Thank you to the guest who reviewed to remind me it was Saturday. I've had a long day, and I really overdid it. Time just got away from me. It's still Saturday where I am though. Sorry for the wait.

You may notice in this chapter that I had to work a little extra at making Booth less of a douche. It's been a recurrent issue as I've been writing this story. I don't know why they wrote him like that in S3, but seriously... Some episodes it seemed like every time he opened his mouth, he talked out of his ass instead. Well, not MY Booth. ;)

Enjoy!

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Chapter 5

"So Hodgins worked his magic, and he's sure we're headed to the right place?"

"It's not magic, Booth. It's science. He discovered two specific pollens that are only found-"

"Okay, right, yeah… Sorry. Science." Booth shifted in the driver's seat to pull his buzzing phone from his pocket and read an incoming text from Agent Reilly. "Sam's gonna meet us there," he told Brennan.

"You told him? He's too emotional," Brennan argued, concerned over the potential confrontation that could be awaiting them in Virginia.

"This is his case. He's invested."

"He's irrational. Probably male menopause."

"What?" Booth bristled predictably. "He's a good man, and you know what? There's no such thing. That's just a myth."

"Factually, hormone production drops in your fifties. Sexual desire decreases. You have to deal with the reduction of muscle mass, erectile dysfunction-"

"Hey, alright," he interrupted her, flustered. "Let's just keep the conversation up, shall we?" Brennan was not to be deterred. Getting her husband riled, particularly about things like this, had become one of her favorite kinds of entertainment.

"And there's evidence that certain men become very unstable."

"Do I need to pull over somewhere and remind you just how functional I am?"

"We don't really have time for that," she grinned. He huffed irritably. "You're very testy."

"And thirty-five. I'm only thirty-five."

"Almost thirty-six, technically." She smiled wider when he frowned at her. "Okay, okay," she acquiesced, letting him self-sooth in silence for a few minutes before changing the subject. "Speaking of birthdays, what would you like to do for yours? It's coming up soon."

"Yeah, but yours comes first," he reminded her, smiling now. "I've already started the plans."

"Do I get to know them beforehand this time?"

"Hmmm… I'll think about it. Right now, I'm going with no."

Brennan rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to their surroundings. She realized that they were nearing Watkins' home, and she shifted her thoughts back to their case. When Booth pulled to a stop outside of a small house in a wooded area, she noted the immediate change in his demeanor.

"No… I don't like this; it's too quiet," Booth said, drawing his gun and keeping it at waist-level. Brennan followed behind him as he approached the front door and retrieved her own firearm from her bag. This was still an area of contention between them, but Booth couldn't argue that his wife was a reasonably skilled marksman. She had passed a Bureau-standard marksmanship test several months prior, and since she had a concealed weapon permit, he had decided to let it go. For the most part.

"Gee, why didn't you bring the big one?" he asked, noting that she'd left her .50 caliber at home. His sarcastic tone earned him an eye roll. They entered the home cautiously, and Brennan quickly spotted something on the floor in the living room. She started to move ahead of Booth to investigate, but he gently pulled her back behind him, whispering her nickname in admonition.

What had caught Brennan's eye turned out to be the prone form of Neil Watkins. He was lying on his living room rug with a bullet wound in his head and a gun in his left hand. Agent Reilly was standing over his body and turned immediately toward them when they entered the room. He aimed his weapon directly at Booth.

"Easy, Sam. Put the gun down, and step away from the body." Both he and Brennan had their guns trained on Reilly, and the trio stood in a tense standoff for several moments before Reilly placed his weapon on the arm of the sofa between them. He drew their attention to the gun in Watkins' hand and insisted that the man had clearly done this to himself. Booth was inclined to agree, but it didn't change the fact that the way they'd discovered Reilly at the scene made him a suspect. Judging by the resigned expression on the older man's face, Booth knew that Reilly understood his position perfectly.

Brennan returned to the lab with Watkins' body so that Cam could perform an autopsy. Cam told her that the bullet in Watkins' head matched the weapon that was found in his hand. Trajectory also indicated that the shot could have been self-inflicted, but she added the caveat that it still could have been staged.

Brennan found evidence of rheumatoid arthritis on the x-rays of Watkins' hands, and she concluded that Watkins wouldn't have been able to pull the trigger. Zack pointed out that if that were the case, the man wouldn't have had the dexterity to assemble the bomb either.

