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"Pick a name, any name," Garcia sang, waving a glittery red stocking in front of Emily's face. "Not your own. You can't pick your own."
"Why not?" Emily asked, grinning and reaching into the stocking. She fingered the little folded slips of paper, wondering if she could pick her Secret Santa by feel. "At least I know what I like."
"Nice try," Garcia said. "But I happen to know that you have already been selected."
"Oh, really?" Emily asked, counting the pieces of paper left. There were only three.
"Do you want to know who picked you?"
Emily pulled a piece of paper out of the stocking and rubbed it between her fingers. "No," she said, even though she kind of desperately did.
"Good, because I wasn't going to tell you anyway." Garcia stuck her tongue out and Emily grinned.
"This is kind of a sucker's game, isn't it?" Emily asked. "Pitting profilers against each other? We should have this all figured out inside of a week."
"I swear, you people," Garcia said, straightening up. She had on candy-striped tights and a sweater that showed a prodigious amount of cleavage. Emily had to admit, she was a little jealous. "I just figured this place could use a little Christmas spirit. After everything." She glanced up at Hotch's office and Emily sighed.
"Okay," she said, opening up her scrap of paper. Rossi, written in Garcia's loopy script. Great. What to get for the man who has everything and hates Christmas? She folded it carefully to dispose of later and when she looked up, Garcia's eyebrows were up around her hairline and her lips were pursed. "What?"
"Are you going to tell me?" Garcia demanded.
"No!"
Garcia heaved a significantly put-upon sigh. "Very well, madam," she said loftily. "Although I have to tell you, even Ebeneezer Scrooge up there was willing to share."
Emily followed her gaze up to the second floor and Rossi's open office. Speak of the devil, she thought. "Rossi has good reason for hating Christmas," she remarked. "It reminds him of the Galen case."
"We solved that, didn't we?" Garcia asked with a frown.
"Yeah," Emily confirmed. "But twenty years of associating Christmas with a bloody axe murder is...it's hard to get over, you know?"
"Mmm," Garcia hummed thoughtfully. "Also, that crush on famous crime writer David Rossi, hard to get over, huh?"
"Hey!" Emily pointed a finger at Garcia's beaming smile. "That is privileged information. And that was before - before he was part of the team. And I was drunk. Drinking. And you and JJ said you had crushes on him, too."
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Garcia said, getting to her feet. She blew an air kiss at Emily and sauntered off.
"Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2, line 254," Reid said behind her, and Emily rolls her eyes while he can't see. "Often misquoted; the true line is 'the lady protests too much, methinks.'"
"What's the lady protesting?" Morgan asked.
"Secret Santas," Emily said, hiding the slip of paper with Rossi's name in her palm. "Who did you get?"
Morgan grinned at her over his paper coffee cup. "Now that would be telling,"
Seventeen hours later, Emily was in Savannah, sitting in an unmarked car with David Rossi and wondering just how deranged you had to be to strangle someone with a piece of pine garland.
"Seriously. This guy's gotta hate Christmas more than you do," she mused into her coffee cup. It was still too hot to drink but the steam warmed her nose.
Rossi glanced sidelong at her, long enough to make her a little unsettled, and then said, "I don't hate Christmas."
"Oh," she said, a little taken aback. "Sorry, I thought - "
"It just brings up bad memories," he said, glancing away, back out the side window of the car. Emily wondered if he was looking for the unsub or just away from her.
"Because of the Galens," she said, remembering a hotel bar in Indianapolis and a David Rossi who seemed human for the first time.
"It's stupid, really," he said with a sigh. "It was April and it was warm. The windows were open. And yet, I think of that scene, and the axe, and chopping down the Christmas tree."
"There's always artificial," Emily offered brightly, regretting that she'd brought the conversation to such a low place. "Every single tree I had growing up was artificial, stored in some closet in the American Embassy for years." The corner of Rossi's mouth twitched up and his eyes crinkled and Emily felt a glow of warmth that she'd improved his mood, at least a little. "They were all impeccably trimmed, of course. Sometimes in themes."
"Themes?" Rossi asked, playing along.
"Red and gold, blue and silver, musical instruments one year, gingerbread men one year - that was my favorite because I got to sit in the kitchen and help the pastry chef make all the gingerbread."
"You mean eat all the gingerbread?" Rossi asked casually and she laughed at the tease.
"Okay, yeah, I did more eating than cooking," she admitted. "But I was seven. And then there was the year of the white fiber-optic monstrosity."
"No," Rossi said, shaking his head. "Christmas trees should be green. And smell like pine, and get sap over anything that touches them. Colored lights," he added. "And handmade ornaments."
"I've always wanted a tree like that," Emily said wistfully. It was true. She'd always wanted a family Christmas, gathered around the tree, tacky ornaments and wrapping paper flying everywhere.
"What's stopping you?" Rossi demanded.
No family for my family Christmas, Emily didn't say. This was one of her most and least favorite parts of working with Rossi. He never gave her an easy way out.
"When I was in grad school," she started, "I was in that little apartment in Georgetown that I told you about and I decided I wanted a full-sized tree."
"What happened?" Rossi asked with the amused and patient air of someone who knew there was a story to be told.
"Well, it took up half the room and was almost completely bare," she recalled. "So I went out and bought a bunch of lights to decorate it. And then I overloaded the circuits in the entire building and didn't have power for three days."
Rossi laughed and Emily was glad to hear it. "I was writing my thesis by candlelight," she added, "and it was freezing that winter, so I had these fingerless gloves that I wore all the time. I was like Bob Cratchit, if Bob Cratchit did papers on international law enforcement cooperation and jurisdictional disputes instead of Scrooge's accounts."
Rossi chuckled again, shaking his head. "I'm sorry I didn't know you then," he confessed. "You probably weren't too far away."
"Far enough," Emily said mildly. He'd probably been married then, or courting, or divorcing, and by her mental calculations, he hadn't left the FBI yet but would soon enough. "What about you? What says Christmas for Special Supervisory Agent and Famous Crime Writer David Rossi?"
"Ah, my Nonna's pizzelles," he said immediately. "Hot off the iron. My mother sold hats and gloves in the city during the holiday season so I'd go to Nonna's house after school and we'd make a batch almost every day."
"Mm," Emily agreed. "Pizzelles are delicious. Did she make them with vanilla or with anise?"
"Both," Rossi said. "She used the anise seeds instead of the extract, and mixed a little vanilla into the batter. Made all the difference."
"Yeah," Emily agreed, remembering the cinnamon-sugar cookies made from remnants of pie crust - half butter, half shortening to get the benefits of both - that old Hans the pastry chef would sneak into her school lunches. "It's always the little things."
Secret Santas were very serious business in the BAU. Every Friday morning in December - or as close to it as their schedules allowed - everyone was to bring a gift for their recipient, hidden in a brown paper Trader Joe's bag and deliver it to Garcia's office.
"I don't get the brown bags," Emily told her. "I bring my own. I am all about the green living."
"Here," Garcia said, handing her a bag from the depths of a desk drawer. "I brought extras."
So, Friday morning, Emily marched into Garcia's office with a double stack of homemade - homemade by some little old lady at a church bazaar at least - pizzelles wrapped in red ribbon and hidden in the depths of the Trader Joe's paper bag.
"Wow," she said when she saw the miles of multi-colored twinkling lights and the silver garland draped over every available surface. "You were totally not kidding about the Christmas spirit."
"I like to keep it at least 180 proof," Garcia said airily. Her lips were Santa-suit red and her headband had a spring of fake holly, complete with berries, nestled among her curls.
