"Dad! Save me!" Rea ran by in a blur of color, followed close behind by Celeste. Her father snared Callie by the hair and jerked her to a stop. She stayed passively, breathing hard, but not struggling.

"What's going on?" he asked after giving the other girl time to stumble to a halt and catch her breath.

"She--she tried to--Eeeeeeew. I feel so dirty," Rae made a face and shuddered. "She tried to kiss me."

"Did she?" He seemed to be feigning polite interest.

"Dad!"

"Oh, all right," He took Celeste's chin in his hand and tuned her to face. He stared into her eyes for a moment and, satisfied with what he saw, told Rea, "She's fine. If everybody ignores her she'll snap out of it in a few minutes. It's not like she's going to attack your leg and--"

"Daaaaaad. . ."

He grinned and let go of Celeste's hair, she backed off and stood gazing at him, rubbing her scalp with the expression of a puppy who's just been kicked. Her lower lip was just beginning to protrude as she slid to the floor to sit quietly for the second time.

Meanwhile, Celeste was feeling curiously warm and liquid. She pulled her knees up and rested her chin against them as she thought about *him*. The girl didn't matter, because when *he* had touched her. . .she liked it. A lot. Callie grinned ferally and rose to her feet in a fluid motion. She ran her hands up his back and over his shoulders, completely unperturbed when he caught her hands and leaned away from her pointedly. She smiled and leaned forward, pressing her lips against his throat, rising up on her toes to reach. He hissed a warning and jerked away, catching her long hair and using it to pull her onto the floor. When he had a short enough leash, he stepped on her hair with one booted foot, refusing to meet her baleful stare.

Now Celeste regained another tiny piece of normalcy. *This man*, she thought, *He thinks he can trap me! He means to imprison me! Well, he can't do that! I'm. . .I'm. . . .somebody important. . . . .* A small, shocked gasp came from her throat as eight pointed blades sprang from the backs of her hands with a gratifying hiss. She smiled again and raised her hands so that the blades were inches from the man's muscled leg. Just one quick movement and she'd be free.

She looked up, way up, into the golden eyes of her guardian. "Do it and I'll rip those things out by the roots."

Her teeth bit into her lower lip as she thought about it, and there was a sharp snap as the claws retracted.

He nodded his approval. "Smart girl," he said, lifting his foot. She scrambled away from him and retreated around the solid length of the table, deciding she didn't like him. At all.

Her next target was Logan, because he was right in front of her. She slid her arms around his neck from behind and waited. That got no reaction, so she decided that it must be perfectly all right to go ahead. She rested her chin on top of his head and waited again. Words buzzed on the air around her, but none of it was negative reinforcement. Just being near this one, breathing in his scent, did strange things to Celeste's insides. Her lips tingled as blood rushed into them, and her teeth throbbed. The vampiric incisors slid from her gums without her notice and her ears picked up the only sound she wanted to hear. A heartbeat. It pulsed fast and strong, pushing blood through his body. Her eyes closed dreamily and her mouth lowered to his throat.

"No." Celeste's eyes popped open again and she raised her head, growling at the dark-haired man, who was fast becoming the bane of her existence. "Do you really want to do that? Do you want him to become like us?" Her eyes narrowed and she hissed hatefully, but she subsided, dropping to the floor between Remy and Logan.

"'Become like us'?" Storm questioned, "What does that mean?"

He smiled. "You don't think Celeste got *all* the power from her mother, do you?" He chuckled at the idea, "She managed to inherit my fangs and my charming personality." To prove his point, he leaned across the table and lifted Jean's hand, gallantly kissing the back.

"I don't understand," Scott spoke up quickly, "If she's really a vampire, wouldn't she require blood? We've never seen her--"

He cut Scott off impatiently, "First of all, it is considered extremely rude among our kind to feed in public, and second of all, Celeste has enough energy to ignore her baser urges. During her wilder teen years, she fed occasionally, just to see what it was like. She didn't care for it and that is why she stopped. Now, I would really like to solve the Marquis' problem and get on with my life, or at least hold out until Celeste can take care of it herself. I believe you were saying, Mr. Summers?" Thus opening the discussion again.

Rea was keeping a nervous and slightly paranoid watch on her sister, and she still managed to miss Callie when she moved again. The Professor had just suggested enrolling Maielle into a boarding school in his world when Rea glanced at the floor and found linoleum staring back at her. She unobtrusively leaned over to look under the table, but saw nothing. Which didn't say much. If Celeste had left, they were in trouble, and if Celeste had made herself invisible in order to seduce somebody else, they would hear about it in a minute.