"There's one man who knew exactly how Neil made his bombs," Cam observed. Brennan nodded, following her train of thought.

"The same man who worked the case for thirty years. I'll call Booth."

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Although Booth advised Agent Reilly to get a lawyer, he didn't end up needing one. With further examination of the watch used as a detonator, Hodgins discovered a thumbprint on the battery. The casing had protected it from the blast, and he was able to pull the print. It belonged to Jeremy Nash.

When Booth and Brennan returned to the Nash residence to make the arrest, Jeremy and his daughter were dressed for his wife's funeral and greeted them on the front step. The letter Angela had been working to reconstruct had turned out to be addressed to Celia Nash, rather than Neil Watkins as the team had originally suspected. June Harris had written to her daughter, pleading for her forgiveness and explaining why she had decided to turn herself into the FBI.

Brennan couldn't help but be reminded of her own mother's last message to the daughter she had ultimately decided to leave behind. She hoped that Celia might eventually find a similar comfort from the letter her mother had left for her. As Booth read Jeremy Nash his rights and guided him into the back seat of a police cruiser, Brennan sat on a garden bench with her arm around Celia. To her surprise, the young woman collapsed against her, sobbing into Brennan's jacket. She instinctively wrapped her arms around Celia's shoulders and held her as she cried. Celia wasn't that much older than Brennan had been when her parents had vanished from her life, and she was now every bit as alone. Her mother was dead; her father would be in jail.

Booth watched his wife comfort Celia with a mixture of sympathy and pride. He knew that Brennan still believed herself to be a 'brain person' as opposed to a 'heart person,' but it was times like this that proved her overwhelmingly wrong on the subject. Her heart was every bit as big as his own, even if she occasionally needed his help to understand it.

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While Brennan returned to the prison for another visit with her father, Booth went back to his office to start on the paperwork that always came with closing a case. They agreed to meet up later, but neither of them anticipated Agent Reilly's appearance in Booth's office doorway...holding a bottle of scotch.

The two men spent a couple of hours toasting to 'the changing of the guard,' and by the time Booth left the Hoover to meet up with his wife, he realized that he would need to call a cab in order to get there. Booth asked the driver to drop him off on the Mall, hoping that he might be able to walk off a bit of his intoxication. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that their favorite coffee cart was still open despite the lateness of the hour. Brennan found him a short while later on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"How much scotch did you drink?" she asked, watching as he flapped the lid of his styrofoam cup and made noises as if it were speaking to him.

"Oh, just enough. You know, I would've invited you, but Reilly… He just… Wow, he really doesn't like you."

"I understand," she replied, biting back a smile.

"I'm sorry, was that rude?" he asked, squinting at her slightly.

"Not from someone who's been drinking." He grinned drunkenly at her and turned to look across the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument. The obelisk was lit up against the night sky, and Booth sighed contentedly.

"God, you know, I love this place. I love it. I love this country… You know, I'll tell you something… If I had been working law enforcement back in the day, when they threw all that tea in the harbor? I'm good, alright? I'm good. I would've rounded everybody up, and we'd still be English." He lifted his coffee cup into the air as if to toast King George.

"You think?"

"Yup. Yup, definitely." Booth sighed again and sipped his coffee. "How'd it go with your dad? Did you get to see him? It's not exactly visiting hours."

"I did. It went alright, I guess. You were right-"

"You seem to be saying that a lot lately. I like it," he interrupted, giving her a lopsided charm smile. She chuckled and encouraged him to drink more coffee before she continued.

"As an anthropologist, I accept change as the natural order of things. But with him, I didn't allow for transformation. I predicated his behavior on a set of outmoded preconceptions. It wasn't rational."

"Wow," he sighed, swaying a little as he gazed back at her. "I… I didn't get any of that."

"I was judging him based on the memory of Matthew Brennan. Like you said, it's sort of like they're two different people, at least in my mind. When I was growing up, I didn't know that he was Max Keenan. I didn't know any of the things he'd done as Max Keenan. Once I learned who he was, it didn't make sense to me how he could be both at the same time. It's like you and Parker," she elaborated when he still looked lost. "You're a father and an FBI agent. He doesn't really know the kinds of things you do as an FBI agent, and you don't behave like one when he's around… But you're always both. If I were conducting an objective experiment on my father, observing his behavior…I'd have to conclude that he loves me."

