as the two men lounged on the picnic table, taking advantage of the large patch of shade provided by a towering oak tree. Their seemingly relaxed postures—Logan leaning back on his elbows, Gambit flat on his back on the tabletop—almost disguised the fact that they were having a fairly intense discussion.
Had been, in fact, for several days running.
The normal cacophony of noise that accompanied Hank and Bobby wherever they went together began to drift into the kitchen, signaling their impending arrival. Neither woman showed any outward reaction, but the switch to telepathic conversation was immediate.
Betsy tilted her head. ~They have been spending a lot of time together recently.~ She moved away from the window. "Tea?"
The other woman nodded absently. "Sounds good." ~They both went to that motorcycle thing the other day.~
Behind her, Betsy rummaged in the pantry. ~And they went to Harry's together twice last week.~ "Chamomile or mint?"
Outside, Remy sat up and planted his feet on the bench next to Logan, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He was staring straight ahead, but the movement of his lips and the way Logan's head tipped toward him slightly indicated the conversation was not over yet.
"Are we out of blackberry?" The urge to eavesdrop just a little bit was strong. Too bad Logan and Remy were among the few people in the mansion who would sense it immediately. She shrugged in an attempt to convince herself she wasn't really curious. ~Male bonding, I guess.~
"No blackberry. One bag of orange raspberry though." Betsy blew the dust off it and crinkled her nose. ~I thought they usually bonded by pummeling each other in the Danger Room.~
Both men were on their feet now, heading across the lawn toward the dock. Logan pulled a cigar from the pocket of his shirt, pointing it at Gambit in emphasis before he lit it.
"Mint then, I guess." She turned from the window and reached for the teapot. ~I wonder what those two are planning.~
Betsy plucked two cups from the rack next to the sink. "I'll get the honey." ~Whatever it is, it can't be good.~
Jean was just falling asleep when the squeaky hinge on their door told her Logan was back. She cracked one eye and saw a yellow rectangle of light splash across the far wall, watched the dark shape of his distinctive profile loom in the center of it until he closed the door behind him. Familiar sounds as he shrugged off his jacket, put his keys and wallet on the dresser, approached his side of the bed.
“You awake?”
~Mmm…barely.~ Telepathy came in handy when you were too tired to bother speaking out loud.
The bed dipped under his considerable adamantium-enhanced weight as he sat to pull off his boots. They were on their fourth mattress and box spring since they had started sharing a room three years ago. That heavy skeleton was hell on the bed. But then, so were lots of other things, and she was partially to blame for those. She tried to stifle a giggle, and failed.
“You sound awake now. What’s so funny over there?” One balled up sock sailed across the room and hit the wall next to the hamper.
“Nothing. How was Harry’s?” Soft thud as the other sock joined its mate on the floor next to the hamper. She turned over to lay on her other side, watched as he tugged his T-shirt over his head and threw it in the general direction of the socks.
He twisted around to look at her, leaning on one perfectly muscled arm. “Same as always. How’d it go?” His other hand lazily scratched the hard ridges of his stomach, fingers curling and opening over the line of hair that ran down the center of his abdomen.
She was definitely awake now.
He was watching her watch his hand, and she shivered lightly as a dirty thought slipped from his mind and into hers. When her eyes finally found their way back to his face he grinned at her like a naughty little boy. A naughty little boy with big sharp teeth.
She knew his control was better than that, knew that he had done it on purpose. She knew exactly what he was doing. So she thought at the time.
His hand was moving again, sliding down his stomach, taking her eyes with it.
“How’d your lecture go?” he asked again, casually drumming his fingers on his belt buckle, thumb hooked under the waistband of his jeans.
God, he was a tease.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, letting the sheet slide down to give him an unobstructed view of the white tank top she wore. Her hard nipples poked up through the nearly transparent fabric. “Do you really want to talk about that now?”
His laugh was low and quiet as he leaned down and buried his face in her neck, all hot breath and whiskey and cigar smoke and stubble. He nuzzled his way up to her ear as she threaded her fingers through this hair. “Not really,” he admitted, the tip of his tongue teasing her earlobe. “But if you think you can stay awake for a few more minutes, we can not talk about a whole lotta things.”
