Thank you guys for waiting so patiently! As always, I'm glad to see reviews and follows. I aim to entertain!

This chapter kind of got away from me so if it turns to rambling, my bad. I think it's kinda cute. I guess I dabbled in being what MysticalGoddessOfWords calls "longwinded". :)

I apologize in advance for any mistakes. I know you guys wanted to read this so I only read it twice instead of three times, ha. I'll be sure to fix everything tomorrow.

Enjoy!


"Do you have a special friend?"

Emily lifted one hand from the steering wheel and adjusted the rearview mirror in her car. When a small brunette sitting in the backseat came into view, she replied with a chuckle, "Where did that come from, Auri? We were just talking about how you can't tell your mom that I let you have ice cream this morning."

Sinking back into the seat, the small girl sighed while bouncing both palms on the seat beside her thighs, "My brain got bored."

"Are you calling me boring?" the brunette asked in a playfully hurt voice. When she was with children, her high school mannerisms and tone woke from their slumber. She spoke quieter, lower and sweeter, but there was no getting rid of her sarcasm.

"No, Emmy," the passenger waved her head back and forth at the face in the mirror, "Just your words."

"I'll pretend that's not the same thing."

"Mommy has a special friend," the three year old craned her neck upward and to the side to peek out of the back window.

"Oh does she? How do you know?"

"She told me. She said I might meet him soon."

Emily was a bit surprised that her friend had mentioned the guy she was dating to Auri. She was fiercely protective of her daughter and didn't prance men around in her house. "Well, he must be really special if he gets to meet you."

"Why?" Emily could feel two inquisitive brown eyes locked onto the back of her head.

She glanced around at the deserted four way intersection. God, this town is small. She brought the car to a stop at the stop sign and turned around with a smile, "She loves you more than anyone in the whole wide world. So if—"

"The whole world?!" small eyes swelled with astonishment.

"The whole wide world," the brunette added with a cheerful sparkle in her eye, "Maybe the whole universe."

"Universe?" the child queried.

Emily loved the intense look in children's eyes when they heard a word they truly wanted to understand. There was a laundry list of things that Emily adored about children, with innocence near the top, but unadulterated curiosity ranked the highest. "Bigger than the world," she clarified.

"Whoa!" the girl plopped her head back into the leather seat to process the existence of anything bigger than the world. "That's really big."

Catching sight of a car pulling up behind them, Emily's eyes returned to the road as she drove through the clear intersection and agreed, "Mhmm. So if she wants you to meet this guy, he's gotta be really important."

"Cuz I'm Mommy's princess!" the claim rang out in a singsongy voice.

"Eww. No," the brunette shook her head violently.

"Princesses aren't eww!" the smaller brunette insisted defensively with arms crossed tightly over her chest. She was boring a hole into the rearview mirror hoping Emily's face might appear.

"They are if you survived the clown/princess incident of 2002."

"Clowns are fun!" Auri's eyes locked onto the woman in the mirror and she thrust her head downward once in a fierce nod.

With an eyebrow raised and eyes darting between the road and the girl, Emily assured, "Just wait, they won't be fun for long. Life will ruin clowns for you."

"But they smile," the arms unlocked and two hands lifted with palms up with a shrug.

"Ch'yeah. The smile of 'I'm going to eat your face off'," she outwardly shuddered at a brief flash of her terrible experience. She'd never be able to look at princesses or clowns the same way again.

"Clowns don't eat faces, Emmy."

"We'll have this conversation again in ten years when you're also freaked out by clowns."

"You'll be old," Auri offered offhandedly with her gaze drifting once again out the window.

"I won't be old!"

"Emmy!" the girl's hands slapped down on her thighs signaling an abrupt shift in conversation.

"What?"

"Do you have a special friend?"

"Great. We're back to this," Emily puffed out a stream of air to blow away a stray lock of hair. She knew exactly how this was going to end.

"Do you have one?"

"Maybe," the brunette woman stammered, "I think. I guess." She didn't know what she and Alison were. It seemed way too scary and nearly impossible to slap a label on their relationship. It was way too soon. She hadn't lied when she told Alison she wanted it to work, but the variable wasn't if it would work but how long it would work.