"Hmm. Why? What happened?" Booth had managed to follow her logic for the most part, but he knew that Max had to have said or done something to bring about this change. She'd been struggling with the concept for years. Even if she hadn't found it in her to forgive him yet, this was still a huge step in the right direction.

"We played cards," she replied with a smile. Though it wasn't at all the response he'd been expecting, Booth couldn't help but grin back at her.

"Cool."

"I killed him."

"Good for you," he congratulated her. Booth couldn't suppress an appreciative chuckle at her proper use of the colloquialism, but it came out sounding more like a drunken giggle. He laid his head in her lap looked up at her with unfocused eyes.

"You're really drunk," she teased him. "We should go home." Booth flashed his pearly whites and snuggled happily into her breasts.

"Already? Because, you know… We've never really had sex in public." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and she shook her head, still smiling.

"You're far too intoxicated for that, Booth. Come on. Let's go home." She gently pushed him back into a sitting position and stood up, offering her hands to help him stand as well. He swayed on his feet, and she wrapped an arm around his waist as they made their way toward her car. "You're rather tactile when your cognitive functions are impaired," she noted as she felt his fingers slip beneath the back of her waistband.

"Baby, when you're around, I'm always tactile."

She couldn't deny the truth of that statement. It did seem that he was always finding ways to touch her. By the time they reached her car, his hand was completely inside of her jeans, squeezing her ass appreciatively. She extracted it patiently and settled him into the passenger seat.

"We gonna do it in the car?" he asked hopefully. She laughed and shut the door. When she climbed into the driver's seat and started the car, his persistent hand quickly took up residence between her thighs.

"Booth," she admonished, removing his hand as she pulled into traffic. "Let's just get home, okay?" He lasted roughly thirty seconds before his hand was wandering once again, and eventually Brennan gave up trying to dissuade him. "You don't feel sick, do you?"

"Nope. Why?" he asked her breasts.

"Because you've succeeded in arousing me, and vomit would most certainly ruin the mood."

"Ah, you're aroused, are you?" he grinned wickedly. "Good thing I'm a fully functioning thirty-five-year-old man, huh?"

Brennan smirked at him and pulled into the garage. Getting Booth out of the car went much the same as getting him into it, and he began to remove his clothes before she had even closed the door. He left them in a trail as he followed her to the refrigerator.

"Drink this," she instructed, handing him a glass of water.

"I'm not really thirsty. I'm hungry, but not for food…" His mouth sought her neck, and she held him off with difficulty.

"Alcohol dehydrates the body. Water will help flush the toxins from your system," she explained, forcing the glass into his hand. He looked at it, and then at her, in drunken confusion. "It'll sober you up faster. Drink it."

He did as he was told and placed the glass on the counter, freeing his hands once again. He promptly divested her of her jacket, shirt, and bra, and his lips devoured her breasts hungrily. She gasped as he pulled her nipple somewhat roughly into his mouth, and his hands continued the task of removing her clothing. Brennan groaned and thrust her fingers into his hair.

"Let's go upstairs," she suggested, prodding him gently in the direction of the staircase. She had a feeling that he wouldn't be conscious for long once he found his release. His hard length pressed against the apex of her thighs, and she stroked him slowly as they made their way to the bedroom.

In light of his inebriated state, Brennan had expected to do the majority of the 'work.' However, Booth surprised her by taking charge once they reached the bed. He seized her lips with his own and kissed her deeply as he guided her body to the mattress, moaning into her mouth when he felt her wet heat against him. His fingertips caressed her center, and he smiled against her lips when he found her readiness.

"Now, Booth," she begged, arching upward into his body. "Please."

He kissed her again and entered her swiftly, slipping his tongue into her mouth at the same time. Booth gasped as he felt her clench around him so tightly that it was almost difficult to withdraw.

"Jesus, Bones." His jaw was clenched in determination to hold off on his orgasm until she reached hers. They moved as one, climbing slowly together. Brennan wrapped her legs around his hips, but he quickly readjusted to push them toward her chest, filling her completely as his fingertips sought the bundle of nerves that would send her over the edge. She shouted with her release and came hard around him, clinging to his upper arms as the tremors rocked through her body.

