He hadn't even heard what DiNozzo had actually said.

They were all a little second-winded and punch-drunk sleepless.

And frankly, he hadn't needed to hear anything they'd been babbling about in order to understand the scandalized glaring she's got aimed between their two desks, "You're disgusting, Tony."

"You're a prude." He points back at her playfully as he slants his chair, kicking his weight into his shoulders to disarm her accusation, "You really gotta lighten up."

"I have to - "

"Even Gibbs thinks you're a little too proper." Both DiNozzo's hands have clasped up behind his head but his exhaustion is evident in the way his shoulders are slumping out of attention, "Right boss?"

None of them have slept in too many hours over twenty four.

And neither of them had left when he'd damn well told them to.

So he forces patience through his teeth as he shakes his head and mutters, "I'm not a part of this discussion, DiNozzo."

She's ramping right past his deflection, her petite body looking sturdier than it should after thirty nine hours awake and he forces a blinking off watching the way she's unconsciously arming herself up beside her desk, "Gibbs understands that I can conduct myself as a respectable woman and still enjoy a whole lot of sex."

"Does he now?" The other man's voice arches loudly through the mostly emptied and early morning office, the tone of it so taunting that it leans toward comical.

"It was a hypothetical and not what I meant. Don't be an ass."

She's always sorta cute when she can't help but get a blush and flush defensive.

It makes the contrasting white and black she's wearing look prettier on her skin tone.

"I've always been under the impression you enjoy sex, Kate." He aims them both quieter by barely murmuring the comment in her direction, intentionally keeping his face near passive as possible, "Or you would if you'd relax for five minutes."

Red light. That there, that was a bright dying star of a 'red light', Jethro.

But goddamn it to hell – they started it. And he's sure as shit gonna finish this line of conversation right here and now.

Because he cannot wade too much farther into it with the way her white skirt slopes her trim waist and thighs just staring him in the face like that. And, generally, the appropriate girl that still thwacks the mental ruler on her own knuckles cannot bring herself to publically tip this close to burning and not blush.

But he's surprised when one of her hands arches her fingers to her desk and her hip flares as the other hand rests into it, her brow arched into a sudden wide-eyed-awake cheekiness as unguarded and completely unexpected mischief brings a smile to her lips.

"Not sure a whole five minutes would be worth it, Gibbs." Her smile is positively chippy and it's got a near smirk stubbornly tugging the corner of his mouth as Tony's unheard of silence gapes over them.

That mischief, Katie Girl. It's your better angel.

Keep it close and it'll serve you well.

He simply shrugs suddenly aching shoulders as he turns back into his computer, unable to let go of the smugly upper-hand smirk she's got on her lips, "I make it worth it."

It was a matter of pride - that's what he tells himself into their surprised silence.

Especially considering Tony's roped him into the discussion regardless of the fact he just doesn't want to go leaning anywhere near it with her still in his line of sight.

Really, though, it's just because she gets so damn adorably flustered when he publicly reminds her that he is a man - and still decidedly alive from the neck down.

"You bait him, Kate." He tells her softly.

He's unabashedly grinning the words out from behind her, amused by the fact she can't save herself from being self-righteous when Tony's being obnoxious. They've got this double dance down. It's comfortable and, in a certain way, when they're thin-stretched, comforting. Their bickering has become a sound to him that is silvered in its ringing, something that hums like a household appliance – ever present and so domestically normal that it becomes intrinsic. Unnoticed unless silenced. He mostly appreciates the fact that the two of them uphold that homage to the familial and most especially in the worst of times. Especially when they're tired and ragged and near unconscious.

Kate turns him back a quick glance in the elevator, her features smoothed so that it seems as though she has no idea what he's referring to, "How so?"

She's full of it and he can tell. He can always tell. She completely knows that.

"Into saying chauvinistic things." Gibbs exhales it over her shoulder, watching the hard cock of her jaw as she aims her ear closer to his words, "You bait him just so that you can slap him down."

She doesn't turn this time, her head forward as she loosely lifts her shoulder and drops her jaw to angle toward it, "You jealous, Gunny?"

No, not in the least. Except, yes, goddamn it.

It's official. She's lost her nimble little mind to exhaustion.

