Hotch’s hyper awareness extended into the office, much to his own discomfort. He’d been able to shove it to the back of his mind and completely pretend it didn’t exist until a week ago. A week ago, after the case from hell (ironic, considering almost every case they worked was the case from hell) he’d followed her to a gymnasium and watched her do something he had most definitely not expected. And damn if it hadn’t been one of the biggest turn ons he’d ever experienced.
Emily Prentiss had once been a world-class gymnast.
He had to admit, he’d gotten a rush from finding out something so private, but what had really gotten him was the intimate nature of their interactions afterwards. He wasn’t sure if it was just the after-effects of her exhausting work out and his natural response or if he quite simply hadn’t been paying attention to the way they fed off each other. Opening up to her, being vulnerable, had come surprisingly easy. He’d taken strength from that night and found himself refreshed the next morning.
In that week, he found himself watching her more, leaning against the back of her chair in their morning debrief meetings and even dragging her fingers along the back of her shoulders. And that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that she’d tended to star in some explicit dreams since that night, dreams where he’d used that flexibility to his own end. It was a glorious, satisfying end to say the least.
So it became so difficult as the week dragged on and there were no cases to focus his attention on to keep himself under wraps. He wanted to drag her into his office and have her. He wanted to feel her again, the Bureau be damned. And he was close to saying it to her. But she was acting like a skittish horse when the team was around and understandably so. But he really couldn’t help himself.
He thought their case would give him a chance to re-evaluate. He figured it would give him something else to focus on, something else to see at night. But he was so incredibly wrong. Three days into their case and still, all he could see was her. And he quite thoroughly blamed the local police force. He wasn’t blind. He knew his team was full of not only highly intelligent minds, but also knew they were a team of attractive women. So it shouldn’t have affected him when, since JJ was noticeably pregnant, the attention of the admittedly attractive local detective lingered on her.
She was just coming out of her hotel room, small duffle bag in hand as he was almost stalking towards her room. He’d seen that duffle bag before, on the floor of a Quantico gym. His body ignited as he remembered that night, as he remembered being that close to her with personal barriers demolished between them. He saw something twitch in her face, saw the split second pause of her step and knew.
“Hey,” she greeted softly, her fingers playing with the zipper on her bag.
“Where are you going?”
Her nostrils flared at the unintentionally sharp tone. “Gym. I made a few calls to find one…”
She looked embarrassed despite the little spark in her eyes that told him his anger was unappreciated. He knew she hated cases where she was dealing with personal as well as professional and knew that the attention of the local detective was difficult for her to handle. He knew she wanted a chance to get her mental stability back for the next day of work. “May I watch?”
Her right eyebrow could have probably hit her hairline if it could. “You want to watch?” He’d come to stand right in front of her now, and her attention honed in on him and him alone. She had been hyper-aware of him over the very little time that had passed and it seemed to sharpen even more as they spent the work week in the same office.
“Do you mind?” Hotch watched Emily consider the suggestion. He knew it wouldn’t be the first time he’d watched and wondered if he’d ever get the opportunity again. The fact that it had found some odd way of calming him was in the back of his mind.
“I guess not,” she said finally, absently chewing on her lip. “In that?”
He looked down at his suit, favouring her with a wry smile. “Do you mind waiting while I change?”
Emily’s smile was shy, but she nodded, closing her eyes as he brushed past her. It was scary how completely things had changed throughout the course of a week and a half. Instead of being able to brush the situation off as a slip of their professional demeanours, she’d been forced to see it less as a slip and more as a completely new chapter in their relationship.
And he hadn’t given her a second to think of anything else. There hadn’t been a single night she’d had a nightmare, but she had definitely been forced to endure a cold shower the large majority of her mornings because of the images that had burned themselves into her eyelids. She remembered the feeling of his hands on her body, the soft touch of his lips across her neck and shoulders. She remembered wanting to almost slap herself upside the head when she brought up the Bureau. Because he’d all but promised to burn her alive in those few touches.
Nevertheless, Emily knew that the Bureau was all Hotch had. He’d given up his family for the BAU and she wasn’t about to put him in a situation where he’d have to make that choice again. But she wasn’t sure she’d be able to push him away again, not when her dreams were pushing her so close to the edge of simply ripping off his clothes.
The touch on her arm startled her, but the way it followed down to her hand let her know exactly who was now beside her. She pushed herself off the wall, lifting her bag in the process, his hand still in hers. The only words in the car were her quiet directions to him from the passenger’s seat and there was nothing said between them as they made their way into the building. She was already dressed in her gym clothes and started stripping down almost the second she got through the doors.
Hotch felt himself salivating as her sweatshirt came off.
This tank top was gloriously red, the shorts the same black spandex she’d used a week and a half before. Her body was, for all intents and purposes already on display for him and he’d have to be as cold-blooded as a reptile to not react to her. But he was only there to watch and so that iron-clad control once again served him well as she started to stretch.
