He kisses her, his lips desperate against hers, his thumbs rubbing circles over her cheeks, his tongue sweeping across her top lip as she reaches up under his jacket and her hands grasp urgently at his shirt. She pulls him tighter to her, tugging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, and when she pushes herself closer and feels him hard against her she deepens the kiss, moaning softly into his mouth.

He's the one who pulls away, and she watches as he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it loosely over a kitchen chair. He smiles and pushes his hands into her hair before he dips his head and runs his tongue down her neck, sucking lightly on her skin where her neck meets her shoulder. She's aware that she's squirming uncontrollably under him, but she doesn't care, the feel of his lips on her skin after what feels like hours of foreplay is everything she wanted. He moves lower, his mouth on her collarbone and his hands pushing her dress higher up her thighs.

"Take your dress off." He doesn't lift his head and his words are warm on her skin.

"Are you asking me to strip for you in the kitchen?" She gives him a coy look when he glances up at her. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I won't..."

"Well, I remember you saying you wanted me to see what was under the dress, so..." He steps back and watches her as she slowly turns around.

"Unzip me..." she says, biting her lip when his hand touches her skin and he starts to slowly pull her zip down, almost excruciatingly slowly.

She feels him step back and she fights the urge to turn around, instead pulling the sleeves of her dress down onto her shoulders and sliding it slowly down her body, hearing his sharp intake of breath when she bends forward to step out of it completely. His hand moves to rest on the nape of her neck, his skin warm on hers as he runs his fingers down her spine.

"Turn around, baby." His voice is low, but heavy with desire, and she feels her breathing quicken in response.

She turns and reaches for him, her hands craving the familiar feel of him...his broad shoulders, his strong arms, his solid chest. His eyes lock onto hers and he watches her as she starts to unbutton his shirt, her fingers fumbling slightly in their haste, not helped by the gentle strokes of his fingers moving down her arm and sending her brain into overdrive. She regains control when she finally opens his last button and he throws off his shirt. Pushing her shoulders back slightly, she watches as his eyes drift to her chest and his hand reaches instinctively for the tiny pink rose on the front of her bra, his finger slowly circling it. When his gaze flicks back to her face, his eyes are dark, determined, and she feels an unmistakable heat spread across her cheeks.

"I like this," he says quietly, his finger giving the small pink rose one last touch before his hand drifts down her stomach, brushes across her abdomen and moves down to the matching knickers. "And these...I like these too."

"Yes, I thought you might." She smiles and immediately follows it with a gasp as he guides her back against the kitchen table. She's grateful, not for the first time although not usually for this reason, that she invested in good quality furniture all those years ago.

"Oh, Harry...happy Valentine's Day to me." He dips his head and kisses her neck.

"Do you remember what we did last Valentine's Day?" She moans slightly as his teeth scrape lightly over her skin.

"Yeah, and it was nowhere near as much fun as this…" He looks up at her and grins, his eyes full of promise. "It wasn't the worst stakeout we've ever been on though."

"No, that's true...we may even have broken a rule or two, if I remember rightly." What she remembers is him being far more irritated about having to work that night than she was, whereas she's never really been entirely sold on Valentine's Day anyway. The element of surprise isn't something she particularly appreciates, although she did cope admirably with him showing up to the stakeout with what essentially amounted to a romantic picnic. "Self-imposed rules, of course."

"Which you, Sergeant, stomped all over that night." His thumb runs slowly across her cheekbone and she sighs.

"Because you, Lieutenant, brought chocolate covered strawberries, and fed them to me in a quite unexpectedly romantic way, actually. I mean, I know now that you're a big old romantic but I hadn't quite realised the extent of it at that point. I thought you were still just on your best behaviour to make sure you got an invite into my bed every time you drove me home." She smirks and remembers how glad she was that the stakeout yielded nothing they needed to pay any real attention to because she's quite certain neither of them did. "And anyway, if I make the rules, I'm fairly confident that means I'm also allowed to break them."

"Oh, you can break them anytime you like, honey." He leans in and kisses her, his hand moving to her neck, his thumb rubbing circles along her jawbone as he pulls back.

"Anytime? I'm not sure my climbing into your lap and kissing the hell out of you would play too well in the middle of one of Spikings' weekly briefings." She grins, briefly allowing herself to imagine doing just that.

"It would make it the first time I've ever enjoyed one of those damn things though." There's a predatory look in his eyes that makes her knees want to buckle and she's thankful all over again for the sturdy support of the table behind her.

"Well, they do say there's a first time for everything." First kiss, first date, first time she took him into her bed, she remembers them all as she runs her hand slowly down his chest.

