Dr. Spencer Reid sat fiddling with a pencil trying to concentrate on filling out the important parts of a report. Instead of words flowing smoothly from brain to pencil to paper as was usual, he found it impossible to find a place to start. It was all so ... garbled. He put the pencil down, stood up, stretched, took a couple of laps around the table and sat down again. This time he picked up a pen and proceeded to write nothing for the fourth time this morning.

Finally he went in search of the man who had replaced his mentor. The older man looked up curiously as Reid entered. Seeing the frown on the younger man's face, he set aside what he was doing and waited. Reid fidgeted, standing behind the chair across from Rossi and looking intensely irresolute, if one can actually combine those two impressions.

"Sit down." It wasn't an invitation, it was an order.

Reid responded with a quick movement and then closed his eyes with a frown to sort out what he was doing and why. "I can't get the report done," he finally blurted out. His dark eyes focused on the older man, a sort of pleading look, yet not quite.

"Why?"

"I ... I ... I'm not sure."

It was unlike Reid to be that uncertain of anything after the fact. The older man nodded, non judgmental. "Where does the issue start?" Again the uncharacteristic hesitation. In the field, Reid was sometimes indecisive because he could see too much or because he was missing a vital bit of information and that would stymie his ability to make the call he needed to make. After the fact he was unlikely to question judgment or decisions, although, like the rest of them, he sometimes had reason to regret his choices; usually those for which further information would have made a difference.

"All right. You were captured," he prompted.

Reid nodded with a sigh. This was twice in his career already that he'd ended up captured and restrained. The first time he'd been tortured. "I don't even know why," he pointed out plaintively. "I wasn't working on anything and wham, I wake up someplace tied to a ... a table. Well, restrained, anyway." The cuffs that held his wrists and ankles were the kind used in institutions that cared for the insane and really cared, not just paid lip service to the concept. They were lined with sheepskin, buckled tight enough he could not get his hands free, but not inclined to leave marks on him even if he struggled. The table beneath him was neither warm nor cold, just neutral. His feet were cool indicating that socks and shoes had been removed. Other than that, he was dressed as he had been.

"I didn't know who they were ... or why. There wasn't anything but a big bare room with me on a table in the center. I didn't know there was anyone else there ... not at first."

"Who was there?" Rossi was aware that the young man had been rescued by someone, but no one knew the details yet. Debriefing the shaken agent was waiting until he could pull together the details of what happened. Rossi had not expected Reid to come to him as he would have Gideon. Their relationship was not the same, yet he was the most experienced agent available to talk to.

Reid flushed slightly. Who was there? He still didn't know her name. "A woman. Tall, athletic, dark hair and eyes; she wore a ... a shift?" He thought about it. "Used to be called a shift, sort of a light weight undergarment like an unfitted slip."

"That's all?" The older man looked curious.

"Yeah," his answer was thoughtful. "Just a shift. Relatively clean. She startled me badly when she ... just ... sort of appeared."

"How did she appear?"

"One minute I was trying to establish room parameters and the next she ... she was ... straddling me." Straddle, that was definitely the word. A warm, soft area of her body was planted on his genitals, only the fabric of his trousers and underwear between the two of them. She leaned forward until her breasts gently touched his chest, her nipples very obvious through the think fabric of her clothing. She stared into his eyes, keeping contact as she shifted her head slightly from side to side. Then she was nearly touching his face with hers and inhaling deeply. She scented him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes half closed, imprinting his smell on her memory and he knew that this was exactly what she was doing, however odd it seemed to him.

She lay down on top of him, letting him take her full weight as rubbed her cheek against him. She was making it difficult to concentrate as the motion of her head was echoed by motions further down her body. He stiffened, in every sense of the word. She pulled up to gaze into his eyes again; then her mouth was on his, softly demanding, her tongue tip teasing his lips until they parted and allowed her entrance.

It wasn't that he had not been kissed before, it was just ... "The place, the timing, the ... I was at her mercy and I'm ... " He blushed again.

The older man allowed himself a soft chuckle. "Bodies don't always pay attention to what our sensible minds say. It sounds like she was playing very hard to get what she wanted from you." There was that question unspoken: did she get what she wanted?

