She meets him at a bar.
He lays it on thick – his accent smooth in her ear, his palm warm on her knee, his blue eyes dancing in the low light when he wraps his fingers around the rung of her chair and situates her so her knees are pressed between his. It's been a very long time since she's felt goosebumps accompany the touch of a man, even longer since she's found herself leaning forward and imagining what his lips might feel like against the hollow of her throat, the tops of her breasts – the soft skin on the inside of her thighs.
Judging by the way his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks when she rolls her straw around her mouth, his thoughts run along a similar vein.
"What do you say, love? Shall I take you back to your room?" His nose nudges just beneath her ear, and it's almost enough for her to give in – the bite of his cologne tickling her nose and the spice of rum heavy on his breath. She'd bet a pretty penny that all that promise in his voice only leads somewhere very, very good – and, yet –
"Why?" She slides her hand from where it's been resting against the small of his back, down over the curve of his ass and into his back pocket. His shoulders immediately stiffen, and she knows it has nothing to do with her bold gesture – and everything to do with her credit card sitting pretty in his trouser pocket. "So you can rob me blind?"
She leans back, grin wide at the look on his face. A roll in the fancy sheets at the Waldorf would have been nice, but the pink glancing his cheekbones is just as satisfying.
"I don't think so, buddy." She can't help the laugh that bubbles from her lips. Especially when his eyes go just that bit wider when she reaches into her purse and pulls out his driver's license and credit card – the ones she lifted forty-five minutes ago when he slid in next to her and asked to buy her a drink.
"You might be good – " She glances down at the ID in her hand. " – Killian Jones – " She leans in close, presses a chaste kiss to his (still) open mouth.
" – But I'm better."
-/-
"Love, wait!"
She keeps walking down the empty street as his footsteps fall heavy behind her, the cold hair whipping at the ends of her hair and biting at her nose. She tries not to smile, but he's out of breath when he grips her elbow and turns her carefully beneath the single street light, that look of surprise having melted into something that looks infinitely more dangerous.
It's been a while since someone looked at her like that.
"Teach me."
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes for good measure. "You couldn't handle it."
His fingers flex on her elbow, a cocky twist to his bottom lip. "Perhaps you're the one that couldn't handle it, darling."
She holds the ring that was sitting on his ring finger in front of his face. He grins like he just won the lottery, and she didn't rob him with sleight of hand.
"Brilliant."
-/-
Ruby gives her the once over when they meet up in Austin, unloading their operation in the hotel room they have booked for the next three weeks while Henry scouts the streets.
"Do we have a new recruit?"
Emma keeps her gaze on the laptop, plugging in the digital camera they'll use to catalogue the bracelets, rings, wallets, and whatever else they lift off unsuspecting conference goers. Technology festivals always draw the good stuff.
(But not watches. Never watches.)
She fiddles with the ring in her pocket – the heavy, ornate one with a ruby red gemstone.
"No, we don't have a new recruit."
-/-
He finds her in Boston.
She's already had his new credentials made.
Ruby smiles at her from behind the computer, giving her best 'I told you so' eyebrow.
Henry laughs into his hot chocolate and immediately starts showing Killian all the complicated hand signals they use to speak to one another across crowded rooms.
Killian – Killian just smiles at her until the dimples flash in his cheeks and – fuck, it's been a long time.
-/-
"It's all about focus," she whispers, sliding closer to him, her breasts brushing the starch of his shirt and her breath backed up in her chest. It's just the two of them in the vacant office, an awareness humming in her blood with every one of his soft exhales, puffed against her collarbone.
"If I touch you here," she glances her palm along his rib cage. "I reach over here."
She holds up the wallet she just pulled from his back pocket. He snatches it back with a chuckle, his fingers brushing hers.
There's an adorable furrow between his brows that she wants to smooth with her thumb but she settles for standing stock still as he moves further into her space.
"So if I touch here," he lifts his hand, thumb dragging over her bottom lip slowly. She can taste the salt on his skin and the lime from his cocktail, sitting abandoned on the edge of the desk. She shivers, and tells herself she doesn't want to kiss him. She licks her lips, tongue catching on his thumb, and he lifts his heavy gaze from her mouth to her eyes.
He blinks, a smile curling at the edges of his lips. He holds the leather strings that never leave her wrist in front of her face, and her heart jumps in her chest.
He smirks when she snatches them back.
