It had been a long day. A long, long day, without even the thought of shooting somebody to break up the tedium. It had started in the gym, where Sam had been on one of his 'I must break each of my teammates into little tiny pieces" kicks. He usually went slightly easier on her than Callen or Deeks, but today she'd made the mistake of pointing out that a bad guy wouldn't be so kind. So Sam hadn't pulled his moves the way he usually did and now she ached all over.
Then came eight solid hours of paperwork, made longer by the fact that a building-wide power surge knocked her laptop out when she was halfway through, causing her to lose everything she had been working on. The vending machine had been out of her favourite snacks and as it was Sam's turn to get lunch, he'd provided healthy tofu wraps for everybody which were practically inedible.
Now she was home, all Kensi wanted to do was crack open the bottle of wine she'd been saving for a special occasion, demolish a few of the big bars of chocolate she had stashed in her cupboard, and soak in a hot bath.
So, of course, her phone just had to ring just as she had sunk gratefully into the bath tub. The shrill repetition of I'm Sexy And I Know It made her groan. Deeks. It just had to be, although just how he'd managed to get hold of her phone long enough to hijack the ring tone she'd assigned him she didn't know.
Leaning precariously over the side of the tub, she managed to grab her phone.
"What?" she demanded irritably.
"Sweetness!" he said cheerily. "Baby, where are you? I thought we were meeting here at eight!"
"What?" she asked, confused. "Deeks, what the hell is going on?"
"Now you know you're just gorgeous the way you are!" he continued. "You need to stop primping yourself in front of the mirror and get down here, okay?"
There was an edge of desperation in Deeks' voice.
"Tell me where you are, Deeks. Are you in trouble?" she demanded, pulling herself out of the tub hurriedly. "Do they have a gun on you?"
"No gorgeous, I just miss your sexy body every moment we're apart," he said, his voice cloying with false sentiment. "Kendrick's Bar and Grill. Remember? It's next to that place we went that time, with the thing?"
"Hang tight," Kensi told him, scrambling back into her jeans as quickly as possible. "You need back up? Callen and Sam?"
"I don't need anybody but you, lamb chop," he told her, sounding even more fake than before. "Kisses!"
He made some obnoxious kissing noises into the phone and hung up. Kensi had no idea what the hell was going on, but she knew that her partner was in serious trouble and that she had to help him.
She took the drive to Kendrick's at a reckless speed, and threw the car into a parking space before rushing into the building. She skidded to a halt when she saw the restaurant and bar teeming with a young, professional crowd. There were no guns drawn or obvious signs that anything was out of order.
"Fern!"
She sighed, and let her jacket cover her gun, sitting neatly in its holster.
"Fern, baby girl! Over here!"
She looked around, and she saw Deeks sitting in a corner booth with a very predatory-looking woman. Kensi disliked her on sight, although she was hard pressed to tell if it was the obviously fake, crimson nails that were digging into the tanned flesh of her partner's arm or the vast amount of admittedly stunning cleavage on display.
The look of relief on Deeks' face was incredibly obviously as she carefully made her way through chatting, laughing crowd. He managed to edge his way out of the booth and advanced on her, arms outstretched.
"I've been waiting to see you all day!" he announced loudly as he swept her up into a tight hug.
"For the love of God, help me, Kensi," he whispered urgently into her ear.
"Who are you?" she hissed back.
"Steve," he said hurriedly.
"You told me nine o'clock, Steve," she scolded him, pulling back a little from his embrace.
"It was definitely eight, darling," he replied, before winking at her.
Before she had time to process what the wink might mean, his grip on her had tightened and she was on the receiving end of a thoroughly spectacular kiss.
She'd had to kiss Deeks before, to sell their cover in a few ops. But then she'd also had to kiss Callen, and Sam. Those kisses had always been…professional, in as far as kissing your work colleague could be considered professional. It was hard to get romantic when you had the team back at the OSP chatting in your earwig, anyway. If her heart rate had risen a little when it was Deeks who had been nuzzling her neck well then, there was their unnamed, undiscussed, unconsummated 'thing' to take into account.
But he'd never kissed her like he was kissing her now, like she was the centre of his world and all of his attention was focused entirely on her. Against her better judgement, Kensi began to relax in his hold, and let one of her hands drift up to his hair. She'd always wanted to know what the texture was like, whether the constant dunking in salt water made it coarse or whether it was as baby-fine as it looked. Her other hand rested on his waist, and she let one of her fingers slide into a belt loop.