Morgan and Rossi arrived with their Trader Joe's bags of Secret Santa Surprise then, and Emily made her escape.
The day dragged, though, and Emily couldn't keep her eyes away from the tree set up near the stairs to the upper level. Finally, she and JJ went down to the cafeteria for lunch and gossip, and when they returned, the space underneath was shining with gaily wrapped gifts. Gaily was really the only word for it, Emily thought. There was just something about red and green paper and silver ribbon and gold bows that made Christmas look happy.
"Hey," JJ said, poking her. "You look like Henry whenever we pass a store window."
"I had a stunted childhood," Emily told her archly.
They had to wait until the end of the workday and for everyone else who worked in the BAU to go home before Hotch would let them break out the beer and gifts.
"What, just because no one got anything for Anderson?" Emily asked.
"Shh," JJ warned. "Hotch hates Anderson."
There was clearly a story behind that statement. Emily made a mental note to drag it out of JJ when there weren't presents on the line.
Garcia handed out the gifts with great fanfare, so it wasn't hard for Emily to notice when Rossi received his package. His face broke into a smile when he saw the cookies and immediately pulled off the ribbon.
"What are those?" Hotch asked, leaning sideways to look.
"Pizzelles," Rossi announced. "Traditional Italian cookies." As he passed them around - he might be a Scrooge about the holiday season but he was always generous with his money and possessions, Emily had noticed - he added, "Just like my Nonna used to make. Thank you, Santa," and looked directly at Emily.
She widened her eyes and shrugged and offered him a vague smile before turning to her own gift. The paper was heavy and the corners were department-store-perfect, she noticed, so not JJ or Garcia, who would prefer to wrap their own packages, and probably not Morgan, who wanted to spend as little time in a shopping mall as possible. Hotch might wrap this carefully, measuring out the paper to the perfect size, centering the box, and pressing the creases sharp and even. Reid or Rossi would just have the store wrap it.
The box was red with a clear lid - no store markings - and inside were a pair of gray wool gloves, fingerless, with mitten-tops that buttoned to the back of the glove or folded over exposed fingers. They were far nicer than the Magic Stretch gloves she'd cut the fingertips off in grad school and she smiled at the memory of sharing the story with Rossi in the stakeout car earlier in the week.
Rossi, then, she thought. They'd pulled each other's names. "Thank you!" she called to the little circle the team made, but Rossi didn't look up from his conversation with Hotch, and Reid and Morgan were busy with some Lego set one of them had opened.
"Oh, those are cute," JJ said, leaning over her shoulder. "I was looking at a pair like that in J. Crew the other day. They're great when you have to find something in your purse and you don't want to freeze your hands off."
"Yeah," Emily said, glancing over at Rossi again. "Or for writing papers in the dark."
Sleeping on the plane always gave Emily the worst dry mouth, so when she woke up with the lights dimmed and the quiet sounds of her colleagues sleeping around her, the first thing she did was stumble toward the back for some water.
Rossi was the only one awake. He sat in the back corner, near the tiny kitchenette, writing in a notebook. Emily murmured a greeting as she went searching out a bottle of water, and once she found her bounty, she poked her head back into the cabin. "Do you want anything?" she asked, since she was up anyway. "Water? Coffee?"
"I think I've already had too much coffee," Rossi said wryly, "but I'll take a bottle of water if there's another one in there."
There was of course, so Emily retrieved it for him and took the seat across from him. "What's that?" she asked, glancing over at the ink-filled pages. Not case notes, those went in smaller notebooks with different-colored pens. This seemed to be fairly narrative and was written entirely in blue.
"The next book," Rossi said, cracking the seal on the water and unscrewing the lid. "It's been hard to write when we've seen so many people using them as blueprints to commit murder."
Emily figured he was thinking of the guy who murdered Zoe Hawkes and maybe Professor Rothschild, and offered a sympathetic smile. "Yeah, but think about how many people have used them as inspiration to catch murderers," she reminded him.
He made a derisive sound. "Jill Morris," he said. "Carbon copy of the jackass I used to be."
"She wasn't so bad," Emily disagreed. "If she had been a man, people would have talked about her brass balls and how she had her eye on the Director's chair." She leaned forward on her elbows and looked down at the notebook. "You should pack a laptop," she said. "So you don't have to type them up later."
"I always write on paper," he told her. She must have looked incredulous because he grinned at her. "We old codgers don't like those new-fangled computers," he said.
Emily shook her head. "Seriously. All those books? All those pages? You wrote everything by hand?"
He shrugged. "More or less. Some of the edits are done over email, that kind of thing. But this way, I can just...write. No hunting and pecking, no looking for the key I need. Lets me focus on the words instead of the process."
"I could never," Emily confessed. She took another drink from her bottle of water. "You should ask for typing lessons for Christmas."
Rossi chuckled and shook his head. "Nah," he said. "I'll stick with what works." He closed the notebook and took a drink of water. The plane was quiet but for the light sound of Morgan's snores and Emily felt Rossi's eyes regarding her thoughtfully. "What's on your Christmas list, Emily?" he asked.
She met his eyes and felt a sizzle of camaraderie that comes with sharing a secret. "I haven't really asked for anything in a long time," she confessed, because her mother didn't generally follow lists anyway. "But uh, you know, I've really missed some of the languages I don't get a chance to speak anymore. There's a Persian poet I used to read, an Iranian woman named Mana Aghaee. I'd like to see what she's written lately."
Rossi smiled. "In the original Persian, I assume."
Emily smiled back. "Of course."
"Hold the elevator!"
Work on Monday, and Emily's head was still full of beautiful verse from Man 'Isa ibn-i khudam, in the original Persian, of course, when she heard someone call. She put out her hand automatically to halt the closure of the elevator doors and was both surprised and pleased when David Rossi jogged into the elevator after her.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he replied. There was an awkward silence and then he reached into his briefcase and held up the leather journal he'd unwrapped Saturday afternoon when they'd finally gotten around to holding the Secret Santa. "This is a beautiful book," he said, his gaze serious and warm. "I've written twelve pages, just because it's so easy to put words into it."
Emily smiled, pleased that he liked it and enjoying this thing they had, this confidence just between the two of them. The elevator dinged - they had reached their floor - and Rossi leaned forward quickly and pressed his mouth to her cheek, back near her ear and whispered, "Thank you," before turning away and walking quickly into the hallway to the BAU.
Emily followed a beat later, the scratch of his beard still lingering on her skin.
Hotch, JJ, and Detective Baker were interviewing the families, and Morgan and Reid were questioning the other students in Sara Cragan's courses at San Diego State, when the coroner's findings came in. Emily was looking at the crime scene photos and trying to rank the local brew on the BAU's Worst Coffee of All-Time list when Rossi walked into the room and shut the door behind him.
"This is odd," he announced, setting the report down beside her files and helping himself to a sip of her coffee and the nearest chair.
"You're taking your life in your hands," she warned. "That stuff's worse than what we had in Montana. I'm putting it at number five on the Worst Coffee of All-Time list."
"I'll risk it," he said, and tapped the top of the report with his index finger. "Look at this. ME found traces of saliva on the victims' bodies. Very interesting places."
"He kissed them?" Emily asked, picking up the report. "We can get DNA from that."
"He performed oral sex on them," Rossi said, quirking an eyebrow.
Emily blinked and set the report back down. "Before or after he raped and killed them?" she asked, which was sort of a stupid question except that maybe it wasn't.