Emily turned to him, feeling his eyes on her body. “Want to do me a favour?”
“Sure.”
She most certainly needed a minute or she wasn’t going to end up on the beam at all, as was her original plan. “Can you grab that springboard for me?” She pointed to the board in the corner. He moved off as she finished her stretching routine and Emily had to take a deep breath to center herself. She was too focused on Hotch, on the memory of his touch the last time they’d been in a gym. She did a few handsprings on the floor to get warmed up, trying to keep herself as close to a straight line as possible.
She glanced over as she came up from the ground. He’d pulled the springboard over, in her line and lined up with the end of the beam. She grinned as he stepped away and took a run at it, bouncing herself into a quick tuck to get up on the beam. She wobbled, out of practice on that particular mount, but managed not to fall. Then, her full attention went to the routine, to the handsprings that would take her across the beam, to the jumps that did the same.
Then she made a massive mistake, and it wasn’t a technical one. On the other hand, the mistake was simple. When she landed on the beam, dropping down to straddle it, the wood flat against her stomach, she made the mistake of looking at him as she pushed herself up. His eyes were almost black, his muscles tensed as if to spring. And he did because the next thing she knew, he’d literally pulled her off the beam and into his arms.
Then his mouth was on hers, demanding a response from her immediately. Her hands came up to frame his face, palms on his cheeks, holding her to him and giving as good as she got. There was nothing gentle about this first kiss, nothing that spoke of anything other than intense arousal and attraction between them. His hands weren’t idle in the slightest, slipping almost immediately to her lower back, lifting her tank top so he could spread her hands over her skin.
Emily moaned into his mouth, her gymnastics completely forgotten in the heat of his body pressed tightly against hers. Even her original trepidation about doing this and then going back to her job had been so completely wiped from her system it wasn’t funny. If asked, she probably couldn’t remember her own name at this point. His on the other hand, was something completely different. It was all she could breathe out when he pulled his mouth from hers and attacked her collarbone and throat.
Control was no longer a word in his vocabulary. Her skin was soft and tasted fantastic under his mouth. She was so incredibly responsive, gasping, moaning, whimpering under his hands and mouth. His hands slid under the back of her shorts, cupping her ass and bringing her flush with his hips. She could feel him, his hardness against her stomach, and arched into the contact, moaning. She was going to lose her mind.
His mouth trailed downwards, his hands hoisting her onto the beam behind her. Emily went willingly, wrapping her lean legs around his hips to feel him pressed intimately against her. His mouth was at her chest now, skimming along the edge of her tank on the swells of her breasts. Hotch’s breath was coming short and sharp against her skin as he virtually devoured her, His hands, still in her shorts, encouraged movement against him. She more than willingly followed his encouragement, rocking against him, feeling him through her shorts and panties.
“God, Emily,” he breathed against her skin. His hands skimmed under the front of her shirt. He couldn’t help smirking when her stomach muscles jumped under his fingertips. She was wearing a bra, though he paid it very little heed as he pressed a thumb against her nipple. She arched into him with a low groan, bringing his head up to his him savagely. It was easy for him to rock her against him, to push further into her, to feel her start to shake around him. He swallowed her squeal as her entire body tensed around him, her legs locking. Nevertheless, he pulled away quickly as he worked her through her peak, etching her face into his memory.
It wasn’t like he wanted, he wanted to be inside her, to feel her around him. But he knew that trying to make the transition, going from here to the hotel, gave them both time to cool down, time to think about what they were doing. The last thing he wanted to do was think. With her taste still on his tongue and the scent of vanilla and roses in his nostrils, thinking was definitely the last thing he wanted to do.
Because thinking lead to consequences, consequences of them together like this. He didn’t want to think of the complications. He didn’t want to think of the FBI or anyone’s reputation, though hers would be his first concern. He wanted to concentrate on her. He wanted those breathy moans, the little whimper she made when he nipped at her collarbone. He wanted to see her face when he pushed inside her for the first time. He didn’t want her to think about the Bureau, about beloved jobs they were risking.
Still, Hotch hadn’t moved since her climax and it had given Emily enough time to get some of her wits back. She still couldn’t think completely straight, and she was definitely not sure if her knees would actually hold her body weight. Her brain, however, was most definitely at it’s base functioning abilities, and for her usual IQ, it was impressive in itself. And she had no idea what this meant.
They’d deliberately stayed away from this a week and a half ago. They had deliberately stepped away from each other, their thoughts on their jobs and on the policies in place to keep the Bureau running smoothly. Tonight, they’d thrown all caution to the wind and it had been a fantastic wind indeed. She’d seen Hotch focus on cases, focus his energy, his attention and his intensity, and she’d imagined all of that focused on her and her alone.
Reality simply and totally surpassed fantasy. There was only one remaining question:
Now what?