The Scent of Blood

God, I can still smell her on my clothes. It's been
months since I left, and still the leather holds her scent.
I can't get away from it. Maybe I don't want to.

I've been thinking of going back more often lately.
Living out of dingy hotels and making money in those damn
cage-fights gets pretty old, pretty fast. It's quick cash; I
can simply let go and beat the shit out of someone. The pain
is a welcome distraction. It means I can still feel
/something/. Maybe that's the darker part of my psyche.
Pounding my aggressions out against some drunken brawler
every night probably keeps me sane.

I suppose that assumes I was sane to start out with.

I'm an A-number-one bastard most of the time. I work hard
at it and it keeps most people at a comfortable distance.
She didn't care.

But she doesn't know what I really am. What I'm capable
of. What I want. I don't think that I could handle it if she
knew I was some kind of walking freak. Mutant is one thing.
Altered-mutant-who-knows-what is something entirely
different. I mean, she's only human.

I am what I am.

I'm a coward.

But I can't be with her, and it was killing me. Every
casual touch became a painful reminder that I couldn't have
her. Every time I saw her, what I wanted to do was so vivid
that I closed my eyes and my mouth went dry. I couldn't look
at her without wanting the feel of her, the scent of her, on
me. And she knew it. She made it clear that she wanted me. I
felt like a damn schoolboy, stuttering and trying to hide
the fact that I got hard just thinking about her.

Playing a little too rough in the sack isn't something I
can get away with. Only someone with a real fetish for pain
would get into bed with a man who could drive his fist
through a car door, and sprouted steel knives from his hands
if he lost control.

I might ridicule Scott's impeccable control, but I
understand it. Unlike him, I have to work hard at being
human--the dangerorge rge to push the blades through my
fists is unbearable sometimes. Giving in to the desire is so
seductive I have to be constantly aware of it. It's too
close to the surface to ignore. One moment of distraction
and somebody gets hurt.

So I left. I didn't even say goodbye. Hell, I didn't say
anything. I packed my bag and slipped out in the middle of
the night like a thief.

Like I said, I'm a coward.

I ended up here, in this piss-poor excuse for a town.
Kittering is just about as far out in the boondocks as you
can get. No one comes here. No one gets found here. But as
soon as the key slipped into the door of the tiny rooming
house I was staying in, I knew something was wrong.

And then I smelled her. Wood smoke and lilacs and I
opened the door and there she was. I don't even remember if
I said anything at all or just gaped at her like a gaffed
fish.

She said hello in that warm whisky-smooth voice of hers,
and it rolled over me like smoke.

"I got tired of waiting for you to come back."

I didn't have an answer, and she didn't seem toect ect
one. "I had a long conversation with Jean after you left. It
was quite an education."

"She talks too much." my voice sounded hoarse.

"It didn't explain why you left."

"I didn't want to hurt you."

She reached past me to shut the door. "No, Logan. You'll
have to do better than that." It left her standing so close
to me I could feel her breath on my face, feel the warmth
radiating from her body. I closed my eyes...

...and my twisted subconscious saw her gasping beneath me
on the rumpled bed, crying out my name. My eyes snapped open
and darted to the bed before returning to her face. She saw
it, and damn her eyes, she was smiling about it.

"I'm tired of waiting, Logan."

I focused on the shift of the blades in my forearms, that
exquisite agony as the blades broke through the skin of my
hands to extend like claws.

Maybe I did it consciously, maybe not. Anything to drive
her away from me.

"This is what I am." The growl reverberated in my chest.

Instead of running or screaming - hey, I've had both --
she reached for one of my hands. I started to retract the
claws, but she shook her head. Her fingers traced the bones
of my hand, touching the blades, my palms, my curled
fingers.

"I /know/ what you are." she murmured.

It's strange enough to me that these wicked blades emerge
from my fists, and I'm usually trying to kill someone with
them. I don't think I've ever had anyone else touch my hands
when the claws are extended. Her fingers were cool, and it
was sexy as hell.