"So," a displeased voice said, ringing out clearly over the background noise of the restaurant. "Steve really does have a new girlfriend."
Deeks broke the kiss abruptly, making Kensi stumble forwards a little.
"I told you, Emma. You think I'd lie to you?" he said jovially. "Emma, this is my girlfriend, Fern. Fern, this is Emma."
"An ex?" Kensi asked, eying Deeks suspiciously. If he had called her out of her tub for the reason she thought he had…
"Very ex," Deeks said quickly.
"Not that ex," countered Emma, looking Kensi up and down and clearly dismissing her as unworthy competition. She was dressed to the nines, clearly anticipating a successful man-hunt. Kensi had just thrown on whatever was on top of the laundry hamper.
"So," Emma continued. "How long have you been going out with Steve, Fern?"
Deeks' hand, which had slipped proprietarily to her backside, squeezed twice.
"Two months," Kensi lied, hoping that she'd picked up on the right code and Deeks hadn't been copping a feel.
"Two months?" Emma sniffed. "You don't waste any time, do you?" she said to Deeks.
"Watch this one," she said to Kensi, as she slid out of the booth. "He's a liar."
"I'll remember that," Kensi said carefully, as Emma walked away, her head held high and her backside shifting back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm.
As soon as Emma rounded the corner to the bar, Deeks stepped away from Kensi and dropped back into the booth, sighing in relief.
"Thank you Kensi. You have no idea how insane that woman can be."
"You want to tell me what that was?"
"That was a big mistake," Deeks sighed, taking a long draught of the beer that was in front of him. "One that's come back to bite me in the ass."
"I thought you were in trouble, Deeks!" Kensi hissed. "I thought maybe one of your old undercover targets had you."
"I was in trouble!" Deeks said indignantly. "I only just got out of that woman's talons, there was no way I was getting sucked back in!"
"You couldn't just tell her that you weren't interested?" Kensi asked, indignantly. "You couldn't just man up and tell her the truth? You had to get me to come down here and pretend to be your girlfriend as a….as a cover story?"
"You've done it before," Deeks said, squirming slightly under her gaze.
"Once," she shot back. "I've done it once before, and I didn't want to do it then either. And it was before…"
She held back the words our thing, but they were there in front of them anyway. Those words were chasing them around a lot, at the moment.
"I had plans for this evening," she finished. "And I now I hope to be able to get back to them. Have a good night, Deeks. Try not to fall into bed with anybody else tonight, because I won't be available to rescue you."
She got up and left before he could reply, but there wasn't anything he could say that she wanted to hear right now anyway. She had overreacted slightly, she knew; she had been a decoy girlfriend before, although she'd managed to walk away on top of the situation, leaving a very embarrassed Deeks to find a new yoga class to attend. But tonight had really angered her.
Their thing, the thing that was alluded to and thrown about and never actually properly discussed, their thing was real. Everybody in the OSP, from Hetty down to the mailroom guy, knew about it.
Their relationship went beyond that of just partners. It went beyond that of just friends. The fact that it hadn't gone as far as lovers was due to their jobs, and nothing else. That was the last line for them to cross, and she wasn't sure that they were ready to do that yet.
But to discover that while she had been respecting the boundaries of their…thing, he had been off out dallying with Emma, and who knew how many others, hurt. She ignored the convenient fact that they had never said that dating others was off the table, that she teased him about the women he claimed to be exes. She never really thought that those women existed.
Tonight she had met one, and he had used Kensi, and their thing, to get rid of her.
That hurt. The fact that he had weaselled his way out of another messy situation without being man enough to take it on the chin, like Callen or Sam would have done, angered her.
Clearly, she reasoned, as she let herself back into her apartment, stripped off her clothes and ran another bath, something had to be done about it. Her gaze fell about the room, from the untidy heap of clothes spilling out of the hamper to the stack of books piled up haphazardly behind the door. One in particular caught her eye, and she smiled evilly.
Deeks was always teasing her about her junk food addiction. Maybe it was time to start a healthy eating programme…
As soon as Callen and Sam left for the boathouse, Deeks leapt up and poured the rest of "The Woody" down the nearest sink. Then he made some decidedly unsexy retching noises and stuck his head under the stream of cold water.
"You are such a child," Kensi sighed.
