Archive of Our Own

David Rossi has written a half-dozen books the abnormal and deviant behavior of serial killers, arsonists, rapists, and cults. His next book, he decides, as he inches north on I-95 at 30 miles per hour, will be on the hysterical reaction of citizens in the DC Metro area when a few snowflakes fall out of the sky. It might not quite reach the level of deviant, but there's certainly nothing normal about it.

He'd had to boot Hotch - who was quite possibly trying to get himself snowed in - out of the office and had made sure Reid was safely en route before he left. He kind of likes being the last guy out, the one to turn off the lights, and he hasn't much chance for that lately. But an early Friday, as a snowstorm bears down on the region? This is a good time for it.

Three miles outside of the BAU, and he finds himself studying the hybrid idling on the side of the road. Panicked motorist, he thinks wryly at first, and then notices the flat. Well, that blows, all puns intended. He debates stopping to see if whoever it was could use some help when he realizes that he knows that car. It's a black Prius, newish - but they all are - and fairly nondescript in the DC-Metro area. But on the back bumper, just slightly off-center, a sticker orders him, "DON'T PANIC." He'd once followed Emily Prentiss from work to a bar for a team night and really, it's fascinating just how unsettling watching those words actually can be.

At his speed, and given the dwindling number of cars on the road, Dave manages to pull over to the shoulder fairly quickly and leaves his own motor running as he abandons the warmth and safety of the truck. He gives Prentiss's trunk a good knock in warning as he approaches her window, squinting against the snow. It's cold, but not bitterly so, not yet, and the sun hasn't completely disappeared below the horizon.

The snow is starting to ice over and he leans over to peer in the window when the engine hums and the window slides down.

"Jesus," Emily says when the window is far enough down for a gust of warm air to waft toward him. He leans into it automatically and smiles at her. She's pretty when she's pissed off - she's pretty whenever, but Dave has a special fondness for Prentiss being pissed off - and her hand's still on her piece. He'd startled her.

"Car trouble?" he asks, gripping the door. She can't stay there. The roads are almost empty and the snow is drifting up against the guardrails. A Virginia state cop will come along eventually but there are never enough of them and it could still be hours.

Prentiss deflates, rolling her eyes conspiratorially at him and says, "Just a flat. They're on their way."

Dave has to laugh because whoever "they" are? They're finding every excuse not to come out in this wreck of a day. It's still not quite full dark, but it's on its way, and even he has to admit the weather is getting pretty nasty. "Sure they are," he says, glancing at the little cave of her car and admitting that she's got it pretty fogged up in there. "You really can't see out that windshield, can you?"

"What?" she asks, blinking up at him with big eyes and spiky lashes.

He realizes, just then, that she'd been asleep - maybe not all the way, but she's too soft and fuzzy around the edges to be as alert as he's used to seeing her. He'd already intended to give her a lift, but now he decides it's time to get that show on the road. He reaches in her open window and thumbs the lock open before he jerks on the handle. She gets out of the car as he finds the button that unlocks everything else.

"Crap," she says, looking around at the deserted highway and drifting snow with a look of offended disgust. Dave likes that look.

Hotch would hand him his ass if he voiced that thought, though, so he opens the back door of Prentiss's car and pulls out her go bag. His own is full of laundry, rushed through back-to-back cases. Dead women, eight between the two, and it never fails to piss him off that the gender ratio is so skewed.

"What are you doing?" she asks with sufficient indignation that he hides the smile that wants to break out on his face. He can't help it - the more ticked she gets, the more fire blooms in her cheeks, the easier it is to put aside the pale, frozen faces of all those other women.

"I'm taking you home," he says. He runs through possible other motives for stealing her dirty laundry and wonders which one she's assumed, if she's assumed anything at all.

"Oh," she says. "Um - thanks." She ducks back into the car and he starts back to the truck with her bag. He hears her engine stop but she doesn't immediately follow, even after he's let himself into the still-running truck and thrown her bag in the narrow back seat. She's fumbling something - a sock? - around the antennae and he allows himself a brief chuckle before she turns around, because of course Emily - careful, thorough, pragmatic Emily - is going to make sure no one is going to tow her car away in the middle of a snowstorm.

"I was expecting more of an argument," he admits when she finally slides into the seat next to him with her purse under her arm and snow melting in her dark hair.

"Oh, please," she retorts. "It's dark and it's snowing, and the car will still be here tomorrow. Like I'm going to look a gift horse in the mouth."

Pragmatic, Dave reminds himself and is oddly glad he can do this for her. It's not that he wants her to owe him and he doesn't have anything to prove. But it's a favor done for a friend, and he doesn't get much opportunity to offer. His team is too competent to leave him openings. "You live pretty far north, don't you?" he asks.

"Sort of between Rosslyn and Pentagon City," she says, and proceeds to rattle off street names until he realizes he knows the area where she lives. He pulls the truck back onto the highway as she uses her cell phone to cancel the tow truck she'd called.

When she hangs up, he expects her to start a conversation, but she doesn't. Instead she gazes out the window at the worsening weather, a thoughtful look on her face, but not the blank brood he's caught her in after bad cases. He wonders if she had plans for this weekend, plans that have been shot to hell by the weather, and reminds himself that it's not really his business. It hadn't been much a secret when JJ was pretending she wasn't dating the cop from New Orleans, and he figured if Prentiss had a guy, they'd all have figured it out just as easily. He leaves her to her thoughts. They all need something of their own, even if it's just in their own heads.

Prentiss's last assignment was in the Hoover Building downtown - a whole three months before Erin Strauss plucked her name out of a hat and tried to make her a mole; Hotch had told him about that, long before he'd come back - which makes the location of her condo a reasonable commute. It isn't a hellish drive now - Quantico is in the opposite direction of the usual flow of traffic. But it is a hike, and he wonders if she's considered moving or if she's expecting to go back to DC at some point. Then again, he isn't one to talk. He has no intention of moving, and her place is...out of his way, but not by far.

The force of the storm eases a little and the wheels of the truck seem to grip the road more tightly. They're off the slush and ice of the highways, into a more residential area, and the roads have been cleared. He rolls to a stop at a red light and realizes how tensely he's been holding himself. He tilts his head to either side and cracks his neck, which seems to bring Prentiss out of her reverie.

"Thanks," she says suddenly, sitting up straight.

He glances over at her but the light goes green in his peripheral vision and he needs to pay attention again. "Think any harder and I'll be able to hear the gears grinding," he says. He doesn't want to ask her what's on her mind, but it's obvious something is.

She laughs and it's...cute. Throaty, nervous, awkward, almost. He wonders if he makes her nervous. She's always handled herself well around him - not like Reid, who nearly tripped over his own lower lip that first week - but she keeps to herself more than the others and he thinks she's not entirely comfortable without the professional gloss on their interaction. "Just appreciating the quiet," she says, and it's clear he's been overthinking things.

"Long week," he says, and it has been. There's not a lot left that surprises or shocks him, but that doesn't seem to stop the sick fucks from trying. He hangs a left onto her street and is greeted with a row of dark houses. No lights whatsoever.

