WARNING:
THERE WILL BE EXPLICIT SEX IN THIS STORY. I will mark those parts clearly in the header. The sex is graphic, but all loving and consensual (and not that much worse than a typical romance novel). If reading sex scenes like that would offend you, please don't read this.

If you want to comment, send email to luba@lubakmetyk.net

Part 2

Late the next day, after a quiet, quick family supper -- during which the subject of a Braddock political career never came up -- Betsy declared she was going to catch a nap, and shooed Brian and Meggan off to indulge in a relaxing soak in the oversized hot tub he'd installed in the manor's remodelled greenhouse. Their Victorian-era conservatory had been expanded recently to several times its original size, the floor in many places now consisting of either scattered-stone or woodchip-strewn paths through the rich soil of essentially an enormous walled-in indoor garden; it was Meggan's favorite room.

Their self-indulgence was well-deserved; it had been hard-earned. They had had a long, rough day -- they'd gotten a call that there'd been an accident, a cave-in, in an old but still working coal mine in Wales. After a brief, acrimonious exchange because Brian had refused to let his currently very pregnant sister come along, he and Meggan had flown there and found rescue crews preparing to go in after the men still trapped inside. The Braddock couple had taken over the lead, Meggan's elemental awareness telling them where and when the walls and roof and floor were solid while pointing out where they required bracing, Brian's strength letting him quickly dig through rubble and shore up passages too tight to get heavy equipment into easily. His wife occasionally morphed muscles to help as needed, but she concentrated on diagnosing the condition of their surroundings... and on using her empathic senses to monitor the condition of the miners trapped within; when one man began to panic and threatened to collapse their small refuge upon them all, the elven beauty morphed herself into a sinuous, snakelike form, to glide ahead through openings too small for anyone else, to bring the cave-in victims lights and a hose through which a fresh air supply could be pumped... and the reassurance they hadn't been forgotten or abandoned.

They'd been lucky this time -- they'd managed to save everyone except those killed in the original accident. They were tired, but it was a good kind of tired, unlike the aftermath of other missions, when they *hadn't* managed to avoid further casualties. Today had left them exhausted but uplifted, especially when they'd seen the reunions of the rescued men with their anxiously awaiting families and friends.

"Ahh..." Braddock groaned quietly with pleasure as he let his large muscular frame sink into the warm bubbling water until only his leonine blond head remained on view. "I hope Betsy *is* resting -- she needs it more than we do. I can't *believe* she wanted to come with us, in her condition!"

"She's fine, Brian, really." Meggan had undressed also but was still standing, gloriously nude, outside the enormous tub, digging the toes of her always-bare feet into the earth by its support platform, her blonde hair wafting about her on the faintest hint of a breeze, her voice muffled as she rubbed her face against the shiny green leaves of a large philodendron. "But isn't it wonderful to have her here, where we can keep an eye on her and help her?"

"Yes, of course..." Her husband held a hand out to her in silent invitation to join him, even as he grumbled on, "Except I keep trying to decide if I should go kill Warren or Logan first..."

"Oh, Brian, don't be silly," she smiled at him reassuringly as she took his hand and slid down gracefully into the water, and into his open arms. After a long kiss, she pulled back from his embrace. "Poor baby, you're all tense. Here, let me get behind you..."

The blonde fay had worked long and hard, to first control and then fully master her powers, since that day years ago Captain Britain had come across the ugly changeling girl, and taken her into his home and his life... and, eventually, his heart. First Betsy, and later Rachel, had taught her to shield, to block out others' feelings so that she did not immediately, automatically morph into the fulfillment of their greatest (admitted, or hidden) desire. Kurt and Kitty had worked out various scenarios with her, to help her be as big an asset to the team as she could be. Moira had studied her at length -- just as she'd studied them all -- and provided considerable professional, objective insights into how Meggan's powers worked. The arrival of Moira's adopted daughter Rahne Sinclair, herself another -- albeit more limited -- shapeshifter, had added insights of a much more personalized, subjective nature.

