Title: This is Life

Disclaimer: Not mine. I think the writers would die in their chairs, if they seen this.

Rating: Oh… such an M.

A/N: All I can say is review and maybe even tell me what you want.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

"I think I drank way too much…" Angela sighed, massaging her temples with stiff fingers, her eyes closed. "If I look at the light, I heave. Like I'm going to vomit. Which really, really sucks because I should be deliriously happy…" Angela was a woman who didn't retain gossip well, and despite her obvious suffering, she was keen to expose the secret that bubbled inside her chest.

Brennan uncapped her pen, maintaining a calm composure so as not to alert her friend to her own eagerness to know. Sometimes Temperance could be as much a gossip as Ange.

"Really? Why's that, then?" she asked, scrawling her name at the bottom of two reports, due to Goodman's office in thirty minutes. If Angela was going to spill some sordid sex scandal, she'd have to do it soon.

"Jack doesn't drink much, you know," she said and the statement sounded random and something of an anti-climax, until she hurried to continue. "Which turns out to be a great thing, because when he's sober, he pays particular attention to sexual gratification in a woman…" Her eyes opened now, twinkling in ways that only a newly satisfied girl's eyes can.

"You slept with Hodgins?" Brennan asked, recalling Angela's anecdote about kissing the doctor. It seemed fitting and somehow the unlikely pair just clicked. To Brennan it were like slotting the pieces of a puzzle together, stepping back and admiring the sheer craftsmanship of it. Angela and Hodgins somehow worked. It defied logic…

"No," Ange said and not sounding at all remorseful of this fact. "But there was plenty of touching and I am not disappointed with what I've learned so far…" the naughty insinuation hung in the air, unspoken and quite unnecessary for Brennan could easily imagine what kind of touching had ensued once they departed from the Christmas Gala.

She opened her mouth to comment, to express in some way the happiness she felt for Angela. But her friend, headache or not, was not a woman who would miss an opportunity to gather secret scandals and lurid stories. "You fucked Booth last night, didn't you…" she said, crossing her legs and reclining back against the sofa, her lips a fine, knowing smirk.

"Excuse me?" Brennan glared, pen hovering above her page, frozen.

"Don't play coy, Bren," Angela scolded, her eyebrow raised in a fine arch. "Last night, when I was wandering around, admiring pieces of stunning art, genuine stuff too, I noticed a rather dishevelled but definitely sexed up Temperance leaving the cloak room on the first floor. By the way, sweetie, post coital blush suits your skin tone perfectly. It's better than cosmetics any day…"

Brennan was blushing at that moment, wondering how many others had observed the clandestine meeting between them and if, God forbid, Angela had heard anything from within the tiny room. Struggling to form a sentence, she sighed.

"That obvious, huh?" she dropped her chin to her hand, tapping her fingertips against her cheek as she contemplated the blatancy with which she and Booth had thrown caution to the wind. It was lunacy – a brand of craziness that derived from never being sexually satisfied and always, always being ready for more.

"Honey, you've been dripping with that 'just got laid' look for days! What's brought on this horniness?" Angela's eyes were rounded and intrigued, a second flush of warmth passing over Temperance's cheeks as she lowered her gaze to the reports beneath her elbows. "Bren? Has our hunky federal agent turned you into a sex slave?"

Brennan sighed, a strand of hair falling over her eyes. "No," she said, "quite the opposite. I've been more than willing. I feel… Angela I'm not familiar with being so sexual. I'm not sure if I can play the sultry vixen…" Angela giggled, shaking her head.

"Bren, sweetie, is he complaining? I don't imagine…" Brennan pushed her chair back, striding across the office, peering through the glass into the laboratory beyond. "Are you alright?" Angela asked, her tone softening into kind concern. The clock was ticking and Brennan needed to be in Goodman's office shortly then straight up to archaeology for the most boring meeting in history.

