Rating Alert: This chapter is rated M for sensuality and adult activity, though in keeping with the overall T rating it's not crude or explicit. It picks up directly after the previous one but it can be skipped entirely if the 'sparky bits' aren't your thing or if you're under age. For those who are skipping, join us in chapter 53, which will begin 'the morning after.'

~Q~

Fan Mail - The Truth in the Beauty

~Q~

If anyone asked him what they'd been arguing about thirty seconds ago, Booth wouldn't have been able to say. That last, whispered confession of hers swept through him as a cursive surge, the sound of her yes hissing in his ears, the ease of it releasing all restraint. Yes, she loved him.

That was all that mattered.

Within seconds of her heartfelt admission the icon he'd worshiped from afar was suddenly coming off the wall as pure motion within his arms, moving heat beneath his hands. Her body was warm, alive, pulling itself against him with all the encouragement of a woman fully engaged in passion and he couldn't touch her enough. That thing warmly gliding against his palm was a thigh lifting high and he felt his groin leaping in reply.

She sought him out, her mouth seeking connection with every pleading invitation to more, delivered by licks and strokes against his lips. Every opening of her mouth under his lured him further, every pass of her palms sweeping up and down his torso steeped him deeper until he couldn't tell if she was filling him or pushing him to a most dangerous precipice. Time seemed to slow, his senses reeling from the overload as her scent swirled and the slope of her back floated under his suddenly wandering hands and the curves of her buttocks edged over the horizon. His hands were filling and he was falling, moments away from being hurtled into the uncharted heart of her.

It proved what he'd always known from the moment she'd unwittingly dared him with a certain anthropological inevitability about how helpless he was against his urges. The moment she gave permission he was going to be all over her because becoming one with Bones certainly ranked highest among the 'biological' urges she inspired, but the next in line was mere prelude to the first: the claiming part.

Call it the caveman urge.

"You are mine," he growled again against her. No icy scientist, icon or saint, just his partner, whom he had hardly dared to think might crave his touch with equal intensity. His mate, who moaned into his mouth when he brought his daring declaration directly to her lips. "Mine, Bones."

He pressed his body deeper into hers, and suddenly they were no longer trapped against a wall but free-standing, curling together, one of his legs jammed in between hers and her body arcing upwards into his. There was no thought other than how much he hated their clothing, the taunt of cloth keeping the slide of her skin away from his. And then another thought, when he circled her throat with a chain of caresses and became aware of two things at once: how shallow her breaths were, and how determined her hands.

Somewhere in the last few minutes she'd tugged his shirt free and had already begun unbuttoning it. And as she did so, the suggestive rubbing that he thought he'd wantonly initiated proved its source was her all along. Shocked, he watched her bite her lip and rock her pelvis against his until his pleasure from the pressure made him gasp in recognition of how perilously close he was to forgetting his own imperative.

Damn it, he was not helpless against his urges no matter how irresistible she was and he was not so close to failing that he'd forgotten why he couldn't. "Wait," he groaned, pained, while she was grinding against him even harder.

"No…."

When she was scared, Bones ran. She always ran but sometimes the running was not away from the danger. No, sometimes she ran straight towards it and now when they were on the verge of making love, she was terrified. So he knew why she was driving them, racing them to the edge of oblivion where fear disappeared into brief bursts of pleasure. Right over the cliff they'd fall and she was pressing forward at a frantic pace. Her hands, her mouth, her body all driving hard against his until one word erupted in his mind: SLOW.

Slow, slow it down, slower than this.

Try to stop a steam train, some rational remnant of his brain managed to tease. Try to stop Temperance when she's decided to run.

Impossible.

Shutting down the engine was the only way if he had any hope of ensuring she received every gush of pleasure he intended to give. Booth might not be an expert on the human brain and body (not the way Doctor Temperance Brennan was), but through trial and error over the years he'd learned how to bring a woman to an exquisite climax. It was all in the mind, in gaining her trust first and then in slowly, carefully, shutting down her conscious thought. Shut off the brain by turning on the body.

Switch by switch.

But slowly.

"No, baby, not so fast." All the contradiction of indolent haste moved his mouth back to hers, each successive caress dwindling in duration. Finally he risked pulling away long enough to whisper, "We need to slow down."