His hands move slowly down to her hips and she feels his thumbs tickling her skin in the instant before he lowers his head again and his tongue runs around her belly button, so slowly and so softly that she can only moan as she moves to clutch the table under her hands. Before she can attempt to think, he tightens his grip on her and manages, in one quick move, to push her down flat onto the table, looking at her with a pure and primal hunger in his eyes. She feels the slight roughness of his fingertips against her thighs as he pulls her knickers down her legs, his eyes never leaving her face, his breath hot on her skin.

"So, maybe you were right." His tone is plain, simple, his voice low and sending a welcome warmth through her body. "In the bar earlier...I guess maybe I was thinking about getting my head between your thighs."

"I...knew it." She's almost breathless as she leans back onto her elbows, shoving something desperately out of her way, a fruit bowl maybe, a vase, she doesn't care. "Oh God, Dempsey. Stop thinking about it and just do it."

He looks up at her, clearly amused by her impatience. She feels his mouth on her thigh, his lips sucking on her skin, his teeth scraping higher, hard enough that it just tickles the border of pain, hard enough that she knows she'll be left with a bruise, a tiny reminder of his touch hidden beneath her skirt. She knows how much he loves to leave his mark, somewhere the rest of the world won't see, like a secret that's theirs alone. His tongue moves over her skin, creeping slowly up her thigh, and she bites her lip as she remembers the look in his eyes in the bar tonight, the look that told her this was exactly what he wanted to do to her. She hears a chair scrape across the floor and marvels at his skills in somehow pulling up a seat without moving his mouth from her thigh for a single second. His hand grips onto her skin, parting her legs a little wider, and she feels a familiar reaction build within her. Sometimes he barely has to touch her before she's ready and desperate for him, and tonight is most definitely one of those times.

He runs his tongue gently, slowly against her, his hot breath mingling with her own burning heat. His fingers move from her hipbone across her stomach and lower, and she feels her muscles contracting under his touch, dancing beneath his fingertips as he curls them tenderly against her skin. Not for the first time she finds herself thinking about all the times she sat beside him in his car, or hers, the long and often dull stakeouts, nights drinking endless cups of coffee and talking about everything and nothing. All those hours sitting so close while she was thoroughly unaware of the things he was capable of doing to her, or of the way her body would react to his when their time finally came, but mostly never dreaming for a moment that she could love him with a force that still threatens to take her knees out from under her sometimes.

"Goddammit, I love you." His voice is low as it breaks into her thoughts, and his dark gaze holds hers when she looks down at him.

"Say my name, Dempsey, please…" She thinks about tonight, about the other times they've done this, the sweet shiver of anticipation when he approached her in the bar tonight, his eyes drinking her in like she was the finest champagne. She wonders what she would have thought of him had they met in a bar, wonders if she would have read his confidence as arrogance and brushed him off, or if the attraction to him that has always bubbled under the surface would have won out. "I love these nights, you know that. I like seeing what other women must see when they see you, and I love knowing you're all mine, but when we get home I don't want to pretend I'm doing this with anyone else. I just want you. I-"

"Oh, Harry, Harry...my beautiful Harry..." He stands up and leans over her, his voice low and his eyes soft as he looks into hers. "When I walked into that bar, all I could think about was that the hottest woman in the place was my girl, who I get to take home tonight, every night. Believe me, it's you I was thinking about, it's always you I'm thinking about, angel."

"Do you ever think about what might have happened if we hadn't met at work? If we'd met in a bar, or at a party, or…" His fingers move to her thigh and she pauses, completely derailed by his touch. "I wonder sometimes…if we would have gravitated towards each other wherever we were, I wonder if I would have brought you home with me, if you might have crept out before I woke up in the morning, and we never would have seen each other again, or-"

"There's not a chance in hell I could ever have spent just one night with you and then walked away." He cuts in and the look in his eyes tells her he means every word. "I'm going to spend the next fifty years with you and it still won't be enough, so-"

She stops him with a kiss, one hand on the back of his neck dragging his face down to hers, her other barely keeping her balance on the table. Their lips meet in a hectic collision and her uncontrollable need to feel his mouth on hers is completely overwhelming. She pushes herself to sit up so she can slide both hands into his hair as she deepens the kiss and when she wraps her legs around his waist, she realises he's still wearing his trousers.

"I love you." There's nothing more she needs to say so she stops there and moves her hand to his belt, tugging on it softly, grinning when he groans as her hand brushes lower. "You know, in terms of clothing...we are very unevenly matched."

"You make a good point." He pulls back and makes such a show of running an approving look down the length of her body that she feels like she might explode even if he doesn't lay another finger on her. "We probably need to do something about that, right?"

"Right. What I think you should do is...take me to bed, Lieutenant." She giggles when he sweeps her quickly off the table, pushing the chair aside as his arms wrap tightly around her and they head for the bedroom.