Beside him, Prentiss curses but - it's not in English. It's not in Italian either, because Dave learned all those words from Uncle Pauly, forty-some years ago. He raises an eyebrow at her, deciding it's probably an Asian language, but that still leaves his choices pretty wide open.

"I'm not sure what you just said," he admits, "but I'm pretty sure I understand what you meant."

Her expression is stricken and she drops back against the seat. "You've got to be kidding," says and he feels bad for her. It clearly hasn't been her day to start with, and now she's got no heat, no light, and no microwave. If her complex uses gas, she can at least make herself some dinner, but she won't be able to see what she's cooking.

It's not a hard decision and he's not even sure when he crossed the line between concept and execution. One minute he's trying to remember if he has a flashlight in the glovebox, the next, he's inviting her to his home.

"Thanks," she says tiredly when he hands her the flashlight. "I'll bring it back on Monday."

"Bring it back in ten minutes," he says, and yeah, apparently he's decided. Hotch wouldn't approve - there are apparently a whole bunch of "fraternization rules" to go with the communications director, the jet, and the fancy new digs - but he has no ulterior motive. He goes out in the field with Prentiss and he has no doubt she'll shoot him if he steps outside the lines. He's not even sure he'd want to. She's a pretty girl, and whip-smart, but three ex-wives is enough and he's accepted that he's one of those people who just isn't cut out for long-term relationships.

"You're good," she jokes half-heartedly, "but I'm pretty sure Dominion Power's outside your jurisdiction."

"Maybe," he admits, because no one seems to have any real power over the damn utilities. "But you're not. Grab some stuff and come back down. You can stay at my place tonight, and I'll take you back to your car tomorrow."

He watches as she balks, the color in her cheeks rising and that awkwardness coming over her again. "Rossi," she hedges, and does everything but scuff her shoe in the snow. She doesn't want to spend the weekend alone in her cold, dark condo, but either he's pushed too hard or not hard enough. Taking a chance on not hard enough, he barks,

"Prentiss. It's freezing, your power's out, I have a house with three spare bedrooms, and I'm wasting gas. Move your ass."

Pragmatic. Logical. That should swing her.

"How do you know your power's on?" she counters, lifting her chin and frowning.

"I don't." He doesn't and as she opens her mouth to deflect him, he plays his ace. "But I do have a wood-burning stove, which in my experience does not come standard in an apartment."

Her mouth closes without a word and she studies him, his flashlight clutched in her left hand. If he could almost hear the gears grinding before, he can almost see them now, and he recognizes the exact beat where she concedes. "Wheels up in ten minutes?" she asks.

"Ten minutes," he says, and she's off. He stays in the car while she lets herself in and a moment later he sees the beam of the flashlight through the window. Oddly, he doesn't feel the familiar warmth of satisfaction at winning an argument. In fact, it feels like just the start of something, of what, he's not sure. But he knows better than to underestimate her.

She's back in ten minutes on the nose, in jeans and sneakers, and he knows what's coming as soon as she opens her mouth.

"Enough with the thanking," he warns as she pulls the door closed after her. "Don't make me leave you here."

He sees her eyebrow lift as she turns her head away to buckle he seatbelt and then turns back with a flourish, hair swinging and says haughtily, "I was only going to say, 'Drive on, Jeeves.'"

She's perfectly deadpan and it does shock him for a moment before a laugh tumbles forth. "Touche," he chuckles, and puts the truck in drive. He'll be just as happy to be out of this mess and in his own home. Prentiss would probably prefer her own place as well, but at this point, his was the next best thing.

"I do have one condition," she says when they're on Route 29.

"Yeah?" He doesn't see where she has much leverage at this point, but he'll humor her. It's his duty as a good host.

"I'm cooking you dinner," she announces.

He levels a searching look in her direction. He hasn't had a woman mucking around in his kitchen in at least five years, and Prentiss has always struck him as the sort who burns water and sets off the smoke detector making eggs. She meets his stare confidently and after a moment, he realizes she's not backing down.

He has to look back at the road anyway, so he shrugs and says, "I'm still choosing the wine." If making him dinner will assuage her ego enough for her to stop thanking him incessantly, he can be gracious. He can be gracious and wash down whatever she cooks with a lot of excellent wine.

"I wouldn't expect anything less," she says calmly. "Of course I'll need to know what I have to work with. Let's talk about what's in your fridge."

"Hm," he grunts, amused. "I think I have some orange juice and a loaf of bread."

"Right," Prentiss says skeptically. "Let's start with meat."

He suppresses a grin. He thinks she'd laugh if he made a completely inappropriate joke, but the situation is a little too fragile to try it. "I have some hamburger in the freezer and a nice cut of steak in the fridge," he tells her. He's got some duck in the freezer too, but it's frozen solid and he doesn't know how she feels about wild game, so he doesn't mention it.

"I can work with that," she says. "What about vegetables?"

"Fresh or frozen?" because he has both. Four days ago, his fridge had been empty so he'd hedged his bets and gone to the store. He'd forgotten how much buying groceries was like tempting fate with this job.

"Fresh."

"Carrots, onion, some green peppers, maybe a tomato or two, some spinach," he recalls, "and I don't know if they count as vegetables, but I picked up a carton of mushrooms the other day."

"If Reid were here, he'd tell you tomatoes aren't vegetables either," Prentiss tells him, and then demands an inventory of his spice cupboard.

In fact, she spends the remainder of the trip quizzing him on the content of his kitchen. It's casual and silly and he's somewhat surprised to find he doesn't mind. He thinks maybe they could start profiling killers by kitchen contents, and wonders what she's learning about him.

The nice thing is, he's pretty sure she really just wants to make dinner.

He pulls the truck into the garage and lets Prentiss hop out on her own. He's a good host and doesn't like to make his guests uncomfortable.

"Come on in," he invites. "Seems like we still have power."

"Oh, now you're just showing off," she complains, but she's smiling. "Some people have all the luck."

"Come on, let me show you where to put your stuff down," he says, letting them both in through the garage. He cuts through the mud room and into the hall, then up the stairs.

There are three spare bedrooms but one of them is kind of small and cold because it's on the opposite end of the house from the stove. His Nonna's cherry furniture is in there and her lace curtains, and some of the crocheted pillows, but it's messy and the bed's a single. The other two are almost identical, queen beds and bed-in-a-bag coverlets, a single chest in each, in case someone stays long enough to need to unpack. The woman at Macy's wouldn't let him buy the same set for both bedrooms so one of them is blue and white, accented in stripes, and the other is dark red and cream. He took the woman from Macy's out to dinner once or twice, but she never saw either of the guest rooms.

He shows Emily to the blue-and-white room because he likes the idea of her hair against the dark red of the other one just a little too much. He's not Hotch - he lets himself think about these things, but he didn't ask her here to seduce her. She's a coworker and guest and he wants her to be comfortable.

"Make yourself at home," he tells her, entertaining the polite fiction that anyone could mistake this prefabricated room for a home. "I'm going to the cellar to pick out a wine. Meet you in the kitchen in bit?"

"Yeah, sure," she murmurs as he leaves her standing in the room.

The kitchen is in fairly good shape. He hasn't been home to cook anything in a week and he ditched everything suspect from the fridge the last time he'd gotten a night off. The steak and vegetables are fresh enough - he'd picked them up in hopeless optimism when the first case was done, and then found himself on a plane to Seattle the very next morning - and the mushrooms still look good.