Because it sure as hell sounds like she's making this less a clinical discussion of another agent and far more like… it's a brazen tease. She's teasing him beyond what's normal and far beyond the way she taunts at DiNozzo. There's a tipped humming in her voice that says this is private and personalized and intentionally made especially for him.

She has completely, utterly, absolutely lost her goddamn mind.

"No." He says, as though the slip of his former rank off her perfect lips didn't make his gut drop hot and his jaw flex up, "You know I won't bite."

"Invalid." Kate just shrugs at him and her hair shifts ever so slightly forward to hide the spot on her jaw he's been unconsciously fixated on. "Your argument is invalid, Gibbs."

Near surprise at her sharp and assertive retort has him leaning away from her, letting his back lay into the elevator wall, creating a purposeful distance, "In what way, Agent Todd?"

"It's just… the bigger the fish, the stronger the bait and reel a girl's gotta use."

He blinks surprise into the cocked and curled smile she suddenly turns his way and he can't help but recognize that his lips are parted for air as she steps forward through opening elevator doors and into the garage.

He realizes how sleepy she truly is when she crashes most of an evidence retrieval kit to the floor and he can silently agree that he's not really all that wide awake himself, dragging tiredly down to help her piece things back into the case with slow reaching hands.

"Don't bait me, Kate." He murmurs over the dip of her head, letting his hands hang loose, wrists to his knees while he studies how silkily dark her hair looks in this lighting.

"Why?" She's watching his laxed hands and he unconsciously flexes his fingers into the quiet bite of her tone, "Your rules?"

He's not entirely sure why they've so quickly shifted from teasing to traitorous but the grazing of her voice puts him on an edge, "You breaking rules is what got you here, remember?"

"No, you got me here. You break rules every day of your life." Her hands are faster that they'd been before as she messily dumps the last of the kit together, "Why's this one so sacrosanct, huh?"

"Don't bait me," His voice hedges low and staccato into the way he wipes the words against the crown of her head, "Caitlin."

And the inhalation she takes only spurs his lips back against her hair in the opposite direction, "Why?"

Because I like you innocent. Stay that way.

"I'll take you under." He's paused into the assessment, self realization making it a little bitter before he forcefully lifts his head away from the smell of her hair.

When she looks up, she looks just like the first Kate he'd met – the one that was a feisty and fierce threat to more than just his patience, "That a threat?"

At first he's startled that their thinking is sometimes still so strategically similar.

And then he remembers that's probably why he'd offered her a job in the first place.

Because he'd seen something in her he couldn't lose. It would have disappeared into the pathways of the District and he may not have been able to hunt it down again.

"It only takes a few minutes to drown." He watches her eyes brighten farther awake as she takes in his words, "Ask any sailor."

"Gibbs - "

A grunted negation breaks off the beginning of whatever argument she's about to make, "And once you stop fighting, really? Seconds."

She purposefully draws herself up with a balanced precision on high heels that subtly impresses him, lifting the kit onto the table and shunting it hard and loud and making her wearied frustration clatter echoing throughout the bay. He watches the lay of her palms against the table, her hips banking back as she shakes her head and he uses his hands against crackling knees to draw himself up to her side. He watches her profile, leaning as close as he usually had a habit of doing, forcing her shoulders higher because he despises when they dip low. She just turns a tired glance of hazel at him and shakes her head like he's her very first decisive disappointment.

And then she smiles and he watches it break brighter in affection, an attempt at reparation, "You've got five minutes to prove it."

Well, goddamn… good girl. You truly are a devil too.

Welcome to No Man's Land, Caitlin Todd.

Breathe shallow and keep your shoulders loose.

Because it's the absolute last response he could expect out of her. Which, in his estimation, maybe makes it the absolute best. Maybe he's losing it too - because he damn near bends her farther forward and runs his hands up her stacked ribs to catch along her breasts while he tastes the warm skin on the back of her neck. Catches himself leaning into the way she sideways watches the whole stretching shift of his chest.

Instead he closes his eyes and brackets his hands to the table at her sides, lets his head drop forward to the back of hers to keep her stop-still even as he speaks, "You heard me, Todd."

"I heard you." Kate admits into dropping her eyes closed, driving her head back insistently into the way he's pressing intimidation into her because it's his perpetually first wave of defense (offense?) in any situation.