Their eyes locked.

Take it slow … slow … slow beat the rhythm of his heart as her mouth opened and her breathing stuttered. Pressing her backwards again towards the nearest wall, Booth indulged himself in the view of her, eyes gone slate and slightly unfocused, lips parted pink and shiny in the lamplight, skin glowing pearly white over the swallow moving her throat.

"Don't rush this…."

When he was sure she was securely held up against the plaster Booth trailed a finger against her lips and down that throat, eyes avidly watching her gasping response.

"Feel." The graveled command made her eyes widen, her body jolt. "Close your eyes and feel my touch."

She did, but he felt the slightly terrified tension tightening her limbs as only part of her relinquished control. Fingers glided against her jaw, creeping across the curves guarding her ears and then behind, skimming so barely against her skin that she shivered. Goose flesh pebbled against his fingertips. His eyes devoured her response, greedy for more as that teasing, trailing touch tantalized her throat, her chest, down to the very edges of cloth still blocking his path. The same long-sleeved shirt he'd been jealous of this morning when she washed dishes in his sink now slid aside as his fingers curled into it, and pulled.

A creamy collar bone, the silky slope of a shoulder, the soft swell of her breast pushing upwards from the cup still enclosing it.

Down over her shoulders went the soft cotton collar, leaving nothing behind but skin and a skimpy bra strap, the stretched neck binding her arms at her sides. She felt like silk, sounded a sigh, those gorgeous eyes blinking open to capture his when one hand slipped a little lower than he'd intended and he brushed against her breast. Brennan's whole body jerked at the shock, a ripple of shivers dotting all across her flesh but that dazed and steady gaze assuring him how welcome it was.

"Feel my love." The whispered invitation, delivered against her ear, made her jolt again but that was followed a moment later by a softening as she relaxed and surrendered a little more. He nuzzled into her hair, relishing the sensation of soft waves nestling against his nose while he inhaled, and hummed, and mouthed her skin and then he was licking eagerly all along her ears, her throat, and hearing each one of her bone-melting moans throb against his hungry, seeking tongue.

The taste of her surrender was turning him inside out and his hands, having fallen idle against her shoulders now shifted back to work when her head fell back and left her entire chest exposed. The shirt jerked down further, exposing more of the soft and simple bra she wore. Barely there, the thin jersey peaked in twin points that betrayed her deepening arousal.

Between their bodies her hands twitched helplessly, still bound and seeking satisfaction by gripping against his hips. When one managed to swipe against his straining zipper, he hissed and felt his eyes slam shut as sensation briefly sidetracked him. That same, determined paw crawled back across him, swerving vertically and careening down until only distance halted her. He was standing just out of easy reach, an intolerable condition she was more than willing to correct by stepping forward. He pulled back, opening his eyes with coal black intent. Clearly more distraction was needed so to that end he brought both palms around and upward, finally cupping her breasts while his thumbs swiped across the tips of her nipples. Even through the cloth covering them he could feel the hard nubs, feel the gasp of pure pleasure she released as an agonized exhalation against him when he stroked her again. And again.

"Feel all of it."

The sight of his own hands curling around her soft, womanly curves nearly sent him into a tailspin so he had to close his eyes again and bite back a groan of his own. His moment of weakness gave her another opening, however, which his determined partner didn't hesitate to take. That seeking hand had him captured in an instant.

As an act of desperation he tugged the shirt she was still tangled in all the way off, releasing her arms just long enough to throw the shirt aside. Then he was taking her hands, gradually threading his fingers amongst hers, leisurely pulling her hands and arms upwards at a pace that forced her to focus on every single sensation of simple movement. The twitch and tug of muscle, drawing taut the ligament and elevating bone. By the time Booth opened his lips over her wrists and flicked his tongue against her pulse point, she was sagging against the wall once more and far more effectively trapped than she'd been before.

"Make love with me." He plucked lips and tongue against her wrist, her palm, stroking over fingers of one talented, slender hand and then down her arm. With his other hand, Booth slid a heavy palm around her waist and then he stepped into her until they held together in a waltz position. The worshiping mouth moved from her arm to her throat once more, plastering her with slow, lingering caresses while he waltzed her backwards.