"How can it be maybe?" Emily perceived the truly confused look in the backseat with a finger tapping on a small chin.

"Because it is."

"It can't be."

"Yes, it can."

"No, it can't."

"Yeah, it can!"

"No, Emmy! It can't!"

"Yeah, Auri! It—god. I can't believe I fell for that."

Cleverly, the satisfied girl noted, "You either have a special friend that's all yours or you don't."

That's how Emily predicted it would end. It always did. "Don't be so insightful."

"In-sy-ful?"

"In-sight-ful," the woman enunciated and defined simply, "Super smart. Way too smart for your age."

"Oh," Auri nodded in understanding and shrugged, "Mommy says I was born that way."

"Nah," Emily joked, "It comes from being around me so much.

"Hehe," the girl snickered, "You're silly, Emmy."

"You're silly. And we're here," she declared as they pulled up outside the restaurant where four women sat at a table outside waiting for her. Her friend's last minute request to babysit Auri this morning threw her a little bit behind schedule. She didn't care. She adored the tiny three year old sitting in the back seat fiddling with her belt buckle.

"I get to meet your friends?" Auri asked with her tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth as she strained to mash the button to free herself from the belt suddenly straggling her. When the clasp finally clicked, the girl asked the woman in the front seat, "Is one of them your maybe special friend?"

Emily's face froze and she quickly hopped out of the car and swung open the back door to retrieve the nosy girl and a bag laying in the floorboard. "I'm not going to answer that."

A huge grin stretched across Auri's face as she crawled across the seat toward Emily, "Mommy says being quiet to a question means 'yes'."

As she slid the bag handle onto her arm and scooped the girl into her arms, the woman said, "Don't listen to her."

"Mommy is always right," the girl insisted.

"Pffft," Emily chucked, "Oh, Auri. Let's also have this conversation in ten years."

Auri situated herself in the tall brunette's arms so she could peer at the four women across the street. "Are you friends nice?" she queried somewhat hesitantly.

Pecking the girl on the forehead, Emily assured, "Of course they are, sweetheart. Are you nervous?"

"They're so pretty," Auri noted quietly before she bounced in Emily's arms and flinging out a finger to point, "Oh! There's Hanna!"

Struggling to hold onto the wiggling girl, Emily said, "Please don't tell me you already get intimidated by other girls."

"In-tim-a-what?"

"Something you shouldn't be at your age." As she stepped onto the sidewalk, the woman allowed her attention to shift from her tiny charge to the women at the table, or rather, a specific woman at the table. Alison's eyes were darting back and forth between her and the beautiful girl in her arms. Although clearly confused, the blonde's features softened into a warm inaudible greeting. "Look, they're all smiling at you."

"I wanna see Hanna, please." Emily bent down and released the girl from her grasp. As soon as she was free, Auri sprinted, well more like hobbled, over to the blonde with open arms.

"Who is this?" Aria asked as Emily pulled out a chair beside Alison.

"Hanna!" the little girl yelped as she threw herself into the woman's arms.

"The only little person I like!" Hanna greeted. Although not particularly fond of children, even Hanna couldn't resist Auri's charms.

After sitting down in the chair, Emily turned to Alison and said sweetly, "Hey, you."

With a small smile, the blonde returned, "Hi."

Pushing out of Hanna's arms, the three year old insisted, "I wanna go back to Emmy."

"Well, that's rude," the blonde muttered as the girl trotted away toward her friend.

Emily hoisted the eager girl up into her lap and wrapped her arms protectively around her waist.

Alison asked, "So who is this beautiful girl?"

Casually, Emily replied, "Oh, this is my daughter."

"Excuse me?" Spencer's mouth dropped open.

"I am not, silly!" the toddler corrected. "She's my friend."

As Spencer, Aria and Alison breathed a sigh of relief, Emily added, "And you're one of my favorite people."

Patting the backs of Emily's hands settled on her stomach, Auri replied happily, "Love you, Em."

Spencer noted with surprise, "This is adorable and unexpected." It was fair to say that none of the three women expected Emily to have the temperament to enjoy the company of children.

"Mostly adorable," Aria said with a smile.

Emily squeezed the girl in her arms, "Love you too." Addressing the entire table, the brunette said, "This is Auri. Auri, this is Alison, Aria and Spencer." Each woman nodded as their name was called.

