Prologue: Post-game
Jean Grey peeled the synthetic leather costume from her body, ignoring the aches and pains that came with her chosen profession. Once free from her salty flesh, her clothes found their own way to the cleaning bin, held aloft by the distracted power of her amazing mind.
She stepped into the shower, and let the water carry away the sweat and ash and grime of her team's latest mission. As the water shifted from stinging hot to soothingly warm, she sensed another presence. Her teammate entered her bathroom. Jean's eyes closed as she let the water soak her waves of heavy red hair, and she reached out with her mind to her guest.
Ah, she thought sadly, it's him. This never gets any easier.
He was wearing a towel, his wide shoulders set square. He simply stood, watching the water fountain off her head into fine spray over her neck, her shoulders, her breasts and belly. He watched each prism droplet refract a vision of her perfect form. Saliva came unbidden, his nostrils flared, his pupils widened as every sense strained to taste her, touch her, see, smell, feel her with his body the way he felt her in his mind.
"Jean," he said, taking a step towards her, towel dropping to her floor.
His second step never came. She held him, immobile, with her mind even as her body yearned to reach out and welcome him. To welcome him into her bath, into her arms, into her. But her heart, her heart was still too full of another to welcome Logan there. So she stopped him, holding him with her telekenetic powers just inches from the falling water that surrounded her.
"Logan," she said sadly, "No. Not tonight. Not... ever."
She kept her eyes closed under the shower, afraid to look at him, afraid to see the dense mat of hair covering his chest, knowing how it would feel scrubbing against her breasts, the wiry pelt that covered his body. She was afraid to see the desire burning in his eyes that she already felt burning in his mind.
He stopped, leaning for a moment against her wall of resistance. They both wondered what would happen if he ever pushed, exerted his indomitable will against her defenses. Would she stop him? Would she go so far as to hurt him to stop him? Or would he burst through her ephemeral shield and fall on her like the savage animal that he so obviously kept restrained inside?
He leaned, for just a moment, and then he stopped. He stood, and rolled his head, cracking his neck. He turned, batting away the towel she had floated back up towards his waist. He left her room, not bothering to dress.
As Jean finally opened her eyes, regarding the towel lying on her bathroom floor still pungent with his musky scent, Logan was walking down the hallway towards his room. His naked feet hissed softly across the berber carpet, and he stalked, his body still hard and optimistic. The man they called the Wolverine slipped into his room, a scowl on his face and an ache in his balls, brooding over the woman who once again had told him, No.
He settled onto the edge of his bed, a Spartan slab with a rough cotton sheet and a thin blanket. He looked down at his hardness, still arching skyward with his desire for Jean. He was about to take matters into his own hands, when his heightened senses kicked into gear.
He heard her heartbeat, speeding up as she watched him sitting in the darkened room. He didn't just hear her soft breath, he felt it, felt the sugar and spice mixture of woman and double-mint as she breathed, sighing his name.
"Why, Logan," she drawled softly, languorous and wicked and very grown up, "is that fo' me?"
"Christ, Rogue," he begged softly, suddenly wary and sad and more than a little frightened, "not again!"
Chapter One: Delinquency
"Oh, Logan," Rogue sighed, slowly coming to her feet from the chair where she had been sprawling, waiting for him again. "Don't tell me you are going to play hard to get, again."
She advanced, and he saw her in the dim light, seemingly naked but for long gloves and thigh-high stiletto-soled boots. As she got closer, he saw that her flesh was covered in some sort of sheer body stocking. He must have reacted, because she stopped, inches in front of him, and turned girlishly.
"Do you like it? Hank made it for me. Mononecu- Momonucul-, anyway, super-sheer fabric. It's about a half-dozen atoms thick, and feels lovely." She raised her arms over her head and shook her red hair off her seemingly-bare shoulders. She stood, arms raised and one leg slightly in front of the others, hips cocked in a pose as old as Mother Eve.
Logan leaned back, trying to get some distance, as her posing had nearly pressed her pert young breasts into his face.
"Hell, kid, we can't do this." His voice was a rough rumble, but there was a slight hint of desperation, of pleading.
She pouted, dropping her arms to her sides and moved a step closer. Her stockinged thighs opened over him, and the smooth cool leather of her boots ruffled the hair on his thighs as she moved over and around him, pressing her knees to the edge of the bed.
"Now, what did I say about calling me 'kid'?" She held up one hand, and he could see that the elbow-length gloves had the palms cut out, exposing her flesh. He winced as she pushed him, palm to chest, back down onto the bed.