He tries to remember what Emily orders when the team is out but can't remember seeing her drink wine. He goes with the traditional, pulling out a bottle of red and, after a moment's thought, a second bottle - a slightly later vintage. He's not a heavy drinker but wine doesn't last, even with those new-fangled vacuum sealers. And tonight, he's not drinking alone.

Besides, he thinks in his own defense, it's a cold night and wine will warm them up. Maybe even get Prentiss to relax a little. She's not jumpy - hasn't had her hand on her weapon since he knocked on her window - but he'd just as soon she enjoy herself and kick back. She has a great natural laugh and he has yet to hear it tonight .

The floorboards in the old house creak when she comes down the stairs and that's his cue to make his peace with his selection and meet her in the kitchen. She's standing by the island when he comes up, hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans, her posture a blend of apprehension and forced nonchalance. He sets the bottles down on the island next to her in case she wants to read the labels, and goes looking for the good decanter. He's not above showing off a little.

"I haven't told you what we're having," she says when he turns back.

"I know what's in my fridge," he replies, oddly pleased by her gentle ribbing. He eases the cork out of the first bottle. "And besides, it's a fallacy that you can't drink certain wines with certain foods. A good wine can be enjoyed with just about anything." He finishes decanting the wine and sets it aside. "So what are we having?"

"That," she declares, "would be telling. May I?"

He raises an eyebrow. After announcing that she was going to make him dinner and interrogating him on the contents of his larder, she was going to be shy about diving in and actually cooking?

"Go on," he says expansively. There hasn't been a woman in his kitchen in a long time and he's strangely glad it's Emily Prentiss. "I'll just - "

"You," she interrupts, head already in the fridge, "are going to sit at the island and tell me where the hell everything is."

"Yes, ma'am," he replies, wondering if he can get her on the faculty of the FBI Academy without losing her at the BAU. She'd make one hell of a drill sergeant. He sketches out a sloppy salute when she turns around breaks into a broad, unpracticed smile.

Unfortunately, it only lasts a few seconds and then her face is falling back into something more guarded. She looks unsure, at a loss for words, her hands full of food. Food he would like her to cook if it's going to be out of the fridge. "Emily," he says, using her first name on purpose to remind her that they're off the clock. She blinks at him. "The steaks are dripping on the floor."

"Oh, damn," she curses, that odd self-consciousness gone again, and spins around to put the mushrooms on the counter and the meat in the sink. She wipes up the spill on the floor with a dishrag and finds the cabinet with his pots and pans. She puts on water to boil and she seems to know what she's doing, so he moves to the cabinet to find the glasses that go with the decanter. The wine should be ready and he's starting to think he could use a glass just as badly as Emily.

"You're slipping," he says, setting the glasses down. She seems to be going at normal pace again, the frenzied activity from before calmed. "That curse came out in English."

She glances over her shoulder. "I swear in English."

"Not nearly as much as the rest of us do," he comments, not realizing how true that is until it comes out of his mouth. Hotch keeps tight control over his emotions and wouldn't dream of cursing in front of children or superiors, but he also fits in well with the boys. His nickname is a natural abbreviation, but he wouldn't have it if he hadn't been able to curse and drink with the SWAT team that christened him. Morgan swears like a trucker when he's having a bad day, and JJ has a delightfully foul mouth on her. Rossi's never heard Reid swear and kind of doesn't want to, and he's heard far too much out of Garcia's mouth to care if there are curse words in there. It's usually worse when there aren't.

"I'm a diplomatic brat," she says, with that wry, brittle gloss that appears in her voice whenever she mentions her past. "Worse than that. I'm an ambassador's daughter. My acts of rebellion were limited to learning as many curse words in other languages as I could remember."

"And joining the FBI," he guesses, because being under constant scrutiny doesn't restrict teenage rebellion - if anything, it magnifies it, and he's pretty sure whatever's in her past that she's not talking about is worse than dirty words and some extremely unfortunate eyeliner.

"And that," she says mildly as she juliennes the hell out of the mushrooms. "Sorry to disappoint, but I was a pretty straight-laced kid. Frying pan?" She dives into the right cupboard before he has a chance to direct her, so he just picks up the decanter and pours two glasses of wine, waiting for her to reappear.

"Prentiss," he says when she straightens up with his frying pan in her hand. "I have been shown your high school yearbook.

"Oh god." Prentiss drops the frying pan and it hits the floor with a clatter that echoes in kitchen. The expression on her face is worth the price of admission and Dave is inordinately pleased with himself, because you can't bullshit a bullshitter. She starts to laugh and he pushes one of the glasses over to her because this should be the last of it, the weird tension that follows them around, intruding at annoying moments.

She takes the glass with a nod of thanks and takes a gulp - he's not the only one to recognize she needs to take an edge off. He watches carefully because that wine like that is not meant to be gulped. Her eyes widen and she blinks at the glass and then takes a careful sip, letting the wine sit on her palate for a moment before she swallows. She goes a little unfocused and it's a surprisingly good look on her. "This is gorgeous," she says, taking another, tinier, sip, and Dave's pleased. He likes good wine and he likes to share it, and her obvious appreciation is just the icing on his cake.

She prefers French wines to Italian, she says, but given this example, she may have to investigate further. He gives her a couple of names, and she counters with recommendations for whites. He doesn't often drink white, but he files the names and vintages away for future reference.

She dumps dry pasta into boiling water. He wishes he had fresh, to show off, but the pastamaker is gathering dust somewhere and he hasn't had that kind of time in months. "You've got sauce around here somewhere, right?" she asks.

"That, I do have," he affirms, and pulls the jar from the fridge.

Prentiss takes one look at the plain mason jar and the label with the handwritten date and says, "Oh, God, you made that yourself, didn't you?" She takes it from him and unscrews the lid.

"Guilty as charged," he says modestly except it's not terribly modest at all. She pours sauce into a small pan to heat and then tastes the edge of the spoon.

Her eyes flutter closed and she lets out a breathy little sigh and he wonders - completely inappropriately - if that's how she sounds in bed. "Oh my god," she groans. "This is possibly the best marinara I've ever tasted. You're going to share this recipe with me, right?"

"Mm, sorry, 'fraid I can't do that," he says innocently. "Family secret."

Her eyes open, all traces of rapture gone, and she scowls at him and it makes him want to laugh. "Nonna would kill me," he says, holding up both hands in supplication, but he has no one to pass the recipe to, and Prentiss does seem to know her way around a kitchen. "Are you chilly?" he asks, before he can respond to that, because he's not sure he likes which way his brain's going. "I can build a fire."

"I'm okay," Prentiss says, "but if you want to, go ahead. I mean it was definitely a selling point."

"I think I will," he says. "The greatroom gets cold. High ceilings. Suck the warmth right out, even with the heat on."

He brings in wood from the garage and gets a fire started in the stove and then wanders back to the kitchen to see how Prentiss is making out. She's a pleasure to watch in the field - she's competent and professional, and when she's not being self-conscious, her movements are elegant and fluid. She's similarly adept in the kitchen, and he doesn't want to make her nervous by watching her. So he sidles up to where she's tossing garlic into his spinach and fills the sink with water and a squirt of dish soap. She gives him a sidelong glance.

