Author's Note: This is a strong T for now. Will eventually go M and be moved at that time.

This picks up 10 months after my previous story, By Any Means Necessary (found over in the M section), leaves off. I don't suppose you'd necessarily have to read it first, but you'd probably be pretty lost if you didn't. It is a sequel, but currently not intended to be anywhere near the length of BAMN. Just gathering up a couple loose threads I always intentionally left untied, with every intention of coming back later to tie them off so long as there's enough interest in the project. So let me know if you are interested! And if you can guess exactly what thread is coming back to haunt us...

By Any Means Necessary: The Sequel

Booth had only been kidding ten months ago, that night before they first made love, when he'd joked outside her apartment that he was addicted to her.

He was pretty sure she had been at least partially kidding too the next morning, when she'd brought him coffee and implied that she was addicted to him as well.

But starting almost immediately from their first time in that cabin, all evidence pointed to the fact that they were both definitely addicted…in a can't keep their hands off each other, sleep is really just optional anyway, and how the hell did they manage to make it through the work day kind of way.

Making up for lost time? Maybe. But ten months later, Booth still couldn't think about that weekend in the cabin without getting a hard-on. About how they'd finally both awakened late that evening, and quickly left in search of a restaurant - because although the cabin had everything else, it was definitely lacking anything edible (well, other than her). About how they'd barely made it back inside the door after a hasty dinner before clothes were disappearing again. About how they'd tumbled back into the bed, breathless and laughing and tripping over one another in their haste to get each other naked. And that time she'd been the one on top the entire time. And he'd finally let her get her hands on him, too, and it'd been more than worth the wait.

He'd crossed off quite a few locations on his list of places he wanted to be intimate with Bones that weekend. His money and planning hadn't been wasted. They'd made exceptional use of the hot tub; they had finally got around to acting out that fantasy of hers involving the couch. And then there was that amazing rug in front of the fireplace, the one that had him quickly adding "must have a fireplace" to his mental list of necessary amenities if he ever talked her into getting their own house together instead of splitting time between their respective apartments.

Life had become pretty damn blissful. He couldn't speak for her, but he wasn't just satisfied. He was completely fulfilled in every aspect of their lives together (well, other than that not-being-married-to-her-yet thing, but he definitely had a go-slow plan for brainwashing her into that one). And that overall fulfillment he felt was even more prominent in their sex life.

And judging by the way he'd become an expert on how to have her screaming his name just like he liked, every single time, he'd have imagined she felt the same.

So he really didn't see it coming when she very calmly turned his whole perspective upside down on its head while he was whistling his way through making breakfast one Monday morning ten months later. He was far too occupied with frequently sneaking peeks at her perched on the counter reading some squinty magazine while making him crazy in nothing more than the dress shirt she had so effectively stripped off him the night before.

"Booth?"

"Mm-hmm?" He was already grinning. It wouldn't be the first time she'd interrupted his breakfast-making in favor of fulfilling other appetites. He knew full well just how easy it was to insert his body right between her thighs with her sitting that way, get her into his arms with her legs wrapped around him, and carry her to his bed where he could slowly and sweetly make love to her. Breakfast was nearly as optional as sleep these days.

"It's been almost a year since Albania."

His grin slowly faded. He couldn't remember the last time either of them had mentioned it, though it was never far from his mind. His attention definitely wasn't on breakfast anymore. "Yeah," he replied carefully, not entirely sure where this was going. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, Bones, I guess so."

She was still studying her magazine, though he knew her well enough to see she probably hadn't actually been reading a word since at least a few moments before she called his name. Her wheels of thought had already started turning…likely aiming to run him over.

"Dr. Saroyan stopped proofreading all of my reports two months ago. Dr. Sweets has not brought up the subject in quite some time, and my field privileges are no longer subject to his supervision."

He watched her carefully, trying to catch her gaze, still a little lost. "That's all good news….right?"

He may as well not have spoken. She just kept staring at her magazine, even turned a page, her eyes flicking toward him once to make sure he was buying her casual reading act. He'd have rolled his eyes under normal circumstances….her acting skills hadn't improved much.