He kept her moving, half aware, until they reached the bed and he returned his lips to sliding erotically against hers. Each slippery kiss beguiled her, captivated her, as his fingers parted ways with each and every hook they met holding the back of her bra together. The fabric falling open was what finally broke through the sensual spell he'd woven around her.

Bones pulled back, half dazed, fully aroused, glancing down at her own dishabille with something approaching chagrin. How quickly that lightning-fast brain went back to work, processing the fact that her state of undress was incomparable to his. Her hands came up, rapidly restoring balance between them.

And he let her, smiling another stream of steamy kisses against her welcoming mouth as her busy hands divested him of jacket, holster, dress shirt. Pants went next; his, then hers. He felt his mouth turn arid at the sight of those long legs emerging out of their denim casings and the equally erotic lilt when she rocked her hips on a tease. "You like the view?" Something made his head bob but Booth was pretty sure it wasn't conscious thought. Not one to be self-conscious Brennan kicked her own jeans away but he was the one who slid off the plain cotton panties she wore beneath, baring her all the way at last.

"God, you're gorgeous." Pressing nearly reverent caresses against the pliant plane of her belly, his hands gliding down and then back up her thighs, Booth finally pulled away because he needed another moment to savor the sight, all the creamy curves of her. Sloping shoulders, narrow waist, firm bones just barely visible behind soft, succulent fruit that he was dying to taste. His mouth watered, his body reminded him that a man has needs and his hands….

His hands could not keep to themselves.

He needed this, needed to touch every blessed inch of her.

Satiny skin glowed beneath his constantly moving palms. He couldn't stop smoothing them over her, stroking the length of every curve, fingering hollows and joins with the sort of reverence one reserves for precious artifacts. "Perfect. You're perfect."

It made her pause for a moment, her eyes flicking up to his before they settled on his chest and her fingers followed. Every stroke she'd lavished against his own body over the last few minutes had gone completely unnoticed when every particle of his concentration had been devoted to exploring her. But now he recalled her fondling and now that she was finally capturing his full attention she smiled, leaning forward to sculpt his muscles under her questing mouth. "I think you're beautiful," she whispered, then glanced back up apprehensively.

Because beautiful was not a word men wanted to hear in conjunction with themselves.

Much preferred would be handsome, studly, or god-like, but not such a pretty word with feminine connotations. Instead of wincing, he dared to wonder. "Why beautiful?"

"Your musculature is well defined, your proportions symmetrical and, in most cases, also congruent with the golden ratio — which according to Euclidian Geometry is defined as—"

Realizing how complicated the answer would get if he let her keep going Booth laughed. Just before pulling her head back to quiet her with another deep kiss he acquiesced, "All right, I'm mathematically beautiful." Next he indulged a bold plunge past her parted lips to delve inside what he'd once jokingly called her Word Factory. The machinery stilled briefly, then repurposed itself and came to life against his own.

Her tongue began undulating in ways that ought to be illegal, just for the damage it could do to a fully upright male. (Buckled knees, exsanguination, probable brain damage if she kept this up too much longer.) Booth was grateful to be reclined already before she began applying the lethal technique. And then, she went in for the kill.

"Not just math, art," she panted, breaking free of her seduction long enough to correct his misapplication of the golden ratio. "Proportionality is a defining characteristic of beauty."

After kissing him brainless, naturally Bones figured that was the right time to try and win an argument. It was a full thirty seconds before he consciously registered what actually came out in that verbal volley, the task made all the more difficult by her immediate reapplication of the tongue-lashing technique. Sweet Saint Rita, patroness of the impossible, how was he ever going to properly seduce this woman when she could so thoroughly scramble his thought processes? Kisses hot enough to weaken steel, followed by arguing that revealed she was nowhere near as compromised intellectually. And that just wasn't fair.

Perhaps that single desperate supplication had given him a mental toehold, however. For all the while Bones was plying him with caresses meant to meld his mind, a single independent thought kept spinning back to what she'd said and what it meant that she'd used that particular word.

Beautiful.

Symmetry and balance have nothing to do with it. A bullet is perfectly symmetrical but is that beauty?

