I've recently become rather obsessed with the X-men films, especially with Rogue who is portrayed by one of my favourite actresses, the lovely Anna Paquin. I am not too good with writing big long stories, one shots are usually my thing so I'm going to keep this quite short - maybe five chapters or so. This is Rogue/Pyro story, with elements of Rogue/Bobby and maybe a couple of others, we'll see as we go along. It takes place after X-Men: The Last Stand and contains explicit sexual content (some of which I may have to link to another site) and very strong language.

Please review! They inspire me to write more

PROLOGUE

He patrolled along the street, headlights on full blast. There was only one streetlamp working here and it flickered on and off every now and again. He kept his speed low, eyes strained through the gloom to try to find her face. Most of the girls tended to congregate beneath the streetlamp for safety and visibility, and if this would've increased competition between normal hookers, it didn't matter for this lot. They were all under the roost of the same pimp, some European bloke, and the work between the girls tended to be shared out evenly enough.

He pulled up and a tall high-heeled blonde strutted over, smiling. It spread a little further across her face as she recognised him. He knew her as the pimp's favourite – the one in charge.

"I'm looking for Elena," he told her. Elena was his regular.

"Elena is with client right now," said the blonde. She turned and scanned her group. "Katarina - come here!"

But the man knew he didn't really want Katarina the minute he saw her. She was dark-haired for one thing, and too old. Elena was rosy cheeked and wore her pale hair in a plait at the side of her head. She looked playful and innocent and kept her socks on when he fucked her cause she knew that was what he liked.

"No," he said. He poked his head out the window and tried to get a glimpse of the rest, but he knew their faces off by heart by now and none of them fitted his bill.

He was about to tell the blonde that he would just wait for Elena when he saw her. Standing slightly away from the others. A dark hood pulled up around her head. The light from the streetlamp illuminated one side of her face. She looked nervous. She had full, pouty lips, dark eyes and a heart-shaped pale face.

"Her," he said, pointing.

The blonde followed his finger and frowned. She obviously didn't recognise this girl. A sense of urgency seemed to deepen the lines on her face. "Katarina will go bareback – no extra charge."

Katarina began to protest but she was silenced by a sharp hand gesture. He wondered if business was slow tonight. They usually weren't so desperately unwilling to lose a sale.

"No," he said dismissively. And he shunted several metres down the pavement away from them and called to the newbie. "Girl!"

She came forward out of the shadows, giving the other girls a wide berth, and climbed into the passenger's seat. He took off before she had even closed the door, not wanting to see the blonde berate the rest of her whores for not chasing this new girl off.

He glanced sideways at her. Yes, very nice. She was very pretty, very youthful.

"You new around these parts?" he asked her.

She nodded the affirmative.

"Well if you ask the other girls, they'll all tell you the same thing. I'm one of the nicest guys around here. I'll treat you right."

"Actually, I'm just passing through really."

His insides swooped. She spoke with a soft Southern drawl which he had not expected at all.

"And what brings a Southern belle like yourself all the way up here to New York?" He wanted to ask if there was a shortage of clients in the South, but he severely doubted that.

She shifted slightly in her seat. "I ran away."

"Ran away?" That was a bit more positive than being told she was trafficked out of Eastern Europe as a slave like the rest of the girls, but immediately his defences went up. He had heard enough on daytime TV to know why most of the individuals on police 'missing persons' went missing in the first place. "You aren't a mutant, are you?"

She looked round at him for the first time. "You think if I was a mutant, I'd be doing this for a living?"

He laughed. "Good point."

They drove a little further in silence. She was far more reserved than the other hookers. Most of them smiled or flirted at least a little, and Elena usually gave him a strip-show in the front seat. But she sat so quietly and stiffly, her white hands clasped in her lap, hood still wrapped around her head, eyes glassy as she watched the city approach them.

He never took the whores to his own house. It was a dump, and his wife would probably protest. His brother owned a small one-bed apartment in Lower Manhattan but was away for work a lot of time. He had decorated it classy enough that it impressed the girls, and he had been sympathetic enough to cut him a key after he had explained woefully that he was "having problems with the wife".

"What's your name?" he asked her.

