Bodies pressed together urgently—no foreplay or niceties of any kind. Her dark hair falling in his face. Perspiration making their bodies even slicker; heat making their breathing even heavier. It was fast—faster than it was supposed to be, but then he wasn't even sure of what he was doing. Could he get into trouble for this? She said this was to thank him. No money changed hands. Still, he worried. He panicked. His labored breathing roared in his head and his ears were filled with the sound of his own heartbeat. It was deafening, and he awoke with a start.

Kensi was sitting up in bed, looking at him as he jerked awake. Her tears glistened in the moonlight, threatening to cascade down her perfect cheekbones. Her knees were drawn up and her arms encircled them. "Deeks, um, who," she hesitated as her voice quavered, "who are you screwing in your dreams?"

"Kens, it's not what you think," he began.

"Oh, it's exactly what I think."

"It's actually a nightmare. Or at least, it's the beginning of one," he said quietly. "From my early LAPD days."

She released an audible sigh. "Oh, God Kens, you know I could never…you know there is no other woman—past, present, future—no other woman who could ever mean anything to me. You are perfect in every way. I count my blessings every day that you are here with me. Honestly." He reached up and wiped at her tears, which had fallen at last. He cursed his weakness for succumbing to the old nightmares after holding them at bay for so long. How much longer could he keep this up?

"Deeks, we need to talk. What happened to the girl? Who was she? Why do you make love to her in your dreams, or nightmares, or whatever the hell?"

He closed his eyes and regretted the games his mind played so, so much. The bits and pieces he could remember were so…damning. What he couldn't remember might be the most damning of all.

"Kensi," he began, "do we have to do this now? What if I promise to take you away to that bed and breakfast you've been pestering me about in Carmel this weekend, and we have a nice, long talk?" He punctuated his sentence with kisses to her hands as he faced her. She still looked miserable and insecure. God, she was beautiful in the moonlight. "I don't want to keep anything from you, Kensi. There are things in my past that I have never shared with anyone, and it's still hard. It's my nature to cover up rather than bare my soul, and I've never wanted to do that with anyone before." He lifted her chin to meet his gaze. "I want to tell you everything, but if I got started tonight, we would not get any more sleep."

She sighed and leaned her cheek against his palm. "I hate that another woman is in your dreams, Deeks. I am a selfish person, and I want to be the only one you dream about," she was stretching back out in the bed, and Marty was thankful that she was a creature of habit who need eight solid hours of sleep. She tried to sound put out with him, but drowsiness was taking the edge off her voice. "You had better make the reservations tomorrow. I want to see the confirmation number."

Even as she tried to sound authoritative, she curled onto her side, pulling his arm over her shoulder, under her breasts, and lacing her fingers in his. He slid his body behind hers, their curves matching in geometric bliss. Translation, reflection, rotation. He would love to live out the positions he used to imagine in ninth grade, sitting in class listening to the Pythagorean theorem. He had dodged another bullet. He'd better not press his luck.

The next couple of days she was quiet and withdrawn, and Marty knew that he had to come clean and tell her what he knew—and what he was afraid of. What if it was the end of their relationship? Marty knew she saw things in black and white. She had made it clear she could never support or forgive someone who had committed murder, hadn't she? Was he fooling himself that she didn't mean him? How could he minimize the impact? He had thought it must not have happened, or surely it would have caught up to him before now. He had lied by omission, leaving out the circumstances leading up to Officer Boyle's murder and his fear that he had been involved. When he said he didn't know, that he didn't remember any involvement; that was not a lie. But what if he had done it? The fear made him want to vomit, and yet he began to look forward to getting things out in the open.

Sitting next to him at their shared desk, Sam leaned over and blew in his left ear. "Earth to Deeks! What's up with you, Shaggy?"

"Just dreaming of you, Sam." Marty quipped with a grin.

"Hey, if you need to talk to a married man about, you know, female issues, well maybe I can shed some light on the fairer sex."

"Oh, no, Sam. Did you just blow in my ear and mention sex? What about those boundaries, huh?"

"Did someone say sex?" asked Nell as she walked by. "Deeks, you're not talking about your first girlfriend's mom again, are you? I've got to tell you, Eric's dad looks pretty good for his age."

"Ughh, Nell. Please stop! My retinas are burning and I've never even seen Eric's dad."

"Oh, hey, you want to meet him?" asked Eric brightly as he walked by, hearing only the last part of the comment. " My parents are coming into town next week."

"Let's just go, Eric—nothing to talk about here," Nell said quickly. "Enjoy your day off tomorrow, Deeks. Kensi told me to text you the confirmation number in case you forgot it, so here goes," she said as she fired off a text.