"Impossible to tell for sure," Rossi said. "But the ME thinks before. It's just trace, nothing immediately noticeable, but what kind of unsub gets his victims off before he has intercourse with them?"
"A considerate one," Emily said.
"Or one that wants to justify his actions." Rossi fingered his FBI ring and looked thoughtful. "If he makes her come, it's not rape. Because she enjoyed it."
"Not all woman come when someone goes down on them," Emily informed him.
"Not necessarily orgasm," Rossi mused. "But pleasure. He's remorseful. Maybe delusional."
"Not all women enjoy being eaten out," Emily said, feeling that he missed the point entirely.
Rossi's eyebrow quirked up. "You don't?"
"I - no, I - " Emily scrubbed fingertips over her tired eyes. She felt flushed and flustered and now all she could think of was David Rossi, down on his knees, licking her pussy and wow, that was not where this conversation was supposed to be going at all. She dropped her hand and looked him straight on. If she'd learned nothing else from her mother, it was to fake a poker face to close down any hand. "I like oral sex very much," she said, pleased when Rossi cleared his throat and sat back in his seat. "But I'm not every woman in the world. So okay, let's say our unsub thinks like you and believes every woman is dying for some cunnilingus." Which, at this point, she kind of was. She crossed her legs to regain a little propriety and Rossi smirked. Emily ignored him. "Why would he do it? He's demonstrated above average brutality to all the victims. His dump sites have shown no signs of remorse. Why would he do something with no advantage to him? He's just going to get a sore jaw."
"Maybe he enjoys it," Rossi said.
"You do?" Emily replied, because she could give as good as she got. She couldn't imagine the conversation being so frank if Hotch - if anyone else - was there, and while they were walking a very fine line between developing a profile and veiled flirtation, they really were getting to the heart of the unsub's fixation.
"It's one of my favorite things to do in bed," Rossi admitted nonchalantly. "But that doesn't fit. If he liked women, enjoyed their bodies and their reactions, liked the taste of it and found satisfaction in carrying out the act...why would he need to rape and kill?"
"So he's reenacting something." Emily pushed the coffee away and tapped her pen against the nearest photograph. "That's one fucked-up love map. Who are these girls to him? Mother? Ex?"
"There's something else," Rossi said. "Trace substance in the saliva."
"What?"
"Did you ever drink absinthe?" he asked.
"I used to drink a lot of things," Emily said automatically. She'd had absinthe in France and the Czech Republic, and later at college, parties with other students who studied abroad and brought back reminders of wild, bohemian nights.
"That means yes," Rossi said and it wasn't a question. "It's legal in the US, has been since '07."
"We should start with college bars that serve it," Emily said. "It can have a pretty high alcohol content. And goes straight to my - " She stopped herself before she actually said the word cunt aloud to Rossi in a tiny closed room in the San Diego Police Department. "It wouldn't take a lot to get a petite girl drunk enough for our unsub to get an invitation to spend the night."
"Where everything seems to proceed normally, and then something happens," Rossi said thoughtfully. "Something that scares her."
"Maybe," Emily said thoughtfully. "Or maybe the sex was consensual."
"Just rough?" Rossi looked displeased at that idea.
Emily shrugged. "Or enthusiastic. Absinthe's pretty potent stuff. One shot of it is like two of vodka or whiskey. And I mean...vodka goes to my head. Tequila straight to my stomach."
"Absinthe?" Rossi asked.
Emily cleared her throat and chickened out again. "Hits me right between my legs," she said as matter-of-factly as possible.
There was something in Rossi's eyes, something pleased and something wary and something deep with heat and arousal. It sent a little shiver up Emily's spine. He smiled a little and said, "You know what they say. Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder."
Terrible puns aside, the absinthe turned out to be the lead they needed. It led them to a bar on University Avenue, which in turn led them to Paul Crowley. Paul's mother had fucked him up but good, impressing upon him the goal of continuing Aleister Crowley's life's work.
"It's too bad he's so crazy they're probably going to give him a padded cell instead of the electric chair," Emily complained as she settled into her seat on the plane.
"It's too bad he won't be able to follow through on making you his high priestess," Morgan teased from across the aisle.
"Flight attendant!" Emily called, unbuckling her seatbelt. "I need to change seats!"
And if she ended up across from Rossi when she sat down again, no one on the plane seemed the least bit concerned.
"Is this a high priestess joke?" Emily asked four days later, holding up the absinthe kit her Secret Santa had given her. She displayed it pointedly, like Vanna White revealing a vowel, and cast accusative looks at everyone in the room. Everyone but Rossi, that was. The conversation in the San Diego squad room still replayed itself in her head when her attention wandered or when she closed her eyes late at night, and that wasn't anything she wanted to revisit in a room full of profilers.
"Is that absinthe?" Hotch asked, sounding mildly appalled.
"Absinthe is legal in the United States as long as it contains less than 10 parts per million of thujone," Reid piped up. "Thujone is a ketone and monoterpene which was long considered the source of absinthe's psychodelic effects, but recent research shows that the quantities of thujone in absinthe distilled in the mid-1800s was likely no more than - "
"Reid, Reid," Hotch interrupted. "Thank you."
Reid nodded and that's when JJ jumped in with, "I hate to unwrap and run, but the weather's supposed to be bad tonight and I should get home before Henry goes to bed."
"I need to take off, too," Hotch said, probably for similar reasons.
"The temperature out there is twenty-seven and with the wind chill, it's pretty nasty," Garcia warned. "Everybody bundle up."
Emily had a long drive north and since the last thing she wanted was to spend the weekend at the BAU, she joined the mass exodus home for the weekend. As she merged onto 66, needles of icy rain started hitting her windshield and by the time she got home, there was snow on the ground.
The attached garage was a godsend. The weather raged outside as she let herself in and threw her coat and purse over the nearest chair.
Emily sat the absinthe kit on her dining room table and opened it carefully. There was a bottle of liquor, two elegantly slotted silver spoons, a package of sugar cubes, and a page of instructions. She didn't need instructions. She couldn't remember if the absinthe was supposed to be chilled but if so, the car had certainly been cold enough. She wasn't sure where her reservoir glasses were or if she'd even kept them. Maybe she hadn't had any in the first place. But she had plenty of tumblers and those would do. She poured a shot of absinthe for the glass, set the spoon on the rim, and sat a sugar cube on top.
The ice water was harder - she tried to pour it slowly but had to keep stopping and waiting for the sugar cube to finish fizzing before she added more. It didn't take long for the louche to form. The first sip was as she remembered, bitter with the overtaste of the sugar cube, and a sharp warmth through her blood. She was glad of it; it was cold outside. The second and third sips reminded her that this was absinthe approved for importation in the United States and maybe not quite as strong as the stuff she'd had overseas, but by the time she finished the glass and had started melting the sugar cube into the second shot - only two, she told herself - she was starting to feel mellow and languid, and carried the glass out to the living room.
Emily kicked her shoes off and ran her fingers through her hair, enjoying the sensation of her nails against her scalp and the sweep of her hair across her wrist. Right in the cunt, she thought, turning on the stereo and making herself comfortable on the sofa. She was warm through now, the blood pulsing sensuously through her veins, and thought maybe she was getting a little wet between the legs.
Maybe tonight she'd take a long bath, find the vibrator she'd left long-neglected in her bedside table, and remember what it was like to be young and demanding and need everything instantly. She laughed a little at her own self-indulgence, and let her fingertips trail over her collarbone, following the open placket of her blouse until she could feel the soft but sensible microfiber of her bra. One button, then two, and she slipped her hand inside, cupping her own breast and stroking her thumb over her nipple. Her body reacted brilliantly, as if it had been looking forward to this longer than she'd even known, and she took another sip of absinthe.
