Author's Note: Ah dear readers, I hate making you wait. If I could write faster and post faster, I would, but it takes me a long time to write the chapters I post. Knowing you're out there waiting prods me to keep going and keep a steady pace even though it's slower than you'd like.

All that said, you are going to hate me. You see, I thought I was going to reveal Booth's question in this chapter, but then realized it would have to be postponed to chapter seven. There's something else that needed to happen first, to show why he asks it.

Meanwhile, we are getting closer to the answers now, but the only way to find them is by asking the right question. What do Booth's dreams mean? What was Excellent Driver's prompt? Why did Motley Crüe make an appearance in End in the Beginning? And ... What the heck is going on?!

The song this time is Secret, by Madonna.

~Q~

Secret

~Q~

"Go out with me."

"We are out." Brennan gestured to take in their surroundings, the muted earth tones and droning hum of the Founding Fathers after hours. It was a longstanding tradition to come here for drinks together after a case, but for the last several months they'd begun meeting after work every single night. Talking, laughing, sharing a meal (sometimes) and finally leaving after two or three hours to return to his apartment, or hers.

"No, I mean on a date."

"Well, a date in the romantic sense is a social engagement intended to facilitate the couple ascertaining their compatibility with respect to the goal of forming a long term monogamous coupling." Which they had already done over the course of four years of partnership, so she didn't see the point.

His eyes having glazed over just a little by the time she found the end of her attempt to over-think his request, Booth shook his head. "I just mean, we should get dressed up and go somewhere fun."

"Well ... what's fun?"

"You really need me to define fun?"

She frowned, looked mildly offended. "Isn't this fun?"

"Of course. I just ... hey, you still have that dress from Vegas?"

Her eyes sparked a little at the desperate switch of topics, or perhaps they sparked at the memory he summoned for them both. "Which one?"

"The black one." Just remembering how she'd looked when she came out of the bathroom with that slinky little black number unzipped, the way she'd turned her back and had him be the one to close the cloth and hide her bare skin. (And the way she'd tensed and developed tiny goose bumps when his fingers brushed up her spine as he worked the zipper. Oh, you like that, Bones...?) Booth had been dreaming of reversing that moment and removing that dress for two years now.

"The Bible sales dress?" Brennan's lips stretched widely around the rim of her wine glass, hiding her smile behind a sip of Sauvignon.

He lowered a scowl at her deliberate tease. "No, the sexy schoolteacher one. Roxy's curves have never looked better. Damn, I had a hard time keeping my hands off you."

Startled, she lowered the glass and swallowed her wine with a shocked little gasp. "Booth! You were with Cam."

"Yeah, that didn't make me dead," he snorted. "You in that dress, on other hand, ought to be declared a safety hazard..."

She smirked and waggled a disapproving finger. "You're the one who picked it out for me."

"You're the one who filled it out for me," he leered right back.

"Why did you pick that one," she wondered, tilting her chin into her palm and fixing her gaze expectantly on him.

Despite Brennan's insistence that motive didn't matter, Booth had discovered she asked about it with alarming frequency. One of her 'whys?' stalked everything he said or did, just waiting to pounce, and often at the most inexplicable provocations. "Why did you do that?" she would ask, when he did something nice for her. Or, "why did you kiss me?" when he kissed her just because. That one always came out with her brows pinching together and a nearly childlike wonder, as if she didn't think she was deserving of his affection. "Because I love you" was never satisfactory, for she would immediately follow that answer up with, "but why...?"

Why did he love her, and why did he pick out the sexiest little black dress he could find on short notice?

Leaning in to capture a quick kiss, he chuckled fondly at her, for there could be no denying that the reason for one was very much bound up in the reason for the other. Yes, even back then he'd known he might be in love. "Because your idea of a teacher is someone serious and shy, slightly frumpy. Someone like you. I needed Roxy to knock their socks off. I needed you in that dress, sexed up and blowing men's brains out so they'd be too busy panting to notice how squinty you are." Her mouth fell open in incendiary outrage, so he leaned even closer to confess with a half-throttled growl, "Then I desperately wanted to see you out of that dress. You have no idea what it did to my concentration."