"Did I do alright?"
-/-
His mouth taste like lime, too, when she kisses him – pressing him up against the big window with her fingers fisted in the lapels of his jacket. He groans – something rough and delicious – and remembers none of her teachings about a gentle touch when his hand finds its way into her hair, pulling tight.
It's only when they're back in his room, her skirt pushed up around her hips and her underwear handing off one ankle – her knees spread wide and his shoulders between them – that he speaks.
"So if I touch you here," his thumb dances along her clit and she groans, back arching, eyes slipping closed. She's been turned on since he walked in with his half buttoned shirt and ridiculous vest, the devil in his eyes and sin on his tongue. His teeth worry a mark on the inside of her knee. "Then I reach over here." Two fingers slip inside her, curling just right, and she bites her tongue to stop herself from whimpering his name.
"Tell me, Emma," she hears the smile in his voice. "Am I doing alright?"
-/-
He brings her hot chocolate with cinnamon when she's still wrapped up in his sheets, shows her his tattoo when her toes press against his, and she tells him about Neal before the lines from his pillowcase fade from his cheek.
She tells him why she'll never lift a watch again.
He presses his lips to the tear tracks on her cheeks, lets his mouth drift down her jaw until he can catch her lips in his.
It's easy.
For once, it's perfect.
-/-
He's brilliant in the field – effortlessly charming as he weaves in and out of the crowds on the street. Their haul is easiest the largest it's ever been and she sighs when she catches him and Henry with heads bowed together over a book later that night, looking over something or another and bumping shoulders playfully.
Ruby comes up behind her, resting her chin on her shoulder.
"You're going to run, aren't you?"
She fiddles with the ring in her pocket. She should probably give that back to him soon.
"No, Ruby. I'm not going to run."
-/-
He's the best she's ever seen.
Not that she tells him that.
-/-
She makes him run instead.
The play on Regina works effortlessly, their money doubled and stacked neatly in black duffle bags in Ruby's car that's following diligently behind them. He had been so perfect – done exactly what she needed him to do.
The car pulls to a stop, and she makes sure Leroy is already stepping outside of the vehicle when she turns to him. He looks confused, but there's an awareness there, too. Like he always knew this was coming.
It almost makes her change her mind.
"What's going on?"
She doesn't look at him – focusing on the carefully ordered wads of cash in her hands instead. "This is for you. One hundred and fifteen thousand. Your cut of the pull."
She places the money carefully in his lap. He ignores it, a shaking in his hands when he loops his fingers around her wrists.
"You don't have to do this."
The walls rise quick and fast, and she steels herself, meeting his gaze. She tries not to think of how he's got the same look in his eyes as he does when she first opens hers and he's propped above her balanced on his elbow, his fingers twisting back and forth in her curls.
"Your part of the job is over. Thank you for – " She swallows around her words, her tongue suddenly clumsy in her mouth. " – for everything, Killian."
He releases his grip on her hands, and she shifts back in the seat, hand searching for the handle behind her.
"Aye, the job." A humorless laugh slips through tight lips as he looks down at the money in his lap. "Is that what it was?"
She doesn't answer, hand finally (finally) finding the door handle.
She doesn't look back.
She definitely doesn't cry.
-/-
Thirty-seven days and Henry still shakes his head at her, sitting at his desk alone and pouring over the same book.
Thirty-seven days and Ruby still crosses her arms over her chest and raises both eyebrows, leaving printouts of Killian's whereabouts by the coffee machine.
She crumples the paper, and twists the ring in her pocket.
-/-
Four months and Ruby stops trying.
-/-
She's pulling a job when she sees him again.
He has a woman crowded up against the bar, his face in her neck, his hands on either side of her hips. The woman laughs and Emma drops her expensive wine, the shattering making everyone in the room silence abruptly, turning towards the woman who dared make a spectacle in the grand ballroom of the Four Seasons.
It's hardly going low profile.
He looks right at her, and she runs.
-/-
He meets her at the bar.
She laughs a bit at the irony.
"Is she a mark?" She asks, hating herself a bit for the waiver in her voice. He sighs, shifting back and forth, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"No, she's not a mark." She takes a bigger gulp of wine. She's definitely going to need to grab a bottle or two on the way out. "I'm different now, Emma. I'm on the straight and narrow, as it were."
She turns and presses her hip against the railing, finishing her wine and staring him down.