"You're a poisoner," Deeks said flatly, stripping off his now soaking wet grey hooded sweatshirt to reveal a tight, white, v-necked t-shirt underneath. "Poison Lady, that's your new name."
"I was only trying to help you out!" Kensi protested, waving the book of smoothie recipes at him.
"Thanks, Kensi, thanks a lot," he said, rummaging around in the drawer of his desk for some gum, or Tic Tacs, or anything that would take the taste of that foul drink out of his mouth. "Next time you wanna try making me something that doesn't make me sound…."
He trailed off, letting his flailing arms do his talking for him.
"Impotent?" Kensi offered. "Lacking in manliness?"
"Shut up," Deeks hissed. "Anyone could hear you."
Kensi looked around. There were no other agents in this section of the main floor of the OSP, the Kensi and Deeks Show long having lost its originality. Their banter was now seen as a standard practice in the workplace, and they no longer drew the crowds they used to.
"Don't worry, Deeks," Kensi said consolingly. "Your secret is safe with me."
"I am not impotent," Deeks said slowly, catching her eyes with his and keeping her stare locked on him. "I have no problems with my manliness, and I definitely do not need help to stand tall, day or night."
Kensi swallowed, the small lump in her throat now feeling like a boulder.
"Could have fooled me," she said quietly, before turning on her heel and leaving.
The news of the Kallstrom case helped Kensi focus for the rest of the day; there was no time to brood about what an insensitive idiot your partner slash friend slash…whatever was when there was an escaped, murderous, international pharmaceutical thief on the loose. The fact that Deeks ditched her to go to the Edison on his own did sting a little, but the fact that he owned up to yet another psychotic ex-girlfriend did go a small way to lessen the hurt. The fact that he was willing to go alone and deal with her didn't escape her, and neither did the fact that his eyes ran appreciatively over her body when he pronounced her as being definitely not a fifty year old, balding man.
She wasn't sure if she should be flattered that he felt the need to lie about her identity to his girlfriends, or annoyed that he had them in the first place.
Kensi was spending more and more time being unsure recently, and it was starting to wear at her. Her professional life was complicated by necessity. In her personal life she preferred straight lines, direct speech and as much honesty as she could afford. Deeks blurred the lines between the two, and it made her uncomfortable. If only they could just talk about the obvious attraction between them, get all their emotional baggage out and rummage through it together, she'd have a better idea about where she stood.
It was almost a relief to have something as serious as the Kallstrom case to think about. As soon as the name of the club on the matchbook was revealed to them, Kensi had a strong suspicion that she'd be paying it a visit. She'd been there before, one night pre-Deeks when all she had wanted was an uncomplicated evening with somebody tall, dark and handsome. She'd got it, too, directness and honesty winning her a memorable night with someone who's name wasn't so easy to recall now. Josh? Jim? Something that started with a J.
It was strange that she'd stopped hitting up the club scene in the last year or so. She hadn't made a conscious decision to stop. It was just that on nights where she'd been bored and alone and would have taken herself off to find somebody to spend the night with, Deeks now showed up on her doorstep with a six pack and takeout. Or she'd find herself going with him to the beach to walk Monty while he grabbed the last waves of the day. After, they'd sit on the beach with hotdogs and decompress after whatever work had thrown at them.
So, although going undercover at the club wasn't a surprise, the tattoos were. Normally, she did her best to fit in with the other women in whatever club or bar they were staking out, and heavy tattoos would make her too memorable. Hetty had supervised their application, directing the OSP's makeup artist from the ankle all the way up Kensi's body. The black tribal tattoos were surprisingly delicate, considering that they ran up her left leg, around her thigh, traced over the curve of one hip and up her spine, flowering over her shoulders and down both arms. The dress Hetty had given her was vibrant and funky, clung to every curve that she possessed and was guaranteed to get her noticed by every straight man in the room.
Sure enough, within twenty seconds of sitting down at the bar, she had a drink in her hand. She had to give Hetty her due, when Kensi stepped out in a Hetty-approved dress, Kensi drank for free all night. It was a pity that she had to lose the guy straight away, but she wasn't here to meet cute men. She was here to trap a killer.
Being used as bait wasn't her favourite part of the job, but one that she accepted with fairly good grace. It helped that she knew that Callen was watching carefully from the other side of the bar, and that Deeks was lurking somewhere behind her. Callen's eyes on her were nothing new, but the thought that Deeks was watching her strut around in tight lycra, fake tattoos on display, was oddly stimulating. He could look; in fact, he was being forced to look, but he wasn't allowed to touch. He had to watch her flirt with every man with heavy enough stubble to cover a scar on the jaw, and there was nothing he could do about it.