Most recently, it had been Pete Wisdom's turn to help her growth. He didn't seem to see the same limitations when he looked at her that the others did. Where they gave her children's books carefully chosen not to overtax her recent progress in learning to read and write, Pete brought her adult books (many of them his own) on anything she expressed some interest in, and obviously expected her to slog through them, however long it took her, however hard it might be. And in some odd way the mere fact he expected her to understand them made it all right for her to ask him for help when she didn't. And just as he'd expanded her literary horizons he'd expanded the range of her powers.

Unlike the rest of the team, the elfish empath had liked the dour, cynical Black Air agent immediately. She'd never sensed any evil or deceit about him, only the badly masked pain of the deeply wounded but intrinsically good man hidden within. But she certainly *would* agree with the others that the world-weary, cynical Londoner had one of the most devilish, devious minds they'd ever come across. In particular, Wisdom could think of uses for Meggan's powers that would never in a million years have crossed her mind -- but that were completely obvious, in hindsight.

What she was doing now was something Pete had suggested -- something, in fact, he'd said the shapechanger Mystique had done for him once (which had earned him some definitely sour looks from both his current girlfriend Kitty, and from Raven's putative son, their team leader Nightcrawler). Staying behind her spouse, pressing up against him, she let most of her body ooze into a body-hugging pad carefully contoured to match every bump and hollow along Brian's back from neck to heels, then gradually started rippling and undulating, her own surface ranging from soft to hard as her empathy guided her. She left her 'normal' arms wrapped around his broad chest just above his waist to hug him close, while growing 'extra' palms and fingers wherever needed to more firmly knead the assorted knots of tensed, strained muscles.

Braddock leaned back into her, luxuriating in the full body massage even as he kept his eyes very firmly shut. While it *felt* wonderful, they'd both learned the hard way that much of the pleasure disappeared if he actually saw himself in the embrace of an oversized, flattened amoeba sprouting rows of excess hands reminiscent of a centipede's legs. (And his wife's beautiful features and long flowing blonde hair 'stuck atop' just made it worse, not better.) Even as his tense body relaxed and leant back into the incredible, ultimate backrub, he kept on grumbling, "I *like* Warren. Good background, and a good head on his shoulders, and he *did* want to marry Betsy -- *he* was the one suggested we make it a double ceremony -- I still don't understand what went wrong..."

One of the reasons Meggan kept her head basically intact while the rest of her morphed out of recognition was to make it easier to talk to her mate. "It's simple, Brian -- Betsy wanted to have children, Warren didn't." And if Betsy hadn't told her brother *why* Warren hadn't wanted children, Meggan thought to herself, that was Betsy's choice to make. His sister and his wife both knew Brian *had* honestly liked Warren -- the two had a lot in common, after all -- and had decided to let their friendship have a chance of surviving. "And Betsy decided, if she *had* to choose, having a child was more important to her than getting married."

"But why now? Why this way?" he asked plaintively... and not for the first time.

Kitty might ignore *her* man's habitual grousing as just random background noise -- and Betsy might have taken Warren's stereotypical remarks as serious philosophical observations that required rebuttal and re-education -- but the blonde empath wasn't made that way. She couldn't ignore Brian, and she certainly wouldn't argue with him, criticizing his old-fashioned opinions as irrelevant because out-of-date. Meggan just *couldn't* feel good unless everybody around her felt good, and she spent a lot of time and effort trying to ensure exactly that; now, she set herself to administer a verbal massage smoothing Braddock's mental and emotional unease just as she grew a few extra stubby hands to work on smoothing the kinks in his muscular thighs. "Betsy knows herself, and she knows what she wants," she murmured softly. "She decided this was the time, and she chose the way... and the person."

"Maybe... but then *Logan* should be with her now. What does it say for their future, that the X-Men are more important to him than Betsy and their baby?"