There was a pause. "Annie."

"What's your real name?"

"I'd rather not say. You can call me Annie."

He didn't know why he expected her to give her his real name. He didn't know why he wanted to know. He made a point of not even asking for proof when Elena told him she was eighteen. This wasn't a business where you asked questions. It was filthy and sleazy and that was why he enjoyed it more than sleeping with his wife. There was something quite intriguing about this little Southern creature though.

"Ok, Annie," he said, trying out the name on his tongue, knowing he would be groaning it all night. "My name's John."

Her head inclined slightly and her dark eyes darted towards him for a split second. So quick he almost missed it.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing." There was another pause. "I knew a guy called John once."

"Everybody knows a guy called John. It's a common name."

"I suppose so."

They reached his apartment shortly after eleven. A gust of wind had blown the contents of a dumpster all down the street. He stepped in a bag of old Chinese takeaway and kicked it off irritably.

"It's nicer inside," he reassured her. It was up on the second floor. Though unused during the day, he had the heating set to come on at nine every night so that the rooms weren't too cold for the girls to take their clothes off. He closed the door behind her and took her coat. Her hood came down and a bundle of long black waves tumbled out of it. He stared. There were two very uniform streaks of grey at her hairline.

"I take cash up front," she told him.

He didn't acknowledge this. "That's unusual," he said, pointing at the grey.

She wrinkled her nose at his finger pointing in her face. "It's a stress thing."

He snorted. "I know what you mean. I have something tucked in the fridge for the very same reason. Please, go through to the bedroom and make yourself comfortable."

When he came into the bedroom, two glasses of white wine in his hands, a wad of cash tucked under his arm, she was sitting tersely at the edge of the bed. He paused in the doorway to admire her. He had snatched up a rare little gem tonight. She was slim and wore a delicate looking white blouse that fell quite low on her chest. The sleeves were short, but only an inch or two of the skin on her arms was showing as she was wearing a pair of long, white leather gloves. She was unravelling a long grey scarf from around her neck and took the glass of wine off him with a polite nod.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're very welcome, Annie." He sat next to her on the bed. She smelled divine. She must use tea tree and mint scented shampoo on that luscious hair of hers. All of a sudden he felt like he might go mad if he didn't touch her.

He reached out and popped open the first button of her blouse. She looked at him for a moment and then sat her untouched glass of wine on the carpeted floor. She went to take off her gloves but he stopped her.

"No," he said, hand squeezing her shoulder. "Keep those on."

They were sexy.

"If that's what you want," she said. She stood at the foot of the bed in front of him and unbuttoned the rest of her blouse, slipping it off her shoulders. He let out a groan. A pale pink, lacy bra pushing her breasts up. Smooth porcelain skin. She was fucking perfect.

"Yes Annie, yes," he breathed. "Take it all off."

She unzipped her jeans, turned her back to him as she shimmied them down her hips, revealing matching pale pink pants, her tight ass, everything pale and smooth and beautiful. When she turned back to face him, only in the bra, knickers and those white gloves, he felt like his dick might explode in his pants.

He hurriedly tore them off, nearly ripped his t-shirt in his eagerness to get naked for this girl. She didn't even look down at his body as he undressed. Her dark eyes kept boring into his, but he saw them flicker almost imperceptibly to the little bundle of cash that had fallen to the floor along with his t-shirt.

"Do you want to take the rest off for me?" she asked.

"Fuck yes." He grabbed her around the waist and swung on her onto the bed on her front. She was light, like a young girl, and her spine poked out in a knobbly line down her back. He popped the clasp on her bra, slid his hands down the skin. He hooked his finger round the waistband of her pants, pulled them down slowly to reveal the curve of her ass.

"You are so fucking perfect," he murmured.

"Could you turn me round?" she asked, twisting her head so that her voice wasn't muffled by the sheets.

He flipped her over, and for a moment she looked like an angel with all that dark hair spilling around her pale face. Felt like one too, the silky skin of her thighs pressing against his, his cock jutting against her hip bone. Then her face screwed up, brow furrowing in concentration, and he knew she was ready for him.

