The hiatus is already making me stir crazy so this happened. It's definitely smutty but in sort of a nontraditional way, maybe? Thank you for reading, as always, and make my week with reviews if you're able to. ;) I'm setting this to complete for now but I may revisit it later, we'll see.

Paige was so close. It felt like every cell in her body was electrified, coiled, desperate to fall. She bent down to capture Walter's lips, tangling her tongue with his, gasping into his mouth when he wrapped one arm around her back and seamlessly flipped them over, pressing her firmly into the mattress. He could always tell her orgasm was nearing by the way she tightened and pulsed around him, and he used all the tricks in the book to make her climax as hard as possible. The genius's hand fell to her thigh and lifted her leg, guiding it around him, and Paige grinned as she repeated the motion on the other side and crossed her ankles to pull him deeper into her. They both groaned at the increased contact and her hands flew to his neck, drawing him back down into a fiery kiss.

"Don't stop," she whimpered as she rolled her hips frantically. The liaison knew she was practically begging, but pride wasn't high on her list of priorities when he had her falling apart like this. Besides, the hunger in his eyes told her everything about the effect her unraveling had on him. "Yes, I'm almost—."

Her sentence was cut off by a loud moan as she crashed, her nails digging into his shoulders. Her mind went blank, everything fading out of her perception except for the relief rushing through her body in heady waves. She was only vaguely aware of Walter increasing his speed, kissing a path down her neck, growling as he stilled his hips and followed her over the edge.


Paige woke up with a start, gasping for breath. She blinked a few times to adjust to the darkness in her room and brushed her tangled hair out of her face with one hand. The breeze from the fan made her shiver, and she realized that her clothing was soaked from sweat and arousal. She let out a frustrated sigh as she pushed herself off the bed.

This was a problem for teenage boys. Maybe adult men, on occasion. It was expected for them to snap out of dreams stimulated and aching. But she was a grown woman and although she couldn't say for sure if other women had such vivid, inconvenient dreams, they made her embarrassed and anxious all the same.

It was already close to six and Ralph would be awake soon enough, so Paige peeled the saturated fabric away from her body and tossed it into the hamper, grabbing a towel off the hook on her door. She was typically a shower girl in the mornings, but baths were a nice treat when she didn't have to rush, and the knot she'd developed in her neck from bolting up so suddenly would be served well by hot water and a sprinkle of scented salts.

She perched on the edge of the bathtub and turned on the faucet, making small adjustments to the temperature in between attempts to ease her muscles. Paige hoped the rest of the morning went more smoothly, because if this was what she could expect from the day, she had half a mind to just crawl back into bed and yank the covers over her head.

Okay, perhaps she was being childish. She couldn't neglect her duties as a mother or a liaison because of one difficult dream. Except…it wasn't just one.

Paige switched off the flow of water and tested it with her toes before lowered herself into the tub and letting the warmth envelop her. A cold shower may have been more effective, but she found them highly unpleasant for any purpose and the heat felt almost cathartic as it stripped away any evidence of the night on her skin.

She'd assumed they would stop, eventually. Just fade out until she could hardly remember them anymore. But to her chagrin, the opposite was happening. Now she was waking up abruptly three or four nights a week, dazed and drenched, sensations of pleasure she'd never actually experienced burned so deeply into her mind that she could probably go toe-to-toe with Walter's eidetic memory.

Paige dragged her hands over her face, wiping away stray droplets of water she'd accidentally splashed on herself. He was the last person she needed to be thinking about right now.

If she was being honest, that was most likely the problem. The more she pushed him out of her thoughts—the more she distanced herself consciously—the more her mind and body betrayed her. But what was the alternative? Allowing him to invade every minute of her waking thoughts was an equally disastrous proposition.

Regardless, she was sleeping less and less lately—the past few weeks were when it started to get really bad, sometime after their conversation in the capsule—and it was becoming obvious. Tim asked if she was getting sick and Toby made a sly remark, mercifully out of the team's earshot, about the trainee keeping her busy all night, every night. She'd answered noncommittally both times, because she sure as hell didn't plan on telling either of them the truth.

The dreams themselves weren't new. Paige had them occasionally, maybe every few months, since shortly after she'd started working at Scorpion. Her attraction to Walter was never in question. He was a good-looking man, interesting, loyal, kind. They had natural chemistry and she had caught him staring at her in ways that were not strictly platonic more than once. But knowing—knowing that he loved her, and actively fighting that information—was what brought the visions around so often now, made them so intense and inescapable.

