Round One

"Hey, Reid. Think fast."

Reid looks up from the paper he's holding just in time to drop it and get his hands into a defensive posture. Emily's projectile is well-aimed - the star puzzle she'd been fussing with on the plane lands itself miraculously between his palms - but he takes issue with her word choice.

"I think fast enough," he says, pressing its points into his fingertips and sliding the pieces around almost absently. "It's my reaction time you're worried about." He looks up from the puzzle - she's taken it apart again, and he's already got it a quarter of the way back together - and meets Emily's eye. She looks tired, but not burnt, and her eyes are warm. She doesn't even roll them at his correction.

"Right," she says, striding across the room to meet him. "Reaction time. Why are you still here?" The puzzle locks into place in his hands with a low clicking sound, and Emily looks from it to him and back again. "And really?"

Reid tosses it back at her. "Paperwork."

"Paperwork?"

"I don't write as fast as I read. Why are you still here?"

Emily shifts her weight a little. He anticipates the lie before it comes and barely has time to wonder what she's hiding before he gets his question sidestepped instead. "Show me how," she says, bouncing the puzzle off the tips of her fingers for emphasis, then pulling it apart nearly as fast as he put it together.

"How to solve it?"

"Yeah. Show me." She flips it back at him, and this time his catch is more graceful.

"Okay. Here, look, you have to..." He stops as Emily sidles closer and peers around his shoulder. "You know, it might be easier if I... give me your hands. Is that okay?"

"Mmmhmm."

He turns to face her, which means he has to solve it backwards so that she can get the right visual cues, and it takes a little longer. She lets him adjust her grip and guide her fingers over the lines and points of the wood, lets his hands tell hers what to do, and she smiles a little at his patience.

When there are two moves left - obvious ones; she sees the strategy now - he drops his arms to his side and lets her slide the pieces against one another until she gets that same satisfying click. The smile she's been playing at comes all the way loose and touches her eyes, and when she looks up at him, she's got both eyebrows up. "You're funny, you know that?"

"Funny how?"

"Most of the time, you can't get out of your own way. But you can be surprisingly coordinated." There's amusement in her expression, and something fond, as well, but there is also something else. The something else that has the unfortunate tendency to make him stammer.

"I'm... you know, I've been told I'm good with my h- with my hands." The words bring heat up into his face, and the best that he can hope for is that the color doesn't immediately follow.

Emily laughs. It's a funny laugh, mostly in her mouth, and she gives her lower lip a bite he probably would have missed if he'd been in another line of work. "You're flirting with me," she says. Her tone is matter-of-fact, but the pitch goes up at the end. "Who taught you that?"

"Garcia," he says, the answer out of his mouth before he can stop it, and Emily's laugh gets big and throaty.

"Oh yeah? Her idea or yours?"

"Hers." There is definitely color in his face now, and he can feel himself struggling to keep eye contact.

"Smart girl," Emily says, cocking one brow again. "She feed you that line?"

"Some variation, maybe. But the phrasing was all mine. You know, in case you couldn't tell."

"Trademark you, for sure." Emily leans back against his desk and sets the puzzle down on top of the mess of paperwork he's been avoiding. "Good thing you're charming, or that would have been totally skeezy. You do know that, right?"

"Would it?"

He looks genuinely uncertain, and Emily has to swallow the laugh that's edging up her throat. "Mmmhmm. You basically just propositioned me."

"No, I didn't! I just..."

Reid pauses, groping for the right words, and Emily takes immediate advantage of the unlikely situation. "Wanted me to know that you're unusually adept at manual stimulation?" she suggests, her face nearly Hotch-like in its stillness, but her eyes glittering madly. She's thoroughly enjoying this now, he can tell. This conversation is going exactly the way she wants it to, and that realization unnerves him more than anything else that's happened today. And considering the case they just got back from, that's saying quite a bit.

Reid swallows heavily and decides that he can beat her at whatever game she's playing - he's from Vegas, after all, which people sometimes forget - and then he puts on his best interrogation-room face, looks her square in the eye, and says, "Yes, actually."

The surprise flickers across her so quickly that someone else would miss it, but she recovers well. "Garcia tell you that one, too?"

"Not Garcia, no."

"Name your source."

"I'd... I'd rather not." He coughs a little, just a throat-clearing sort of grunt, and willfully ignores the set of hot fingers pricking up his spine.

"A gentleman," Emily nods, the mask of her face faltering a bit at the corners of her mouth. "Good answer." They stare at each other for a full three seconds before she says, "You realize we're alone in here."

"We're never alone in here." Reid gestures with his eyes at the perimeter of the room.

Emily shrugs. "If Garcia can teach you how to flirt, she can handle a few security cameras. Don't you think?"

"I... yes. I think she... she probably can." The stammer is back.

Emily smiles. "Is there audio?"

"No."

"Good."