Unwilling to stray from their conversation in the car, the three year old asked, "Who is Emmy's maybe special friend?"

"Her what?" Hanna queried with a piqued interest.

"Do you want something to eat?" Emily asked hoping to distract the little girl.

"I already had ice cream," Auri recalled.

Alison commented, "You gave her ice cream before noon?"

"You can't tell Mama," the small brunette instructed.

"Don't worry," the blonde assured, "We're all good at keeping secrets."

With wide eyes, Auri made an ironically educated guess, "Are you her maybe special friend?"

While Emily frantically tried to concoct a subject that might interest the girl, Hanna asked, "Why don't you tell everyone your full name? Have you learned to say your last name yet?"

"Thanks, Han," the blonde's friend groaned. She might prefer the special friend topic to this.

Clearing her throat, Auri said, "It's Colbie Aurelia Vanderwaal."

"Vanderwaal?" Spencer choked.

"That's a mouthful for such a little girl," Aria replied hastily as Alison and Spencer recovered. Tension hovered above their heads as it threatened to descend and disrupt the previously jolly tone of conversation.

Because she never could let anything go, Hanna prompted just to clarify, "And your mom's name is…"

"Mommy's name is Mona. It's a pretty name."

"Oh, dear god," Alison's forehead dropped into her open hand.

Emily's feelings ranged from discomfort to amusement. Three women who directly and indirectly tortured Mona in high school now sat less than two feet away from her daughter. She mashed her lips together to swallow a laugh.

"Don't worry, Alison." Hanna mocked, "She hasn't been trained to attack."

Oblivious to Hanna's goading, Auri asked, "Can I eat something? I'm actually hungry."

Grateful for the interruption, Emily replied, "Sure, let's get you something." She glanced at Alison to her right and assured playfully, "I swear she's not going to bite."

"You do know the history here, right?" Alison asked quietly not wanting to draw Auri's attention.

Emily situated a menu in Auri's hands and said, "Yeah. I also know that Mona is raising an amazing girl. She stopped holding grudges the minute she saw her daughter's face."

"I can't read this, Emmy," the toddler reminded her friend.

Chuckling, Emily teased, "I forgot. You're usually so smart." She listed a few of the choices and asked the little girl to choose. As Auri tapped her mouth in thought, the woman asked Alison with a smile reserved only for her, "How are you?

The blonde's face lit up and she softly replied, "I'm good now."

"Pizza, Emmy. Pizza please," Auri decided. Slapping the menu down onto the table, she asked Alison once again, "Are you her maybe special friend?"

"What is a maybe special friend?" Alison asked.

Noting the twinkle in Ali's eyes as she spoke to Auri, Emily couldn't help but reveal, "She's my special friend, Auri."

A faint groan drifted across the table from Hanna's direction as the toddler grinned and declared, "You're so pretty!" She poked at Emily's shoulder above her own and said, "Mommy told me you need a special friend because—"

"Pizza, right!" Hanna blurted. Emily mouthed a thank you. Despite her constant bickering with the blonde, they were fiercely protective of one another when it came to sensitive topics. "You need some pizza." A waitress happened to wander over at that moment and Hanna asked, "Can you get this girl some pizza? Or anything to stick in her mouth?"

"Let's just stick with pizza," Emily clarified.

After everyone rattled off their individual orders and the waitress strolled inside the restaurant, Spencer said to Emily, "I guess I'll forgive you for being late and inviting three, well four, other people to our lunch."

"It's because of my awesome friend, isn't it?" the other woman queried.

"Pretty much," Spencer admitted with an adoring look at the girl in Emily's lap. Auri had successfully captured the heart of all the women at the table in less than ten minutes.

"Can I color?" Auri asked as she strained to reach the bag sitting on the ground.

"Oh yeah," the brunette lifted the bag, pulled out a notebook and crayons and said, "I forgot I brought that. You can't take this girl anywhere without paper and crayons."

"And never forget the paper or she'll start drawing on pretty much anything," Hanna added.

"I like to make things pretty," Auri explained innocently as she pressed a red crayon to the paper.

"And you always do," Emily answered with a light kiss on the top of her head.