That mollified her immediately. Her eyes widened, her lips twitched.

"A victim of your own foul schemes," she teased. "I believe that is what they call poetic justice."

"True," he said and tipped his glass to clink against hers. "I spent the rest of that case regretting my success."

That weekend she donned that dress, making Booth's eyes (and other parts) pop out, and as she sashayed past Brennan snapped his jaw shut for him. (How she could flip on a dime, from ingenue to siren, never ceased to amuse him.) They went to a quiet little club tucked away in Georgetown, listening to sets over food and wine, and it was during one of the intermissions that Avalon piped over the speakers.

As the Bossa Nova rhythms slithered around synthesizers, Booth beamed. "Hey! I haven't heard this in years."

"I've never heard it at all," she mused, surprised by both the lapse and that Booth recognized music she herself was more likely to listen to (and yet never had she heard this).

Aghast, he pulled her off her chair and swung her into a slow rolling hip sway with a few other couples. "Some would argue Avalon is Roxy Music's best album, but it's nothing like their earliest offerings."

"What were those like," she asked dutifully.

"Let's just say Gordon Gordon during his Noddy Comet incarnation would have rubbed shoulders with the likes of classic Roxy Music. Total glam rock with an art punk twist."

"Sparkles and spandex?"

Brennan was not glam rock's biggest fan, a lamentable fact that had him defending his musical preferences to her yet again. "Don't let the flash fool you, there was serious substance in their music. You know Heavy Metal bands like Motley Crüe and Twisted Sister owe a debt to glam rock?"

Brennan pursed her lips, moving her hips closer to his and falling into synchronous rhythm. "This doesn't sound anything like Motley Crüe, it's more like a fusion of Latin and Jazz."

"This is more of an art pop sound," Booth agreed and lost all track of anything else he was going to say when her body fit against his so tightly and then seemed to melt into him. Their rolling movements, the scent of her subtle perfume, having her heat flame through him ... it was like making love on the dance floor. Breathless fusion, joyful abandon, he'd never felt this way with anyone and he'd known from the moment he met her that Temperance Brennan was the one.

The only one.

When the samba takes you
Out of nowhere
And the background's fading
Out of focus
Yes the picture changing
Every moment
And your destination
You don't know it
Avalon...

He didn't know where they were going, and sometimes a part of him feared this was all too good to be true. Was it only a dream, to finally have her in his arms?

Whenever he considered how fortunate he was to hold her so close, he had to fight back tears. It might be a sin to be this happy, to adore a woman with this intensity that probably should be reserved for God. It was definitely a sin to indulge in her sweetness without doing something to make her place in his life a permanent arrangement. He had every intention but she was still recalcitrant.

"Won't you reconsider?" he whispered against her temple, their bodies moving in perfect harmony together and their pulses speeding up in tandem as each was affected by the closeness of the other.

"Booth..."

That low, rasping voice of hers burned through him with her reluctance to surrender a cherished ideal even if it was for his sake.

"Come on," he cajoled. "I won't stop asking until you say yes."

Pulling her head off his shoulder to meet his eyes, she smiled and then pressed her warm, soft lips against his mouth. Their bodies slowed as the music wrapped them in Avalon and the kiss soothed them both. When she pulled away, he knew it wasn't an answer but he brushed a loving thumb against her lower lip anyway. "I'll never stop asking."

"I'm starting to believe that's true. You are very persistent."

"Then save my breath," he whispered against her lips. "Just say yes."

"I promise I'll say 'Yes'..." (He could tell it was a tease by the way her eyes danced.) "...just to save your breath."

"Really? You will?"

"Really."

"You're saying yes?" he tried to clarify, hoping she was giving him the yes he wanted.

"Only to potentially save your breath, which isn't in danger at the moment."