"Come with me," she pled, her words somewhat disjointed by her trembling. He erupted within her, and the pulsating sensation nearly pushed Brennan to the brink a second time. They collapsed in a heap, panting with exhaustion as their hearts slowed to a reasonable pace. Brennan moved her hands in soothing circles over his back, and he grunted in appreciation when he felt her aftershocks spasming around him. "You okay?"

"Mmhmm," he groaned into her neck. Coherency seemed beyond him at the moment.

"You should get some sleep. You're probably not going to feel well in the morning," she reminded him. Booth nodded and withdrew from her body with a little sigh of regret.

"I don't feel as drunk anymore."

"Yes, well that's probably because exercise is another means of sobering up," she laughed, helping him straighten out their disheveled blankets.

"Hmm. So you didn't really take advantage of me, huh?"

"Of course not," she replied, a little indignant. "I believe you were the one with your hands in my pants most of the way home. If anything, it was the other way around."

"Guilty as charged," he agreed. His cheshire grin relaxed into an expression of complete adoration. "I love you, Bones."

"I love you too."

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A few days before Brennan's thirty-first birthday, she and Booth were called to a crime scene in Virginia. The remains had been discovered by a group of Boy Scouts on a camping trip. Although the body was still in the early stages of decomposition and would mostly be handled by Cam, the victim's feet had been removed post-mortem, which led Cam to request Brennan's input as well. The feet were found buried a short distance away from the body, and cause of death appeared to be a penetrating wound to the forehead. Compounding the already odd circumstances was the presence of a white substance coating the victim's nose and mouth.

As Cam and Brennan worked together on the platform, they were unexpectedly interrupted by Hodgins, who announced at random that Angela had plans to be hypnotized the following day. They still hadn't managed to track down Angela's missing husband, and Hodgins had come up with the idea of hypnosis in attempt to recall the man's full name.

"I thought you had a name?" Cam asked, keeping her eyes on the remains rather than her employee. Before Hodgins could clarify, Booth swiped his way onto the platform clutching a casefile in his hands.

"A name for what?" he interjected.

"Angela's husband," Cam replied.

"Berimbau," Hodgins answered. "But our private investigator says it's a nickname."

"Well, you can't get much off a nickname," Booth shrugged.

"A berimbau is a little flute. Brazilian," Brennan informed them. Cam and Hodgins tried unsuccessfully to suppress their smiles, and Booth lifted his brow somewhat incredulously. "What?"

"A little flute?" Booth asked quietly, unsure of whether to be amused or feel pity for the unknown man. Hodgins, meanwhile, was now smirking with satisfaction.

"I'm suddenly filled with a sense of… well-being," he grinned. Brennan didn't understand his behavior but felt compelled to point out that the efficacy and validity of recovered memories was still controversial. Booth turned the conversation back to the case and explained that the victim's prints had given him an ID.

"Ed Milner, from Maryland," he announced, showing Brennan the man's picture.

"The shiny substance you found on the victim's nose and mouth? It's sunscreen. Per the manufacturer, it protects and maintains the color of coats, manes, and tails," Hodgins announced.

Brennan asked if the product had any human application, but he replied that the manufacturer specifically recommended against it. Cam interrupted their conversation to report that the victim's stomach contents were comprised of corn, raw oats, and dried molasses.

"Alright, I can draw inferences from multiple equine implications," Brennan said, almost as if speaking to herself. She picked up the remote for one of the large monitors and pulled up an enlarged x-ray image of the victim's skull. "Incised wounds extending to the periosteum of the maxilla between the molars and pre-molars," she explained, manipulating the victim's jaw to show Cam the wounds. Cam understood, but Hodgins and Booth were still missing the point.

"What?"

"His teeth and jaw show evidence of a bit," Brennan clarified. To her surprise, Hodgins began to laugh.

"His name is Ed," he explained, still chuckling. Cam and Booth joined in with laughter of their own, but Brennan was still lost.

"Why is that funny?"

"As in… 'A horse is a horse,'" Cam told her. Booth and Hodgins provided the next line in unison with her. "'Of course, of course.'" Brennan's expression showed no sign of recognition, and Booth sighed.

"The famous Mr. Ed?"