"Go home and get some sleep." He's curbing his voice under control and there's no lingering of any particular emotion, "Your judgment is questionable."

She leans farther forward and away from him on a huffed noise, "Seems it is."

"Oh, I don't mean in your execution." Suddenly he seems just as worn out weary as he really should, his face slackened gray as he leans back into the table beside her, "I mean in your quarry."

"You're nobody's quarry, Gibbs." It actually softens him to see and hear how she's proud of the sentiment and sullen by it all at once. "And I'm not a predator. I'm not that kind of woman. Tony could obviously tell you that."

"Kate - "

"I'm pretty tired." She laughs it off like it was all innocent, just shakes her head conspiratorially like they'd been playing a poor man's hand of poker.

Nothing at stake, really. No bets to make.

Thank Christ. You've got me skint broke already, woman.

She looks simultaneously mortified and somehow awkwardly settled – as though she'd hated the gambling process but she'd had to make the play to know the end. "Too tired."

"Want me to drive you?" He hadn't meant to make it hurt but he can see so instantly that it does. Her hurt tends to live in her eyes and the shifting color around her pupils, he's visited her with pain often enough to know the welcome mat.

"Not that tired." She tells him with a tone that betrays a little bitterness, an obvious distaste for his infuriating tendency to be soundly over-protective and completely hands-off at once.

"Kate - "

"Do we have to do this?" It's the closest she's going to get to pleading and he chalks it up to her defenses being battered by exhaustion because, otherwise, she's seemingly happy when scrapping with him, "Because… I'm just - "

"You're exhausted." He supplies the white flag for her, lifts it between them with a cocked smile.

"Completely." She nods a jerked gratitude back.

Gibbs exhales into watching her, "Let me drive you home."

She shakes her head negatively so very slowly, so innocently sympathetic to how back and forth the both of them are. It's like she can simply stand back and see the entire situation for what it is, then guiltlessly step back into it. He should be able to do that – and he can't sort why, in the middle of this moment, he just fucking can't.

At least, he can't sort it out until he meets her eyes.

And she's more than tired, she's more than sad… She's completely embattled.

Which doesn't make a damn bit of sense to him – because he's the one that's suddenly hooked up by the throat.

She has no idea that she's equal to an invasion – a sort of unavoidable endgame. "Good night, Gibbs."

Good night, sweetheart. Sleep well.

"You did it anyhow." He's waited and watched her hips and wondered it out loud when she's already halfway across the bay, seemingly physically unable to just let her go, "I told you not to."

"What?" A lack of sleep and motivation plays into the way she just swings back around on him, her usual attention to rank and professionalism so shredded up that she is simply, completely, just a vividly and beautifully frustrated woman. "I'm walking away, right? Isn't that the right answer? Go home? Pretend everything's normal? That's what you want."

"Kate - "

"That's what you need." She's veering close to angry, at least as angry as she'll show him these days, "To feel right in your superiority because that just might justify keeping distance. To feel like you have control of this."

"Of what?"

"Of whatever the hell this is." There it is. That sure quick strength and self righteousness that tends to rear up when she thinks she's right and he's wrong.

"What was it with Kerry?" His voice hashes low and verging on accusatory, "You've done this before."

"I have never," The surprise of her flat palm forcefully slapping center line into his chest is something he's not going to forget for awhile, because it takes a pretty mighty set of balls to shove a Marine, and especially this particular one, "never done this before."

He can't ignore her hand or the implication that she's lending more weight to this 'this' than any other – and he can't decide if he finds it endearing or terrifying.

Except, really, not much terrifies him anymore. At least, he forces it not to. Mostly.

So maybe it's just endearing, or maybe it's damn adorable, "Then let me take you home."

She's got a feral smile sometimes, one that prowls, "Not happening, Gunny."

She can't keep saying it like that.

In fact, she's gotta stop saying it at all or he's just gonna tongue the word right off her pissy little lips.

He lets a little grit and growl back in her direction, keeping his tone low, "You keep saying that like you have a right to."

"I do." Kate tosses back so perfunctorily that he questions whether or not she actually does as she turns a shoulder to him.

But, no… but, "Why?"