"Wh.. Why is that good?" Reid watches as Emily slides off the side of the desk. Her heels hit against the tile with a dangerous sound - rather like a gun cocking, he thinks - and she reaches for his hand. He lets her take it. Her skin is hot, and it's softer than he'd imagined it might be, and she smells good. Fantastic, actually, which doesn't make any sense after an early morning and a long plane ride and a conversation that's definitely making him sweat.

It takes him longer than it should to realize that he can smell her because she's right in his face, and by the time he does, it's entirely too late, because she puts her lips up against his ear and whispers, "Because I'm loud."

She isn't lying.

She's loud when she pulls him against her and gropes for the desk and knocks his entire mug of Sharpie pens to the floor. She's loud again when she swears at the clatter and laughs into his mouth. And she's loud when he surprises her by upping the ante first and sliding one hand under her sweater. That sound isn't the loudest one, but it hits him the hardest, her sharp gasp like a fist curling around his cock.

Her skin there is hot, too, and even softer, and the gentle curve of her ribs under his palm is steadying, somehow, despite the utterly unhinged circumstance. He holds it there for a few seconds, letting his fingers tick down. There are twenty-four bones there, twelve on each side, and she isn't skinny enough for him to count every single one, but he can feel a lump near the bottom left when his thumb skims it. His memory flashes violently - Colorado, Benjamin Cyrus, her screams from another room - but she doesn't let him linger there. She reaches for her hem and yanks the whole thing over her head, catching him in the chin and the lips and the ear as she sends it backwards onto his chair.

"It's hard to feel sexy in a turtleneck," she mutters, her mouth slipping along the line of his jaw.

The bra she reveals wouldn't exactly be classified as lingerie either, he thinks - it's white, front-clasp, practical right down to its sturdy underwire and full coverage - but he isn't going to complain. The fabric is thin enough that he can feel her nipple harden almost instantly when he touches it, like it was just waiting for him, and she's loud again - a nice, round oh this time - when he does it. It's fine. It's perfect. It's Emily.

When she arches her back and braces her hands against the desk, he deduces that maybe she wants some attention on the other one, too, so he dips his head down to mouth at it through the cotton. The taste isn't as pleasant as he imagines her skin probably is, so he opens up the clasp, moves her bra aside, and sucks. More ohs now, bigger, open like her pupils in the evening-dimmed light. This is good. She bites his ear and moans right into it, and this is the sound that is going to replace all of the others he has filed away under her name; this is the one he is going to hear in his dreams from now on.

Her pants are suddenly just in the way. They both draw that conclusion at roughly the same time, and their wrists bump when they both reach for the button. He remembers that it's his hands that are in question here, so he nudges her over and insists. She smiles into his cheek and lifts her hips, her heels scrabbling against the desk for purchase before she kicks them off all together to get better leverage.

They work together to get them just below her knees. Emily opens her legs for him immediately, kicking hard to dispose of the pants entirely, and tucks herself neatly around his thighs. Her panties don't match. When he looks down - because his memory is mostly visual, after all, and this isn't something he could handle forgetting - he sees that they've got hearts on them, of all things. Hearts, red on green fabric with matching red elastic. They're cotton, like her bra. But they're wet. Already. And it isn't from his mouth this time.

It's him that's loud now, drawing in a hard breath as he feels her heat through his own pants. She clutches at his back, rough handfuls of his shirt, and he can feel her knuckles tense and her fingernails digging in. "Well?" she says, full of challenge, still playing, and wriggles against him.

With one hand, he pulls her head to his shoulder. "Close your eyes," he says, and when she asks him why, he surprises himself with, "a magician never reveals his secrets." What he really means is that he can't bear it, that her eyes on him while he fucks her with his fingers on the utterly trashed edge of his desk are just entirely too much, that he doesn't want to come in his pants like he's fifteen. It's a distinct possibility at the moment.

Emily's mercy, he discovers, is infinite, and she just buries her face in his shirt and mutters, "Oh, you're fucking clever, aren't you?" into the side of his neck.

He shuts her up with his palm, which he cups between her legs and slides back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, slow and methodical like the way he worked her puzzle using her own body. She starts to go with it, to grind against the heel of his hand, and that's when he changes it up. Getting too comfortable is a bad idea, he knows. It stagnates the brain. It numbs you.

He pulls his hand away, and Emily protests, a high little mewl that is nothing like her other noises. It's on the verge of a sob, almost, and he rubs circles into the back of her head with his free hand. Her hair is sweaty and tangles in his grip, but she doesn't seem to care. For a moment, he thinks she's panting, and it's only when he leans down to shhhh at her, to comfort her, that he realizes it's him.

It's so startling that the elastic of her panties snaps against her skin when his hand moves, right at the inside of her thigh, and she bucks up like she likes it. He does it again, a little experiment, and she jerks so forcefully that it throws him off balance for a second. "Oh, my God," he mumbles into the side of her head, and she answers him with a hot, hard hiss.