That was when the phone rang. "Oh, hell," she muttered, setting the glass aside. "If we have a case...."
She left the thought unfinished and crossed to the console where the base for the cordless phone sat. "Prentiss," she said crisply, even as she looked at the caller ID and realized that David Rossi was calling her at home.
"Emily? It's Dave."
Dave. Not Rossi. It was Dave calling her. At her home. "Hi," she said. "I was just thinking about you." She said it without thinking and bit her lip when she realized it was true.
"Good thoughts, I hope," he said. Oh, Rossi, Emily thought. You have no idea. "I was just calling to make sure you got home all right. The roads are getting slick."
I'm getting slick, Emily thought as she walked back to her sofa and snagged her glass from the coffee table. "I'm home, my shoes are off, and I'm breaking into my Christmas gift," she said aloud.
Rossi - Dave - chuckled and Emily wondered if it was the absinthe that made it sound so sexy or if she was really falling for the guy. "Brings back memories?" he asked.
This time she didn't bother being coy with him. "I used to drink it in college," she told him, setting the drink back down again and fiddling with the edge of her blouse again. It was still open and when she glanced down, she could see the curve of her breast, and wished she was wearing something prettier. "I had a lot of friends who studied abroad and it was a popular thing to smuggle back."
"And to think," Dave said, amusement evident in his voice, "that once upon a time, I had you pegged as a good little rule-follower."
"You should know better than that by now," she said, fingering the strap of her bra.
"I know you've been thinking for yourself since you were young," Dave said quietly. "I know you've been making important decisions for yourself for a long time. I know sometimes rules fail to apply to certain situations."
Emily closed her eyes and took a deep breath and asked, "Dave, speaking of rules...were you really the reason for most of the fraternization rules?"
Dave chuckled, low, but with an undertone of...something. Regret maybe? Anger? Emily couldn't tell. "Why?" he asked. "Do you want to fraternize with someone?"
Emily reached out, found her glass by touch and brought it to her lips for a long, slow sip before answering. She felt the liquid warmth burn down her throat and through her arms and legs, her stomach, and she felt a little light-headed. "Maybe I want to fraternize with you," she challenged. She popped the button on her trousers and thumbed the zipper down.
Dave's indrawn breath on the other end of the line was shaky. "The fraternization rules," he said, voice low and rough, "were put in place due to the atmosphere in gender politics at the time compounded by some emotionally driven decisions of myself and probably several other agents in the Bureau. I fucked a lot of women when I was young, and I didn't care who they were, just that they were pretty and willing."
"What about now?" Emily asked. She wondered if he'd gone down on all those women he'd fucked, wondered if he'd licked them until they came, and couldn't decide if she was jealous or hurt. Not as much as she should be, she decided, and waited for his answer.
"I don't give a fuck about the rules," Dave said. "They don't apply to me. But if I were to - " He cut himself off and Emily bit her lip and closed her eyes. "I'm not the same guy I was back then," he said softly. "At least I hope I'm not. I don't want to be that kind of jackass to someone I care about. And I can't pretend the rules don't exist. That's not fair to - I'm not just thinking about myself anymore."
Emily's breath caught in her throat. "Dave," she said, with no idea what came next.
"If I were...going to act on how I felt about someone," he continued slowly, "we would have to be upfront about it to the team. To Hotch and Morgan, at least. Other than that, it would have to be kept quiet. The powers-that-be aren't very sympathetic to situations they don't understand."
"Do you want to?" Emily asked, hooking her finger in the waistband of her cotton underwear. "Act, I mean. If you felt about someone...."
"Of course I do," Dave said, his voice rough. "You think I like looking and not touching?"
Emily let her hand slide deeper into her panties. "Or tasting?" she whispered.
"I like tasting a lot," he answered.
"Me too," she said. She was wet, slippery under her fingers, and she wondered what he would think if he knew she was fingering herself while she was on the phone with him.
She bet he would like it.
A lot.
"Emily," he growled.
"Yeah," she answered.
"Think about it," he said. "Think about what you want. Think about about it when you're not drinking or lonely or...." He cleared his throat. "Let me if you want to take the risk. And we'll talk about it."
"What are we doing now?" she asked.
He laughed. "We're drinking," he said. "And we're lonely. And...."
"And?" she prompted.
"And it's late, it's cold out, and it's easy to want something we can't have tonight," he said. "Good night, Emily. Sweet dreams."
"Good night, Dave," she whispered just before the line went dead and then she cast the phone aside and pushed two fingers straight inside herself. She didn't want to get up and waste time looking for the vibrator, not now with Dave's voice echoing in her ear and the knowledge that he was probably just as turned on as she was, probably was home with his dick in his hand, thinking about her and jerking off.
She reached for the glass of absinthe with her free hand and swallowed the remainder. It rushed, hot and intoxicating, through her body, heightening sensations and making her bolder. She pushed it back to the coffee table and switched hands, sliding that hand into her panties, into her cunt, and dragging the wet one out, over her clit, and out of her pants. She reached into her shirt and pushed her bra cup off, finding her nipple with her first two fingers and her thumb.
The sensations rolled up immediately. She closed her legs around her hand, squeezing tighter, pushing herself toward an orgasm faster, and moved her fingers more quickly. This is how Dave would touch her, she told herself, even though his hands were bigger, his touch more firm, and his breath and the scent of him, and the weight of his body against hers would -
Emily came in a long, slow, glorious shudder, clenching tightly around her own fingers. She let them slip out and rested her hand on her stomach for a long moment as she closed her eyes, thoughts full of David Rossi and his words and his voice in her ear. She knew what her decision would be. She'd known it before she picked up the phone.
It was official, Emily decided, looking at herself in the mirror. Profiling criminals had finally driven her insane. Of course she'd always thought it would be the psycho-or-sociopathic sort of homicidal insane, not the, I-just-bought-red-lace-lingerie-for-seducing-one-of-my-colleagues sort of completely-lost-her-mind insane.
The red lace bra and panties had been sufficiently daring and elegant in the store, but now, home, in front of a full-length mirror with nothing else on but her makeup, they were magical. The lace curved around Emily's breasts, lifting them and bringing together and forward, not in a gross, distorting fashion, but like they were being cupped by gentle hands and offered up for worship. The panties wrapped low around her hips and flowed downward, pointing where to go, where to touch. They'd been expensive - cheap lace itched and reddened her skin - but if lingerie existed to please men and make women feel beautiful, then they were then it was definitely performing above and beyond the call of duty.
Now, as long as Dave liked them.
It was pretty hard to imagine he wouldn't. He liked the classics, he was traditional in a lot of ways, and Emily looked pretty damn good in that get-up. Suddenly embarrassed at the time she'd spent admiring herself in the mirror, she tugged her sweater over her head and stepped into her most flattering jeans.
The party was at JJ and Will's house and showing up in a dress and heels would be a flashing red light - all puns reluctantly intended - that something was up. Emily wasn't about to confess to JJ come Monday that she had a hot date she couldn't discuss.
She zipped up her boots - she would have liked to wear heels, but the snow and ice hadn't budged from the sidewalks - checked her hair in the mirror, and picked up the gift she'd chosen and wrapped with equal care that she'd chosen her outfit. Rossi wouldn't know what hit him.
Will answered the door, wearing a green sweater with a Christmas elf on it, and looking cheerfully resigned to having his house taken over by the BAU. "Merry Christmas," he greeted her, ushering her in with a kiss on the cheek.