It was probably that thought, bubbling gleefully around in her brain, that made her screw up and forget that she was miked up and everything she said was being recorded by Eric and Nell, and overheard by Callen and Sam. Bantering with Deeks was second nature; she just forgot how…charged their banter got when they were alone. Or thought they were alone. Despite the fact that they were in a busy, noisy club, despite the fact that they were both wearing earwigs, Deeks was still boasting to anybody who cared to review their mission tapes that he'd be able to succeed where other men failed, that he'd be able to get her to go home with him, if she was, in fact, his type.
And damn him and his stupid sexy hair to all seven layers of hell, he was very probably right.
For all of Deeks' macho posturing, she could see herself sitting happily in his lap as he drove. She'd be mouthing at his neck, laying down some of those marks that he was happily boasting about, and he'd be driving with one hand lazily skimming up and down her smooth, tanned leg, tracing the lines of her new tattoos. She'd never had that particular fantasy before but now she knew, she just knew, God damn him, that she'd never be able to get that image out of her brain.
Five words. Just five words. Five stupid words, and she had handed her dignity to him on a platter.
"I am too your type!"
She hadn't meant it like that. What she meant was that Deeks wasn't particularly discriminate in his choices, and that she looked good in this dress, and that any man would be damned lucky if she let him pick her up, especially shaggy haired surfers who had to be forced into smart clothes practically at gun point.
But she hadn't said that, and now she had handed him, and Callen, and Sam enough material to bait her with for weeks. It was a relief to be ordered away from the bar on a little fishing expedition, away from Deeks and the looky-loo bartender. She could feel Deeks' eyes on her as she walked away, and she tamped down hard on the urge to throw an extra wiggle to her walk. He could tease all he wanted, but he was the one that couldn't look away.
There was their thing, after all, and he wasn't any more immune to it than she was.
That moment of humiliation over, the mission started to get more serious. The guy that came up quietly behind her in the ladies room had genuinely surprised her; for a big guy, he moved quietly. He also worked quickly; one long, assessing glance at her body, one courtly kiss to her hand, and she was being bundled quickly out of the back door.
Callen and Deeks were right behind her, she knew; Sam was moving quickly to intercept them in the back alley. If things came to a head before the rest of the team were in position, Kensi knew she could take this guy out in three different ways without scuffing one of the stunning cobalt blue shoes she was wearing. But despite this knowledge, she hated this part of the op. She hated knowing that this guy was going to manhandle her, and that she was going to have to play along with it. In the course of her job she'd been squeezed, fondled and stroked by men that in real life she'd have preferred to run over, and had to pretend to like it. She'd put up with sloppy kisses and furtive gropes and had giggled encouragingly when she'd been itching to break noses instead.
Ops like this meant scrubbing herself until her skin was pink in the shower, washing her hair three times until all she got was the faint scent of her conditioner instead of whatever cologne the bad guy de jour had been bathed in. It was better when the guy made her skin crawl; that way she could shut down all emotion connected to the op. When the guy was attractive, like this one, it just made it worse. At another time, in another place, when she was out looking for one night of directness, she could have happily been in his bed.
Those were the nights she had to scrub herself extra hard to make her skin feel clean again.
Tonight all she got was a bit of heavy breathing, one hard kiss and a hand wandering up her thigh before Sam tackled him and knocked the breath out of him. She stepped out of the way and watched dispassionately as the cable tie went on and the knife she had heard click open went skidding across the concrete. Callen and Deeks arrived then, and she couldn't ignore the fact that Deeks planted himself firmly in front of her, blocking her from the target's sight.
"Are you okay?" he demanded, as Callen and Sam came to the conclusion that this was the wrong guy.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, frowning as she heard the guy confess to being nothing more than someone who answered a sexy personals ad. She wasn't fine; she was never fine after an op like this, not until she could get home and shower. From the look on Deeks' face, he knew it too.
Belatedly, she remembered that "I'm fine" didn't work on him like it did on Callen and Sam.
