Chapter 9: The Serpent's Bargain
The shower was still running when she found him, steam curling in thick coils around the glass enclosure, fogging the mirror until his reflection was just a ghost of scarred muscle and hard lines. Logan stood with his palms braced against the tile, head bowed, letting the scalding water hammer the back of his neck, trying to burn the ache out of his bones. The venom was still there, a dull serpent coiled in his gut, and the half-antidote had done little more than take the edge off the burning. He could feel her before he heard her—that shift in the air, the subtle pressure of another presence intruding on his solitude.
The glass door slid open with a soft hiss.
"Time's up," Viper said. Her voice was low, almost lazy, but there was an edge to it that cut through the steam. "The facility's ashes are already cold. I need you functional, not brooding."
Logan didn't turn around. "I'm functional."
"Are you?" He heard her step into the shower, the water changing pitch as it hit her body, and then he felt her—the warm press of her naked flesh against his back, her breasts flattening against his shoulder blades, her hands sliding around his waist. "Because you feel like a man who's still fighting something."
He should have pulled away. Should have turned and put a hand around her throat, reminded her who he was, what he was. But the water was hot and her skin was hotter, and the ache in his bones had settled into something lower, something hungrier.
"Maybe I am," he said.
Her laugh was a soft vibration against his spine. "Good." Her fingers traced the lines of his abdomen, nails dragging lightly through the hair below his navel. "Fighting's good. Keeps you alive."
She pressed closer, her mouth finding the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and her tongue—that forked, sinuous tongue—flickered against his skin. It was like a spark catching dry timber. Logan's head fell back, a low sound escaping his throat before he could stop it.
"There he is," she murmured, her hand sliding lower. "There's the animal I've been waiting for."
Her fingers found his cock, and she wrapped her hand around it with a practiced grip, stroking slow and deliberate, feeling it thicken in her palm. Logan's claws scraped against the tile, the sound of adamantium on porcelain sharp and grating.
"Look at you," she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. "So hard for me already. After everything I've done to you, after all that poison in your veins, and you can't help yourself, can you? You want me."
"Shut up," he growled, but his hips betrayed him, pressing into her grip.
"Make me."
He turned then, fast and violent, water sluicing off his body as he seized her by the throat and slammed her against the glass wall of the shower. The impact rattled the frame, and her smile only widened, her eyes bright with something between challenge and hunger.
"You think I won't kill you?" he snarled.
"I think you can't," she said. "Not yet. Not with that poison still burning in your blood. And I think," she added, her hand sliding down his chest, her nails raking lines of fire across his skin, "that you don't actually want to."
She reached between them, her fingers wrapping around his cock again, and stroked him with a slow, twisting motion that made his vision blur. His grip on her throat tightened, but he didn't squeeze. Couldn't.
"See?" she breathed. "You're already mine."
She dropped to her knees.
The water hammered down around them as she took him into her mouth, and for a moment, Logan forgot how to breathe. Her lips were hot and wet, stretched tight around the head of his cock, and her tongue—that wicked, forked tongue—curled around his shaft with a dexterity that made his knees buckle. She worked him slowly at first, savoring him, her eyes locked on his the whole time, watching the way his face contorted with the effort of staying upright.
Then she sucked him deep.
Her cheeks hollowed, her throat opening to take him down to the root, and Logan's hands flew to the glass walls on either side of him, claws punching through the tile with a sound like gunfire. She hummed around him, the vibration traveling up his spine, and he felt the brush of her fangs against the sensitive skin of his cock—just a graze, a promise of pain, a threat he couldn't decide if he wanted her to carry out.
"Fuck," he rasped, the word tearing out of him.
She pulled back, his cock slick with her spit, and licked her lips. "Not yet."
She rose, unhurried, her body sliding against his as she straightened. The water had plastered her hair to her skull, and her scales glinted at her collarbone, shimmering with each breath. She pressed him back against the glass, her hands flat on his chest, and lifted one leg, hooking it around his hip.