"I'm just checking that we're alone… last time I thought I was going unobserved my best friend was standing in the corridor witnessing everything!" she hurried off into a tangent, her pulse rising a few notches as she paced the space behind her desk, pausing to rearrange an ancient Aztec vase that had become the centrepiece for her cabinet. "Angela… I have hormones raging through my body, never content with being dormant and driving me wild! I wake up at two am, ready to pounce on him…"

"Everyone gets raging hormones, sweetie. It's one of the best things about being a woman…" Angela winked, chuckling to herself, probably recalling Jack. Brennan felt almost as though she were intruding in a private, sexually charged moment.

"No… Ange… it's because…"

The door swung open and Booth stepped in, dressed in dark blue jeans that rode low on his hips, a blue hooded sweater. He was smiling, rubbing his hands together. "Bones, we got a lead on the bastard, lets go…"

Brennan frowned, reclining back in her chair, raking her gaze, almost involuntarily over the length of his lithe, defined frame that seemed to radiated the kind of raw sexuality that made wet, urgently requiring release. She held her breath, willing her desire to subside long enough for her to concentrate on what he was saying.

"Go?" she asked dumbly. "I can't go anywhere. I have a meeting with Goodman… What lead?" Booth and his SAC had spent three weeks hunting down the bastard responsible for murdering what had now accumulated to six people. Two days ago, he'd captured a suspect, who was being held for questioning and as far as Brennan understood it was a case of waiting until the guy cracked under the pressure of their interrogation.

"Goodman knows you have to come. Let's go, the car's waiting…" She rubbed her forehead, pushing her chair back again and shrugging at Ange. "Whatever you ladies were discussing is going to have to wait, I'm afraid." He sounded genuinely apologetic, taking Brennan's elbow and steering her towards the door. "Romany is freaking out, he said it wasn't really necessary for you to have a look at it right now but I think there is, so I defied his wishes and came to collect you."

Brennan blinked as he practically frog-marched her outside, waiting until the doors hissed behind them until she spoke. "It's necessary for me to see what? You can send anything to the Jeffersonian and someone will look at it here…"

Booth was shaking his head, firm and sullen, his features adapting the dark brooding look that told her he was in a no nonsense mood. "Not this," he said, unlocking his SUV. "I don't even know how we would package this to be sent…" He slipped the key into the ignition, the engine roaring to life as Brennan strapped herself in. "It's not something I'd want to FedEx, anyway."

Speeding along the highway with his usual lack of road safety, he mumbled about needing expert assistance at once.

"I thought you had a guy in custody? I thought…" Brennan said, watching his face, drinking in the handsome ruggedness of him and remembered their dangerous, liaison in the closet. Her cheeks flamed at the memory of his hot wet tongue, tasting her as though she were fine wine.

As the urban city thinned to suburban and finally becoming a vast length of infinite white, rural fields that undulated steadily, almost the exact colour of the sky, Brennan frowned. "How did you find anything in all this snow?" she asked, slipping from the car as he killed the engine.

"I didn't find it in the snow," he said, taking her wrist. "Follow me, it's just a little ways over here." Crisp, freshly fallen snow crunched beneath their boots as they plodded through a blanketed field, deep prints left in their wake. She noted that there were already two tracks, one set heading in their direction and the second in the opposite direction.

"Do you think you have enough for a conviction?" she asked, the wet flakes soaking through her jeans, causing a icy shiver to creep along her spine.

"Yes," Booth said, his voice rigid with certainty. "The bastard has guilty written all over him. Careful, Bones, there's a dip in the terrain, just here…" she heeded his warning, allowing him the small privilege of assisting her over the gap as the field sloped about thirty feet, and a long, narrow building stood, desolate and dark, a sombre reflection of the wintry afternoon.

"Is this where he killed them…?" Brennan asked a hesitant trepidation seeping into her voice as she observed the intricate grey stonework, the slated tiles, coated with powdery snow.