Deeks cleared his throat and said, "B as in boy, D as in David, 632914-M as in mast…"

"Hey!" yelled three voices at once as Eric, Nell, and Sam reacted before he could finish the word.

"MasterCard, guys! Get your minds out of the gutter," he admonished, grinning.

The Vagabond's Inn was heavenly, and Deeks was so glad he and Kensi had each used a vacation day to make the trip ahead of the weekend traffic. Their bedroom (the part Deeks cared about most) sported a distressed wooden headboard and a tufted leather couch at the end of the bed. He chuckled as he gauged Kensi's mood. She had been friendly, sweet, but quiet still. Not at all "normal."

"What's so funny?" she asked him.

"This place is perfect," he said. "Shabby-chic. I look shabby, but my place is fairly chic. You look chic, but your place can be a little shabby. See how well we complement each other?" He asked, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her close to him. "You are soft, but I'm hard," she rolled her eyes. "You go in, I go out…"

"You make bad jokes. I pretend to think they're funny," she continued as he covered her mouth with his. When they broke apart, she leaned back to look up at him. "I find it more than a little odd that you use decorating terminology so well! How many guys recognize shabby-chic?"

"Well, it is stated on the brochure," he retorted, reaching both hands down to lift her face and draw her in for a long, long kiss.

Things were definitely looking up, but Kensi was determined. She stepped away and said, "Put that on hold until after we talk." He grimaced at the thought. She rested her forehead on his. "You promised, Marty. I want to know. I need to know. I deserve to know."

"Yeah, no, I mean I know you do, Kens. OK, let's get comfortable, if that's even possible," he said as he pulled her next to him on the sofa at the foot of the bed. It was wide enough that they could turn and face each other.

"Does the girl in your dreams have anything to do with the IA investigation?" she prompted him.

"Um, well, I am not sure." As Kensi bit her lip and shook her head, he was worried he had lost her trust already. "Baby, please don't turn on me. Not yet. Hear me out. I have been so afraid that the truth would drive you away from me—I've been scared to death to tell it all to you. What I know of it."

"Deeks, it's me. You know I will support you through whatever this is. I just want you to be honest."

He took a long, ragged breath and cleared his throat. "Oh my, so here goes nothing—and maybe everything. OK, so you know the trouble with my first partner?" She shuddered at the thought of the veteran officer using scalding coffee to get a suspect to talk and then putting a gun in Marty's mouth when he confronted him. "Ok, well, there was something else he did. This group of prostitutes hung out on Simpson St., and he would, um, encourage them to provide services so he would look the other way."

"Oh, my word, Deeks, I had no idea that LAPD was so corrupt!"

"No, no, no. Most of the officers are not corrupt. In fact, I think it is a great organization and many people put their lives on the line everyday. It was just this core group, and I was too new and stupid, and I didn't know who to go to.

"Well, anyway, one of the girls came in to a bar I was in one night—off duty. We were just chatting. She wasn't there to work, or at least, not in front of me. She reached for a drink, though, and I saw bruises on her arm. Then I looked closer and saw finger and thumbprint bruises on her jaws where someone held her face roughly. I mean, we had been trained to spot signs of abuse, and hell, I had enough growing up. I told her I could help her get away from her pimp, and that she didn't need to let him hurt her. She started laughing and said it wasn't her pimp—he didn't like the girls to get marked up. She said it was my partner."

"Oh, no. What did you do?"

"I confronted him again. I was prepared for his reaction, and I got the better of him when it turned physical. I knew better than to go higher up, but I convinced him that I would anyway if he bothered Tina again. He left her alone after that. I think he just found another group of girls outside our patrol area, but anyway, things got better for Tina. He left me alone, too, and recommended me for undercover work to get me away from him. Nobody wanted to do it because of the isolation and the danger, but I didn't mind either of those.

"I saw her again about a month later, and she, um, asked me to come to her motel room and I, uh, did. She said she wanted to thank me for keeping Boyle away, and she thought I looked like I could use a tension reliever. I had been drinking, and I was so keyed up, and… I did." He hung his head. "I was so nervous—I'd had one-night stands before, but this didn't feel right. I felt like I was using her, and it made me ashamed." Deeks looked away from Kensi.

He let out a long, ragged breath. "Boyle and I were re-assigned shortly after that. After a couple months, I was surprised to see his number on my cell phone. When I answered, he said someone wanted to talk to me, and he put Tina on. She asked me to come to the hotel, but I could tell she was only saying what her made her say. I knew she was scared to death of him. He got impatient with her and I heard him slap her. Then he got on the phone and I could tell he was high on something. He said, 'Come save your little whore, jackass!' I heard her scream as he hit her again. I jumped in my car and drove to the hotel without thinking…without backup. I had a plan. I would restrain him, let him sleep it off, and let her get out of there.