"Merry Christmas," she replied. "And nice sweater."
"You like that?" he drawled. "Henry picked it out for me. He liked the pom-pom I guess. JJ and Penelope said I had to wear it."
Emily grinned back at him. "It's very handsome," she assured him. "Henry has excellent taste."
"If you want me to take the present and put it under the tree," Will offered, "there's drinks in the kitchen. JJ is worried some army might show up and eat all her food, so she's probably in there, too, whipping up some more hors d'oeuvres. Penelope's somewhere doing her...Penelope thing. And the guys are trying to explain football to Doctor Reid. If you wanna hang out with someone sane, Jack and Henry are in Henry's room playing trucks."
"You're a very good sport," Emily told him, handing him Dave's gift. "I'll go see if JJ needs help."
JJ needed help, but not making more appetizers. Emily and Penelope got a glass of wine in her, pulled her away from the Li'l Smokies, and interrupted the conversation in the living room, which seemed to consist of when to go for the two-point conversion and when to just kick the extra point.
"Give the poor guy a break," Emily scolded them. Reid and Kevin looked relieved. Rossi looked up, smiling. He was weating a green sweater, no elf, and he looked very handsome. Emily didn't say so, of course, just added, "Football is not the be-all, end-all of sports everywhere."
"Shut your mouth, woman," Morgan joked at her. "What's better than football?"
"Rugby," Emily offered.
"Soccer," JJ chimed in. "You know I love football as much as any one of you, but soccer's my game."
"Ping-pong?" Garcia asked. "Ping-pong's a sport, right?"
"Only if you want it to be, baby girl," Morgan assured her.
They talked about football for a bit longer, and then basketball. JJ brought out a tray of homemade pizza, which was amazing, and retrieved Jack and Henry for dinner. Jack ate his slice solemnly and whispered something to his dad before running back to play with the trucks in Henry's room.
Emily and Morgan carried the dishes through the formal dining room and out to the kitchen and Penelope distributed cookies, and that's when Emily realized she'd left her cup of eggnog in the kitchen. The plastic cup must have gotten rinsed out and thrown away, so she got herself a new one and filled it to the top. That made it too full, so she took a deep drink and headed back out to the living room before she missed Jack and Henry opening the gifts everyone had brought for them.
Someone walked into the kitchen, just as she reached the doorway, and she stepped back to avoid spilling eggnog down her front.
"Hey," Rossi said, pausing under the doorframe.
"Hey," she replied, with an awkward air that would make her mother's eyes roll.
He smiled at her. "You have eggnog on your mouth," he said, reaching out and touching her top lip.
"You're under the mistletoe," she said, glancing upward at the sprig she'd seen hanging in the doorway when she'd first walked in. "And I've never given you a proper thank you for all the gifts you've given me this month." She reached up and curled her hand around the back of his neck and stepped closer to him, fitting her body up against his.
"Emily," he rumbled, his hands spanning her waist and sliding up her back.
Emily pressed her mouth against his, finding it sharp with beer and tangy with tomato sauce and sweet and spicy with gingerbread. She closed her eyes and sighed against him, deepening the kiss, and he responded by pulling her in close and slipping her mouth open under his.
"Emily," he whispered a moment later when their lips parted. They were still embracing, tangled up in each other, his arms holding her tightly. "I - "
"Prentiss! Rossi! Where are you?"
They stepped apart quickly and looked away. Emily lifted her eggnog to her mouth as Garcia came in from the living room. "Mm. We're just - " She lifted the cup. "I needed more eggnog."
"Well, come on," Penelope insisted. "We're going to do presents now! It's the big reveal!"
"I need to get myself a refill, too," Rossi said. "I'll be there in a minute."
Emily didn't look at him as Penelope grabbed her hand and dragged her into the living room where Jack was unwrapping something that appeared to be a construct-your-own-robot kit.
"Wow, look at that, buddy," Hotch was saying. "Your very own android sidekick. Say thank you to Doctor Reid."
"Thank you, Doctor Reid," Jack said, already prying the box open.
Hotch talked Jack into opening the rest of his gifts and JJ and Will helped Henry get the paper off his. Then Will put Henry to bed and Jack curled up on Hotch's lap, playing sleepily with the bright yellow Transformer toy Emily had given him.
Emily caught Rossi watching her carefully once or twice, and she couldn't quite read the expression on his face.
"Jack, you want to be Santa's Helper?" Garcia asked. Jack nodded and slid off his dad's lap, keeping a firm grasp on Bumblebee as he dutifully carried a gift from her to his father, and then from Hotch to JJ. Then Garcia handed him the gift Emily had so carefully packaged (twice, because she had never been good with Scotch tape and really should have gone with the gift bag idea to start with) and he carried it over to Rossi.
"Who gave me this one, Jack?" Rossi asked him.
"Santa," Jack replied promptly. Everyone laughed and Rossi leaned forward to point at the gift tag so he could read it. "Emily," he recited.
That got him some cheers and a completely unnecessary wolf-whistle from Morgan, and got Rossi an exasperated look from Hotch, who was trying very hard to brainwash Jack into being a polite Southern boy who called everyone Mr. or Ms. and their last name.
"Renaissance art," he announced, holding up the pack of coasters with Michaelangelo's "Creation of Adam" depicted on cork.
"Not the original," Emily confessed.
"Something to sit on the Renaissance art," he said, holding up the box with the pair of wineglasses she'd picked out. "And...something to spill on the Renaissance art." He turned the bottle of grappa to read the label and she was pleased when he smiled. "Thank you, Emily," he said, and Penelope was sending Jack her way with a new present.
"It's heavy," Jack told her, apparently in warning, because it was nowhere near the heft of the bag she'd put together for Rossi.
"Thank you, Jack," she said, accepting the package.
"It's from Doctor Reid," Jack volunteered.
"Are you sure?" she asked, checking the tag idly and sure enough, Reid's name in his impossible handwriting was scrawled on the tag.
"Ooooh," Morgan teased from his spot on the couch with Hotch. "Did someone's profiling skills just get dissed?"
Emily shot Morgan her darkest glare and ripped the paper off her gift. Books, two, both hardback Vonneguts. Welcome to the Monkey House which collected his early short stories, including the very first he ever published, and Look at the Birdie which was published posthumously. "Reid, thank you," she exclaimed, ignoring her earlier gaffe and refusing to look at Rossi at all. "I don't have either of these." She beamed at him and he smiled back, and accepted the gift Garcia and Jack aimed in is direction.
Rossi, it turned out, had drawn Morgan and given him tickets to some event.
Jack had fallen asleep on Hotch's lap and everyone was going for refills on cookies and wine. The gift exchange was over and Hotch was making noise about going home. JJ was trying to convince him to put Jack down in their bed and stay for a round of some game that Emily was fairly sure she did not want to play unless she could be on Reid's team.
Emily had made herself comfortable in one of JJ's big armchairs and was paging through the table of contents of the most recent book, reading the titles of Konnegut's last works and wondering how on Earth she'd managed to miss that Rossi wasn't her Secret Santa.
She wasn't angry, although she was a little pissy that Rossi had strung her along. He'd never actually said that he was although he also hadn't said that he wasn't.
"How much trouble am I in?" Rossi asked, sitting on the arm of Emily's chair.
She glanced up at him. "Trouble," she told him without any real heat, "does not begin to cover it."