"You're making me dinner, I figure I can do the dishes," he says, even though she's not done. Truth is, he'd rather stand next to her than be exiled to his own breakfast bar, and she doesn't seem to mind much. They bump elbows a couple times and she pops him in the hip once when she's juggling multiple pans on the stovetop. He likes it. It feels cozy to work alongside someone once more, like he's not the loner he makes himself out to be these days.

"Is it all right if I use some of this?" she asks, holding up her glass.

"Be my guest," he invites, and watches as she dumps the remains of her glass into the pan that held the steaks and tilts it so the liquid covers the full area. "You should never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink."

"Trust me," she says dryly. "I've drunk a lot of wine I wouldn't cook with. This is a treat."

"You need a refill," he says, and takes care of it as soon as his hands are dry.

"Thank you," she says, throwing her pile of mushrooms into the pan and picking up her glass to take a fresh sip. Her cheeks are flushed a lovely pink from the wine and the heat and the exertion of juggling three dishes at once. Dave's impressed despite himself. "Do you want to set the table?" she asks, sounding hesitant. He doesn't blame her. The kitchen island is covered with ingredients, the formal dining room is, frankly, terrifying, and he doesn't have a real kitchen table. He's not quite sure how that happened but he's never missed it before and figures now's not the time to start.

"Why don't we eat in front of the fire?" he suggests, taking two plates from a cupboard and picking out the right assortment of silverware. "It's more comfortable in there."

It's where he eats most of his dinners, and the occasional lunch. He eats breakfast, when he bothers, at the island. He supposes at this point he should be comfortable with the bachelor life. He takes the plates and silverware, and a pair of napkins, into the greatroom and sets them on opposite ends of the coffee table. There's just enough wine to refill his glass and top off Emily's, with a little left, so he decants the second bottle, just in case, as she arranges the food on the table.

The meal is traditional, pasta with sauce to start, steaks with a mushroom demiglace, and wilted spinach with garlic. It smells amazing and the cold has made him ravenous, so Rossi just dumps it all on his plate and tastes everything. In a word, it's amazing. He's paid exorbitant sums to restaurants for food only half this good.

"Where'd you learn to cook?" he asks Prentiss, because he swears, she showed no sign of this kind of talent. Usually when women like to cook, they also like to bring things in to work to share and show off, and the last time they had anything like that was when Morgan's mother was in town.

"College," she says with a grin that somehow manages to be mischievous and slightly abashed all at once. "I wanted to prove to my mother than I was a fully functional adult. The first week, I think I managed to burn water. You?"

So he wasn't completely off, he thought ruefully. Just by about fifteen or twenty years. "Self-defense," he says. "No self-respecting man used to the family recipe for lasagna is going to find Stouffers' an acceptable substitute." Of course, even getting to that point took him a while. He'd gone from his mother's kitchen to his first wife's, and even when that had ended, he subsisted on takeout and coffee until he got remarried.

"Nonna wouldn't approve?" Prentiss asks wisely.

"Nonna would come spinning right out of the ground, God bless her," he says, thinking of tiny, fiery Nonna, and of his grandfather leaning over and whispering, Your Nonna, she's one hell of a woman. I tell you, Davey, you need to go out and find yourself a girl just like her. But there was no one like Nonna and it took Dave three tries to figure that one out.

"You sound like you were close," Emily says, and the smile on her face is gentle.

"When you're the only son of an only son? You're not close, you're henpecked," Dave says, thinking about the number of times Nonna's wooden spoon found the back of his hand. You didn't mess around in Nonna's kitchen and it's only now that he's older, now that he can look back, that he realizes he learned everything he ever needed to know back there, and still went out looking for more answers.

"She sounds glorious," Emily says, curling her feet under her and taking a sip of her wine. "Tell me more?"

He wants to ask about her family, her grandparents, her childhood, but she's never mentioned her father, let alone any relative more distant, and everything he knows about her childhood, he learned in his kitchen that very evening. So he doesn't press. Instead he tells her about holidays with Nonna and Poppy, Thanksgiving turkeys and Easter hams and homemade lasagna and pizelles, and about his multitude of cousins, and how one of them made him a great uncle last year and he's pretty sure he's not old enough for that.

Emily's been to Italy, lived there in the 80s, and they talk about places and history, but he doesn't miss that none of her stories are personal. She'd make an excellent traveling companion, he thinks idly, as they finish up dinner and take the dishes back to the kitchen for cleanup. She speaks several languages, she's smart, she's funny, and she can fit a week's worth of clothing in a single duffel. She keeps the conversation going until they've dried the last dish and then Dave realizes he's alone, late at night, in his house, with a beautiful woman, and he has absolutely no intentions toward her.

"What would you like to do?" he asks awkwardly and pours them more wine because it's a good way to fill time. "We can practice our card counting for the plane, I have a checkerboard around here somewhere, backgammon, Monopoly..." He is a boring old fuddyduddy and everything on that list has at least an inch of dust on it.

"You know," Emily says, taking a sip from her glass, "I hope this isn't rude, but really? I'd much rather read."

Her blunt honesty is a relief and so is her choice of activity. He would talk to her all night if he didn't have to worry about running afoul of her personal boundaries (of which, he suspects, she has many) and if he wasn't so blasted tired. It's been a hellish week and he needs to unwind a bit, decompress, before he'll be able to sleep.

"Fine by me," he tells her. "Mind if there's music?"

"So long as it's not techno," she says. The very idea is a noisy intrusion into his head and it must show on his face because she laughs and says, "I'll be right back."

She jogs up the stairs, leaving him alone in the still-fragrant greatroom, and he wonders how he's never had Emily Prentiss in his house before. He's been standoffish, he thinks. He hasn't even had Hotch over, let alone the rest of the team. He should cook out when it gets warm or maybe just make a big pot of chili and have everyone over to watch basketball. He hasn't realized before how much he's missed having company.

The Palestrina cd he's been looking forward to is waiting for him on the entertainment center and he sets up the disk and dims the lights. Idiot, he thinks ruefully. Emily can't read in the dark. He turns on the lamp on the side table for her, making sure the beam of light is positioned right over the end of the couch where she had been sitting. He tops off her wineglass and sits it next to the lamp base. It's been nice to have someone to share with and he wonders if maybe he should have left the second bottle alone. Maybe they will get to it, though, and even if they don't, he'll think of her as he drinks it.

He sinks down in his armchair and kicks his feet up on the table. It's old and scarred anyway, and this room is for living, not for showing off. He takes a deep breath, imagining he's inhaling the music, resetting his pulse to the tempo, allowing the notes to filter through his entire body.

It's been a hard week, an ugly week, coming at the end of a hard and ugly month. Not just for him, either. The last traces of Benjamin Cyrus's beating has finally faded from Emily's face, but earlier that month Dave could almost feel the waves of guilt coming off Reid, Hotch, Morgan, whenever they caught sight of the bruise encircling her eye. He's pretty sure she could feel them too, and hoped he hadn't been emanating the same. It hadn't been easy to listen to her take all that, even harder to be the one to insist that they hold back, listen to her coded message telling them not to go in. But she didn't need to be comforting them. That isn't the way it works in Dave Rossi's book, and he isn't going to pile more on her.