When she still looked blank, he promised to show her a clip of the old television show online when they got home. It was still another half hour before Brennan agreed to leave the lab, and Booth knew that they would be feeling their late night the following day. The sun had already sunk below the horizon when they'd arrived at the crime scene, and it was well past midnight when they finally made it home.

Booth found a short video of the theme song they'd been singing in the lab as well as a ten-minute clip of the show. Brennan found the theme song amusing, not to mention the odd coincidence of their victim's name, but she looked slightly concerned as she watched the short portion of the show.

"People didn't actually believe he was talking, right?"

"No, Bones. It was just supposed to be funny. I'm not sure how they got his lips to move like that though."

"That wouldn't have been difficult. They most likely would've put something in his mouth to irritate him into moving his lips, and eventually a trainer could've taught him to do it with some sort of command."

"That makes sense," he nodded, smiling at her as he closed the laptop and put it away. They'd been together for nearly two years, and Booth had taken the time to introduce her to a lot of pop culture that tended to come up in conversation. He knew that she didn't like to feel ignorant in front of others, even if it were in regards to something as meaningless as a television theme song. As he lay in bed that evening, holding her close while she slept, Booth realized that she rarely uttered her trademark, 'I don't know what that means,' anymore. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time she'd said it.

Although he was proud of how much she had learned, he found himself missing the sound of those words on her lips. After their first case, the habitual response had been a source of annoyance for him, but even back then he admired her for it. She was arguably the smartest person he had ever or would ever meet, but she'd never been too proud to admit that she didn't know something. That kind of humility was a rare trait, and he had always admired her for it.

Booth smiled into the darkness and pressed his lips to Brennan's forehead once more before sleep claimed him.

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Booth met with Ed Milner's wife in his office the following morning. Although she was able to give a positive ID from a photograph of the remains, she seemed to have no idea why Booth was asking her questions about horses. She stated that she wasn't sure her husband had ever even seen a horse in person. She had been under the false impression that Ed was in Florida at a work conference, and she insisted that her husband was well-loved by everyone who knew him. Booth tracked the victim's last credit card purchase to a country inn in Virginia and headed to the lab to pick up Brennan.

"Hey," he greeted her as he strolled into her office.

"Hay is for horses," she replied with a proud smile. Booth couldn't help but return it, regardless of the bad joke.

"Hey, that's funny, Bones."

"I found it on this website about horses. Where do horses stay in a hotel?"

"Bridal suite," he answered after a brief moment's thought. She looked slightly surprised and a little disappointed.

"That's correct."

"Yup. So did you find anything useful?"

"The hooves of champion thoroughbreds are buried separately from the corpses. The hooves represent power and are given their own resting spot. Our victim's feet were severed from his body," she reminded him.

"Well, the victim's wife said he was at a corporate retreat, and his boss said he took time off to spend with his family."

"He lied," Brennan surmised.

"Yeah, they could all be lying," he agreed. "I got his last known location from his credit card records. Want to come?"

"Sure," she nodded, rising from her seat to collect her things. "How did you know the answer to the bridal suite joke?"

"Parker," he grinned. "He'd probably like whatever other jokes you found on there."

"Maybe we should get him a joke book, now that he's reading so well."

"That's a great idea," Booth said, smiling at her. He loved that his wife and son got along so well. If Brennan wasn't around for whatever reason when Parker was with him, Parker would immediately ask where she was. During the times that Parker was with Rebecca, Brennan still brought his name into their conversations as often as she might if they had full custody of him. He was clearly in her thoughts often, and when it came to planning things in their lives, she was always conscious of what accommodations might need to be made for a young boy.

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The victim's last known location turned out to be the Ambassadora Bed and Breakfast, and the proprietor introduced himself as Lucky. He didn't confirm or deny that he recognized a photo of Ed Milner. Lucky acted as though he didn't believe that Booth was truly an FBI agent, and by the third time Booth had to show his badge, Brennan was annoyed.

"Sir, why are you being so difficult?"

"Not difficult. Discreet."

"What do you do? Run a service for cheating husbands?" Booth asked. Brennan leaned over to speak into her husband's ear, still loudly enough that Lucky would hear.

"Call in the SWAT team. They're anything but discreet."

"Okay!" Lucky said quickly, looking alarmed. "Okay. That's Mr. Ed."

"'A horse is a horse, of course, of course?'" Brennan replied, her tone slightly mocking.

