K, this is Brennanite again, coming up to bat. I REALLY don't know where the hell this came from, and it's not the best thing I've ever written, so please be gentle with your reviews. I spent three days writing this at midnight. Cut me some slack.

Given some of the dreams he was experiencing at the moment were a little less than considered appropriate, Booth was finding it hard to even give his partner a straight-eyed look without blushing profusely. The whole day had dragged by, case-less, and filled with nothing but paperwork and court prep for a trial that was just around the bend. He hadn't seen Brennan at all that day until he decided to go into the Jeffersonian and drag her home so she would sleep, even if he couldn't.

Driving provided an outlet for Booth to divert his attention away from the beautiful scientist that sat right next to him. Brennan was surprisingly quiet as the car blazed the familiar path to her apartment. Even though she was virtually silent, she still drove him to the brink of insanity with the smell of whatever perfume she'd dabbed on that morning. The scent of vanilla had been exemplified several times over, even after she thanked him for the ride and hopped out, disappearing into the building.

Sighing all the way, Booth flopped down onto his bed the moment he came near it, not bothering to undress himself fully. His suit jacket hit the couch, his shoes the wall, and his belt buckle draped over the doorknob. He fell into a deep sleep on top of his bed, ready for a tranquil sleep…temporarily.

*******

Booth looked out into the bleak, London sky. His family's expansive lawn spread so far, he could barely see the front gate and the gas street lamps just beyond that. The rain had lightened up considerably since this afternoon. Darkness would soon spread over the horizon an d engulf the city in it's immense darkness. He stepped back from the window and grabbed his riding cloak.

Descending the stairs two at a time, he made his way out to the stables, going straight for his favorite white horse's stall. The horse whinnied and stomped at the arrival of his master.

"Shh…don't worry, Angel, it's alright." he soothed the horse and stroked her muzzle softly. Booth reached for one of the saddles off the wall and slung it over Angel's back. He figured he would take her out for one last ride for the night; the fresh air maybe being able to help with his thought-ridden mind.

Booth rode slowly through the streets of London as people retired to their houses. All was growing quiet as more of the lamplight fires started. It had grown so quiet, that Booth could hear a ear-shattering scream in the distance.

Slightly shocked by the sound, he slapped his horse into high gear and galloped several streets as the sound grew more primal and desperate. He skidded to a halt at the entrance to a dark alley. Despite the poor illumination, Booth saw the shadow on the ground move. Moving closer, he made of the figure as a brunette woman in absence of clothes.

"Miss? Miss, are you alright?" Booth gently shook the woman's shoulder. While being primarily concerned with her well-being, he could help but notice how beautiful she was in the horrible light.

She made a small grunt of pain and misery as she shook violently against his touch. Dried blood was caked to her face and arms. "So…much…pain." she whimpered.

Booth shed himself of his cloak and wrapped it around her broken frame. "I live near here. I'm going to take you back to my place." he told her as she passed out from the pain.

*******

It hadn't been an easy feat, but Booth had managed to get her back to his house wrapped in his cape without raising suspicion of the nosy people that lived throughout the neighborhood. He brought her up the staircase and set her gently on his bed.

Once he made sure she was comfortable, he got some cold water, a washcloth, and some gauze to wrap her wounds in. Booth dabbed at her wounds softly with the wet cloth, cleaning them as best he could. He then wrapped them so they wouldn't continue to bleed.

After he'd gotten her patched up, his next objective was to find her some clothes. He remembered vaguely that his cousin Tessa kept some spares in the guest bedroom so she wouldn't have to pack heavily whenever she came to visit. Booth made the quick jaunt down the hallway and brought back and appropriate black and white polka-dotted dress.

He had turned his back and saw that she'd woken, her movements somewhat strained from the pain and tension in her muscles. Booth turned back around and sat next to her. "Try not to move, it'll only hurt that much more."

She groaned quietly, obviously understanding what he meant. All of a sudden, she sat up straight like a shot had gone off. She willed her limbs to move, whimpering 'I have to go' as she went.

"Hey, nothing's going to hurt you here. You're safe." he tried to soothe her and handed her the clothes. She took them appreciatively and dressed herself slowly. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Temperance." she said quietly as she sat back down on the bed again. "Your's?"

"Seeley. Seeley Booth." he held his hand out to her to shake.

She accepted his offer and searched his brown eyes. "Are you…oh, God, you're of the Booth bloodline, aren't you?"