He hears her footsteps and cracks his eyes open enough to see her enter the room with a battered paperback in her hand. She smiles a little - he thinks at the sight of her seat, glowing with light and supplied with wine - and he says, "Welcome back. Make yourself at home." He's not relaxed, not completely, but the music helps and studying the left side of Emily's face and seeing no sign of discoloration or marring doesn't hurt either.

She nudges off her sneakers without untying them and swings her feet up on the couch. Her socks are striped, he notes, and don't match a single other thing she's wearing.

"This is..." she starts, and then cuts herself off, looking slightly baffled. "It's lovely," she tries, and frustration immediately intrudes on her features. "It's - I've never - "

"Palestrina," Dave tells her, closing his eyes. Something catches in his throat that she likes his music, that she feels his music. It would be unfair to make her try to describe something so transcendental, so he lets her off the hook. "It hits people like that sometimes."

It hits him like that and for several minutes, they sit together and listen, Palestrina's harmonies swelling through the room, through him, through them, and the quiet turn of pages under Emily's fingers keep him grounded as he concentrates on expunging the tension and distress coiled deep inside. It takes him a minute to realize that the pages have stopped turning.

He opens his eyes and looks over at her. The book is closed and pressed between her palms. She's biting her lower lip and the color is high in her cheeks. He's not sure if it's the week or the music, or if she's just exhausted her reserve of social energies. He can relate with any of those. Before he can ask, she sets down the book and looks up at him. She doesn't seem startled to meet his eyes. "Something wrong?" he asks, giving her latitude for any excuse.

"Not at all," she says instead, and it's so clearly false that he raises an eyebrow at her, his own physical manifestation of the bullshit flag. Instead of going on further, she swings her legs to the floor and manages to knock her book off at the same time.

He reaches for it automatically, feet dropping to the floor and fingers curling around the spine of the book as it skitters against his shoe.

Emily reaches for it too, but when she grabs for the book, she catches his wrist instead, and
her touch is like a shock to his system.

Emily Prentiss is an attractive woman. He's never tried to deny that. But he's never seriously thought about taking her to bed, for reasons that some might consider obvious. Like most legends, stories of his office romances are far overblown, but also similar to legends, they're based in fact. But he didn't go out in the field with those women, didn't have to listen to them take beatings over the radio. That was before he'd married three women and failed to live up to his side of the bargain each time. Three strikes and you're out, he figures.

When she looks up, that changes. Her eyes are huge and paired with parted lips and flushed cheeks, she looks...aroused. He remembers her quiet moan in the kitchen and thinks, I can make her do that and it feels like a challenge.

Before he can decide if he's read her wrong, if she really wants this too, if this is worth the risk, she reaches up and presses her hand against his face. He can't help but lean into the touch, and then she kisses him, lightly, almost chastely, and that's no good. He kisses her back like he means it - and he does - and lets himself touch, lets himself slide his hand up the back of her neck and into the dark, silky mass of hair. She hums at that, and he feels the vibration against his lips.

Emily Prentiss is a joy to kiss. She's sweet, enthusiastic, takes cues easily, and is charmingly creative. He straightens when his back twinges, urging her with him, and she does, like following his lead in a waltz. He wonders if she dances, too. Her teeth tease his lower lip and he smiles because she's hit on one of the quickest and easiest ways to turn him on and there's no way she could have known that. He has his answer to his earlier question - Emily Prentiss is worth the risk. But he's not the only one who has to ask that question. There are a dozen reasons that she shouldn't sleep him him, and he seems to have taken Hotch's team theories wholly onboard, because when Emily pulls back, he studies her face for signs of apprehension or doubt. She should know better, based entirely on his name and reputation, and if she's willing to dismiss those, well, maybe there are other reasons she should consider.

Her face goes red instantly and she turns away, whispering a foreign word under her breath. That awkward self-consciousness is back. Dammit. That's not what he wants.

"Hey, Emily, no," he coaxes gently, turning her back to face him. Her face - not just her cheeks either, but her whole face - is flushed bright, and her distress is evident in her eyes. "It's not that at all," he assures her, because she's beautiful, she's gorgeous, and he'd be crazy to turn her down - and now he's wondering if this is what crazy feels like. "It's not that at all - " he says, because she's wrapping her arms around her and hunching her shoulders and that's just wrong, " - if anything, I'm flattered."

"What - " she whispers, then stops and regroups and w/hen she asks again, her voice is stronger and some of her attitude is back. "What is it, then?"

It's a damn good question and he hasn't quite formed the words for it. "Emily - " Just saying her name is going to break him and he looks away. How does he say, I can't court you, I can't take you out on my arm, I can't even let anyone know about us without damaging your reputation and make it sound like he's being thoughtful? Somehow it seems like he should be better at this. "We - I - need to be clear on what's going on here."

He's fucking this up.

"Hey." Emily's voice is suddenly gentle and confident again, and her fingers brush his cheek. "I'm not looking for happily ever after."

"No?" He doesn't believe that - he knows her too well, has seen her wistful gazes at JJ's belly, overheard her comments about good men and kids. He would believe, though, that she's not looking for happily ever after with him. He's fifteen years older than she is and has had three wives. He's no one's prize, but maybe, for tonight, for a little while, he can give her what she needs.

"No," she answers, with a little smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

"What, then?" Because he has to be clear. He has to know what's going on in her head when they're in the field together and she needs to be sure of him. They're a good team and whatever else changes, that simply cannot.

"Just a friend." Her face is serious, despite the little smile, and she almost looks a little sad. "Somebody I can trust."

He understands then. That's the heart of it. He knows that every day they see men deceive women, misrepresent themselves, take advantage of falsely earned trust. He can't imagine that Emily feels safe with anyone anymore, after this job, after this week. Both the unsubs were good-looking, charming. Both Preppie Killers, he thinks, like Robert Chambers - no one had believed they were hiding such violent natures.

He's oddly touched that she trusts him this much and resolves not to disappoint her. It won't ever be something they discuss, though, so he just smirks at her and says, "I don't know. You had your hand on your gun when you rolled down the window."

She shouts with sudden laughter, and says, "Oh my god, Rossi. I was sitting in the dark, in the snow, with fogged-up windows. You scared me half to death."

He chuckles, charmed and aroused by how quickly she's shed the self-consciousness from earlier. He likes seeing her like this, relaxed and sexy, although he suspects he would like her just as much if he had to coax her into seeing how beautiful she is. "Come here, then," he says, dragging her up and into his lap, "and let me make it up to you."

Emily makes a completely gratifying squeak of surprise as he manhandles her and suddenly he has a lapful of Prentiss that he can touch however he wants. "I don't know," she says, her voice breathy as she wraps an arm around his neck and tilts her head back as he leans forward to kiss her. "You're kind of bossy."

"It's one of my charms," he tells her with a smile, and kisses her again, concentrating on her lower lip. She opens up easily under his mouth, gives him time and access to explore, to learn her mouth. She wants this now, wants him, at the end of this week, but he might not get this again, so he's going to enjoy it. It's been a long time since he's had a good Catholic girl on his lap, kissing her like he had to get her home before midnight.

