Usual Disclaimers Apply.

A/N: This has been rattling around my head since the episode from which it comes but my computer died so it has taken me a while to get it out onto 'paper'. It seems the "almost kiss" caused a lot of discussion and here is my take on what should or could have happened.

A Lawyer in the House

Finding that damned lawyer in his house was definitely not the ending to his day that Jethro Gibbs expected or wanted. She was screwing with his head and he didn't like it. He couldn't figure out what her game was but if she wanted to play he could surely play his own game with her.

Standing in the doorway, he watched her get up off his couch. She was wearing a very nice, very expensive suit and he wondered who paid for it. Colonel Beck? Probably. He knew she wanted something from him and he wondered how he was going to find out what it was. He could wait her out. Or, he could play along and 'persuade' her to tell him sooner rather than later. She was here in his house after all. She had advanced the agenda to the point of invading his privacy, his very home. He took a few steps toward her and heard her saying something about him using her client and the law and blah, blah, blah.

Sometimes it amazed him that he could have a conversation with someone and an entirely different train of thought could be going through his head at the same time. It happened all the time in interrogations. Now he heard himself talking to her and at the same time his mind was working a hundred miles an hour in another direction. The closer he got to her the more confusing it got in his head. She was still talking but now he was focusing on her hair and her lips and her eyes. She wasn't bad looking he realized; not for the first time he admitted. He thought about that nice suit and imagined what it might look like in a pile on the floor.

It shocked him when he got really close to her that a part of him wanted to hurt her, to cause her real pain. Wanted to make her regret she had ever messed with him. He had never hit a woman, never physically hurt a woman, not on purpose anyway. The provocation had certainly been there with the ex's but he had never succumbed to the temptation. He didn't intend to do so now; she wasn't going to win that way.

The bigger shock was that even though he knew she was using him and that she was bad news in every way, the part of him that didn't want to hurt her just plain wanted her. He was so close to her now he could feel the breath escaping her very tempting mouth as she continued saying whatever it was she was saying to him. He knew with everything he was that he should throw her out right then but his body was betraying him. He wanted to touch her. Wanted to get his hands tangled in her hair and he wanted to taste that mouth that never seemed to stop moving. Maybe he could blame the pain meds he'd taken for the damned dislocated shoulder. Maybe he could just chalk it up to the fact that it had been too long since he had had a woman. Much too long. Whatever excuse he was going to use probably wasn't going to matter in the long run.

Now she was standing right in front of him. He felt the heat coming from her, he saw her lips had finally stopped moving. "What do you want?" he finally asked. "You" she answered in a very soft, breathy voice. He wanted to take her by the hand and lead her out of the living room away from the windows to someplace more private. He wanted to get her out of that very expensive suit and see what she was made of. It would be so easy and it might even be enjoyable. His little brain was screaming at him to take her upstairs and give her what she said she wanted. His big brain, the one that almost always won these days, was yelling just as loudly for him to get rid of her before she did some real damage.

Finally he leaned down to kiss her and just as she closed her eyes he shifted his focus away from her mouth. He brushed his lips ever so softly along her jaw until he could whisper in her ear. He felt her breath catch just a bit and her hand come up to rest on his chest. He fastened his left hand around her wrist as he said very slowly, his voice more of a growl than anything else, "Get. Out. Of. My. House".

She stopped breathing for a moment and he stepped back enjoying the look of surprise and dare he think, disappointment on her face. Without any hesitation he moved away from her toward the front door and opened it for her. Never had the click of a deadbolt had a more satisfying sound than it did the moment she was on the other side of that door.

END