"When I rolled up, I saw his personal car parked in front of one of the row of rooms. I knocked, but there was no answer. I heard a muffled voice like a cry for help coming from inside. I tried the door, and it was unlocked. I called out for him, but he didn't answer. I heard the cry for help again, and I pushed the door all the way open and went in the room. Tina was slumped against the wall. Something must have hit me from behind and I went down. That's it. That's all. I never saw Boyle—or at least, I don't remember seeing him."

"Go on."

"I woke up hours later. It was around dawn. I was in the back seat of my car in a parking lot. A security guard was tapping on my window, telling me I couldn't sleep there or he would call the police. I figured Boyle had dumped me there, and I was surprised he hadn't done something worse, like taken my clothes. Anyway, once I got my bearings, I drove home. I was off that day, so I slept off one hell of a headache."

"Did you go back to the hotel?" Kensi asked, in full investigative mode.

"No. I assumed he'd had his laugh, and as much as I hated myself for failing to check on her, I figured that whatever happened to Tina had already happened, and there wasn't much I could do for her. I didn't know Boyle was dead until I heard it on the news that night. I just assumed Tina had unloaded his gun on him, but they found no prints, so the investigation went nowhere."

"So you never told anyone?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head, knowing how it would sound if he answered negatively, knowing how one bad decision becomes the foundation for hundreds more bad decisions. "Turns out other officers knew of his reputation after all. It was just accepted that this would have happened sooner or later. No trace of Tina was found, and it was just dropped. As far as I know, the LAPD never even knew who she was. I figured if she got away clean, then good for her. She didn't deserve to be treated like that."

He took a long, deep breath. "But as far as what happened that night, I honestly don't remember. I was worried when I first heard he had been shot. Hell, I was petrified. I was afraid that I had done it. Worried enough to lose fifteen pounds and go for a couple of weeks with hardly any sleep. Worried that I had just blocked it from my mind, and at any minute there would be someone coming to arrest me and tell me that there was evidence I had killed him. And what about Tina? I never heard from her again. What if…what if I had become like my father and took up where he left off? What if I had hurt her like Boyle did? I had to remind myself I had a lump on the head because I worried I finally had the psychotic breakdown all of my therapists were afraid I would have. It took a long time for me to relax at all. I threw myself into working undercover."

Kensi could not mask her concern. She frowned, started to talk, then got up and paced the width of the room in thought. "Deeks, this is bad. This looks bad. This feels bad. How could you keep this from me? From the team? Hetty would have helped—we all would have helped!"

"Kensi, I honestly pushed this as far from my mind as I could. I was so relieved that no fingers were pointed at me. Anyway, I haven't allowed myself to think about this for years- not until the IA investigation, and I had to start thinking of what they could have on me."

Kensi sat back down beside him. "OK—well, we haven't heard from them in a couple months, so maybe someone mentioned you as his partner, and they tailed you for awhile and checked into your NCIS record, and that's it—they found no reason to pursue this. Breathe, Deeks," she whispered, putting her hands on his shoulders and resting her forehead against his. When he did breathe, it was full of pent up emotion and stress, and he drew her into a tight embrace.

"Kensi, I am so sorry. I am sorry I didn't tell you. I know I should have. I was afraid you would never want anything to do with me again. "

"Deeks, you were being so—You. Being a champion for the downtrodden and calling out the bad guy. I wish you had called in LAPD to the hotel room, but I understand why you hurried over on your own. As long as you can tell me they couldn't have found a gun in the river with your prints on it…"

"No, they found his gun, and that's what he had been shot with. It was wiped clean. If someone had been trying to frame me, they would have been able to put the gun in my hand while I was knocked out so that my prints would be on it." He smiled wistfully. "I always pictured Tina living in Nevada with a husband who is a preacher who knew her whole story and saved her from going back to that lifestyle. They have lots of kids."

"Marty, you know that isn't likely, although it's very sweet." She kissed his cheek and gazed lovingly at him. He couldn't believe she was still there—that she hadn't run off when she heard his tale. He felt such freedom. He felt relieved and empowered at the same time. He leaned over to kiss Kensi, and she responded hungrily. She wanted to show him that she trusted and believed in him. He wanted to show her that she was the most important person in the world to him.

Ninety minutes later, they were walking hand in hand through the cute downtown area, both still glowing after their lovemaking, and basking in the belief they each had that life couldn't get much better. Both were caught unawares when a man in a blue suit approached them saying, "Martin Deeks?"

"Yeah, what's up?" Marty asked.

"Put your hands behind your head. You are under arrest for the murder of Lieutenant Francis Boyle."