But this time, he doesn't have to have her home by midnight and he doesn't have to stop short of second base. He slips one hand under her sweater, just at the curve of her back. She gasps at the brush of his fingers and if that's not a turn-on, Dave doesn't know what is. He can't help but smile as he presses her closer, and then he takes the kiss from under the bleachers to under the boardwalk.

She's right there with him, squirming against him and fumbling with the top few buttons on his shirt. Her hands are warm, sliding over his skin and tracing his clavicle. He groans into her mouth and she laughs at him.

All right, he thinks. All right. Time to lay down the ground rules. He keeps one hand braced against her cheek and leans back. She follows him, pushing right by his hand, and he catches her shoulder, sliding his hand up to her neck as he rests his forehead against hers. Her breathing is unsteady and she's flushed so hard, he imagines it must go straight down to her breasts.

"Rossi," she pants, one thumb stroking over his cheekbone repeatedly. "I am going to kill you," she swears, and he thinks if he gets to choose how he goes, this would be a pretty sweet death.

"Aw, Prentiss," he counters, pressing a kiss to her temple, "think of all the fun you'd miss." She has beautiful features and he kisses up, down, and across each one, memorizing the feel of her delicate skin under his lips. She's turned on, flushed and breathless, and the breathy little moans are just the beginning.

He thinks maybe she's loud, maybe she gets wound up when someone pays enough attention to her, and he's keeping a careful eye on her, watching for what works and what might make her balk. She might still change her mind and he wants to be able to see it coming.

Then she twists in his lap, straddling him, and pressing up hard and -

"Jesus, Emily," he groans when she does something amazing with her hips, rubbing up against his cock and okay, that's a no - Prentiss doesn't change her mind when she decides she wants something, and this is clearly no different.

He brackets her hips with his hands and drags her up against him. She makes a pretty noise and leans down to press her mouth on his, and he slips a hand up her sweater, teasing the lower curve of her breast with the pad of his thumb. She shivers under him and then starts riding him, fully dressed, too many layers of clothes between them. He lets his other hand slip down her back, to the waistband of her jeans, and palms her ass between her jeans and her underwear. She's lithe and tight and when he cups her, she grinds down on him like she's trying to come from frottage alone.

"Dave," she gasps, "what the hell are we waiting for?"

"Some of us," he mutters, "like to take our time with these things." It's true, maybe more true now that he's older and wiser, but he has no doubt that he could nail her right up against the wall. She's amazing and she's eager, and she's turning him on more than he had considered possible when they started this. It would be easy to make this about him, about losing himself in her for a little while, but he's invested in making tonight an experience that will remind her that she's beautiful and desirable and that she can trust him to keep her safe and make it good for her. That's what he wants, what's turning him on. He wants to see her look up at him with stars in her eyes and know he put them there. Sex is always better when your partner's having a good time and Dave wants Emily to have a very, very good time tonight.

"Fuck time," she complains, twisting against him again, and that only furthers his resolve.

"I'd rather fuck you," he says and...yeah, there it is. The hesitance, the confused focus as she looks straight at him. Her hair is tumbled and her mouth is kissed red and wet. He only has her for a second and then she shifts away, dropping her eyes.

"Come on then," she tempts him, but her smile's faked and her cheeks are flushed. She's not really looking at him.

"Hey," he says, squeezing her side and smoothing the skin with his thumb. He's got her attention now, or as much of it as he's going to get. "Learn to take a compliment," he orders her softly. "I want to fuck you, not just fuck."

Her breath hitches when he speaks coarsely - she likes that. He wonders if she even knows that.

"Dave," she starts, but he interrupts because he's not done yet.

"Emily," he counters and grins at her. "What's the rush?" Slowly, deliberately, he presses his hand up her ribcage and palms her breast. She's not large - she's thin and evenly proportioned and he bets she was a gawky kid - but she fits nicely in his hand and she's sensitive. He adds a little pressure and she's gasping and the muscles of her thighs are tensing on either side of his own. "It's not like this isn't fun for me, too," he points out. It's true. He likes touching her, watching her react, know that he's the one making her gasp and tremble, and writhe.

She laughs, kind of, though it might be a sigh or a moan, and she says, "I never would have guessed."

So it was a laugh, and a self-conscious one at that. She's still tense against him, clearly used to rushing it, so he makes things easy for her. He tells her what he wants. "Slow down," he says, and when she gives him a look like maybe she doesn't know how, he just smirks and says, "I dare you."

Emily Prentiss, for all that she was born 15 years too late and without a Y chromosome, would have fit in perfectly with the group of kids he ran around with in his childhood. He doesn't have to double dare, or triple dare, or triple dog dare. He just has to raise an eyebrow at her and her expression goes all devious and determined as she sinks down on him, hesitating over his mouth for a split second before easing forward in a kiss. She probably thinks she's teasing him, going deliberately too slow to teach him a lesson, but it's perfect. She's sensuous and exacting and her tongue slips so slowly against his own that he thinks he could sit here holding her forever, balanced on this heightened sense of arousal that makes everything fuzzy around the edges.

She presses her hips up and against him, and they fit together, concave and convex, for a moment, before she eases back and draws out of the kiss. His mouth is dry when her lips leave his, but when she kisses the corner of his mouth and whispers, "You're on," he manages to recover enough to smile.

No one had ever had to double dare Dave Rossi, either. "Somehow," he admits, now that he's gotten her on the same page as him, "I don't think I'll mind if I lose."

It's time to go upstairs, before she thinks that's permission to speed things back up. The music has clicked off and the lights are low, so he lifts her out of the chair as he stands, and waits until she find her feet before leading the way to his bedroom. She's still holding on to his hand when they arrive and he watches her glance around, charting her surroundings. Then he realizes that he hasn't kissed her in almost a full minute and goes about remedying that.

He plays with the hem of her sweater while he kisses her, and when they come up for air, when she presses her hand to his face and looks up at him, he draws it over her head as slowly as he can bear. She shivers a little and reaches for him. He runs his hands up and down her bare arms to help her warm up, because she has goosebumps, but she's unbuttoning the rest of his shirt, then the cuffs, and she won't be deterred.

She presses her hands against his chest, then wraps her arms around his waist and untucks his shirt. Then she runs her hands up his chest, over his pectoral muscles, to his shoulders, where she pushes the shirt off. He likes that she's touching him, exploring, discovering. It's what he wants for her. He tugs at her waistband but it's faster for them to get rid of their own jeans and socks. Her sneakers are still downstairs but he kicks his boots under the bed.

"Wait," he says, when she slides her fingers between her breasts to unhook her bra. She does, turning her eyes up to him, but he's fixated at the drift of her fingers against the delicate skin of her breasts.