Reid nodded and swallowed. He accepted a glass of water from the other man gratefully, fighting the urge to gulp it down. Control was the answer right now and he would exercise that control; he hoped. "She decided the buttons on my shirt were keeping her out and started to pop them one by one." Suddenly he understood the allure of old fashioned bodice ripper romances. The sudden release of straining fabric was arousing, exhilarating, freeing ...

Then someone slammed open the door to the room and barked something incomprehensible at them. The woman moved like a trained athlete releasing pent up energy. She was gone and he heard the crack of bones breaking. A moment more and she was back, a wickedly sharp blade in her hand echoed by the shark smile on her face. His heart froze. She sliced the cuff confining his right wrist with precision and care. He had to tug to get the sheep wool on the inside to pull apart.

She smiled again, not quite so feral deadly and helped free his ankles while he unbuckled the left wrist. He accepted her help down and followed her to the door, then out. They were in a warehouse of some sort. Voices surrounded them. She gestured for him to stay where he was. He started to disobey and thought better of it. After all, she'd killed once, without much thought apparently; staying behind her could be safer than being with her.

He tried to ignore the sounds of carnage; gunfire erupted to his left, gurgling screams to his right and the sound of bodies dropping to cement from short and long distances ahead of him. Silence. Reid edged forward to another door that led out into the main body of the building. He could see two bodies from where he stood in the shelter of the doorway. She stepped over one of them, her shift spattered with blood and red running down her arms to the knife she held as she licked the fingers of her left hand clean.

"Licking her fingers?"

Reid nodded. "With that really sensuous lick some people get with other ... fluids ... " he stuttered to a halt while his mind chased images varying from ketchup to chicken grease to secretions of a very personal sort. He looked everywhere but at his companion. "I really thought she was so far gone that ... I was next. I couldn't move. She was so ... "

"Beautiful? Sensual? Aroused?" The other knew the subject as well as Reid did.

"Mind blowing," Reid decided. What was truly consciousness altering was her dropping the knife halfway between the body he could see and him, her movements languid, sensuous and leading directly to him. She leaned up and kissed him again, the taste of blood on her tongue as it invaded his mouth. For a long moment they stood there, tongues entwined, breathing slowly, inhaling each other until they were practically sated and moved slightly apart. She smiled, fully happy and satisfied by his touch and her desire for him.

"Mmmmm. Damn. We need to get you out of here," she said regretfully. She took his hand and led him past the carnage. He was resolute about not taking in details. His companion was frightening enough without seeing the trail of death between the exit and where she'd left him sheltered. Outside was an ordinary parking lot and afternoon sunlight that made him blink.

"And then?" Rossi prompted.

"She checked the cars, found an open one and tossed me the keys." It sounded so unutterably bland and normal until the vision of her blood doused body returned.

The woman caught him at the car, backing him against the curve of the door, not quite pressing against him, but touching. The still damp red transferred a little to his shirt. She ran the tip of her deep pink tongue along the edge of her nearly perfect teeth before leaning past his left cheek to take a deep breath just below his ear.

"Mmmmm."

"That's good?" he couldn't keep from asking. Her chuckle was reassuring.

"Very good." She leaned back to look at him. Again, he could read regret in her face.

"What?"

"Wish we had more time." She ran a finger down the button placket of his shirt. Another warm chuckle escaped her as she leaned into him again, nearly nose to nose. "You're not afraid of me," she told him. "you think you are, but you know better." She tapped his breastbone, indicating the heart beating beneath it. She inhaled deeply again, savoring the smell as distant sirens drew her attention away from him. She tossed something small and cool surfaced to him as she turned away. "Speed dial is so geeky cool …"

"I swear I looked down just long enough to recognize my phone … She can't have gone far …" Reid was bewildered by the experience.

"There were ten bodies in the warehouse; eleven if you count the man in the room you identified as where you woke up."

Reid nodded. "I know. Throats cut, several disemboweled and she was … licking her fingers like she was practically getting off on the blood. Until she dropped the knife, I thought I was next." Only he wasn't. She'd probably saved his life. The Bureau had identified most of the dead as belonging to a particularly virulent cell of Russian Mafia. They'd probably never know why they took Reid off the street or who the woman was.

The older man nodded. "Bare bones," he advised.

Reid nodded. Details were important, but sometimes reports could be terse.