When her flesh touched his, there was a connection, a closing of a circuit or the opening of a gate. Energy, emotions, powers, even the frustrated desire he'd had for Jean all siphoned, flowing into her palm and up her outstretched arm into her heart. She arched her back and rocked her hips forward, knocking him the rest of the way down to the bed and breaking the contact, both of them gasping.
Logan lay, grey clouds at the corners of his vision. He was starting to get angry. Messing with powers, that was serious business.
Rogue looked at him with heavy lidded eyes, and slowly licked her lips.
"My. Oh, my. You did want that girl tonight didn't you? I can feel the desire, the hot, hard animal need." She lowered herself down, trapping his erection between them as she slid her stocking-clad body against him. "It's just so unfair, to want someone who doesn't want you back, isn't it?"
"None of your business," he growled, more angry now and finding his will. He sat up and tried to push her away. Her temporary and superficial theft of his strength and power had left him just weak enough, and her just strong enough, that with her better leverage she held her ground. All he accomplished was pressing his body up to hers.
Impulsively, she reached down and bit his lip, grabbing his lip in her teeth and biting him savagely. Even as she felt his strength, his healing and his animal instincts pouring into her, she felt something else. She felt his will, his iron resolve. She was emboldened and she knew that she would see this through.
She released his lip, they both tasted his blood as the teeth marks disappeared, so much more slowly than usual from the effects of her touch. He shook his head like a dog coming out of the water.
"You made a mistake, girlie," he said, licking at the corner of his mouth. "You like your games, stealing my strength and my lust and my rage, well you know what you took this time? You just took my slef-control!"
He stood, levering himself upright with a surge, muscles rippling under his skin. She started to fall to the floor, but he caught her, one arm around her waist and another under her leg, pressing her sex against him. He spun, and dropped her to the mattress, hands running over the microthin fabric that covered her. Pinching, mauling, pulling at her sensitive skin, roughly massaging her hips, pulling the flesh back and forth over the bones and muscles beneath. His hands were everywhere, fingernails dragging along the slick surface of her body suit.
She gasped, buffeted by his sudden passion. He pinched her breasts hard and she moaned, yet the residual healing power she had taken from him soon repaired the hurts he was visiting upon her. It was all just so tactile, so immediate, she could not process it all.
He paused, nostrils flaring, looking down at the way her sparse red hair matted inside her body suit, soaking with the excitement she had for him. He didn't need heightened senses or animal instincts to know she wanted him, she was ready for him. He laughed, a low evil animal sound that thrilled her.
He moved as though to claw through the thin suit, his hand raised and forearm muscles rippling the way she had thrilled to a hundred times. He looked up from the fully ready and eager body that waited for his touch, and saw the slightest trace of scared girl-child still hiding in her eyes. He hesitated, fighting to control himself, to control the rage and lust that boiled under his skin.
"No!" She cried, a hoarse shout half anger and half fear. "Don't you stop now, don't you dare stop!"
She reached with her palm-less glove and grabbed at his broad, hairy chest, yet so soft and smooth under the covering of black wool. She'd noticed it in his hands too. Calluses are scar tissue, the buildup of a million little injuries. Despite his bristles and his attitude, Logan healed every one of the million tiny hurts that flesh is heir to, leaving his skin everywhere as smooth and soft as a baby's.
With a cry, and a desperate hunger, Rogue pressed the Wolverine's baby-smooth soft body against her palm, shocking him with the drain and the contact and the warmth of her skin, taking his hesitation, taking his caution, and finally taking his self-control.
Even as she steeled herself for what was to come, he let out a growl that raised all the hairs on the back of her neck and sent a tingle through her sex that flushed her skin from her blushing scalp down to the toes that were flexing inside her boots.
"SNICKT!" One claw, white, curved, a pale crescent moon of pain and pleasure in the darkness, flashed for a moment, and she was opened to him. The fine strands of the monofilament stocking parted and she opened like a night-blooming flower. The room was flooded with her scent, and he leaned forward to take her.
With her last surge of will, borrowed from him no doubt, she pulled away just enough to get his attention as she fumbled for something in the top of her boot.
"Wait, lover, please... oh, God, where is... ah." As he struggled to get into her, she produced a condom from her boot top, and tried to roll it over his eager manhood. As the thin material covered him, he took her. Protected somewhat from the skin-to-skin contact, he was able to maintain his strength, and as he reached a barrier within her, his skin touched hers briefly and another firework of shared mind, shared power and shared strength buffeted him like a storm.