The muscles of my belly clenched when she lowered her
head to press her lips to my knuckle above the blade, her
eyes never leaving mine.

What the hell am I doing?

The blades retracted with a snap. I scented blood, the
metallic rill of it like a heady spice. I turned her hand in
mine, a shallow cut on her thumb bled just a little.

She rubbed her bleeding thumb across my lower lip, and I
got instantly and painfully hard.

I backed into the wall when she touched me again, a brush
of her hand against my chest, another on my hip. Self-
control is a tenuous thing at best. A thousand miles away
and my dreams of this woman left me shattered. Now a hand's-
breadth of charged air separated us and I could barely
breathe.

I should stop her. I should push her out the door and
lock it behind her. Before she finds out why I left. Instead
I reached to coil my fingers in her hair and kiss her.

I'm a fool.

She melted against me and I could feel the furious
pounding of my own heart. Her teeth nipped my lower lip
before she opened her mouth to me.

One last protest, "We can't do this."

"Liar." she breathed into my mouth, all silk and wet
velvet, and I surrendered.

Novels always dispense with that awkward moment when
everyone takes their clothes off--the famed 'zipless fuck'.
Reality is less smoothly executed most of the time. This was
effortless. One moment we were clothed, the next, we were
naked on the narrow bed.

I'm dominant. Disagree with me, and you lose. Order me
around and I'll laugh in your face. Get into a pissing
contest with me, and I'll kick your ass. I fight to win, and
I win every time.

So I'm not sure how I ended up underneath her with my
arms stretched over my head. Very carefully, she put my
hands on the bars of the wrought-iron headboard, curled my
fingers around the cold metal.

"Hold on." she whispered into my ear, and while
the ramifications of that comment sent a flush of heat
rocketing down my body to settle between my legs, she slid
down on me with a sigh.

I must have answered something negative, because she
released my hands, trailing her fingers over my arms and
chest. Prickles of gooseflesh followed her fingers.

Then she started to move and I forgot how to breathe.

The world compressed to harsh gasps and moans; to the
sweet, slow, languorous strokes of her body on mine. I
gasped breaths when she released my mouth from hers.

The blades in my hands extended into the wall behind the
headboard with a metallic hiss. There is a fine line between
pain and pleasure, and the sharp pain of the blades was
suddenly almost too pleasurable to bear.

But I can't explain to her what I really want. Why I
avoid intimacy, why I fear letting go and playing rough. Why
I took off. Why I cringed each time I looked at her and
wanted her so badly I could taste my lust for her on the
back of my tongue.

I wonder if I was always like this, or did it change when
I was made into this metal-and-bone monster? Pain is a part
of my life now. It wraps each and every bone in my body. The
little agony of the blades in my hands, the twinge of
healing wounds, the dull ache of old bruises. I heal, but
it has left in me a dark desire for that fleeting sensation
that proves to me that I'm alive.

I want her to hurt me.

I want to skate on the edge of pleasure and pain until
they are no longer separate.

Sick fucker, aren't I?

Her face rose to mine when the claws dug into the wall,
staring into the desperate depths of my hell. And she
smiled, eyes dark with a promise that caught my breath in my
throat.

When she leaned forward and I felt the sharp imprint of
her teeth on my collarbone, I realized that she knew. I
gasped when her fingernails scored the skin of my belly,
tugged painfully on my tight balls. Harshly now, she kissed
me; touched me with casual roughness, again and again. Her
teeth nipped my lower lip and I tasted blood.

My last deliberate thought was to sheath the knives in my
forearms before I dragged my hands from the headboard to
touch her.

I heard her gasp my name as I rolled us on the bed with a
growl. I slid home that last, delicious inch and she came
with a liquid sigh that hummed through my body and dragged
me to the edge. The small, sweet pain of her nails on my
thighs frissioned through me like an electric shock. The
delicate touch of her tongue on the torn skin of my lip
shattered me.

The only thing worse than my tortured longings was that
she knew all along.

I am such a fool.