Booth wished he'd never been born to his name. In England at this time in the 1800's, all that mattered to people were is if someone had land and noble name. Unfortunately for Booth, he'd had both, and that meant his entire life was basically planned right before his eyes.

"Yes, I am." he whispered and sat down next to her as she adjusted herself to see out the far window. "What were you doing in that alley, Temperance?"

"Please, call me Tempe. I hate my name." she said with a small chuckle. "And, you don't really want to know why I was in that alley." her voice turned to dead seriousness.

"When you say that, it only makes me more curious." he stated.

"I…ah…" she didn't really quite know how to phrase her response. "I'm a…a hooker…you could say."

"Oh…oh…" Booth wasn't sure what to say to something like that. He'd expected her to have fallen down drunk in a mud puddle. Not…this.

"Yes, oh. Nobody thinks of me as something like that, but sometimes you've got to do what needs doing to stay afloat in a government that doesn't care about you." she bit her lip at that last statement, knowing that an aristocrat like him probably had some kind of standing in the government. "Sorry."

"You don't have to tell me, I understand." In fact, it was the life he'd dreamed of since he was a small child taking piano lessons and never seeing hide nor hair of his father and mother.

"I have to go now," she said quietly, looking like a lost little girl that couldn't figure out which path led her home.

"You can stay here tonight. It's no big deal." he pointed out that it was almost pitch black in the outside world now.

"No, I mean I can't stay. It's not safe for me to stay in one place for a long time." she looked as though she were on the verge of tears.

"What do you mean?" Booth stepped in front of her as she tried to step around him.

"The Ripper, damn it!! The Ripper's after all of us!" she hissed it like it were the worst curse on Earth.

Booth had heard rumors of the Ripper, someone who'd been slaughtering prostitutes in the area. He now understood why she was so bent out of shape over something like this. "It's safe here, you know. I'll protect you." he smiled slightly.

"Why are you so nice to me? D…do you want something from me?" she asked with hesitation. Temperance was reluctant to believe that this man was like that, but then she'd known quite a few men who seemed nice to begin with.

"What? No, no, I don't want anything like that." he held up his hands in his defense. "You just don't deserve to go out again without a good night's sleep." Booth tried to reason with her.

Temperance looked him dead in the eyes and decided that he was telling the truth. To be honest, she was a little disappointed. She wouldn't have minded giving him a run for his money, should he want it. 'Hell,' she started to think, 'I'd do it for free'.

"Okay, but that doesn't really make me feel all that safe. When you spend time on the streets like that, you develop a sixth sense. People are always watching you." she muttered softly, he'd barely heard her.

"Well," Booth couldn't think of a way to go about this. "You can take my bed, I'll sleep on the couch." he gestured to the sofa near the window.

"Oh, I don't want to kick you out of your own bed, I…" he held a finger to her lips to silence her.

"It's not kicking me out when I volunteer it, now is it?" the question was redundant, but she understood. Booth led her back to the bed and helped her climb into it, bringing the covers back up around her as he did so.

She was so adorable that he considered kissing her on the forehead, but that would be too improper, even if she was what she said she was. He rubbed her shoulder and gave her a nice charm smile before he began to walk away.

"Seeley?" Temperance called, her voice was small to his ears when she was buried under the several blankets of his bed.

"Yes?" he answered promptly.

"What's your story? I mean, it doesn't seem to me that you enjoy all of this. This wealth." she clarified her statements.

Booth breathed a heavy sigh he didn't know he had in him. He didn't think that his dislike and mistrust of all that surrounded him was that obvious. She would know better, though. At this point in her life, she would've had to read people fast or she would die.

"I didn't think it was so obvious." Booth chuckled softly as he sat down beside her where he'd just set her down. Temperance sat up, ignoring her body's protests, and pulled the blankets back up over her legs, knowing that a long story was about to proceed.

"My family's always had all of this. When I was younger I thought it was nice that we had a nice house and people that were willing to do things for us. I had my own private tutors and lessons every day, academic and musical…" he trailed off.

"Musical?" she asked with a deep interest.

"Piano and violin. Then my parents didn't even seemed to care if I came or went, I had nothing to do and they always favored my younger brother, Jared. I would go riding my horses after lessons and I would see the families huddled together in the streets." he looked deeply into her eyes as his own welled up slightly. "They didn't have much, and they didn't need to be to be happy with each other."

Temperance picked up her cue. She rubbed his back in soothing circles across his back. Now she really thought that he was a decent man.