"This is slow?" she asks, and it takes him a minute to realize she's teasing him. Again. He could get used to this. "I mean, it's not like I mind, but suddenly there's a lot of naked going on...." She makes a show of checking him out and she doesn't - or can't - hide that she likes what she sees. Prentiss has a thousand tells when she lies out loud, but she also has a few when she's telling the truth. Right now he can see that her blush does go all the way down to the tops of her breasts, that her eyes keep flickering back over him, like she might have missed something, or something might have changed, and he sees when her eyes glaze over a little and she shivers. She runs a hand unconsciously down her own side, hooking her thumb in the top of her panties - white cotton things that sit far too low on her hips to pass as sensible - and spreading her fingers over the top of her leg. She licks her lips and patience is all well and good, but Rossi's supply is running low.

"These are just the preliminaries," he assures her, and thumbs the straps of her bra off her shoulders before he opens the front latch. He slides it down her arms, lets it fall - because a woman's bra on the floor isn't a mess, it's art - and then fill his hands with her breasts. Her nipples are tight against his palms and she draws in a sharp breath that breaks into a moan. Not a breathy, God-this-is-good-marinara moan, either, but something lower and richer that fans the heat building inside him. He eases her down on the bed, cradling her head against his arm, and then he stretches out next to her, cock heavy against his stomach, and starts to touch her.

He keeps his hand light at first, keeps it moving. He touches her everywhere, keeping mental notes of when she shies away and when she leans in. The backs of her knees and the nip of her waist are ticklish. She tries to push him on when he lingers too long at the hollow of her hip. Her throat and collarbone are so sensitive that when he brushes his thumb into the notch there, she closes her eyes and shivers. She's flexible - she lets him draw his hand up the entire back of her leg, stretching it into the air. He doesn't have anything crazy in mind for tonight, but if he ever gets a second chance, if maybe this could be a stress relief, a comfort for both of them, he would experiment with that, see what she liked, what angles they could try. It's a dizzying notion and he tells himself to slow it down, to concentrate on the here and now. He's planning too far ahead. Right now, he just strokes and observes, and goes back for more where she likes it, playing with speed and pressure, and making her push up into his hand.

She's holding onto the coverlet with one hand and touching him with the other. She runs her fingertips through his chest hair and fingers a nipple. Her thumb finds a particularly long scar on his shoulder and she strokes to either end of it and somehow there's a question mark in her touch. He tells himself it's okay, and concentrates on her reactions to him. She doesn't ask about it and he's fine with that. She strokes down his side and over his hip, she skims a palm over his ass, but she hasn't touched his cock. He's not sure if she's shy or inexperienced or just overwhelmed. He hopes it's the latter, but the others can be overcome.

He doesn't mind taking the lead, never has. He doesn't want her to be nervous, though, so he goes slow when he rolls over her, taking his weight on his hands. Her eyes are luminous when she looks up at him, and she arches up against the leg he settles between hers. Prentiss has great legs. He's not concentrating on them right now, though. Right now he wants to see if her breasts are as sensitive to his mouth as they were to his hand.

They are. He slows down, goes gently, and lets his mind drift over the benefits of this kind of careful, thorough seduction. 1) He manages to learn something new about Prentiss. 2) Sex is a helluva lot of fun, and keeping it going a little while longer was just going to prolong the fun. 3) He wants to see if he can drive Emily so high, so crazy, that she forgets about being shy, forgets about whatever might be holding her back, and just gives it all up to him. It's not that he's greedy, he tells himself, it's that Emily has had a lousy day and she trusts him, and he wants her to enjoy tonight. He doesn't think she lets herself indulge all that often.

Anyway, it seems to be working. Her breasts are full and flushed and her skin goosebumps up against his tongue. She reacts brilliantly under his mouth and to his surprise, she likes it when he uses his teeth gently. He settles a little lower so he can kiss her shoulder, her neck, the salty valley between her breasts, and his cock pushes gently against her underwear. The cotton's already damp and she smells amazing. Dave thinks maybe she's close enough to come soon - she's twisting and sighing under him and he thinks that if she comes, maybe....

Really, he just wants to make her come. She's not uptight and she's not unresponsive, and she's not even really shy. It isn't like she wasn't touching him. It isn't like she didn't straddle him in the armchair and grind down on him like she couldn't let a silly thing like clothes keep them apart. It's their first time together, he reminds himself, and they work together. He's lucky she's as forward as she is. Not as forward as she is in the field, an irritating voice chafes at him, and that's just about enough of that.

He rolls off to the side and turns her away from him, spooning up against her back. She presses back into him, putting pressure on his cock, but he can't be distracted now. He knows what he wants and that's to feel Emily Prentiss let go for him. He strokes up the inside of her leg, because it's never seemed acceptable not to give fair warning. His hand seems big against her leg - Emily's tall but she's thin and leggy and her stomach is flat when he spreads his fingers across it. She doesn't flinch when he slides his hand under her panties, but when he doesn't go any further, she pops her hips forward and lets out the best frustrated noise when he laughs at her utter conviction that these things must be rushed.

"Rossi, I swear to god," she grits, and he can hear the tension riding her voice. It's in her shoulders, in her neck, even in the hollow of her hip where he's resting his hand.

"Don't worry," he whispers against the line of her neck. "I wouldn't dare." He slips his hand down as he's talking, brushing his fingers over her clit, wetting his fingers against her and slipping inside so, so easily. He knows where to look and it doesn't take long to find exactly where to press against inside her. The rock of her body tells him he found the right place, and he sets to work there even as he brushes his thumb higher, trying to suss out how she likes her clit touched. It's actually a little hard to tell because he suspects she just wants to be touched, the way she's moving with him.

Whenever she starts moving too hard, too fast, when the faint whining sounds in the back of her throat start up, he gentles his movements, even pulling all the way out and cupping her lightly, no friction, with his whole hand. She lets him get away with this three times - at least he thinks it's three times; he was never a big fan of math - and it's arousing him almost as much as it's arousing her.

This time, he thinks, and keeps his hand moving through the pretty little sounds, until they become moans, until they become gorgeously broken, gasping cries as she calls his name and comes apart in his arms.

He likes the sound of his name on her lips. He likes the way aftershocks shudder through her limbs and stomach under his arm as he presses her tightly against him. His other arm is around her shoulder and he crosses it against her chest, settling his hand on her opposite shoulder to steady her. Her body is still tightening a little around his fingers when he slides them out. His hand is wet, but before he can wipe it on the sheets, she twists around to face him, and he has to lift his arm to give her room to move.

Her bangs are askew and her eyes are huge and he wants nothing more than to kiss her just then, but he can't seem to stop staring. Then he realizes that she's taking his hand in hers and bringing to her mouth and damn, how had he ever thought she was shy or inexperienced? She slips her mouth around his finger - his finger that was inside her not thirty seconds ago - and sucks.

"You are," he says, trying to find words in the English language that aren't too pathetically pedestrian, "utterly unexpected, Emily Prentiss." She draws off his finger and he imagines - imagines vividly - how the drag of her mouth would feel around his cock.

Then she smiles at him, a real, beautiful smile, and leans up to press her mouth against his. She kisses him deeply, her hand curved around the back of his head, and whatever he was hoping to achieve by making her come? He's pretty sure this was it. She pushes at his shoulders and he lets her roll him to his back. There's not actually a lot of "letting" involved - she's strong and it's not like he was inclined to put up a fight anyway. "My turn," she says, sitting up.