For the next twenty minutes, Emily managed to keep Auri occupied with drawings of dogs, cats and a plethora of stick figures. Auri jokingly sketched a rough image of a clown just to laugh at Emily's small shudder. Somewhere during that time, Alison pulled one of Emily's hands into her lap and gently traced lines up and down her fingers. Since the three year old refused to share her blue, red and green crayons, she didn't notice the absence of Emily's right hand.

When a warm pizza arrived along with the other food the women ordered, Auri's green crayon slipped from her fingers as she squealed with excitement. Entertained by the clapping and wagging tongue, Emily observed loud enough to be heard from across the table, "You remind me of a little Hanna."

Spencer and Aria couldn't suppress a snort, but Alison bit her tongue and simply cleared her throat. She and Hanna still had a precarious relationship, so she opted not to join in on any kind of humor at the other woman's expense.

With a quick glare at the very aware three year old, Hanna responded carefully, "Em, you are a b-i-t-c-h."

"Hanna," Emily scolded softly.

"What's that spell?" the small brunette asked no one in particular.

"It spells 'Emily'," Hanna blurted before anyone could steer the conversation down a less confrontational avenue.

Glaring at her blonde friend across the table, Emily clarified, "That's not how you spell my name, Auri. That's just Hanna being silly."

Auri cupped her hand around the outside of her mouth and whispered up into Emily's ear, "Did she say a bad word?" When the woman nodded, the girl noted, "She says a lot of bad words."

"She does have a potty mouth," Emily agreed.

"A potty mouth?"

"Hey," Alison interrupted. "Aren't you hungry? I'm sure that ice cream didn't fill you up."

As Auri's pointer finger leapfrogged across several pepperonis, Emily said, "You mean the ice cream I shouldn't have given her?"

"Not before lunch," Alison concluded with a smirk as the brunette carefully dragged a knife along the not completely cut lines across the pizza.

Auri rubbed her palms together in anticipation until Emily set down the knife and asked, "So how big of a mess do you plan on making?" She poked the girl in the sides.

As Auri started yanking one piece of cheesy goodness off the pan, Alison suggested, "Cutting it up might make it easier."

"Nah. That's for babies. She can handle this like a pro," Emily claimed as the toddler hovered a drooping slice of pizza to her wide open mouth.

A tiny glob of sauce trickled down a finger. Eyebrow raised, Ali reemphasized as she wiped the sauce off, "It might be cleaner."

"Kids are messy," Emily replied. "Sauce, ketchup, mud, paint—all fair game in the ruining of carpet, clothes and pretty much anything that can be stained." Alison stared at her with a skeptical yet amused look. "Isn't that right, Auri?"

The girl glanced upward with sauce caked on the corners of her mouth and a long string of cheese stretching from her teeth to the slice of pizza. "Uh huh. That's right," she muttered through the food.

"You're got something on your face," Emily smiled down at the girl with mozzarella dangling from her chin.

"You won't be so smiley when she ruins your shirt," Alison joked.

"You guys wanna stop playing 'house' over there?" Hanna suggested as she shoveled lettuce into her mouth.

"You wanna stop chomping lettuce like a baby koala?" Emily retorted.

Setting down her fork, the blonde shrugged, "Just go make a baby if you want one so ba—" A fry bouncing off her forehead truncated the sentence. Egged on by a snickering Emily, Hanna snatched up a cherry tomato drenched in ranch dressing from her plate.

"No way!" Spencer snagged Hanna's wrist and cajoled, "I don't think we need any more children at this table."

Reluctantly, the irritated and subdued blonde dropped the tomato into a bed of green leaves. She picked up her fork and pointed at Emily ominously, "You'll pay for that later."

"How are you two friends exactly?" Spencer asked.

As Emily assisted the girl in her lap, catching the pizza before it could land on her shirt, she replied, "We both have really strong opinions about pretty much everything."

"And we throw them in each other's face with so much love," Hanna nodded with a smirk.

"It's a mutual understanding."

Waving her fork loaded with lettuce in the air absentmindedly, the blonde added, "We're occasionally nice to each other."

"That doesn't sound functional," Aria noted.

"Like your friendship with that one is?" Hanna nodded toward Alison.