Rossi smiled apologetically. "Reid came to me asking for ideas. Poor kid was stumped. We'd just been talking about Georgetown, so I told him those fingerless gloves were popular with women these days. After that...." He shrugged. "It was more fun figuring out what you would like than Morgan. He's not nearly as pretty."
Emily couldn't suppress a smile at that. "I don't know," she said. "Morgan is very pretty."
"I didn't tell Reid why you wanted the things you did," Rossi said softly. "I just said I heard you mention that you wanted the book...."
"And the absinthe?" Emily asked. "Please don't tell me he knows it makes me horny."
"You know what they say..." Rossi started with the evil glee of a man about to overuse a pun.
"Do not even," she warned him.
He laughed and held up his hands in supplication. "I didn't say a word to Reid," he confessed. "That was one all his idea. High priestess joke."
Emily shook her head. "That needs to die," she said. "Sooner, rather than later."
"I did tell him I thought you'd get a lot of enjoyment out of it," he said and laughed when Emily groaned and covered her eyes. "I made him pick out the books himself. I knew what I wanted to get you for Christmas and I wasn't in the mood to share."
Emily glanced up. "Is that an oral sex joke?" she asked.
Rossi grinned and shook his head. "No," he said. "This is something I wanted to give you, no matter what your decision."
"I'm intrigued," Emily confessed.
"You'll have to follow me home," Rossi told her. "Think you'll be ready to go in about fifteen minutes?"
Emily thought about it. She wasn't really mad at him, not at all. And of course she was interested in what he'd wanted to give her, what was so intimate - and not in a sexual way - that he didn't want the rest of the team to see. "Yeah," she said. "Fifteen minutes."
"Do I have to close my eyes?" Emily asked as Rossi unlocked the door - deadbolt and latch.
"No," Rossi said confidently, touching her elbow as he ushered her through the door. "No need."
He was right - the house was dark and the shadows tugged at Emily's attention. She'd been in his home once, a year ago for a party - the Final Four playoffs. She couldn't say who had won the games, but she noticed the layout of his house, the personal details tucked in among the showroom furniture, and the simple, surprisingly personal menu of meatballs and homemade chili.
"This way," he said, and didn't remove his hand from her arm. She didn't mind; in fact, she wanted him to linger, liked the weight of his touch. He bypassed the formal living room and led her to the greatroom in the back. It was lived-in and comfortable with heavy, worn furniture and a fireplace stacked with ready wood. Emily had wondered why the party wasn't set back there until she'd realized the only television was in the front room. He led her just inside the room and then said, "One minute." His hand dropped away from her arm and seconds later, the lights blazed on.
Emily blinked in the light and for a moment, she didn't recognize the import of the tableau in front of her. Then it hit her all at once, sights and sounds and meaning and the way one dark green fir tree filled a room with everything Christmas should be.
"It's beautiful," she said. "It's beautiful. Dave, you put up a tree."
"Yeah," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I figured it was time."
Emily reached out and touched the nearest branch, feeling the needles bend against her palm. She walked the outer edge of it, inhaling the fresh pine scent and letting the branches bend and bounce back. Tiny colored bulbs were woven into it, dark green cords twisted firmly around deep branches. It was a perfect tree, tall and full, with enough space for ornaments - which were stacked in boxes against the wall.
"Why now?" she asked, feeling a little guilty for fishing.
"It's been a pretty good Christmas so far," Dave said, stepping closer. He reached out and touched her chin with his thumb and index finger. "I thought it might be worth trying something...new."
His fingers were gentle on her face, but electrifyingly present and Emily studied his face as she awaited the inevitable, daring him to be the first to lean forward. He'd been handsome in his youth, striking even, but in all the pictures she'd seen, Emily thought he looked arrogant and closed-off. Now she knew he was arrogant and closed off, but she also knew where the cracks were, where he was soft and what made him angry and what made him hurt. He was softer, grayer now, and she found herself infinitely more attracted to him.
"Aren't you going to decorate your tree?" he asked, dragging his thumb away and shifting his gaze to the ornaments on the other side of the room.
"My tree?" Emily asked, delight overwriting the disappointment that he hadn't kissed her.
"You said you wanted a real tree," Rossi - Dave - reminded her, hefting a large plastic box from the pile. "Part of having a real tree is putting on the ornaments."
"Handmade?" Emily asked as he sat the box on the couch and pulled the lid away.
He made a face. "Not by me," he said, lifting one of the individual boxes inside. "Here, get started on these while I get the fire going."
Emily's wistful daydreams and hasty attempts at putting together a tree of her own hadn't prepared her for the fun of diving through a bin of nearly-forgotten holiday treasures. There were old glass balls, tiny wooden toys, and punched metal keepsakes. She found a delicate lace snowflake, nestled in tissue, that had hung on Dave's Nonna's tree, and pipecleaner candy canes and clothespin reindeer.
"Oh, you liar," Emily announced, when she opened a box and discovered a great treasure.
"What?" Dave asked, busy arranging a set of metal toy cars on the highest branches.
"You said there was nothing in here you made," Emily said. She held up her prize, two plastic lids glued together around a handful of red and green confetti. The name "Davey R." was written on the edge in black marker.
Dave groaned. "My mother kept everything," he grumbled, turning and reaching for it.
"Ah, ah, ah," Emily warned, holding it just out of his reach. "Not until I get the story behind this one."
"There's no story," Dave said, collapsing onto the couch next to her and reaching half-heartedly for it. "We made them in school."
"How old were you?" Emily demanded.
"Seven?" Dave hazarded, reaching for it. This time she let him take it. He studied it and smiled. "Catholic school," he added. "Sister Agnes let us make them to take home to our mothers. I had the biggest crush on her."
"On a nun?" Emily asked, amused.
"I was seven," Dave said, slipping an arm casually around her shoulders and pulling her against his side. "She was probably twenty-five. She had dark hair with bangs - the way you wore your hair last year - and big brown eyes. She was a teacher who had joined the abbey after school and she hadn't taken her solemn vows yet. I was planning for us to run away together when I hit the double digits, but things don't always go according to plan."
"You found someone else?" Emily asked, thinking of his childhood sweetheart from Comack.
"She found someone else," he said. "Apparently being a nun wasn't her lifelong calling after all." He gave Emily a fond look. "I was always a big fan of the bangs, though."
She pushed at his shoulder and took the little plastic disk back from him. "I'm putting this on the tree," she said, standing up and doing so. There wasn't much left - that one had been near the bottom - and finally Dave picked up the worn gold box in the bottom of the last bin.
"Here she is," he said, sliding the cover off the box to reveal an angel, crinkly tinsel halo set in her dark hair, white dress billowing around her porcelain arms, and the pink nearly rubbed from her delicate face.
"I don't know how you're going to get her up there," Emily said, peering up at the tree. "This is not a short tree."
"Good thing I have a helper, then," Dave said, handing her the angel.
"What are you doing?" she asked, but before the words were all the way out of her mouth, he had scooped her up, boosting her high enough to reach the top of the tree if she stretched. "You are crazy," she told him, as she placed the angel on the highest vertical branch and arranged its dress to drape on the nearby greenery. "I am way too heavy for you to be doing that."
Rossi grunted and she braced herself on his shoulders as he lowered her to the ground. "It's just for a minute," he said, and kissed her sweetly on the mouth. He pulled back and wrapped his arm around her waist, admiring their evening's work.
"Do you want a drink?" he asked when they'd declared the tree a worthy specimen.
"Sure," she said, glad for any excuse to stay a little longer.
"Make yourself comfortable," he invited. "I'll go see what I have."
