Chapter 4

We're captive on a carousel of time.
We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round in the circle game.
- Joni Mitchell

September 2008 – March 2011

Question: How long would it take Emily Prentiss to go from a woman shaking in fear about the mere idea of having sex to a complete nymphomaniac?

Answer: 72 hours, if said sex partner was Derek Morgan.

The first time was beautiful. Emily had fought back nervousness bordering on petrified, and Derek had been gentle and slow and incredibly sweet. The second time, a few hours later had been more passionate and the fear was gone. The next morning when Derek had talked her out of her pajamas in the middle of her kitchen while she was trying to make breakfast, she acted like fucking on her kitchen bar was a regular occurrence. It had taken Derek Morgan exactly nine hours to undo a lifetime of repression. Nine hours.

Later that afternoon a case had taken them away and by the time they got home two days later, she thought she might die before she got him alone again. She actually said that to him when they were speed walking to their cars in the parking lot, "I am going to die if you don't fuck me soon."

Who was this woman? Emily wasn't sure, but she knew she liked that version of herself. A dam had broken inside of her, and it seemed to have an endless supply of water behind it. She couldn't get enough and he was happy to comply.

Then the complications came. Five months in, right in the middle when she was writhing and crying out his name, when he was staring at her face like love might be a palpable force and he'd be able to reach out with it and pull her to him forever, he said, "I am so in love with you, Emily Prentiss." And Emily told him she loved him, too, because she did. But after, as Derek drifted off to sleep, all she could think in her head was, you don't even know me.

Seven months in, they were in his bed, Derek laying behind her, his arm draped loosely around her middle and he mumbled against her neck, "We'd make amazing babies."

And the reality was they would, but they couldn't, because their relationship was a BIG SECRET, and neither one of them was willing to quit the BAU so that it could ever be anything more than a secret. On another level Emily knew they couldn't because, despite the love and despite the sex, she was really fucked up when it came to ideas of family and children. "By the way, Derek, there's this little boy living about thirty minutes away who I rescued from hell and who I love, but I can't see him much. You see, I fucked his dad as part of an assignment and helped raise the boy for a year. His father is still alive and he's a raving lunatic who would slice my throat on sight." Yeah, that wasn't a conversation that was about to happen.

Soon after that, the conversations about feeling guilty about all the lying started, and every time the word "lie" came out of Derek's mouth, it felt like a knife driving into Emily's gut. It's not that she didn't feel guilty about making up stories to bow out of social events with the team; she did. It was that his lies were so comparatively innocent to hers. So eight months in she started a conversation about maybe taking a break for a while, and though he was sad, he agreed.

The team hadn't noticed a blip. To them, Emily and Derek were friends before, and they were friends now. To Emily, though, she realized a break didn't change how she felt at all. It was like living in a sex deprivation chamber. But worse than that, it was denying herself love. She wasn't used to love, she may not have been very good at it, but she missed it. Desperately.

Two months later, Derek decided it would be a grand idea to put himself in the driver's seat of a huge ambulance bomb, literally. Garcia told Emily he came within a second of dying.

That night, Emily paced back and forth in her hotel room working herself into a frenzied state, waiting to hear the sound of Derek coming back to his room next door. Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, she heard the door one room over open and close. She held out for 10 seconds before grabbing her key and heading towards his room. Their thoughts must have been keeping pace with each other because Emily had barely placed a knuckle on his door when he opened it, dragged her inside and started kissing her.

She wasn't sure how it happened, but within seconds it seemed, their clothes were off and Derek stood before, pressing her naked body into the cool glass of his hotel window, his hand between her legs. Seconds to reach this point and then he kept her on the edge of orgasm for what felt like an eternity. She didn't care that they were still technically on a case, that this went well beyond the rules they had established, that two months ago they decided to stop this. All she could do was beg. "Please, Derek, please." Derek removed his hand and walked her towards the bed; his legs hit the edge and she crawled on top of him. She looked lovingly at his face, reached out and touched his lips and ran her finger down his neck, whispered, "You're alive," then sank down on him with a satisfied moan.

After, she didn't ask him to never put himself in such danger again, because she knew he would; that was his job and who he was. Instead they talked about different rules and better balance, more time joining the team for dinners and drinks instead of making so many excuses. Less lying, they agreed, might work better.

It did work for about a year. They were less frantic and settled into a mellower relationship that allowed them more than a life of just work and sex. Then Derek was being watched and given more responsibility at work and it all got to be too much. They flitted in and out of their relationship for another year, a year where they even entertained the idea of seeing other people, but eventually came to the conclusion that being with each other in whatever limited fashion they could manage was better than being alone or with anyone else.

Another several months of relative peace followed but was shattered when Emily found out Doyle had escaped. She ended things that time, with a sense of permanency, knowing for certain if Doyle found her and found out, he'd kill Derek without batting an eye.

A little over three years after they first slept together, Emily Prentiss found herself shaking in fear again, but for an entirely different reason.