Drawing her closer still, he closed his eyes and breathed her in. "It's always in danger, when you're not with me."

~Q~

The hardest moments tended to be working ones. This fact had been driven home to Seeley Booth a few weeks before that night they danced to Avalon. On a crisp April morning, Temperance Brennan walked into his office just ahead of their eight o'clock meeting wearing a sleekly fitted jacket of such an intense cobalt blue that her eyes seemed to glow. He jumped to attention, drawn toward her like a bee to her flower. "Hi..."

"Hi," she answered, smiling back.

"You missed me," he suggested, drawing just this side of inappropriately close to her.

"I saw you an hour ago," she countered and leaned against a file cabinet while he leaned in just a bit further. "I haven't had time to miss you."

"Oh, then maybe I missed you." One brow waggled at her.

She laughed. "You've always been the sentimental one."

"Nothing wrong with that." One finger reached to illicitly brush the back of her hand, causing her eyes to widen. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he confessed, "If we were anywhere else, I'd kiss you."

"But we're here," Brennan pointed out. Tilting her head in a way that reminded him of a shooting gallery confrontation years ago, she sidestepped away from him and turned just in time to greet the man they'd scheduled to meet.

Booth straightened his tie, feeling flush with the danger of barely escaping notice — he really needed to get a better grip on his compulsion to be in her space at all times — and returned to his desk while Dr. Marcus Scheer spoke with Brennan and proffered the x-rays they'd asked him to bring.

Pointing to the altered second phalanx on the x-ray of both the right and left feet, Dr. Scheer confirmed the identity of the woman whose death the partners were currently investigating. "Like I said on the phone, this is definitely my patient. I remember I threw in a toe tuck for free." He grinned, no doubt expecting them to be thrilled with his generosity.

"A toe tuck?" Lounging in his chair now and palming his 'Magic 8' ball, Booth was nothing short of incredulous over this bit of news. He was mystified at the entire idea, both what it entailed and why anyone would feel the need to tuck their toes in the first place. Tuck them into shoes, tuck them into a tight little curl before kicking a football, sure. But plastic tucking was something he genuinely could not envision. (What did that mean, snipping off saggy, unsightly toe skin?!)

"What can I say? Toes are the new nose."

With that brilliant blue jacket still beguiling Booth if he looked at her too long, Brennan stood at her partner's right side, arms tucked (not like toes) and her disapproval blatantly displayed. "The board of plastic surgeons hasn't approved this for elective surgery."

"They haven't condemned it, either," the toe tucker extraordinaire defended irritably.

Judging by the way Bones is glaring, they probably should, Booth found himself thinking. By this time he was well acquainted with Brennan's many rants against body modification intended to match cultural stereotypes. There, see? After spending so much time with her, he was even beginning to think like his opinionated anthropologist, even stooping to using her words. (Not that he necessarily thought she was right about everything. There was one topic they strenuously disagreed upon, having reached an impasse of late.) But if he didn't intervene immediately, this spat between doctors could get very ugly, very quickly. Better to head it off at the pass.

"All right, so who's our girl?" Booth redirected. He set the Magic 8 Ball down gingerly and glanced at his partner, hoping she'd let it go.

"Oh, um. Mariel Mitsakos. She wanted the plastic surgery because she was getting married." Dr. Scheer had brought his own file of medical records and consulted it briefly before Booth helped himself to the folder. And it might have been fine, until the toe-tucker (slash-butcher, as far as his partner was concerned) revealed the vile-most nature of his trade, a two-for-one deal guaranteed to ignite Brennan's indignation:

"She had her eye on a pair of Christian Louboutin sandals, but her second toe stuck out. I said it was an easy fix." He mimicked snipping with scissors.

Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Brennan regarded the man with outright contempt. Few subjects were more likely to light her fires than the subject of plastic surgery and altering one's bones. She acted as if personally affronted each and every time. And here the man was gleefully docking toes like puppy dog tails, all for the purpose of aiding one twisted Cinderella in cramming her ugly feet into what Brennan thought might be an even uglier thing: high end heels and a wedding gown.