"No," Booth said, descending the slope with the carefulness of someone who understood the risks of icy hills. "Watch your step…"

Easing the heavy oak door open, sending a flaky cascade of snow tumbling down around them, Booth gestured for her to enter, watching as the tense muscles of her shoulders bunched as she took a step over the threshold, sucking a deep breath into her lungs. She smelt spice in the air, and holly. Berries, perhaps. All the scents of Christmas.

"Someone's been living here recently," she observed, running her eyes over the antique oak furniture, the half burned essence stick that was the source of cinnamon. "Okay," Temperance said at last, deciding that the building posed no immediate threat. "What is it that you can't FedEx?" She couldn't smell death or decay and the immaculate décor did not suggest a sinister secret.

She startled when his hands fell upon her hips, not with the same professional demeanour he'd been showing just seconds earlier. His touch prickled at her skin. "This," he said, taking her hand and pressing her opened fingers to the rigid line of his penis. "FedEx generally don't like it when you send genitalia… most courier services operate a 'no penis' policy, actually…" his breath was hot against her neck, and her whole body stiffened, except for her hand, which relaxed around him.

"I'm supposed to be in a meeting…" she whined, "and you dragged me from work, drove me to the suburbs and all for what…?" Booth smiled against her neck, his tongue touching the edge of her jaw.

"Sex, Bones, what else? I thought my plan was very carefully orchestrated," he slipped his arms around her waist, looping his fingers beneath her belt, deftly unbuckling her. Temperance sighed, dropping her eyes to the sofa, the immaculate surroundings.

"Where are we?" she asked, leaning into him as his palm brushed over the torso, hardened by her early states of pregnancy.

"It's on the market to be sold and I cut a deal with the estate agent that I'd like some time to look around," he ground his hips into her ass, the length of his shaft insistent and urgent. "I'm getting good at finding these illicit places to fuck you, wouldn't you agree, Bones?"

The mention of his 'fuck' promise flooded her with wet nectar. Her clit throbbed in sweet anticipation. "Very good," she agreed, flicking the button of her jeans, wriggling out of her clothes and turning to him, reaching for his buckle, only to find that he clicked his tongue, removing her fumbling fingers with a devious smile.

"We have all afternoon," he said, "and I intend on using our time wisely."

"Why can't we just wait until we get home, Booth, and fuck then? Why organise a meeting under the pretence of work so… ooh…" his tongue passed over the line of her cleavage, dipping into the crevice with a hot, wet lick. She sighed, finding his hair with her fingers, catching the scent of her own arousal, merging with spicy scents of Christmas.

"Don't you find this exciting, Bones?" he asked, slipping his finger into her panties, brushing only the pad of his finger of the tight bud of her clit, dipping into the sticky evidence of her arousal. "Apparently so," he confirmed with a smile in his tone. She moaned, his name filling the air as a purring, husky whisper. "I knew you wouldn't protest… I know you're horny… I saw it the minute I walked into your office."

She was powerless to resist him, seeking the satisfaction that only he offered. Time and time again. The thick, solid length of him inside her, filling her, making her body buzz with need. It was a sweet addiction. Booth had a way, a talent, a certain magic that brought her to the brink of euphoria each and every time he touched her. And when he fucked her – truly fucked her, with the kind of inhibitions that they'd shared recently, he tore beyond the barrier of euphoria and took her somewhere else.

Made her high. A drug,

"Okay," he said, pressing his finger against her clitoris so hard, she bit on her lip and released a moan that filled the room. "I'm going to torture you, Temperance. I'm going to make you so wet and arouse you so much, you'll beg me to give you what you want…" a tremble ran through her body, her fingers reaching out to touch him, to feeling the solid length of his penis against her skin. He made noises of disapproval, snagging her wrist and shaking his head. "No way, Bones," he said, "that would be too easy."

She whimpered. "Please…"

"Get undressed," he commanded, "I think I'll start with my tongue."

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

And so he shall, you have my word.