She'd been with some of the dirtiest low-lives and some of the highest in the aristocracy, and she'd never met a man as sweet or compassionate as Seeley Booth. He tended to her in her hour of need and asked her to stay the night when she thought she wouldn't make it anywhere else. In her book, Booth was a saint.

"My parents took off when I was fifteen. That didn't really bode well for me through my post-adolescent years and that's kind of how I ended up where I am now." she didn't meet his eyes through the small confession. It was a difficult subject to talk about. Her family abandoning her with nowhere else to go had devastated her. "I think it might be better to have no family at all rather than a family that doesn't love you, but that's my opinion."

"It makes sense." Booth stated simply. "I've been raised around all of these baubles all my life and no one's ever really showed the slightest interest what I do or where I go. Hell, I just want someone who cares…and even that's not going to happen." he mourned.

"What do you mean?" Temperance looked confused.

"I'm set into an arranged marriage. It's something people do in the aristocracy; keeps the royals royal." he flopped back against the bed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Temperance's eyes followed his face backwards. "You…you don't even get to decide who you choose to love?"

"No. Like I said, my whole life was planned out for me before the age of three. What a wonderful world." Booth muttered sarcastically.

She only looked at him with sympathy. "Life, in itself, is cruel, unusual, shit-worthy rubbish-shoot. You can't plan your life, there's no purpose in that. We are all given life so we could live it, make our mistakes, and…" she paused.

"And?" Booth asked softly.

"Try to find that one person we're dreaming of at night." she whispered.

Their eyes were locked onto one another's, as if separating them would be the highest of all treasons. There was some magnetic force in the room, both could tell, because the pair's lips began to move subconsciously towards one another's. They were technically a millimeter away from kissing when she sprung up.

"I can't do this." she murmured to herself.

"What? What's wrong?" Booth asked her, trying to meet that electrifying gaze at least once more.

"What's wrong? Everyone I come near or dare to think is any good on the inside either dies or leaves me when I need them the most. Let's just say I have abandonment issues." she fired at him so fast it was hardly understandable.

"What makes you think that I'll leave you?" Booth had to ask the obvious.

"Seeley, we hardly even know each other, and since I'm not on the job, I really don't wish to take that risk." she sighed.

"Then run away with me?" he begged.

"What?!"

"You heard me, we'll run away together somewhere. France, Italy, Spain, wherever, I just want to get out of this hellhole." He was excited now, wondering why he hadn't thought of the idea sooner. "This isn't a life, Temperance, this is my family wanting more money out of me when I go to get married. I want to live the life I never got."

"You're insane, the king will just bring you right back here." She stated.

"Not we make ourselves invisible. We'll change our names and go get new lives wherever we choose to. Haven't you ever wanted something else for yourself, Temperance?" Booth asked with his voice several octaves higher than what would be considered normal.

To be frank, Temperance had never wanted anything else more in her entire life than to start over with a clean slate. Prostitution was never anyone's first occupational choice, and she wanted nothing more than to rid herself of it. "I…it would be nice." she stammered.

"Where would you want to go, given the option?" he asked.

"My mother taught me Italian before she left." she said quietly.

"Italy. I've always wanted to see Venice." Booth said.

"God, are we serious?" it felt as though everything was moving to fast to be considered real.

"As serious as it gets, baby."

The spark in each other's eyes was back, and this time, Booth didn't let it escape his grasp. He kissed her with such passion that it hurt his heart to hold it all in. She responded this time with equal fervor, clinging and scratching at his back.

"Let's go right now." Booth whispered, jumping up.

"Wha-…right now?" Temperance looked at him like he'd sprouted a third head. "Are you insane?"

"No, I'm not, you just gave me a reason to leave this hell hole." he reached under the bed and pulled out a large suitcase. "Do you need to go anywhere to pack?" Booth asked excitedly.

Temperance bit her bottom lip, "All I own you saw in the alley."

Booth thought back to the alley, thinking he saw a cardboard box and a garbage can. "I'm sorry," he whispered sullenly.

"Don't be." she whispered as he shoveled clothes into the growing suitcase. "But, we can leave in a little while, can't we?" Temperance wrapped her arms around his neck. She couldn't understand why she was attracted to him so badly, and frankly, she didn't care.

Booth met her beautiful needy eyes in the darkness of the room. He saw the fear that hued her irises and knew that he wanted to take whatever pain she had away. He pushed her back up towards the headboard.