Even Booth knew he must sound disturbed. "You cut her toe off, so she could fit into a pair of shoes?!"

Soothed slightly by Booth's agreement, Brennan couldn't help but add her own outraged observation. "Self mutilation for an antiquated ritual … it's barbaric!"

That would be the two-for-one deal: body mangling for archaic religious reasons. She might be offended by the idea of bones being loped off (he was, too) but what Booth heard right then was the dig on marriage. Pretty much the same dig she'd given him last night, almost word-for-word. He shook his head mildly, his better judgment abruptly hijacked by his determination to win her over. "Oh, come on. Marriage is important to a lot of people, Bones."

Like me.

"No, it's ridiculous! No one can guarantee how they're going to feel about someone for life. We're not a monogamous species." Brennan held his gaze a moment, as if daring him to respond right here in front of an audience.

Booth felt the same volatile mixture of attraction and aggravation she'd always inspired spurring him onwards, but he didn't take her bait. Despite the seeming threat in what she'd just said, he knew Brennan was all talk. Fundamentally, she was honest and loyal. Once she'd settled into their relationship three months ago, he had never feared that she would stray — only that she would drive him insane with her insistence on autonomy. And the unending arguments, of course.

At her provocation, Dr. Toe Snipper was left to linger at the edge of the room, forgotten as the debate from last night rattled onwards. Because the only thing better than sparring with Temperance Brennan, Booth had discovered, was making up with her afterwards.

"Marriage has been around since the beginning of time." Booth served, then waited for her volley.

"Women from Amazonian tribes express their love by spitting in their partner's faces. I hope we've progressed past that." Her eyes lifted from the photos and medical reports he'd been handing over to her, a flicker of challenge burning in the lapis blue.

He chuckled. Game on, Baby. "Okay well, you know what?" Rising from his chair, planting his palms firmly on the surface of his desk, he leaned into her. His eyes captured hers, daring her to disagree. "Love trumps logic."

When had she ever backed down. Eyes snapping electric blue sparks, she leaned in from the other side. "Love is a chemical process which causes delusion!"

Booth almost laughed, loving her despite the constant tussle over every subject. Wanting her, knowing she would not surrender easily, he acknowledged with a blistering gaze at her lips just how close he was to dragging her over the desk and shutting her up with a kiss and damn the consequences.

Her eyes widened at the unspoken threat, but she didn't retreat. "An intellectually rigorous person would never get married."

Yet when she said it, her tongue tangled in the words, betraying the calm control was only an illusion once she starting thinking about kissing him. He smirked, sensing victory. "Never say never."

He would get a ring on her finger yet. They both knew it.

"That's a paradox," she parried. "It makes no sense." But the light in her eyes told him he was winning. He just had to keep asking, keep knocking on that door until she opened it and let him deeper into her heart.

"Am I still needed here?" Dr. Scheer asked timidly. "Because if you two are having relationship issues…."

Recalling too late that they weren't alone, Brennan and Booth turned their heads in perfect synchrony.

"We're not a couple," she denied briskly.

Booth pulled himself back, realizing how much they'd forgotten themselves in the last few minutes. "We just work together. That's all."

Right. A glance at her flushed face and he almost laughed again. Instead, he plopped back into his seat and blew out a very distracted puff of air. His partnership with Temperance Brennan blazed through every aspect of his life: work, home, weekends with Parker, and nights alone with her in his bed. He could never go more than a minute without thinking of her pressed up against him, her eyes blazing as they fell closed, her mouth forming a perfect 'oh' of ecstasy when they met in Avalon.

Letting his thoughts stray to the passion they shared gave her the temporary advantage of a clearer head, which was why Brennan regrouped faster this time. She turned to declare, "Mariel Mitsakos was murdered."

"And as of now, you're the only one we know, who's taken a knife to her." He shot a pointed warning to the bone-mangling doctor, that was far more about discretion than suspicion. The man nodded, smart enough to know what was really going on.