His shirt is sticking to him now, damp with his own sweat and Emily's spit, and he can feel her fingers where she's gotten one hand around part of the hem she's yanked out. They're pushing in just above his hip, brutal. He imagines a knuckle-shaped bruise there, like he's been knocked flat out, and the analogy is surprisingly appropriate.

He snaps her elastic once more and grinds out, "You like that." Even rough with the timbre of the moment as it is, his voice still sounds awed.

Emily's thighs contract, the muscles pulling hard, in response, and he slides one finger underneath. There's nowhere for him to move it - the position of their bodies and the material of her underwear have him veritably pinned in place - except a gentle side-to-side, so that's what he does. The motion is obviously frustrating, obviously not in the right place, because she starts to squirm, trying to angle herself up.

Though he knows he shouldn't let her do it for long, it's tempting. He could watch her this way until 8am tomorrow, when Hotch's key turns precisely in the lock and the echo of his clipped steps fills the empty office, because she's fascinating and stunning and absurdly beautiful when she's not getting exactly what she wants. When he's the one not letting her.

He shakes off the thought, though, because she kicks him hard with her heel, and he's almost certain it's on purpose. Hooking his fingers through the waistband of her panties, he tugs at them until she lets go of his shirt to help, and together they maneuver them to the floor.

She's so slippery that he can feel it on the insides of her thighs when he runs his hand along them and makes her muscles leap. Emily scoots as close to the edge as she can, impatient, and she is pushing her face against him so hard that it's a bite.

He slides one finger around, searching for where she's the wettest, with the idea of slicking everything up, but he discovers that he doesn't need to. She's so keyed up that it slips right in, and she rewards him with a shaky, high-pitched sound that makes his belly tighten dangerously. He turns his wrist to get the angle right and discovers that the back of his wrist skates along his desk with no resistance whatsoever. He gasps involuntarily, and Emily's open-mouthed bite turns into a smile.

"More," she says, and this time it is her who's panting.

He puts a second finger inside of her right away, pressing back against the ridges he feels every time he fucks her, and she starts to follow his rhythm with her body and her voice, arching up into it with a series of staccato ohs, each one higher and louder than the one before. Her hand creeps over between his legs, and before he can stop her, she's got a grip on his cock through his pants, squeezing hard.

He knows that if she keeps it there, he's going to embarrass himself, going to lose his momentum, going to ruin everything, so he untangles his other hand from her hair - it's a pull, and she likes that, too, and pushes down hard against his fingers when he does it - and tugs her hand away. "Don't," he mutters. "Don't distract me when I'm trying to figure you out."

He punctuates his order with a third finger, which slips in easily but makes her draw a breath through her teeth, but she's keeping pace with him well and says, "This a puzzle for you, Doctor? Are you going to solve my cunt, too?"

The only answer he can come up with is a moan of his own, something pulled up straight from his belly, something low and primitive, something that he's never heard himself make before. She likes it, gets off on the sound, because she matches it with her own, even louder, and that's when he pushes his thumb against her clit. It's hard and slick and when he presses down, he can feel her pulse, steady and pounding right along with his own heart, behind it. For a moment, he just holds it there, and he stills his fingers inside of her and lets her muscles contract around him.

It's a sensation he doesn't think he'll ever get used to, being inside someone else's body, being right there next to their breath and their rushing, living blood. It's enough to make him dizzy if he thinks too hard, so he doesn't. Instead, he starts drawing circles, faster and tighter and closer with his thumb until her hips are all the way up and she's crushing his knuckles together with her trembling, and then he stops, hoping for one last crash of her voice through his body.

He gets it. It isn't what he was looking for, but she asks him. She whispers. The sound is so intimate, so oddly wrenching, so out of place in her mouth, that it's louder than a gunshot. Louder than the clicks of Tobias Hankel's gun barrel spinning in his face. Louder than his heart leaping back to life. Emily whispers please, and he holds her to him so hard he thinks he must be crushing her but he can't bring himself to stop, and he slides his thumb up and down three times, and she comes.

All of the pieces click into place.

She scratches him through his shirt, her nails raking just below his collar, and she moans flat against his ear, and it takes a long, long time before her body stops fluttering around him and she kisses him, wet and sloppy and beautiful, right on the mouth.

Then she slumps into him, loose and wrecked and covered in sweat - even at night the heat in here is too high, the air too dry - and he tries to steady his own breath against her hair. After a moment, her voice - reedy and thin, but decisively hers - breaks the silence. "Okay," she says. "You win Round One, Doctor Reid."

"I didn't know we were playing," he lies, tracing a line of sweat down her spine with one fingertip. "When's Round Two?"

Emily pushes against his chest to sit herself upright, and even with her hooded gaze and chaotic hair, she manages to arrange her face into a wicked grin. "Give me thirty more seconds," she says, her hand dipping low towards his belt, "and we'll see who's got the skills. But Reid?"

"Hmm?"

"We both lose unless you call in a favor with Our Girl Friday, yeah? There are much less humiliating ways to get fired."