"Is that so?"
His eyes are clear, jaw clenching as he nods.
"Aye."
-/-
She steals two bottles of wine.
And the bracelet from the woman with the laugh that makes her skin crawl and a dress collar that smells like Killian.
-/-
Half of her thinks Ruby arranged this whole thing, making their mark Killian's brand new girlfriend. She scowls at her friend over coffee, watching carefully for even a hint of a lie.
"I swear, Emma. I had no idea." Red nails skim the top of her ceramic mug. "Although I can't say I'm disappointed about this little detail."
"Try to harbor your enthusiasm," she deadpans. "The job is off. We're moving on."
"Oh no, you don't. This job is big money, and I thought we agreed it would be the last one we needed for a while. Certainly enough to get Henry out of this life and into a good college." Emma slumps back in her chair and Ruby glares at her over peppermint mocha whipped cream.
"Consider it extra motivation."
-/-
She watches Killian tug on her earlobe with his teeth.
Extra motivation, indeed.
-/-
In the end, it all goes to shit.
Maybe she should have pushed Ruby a bit harder – told her how every night she lies awake and stares at the cracks in the ceiling of their shared apartment and misses him. That sometimes she stands in the shower and wonders how two months of working with an arrogant asshole turned into her falling for him.
Maybe if she pushed, she wouldn't be tied to a chair, a gag in her mouth and a raging red-headed society queen holding a gun to her chest.
Maybe Killian wouldn't be right next to her.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Zelena's eyes flash and Emma would answer, she really would, if not for the Calvin Klein handkerchief in her mouth. "Do you think I didn't know as soon as you snuck into my party like the street trash you are that – "
"It wasn't her idea." Killian is not gagged. She shoots him a look, the chafing in her wrists paling in light of the panic humming through her bones. "This was all my plan. From the very beginning. I was going to – "
Zelena's henchman doesn't wait for an appropriate response, pushing her out of the way and shooting Killian in the chest. The force of it pushes him back, and he lands on the floor with a groan, his arms and legs still bound to the wooden chair.
She screams through her gag.
Maybe she should have pushed.
-/-
Zelena flees as soon as Killian's blood starts staining the fine white carpets, his head lolling to one side as Emma fights to free her wrists. She probably fractures her left one, but her arms come free and she works at her legs, crawling over to his prone form with her hands hovering over the red blooming on his chest.
"Killian, please – " Her hands shake and she cups his face, willing him to open his eyes. "Killian, please don't."
She smooths her thumbs under his eyes. If she touches him here, maybe his heart will keep beating there.
A sob sticks in her chest.
"Come back to me."
-/-
In the end, it all goes to shit.
And she's remarkably less observant than she used to be.
Probably has something to do with the guy bleeding out beneath her hands.
(Probably has something to do with the way her heart is breaking right beneath her hands.)
Someone pushes her out of the way, and Henry is suddenly kneeling on the other side of Killian – a well-fitted suit and a green emblem on his chest, the mark of Zelena's trusted guard – some sort of syringe contraption in his hand and his face a mask of intense concentration.
"That book we were always looking at?" His hands are sure as he flicks open the last two buttons on Killian's shirt, pressing the needle into his chest and pulling back on the pump until blood is squirting out like a god damned Quentin Tarantino film and she – she is just – what the fuck is going on?
Killian's eyes flash open with a gasping breath, a pained grunt leaving his lips as the pressure eases in his chest. Henry marks the exit wound with duct tape, and Emma lets Killian lean against her, her shaking hands wound tight in his hair.
Henry smiles at her, a speck of blood on his cheek.
"Anatomy."
-/-
His head is in her lap as Henry guides them through the dark streets, avoiding potholes and trying not to jostle them too much. Killian's fingers loop around her wrist, and she would punch him if she didn't love him so god damned much.
"Ruby's idea, I'm afraid." He chuckles, and god – she missed his smile.
She tries to keep her face stern, but a smile breaks through instead, thumb running along his eyebrow. "So you lied to me?"
He laughs again, a pained wheeze there at the end.
"No, love. I didn't lie. Zelena wasn't the mark." He presses a kiss to the back of her hand and closes his eyes, smile of his lips. "You were."
-/-
He's the best she's ever seen.
She tells him every night, with his forehead against her collarbone and her fingers tracing the scars on his back.
"Well, darling," he presses his lips to hers. "I did learn from the best."