"That's the general idea, yes." Lucky hesitated briefly but asked them to follow him into a deserted lounge area, away from potential eavesdroppers. "The Ambassadora is a place where people come to indulge in pony-play fantasy twenty-four hours a day, without fear of judgment. Mr. Ed is a pony." He handed Brennan one of the brochures she had seen on the front counter. The title read Equine Excitement.

"Is this some kind of a sex thing?" Booth asked her.

"How'd you get there so quickly?"

"The man said 'fantasy.' I just made the leap."

"Ed took off a couple of days ago," Lucky added. "Which was odd, since he'd prepaid."

"Prepaid for what?"

"Oh, we're uh… We're in the middle of what you might call our convention. So unless this is really important, I'd rather not disturb our guests."

"Well, two miles from here, in the woods, Mr. Ed was found dead," Booth explained.

Lucky looked disturbed and reluctantly led them into another area of the inn. There were a dozen or so people entering the room from an opposite doorway. Most were paired off with opposite sex partners, and all were in some sort of costume. Some were dressed in revealing, bondage-type ensembles that resembled horse costumes. Their counterparts were dressed as grooms or jockeys. The 'ponies' were led to a long food trough to eat what appeared to be a similar meal to the one Cam had found in Ed Milner's stomach, and their dominant counterparts seated themselves at a table to eat their meal.

"Wow, what's going on in here?" Booth mused.

"It's a fetish." Brennan's tone was smug as well as intrigued. As an anthropologist, she had studied sexual fetishes in the course of earning her doctorates, and the scene playing out before them was by far one of the least provocative things she'd witnessed. She also knew without a doubt that her husband was uncomfortable and a little embarrassed, and a flustered Booth was always good entertainment.

"Uh, so the idea here is that one of them is the horse, and the other one is the rider?" Booth asked, trying to look anywhere but at the scantily clad people having their lunch.

"Basically," Lucky answered.

"Well, this isn't about the horses," Brennan elaborated. "It's about a dominant versus submissive balance of power. A variation on sado-masochism."

"Those people are eating from troughs," Booth said awkwardly, leaning toward Brennan. "Do you think that's sexy?" His voice cracked a little on the word 'sexy,' and Brennan bit back a smile.

"This type of fetishism is a way of indulging in sexual activity without actually engaging emotionally with the other person as a fully formed human being."

"Okay, sex is all about engaging," Booth disagreed, momentarily forgetting that Lucky was standing right next to them. "If you don't want to engage, you just stay home and… you know."

"Well, there are masturbation fetishes. Often involving women's shoes or undergarments-" Booth interrupted her before she launched into what he suspected would be a very long and detailed lesson on BDSM.

"Uh, can we just talk to Mr. Ed's mistress...dominatrix...whatever?"

Lucky replied that he would have to ask the person's permission to 'out them,' but Brennan made short work of it by loudly requesting that Mr. Ed's last rider reveal themselves and speak with them. Booth flashed his badge, and a young woman rose from the table. She was petite with dark blonde hair, and her expression was resigned. She led Booth and Brennan out of the building into an open courtyard.

"My name in the world is Anne Marie Ostenback. Here, I'm Annie Oakley," she introduced herself. "So Mr. Ed is dead?"

"Yes. How well did you know him?" Brennan asked.

"We met online over a year ago. We were a match. I mean, compatible in every way. You have no idea how hard it is to find the perfect pony. Mr. Ed was easy to handle, but he wasn't mindlessly obedient. And yes, we had sex, if that's your next question." She glowered at Booth, easily sensing his attitude toward her lifestyle.

"When did you first meet in person so that you could...um, ride him?" he asked awkwardly.

"Six months ago. I fell in love with him."

"Meaning what? A little light whipping?" Booth guessed, looking increasingly uncomfortable. Anne rolled her eyes.

"When I say love, I don't mean romantically. I mean the way a young girl feels about her first pony."

"Have you ever heard of any of the ponies fighting one another?" Brennan asked.

"No. No, pony play is not like that," she replied. Brennan disagreed but held her silence for the moment. What she knew of the BDSM community and of human nature in general led her to believe that at least some jealousy among the submissive participants would be unavoidable.

"Mr. Ed's body was found only a few miles from here," Booth told her.

"Evidence on the body suggested an equine fetish."

"You should talk to his wife," Anne suggested.

