Author's Note: For those who celebrate it, Happy Valentine's Day! :)

For Caroline in Melbourne, you are not signed in so I can't send you a note. Your reviews have been a delight that I looked forward to reading, you literally made me laugh out loud at times. Thank you!

The Care and Keeping of Christmas Trees

Rule #14: Celebrate with hot buttered rum

While he began pulling out ornaments, Brennan slipped into the kitchen and took out a small pot. She dropped in a pat of butter, water, brown sugar (Booth loved it on everything!), a bit of cinnamon and allspice (no nutmeg to be found), and set the pot to a gentle simmer.

"What's that smell?" he hollered from the next room.

"Wait one minute and you'll see," she chuckled. So impatient, like a child.

Turning to the special bottle she'd pilfered earlier from Booth's bar, Brennan poured two fingers of Cpt. Morgan into two mugs, added the hot spices and stirred. The delicious scent drifted ahead of her when she took the cups to Booth.

He took his and sipped, his face lighting brighter than the tree could ever hope to be. "You made hot buttered rum?"

"Yes. You said your grandmother made it while you decorated the tree."

In the span of a few heartbeats his expression changed, went darker somehow. Without a word he took his mug, hers too, and set them both aside. He moved slowly, deliberately, intently, and she watched, puzzled by the intensity. His eyes blazed into hers with something ... she didn't know what ... a fire she'd never seen before burning in the sepia surrounding her. Somehow she could only watch and wonder as the world moved, as Booth moved and surrounded her. When did that happen? He was everywhere.

Then, before she could quite comprehend how she hadn't noticed her own change in position, Booth had drawn her against him and her eyes fell closed. His hot breath fanning her lips, and a crackling sense of him, so close. It was excruciating. No ... yes ... he was going to... But then he didn't.

Trapped in an agony of suspended anticipation. They were silent, both frozen and burning hot with awareness.

"Bones," he whispered, the soft brush of rum-scented breath causing her knees to nearly buckle.

She didn't want to open her eyes, she didn't know what to do. A tiny whimper burbled out of her strangled throat because she needed him to do something that would end this exquisite torture.

His voice struck her like lightning.

"I kissed you at the campfire because it's tradition for people in love to kiss each other."

Shock popped her eyes open but then blistering heat slammed them closed again. His lips, his mouth, his love licking into her like flames.

Fiery sweet, spicy rum and heat, hot consumption, burning combustion.

She groaned, he growled, and his hands that had cut and dragged a tree now soothed themselves in the gentle chestnut tangle of her hair, on the silky plain of her abruptly bared back when he pulled her shirt loose. Her palms that were blistered brushed over his velvety nape and measured the curvature of his shoulders. Then he wasn't just kissing her mouth; he was blazing trails against her cheek, her jaw, her neck, against any skin that wasn't covered in cloth. They both coiled and strained to get even closer until Booth pulled his mouth away from her with a great, gulping gasp and a desperate grab for self control. As for Brennan, she slipped to the floor in a boneless heap. Multitasking such a mundane thing as standing while still in the aftershocks of Boothy bliss...? Not going to happen.

She fell backwards, breathing hard, smelling fir resin and staring up into the Technicolor dance of lights on the ceiling. Booth flopped down beside her, but then his hand found hers and squeezed, and the explosions of awareness were triggered all over again. She squeezed her eyes closed, feeling herself on sensory overload because Booth was whispering to her again.

"You're not going to argue with me?" A teasing brush of his nose against hers, and then another steamy freight train of kisses and she was absolutely drowning in Booth.

Couldn't think.

What was he doing to her?

It was probably an act of mercy when he finally pulled away and rested beside her. Beyond the riot of her senses, Brennan's battle to order her thoughts was waged internally, spurred on by her desire to recover just enough to understand his question, but her defeat had already been ensured by his total commandeering of her consciousness. Even with her eyes closed she only managed to mutter, "About what?"

"That we're in love."

"We are?" She wondered how he could be so certain. Indeed, she wondered how it was that stringing two words together just now posed such a challenge, while Booth was effortlessly uttering complete and grammatically correct sentences.

"I've been in love with you for a long time," he confessed into the palm of her hand, his lips tracing warm arcs over the blisters she'd earned for him. "And you're in love with me." Each word was punctuated with a caress against one of the blisters, as if each one gave evidence of something, but the final argument he left for last. "This whole crappy day ending with you making me hot buttered rum instead of kicking my ass proves it."

"It does?"

"It does," he murmured drowsily.

The lights were blinking overhead, Booth's fingers gently playing with hers where their hands had tangled together. She closed her eyes, warmed all the way through and blissfully content beside the only man she would ever be willing to go through such hell for. For Booth she would do anything ... and maybe that was love.

~Q~

Author's Note: And now it's time for a special Valentine's surprise ... one more chapter will post tomorrow. You know why? Because they didn't decorate the tree yet!