"Because you like it." He realizes as she flings back that maybe it's the most furious and feisty and ferocious she's been with him since she started laying slaps across his chest within the first week of them meeting, "And I can tell."

He doesn't actually argue with that. Doesn't actually want to.

Because he respects the fierceness of her surety too much to lie in the face of it.

"I'm not stupid, Gibbs. And I'm tired of pretending."

He thinks that she should be told, some day, that she's completely wrong in her own assessment of her personal capabilities when it comes to stalking a sort of prey. Because she has him so narrowly pinned that he can't help but watch how interestingly arresting the hunting process is on Kate Todd. How lithe and nimble and easy she makes it seem. She was well trained before he'd put hands to her career and started shifting her sense of life direction. She'd been yanked and pulled and dragged through enough rigorous training that when she'd mentioned shooting him shortly after meeting him, he'd nearly instantly gotten aroused.

Any-damn-time, gorgeous. Your sidearm or mine?

Because that hadn't been a threat, not in the least. That had been a full on flirt.

But that had been when she was more, say, available.

"I'm tired." Actually, she's beyond that and it makes him feel momentarily guilty for working her and the rest of the team over. Except this sort of guilt is usually a fleeting thing and she's proven she can take this job on.

It's him that she has to guard herself around. He's tiring her.

"Exhausted." He agrees. "Lemme get you to bed."

"Just sleep." It's not a question she gives him with an arched look, but an order. Somehow she's re-assessed the situation and found a median line, a stability in her emotions and their situation that she can live with – even if it's just temporarily. However, she's not the one giving orders around here. At least, she's not supposed to be.

"Just sleep." Gibbs agrees softly anyhow, confused as to how his hand got close enough that he's brushing the pad of his thumb against the waistline of white, fingers stretched along her pelvic bone.

She smiles even as she leans into the wiping comfort of the touch, "How's my judgment now?"

"Still impaired." He snorts a low chuckle, nodding but keeping his eyes from hers, "But better."

It's a sudden stillness when she curls her hand against his wrist, forcing his stretched fingers unmoving and drawing his head marginally up even if he still can't look at the color of her eyes, "You want more of me."

"Yes, I do." I want all of you. "Doesn't change reality."

"Can I tell you something?" Her fingertips are running the inside of his wrist just behind his watch and it's unexplainably sexy and too personally intimate all at once.

"Sure." He lets her keep doing it anyhow, because as annoying as he pretends to find it, it's making his fingers curl in pleasure.

"One of these days?" Her lips rise along his cheek and he stubbornly lifts his jaw into it, pressing into the way she's whispering so that she's gotta leave it on his skin or pull away, "Five minutes isn't gonna be enough."

One of these days a whole year isn't gonna be enough of you.

"Time me." He nods so starkly that she's confused, blinking as though she just doesn't comprehend the English language anymore.

"What?" She's obviously surprised by the harsh shunt of his palms, the force of his thrust driving her hips back into the edging of the table as he steps up into her space and leans.

"Start the clock. And don't lose track."

She slumps less than gracefully into the way he tugs at her waist but he finds it sort of cute in its sleepiness, the lethargic but trusting way she just lends her body into his pulling. He draws her jaw up while watching her face, turning his fingers up under it so that he can aim her head up and over his shoulder toward the clock on the wall behind him. She's got fingers in his shirt and her lashes suddenly flutter her eyes wider in some sort of comprehension and he can't keep from grinning as he leans his mouth close to the line of her jaw.

"You watching the clock, Kate?"

He's pretty sure she's just shivered under his pressing, could feel it settle, "Yes."

And he grins as he keeps watch over the expectant lax of her features, "You should probably have your eyes open then."

"Bastard." It sounds so nice coming off her, though. Like praise or a whispered worship.

He's losing his sense of direction and the only way to find north is the fact that he so completely knows the smell of her hair – and if he's got his face buried in that darkness he can keep his eyes comfortably closed and slope his fingers south. He can map this body in minutes, trajectory and terrain have already been perused, scoped, studied. He knows his best vantage points. Has them filed in his memory, previously unused. However, observantly catalogued, intentionally tracked. He knows exactly where to go to bring her down. He's made her his favored reconnaissance since the day she'd walked into his office still a member of the Secret Service and inexplicably drawn an otherwise unheard of 'please' off him.