Once the plastic surgeon had been dismissed, Booth turned and pushed Brennan back into a corner. "You almost blew our cover."

"I did." Her chin came up, her frosty eyes sparkling like that sunny winter morning when he first proposed a change in status. "I was talking about plastic surgery. You're the one who started in about marriage."

His charm smile could heat steel, and he knew it would heat her up in moments. "You were deliberately provocative."

"You love it," she taunted.

"I love you," he countered, the words steamy.

Her eyes were darkening. "I love you, too."

"Prove it," he whispered.

"You want me to spit in your face?"

He laughed, but his eyes never left hers. "I want you to marry me."

She tossed her head, laughing with him as their game played out again. "Never."

A quick glance to make sure the coast was clear, and he moved in closer, his body caging hers. "You are going to marry me, Temperance."

She let her head fall back against the wall, sighing when his mouth started to drift over her cheek, edging closer to her lips. "Don't call me Temperance," she commanded softly.

"What do you want me to call you," he teased, "since you don't like 'Baby' either?"

"Bones," she answered. "I like Bones."

"Mmm, so do I." He took her in a deep caress, hands on her, lips brushing, tongue moving in to taste her silky lower lip. They lost themselves briefly in searing breath and fevered touches, until finally he dragged himself away from her. "I have no self control when you're this close to me."

Brennan snorted comically and pushed him backwards, ducking under his arms and straightening her hair with a quick, feminine gesture. "You pushed me, Agent Booth."

"We can't keep doing this," he said. The door was closed now, keeping their indiscretion quiet for the moment. He meant the small lapses in self control, the desire-fed slips that resulted in locking lips behind doors in various not-quite-public places. "Someone is going to catch us eventually."

"Then maybe we should let ourselves be caught," she shrugged.

"If that happens, the FBI will split us up."

~Q~

Sweets was still gaping after them through the blinds when Booth caught up to his partner. Still stunned himself, he nonetheless waited until they'd rounded a corner (away from shrinky eyes), before he leaned in to hiss, "Bones, what the hell are you doing?!"

"Carpe diem, Booth. I am seizing opportunity." Spinning into him, her face alight with mischief, Brennan raised her brow and pulled him along the hallways with no further explanation. The sudden and very unexpected blurting out of her personal ambition (and how she thought he should be involved) made his head spin, and her inexplicable exuberance now was no less baffling. He felt just a bit nauseated by what she'd decided in there, the most insanely irrational thing he could possibly imagine.

"You and I need to discuss things like this privately. Trotting it out in front of Sweets? You know what he's going to do now? He's going to go blurt your 'plans' to the brass. It'll be all over the Bureau by five o'clock."

She shrugged, tugged him into an elevator and turned to regale him with a triumphant grin. "That's exactly what we want."

"What?!"

"Trust me." Brennan flicked the button for the lobby, taking him down with her with no sign of cluing him into to the insanity that had taken hold.

"Trust you?! You've gone insane! I thought we agreed to keep him out of our private lives. Way the hell out."

"Well I had to do something," she defended.

"Why?" He wasn't even sure what he meant. "Why did you have to do that? "

"Because we can't hide it forever, unless we hide it in plain sight."

"What are you talking about?" Why did he always feel like he was ten miles behind her?

"The sooner we lay the groundwork, the better," she explained, rolling right over his roaring protest.

"Lay what groundwork?!"

"Having me inseminated, of course. Weren't you paying attention in there...?"

~Q~

He wakes up with a sputtering gasp, shooting bolt upright to shake his head in hope that he can dispel the lingering horror of Brennan asking him to inseminate her. Out of all the times he's dreamed of her being pregnant, this is a nightmarish first that is made worse by the fact that she's returning tomorrow. God, how is he going to face her...?

Booth rubs his hand over his face, muttering under his breath that he can't take much more, especially when the dreams are this intensely crazy.

Author's Note: Whoa ... horse!