While he was in the kitchen, Emily sat on the of the couch nearest the fire and ran a hand through her hair. She wasn't sure what to expect from him anymore. He seemed comfortable hugging her and kissing her, but none of his advances had been sexual and she wondered if he was having second thoughts.
That thought didn't survive his return from the kitchen.
"Is that...?" she asked, seeing the green liquid in the reservoir glass. She had expected him to break out the grappa, or some other wine he'd put aside for tonight.
"You didn't think I was going to let this one go so easily, did you?" he asked, setting the tray on the coffee table. A silver absinthe spoon sat on it, along with a bowl of sugar cubes, a carafe of ice water, and a tumbler of scotch.
"Not joining me?" she asked, leaning forward to set the spoon on the glass and the sugar cube on the spoon. Of course he'd go out and buy all the trappings. If David Rossi was going to do something, he was going to do it right.
"As tempting as you make it sound," Dave said wryly, "I can't get past the idea that it's extracted from wormwood."
"Tch. It's no more poisonous than the stuff you're drinking now," Emily told him mildly.
"Show me how it's done," he invited. "I have 911 on speed dial."
Emily rolled her eyes at him and tipped the ice water slowly over the sugar cube. "This takes a while," she informed him.
"I thought about buying the fountain," Dave said conversationally. "But I didn't know where to put it."
"That would have been a first," Emily admitted. "No one's ever bought me an absinthe fountain before."
It took long enough to melt the sugar and for the louche to form, so Emily rushed through adding the extra water and sat back with her glass.
"Merry Christmas, Emily," Dave said, tapping their glasses together.
"Merry Christmas, Dave," she replied with a smile and sipped her absinthe. "Stop watching me. I'm not going to keel over."
Dave reached out and brushed her hair away from her forehead, his fingers trailing through the strands from the root to the ends. "I want to kiss you now," he said carefully. "May I?"
"If you don't," she answered, shaken a little by his formality, "I will."
He smiled a little and closed the distance between them. Then he leaned over and placed his glass on the coffee table, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. It was slow and sweet and impossibly gentle and Emily held onto her glass awkwardly and let him show her just how deeply his feelings toward her ran.
She was breathless when he pulled away and rested his forehead against hers. His beard scratched against her palm and she ran her hand up his face, smoothing the creases at the corners of his eyes and brushing over the shape of his ear.
The coffee table was to her left and she tried to reach it without moving the rest of her body but Dave noticed and laughed, leaning back.
"No, I just want to - " she started, and then shut up and just did. Her mostly-full glass made it safely to the table and then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his.
Everything heated up from there. Dave pulled her onto his lap and kissed her mouth, thorough and dirty, until she was panting, and then turned his attention to her ear, the line of her jaw, the sensitive column of her throat.
Emily moved her leg to straddle him and settled a knee on either side of his hips.
"Okay?" he asked, pausing long enough to look up at her.
"Just getting comfortable," she said, pushing forward until she could feel him against her. He was hard, and big from what she could tell, and he groaned when she rubbed against him. His hands tightened on her waist, just under her sweater, and she wondered if he'd leave marks to find in the shower tomorrow.
She'd only had one sip of absinthe but she was sure her panties were soaked and she could feel the throb of her pulse in her cunt. She tightened her muscles, hoping a little pressure would take the edge off the aching need between her legs, but it only served to do the opposite.
"I don't want to rush you," Dave murmured against her throat. "We don't have to do anything you aren't ready for. But I really want to go down on you tonight. Can I do that?"
"Oh, my God." Emily laughed shakily and buried her fingers in his hair. "Yes. Yes, of course. You don't ever have to ask about that."
Dave sighed against her throat and she felt his fingers curl around the hem of her sweater and pull upward. It's about time, Emily thought, helping him drag the offending garment over her head and off her arms.
"Pretty," Dave said, fingering the red lace at the swell of her breast. "Do you wear these out on cases or are they strictly party attire?"
"They're pretty much 'seducing colleagues under the mistletoe' attire," Emily confessed as he stroked his thumb inside, glancing across her nipple. She caught her breath, shaking from the touch. Too much, yet not nearly enough.
"That makes me a lucky man," he murmured.
He traced the edges of the the bra with his fingertips and then cupped her breasts in both hands. They felt heavy and tender, warm where his hands covered the lace, and Emily's nipples were hard. Dave ducked his head into the swell of them, ran his tongue along the edge of the lace, and then mouthed her nipple through the lace.
"Oh, God, Dave," she moaned, pushing her breast further into his mouth. "That feels so good."
"Is this in the way?" he asked, peeling the lace away from her breast and sucking the nipple into his mouth.
Emily made a sound that might have been a squeak but she wasn't in the mood for classification. She looked down at the top of Dave's head while he teased and tugged and sucked at her nipple, and ran her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp as he hummed against her.
"I can take this off," she said as he smoothed the lace up back up, covering her.
"Leave it," he murmured, peeling the other cup back. "It looks pretty on you, " as if she were the one making the bra sexy instead of the other way around. He gave her other breast the same patient attention as the first, then covered it up and urged her mouth down to his. "Right here?" he asked.
"What?" Emily asked, because she'd been thinking about his mouth on hers and his hands on the small of her back.
"I'm going to lick your pussy," he said, and fuck it was sexy when he said things like that. He reached over to the coffee table and handed her the absinthe glass. "I want to lay you down right on that rug over there," he said, "and eat you out until you come so hard you can't remember your own name."
"Oh, God." Emily felt herself flush and took a sip from her glass, then a longer one. Her mouth was dry and she was already wet and a little dizzy from the aftershocks that tingled through her nipples.
Dave took her absinthe glass and leaned past her to put it back on the coffee table. She pushed herself off him carefully. Her muscles had all clenched up and it hurt to stretch out again. He smiled as he looked up at her standing in front of him. She thumbed open the button on her jeans and eased the zipper down. He reached up and folded the waistband back and said, "You match." He slipped a couple fingers in the waistband of her panties - not enough to tease her, not low enough - and admired the way the lace stretched over his fingers. "I'm a fan."
Then he was pulling away and standing up. He directed her toward the high pile rug in front of the fireplace with his hands on her waist, and when they were there, he drew her jeans slowly off her hips and down her thighs.
Emily sat down when he dragged them past her knees and helped him kick them and her boots off. He stretched out over her, pressing her back onto the carpet and laying her out to his eyes. He kissed her mouth and her face, her collarbone and her breasts again, and then her stomach, circling and dipping his tongue into her navel before settling between her legs and pressed teasing kisses to the inside of her thighs.
"I've been thinking about doing this since San Diego," he murmured against her skin.
Emily smiled and licked her lower lip, as if that would help the dryness of her mouth. "Only since then?" she asked.
The wicked twist of his smile gave her the answer she expected.
He brushed his nose and then his open mouth against the damp lace of her panties. "I think these have done their part," he said, running a finger under the edge from her hipbone to the swell of her mound, back to the bottom curve of her ass. He traced the path back and hooked his fingers in the satin-clad elastic holding them on. He dragged his fingers back to the tiny triangle of satin and dragged the thong down over her rear, cupping her curves as he drew them elastic down.
He tugged them down, exposing her to the warm air and his curious eyes, and then used both hands to draw them down to her knees. "Lift up," he husked, and she drew her knees up to let him take them off. "Up, up," he corrected when he reached her ankles and straightened her legs up as high as his head before tossing away the panties and folding her legs down over his shoulders to rest on his back.
"Dave," she whispered, feeling vulnerable and silly and desperately aroused.
