Booth loved pie. Booth also loved making love to women. He didn't just love making love to women because he was cocky, though he knew he was good—mostly, he just loved women. Loved the way they looked, each curve of their body dipping and rising. Loved their skin, the soft feel of it under his hands. Loved the way they would flush, spots of pink on their cheeks and their chests when he kissed them breathless. He especially loved the sounds that they made, gasps and pants and mewls, groans and moans and sighs, screams and wordless calls and outright shrieks of release. However they said it, he liked when his first or last name was followed by "more," or "please." Booth loved the feel of their mouths under his, warm, silken and sweet.

There were lots of great parts about making love to a woman. While he sure as hell wasn't going to say no to a blow job, and the actual sex part was always incredible, if he had to choose his favorite part of the whole making love thing, say, if he had to give the rest of it up, then he'd have to say that he loved to taste women. Each had their own flavor, the taste of their skin and their mouths and their centers the same and yet shading from lighter to heavier. Their tastes shifted-- from simply sweet, to salty and sweet, to that perfect combination of tart, sweet, and salt, the thick, ripe flavor of them as they came, because their bodies knew—Booth loved making love to women, and loved to taste them. Women were like a perfect piece of apple pie, except infinitely better, because pie doesn't grab your hair when you're eating it and scream your name like a banshee.

Not that all of them tasted like apples. Some were like cherries, or apricots, or blueberries. Sometimes peach, even a few huckleberries. There was one plum, a raisin, even a pumpkin. That pumpkin was special. One of them tasted like mangoes, though he'd never had a mango pie before. He'd tried a mango parfait, once, and it was pretty close, and he bet mango pie would have been closer to that particular woman.

The smell of their hair or their perfume wasn't the sole key to finding out what they tasted like. It required personal inspection, the careful, teasing, slow application of his nose and his mouth to their skin, before he could fully conclude what flavor they were, while they whimpered and flushed and did all the other things he liked so much. He'd gotten better at guessing, though, over the years. Some observation of their personalities, a fair amount of hair sniffing while they weren't looking, the casual touch or the arm around the shoulder to feel the warmth of them under his hand, and he could usually tell. But it never hurt to ask, because amazingly, their personal preference was usually the way that they ended up tasting. He liked to try to guess first, then ask, and last but not least, taste for himself.

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"Why do you want to know?"

"Just answer the question."

"Fine. Pineapple."

"Hah. I knew it."

"How could you possibly know that my favorite fruit is pineapple, Booth?"

"Secret Seeley Booth powers, Bones. Trust me on this."

"I thought it was special FBI powers."

"Nah, Bones, this one's personal."

"So if you're so smart, then explain why it's my favorite fruit."

"Well, see, pineapple requires special attention, but it's worth every bit of it. First, you have to make sure it's perfectly ripe. You have to peel it just so, taking care to remove all the eyes carefully, so you remove all the prickles but don't damage the fruit. Then you remove the fruit from the core, because it can sometimes be hard and bitter. But if you do everything right, get that perfect pineapple that just needs the right preparation? When you take that first bite, it's that perfect, over-the-top blend of sweetness and tartness. The flavor bursts in your mouth, practically overwhelms your senses. The way flesh feels under your teeth is like no other fruit. It makes your mouth water. The juices drip down your chin when you're eating it-- it gets all over your hands, and you find yourself licking up each drop, then going back for more, to make sure you've gotten every last bit of it. It requires all your concentration to prepare it for eating, but when you do, it's like no other fruit in the world. "

"Yes. Yes, exactly."

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He'd never had a pineapple pie. Yet. But he was sure it would be his favorite of all.