"Hey, Hanna," Emily spoke up as she clamped a hand on Alison's thigh hoping to avoid a argumentative response. "Let's model our good behaviors for this very impressionable little angel."

"Fine," the other woman conceded. "Let's talk about something boring and appropriate."

The five women launched into a censored but entertaining conversation covering topics from Aria's latest project to Spencer's party on Saturday. About half an hour went by before a car pulled up next to the curb several yards away from them. "Auri!" a voice called from the vehicle.

"Mommy!" the girl leapt from Emily's lap and onto the pavement.

"Whoa there," the brunette grabbed the girl's arm and carefully wiped off the girl's mouth and fingers. Auri waited patiently until the woman declared, "Alright. You're fit to be seen." She stood up and followed the skipping girl to the car. She greeted the driver through the rolled down passenger side window, "Hey, Mona. Did everything work out?"

"Yup. All's well," as Emily shuffled Auri into the backseat, the mother said, "Thank you so much for watching her. I hope it wasn't an issue."

"Not at all," the other woman shook her head as she buckled in the smiling toddler, "I haven't seen her in months. I needed some Auri time."

"And I needed Emmy time!"

The girl yanked her babysitter into a hug and strangled her to the best of her ability. Once free from Auri's loving clutches, Emily shut the door and leaned into the open front window. "Call me anytime. I missed her."

"Are you okay?" Mona asked. Although fully aware of Emily's struggles, the mother never questioned her friend's ability to take care of her child. While Emily often withdrew from the two person family of her own accord when she slipped, Hanna sometimes stepped in to act as a buffer when the brunette failed to recognize her impairment. Emily never gambled when it came to Auri. The girl was one of the only people she'd yet to fail.

"Yeah. I'm good."

"If you need anything on Saturday, call me Em," Mona instructed rather than requested.

A bit irritated by the reminder of the anniversary only two days away, Emily nodded and replied, "I will. Don't worry." She drummed on the edge of the door and said, "Well, take care. Let me know if you need me to take her off your hands."

"She looks forward to it," Mona smiled.

When Emily turned around to walk back to the table as Mona and Auri drove away, she nearly collided with Alison who stood directly behind her. "Come with me," the blonde demanded as she clenched her fingers around Emily's wrist.

"Umm okay. Where are we going?" Emily asked as Alison pulled her down the sidewalk.

The blonde's fingers tightened as she glanced back briefly to say, "This is the part of whatever this is that we gross everyone out because we can't keep our hands off of each other."

When Alison turned a corner and whisked them down an alley, Emily snickered, "Whatever this is?"

"Do you wanna talk about what this is?" the blonde queried rhetorically. By her quick pace and ever tightening grip on the brunette's hand, she had no intention of talking.

As Alison tucked them behind a small dumpster and backed Emily into a wall, the tanned skinned woman observed, "Well unless those bags of trash count as 'everyone', I don't think we'll be grossing anyone out from back here."

"Well, I want you all to myself," Alison smirked.

"Why is that?" Emily teased. Although the answer was written all over Alison's face and seeping through the hand pressed against her stomach, the brunette did wonder why she'd been dragged off after packing Auri into a car.

"Oh, ya know," Alison said, "I just wanted to have a casual conversation in private. I could tell you about work." When the other woman's back hit the wall, she asked in a low, sultry voice, "Do you want me to talk about work?"

As Alison's right hand pinned her firmly against the jagged bricks, Emily's eyes roamed the face inches from her own. Well, they intended to roam, but were snagged by minute captivating features dotting the pale flesh canvas. In these moments, Emily completely understood the difference between looking and truly seeing. During their brief meetings over the past weeks, she'd visually raked the woman's face searching for signs of lust and attraction. No longer desperate to infer Alison's feelings from every look, the brunette noted seemingly mundane things.

Without layers of liquid foundation on Alison's face, she noticed the texture of her skin, which looked as soft as it felt. She saw the two crevices on the edges of her lips—those pink fleshy bundles of nerves decorated with a multitude of tiny vertical lines. Emily exhaled with pent up desire as Alison unconsciously tucked a sliver of her bottom lip between her teeth.