Her night's work wasn't over. She had to escort the guy back to his house and watch as he brought up the emails on his laptop that proved that he was telling the truth. Deeks did all the work, plugging in the flash drive that would link the laptop back to Eric and Nell, talking tersely to the angry bearded guy, checking out the apartment for any signs of evidence linking him to Kallstrom. Kensi stood silently and watched as Deeks refused to cut the cable tie until Eric had declared the guy to be telling the truth, and she listened without commenting as Deeks read him the riot act about carrying a concealed weapon in a public place.
If the guy had mouthed off in some way, or tried to make eye contact with her, Deeks would have arrested him, she knew it. Instead, he wisely kept his gaze away from her and took Deeks' warnings with merely a curt nod and a clipped apology.
"I'm taking you home," Deeks announced as they got back into the car.
"Back to the office," Kensi corrected him. "I need to change and get these tattoos off."
"You can do that at home," he said firmly, the usual teasing tone long gone from his voice. "Hetty can have her dress back tomorrow."
Kensi didn't argue. Her shower and her bed were calling her, and Hetty could wait for the dress. She remained quiet for the rest of the drive home, and didn't speak until he parked in front of her house.
"Thanks for the ride," she told him. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"I'm hungry," he announced, getting out of the car. "I'm calling for pizza. You want your usual?"
Kensi opened her mouth to protest at his invasion of her house, but then her stomach reminded her it had been a while since she had eaten.
"Alright," she said, already seeing the gloriously fattening food appearing like a vision in her mind. "Extra cheese."
It had been an extra cheese sort of evening.
"Extra cheese," he agreed, dialling the pizzaria they used when ordering at her place.
She let them into the house, and then disappeared to take a shower. She heard him poke about in the fridge for drinks, and three thudding noises, one large and two soft, had to be him settling down into her couch and toeing off his shoes. The television came on, and she heard some serious channel changing going on before he chose a channel.
"Get your jammies on!" he called from the living room. "I've found that show with the insane mothers and the scary kids with wigs."
She sighed and didn't try to stop the smile that broke through her bad mood. Any moral superiority he had claimed about her liking Top Model had long disappeared since he had discovered Toddlers and Tiaras.
"I need a shower," she called back. "I need to get these tattoos off."
"You want a hand?" he offered.
She actually smiled at the audacious offer, and tried not to imagine what showering with Deeks would be like.
"Sure," she called back breezily. "Just give me a minute to wash my hair and you can jump right in!"
It was a joke, of course, she told herself as she started the water running in her shower. She didn't actually mean it. She stripped off Hetty's dress and hung it on a hanger on the back of her bathroom door, and deposited her underwear in the hamper. She got into the shower cubicle and sighed as the warm water started to pound her body. God bless the previous owners, who had done up the bathroom before selling the house. They had bought a deep tub, long enough for her to stretch out in without curling up her legs, and had built an extra-large shower cubicle with multiple jets.
Once she had seen the shower cubicle, she'd put an offer in on the house.
She lathered up her hair, and started to scrub. Three rinses later, she felt clean. No trace of the club in her hair anymore. Now for the tattoos. She makeup artist had said that they'd fade in a week if she just took quick showers, or that she could remove most of them with a good exfoliator in two or three long showers. If she wanted them off more quickly, she could use acetone.
Somewhere in the rack of bottles in the shower, she had a big tub of expensive almond-scented exfoliating lotion. A burst of cool air distracted her as she reached for it, and she gasped in surprise as a muscular male arm reached over her to grab it from the top of the rack.
"Deeks?" she spluttered. "What the hell?"
"I came to tell you that the pizza arrived," he said, "and then I remembered your offer of a shower. So here I am."
"Here you are," she repeated numbly.
"This is an awesome shower," he said happily, raising his arms to let the water blast all of his body.
"It's usually roomier," Kensi pointed out, trying not to look at her very naked partner's very naked body.
She failed. Boy, did she fail. But in her defence, there was a lot to look at.
"It seems plenty big enough for two," Deeks reasoned, looking around the spacious cubicle. "Turn around, I'll do your back."
She should throw him out, she thought, as she found herself turning around and presenting her bare back to him. She should bash him with the biggest, heaviest bottle of shampoo she had and throw him out of the house.
But oh, his hands felt good. He had taken a dollop of the almond scented lotion and was working it across the top of her back. She couldn't help but moan as his strong fingers found every tense knot in her muscles.
"You're really tight across here," he said quietly. "The op?"
"Yeah," she said, her head hanging forwards as he kneaded the tension out of her.
She didn't have to say any more.
"I would have been out of the club quicker," he told her. "But the door was blocked. I had to push past a group of women."