He went to position himself and found he couldn't. He blinked, tried to move again but only succeeded in collapsing on top of her. His vision was going blurry at the edges, his fingers and toes going cold.

"Wh-what..."

The world spun. He vaguely recognised that he had been thrown off the bed onto his carpet, and that an agonising penetrating ache had settled into his hips and legs. The pain felt miles deep. He tried to blink his vision clear but it was now completely obscured.

"An...Annie..."

"Sorry, darling," came her voice clearly through the roaring in his ears. "Don't panic, you're not dying."

He tried to reach for her. Whether to strike her or just get a hold of whatever she had used to do this to him, he didn't know. His arms wouldn't budge.

"It should wear off within the next 24 hours," she was saying. "There's no need to call the police in the morning, I'm only taking the money that you would've given me for the sex anyway. You got a nice little show and a good feel up – I'd say that was worth the even $100." There was a pause. "Next time, just wait for Elena."

He couldn't even summon up the anger... he couldn't summon up anything... everything was going grey...

But the last thought that feebly burst into his head as he lost consciousness had nothing to do with her last words that he didn't even hear – "I'll leave the door open so the mailman finds you in the morning" – and when he woke up the next night in the hospital, he'd only vaguely remember the streak in her hair and the pink bra let alone this thought. But it was the only thing in the whole world that could connect, relate and explain what the hell was happening.

And the thought consisted of just one word:

Mutant.

The whore called Annie drew her hood up around her face as she stepped out of her unfortunate punter's apartment building into the street. She fished her phone out of her coat pocket to check the time. Eleven twenty. That had taken longer than she had expected it to. Most men tended to laugh at her gloves, not tell her to keep them on.

She shuddered. She needed a shower.

She needed a taxi too. She didn't recognise this area. She could call up and book one but that would mean waiting around this building and possibly be sighted by residents who would put two and two together if Jaunty John bothered to report this to the police.

She should probably move to another part of town tomorrow anyway, just in case.

The phone in her hand suddenly started vibrating and a loud jingle blared down the street. She nearly leapt out of her skin, quickly rejecting the call. She sighed. That was stupid. She had been ignoring all calls to this phone on purpose, so that people might get the idea that she wasn't using it anymore. Rejecting the call made it clear that that wasn't the case.

She glanced at the name under the 'missed call' notification and her stomach turned over.

Bobby.

She quickly shoved her phone in her pocket, where it rustled the across the dollar notes. She swore under her breath. "That boy just doesn't get the message..."

Bobby was her sort of boyfriend-come-ex-boyfriend who had been calling her every night for the last week and a half. Always around the same time, she presumed just before he got into bed at night. She ignored the calls, was usually fine about it, except for these few occasions when he happened to call her directly after she had gone on the game. Other men touching her skin, getting hard for her, seeing her naked... She never let it go any further but she still felt guilty about it.

She shouldn't really. He was part of the reason why she had left in the first place.

But if anyone should be touching her, realistically it should be him.

Her phone dinged again. She looked. He'd left a voicemail.

He'd never done that before.

Because he hadn't been sure that she was still using her phone until now – right when she had stupidly rejected the call.

She glanced up and down the street as if expecting to see him running down it towards her. It wouldn't hurt, would it? Just to see what he has to say? She doubted they were taking her disappearance so seriously that they were keeping tabs on what she did with her phone. They wouldn't know that she had listened to it.

She dialled her voicemail service and held the phone up to her ear.

"You have one new message."

A man was coming down the street with a bag full of beer bottles. He tried to catch her eye as he walked past, but she turned her face away.

"Message one," the automated female voice continued. "Today at 23:27.

"Rogue–"

She hung up almost immediately. Hearing his voice was like having a fist squeezing her stomach. Especially hearing it say her name. All of a sudden she wanted nothing more than to jump onto the next bus and head straight back to Westchester to see him.

But she couldn't do that.

She made sure the man with the beer bags had walked a fair enough distance away from her before turning out of the light of punter John's apartment block and heading down the street towards the nearest sounds of traffic. The clouds opened over her head and a cold drizzly rain clung to her clothes as her heels clicked down the pavement.

There was no way she was ever going back.