Chapter 4: The Midnight Visitor
The lie of sleep clung to him like a shroud. He lay beside Beth, the scent of their sex now stale and cloying in the dark room, and stared at the faint crack of moonlight bisecting the ceiling. Her breathing finally deepened, shifted into the rhythmic pattern of true unconsciousness. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 3:17 AM.
He moved with the silent, deliberate precision of a predator. Sliding from the sheets, he found his discarded boxers and trousers, pulling them on in the gloom. He didn’t look back at Beth’s sleeping form. Every fiber of his being was magnetized down the hall.
The house was a canyon of silence. Each floorboard he avoided was a remembered map. The guest room door handle turned smoothly under his palm.
In the wedge of light from the hallway, he saw her. Elena was asleep on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, fully dressed in the same pink shorts and black top from earlier. The moonlight silvered her blonde hair, fanned across the pillow. She looked like a painting. An angel, untainted and serene. The ache in his chest was physical, a splintering pressure. He had no right to be here, no right to shatter this peace with his corruption.
He took a step back. This was madness. He was a man who built fortresses of order, and he was standing in a dark hallway about to burn his entire life to the ground for a glimpse of a sleeping girl. Shame, hot and acidic, rose in his throat. He retreated, pulling the door silently closed.
The soft click of the latch was her alarm.
“Hotch?”
Her voice was thick with sleep, a bare whisper, but it hooked into him like a barb. He froze, hand still on the knob.
“Are you leaving?” she murmured from the darkness.
He couldn’t speak. His forehead dropped against the cool wood of the door.
“Come back in.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a command, soft and undeniable. He pushed the door open again and stepped inside, closing it behind him, sealing them in total darkness.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, the words rough.
“But you are.” Sheets rustled. He could sense her sitting up. “I felt you watching me.”
He moved toward the bed, drawn. His eyes adjusted. She was a pale shape in the gloom. He sat on the edge of the mattress, the weight of the world bending his spine. The confession tore out of him, ugly and true.
“I just fucked her,” he said, the vulgarity harsh in the quiet. “Beth. In my bed. I had to… I had to close my eyes and pretend it was you. I had to picture your body, your face, just to get hard enough to do it.” He let out a shuddering breath, a sound of pure self-loathing. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
Her hand found his in the dark, cool fingers threading through his. Then she guided his palm to her face. He cradled her jaw, his thumb stroking the impossibly soft skin of her cheek. She turned, pressing a kiss to his palm.
“The same thing you’re doing to me,” she whispered.
It was the permission he needed, the shared guilt that dissolved his last shred of resistance. He leaned in, his mouth finding hers in the darkness. This kiss was different. It wasn’t the frantic hunger from the couch. It was slow, deep, a tasting and a claiming. A communion.
He broke the kiss, his hands moving to the hem of her black top. “I need to see you,” he breathed. “All of you.”
He pulled the top over her head, fumbled with the clasp of her simple bra. It gave way. In the muted moonlight, her breasts were revealed, perfect pale mounds with taut, pink nipples. He groaned, low and reverent. “God, Elena.” His hands smoothed over the silken skin of her stomach, her ribs, mapping the exquisite architecture of her youth. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her shorts and the tiny panties beneath, peeling them down her legs. She kicked them off.
He laid her back against the pillows and just looked. Smooth, clear skin without a mark, taut and firm over lean muscle. A tiny waist he truly could nearly span with his hands. The gentle flare of her hips, the perfect, rounded globes of her ass. She was a fantasy made flesh, but infinitely better, because she was breathing, watching him with those wide blue eyes, her lips parted.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he whispered, his voice ravaged. He lowered his head, taking one nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the peak before sucking, hard. She gasped, her back arching off the bed. His hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach, through the fine, soft hair, and found her core. Slick heat greeted him. He pushed one finger inside, and the tight, clinging suction around it made his cock jerk painfully against his zipper.