Still more hands budded from her pliant form, so that she could work on the tense calf muscles below his knees. "Oh, Brian... Logan will come any time Betsy needs him, you know that! But Betsy didn't want that kind of full-time partner. She wanted a child, and a father for that child that she could trust and count on... and she knows she can trust and count on Logan."

"Doesn't she realize that he's still hung up on Jean?"

"He loves Jean, yes," Meggan replied, steadily. "But he loves Betsy and this baby, too -- trust me, I can feel it shining off him."

"But doesn't Betsy *mind*?" he asked, even more plaintively. "She's a telepath, she *must* feel him loving Jean... How does she put up with it?"

Meggan shrugged, a wavelike motion he could feel across his shoulders and down the length of his back, past his buttocks cradled in warm, soft, form-fitting flesh. "The same way I put up with your loving Courtney, I guess." Ignoring his sputters of protest she went on calmly, "Logan has a big heart -- he loves Jean, and Kitty, too, and Jubilee, and his adopted daughter in Japan... and who knows how many others we don't know about. But his love is always a *good* love, not a selfish love -- remember how Betsy told us he let Mariko do what she needed rather than what he wanted? He won't make a move on Jean as long as she's happy with Scott, he's not jealous of Kitty being with Pete--"

"And you think *that* shows him to advantage?" Brian snorted, making his wife laugh.

"Well, he's certainly not been as bad as you or Kurt about it... or Storm or the professor! And *he*'s the one who'd have the most right to be!" Sensing him smile wryly, she went on, "He wants Jubilee to be at the Academy with Emma and Sean because he thinks it's best for her... and he'll be there for Betsy and little Marianne just as much as Betsy wants and needs..." The arms she'd kept wrapped around his torso were roving now, up to tweak a nipple, down to tickle his navel and the wakening manhood below, as she strove to relax and distract him.

It always made Brian just a little uncomfortable, how Betsy and Meggan both talked about the baby as if she were already... well, as if she already *existed* -- well, she did, but she hadn't been born yet, but to Betsy and Meggan she was already a real person with her own wants and needs. He was sure they were right, but he himself didn't have the help of either telepathy or empathy to really *feel* it as they did... Or maybe it was just a female thing. "It shouldn't be Logan's baby anyway," he grumbled half-heartedly. "It should be *Warren's* and *he* should be with her..."

"I know..." Meggan's dulcet voice was as soothing as the full-body massage she'd kept up the whole time. "I know she and Warren were really, honestly in love, and part of me wishes they had been able to work things out... but the rest of me is very selfishly happy that Betsy and Marianne are here instead. Warren wouldn't have agreed to that, you know -- that was part of the problem, that he couldn't make the break from the X-Men and the mansion. But that's no life for a baby."

"God, no!" He reared half-way upright, raising himself out of the pool so trails of water droplets trickled down his sculted form in a delicate, tinkling shower, then settled back down slowly as his wife gently tugged at him. "But, Meg... Betsy never mentions Logan taking care of Marianne... if anything happened to her, I mean, God forbid... Maybe she doesn't trust him as much as you think?"

"Oh, Brian -- Logan's legal state is as questionable as Betsy's is! I'm sure he could provide financially, and even emotionally... but that's still not enough to make a proper home for a child, as we could. I'm sure that one reason Betsy chose him in the first place is that she *does* trust him -- not to try to take his child, not to go against her wishes about us taking care of Marianne... if... if we ever had to."

Meggan had shifted back into her accustomed form as soon as he'd pulled away, and now slid around in the hot tub to face her husband, who gazed at her voluptuous body admiringly. Her time in the water had her eyes shifting from vivid emerald green to a lighter sea-green and her usually fair skin had taken on a silvery-blue sheen, as if covered with thin translucent scales. Then, as she slowly sank down into the water, small openings flared on either side of her long, swan-like neck -- gills that would let her breathe underwater comfortably, while her mouth and teeth and tongue kept busy relieving the tension and stress which she'd been slowly building up in a certain particularly demanding portion of his anatomy during her loving attentions to the rest of his body...

Continued in Part 3...