"So, I hear not all women like being eaten out," he said conversationally as he brushed his beard against her inner thigh, high enough to make her arch. He pushed that leg to the side and she crossed her ankle with the other one on his back.
"That's a lie," she rasped. "I don't know who told you that."
He chuckled, his breath drifting against her most sensitive skin.
"I can't imagine who would say such a thing," Dave said, mouthing casual kisses down the hollow of her hip and the crease of her thigh.
Then she felt the tip of his tongue tracing her clit, one downward stroke, then another, and then he switched directions and licked upward, hard and fast, and her hips jerked.
"Hey," he said, rubbing his thumb high up on the crease of her hip. "I'm only getting started." He leaned forward again, sucking her clit gently and bringing his hand down to press his thumb into her.
"Dave," she whispered, all other words lost as he stroked the edges of her cunt.
"You're so wet, Emily," he answered. "How long have you been this wet?" He dragged his tongue down the length of her and back up again. "Since I touched your breasts? Since I kissed you? Since you took that drink of absinthe? Can you feel it? Are you feeling it now?" He circled her, starting at her clit and dragging down, around her cunt, dipping in before brushing his lips lightly back up to her clit.
"When I got dressed," Emily managed between gasps for breath. All her muscles were twitching, rippling with pleasure, and she wasn't sure if they were tiny orgasms or just overwhelmed with sensation. "When I put on the panties and bra that I bought for you and looked at myself in the mirror and thought about you seeing me like that, what you would think, how you would take them off."
Dave's mouth and fingers stuttered against her and Emily felt powerful and beautiful and brave. "Didn't expect to hear that, did you?" she asked, reaching down to scratch her fingers through the hair at his temple. "I couldn't stop thinking about you, that this was your favorite thing to do in bed, that maybe you would want to do it to me, how good you'd be." He groaned against her, the vibrations heightening the movements of his mouth and fingers.
She lifted her hips against him and he pushed on the leg that was already canted to the side, opening her up more widely. She felt his tongue lap into her and his fingers rub her clit, and she couldn't stop shifting under him. He went with it, one arm around her hips to keep her movements small, and his mouth and fingers catching to her rhythm. For a while, she stopped being able to tell just what he was doing with his hands and what he was doing with his lips and tongue. She occasionally felt the gentle push of his teeth and after her first orgasm, which had been more like three layered on top of each other, she felt him push a finger all the way inside her cunt.
"More," she sighed, trying to tighten around him, trying to feel him push her wide. "I want more."
He gave her more, two fingers, which at least let her feel him all the way through and then he said, humming against her clit, "That's two, do you want more? Can you take more?"
"Yeah," she moaned, opening both legs and bearing down on him. "Fill me up."
He withdrew and a moment later, she felt a push and her brain whited out with oh yes, right there. "That's three," he murmured. "I have three fingers in your pussy." And he was moving them, fucking her with them, and mouthing her clit and it was good, so so good.
She clenched around him, shaking, trying in some primal way to capture him, to hold him still, but he kept moving his hand, moving his mouth, lapping at her until the endless contraction of every muscle in her body finally broke and she sprawled loosely against the carpet. Her pussy was still singing with stimulation and she barely felt the kiss Dave pressed to her clit or the gentle slide of his fingers from her cunt. He unwound himself from her legs, placing them on the soft rug, and stretched up her body to lie on his side next to her. He brushed her hair away from her forehead with the lightest of touches.
Emily tilted her head back against the carpet and breathed deeply. She still felt prickly, oversensitized, too raw. Dave mouthed gentle kisses to her face - her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, and when she didn't respond, to her shoulder and then her fingers. "Do you want to go upstairs?" he asked softly, as if her ears might be just as delicate. "We can sleep if you want...."
"Oh, hell, no," she managed, rolling to her side and pushing Dave under her. He was hard, the head of his cock wet, and she wrapped her hand around it firmly. "Don't you think we're leaving you like this." She pumped him up and down and he growled with pleasure and reached up with both hands to cup her hips. "Can we stay here?" she asked, leaning forward to kiss his chest, her hand trapped between them. "Can you just fuck me. Right. Here?" She punctuated her pleas with soft, sucking kisses to each nipple and then moved up to nibble on is collarbone. His skin was hot from the fire and damp from pressing against her.
"God, Emily," he groaned. "Anything. Anything you want. Anywhere you want."
He rolled them, careful to cradle her head in his hand, and sat up, edging her legs apart with his thighs. "Hold on," he rasped. "I gotta get a condom."
There was one (or six) in Emily's purse but he was already on his feet and she figured she would keep just how prepared she had been to herself. Instead, she took the extra moments he gave her to catch her breath and stretch her back. The fire warmed her skin and the rug under her was thick and plush. She hoped he didn't mind if it got a little messy because she didn't intend to go easy on him.
The condom must have been in his wallet, which he'd left in the kitchen earlier, because he was back quickly, kneeling between her legs and kissing her.
"Here," she offered. "Let me." Emily had tried to roll a condom on with her mouth exactly once and that went about as well as she should have expected, which is to say not well at all. So she didn't do anything fancy, just pushed him back and moved over him, used her fingers to roll the rubber tightly onto his cock, and smoothed it down with her hand. "It's not fair that you have to do all the work," she whispered, and pulled him inside her.
It took a moment to make the arrangement secure. She walked forward on her knees and settled back and he guided her hips with his hands until he was well-seated in her. She started slowly, because his fingers had stretched her, but not quite enough, and she was dripping wet, but still a little tender.
"Emily, you're beautiful," he said, running a splayed hand up her stomach and wrapping the other around her back.
She leaned down to kiss him because there, making love to him on his living room floor, with the her Christmas tree scenting the air and the fire crackling behind them, she felt beautiful. He ran his hand up her back as they kissed and unhooked her bra. He used both hands to slide the straps down her shoulders and guided first her right hand, then her left, off his shoulders so he could slip them off and cast the scrap of lingerie to the side.
"Let me see you," he said, hands bracing her hips, and she sat up, breasts bared, and rode him slowly, sensuously, with his hands sweeping calligraphic patterns over her skin. He groaned, low and rich, and started to thumb her clit, but she covered his hand with hers and leaned down again.
Emily wanted to feel him deep inside her, wanted him to reach beyond where he'd touched and tasted before. She pulled her knees higher and sat further back, keeping up her rhythm, increasing the pace a bit, as she pressed her breasts to his chest and her mouth to his throat.
Dave growled her name and fucked up into her harder, then rolled her to her back. Emily wrapped her legs around his waist and he didn't hold back, thrusting deep and strong and she felt her body cling to him deep inside as she clung to him outside and when he came, it was with a half dozen wild strokes and a groan that came from someplace equally deep.
Emily held him, legs wrapped around his waist, arms folded across his shoulders, hands holding his head to her breasts. The rest of the room came back into her awareness slowly, quietly, and eventually he lifted his head and eased out of her.
"I have to take care of this," he murmured, stripping the condom off and rolling to his feet to dispose of it elsewhere.
Emily felt bare, exposed, the sweat cooling on her skin making her shiver. She snagged a blanket from the back of the couch and snagged her glass for a warming swallow.
"I'm cutting you off," Dave said, walking back into the room. He was naked and didn't seem bothered in the least by it. He sat down next to her and took her glass before pulling her into a long, sweet kiss. "If you keep drinking this stuff," he whispered when they came up for air, "I'll never be able to keep up with you."
Emily just smiled. "Maybe you should try it," she suggested. "You know what they say...."
THE END