This is a darker Fanfiction... it's shared with the disclaimer of low level violence and smut... please do not continue if you are underage or are offended by such things.

Good news is - there is sexy B&B romance and all 8 or so chapters are completely written and proofed... I just need to know they are wanted before they're posted... reviews are a good way of showing that... just sayin'

Is that bribery? If so, I'm guilty as charged! Please read and review!

This fic came to me in the shower and is set in Booth and Brennans' first house (before it was blown to smithereens)...

Booth toes off his shoes with an exhausted sigh, stumbling slightly over his feet across the threshold of his and Brennan's front door. It had been a long and draining week for the whole team, following the sickly scent of DC's most recently sought after serial murderer - the infamously labelled - Streetwalker Strangler.

The case they had been working on had been officially closed… Booth had shot dead the self-confessed murderer in a stand-off - a well decorated, ex-military/turned bodyguard working for the house of Leroux.

Despite the closure, Booth still has a niggling sensation, right at the base of his xiphoid process. The acidic burn of his ever bubbling gut suggests intuitively to him that this particular murder file may not be quite ready for the finality of the 'case closed' pile just yet.

…

Erik Leroux was a child born into a dynasty of red-carpeted, high-classed, unscrupulous drug merchants. Kept hidden beneath the shadows of their affluence, Erik brought himself up amongst a transient bevy of illicitly-paid, blood-stained bodyguards and a pretty line-up of painted, empty-eyed working girls.

Entitled, spoilt and stifled under the dark, indifferent side of his parents' treatment, Erik, although rather lonely, was confident and head-strong - believing himself to be the sole ruler of his world… and he was… up unto a certain point…

You see, Erik's gregarious and charming demeanour, stood shield to a silent dam of shame and a deep-seated, boiling well of self-loathing.

This burning undercurrent of revulsion came to a particularly volatile breach one drug-fuelled night as he was rocking over an easy-paid lay with ice-blue, charcoal-smudged eyes during an extravagant masked ball that his parents were hosting. Her white, layered bustle skirt was a chaotic mess of tulle and satin up around her neck and her eyes shone bright, framed within the white eye mask she was wearing.

Despite her requisite mute submission, she questioned him with breathless, drunk audacity; dragging her paint-chipped thumb over a scar that pulled a tight, shiny line from his nose down to and up under his lip, "What happened to your face Louie?"

His eyes grew livid and black and his temples pulsed as he questioned her roughly - the shiny line above his lip shortening to bare his teeth… his hand clasped angrily around her throat as the dam of anger burst in a torrent of intense fury.

A repentant reply died cloaked as a breathless sob over her blue-tinged lips… a nauseating snap and an exploding, burning sensation radiated from where his thumb had burrowed intently up and under her mandible. Furious, choking heat… that was the last sensation the blue-eyed beauty felt as her short life, and her even shorter-lived career, was effortlessly snuffed out.

Later that night, as he stood hunched over the vanity below his ensuite mirror; shoulders tensed – scrutinising, criticizing; Erik, for the first time in his life, felt a rush of visceral strength… a surge of gut-felt, raw power.

For once in his life, Erik James Leroux the Third felt completely, heart-thumpingly alive, and… indubitably… one hundred per cent… sincerely true to himself...

I trade you reviews for the next chapter ;)