"You're a bastard." The guttering rasp of her voice gives him a small smile, knowing he's got her off balance, "I thought - "

"I told you not to bait me." He bites the words out staccato into her cheek, letting a little threat lay into the tone before he softens his mouth along her jaw, "Little over four minutes?"

"Mmm."

"You did it anyhow though, didn't you?" He lets his fingers flex tight from her jaw to her throat, wiping downward as his thumb presses her chin higher, letting himself darken the color of his eyes on her as he watches her submission to the movement, "Eyes open, Todd. Pay attention."

"I am." She blinks away from the clock and the sheer surprised innocence in her eyes rakes on him, so wide and brashed more copper than brown.

She's got a smile, though. One that says she knows him better than he thinks she probably should. She's too young and bright-wide-eyed for him to touch. She shouldn't be wise enough to understand this, to understand the edges of him, but somehow she's managing. It's a smile that says she already knows he's going to lay his mouth down hard on hers and she meets his tongue with a lashing of her own.

She lets him kiss her angrily, lets him start it with some sort of pent frustration.

She makes it so much softer, though. Leads it long, slow, and gentler than he'd began.

That's my girl. Been looking for her everywhere.

"How long do I have?"

Hell, how long's she been profiling him? Working up a modus operandi? Letting her circling thoughts peg him down, facet by facet by turning glances? Since the very damn beginning, he knows. Since she'd found herself penned in between him and Fornell and unexplainably chosen his flippant smart-assery over the other man's affability. Tobias could have easily charmed her his way, drawn her into an agreement with the FBI rather than NCIS – it's not like the other man was socially inept. Not like he couldn't sweet talk a deal and a half with some sugar on top. Jesus, Diane had proven that.

But she'd settled on him instead. Taken him up on his offer before Fornell could even make one. Maybe that'd been her first mistake and not her dalliance with Kerry, choosing him over Fornell. Letting him lean on, over and around her. Maybe he never should have offered her the job and maybe she'd be at the Hoover Building now instead of getting groped by her boss after he'd overworked and underslept her.

"Kate - "

She shakes her head sharply at the sound of his own questioning, like she's already read and re-read his thoughts. "Two minutes."

She suddenly sounds so assured and he finds himself smiling relief into how calmly unwavering she is as her spine arches, her head slackening back a little to her shoulders as he strokes his palms against her breasts and fingers fabric. He rolls her nipples between thumbs and forefingers, feeling the pull of her bra and smiling into the way it leads her chest arching into him before he fully palms her breasts. He leans a swipe of his tongue up the perfumed tang of her throat, grating a groan through his teeth and letting it vibrate just under her ear before he nips his teeth against her.

"Plenty of time." He's gotten her skirt twisted up higher on one thigh than the other just because he wants to draw her leg onto his hip and he grunts appreciation when she doesn't just let him pull up against the back of her knee, she moans into the calloused pads of his fingers rising higher on her thigh. "You drowning yet?"

He can feel her ass tighten under his touch as his hand lends between two fabrics and he jerks her closer, "No."

His glaring thins a little into her stubbornness and he fights the twitch of a proud smirk, watching her eyes flick a challenge from the clock to him and back as her jaw rises.

"Little liar." Gibbs murmurs and shifts his fingers under dry cleaned fabric, stroking the top of her thigh with intentional slowness before his thumb angles pressing against the fabric of her underwear.

Christ, she moans like he's already inside her. Like he's already found a way to own the inches of all of her. The sound of it should be considered classified – because he's positive that he doesn't want anyone else to have access to it. He wants that sound buried in his throat, laying on his tongue, bitten into his shoulder, wiping anywhere she can reach with her lips.

He's not necessarily surprised that she's a little damp, and he can't really blame her. Because he's damn hard as he turns his mouth into her cheek, tipping his hand so that he can rub slow and methodically pressured traces against the crotch of her panties, kissing against her cheekbone as he studies her downed lashes.

"Open your eyes, Kate." The moaned noise that keens off her comes from lower in her throat than expected and he grins as her lashes flutter back open upon demand, her jaw lifting into watching the forgotten clock.