Although there was nothing spectacular about it, the brunette smiled as her eyes traveled up the vertical valley above Alison's upper lip and to the top of the bridge of her nose. She randomly marveled at the skill of artists who could accurately capture the essence of people and their faces with brushes, pencils and paint. She thought for sure that not even a master painter could do justice to every curve and color mingled together to recreate this astoundingly beautiful face.

As much as the blonde's lips, dimples and nose dumfounded her, the two pools streaked with want paralyzed her. The eyes weren't just blue. Hints of white and grey and shades of green swirled in the sea of blue around a wide black orb. Just when she thought the two round windows to Alison's every want and need might mesmerize her indefinitely, she felt a thumb swipe across her bottom lip and four fingers settle on her neck just below her jaw.

"Are you just going to stare at me?" Alison whispered with her warm breath tickling Emily's mouth.

Before Emily answered, a strange realization knocked on a hidden door in a locked away room in her brain. She thought the key had been lost, but the blonde's words yanked the door from its hinges, flushed away the cobwebs and flooded the room with light. She almost choked on the idea that she might be able to stare at this face for weeks, maybe months, maybe years to come. That wasn't normal. That wasn't expected. It was terrifying.

"Em," a finger tapped on her chin. "are you with me?"

"I think so."

Marveling at the return of the vulnerable tone Emily revealed in Auri's presence, Alison said, "How often does this happen?"

Still dazed by the slightly uncomfortable thought swimming in her brain, the other woman replied, "How often does what happen?"

"You're so quiet and sweet. With Auri you were just…"

Peeking out of her own muddled mind, Emily said, "Kids have that effect on me. They're my kryptonite. Wait," the brunette smirked at the woman pinning her to the wall, "Are you saying I'm not normally sweet?"

"In your own twisted way," the blonde's fingers on the hand not pressing on the brunette's stomach twiddled with a few locks of brown hair.

Reality swallowed her uncertainty and Emily replied, "So did you drag the quiet, sweet Emily back here?" Her wrists locked behind Alison's back, keeping her close. Having sufficiently explored the intricacies of the blonde's face, her eyes wandered to Alison's neck and right shoulder. While she could stare and wonder at the beautiful body in her arms, her mouth couldn't deny itself a taste.

As Emily's warm lips tingled against the skin on her shoulder, Ali replied, "I dragged you." A raw exhale shot from her mouth when a tongue rolled up her shoulder as the other woman trekked up her neck.

And so began the symphony of firsts. Although Emily's lips dominated most of Alison's semi-conscious thought, the rest of her body relished in the introduction of other glorious sensations. The skin on her spine shivered and Emily's fingertips trembled as the brunette traced the very first trail up the blonde's back. Soon, her fingers would know this body as well as she did her own, but in these moments, they wandered searching for spots that made Alison wince or shudder with pleasure. As Alison slid her hand through Emily's hair, her fingers rejoiced in the sensation of the hair ravishing them while the brunette's scalp savored the touch of the strange but welcome digits.

"Which Emily do you prefer?" the brunette asked as her lips pecked slowly toward Alison's mouth.

"Do I have to choose?" Alison murmured.

Thoughtfully, Emily replied, "One's a little less complicated and relatively undamaged."

Leaning into the brunette's ear, Alison whispered, "I told you yesterday—I'm not afraid of you."

No longer even slightly interested in speaking, Emily's right hand abandoned it's comfortable post on Alison's back and tangled in blonde hair as she maneuvered Alison's lips away from her ear. The blonde's hand dropped from the back of Emily's head as the brunette took one look into blue eyes before smashing their lips together. Although their lips met with haste, they didn't proceed in an animalistic passion.

Their noses happily adapted to the occasional nudge and the streams of air pelting their skin. Their lips didn't merely graze and tease, they gently tugged begging for more and parted fulfilling their needs. No movement resulted in a redundant feeling. Every time Alison's teeth barely scraped Emily's lower lip, a different sensation penetrated the pleasure center of her brain. If Emily stilled their kiss just to enjoy the feeling of Ali's lips on hers, different nerve endings on her lips tingled.

When the blonde's tongue drifted past Emily's lips, the brunette happily greeted it with her own. Their mouths widened as they became less interested in each other's lips and intrigued by the tips and tops of their tongues, the roofs of their mouths and the sides of their cheeks.