Their kisses were so spectacular that neither wanted to stop to breathe. Brennan couldn't remember the last time she'd actually wanted a man, and soon thought that she never did. Not like what he made her feel.

Booth was on cloud nine, himself. Even though he didn't know a single thing about women, having been sheltered all of his life and never actually having a date, He was willing to learn. Temperance would reassure him when he went wrong or help him if he felt hesitant.

Trailing her fingers down the buttons of his shirt, she expertly undid the buttons one by one and pulled it out of his trousers. Running her nails over the soft skin that lie beneath the fabric. Booth's kisses were as intoxicating as a shot of vodka. He ran his fingers through her surprisingly silky hair. She helped him shrug out of his shirt.

The thrill of her fingertips tracing lines down his back was electrifying. He traced kisses down her jaw and neck, not believing the way her back bent to arch herself out to his touch. Booth was being self-conscious of his movements, wanting the first time he made love to a woman to be the most perfect moment he'd ever experienced.

Temperance could tell that this was his first time. It was the way he tried to control everything and not just go with the flow of things. She wouldn't say that; she knew better, but for the first time in her life, she felt special. She knew she'd never been anyone's first before, let alone their first choice. The fact that he'd wanted her just as badly as she did him made her feel something she couldn't quite identify, but it was there all the same.

Booth looked down at the dress that separated their flesh, then met her eyes. She gave him a slight nod to give him the go-ahead. Her eyes were burning the brightest blue possible. He hesitantly opened them one at a time, giving her all the opportunity in the world to turn him down. All she did was start at the bottom of the trail and met his fingers in the middle.

He carefully slipped her out of the fabric, mindful of her wounds and bandages. His fingers traced over her skin so delicately, her skin could've been mistaken for butterfly wings. Booth thought she was almost breakable. Temperance's smile doubled in size as she watched his eyes widen in approval. She took good care of her body when she could, it was what made her the little money she had.

Booth's senses went into overdrive. The feel of her soft skin under his roughened fingers went beyond anything he'd ever experienced. "You're incredible." she heard him whisper.

Temperance flipped their positions, straddling his waist. She hovered over him, close enough for him to feel the heat radiate from her skin, but not so they were touching. She felt him pressing into her through the his quickly shrinking pants. Deciding not to let him suffer, she reached down and released the buttons of his trousers and pulled them down. In that instant, she planted him into her.

Booth's eyes went wide in shock. He knew the premise of making love to a woman, but never imagined that it was such a beautiful feeling, a war on the senses. She flipped her hair over a shoulder. "Why, Mr. Booth, you seem surprised."

He rolled them as she laughed, his eyes showing all the intensity of the world, which helped her sober. He moved within her slowly, drawing small, high mewls from her lips. If there was one thing Temperance knew how to do, it was how to make a man feel manly. It made them feel better to know they could bring a woman to being a puddle of desire, pooling at their feet.

It would've scared her a lot less if she was acting.

Before long, they were a tangled mess of limbs, writhing in pleasure. She came a lot sooner than she expected of herself, digging her long nails into his back and calling out his name. He followed her soon after, amazed at what had just happened.

"Well?" Temperance watched his expression for a full minute before speaking the single word that broke the silence.

"Wow." was all he could respond with.

"It sounds fitting." she agreed.

"I'll give you a promise if you'll give me one in return." he rolled to his side and stroked her cheek.

"What's that?" the gesture had never felt so sweet against her skin.

"When we get to Italy, I'll straighten anything and everything out that needs to be done, if you promise me something." he whispered.

She had to assume that he was talking about her occupational hazards and drawbacks. "What's my end of the bargain?"

"If you promise me that I'm the only one you'll ever do that with ever again." He took both of her hands into his own.

Temperance looked out the window to see the full moon shining in. The answer seemed to roll off her tongue like a simple prayer. "Yes."

*******

Booth rolled out of bed and hit the floor with a deep, reassuring thud. He came to realize that he was no longer in old-world London and in present-day DC. He was utterly disappointed at the turn of events that led him back to his real life. His cell phone indicated a voicemail message. He called and entered his security code.

"Booth, it's Brennan, I was just wondering where you were since I'm leaving this at nine o'clock…"

He looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly ten-thirty. He frantically grabbed his jacket from the previous day and headed straight out the door.

Yes? No? Maybe it's good? I don't know. Coiler thinks it's good, but I'm not so certain I believe her. Maybe a few reassurance reviews are in order? Please...? XD