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed. “You’re so tight.” He added a second finger, stretching her, feeling her inner muscles flutter and grip. “Are you… has anyone…?”
“Not like this,” she breathed, her hips rocking against his hand. “Never like this.”
Virgin tight. The thought, possessive and primal, sent a bolt of pure lust through him. He stripped his clothes off with frantic haste, his own hands clumsy. When he was naked, he knelt over her, his rigid cock jutting against her inner thigh. He reached down, guiding himself to her entrance. The wet, hot notch of her felt like home.
He pushed in slowly, an agonizing, inch-by-inch revelation. Her body resisted, then yielded, a breathtaking, velvety tightness swallowing him whole. He was big, and she was so small. He felt her wince, heard her sharp intake of breath.
“Okay?” he gritted out, sweat beading on his temple.
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded, her legs wrapping around his hips, pulling him deeper. “Just fuck me, Hotch. Please.”
He slid home, fully seated, buried to the hilt. A white-hot, blinding pleasure seared through him. It was better than he’d imagined, and he’d imagined it in pornographic detail. The fit was exquisite, a tight, wet, perfect friction that threatened to end him before he’d even moved.
“Oh, fuck, baby,” he groaned, dropping his forehead to hers. “You feel… you feel so right. So fucking tight. I’ve never felt anything like this in my life.”
He began to move, a slow, deep roll of his hips. Her nails bit into his shoulders. Her moans were soft at first, little whimpers against his neck. But as he found a rhythm, setting a pace that was both tender and devastatingly thorough, her sounds grew louder. Each deep stroke pulled a sharper cry from her lips. The sounds drove him wild, a feedback loop of ecstasy.
“That’s it, good girl,” he murmured, kissing her throat, her jaw. “Take it. Take all of me.”
But her cries were escalating, becoming uncontrolled, ringing too loud in the silent house. Thrilling as it was, panic lanced through the haze of pleasure. He withdrew suddenly, the loss of her warmth a shock.
“On your hands and knees,” he ordered, his voice guttural.
She blinked, dazed, but obeyed, turning over with a fluid grace that made his mouth water. The moon lit the perfect, heart-shaped curve of her ass. He couldn’t resist. He brought his hand down in a sharp, stinging slap on one pale cheek. The sound was obscenely loud. She yelped, then pushed back against him, a wordless plea.
He positioned himself and drove back into her from behind. The angle was different, deeper, harrowingly intimate. He hit a place inside her that made her shriek, a raw, unfiltered sound of pleasure.
“Quiet!” he hissed, snapping his hips forward again. He was pounding into her now, the bedframe knocking rhythmically against the wall. She was sobbing with each thrust, her cries muffled by the pillow. He leaned over her, one hand clamping firmly over her mouth. “You have to be quiet, Elena. If Beth hears you… if she catches us, she’ll kill us both.”
She nodded frantically under his hand, tears streaming down her face to wet his palm. “I’m sorry,” she choked out when he lessened the pressure. “It’s just… it’s too good.”
“I know,” he breathed into her ear, never slowing his relentless pace. “You feel fucking amazing. I need to fuck you when she’s not here. I need to hear you scream. I want to hear how good I make you feel.”
The words hung in the dark, a filthy promise wrapped in a necessary threat. He felt her nod again under his palm, her body shuddering around his cock. He removed his hand slowly, watching the pale line of her back contract with each ragged breath she tried to control.
He began moving again, a slower, deeper pace that allowed him to feel every millimeter of her clenching heat. With each measured thrust, a truth he’d been fighting surfaced, cold and clear as the moonlight on her skin.
He didn’t recognize the person he was. Talking about fucking her the moment Beth left for work, planning it. Hell, he was fucking her now, with Beth asleep down the hall, her perfume probably still on his skin. The infidelity was a concrete fact, a line crossed with deliberate, desperate steps. He had never been a cheater. Integrity was the load-bearing wall of his character. But for the life of him, staring at the perfect arch of Elena’s spine, feeling her inner muscles flutter as he dragged his cock almost all the way out before surging back in, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
This felt right. She felt right. Her soft cry, stifled in the pillow, was the only sound that mattered.