"His wife?"

"Yes, she showed up here, and the next morning, Ed was gone," she explained. "The night Ed took off, I was in the stables with him. I'd worked him hard that day and was rubbing him down. Which is when she caught us."

"Did you know he was married?" Brennan asked, imagining the scene Anne had described. It was aftercare, which was commonly practiced in the BDSM lifestyle, but to Ed's wife, it might have looked like something else entirely.

"I didn't want to marry the man. I just wanted to play with the pony."

"How did he react when he saw his wife?" Booth asked, not missing the fact that she hadn't answered Brennan's question. Anne shrugged in response. She explained that Mr. Ed had stayed in character the entire time, even after his wife had walked away. Anne had gone to bed alone afterward, and Mr. Ed was gone the following morning.

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"What's worse?" Booth asked her as they headed back to DC. "Finding out that your spouse is having an affair, or finding out that he has a secret life as a pony?"

"Pony fetishism has been around since the Greeks."

"Had to have been the wife, right?" he pressed. Can we please skip the anthropology lesson?

"Aristotle extolled the joys of being ridden like a horse."

"Aristotle also thought that the purpose of the human heart was to solve math problems."

"I'm surprised you know that," she said honestly.

"Well, it turns out, I'm smarter than a fifth grader," he replied with a wink. Brennan huffed a tiny laugh but was not deterred.

"In Victorian England, scantily-clad women put on erotic shows dressed as ponies."

"Just saying… A wife sees some woman in a harness rubbing her husband down while he's nibbling on oats? That's harsh."

"And in sixteenth century Turkey, the king kept stables of pony-girls and pony-boys for his pleasure," she rattled on.

"Okay, the king of Turkey was a freak."

"Why are you being so judgmental?" she frowned. She knew that speaking openly of sex often made her husband uncomfortable unless it was just the two of them, but he had never struck her as a judgmental person.

"When you turn someone into an object of sexual pleasure, it's wrong," he argued.

"How do you know?"

"It says so in the Bible."

"It does not!" she insisted, chuckling in spite of herself.

"Then it got left out by mistake," he grinned. She rolled her eyes.

"We are all hard-wired differently. If someone needs to shout 'Giddy Up' to heighten arousal, what's wrong with that?"

"Maybe if Ed had lived like a man, he wouldn't have died like a horse," Booth pointed out. "Besides, I thought you said it was all about domination and submission and all that."

"I did say that. And I'll remind you that you didn't mind being bossed around a little when your hands were injured. You don't mind bossing me around in bed now and then either," she teased him. "That's a form of domination and submission, even if we don't use toys or props."

"Bones, taking charge of the action once in a while is completely different than having sex with someone who's pretending to be a horse."

"I agree that it's different, but it all falls under the same sort of attraction. It's about control."

"I disagree," he said stubbornly, shaking his head.

"Oh really?" Brennan challenged. At any other time, she might've let the issue go, but his attitude had gotten under her skin. She wasn't angry with him, but she wasn't about to pass on the opportunity to prove her point. She allowed her hand to creep sneakily onto his lap, brushing against his inseam. His body responded immediately.

"What are you doing?" His eyes were wide, and his grip on the steering wheel had tightened considerably.

"So if I were to touch you while you're driving…unable to stop me or to focus on controlling your body's response…? You wouldn't enjoy that?" She lowered his zipper with a smirk. "Because this tells me otherwise."

Booth groaned as she freed him from his pants. He swallowed thickly and tried to come up with an appropriate argument. He toyed with the idea of pulling over somewhere, but they were on a busy interstate. The last thing he needed was for a state cop to discover him getting a handjob in the front seat of his FBI-issued vehicle. He had a pretty good idea how that conversation with Cullen would go.

"Bones," he gasped as her hand began to work him rhythmically. "I'm driving."

"Do you want me to stop?" she asked, her tone daring him to do so. He didn't. He couldn't.

After several minutes, he stammered a warning that he was nearing the edge, and her actions shocked him yet again. Rather than retrieve a napkin from the glove box, she leaned over the center console and took him in her mouth, sucking hard until he came hard down the back of her throat. He panted heavily as he settled down, glancing incredulously back and forth between the road and her smug expression.

"You were saying?"

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Thanks for reading! Review if you have a sec; it really does motivate me. :)