Emily's lissome and confident as she shifts over his legs, leaning up to rest her hands on his shoulders. Her color is up and her breasts are high, still tight with arousal. He watches her as she squeezes the tight muscles in his shoulders and then spreads her palms open to rub targeted circles down his arms. He closes his eyes reluctantly, torn between watching her above him and basking in the press and give of her strong hands over the muscles of his arms. In the end, he doesn't want to make her nervous, now that she's exploring and discovering, so he tilts his head back and just enjoys the sweep of her hands on his skin.

She sighs against his chest as she leans down, pressing herself against him, and he feels a suddenly wet pressure on his nipple. He can't not touch her anymore and finds her waist with his hands, just to feel her, just to ground himself. He doesn't want to rush her, doesn't want to control things, just wants to curve his hands to her. He blinks his eyes open long enough to see her mouth press against his chest again, and then closes them, enjoying the surprise of where she'll kiss next. Too soon, she runs her hands up his chest to his shoulders, then down his arms again, and she's sliding out of his grip.

When he opens his eyes to see where she's gone, she gives him another beautiful smile, and wraps her hand around his cock. "Still want me to take it slowly?" she asks brightly and then laughs when he groans. This is all his fault.

This is what he wanted, her hand on his cock, and now he knows that it's a good thing he waited, because her touch is smooth and firm and she lets her palm skate around the head and it's amazingly good. It's so good, he would have had to fuck her before, and then he wouldn't have gotten to watch her come in shuddering waves, watch her suck his finger, taste her on her own tongue.

God help him if she tries to go down on him.

She settles her weight on him when he tries to move into her hand, and it's strangely reminiscent of the first time he played cards with Reid - he's pretty sure he's been hustled. In this case, he's willing to take the lesson and move on, though, because she's starting to look a little broken, too, and he has to grab the bedclothes to keep from reaching up and dragging her down to him.

The first crack in her sheen of self-assurance is in her eyes, but then she bites her lower lip, and that nearly undoes him. He holds eye contact, keeping her tethered as her hand speeds up and she starts to ride him a little. She breaks first, reaching down and pushing her panties aside with two fingers and his breath catches in his throat as she touches herself. It's the hottest thing Dave's seen all night, and that's a pretty high bar. He tries to pay attention to how she's touching herself but she's jerking him off with hard, steady strokes, and he's going to have to mix things up pretty soon or the party will be over before it's really started.

She does something extremely right, and her head drops back. He takes advantage of that brief moment to flip her onto her back, following her over. Emily lifts her hips when she hits, and he only looks away long enough to grab a condom from the nightstand. When he looks back at her, though, she's kicking off her underwear, and she takes advantage of his moment of distraction to take the condom right out of his hand. He waits, letting her open the packet and roll it on him. The tear of the foil and the desperate cadence of their breathing almost seems to echo in the quiet room. She is being deliberately slow and he has no one to blame but himself for that.

When she's done, she smooths her fingers over his length one last time, and leans back on her elbows. Her smile is brilliant and he leans down to kiss her so he won't be blinded. It's been a great night, an extraordinary night, and he can't imagine anything would go wrong now, but he's feeling a little unsteady and he's not entirely sure he can fuck her and let that be the end of it. He's not entirely sure he can give her up so easily.

"Emily," he whispers because he's very aware of the kind of relationship they can't have, but she's rolling her hips against him, and he can feel the heat of her against his cock, and he knows just how easy it will be to slip right in and forget about everything else.

"David Rossi," she warns, her voice gone throaty as she fights for air, "seriously, I will kill you."

Of that, he has no doubt, and he reminds himself that this is something he wants to do for her, that it doesn't matter what happens after or whether they get to do this again ever, or if he'll ever get to feel her mouth around him. So he shifts down, and steadies himself and mutters, "You just might," as he slides deep, deep inside her.

It takes him a minute to catch his breath, another to start moving.

The soft moan she'd made in the kitchen seems like a lifetime ago, the brief curiosity that had crossed his mind now seems ridiculous. She doesn't sound like that in bed - the sounds she makes are deeper, throatier, almost like he's forcing them from her when he pushes his hips deep, and it's ridiculously gratifying. He's loathe to draw out, so he stays as deeply inside her as he can while keeping up just enough friction to push them ever higher. She wraps her long, long, silky legs around his waist, opening up his angle, and holding him tight to her. He's not inclined to make her wait, not now, so he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches between their bodies to find her clit. He can feel her nails on his back as she comes, and it's amazing, tiny bites of pain heightening the pleasure of her clenching around him.

He keeps his rhythm steady through her orgasm, watches her face as she goes from tense to ecstatic, to glazed, and he says her name, just to feel it fall from his lips. She opens her eyes, then, and smiles, and does something, reaches down, and - fuck! Her fingertips rub against his balls, against the skin behind him, and it's like the sun explodes behind his eyes as he closes them tightly and just loses himself in her body. He's got something like the shakes after, his cock taking a long time to go soft, and it's only because he's sure that he must be crushing her that he rolls away.

Emily drops her head to the side, toward the door, and suddenly Dave knows what she's thinking. He'd shown her a room, she's left her stuff in it, and she's wondering if she should go back there to sleep, to end the night here, like a one-night stand.

Too bad for her, David Rossi is an old-fashioned sonofabitch. She's not going anywhere unless she would really prefer to be alone, and he doesn't think she does. Her body is still canted toward his and she hasn't really moved, to cover herself or slip away, or anything.

He reaches out for her, drags her up against him, and is pleased when she curls against his side.

"Definitely bossy," she says, but her voice is honeyed and her eyes are closed, and she doesn't look like she's inclined to fight him any time soon.

"Tell me you didn't find it charming," he says, and considers the circumstances. He's fifty-three years old and by all rights should be exhausted, totally spent, but they might still be snowed in tomorrow and he's wondering what she's like to wake up with - warm and pliant, and unguarded. He wants a chance to find out, and he's always loved making love on lazy weekend mornings. Plus, he figures, he owes her breakfast.

She nudges her elbow into his ribs, but it's good-natured and she snuggles closer to him when she says, "Charming is not the word I would choose."

"Careful, now," he replies, running his fingers through the tangled strands of her hair. She's starting to melt against him, loose and languorous. It's what he wanted, what he was hoping for, and yet he can't help but add, "Or I won't be such a gentleman next time."

It's a risk, and he's pretty sure he'd be justified in saying that the devil made him do it, but he wants to be with her again - the sex was just too good not to repeat - and he's not used to denying himself anything.

"Oh, please," she murmurs into his skin and then lifts her head an inch, her hair shifting on his shoulder. "Next time?"

"Don't tell me you didn't have fun, Emily," he says, wrapping his finger in a lock of hair and tugging gently. "My ego may never recover."

"Please, Rossi," she laughs drowsily, "your ego doesn't need any help."

"Maybe not," he says after the silence has stretched a beat too long. "But the rest of me could - " He breaks off and glances down. She's asleep, bangs and lashes dark against pale skin. He turns his head and presses a kiss to her temple. "Sweet dreams," he whispers, wishing sincerely, for both of them, and closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, sunlight is spilling across the bed, everything is dazzling white outside, and Emily is still asleep in his arms.

Fin