“Elena,” he grunted, his rhythm faltering as the emotional wave hit him harder than the physical one. He leaned over her, blanketing her body with his, his mouth against the shell of her ear. “Look at me. I need you to look at me.”
With effort, she turned her head, her cheek smeared with tears and the cotton of the pillowcase. Her blue eyes were glassy, unfocused with pleasure, but they found his.
“This is who I was meant for,” he whispered, the confession leaving him like a pulled stitch. “You. It’s you.”
He was still moving inside her, a slow, inexorable pulse, but the act had transformed. It was no longer just frantic coupling. It was a vow, sealed with flesh. This was his girl. His woman. His love. The words felt foreign and absolute in his mind. He would cherish her in a way he’d never cherished anyone—not with distracted duty, not with comfortable habit, but with a single-minded ferocity that terrified him. He wasn’t letting this woman get away. Not ever.
“The first time I saw you,” he murmured, his hips rocking gently, “in the lobby. You were soaking wet, scared shitless, but you looked at me like you could see straight through the badge. Like you knew me.” He brushed her hair from her damp temple. “I needed you then. I just didn’t know it was this. This need… it eats me alive. It’s not just wanting to be inside you, even though Christ, I do.” He pushed deeper, drawing a sharp gasp from her. “It’s needing to know what you’re thinking when you’re quiet. It’s needing you safe. It’s needing your smile in my goddamn kitchen. I love you.”
The words, once released, couldn’t be stopped. They spilled out in time with his movements. “I love you more than I ever loved Beth. More than I loved Haley. More than I love my own pathetic self. You make me feel… sex-craved, yeah. Obsessed. But it’s because you’re mine.”
She was crying in earnest now, silent sobs that shook her frame. She reached back, her hand fumbling until it found his hip, clutching him to her. “I knew,” she whispered, her voice broken. “I didn’t care about her. I saw you and I just knew. You were meant for me. I wanted you. I love you, Aaron.”
Hearing his name in her raw whisper undid him completely. He quickened his pace, his control slipping. The bed resumed its soft, rhythmic protest against the wall. “You have me,” he promised, each word a thrust. “All of me. She doesn’t. She never did. I’m not going anywhere. You understand? Nowhere.”
He felt the telltale tightening in his balls, the coil of pleasure ready to snap. “Come with me,” he demanded, his voice rough. “I need to feel you come on my cock. Now.”
It was all the permission she needed. Her body seized, a silent, breathtaking convulsion that squeezed him like a fist. Her cunt milked him rhythmically, pulling his own orgasm from him with a force that sawed the air from his lungs. He emptied himself into her with a choked-off groan, hips stuttering, burying his face in her hair to smother the sound.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their desperate, synchronized breathing in the dark. The reality of the house, of the other occupant, seeped back in like cold water.
He carefully withdrew, the loss of connection a small death. He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, settling her against his side. Her head found the hollow of his shoulder, her leg thrown over his. They were both slick with sweat, the smell of sex and salt thick in the air.
Down the hall, a floorboard creaked.
They both froze, a statue of guilt tangled in sheets. Hotch’s heart hammered against Elena’s ear. He listened with every fiber of his being, the profiler parsing the night sounds. A sigh. The rustle of bedsheets. Then, silence again. Beth turning over in her sleep.
The relief was acidic. He kissed the top of Elena’s head, his arms tightening around her.
“You should go back,” she whispered, but her fingers traced the definition of his abdomen, claiming the territory.
“Not yet,” he murmured. He stared at the ceiling, at the familiar crack he’d seen from his own bed a thousand nights. It looked different from here. Everything did. The man lying in this guest bed, holding this girl, was a stranger. And he preferred him.