"Beauty is more than proportion," he countered when they broke apart several steamy minutes later. Because she was beautiful, even though he knew she wasn't perfect or perfectly proportioned. There was a small scar on her nose (one she never spoke about) and her jaw was a bit too broad to be perfectly feminine and some might even say that nose was too slender and long but to Booth, she was the most gorgeous female he'd ever beheld.

Hardly daring to look anywhere other than directly into her beautiful eyes, he held himself poised above her and the words he needed whispered through him. Where they came from had to be a miracle. "Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, others call a fleet the most beautiful sights the dark world offers, but I say it's whatever you love best."

Startled into stillness, Brennan's eyes held his for a moment before she finally murmured, "Sappho."

And then a strengthening sense of shock as she realized, "you recited a line of ancient poetry."

"I am a constant surprise," Booth preened.

"But why did you say it?"

Why were they reclined unclothed on her bed while she quizzed him over his (evidently unsuccessful) effort at verbal seduction. Chagrined, Booth shook his head and mumbled, "I thought you called me beautiful because you love me."

"Socrates deferred to poets as having greater insight on love. He would say that…." and here she paused, that mental machinery clacking away, and he could sense the moment all the cogs fell into place. The way her eyes widened, the almost stunned comprehension that reminded Booth of nothing so much as witnessing the final seconds of someone's life. He'd glimpsed that same glassy astonishment in soldiers about to die and it was fairly terrifying to see it in a woman he was trying to seduce.

"Bones?" To his horror her eyes were rapidly filling with tears, something within her bursting and he cursed himself for being a cad (for only a cad would make a woman cry at a moment like this).

"He would say you're right."

Concerned, he pushed himself upright and nearly fell back again when she lunged and buried her face against his neck. Arms clamping, shoulders shaking, her entire body trembling against his and every time he tried to pull back just enough to see her face she only seemed to burrow in tighter. Bringing his arms around her instead, feeling warm tears begin to drip against his throat, Booth gulped and wondered what it meant when she repeated it all the more unsteadily. "You're right."

"What am I right about?" He almost wanted to add a quip, 'and can I have it in writing?' but she seemed far too torn up for jokes. Twisting herself even more tightly into place, she rested silently after that, not answering. All he could feel was her warmth, her breaths coming in uneven bursts and occasional tremors that might be shuddering sobs crushed against him, or might just be shivers from the cold against her exposed back.

Cautiously he whispered, "God, Bones, I didn't mean to make you cry."

"You didn't."

That's what she said, but there was no mistaking the tone of tears — that thick, unsteady cadence she couldn't quite hide. It was that uncertain pitch that moved him, made Booth roll them both until she was mostly on her back and as he pulled himself up, away, to avoid crushing her below his weight, she held fast. She clung tight and paradoxically declared, "We shouldn't have sex."

Not one word came out of him but she must have sensed his absolute confusion, for Bones finally seemed to gather evidence suggesting she ought to answer his befuddled silence. "Our friendship is solid, love is the bridge that carries us across. You said that. You're my friend."

"Yes..." But friends don't lie naked and entwined on a bed, seconds away from sex. Bones had been arguing that all day and apparently she was reverting back to it at the most inconvenient hour, mere minutes after they'd taken turns seducing each other in her hallway. Booth thought he might properly be forgiven for losing his patience, if not his actual mind. All the mental whiplash was giving him a brain-bleed but before he could utter anything resembling a complaint, she spoke again.

"But love is not a bridge, Booth. The love of an inspired friend gives wings to the soul."

Only angels have wings. Or birds, or bats, or...?

Bewildered, Booth pried himself upward one more time and now that he'd succeeded in easing a little further away, just far enough to see her whole face, he found himself faced with raw wonder. Touching his cheek as if she'd seen an angel, she whispered, "You're my inspired friend."

Something was happening, some kind of breakthrough. He had no idea, she was always ten light-years ahead.

"Okay." His pulse now thundering, barely daring to breathe let alone speak, Booth dared to say it anyway. "I don't know what..."

Ancient wisdom whispered against his skin, tenderly rendered in the breathy husk that enthralled him from the start. Every leap of genius came to him packaged sweet and low, her brilliance beguiling in a breathy alto, and more often than not Booth was hard-pressed to say which captivated him more: the things she said or the way she said them.