Although Emily's vocal cords rang with Alison's name, their melded mouths smothered the words into a moan. Her fingers clenched tightly into the blonde's scalp as the sound reverberated through her throat and into her mouth. In a matter of seconds, the brunette's brain was bombarded by a flurry of realizations. She wasn't used to foreplay; she didn't do foreplay. She could practically feel her pulse shooting heat between her thighs. She and Alison had been exploring one another's lips and mouths for several minutes. With any other woman, there would have been teeth clamped on nipples and fingers drenched with want and fulfillment as she pummeled into her partner. They could be naked or fully clothed. They might have kissed or they might have not. As the moan echoed in her mouth, she consciously decided that this had to be different. She hastily buried every lewd, impersonal thought beneath a sincere aim toward intimacy rather than temporary pleasure.

She couldn't stomach touching Alison with an impure intention. Although every sexual part of her body railed against her noble intentions, Emily unlocked their lips to proactively communicate, "Ali."

"Em," the blonde muttered straining forward to the brunette's lips.

"I want to do this right," she responded to every small peck placed by Alison as she desperately tried to collect her thoughts and form complete sentences.

"Trust me," Alison's tongue snacked across her bottom lip, "you're doing it right."

"I want to fuck you," the brunette stated bluntly. She felt the blonde's lips still. She probably should have chosen a different word. She leaned back and quickly locked eyes with wide blue ones. "But I'm not going to. That's what I always do."

Much to Emily's surprise, Alison immediately understood and replied with soft fingers trickling down her jaw, "Emily."

"This has to be different," Emily began to tense with determination.

"Em," both of Alison's hands now cupped the face clinched with frustration. "This will be different for both of us." Still somewhat on edge, the brunette merely nodded. Softly, Alison requested, "Now tell me that I'm beautiful and kiss me some more."

Just as Emily predicted, she melted at the sound of Alison's words and the reassurance of her touch. "You're beautiful," she murmured. Instead of dwelling in the fear snapping at her heels, she booted her insecurities aside and frantically searched for a sledgehammer. As Alison pressed her lips to hers, she snatched up the weapon and attacked a vulnerable spot in her walls of defense. As their tongues danced, she bashed at the bricks while her arms screamed in pain and the fear barked and bit at her legs. When their kisses slowed to soft lingerings, she threw down the nearly broken hammer in triumph. When Alison pulled back, smiled and blue eyes fused with hers, Emily basked in the sunlight streaming through the gaping hole in the wall. She hadn't seen this light in years and she couldn't think of a better reason to risk getting burned than the woman in front of her.

"Are you still here?" Alison asked placing one last kiss on the musing girl's nose.

Wrapping her arms tightly around the blonde's waist, Emily nodded and assured, "There's no getting rid of me now."

"Good," Ali didn't break eye contact and said, "Because I do want you to fuck me."

"Wow!" Emily snorted. "That went from sweet to crude really fast."

"Oh, I'm supposed to be the emotional sweet one?" Alison teased.

"Hell no, you just keep being you."

"Guys," Hanna's voice rang out from the other side of the dumpster. "Can you get your hands and mouths off of each other and actually talk to us?"

"We're just talking," Emily lied still staring at Alison.

"Oh, please. Emily Fields doesn't talk behind dumpsters."

"Well go away so we can put our clothes back on," Emily replied.

"Okay. Gross. I'm going." Emily could practically see the rolling eyes and small gag. "Oh," the blonde added, "be sure your shirt is on right. I can't even count how many times you've strutted into a room with your shirt inside out after you've—."

"Go away!" the brunette insisted again.

With a raised eyebrow, Alison noted, "You seem to have a reputation."

"That's such a strong word," Emily said with a strained tone as if trying to convince herself as well as Alison.

"Hmmm," Ali murmured as she slipped her fingers through Emily's and pointed them toward the street.

"Hmm as in 'oh that's interesting but we'll never speak of it again' or as in 'we're going to have to talk about this later'?" Although Emily hoped for the former, she had limited experience with Alison and her level of curiosity.

"I'll let you know," the blonde said cryptically.

Opting not to push, Emily squeezed the hand in hers and said, "C'mon special friend. Let's see what kind of shit storm this lunch can turn into."


I hope the wait was worth it! My brain is totally fried. The next chapter is going to be a doozy.