"Keep breathing." He bedroom whispers it right in front of her ear right before he traces a fingertip up under the hem and wipes on wetness, pushes against her with the complete weight of him while he hooks his finger deeper between her legs. He simultaneously loves this exact trimly tailored skirt and despises how the bridging of it keeps her thighs from spreading farther open for him. Because, at this point, he damn well knows she would if she could. The deathgrip she has on his upper arms is just one scrap of evidence to that fact.

"Gibbs." He knows he's outta time, outta line – doesn't keep him from roughly swiping his thumb across her clit just once, "Stop."

She's completely breathless but her lungs are full and he leans farther forward a moment before flexing his fingers and drawing them off of her, twisting them up and into hanging viced from the dark fabric of her shirt. It suddenly feels like his fingers are on-fire-aching. He leans an angling into the way her knee is still pressed up along his hip and he smiles into wiping unintentional wrinkles from the fabric of her shirt, righting the buttons straighter and perpendicular toward the bunched fabric of her skirt. When he looks up she's watching his movements with a sweetened softness that reminds him of her coffee, light brown and all sugared sweet.

He can't help a boyish grin, squeezing her knee as it starts a downward slide on his leg, "Was it worth it?"

She flexes her arms straight against the cool metal of the table, leveraging her upper weight back into it as she toes her high heel back onto her foot and he can't help watch the arch of her calf to the bend of her ankle, "I'm not exactly sure yet. I need more time."

Gibbs nods once, "I'm taking you home."

"Uhkay." Kate's shoulders shrug so simply and acceptingly, like she'd expected nothing different from beginning of the day before to this particular end.

"With me." He lands it quietly in her hair, lets his hands close her up into his chest like she's a small thing he can protect for a little while. It tugs on something unexplainable in his gut, tugs harder down in his thighs.

"I figured."

He lets himself wipe at her hair once before forcing his hands back down along her arms, fingers squeezing her more coherent, "For sleep."

She nods her face into his shirt, the slight height of her fitting her up against him so that she can wipe her cheek onto his chest. "Just sleep."

"I didn't say that. Not 'just'." He shrugs away from her, already shifting them apart so that he can shut off some of the lower lighting, letting his steps echo as she searches over the table before looking back to him, "For sleep."

"You said 'just' earlier." The brunette moves to follow him, leaning her shoulders forward first into the movement and letting her steps slowly bring them back together as he pauses at the elevator keypad.

Gibbs just shakes his head into a near grinning, exhaling slowly without pressing farther into it, "What'd I tell you about baiting me?"

"Don't do it." She chirps up at him mischievously, "And then you rewarded me for doing it anyhow."

Like she's more than a little proud of bending-into-breaking the rules, of being frighteningly like him. Sometimes following his rules meant snapping them in half and scattering the pieces. It's a tautological cycle, he knows. But if they, she, can't trust herself to know which rules are breakable and which aren't then they were in some serious trouble.

If he couldn't trust himself to break this rule, he was in some serious trouble.

Because he's stuck still. Either he's moving forward or he's retreating.

"Gibbs?"

Only duplicitously smart men or cowards retreat. He fancies himself as neither.

"You baited me anyhow." He repeats softly, blinking a wealth of pleased astonishment into her watching.

She gives him a sleepy smile and lifts her hand into reaching like she's known this was the ultimate ending since he'd said the word 'sex' and her name in the same sentence with DiNozzo as witness. "Yeah, I did."

"Kate - "

"I'm tired, though." Her eyes soften on him as her head angles, fingers stretching out to rest along his wrist. "It can wait til tomorrow. Or next week. Or whenever."

Don't you dare say 'never', you little fox.

She's giving him an emergency exit end, in the event that his blood flow has actually made it back to circling through his brain rather than just his dick.

It's cute, sorta sweet even, but completely unnecessary.

"That wasn't meant as a reward." He lets her fingers stay wrapped on one arm while the other hand dips his pocket for his keys, jangling them between their pressing so that she realizes his intent in unchanged, "It was supposed to be a punishment."

There's obvious surprise in the way she lifts her head to accept the kiss he wipes onto the corner of her mouth, "Coulda fooled me."

He lets his lips own the spot just before her ear, "Next time I'll make it more obvious, Agent Todd."