She tilted her head back, let him follow the line of her jaw with his mouth. “Absolutely.”
And then he was gone, so quickly and so silently that he seemed to almost disappear. The bathroom light spilled into the room briefly before he closed the door, and she lay there listening to him brush his teeth as she debated whether or not to take off her underwear.
If she hadn’t been on the verge of her first orgasm of the night, she probably would have noticed Remy sooner.
She was sprawled sideways on the bed, her thin tank top pushed up to expose one flushed breast, a naked Logan between her legs, painstakingly driving her out of her mind with his tongue. Her arms hung off the bed behind her head, wrists bound together with her tiny panties. Apparently, he had wanted her to leave them on.
So it took a second for her to process the fact that someone was running their fingers through her hair where it hung off the bed. Something Logan could not possibly accomplish without stopping what he was doing. And he most definitely had not stopped. She was tempted to ignore it. Logan only needed a few more seconds to get the job done, and it was probably nothing more than a lust-induced hallucination anyway.
Then the fingers tugged gently on her hair, as if their owner was a getting a little impatient with her lack of response. It was funny how much her eyes widened when she saw Remy standing over her, given how stubbornly they had resisted opening at all. Her body was frantically pointing out that Logan’s tongue had suddenly gone AWOL at an extremely inconvenient time, and for a second she actually debated which issue to deal with first.
“Room for me, chère?” Her hair slid over his hand again, the ends tickling the inside of her elbow.
“What??” This couldn’t possibly be happening. For one thing, there was no way Logan would—
Logan.
She lifted her head to look at him, wondering why he hadn’t punched six neat holes in Remy’s stomach for even suggesting such a thing. For simply being in the room, come to think of it.
He was watching her intently, his tousled head framed neatly by her smooth thighs. His eyes held hers as his mouth opened over the tiny point of flesh he had so recently deserted. His tongue dipped down and lightly grazed it, just once.
She wanted more.
He knew it.
“Answer the question, darlin’.” Another slow, teasing lick.
“What?!?”
Remy was on the bed next to her now, up on his knees. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, but his feet were bare. His red eyes glowed beneath the soft hair that always seemed to be falling into his face; many times she had resisted the urge to brush it away from his forehead as if he were a little boy.
He certainly wasn’t reminding her of a little boy right now.
He quirked one perfectly shaped eyebrow as his unreasonably beautiful lips, which seemed far too sensuous and sculpted to belong to a man, curved upward in a smile. “Dat all you can say, Jeannie?” He turned his fiery gaze on Logan. “Thought you said she was a talker.”
Her mind raced backward several days, to a quiet afternoon when she and Betsy had made tea and pondered what Logan and Remy could possibly be discussing with such seriousness. Now, without using even the tiniest bit of her power, she was absolutely sure what it was.
Her.
Hot breath on the wet flesh between her legs brought her back to the current situation. Logan was waiting for an answer.
She swallowed with a throat that was far too dry and tight for comfort. “You’re kidding, right?” Had to be.
Logan rubbed his chin lightly back and forth between her legs, stubble scratching her delicate pink skin but doing nothing for the itch there. “Nope.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“I want you to.” His tongue slid up against her again, stroking wetly and perfectly just where she needed it.
Her head fell back and she opened her mind, sending a burst of shivery pleasure to both men, feeling Logan’s familiar masculine pleasure—and a tinge of sexual pride—flow back at her immediately. A fraction of a second later her mind blossomed with a vibrant mixture of desire and curiosity, carried on a lush undercurrent of more subtle impressions—the irresistible lure of the forbidden, the distinctive thrill of having something that was not yours for the taking. The kind of inner construct that could only belong to a thief.
Logan’s voice floated through her head. ~Trust me.~
She opened her eyes to find Gambit looming over her, reaching for the knotted fabric that restrained her hands. His extraordinary eyes crawled over her greedily as she pushed herself against Logan’s mouth, and the last of her hesitation fell away with the thin piece of silk and lace that slid from her wrists under Remy’s talented fingers.
End Part One