"You feel that?" she asked, her cunt slick and hot against his cock, grinding against him. "That's what you do to me, Logan. All this poison, all this power, and you're the only thing that makes me wet."
He grabbed her ass, fingers digging into the flesh, and pulled her closer, grinding his cock against her. "Then ride me."
Her smile was a knife. "Ask nicely."
"Fuck you."
She laughed, and the sound was low and cruel. She reached between them, gripping his cock, and positioned it at her entrance, just barely teasing.
"Say it," she said. "Say you want it. Say you're mine."
Logan's jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck corded, and he felt the venom pulse in his veins, hot and insistent. He didn't say anything. He just grabbed her hips and slammed her down onto him, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal thrust.
The sound she made was something between a gasp and a scream, her head snapping back against the glass, her nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood. The water streamed down her face, her lips parted, and she stared at him with a hunger that mirrored his own.
"Better," she hissed.
He didn't give her time to recover. He drove into her again, and again, each thrust hard enough to rattle the glass, the rhythm savage and unforgiving. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into his lower back, and she met him stroke for stroke, her hips grinding against his in a counterpoint that made his vision blur.
"That's it," she gasped, her mouth at his ear. "That's it, fuck me, fuck me like you hate me."
"I do hate you."
"No, you don't." She bit his shoulder, her fangs sinking deep, and the venom flooding into his bloodstream was like fire and ice at once, a crackling current that shot straight to his cock. "You want me. You want this. You want to be inside me, filling me, owning me—"
He roared, his claws punching into the glass on either side of her head, and slammed into her with a force that made the pane spiderweb with cracks. Her cunt clenched around him, hot and tight, and he felt his own release building at the base of his spine, coiling like a snake.
She felt it too. Her inner walls fluttered, her rhythm stuttering, and she bit down on his shoulder again, drawing more venom from her fangs, flooding his system with it.
"Come inside me," she commanded, her voice a guttural snarl against his neck. "Fill me up, you miserable animal. Show me what you're good for."
He couldn't stop it. His hips bucked, buried deep inside her, and he came with a roar that echoed off the bathroom tiles, his seed flooding her in hot, thick pulses. She clenched around him, milking him, her own body convulsing as she followed, her thighs trembling around his waist, her breath ragged and desperate.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The water continued to fall, washing it all away, steam curling around them. Logan's claws were still embedded in the glass, and his forehead rested against hers, their breaths mixing in the humid air.
She pulled back, looking at him with those green eyes, now heavy-lidded and satisfied. A slow smile spread across her face, her forked tongue flicking out to taste the water on her lips.
"We're not done yet," she said.
Logan pulled his claws out of the glass, the shards falling around them, and set her down on her feet. His legs were shaking, but he kept himself upright, meeting her gaze with a steadiness he didn't entirely feel.
"Meaning what?"
She stepped out of the shower, water sluicing off her body, and grabbed a towel from the rack. She dried herself with slow, deliberate movements, never quite looking away from him.
"Meaning the mission isn't over. We took down the facility, but Stryker was just one head of the hydra." She wrapped the towel around her body, tucking the end above her breasts. "There's more. Files, locations, a network of people who kept that operation running. And I want them all."
Logan turned the water off and stood in the sudden silence, drips pattering on the tile. "And you need me to help you burn it all down."
"I need you to help me cut off every head." She walked to the bathroom door, paused, and looked back at him over her shoulder. "And I need you to do it wearing this."
She tossed something at him. He caught it reflexively. A slim vial of clear liquid, warm to the touch.
"The rest of the antidote?" he asked.
"The first half of it," she corrected. "I told you—you've earned part of it. The rest comes when we're done." Her smile was a slash of white in the dim light. "Consider it motivation."
She walked out, leaving him standing naked in the steaming bathroom, the vial clutched in his hand, his body still humming with the aftermath of what they'd done, and the dull ache already creeping back into his bones.
He looked down at the vial. Then at the door she'd disappeared through.
"Fuck," he muttered, and swallowed it in one gulp.