The tip-off was so tiny that neither her father nor Logan caught it. But Ethereal did. Gambit's eyes widened, flashing a feverish red before her calmed himself after a fraction of a second.

He swallowed jerkily.

Moments later, he curved his hands around the arms of his chair and gripped them. Hard.

"Celeste!" She screeched before diving underneath the table. Celeste, still not quite lucid, laughed and pushed Gambit's chair back, sliding her body against his as she rose from between his legs. She wrapped her arms around his neck in that insane quest for the sensation of skin on skin and pressed her lips to his. They made just a brush of contact before steely arms encircled her waist and pried her away from the Cajun.

Logan tuned Callie around and swung her up over his shoulder before she had the chance to react and addressed his father-in-law, "Ignore her?! I don't think that's going to work." Celeste hiccupped and cooed happily as she bounced out the door, finally allowed to touch him, hugging his back for support.

When they were gone, Ethereal looked at her father worriedly, "Are they going to be all right?"

After he stopped laughing uproariously, he answered, "Of course. The next time you see them, he'll be walking funny and in a dangerously good mood, and she'll be back to her normal self."

She shook her head, a little dazed by the craziness she had seen from her sister. "I've never seen her like that. Did Mom ever do that?"

A slow, dark grin spread over his face. "Of course she did," One eyebrow shot up, "How do you think you got here?"

Logan kicked the door twice, once to open it and again to shut it behind him. He dropped Celeste on the bed and stood looming over her. She looked up at him, blinking with bird-like confusion.

"Well, darlin'? What're y'waitin' for?"

Her grin went from ear to ear. She surged up from the bed and pulled him down, swinging on leg over his so that she straddled his hips, already forcing his mouth open under hers. Logan would probably never put the next twenty minutes together in his mind; one minute, they were laying on the bed, kissing, and the next, they were naked and writhing together on the sheets, clothing and blankets thrown over the foot of the bed.

This time, she was the aggressor, and she controlled it, as she pleased. Whatever lucid thoughts were able to pass through the testosterone-induced fog around Wolverine's brain, one of them was that this must be how it felt to make love to a queen.

Logan finally broke under the strain of her teasing, slow strokes and rolled her over onto her back. Clearly she objected to this change of position, hissing and raking her nails down Logan's back.

He growled at the small pain and parted her legs with his knee, making a space for himself there. His wife was already half-mad with it, the need for completion; she arched and strained against him, pulling his mouth down to her feverish skin.

So he gave it to her, hard and fast, and held her in his arms while she shuddered in the aftermath.

"Well," she declared, "I feel better."

"Figured out how to talk, did ya?"

"Yeah, and you'll never guess what I have to say," she rolled over, propped herself up on one elbow so that she could whisper into his ear, "Now that we've got the warm-ups out of the way, do you want to. . . .?"

At her suggestion, his eyes went wide and he blushed beet red. She laughed. "You'll have to give up blushing like that, Wolvie. Blushing is for girls."

Celeste laid her head down on Wolverine's chest and sighed contentedly.

"Glad to oblige, darlin'." He tipped her chin up, turning serious, "Why did ya do that?"

Her eyebrows rose. "I thought you liked it."

He gave a startled laugh, horrified to feel blood flooding his face again. "Not *that*. I mean, why did ya suddenly start giving off scent and attackin' everybody?"

"You noticed the smell?" he nodded, and she looked down for a moment, collecting her thoughts, "Well, it's kind of like what happened after I took Ana's power. I started shedding rose petals and smelling like a hot-house orchid. After my body adjusted to the change, I stopped. If you remember, Jean stopped giving me the evil-eye for trailing flower petals all over two days ago. And now. . ." this time, she blushed a bit and glanced away, "I guess you could say that there are two things that make all animals kin--the thrill of bloodlust and sex. In both cases, sensation reaches its peak and energy flows most naturally, closest to the surface."

"Ah, um, one usually follows the other, and when I get. . .really. . .excited. . .I tend to give of an odd scent." He nodded slowly, considering it, and she clarified. "I get like a bitch in heat sometimes."

"I don't remember ya doing that the first time we--" He cut himself off. Celeste was suddenly studying her cuticles as though they held all the answers. "Oh." He grinned and grabbed her, rolling her over and over. "I guess I'll just have ta try harder, huh?"

"Thank God for your healing factor. It's a good thing you can recover quickly, isn't it?"

They were both laughing when they rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a muffled thud.