Paige cracked open a bottle of body scrub, but the lavender scent was suddenly overwhelming and she snapped it shut. Walter's loft always smelled of lavender now, had for years. She had no doubt that was for her, or at least it had been…maybe he was so used to the odor now that he didn't really notice.

She shivered lightly and wondered if the water was starting to cool, but a sweep over the surface confirmed that it was still fairly hot. The lavender. Cautiously, she pushed up the cap again, allowing the scent to fill her senses. Another shiver wracked her spine, stronger this time, and Paige realized with a mixture of annoyance and interest that she had triggered a memory of a previous dream. She'd felt it before she could see it, but with longer exposure to the stimulus, she started to replay the images clearly in her mind. Everything in that dream smelled like lavender to her because she had been in Walter's loft. In his office.

On his desk.

The liaison shook her head to clear her thoughts, but she was only partially successfully and far too late to stop the pressure from building deep in her body. She was so tense it almost hurt. Paige leaned against the cold porcelain, willing herself to relax, but the images were insistent behind her closed eyelids and she felt her body winding tighter and tighter until she was certain she would go crazy if she didn't find an outlet.

Rationally, she recognized that she was making the problem worse every time she indulged in one of these fantasies, but his dark voice seemed to echo in her ears and her resolve crumbled hopelessly. Paige slid one hand down her stomach, under the water, biting her lip to stifle a sigh as she grazed the pads of her fingers over her center. Once she relinquished her control, the images from her dream—and a hundred others like it—flooded her mind all at once and sent her body up in flames.

She'd always had a vivid imagination, which she guessed was a blessing (or curse) of high EQ, and it wasn't failing her now. Paige's breathing grew louder as she pictured his lips passing over her skin teasingly, his tongue exploring her, his fingers curling into her, his weight pressing her against every available hard surface.

Paige lost herself, barely conscious of crooking her fingers inside her while the heel of her hand pressed down hard over her clit. The tightening of her walls brought her back to earth and she clasped her other hand over her mouth—damn these thin apartment walls—seconds before crumbling, a gasp falling from her lips as she came. She dropped her head back onto the edge of the bathtub and rubbed herself to draw out her climax, shaking gently before the tension flowed out of her and left her weak and breathless.

No one else knew about this, how bad it was, how much wanting him kept her up at night. Even if she had someone to tell, she's not sure she would. She was well aware of how selfish this was, using him to fulfill her needs when he was clueless. When she refused to be with him. When he loved her.

But it was safe. Or if not safe, at least within her control. She could sob his name, ride out the high, and not worry about him walking away in the morning. It would never feel as good as actually being touched by him, she was sure, but it wasn't as risky either.

For not the first or last time, Paige wondered if he ever thought about her like this. If she'd ever been the face he saw when he…if he did at all. He wasn't exactly the typical man. But she found a while ago that the possibility didn't bother her. Walter has always respected her, made her feel strong and intelligent. Even in his mind, he would never degrade her.

It was still a mystery why the thought of being with Tim didn't make her ache the same way. Or at all. She was attracted to him and she enjoyed being around him. She knew he would probably be talented, would make it good for her. He was good. Things between them were good. Everything always just hovered around good, and that seemed about as far as their relationship was capable of going.

And though her subconscious fantasies revolved exclusively around Walter, the truth was that she had far more physical experience with Tim than she ever had with the genius. All they'd shared was one kiss that barely lasted thirty seconds—she had kissed Tim for what probably amounted to hours. It was pleasant enough. But she never felt his lips on hers for days afterward, like she did with that rushed, frenetic moment in the garage. Paige knew Walter would pour everything into pleasing her, just like he poured everything into that kiss.

She'd been alone for a long time, celibate for most of her twenties, and she assured herself frequently that it was normal to fantasize. But to call this…everything she felt…a fantasy seemed misleading. Fantasies were about wish fulfillment; a fleeting, one-sided impulse about what could have been. Sure, she had imagined in extensive detail what he would do to and for her. But right underneath that was an irrefutable reality—that she'd always wanted him to be happy, wanted for years to be the person that made him happy, wanted to take care of him while he selflessly took care of everyone else.

And that sounded like more than attraction. More than lust. More than a fantasy.

It sounded like love, and that scared Paige the most.