"The inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. For love (is) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love, but friendship only…."

And only after she finished speaking did he suspect the wonder might be more on his own face, than hers. Because the next thing she whispered was the most irrational idea that had ever come from the mouth of Temperance Brennan. "According to Socrates, if we don't have sex we'll get to heaven faster."

"What?" Granted, fornicating is a sin but since when did she believe in or fret over roadblocks to heaven? "I'm not worried about that." The confession spilled out, genuine and unrepentant, as the thought of retreating from her now for the sake of his soul ranked right up there with achieving sainthood for the single goal of getting to heaven faster. Anything that would take him away from her, away from this moment (confusing as it was), was nothing he wanted to consider.

And if he had to forgo heaven for eternity, so be it.

"But you've been trying to stop us from—" Confused now herself, her eyes searched his. "Isn't this why?"

"I just ... wanted you to feel. The longer we wait, the better it's going to feel."

"So, you are trying to amplify our sexual tension."

"No! Well ... maybe that's part of it, I don't know. Something just said 'wait' so I was waiting."

He hadn't known it, but he was waiting for this and at the discovery Booth licked his lips, suddenly nervous and yet relaxed as all worries about doing it 'right' drained away. Every way was right with her, he should've had faith in that from the start.

Watching him curiously and her own nudity notwithstanding, the woman he was no longer seducing brushed cautious fingertips across his shoulder, stroking down the length of his arm as if to let him go. Though her fingers grazed gradually down every corded muscle and tense tendon, (each caress a tiny, illicit exploration), upon reaching his wrist her hand fell away. "Do you still want to wait?"

Instead of replying he found that hand and hauled it back, his fingers tightening, his mind made up. "What does Socrates say will happen if we do make love...?"

That unnerving intensity that always came with her being direct pooled directly into him when she dove directly into his gaze, her fingers gripping the hand that held them and her body curving towards his. Her lips parted, her eyes painfully bright and the promise, silken and low, threatened to overthrow any doubt he still might have. "We'll spend our existence happily together here on earth and get to heaven eventually."

It had always unnerved him when her eyes searched his, unswerving, unafraid, undaunted by obstacles he'd occasionally thrown in her way. Always he'd trembled and dodged when she got that close and now he knew why. Inspired friend, the one who had already pulled him out of purgatory; the one who had already set him on a gradual rise to paradise.

It was not too hard to imagine: a lifelong, leisurely climb towards ecstasy, every moment with her a tantalizing taste of the joy to come. "Well then, I'm all for eventually."

Engaging her gaze purposely this time, viewing all the way to the depths of her naked soul, Booth smoothed a gentle thumb across her lower lip and felt his own sense of doubt melting away. "Wait here with me."

They were suspended for those few seconds, caught on the threshold of paradise before her eyes slid closed and they decided together. Woman rising, man falling, all senses connecting in a kinetic rush of pure touch. Sounds, scents, the sight of his hand stroking darkly against her milky white canvas. The stroke of her thigh brushing against his as they shifted tighter together. Their pleasured sighs breathed from one breathless mouth to the other and back again, the taste of eternity.

His heart thundered, thrilling to every brush of her skin, of her lips against his and her palms gliding over that most sensitive part of him; his body surged, seeking more of her silky, sweet embrace. She grasped him harder, pulling, pleading. Control snapped, frayed beyond strength by the whispered pleas she moaned against him all the while thrashing for purchase and when she urged him closer, beckoned him right to the edge with her, he would never regret their fall.

Every touch on her proved just as pleasurable as her every stroke on him, sensations blending until he couldn't tell where he ended or she began. Nothing remained but the sublime expression of pure fusion. They moved as one, breathed as one, clung and merged and when he finally soared away with her on wild wings, Booth entertained one fleeting thought that Socrates had it all wrong.

Heaven was right here on earth, sheathed inside his soulmate, soaring and falling until they shattered together in a scatter of limbs that lay commingled long after the aftershocks stopped.

~Q~

Literary Note:

Booth quoted Sappho: Fragment 16, Translated by Jim Powell. (1993)

And Brennan quoted Socrates from Plato's Phaedrus.
The Complete Works of Plato [Annotated]. Latus ePublishing. 03-19-2012. Kindle Edition