"It's okay," she told him.
"He had a knife," he said, the words spitting past his lips with real venom. "That son of a bitch had a knife and he was going to…he was going…"
His hands stopped moving and he gripped onto her shoulders tightly. She could hear his breath come in shudders, and she realised that he was here in her shower as much for his peace of mind as for hers. She shrugged out of his grip, turned around and gathered him into her arms.
"I'm okay," she said into his ear as he grabbed her close and held her so tightly that she worried for her ribs. "I was always going to be okay. I could have taken that guy, knife or no knife. Sam was there. Callen was there. And you were there."
"I know, but…" he trailed off and she felt him kiss her forehead, two hot lips marking her as if she was branded.
"You said you were fine," he said eventually, still not releasing his hold on her. "And that means you're not fine. That means that something's wrong."
Kensi leaned back slightly, to look at the genuine concern in his deep blue eyes.
"I hate these ops," she told him honestly, admitting a secret that she had sworn to herself that she would never tell. "I hate being used as bait, I hate having some creep's hands all over me. It makes me feel dirty."
"I hate that you have to do them," he told her, resting his forehead against hers. "Every time they put you in some little scrap of dress so somebody else can put their hands over your body…I hate that."
"It's the job," she said quietly.
"I know," he whispered. "I'm allowed to hate it though."
"The thing," Kensi acknowledged.
"The thing," he agreed.
They stayed plastered against each other, his hands rubbing her back gently, her fingers drawing patterns on his skin.
"I owe you an apology," he said suddenly. "For last night. For Emma."
"Deeks…" she started to protest, pulling away.
"No," he said firmly, pulling her back close to him. "Shut up and listen to me."
"Okay," she surprised herself by saying.
He sighed heavily and let his hands fall to the flare of her hips. He ran a finger along the curve of her body, and said nothing for a while.
"I'm waiting," she reminded him, a little impatiently.
"I'm a bit scared of our thing," he said abruptly.
When she tried to shift out of his grip, he held her firmly.
"No, wait until I'm finished," he told her.
She stopped wriggling and listened, surprised to find herself holding her breath slightly.
"We joke about it, we flirt like crazy, but we never…do anything," Deeks said eventually, after another long pause to collect his thoughts. "And that's okay," he went on hurriedly. "That's just fine, I don't want you to think that…."
He let out an exasperated breath. "I'm doing this all wrong," he said bitterly.
"Give it to me straight, Deeks," Kensi said impatiently. "Spit it out."
"I see other women because they're not you," he said quickly. "You're on my mind twenty four seven, at work, at home, in my dreams. But I can't have you, not like that, not like anything other than as my partner and my friend, so I try to forget about the fact that I want you by dating women who aren't you, who can never be you. But then sooner or later the fact that they aren't you makes me realise that I shouldn't be wasting their time, or mine."
He let his garbled declaration of love sit between them for a while.
"I can't take the thing any more," he said eventually. "I can't just watch you get pawed at by some low life, then watch you get in your car and go home. I need to be here to wash him off you. I need to touch you to remind you of what it's like to be touched by somebody who loves you, all of you, and not just someone who thinks your ass is hot."
She couldn't help it; she giggled a bit.
"Oh, like you don't know you've got the body of a Victoria's Secret model," he scolded.
"You love all of me?" she asked, looking at him with an unusual amount of shyness.
"All of you," he repeated. "Slobby living room, junk food obsession, the fact you slip Monty his favourite treats when you think I'm not looking. The way that you shoot the targets in the range in the balls when you're angry. The fact that you're a way better shot than I'll ever be. I love your eyes and your weird toes. I love the way you love our team, although you'd rather die than use those words…"
"I do love you," she interrupted him. "More than the others, different to the others."
"I should hope so," he said, kissing her forehead again. "I don't think that both you and Sam would fit in this shower at the same time."
She laughed, her first full, proper laugh since the whole messy op started. Since he had used to her to shift an ex-girlfriend.
"I'm tired of our thing too," she told him. "I want more. I don't want to think of anyone touching you but me."
"Nobody but you," he agreed immediately, his hands sliding down from her hips to cup her bottom.
She sighed, and she could feel the tension just drain from her body. He sought out her earlobe with his lips and kissed it. She shivered a little, and he did it again.
"Sweet," he said, a note of teasing triumph in his voice. "I knew you'd like that."
"Oh yeah?" she replied, leaning back slightly to look him in the face. "You knew?"
"I knew," he repeated, leaning forward to pay attention to her other ear. "You love it when I kiss your neck when we're out playing the lovebirds on an op."
She couldn't deny it. She did like that. That's probably why he insisted on doing it so often.
"Well," she said, determined not to be outdone. "I know something that you like too."
"Oh yeah?" he challenged. "I really don't think that…"
As soon as her hand closed around the erection that had been prodding her thigh for the last few minutes, he lost the ability to do anything than babble incoherently.
"See?" Kensi said nonchalantly, letting her fingers press carefully at the little cluster of nerves just underneath the head of the shaft. "I think you like this a lot."
"I think that any guy would!" he gasped, as she gripped him expertly.
"Shall I stop then?" she asked, grinning at him as she teased him mercilessly.
He couldn't actually speak; he just shook his head violently and made some more babbling noises. When she sank to her knees and sucked the head into her mouth, he actually squeaked. She couldn't help but laugh, and the vibration must have had some kind of weird effect because she could actually feel him swelling in her mouth.
Between a firm grip with her hand on the shaft, some determined suction on the head and an inquisitive finger that ran along the sensitive skin beneath, Deeks was calling out her name in short order. She swallowed what she could, and let the shower wash away the rest. He pulled her up into a fierce hug as he got his breath back.
"As of tomorrow you're drinking more fruit juice," she said, wrinkling up her nose. "That should sweeten you up some."
"Anything you want," he panted into her hair. "Just as long as it's not one of your grape-stem smoothies. And I'd just like to point out that normally, I'm Mr Endurance. What happened here was just a glitch."
"A glitch," she teased.
"A momentary lapse in concentration because fantasy number 134 was coming true," he said firmly, bending his head to kiss her firmly.
Thank goodness that his arm was clamped around her waist because the power of his kiss was dizzying. Kensi could feel her knees weaken.
"You have one hundred and thirty four fantasies about me?" she managed, once he had let her up for air.
He laughed.
"Are you kidding?" he asked, before kissing her again. "I have five hundred fantasies just about you just in the shower, which, now I've actually witnessed the awesomeness of your shower, have multiplied. I have thousands of fantasies about you."
"Do any of them involve me getting to enjoy myself like you just did?" Kensi asked, her impatience forcing her to rub suggestively against his thigh.
"All of them," he told her, eyes gleaming with carnal delight. "But for now, let's go with 382, shall we?"
As fantasy number 382 involved his tongue, her clitoris and three bone-shaking orgasms, Kensi didn't argue with him. She did issue instructions and grab his hair to yank him into a better position, but by the amused smile on his face, he'd anticipated her hands-on approach to her pleasure.
They stayed inside the shower until the hot water ran out. Her tattoos had faded a little, but neither of them could be bothered to hunt out a bottle of acetone and cotton wool at this stage in the evening. He pulled his boxer shorts back on, she found some sleep shorts and a tank top and they retrieved the pizza from where Deeks had left it, cooling on the countertop.
An hour later found them in a familiar position – beers and pizza on the couch, dreadful television programme on the tv. This time though, they were sat cuddled together, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her.
"What are we going to do about work?" she asked eventually.
"Catch the bad guys, fill in the paperwork, try to avoid Hetty. The usual," he told her.
"I'm going to have to flirt with the bad guys sometimes," she said, twisting slightly to look him in the eye. "Are you going to be able to handle that? Watching some other guy put his hands all over me?"
"I haven't shot any of them yet," he said, his flippant tone doing nothing to mask the seriousness of his expression. "We'll handle it like we handle everything else. You'll strut around looking like a catwalk model, I'll bandy about some of my devastating wit. You'll punch me a lot and insult my hair. And later, when the op's finished, we'll come home and I'll remind you why I'm the only man that you'll ever need touching you."
Kensi's mouth twitched in amusement.
"Think you're up to the job?" she asked.
He grinned. "I come very highly recommended," he told her. "Ask any of my exes."
"Oh now you're just asking for it," she said, half exasperated, half amused. She twisted around fully to get a better angle to sock him in the shoulder, but let herself be manhandled so she was lying underneath him.
"Ah, good old number sixty two," he said happily, tugging off her tank top to reveal her breasts. "A classic."
"Why is number sixty two a class…" she began, but when he happily sucked a nipple into his warm mouth, she stopped wasting her time talking.
There was a good reason it was a classic, after all.