"Also, Gordon-Gordon said on Friday that it's not necessary for me to meet with him any longer. Although, he would still like to share a plate of woefully unhealthy potatoes occasionally."

Booth relaxed just a little bit, enough to pour up his omelet into the frying pan, thinking they'd finally reached the point of all this: she must be worried he would object to her no longer meeting with Dr. Wyatt. The issue of her entering therapy had certainly been a point of sharp contention between them at the time, leading to him tricking her into lunch with the kindly older psychiatrist to stack the deck in his favor so he could get her some help.

So he was pretty sure he knew what this was about. But it had never been characteristic for Bones - and even less so since they'd started sleeping together - to take the around-the-bush approach with him unless she was going to bridge some topic she felt he'd need coaxing into. And she had to know he trusted Dr. Wyatt's judgment implicitly, or he'd have never entrusted her to him in the first place. It made him mildly suspicious that maybe something more was going on, so he decided to tread carefully.

"That's great, Bones! I mean, I guess it is. Aren't you…okay with that?"

She abandoned her magazine, plunking it resolutely down beside her and pinning him eye to eye, giving up any pretense of casualness.

"Of course. I was simply questioning when you are going to accept that I've fully recovered."

That froze him into place pretty effectively, his mouth hanging slightly open for a moment. "I…what are you talking about, Bones?" She just continued to stare him down, so he felt compelled to fill the silence. "I mean, did I…do something?" His own wheels started turning, trying to figure out if there was an incident in recent memory where he'd hovered a little too much, let his protectiveness of her get just a little out of hand. He couldn't think of anything; work had been pretty normal, not even one situation where she'd been in danger. And after work she was almost always with him, driving him crazy in every sense of the word, so…

She squared her shoulders, and he knew she was about to spell it out for him. It still figuratively knocked him over when she did.

"I'm asking you why you're still so hesitant about touching me."

That one took him a few seconds to process. One hand came up to rub at his forehead. "Um, Bones…"

"Yes?"

His mouth opened and closed a few times, as he tried to figure out how to state the blatantly obvious. A flabbergasted breath of a laugh whooshed out of his mouth, followed by a voice that sounded entirely too defensive even to his own ears. "We've made love almost every day for 10 months…usually more than once."

"Yes, we have." The huge, cat-that-ate-the-canary grin that crept across her face when she agreed took a little of the sting out of things, reassuring him just the tiniest bit. "But I'm referring to the fact that….oh, that's starting to burn, Booth."

"What?" He stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, before the smell of burning food hit his nostrils and sent his eyes to his now inedible omelet. "Oh! Dammit."

It took him a moment to cut the heat off and quickly wipe up the spatters on the stove after he fumbled the hot pan. All of which was quite honestly the farthest thing from his mind at the moment as he unceremoniously tossed the ruined food, pan and all, onto a cold burner before returning his full attention to his partner.

"Bones, I don't understand. Are you trying to tell me you're not…" He gestured helplessly in front of him, loathe to even say it. "…satisfied?" He felt a little like the rug had been swept out from under him. He'd truly thought everything was fine. Perfect, in fact.

The look on his face (the one that Angela usually referred to as 'kicked-puppy': a descriptive analogy Brennan could most certainly agree with, being all-too-aware of the look's effectiveness) had her hopping down off the counter to move toward him and wrap her arms around his waist, looking up at his worried eyes.

"You know that I'm not dissatisfied, Booth," she told him before lying her head against his chest so she wouldn't have to see it if he continued making that face. "I'm quite satisfied, in fact." Her tone left little doubt that she was telling the truth, and she felt his arms come up to loosely embrace her in return, a bit more slowly than usual. "I simply want you to know that there's no longer any reason for you to be overly cautious with me. I've not suffered from a flashback in months."

His hands moved to her shoulders and pulled her far enough away from him to look at her, his eyes serious. "I'm not sure I understand what's going on here, Bones, but I really need to. Tell me exactly what you're asking of me...please."

She met his eyes, her hand coming up to touch his cheek. "On the night I returned home from Philadelphia, you said the topic was closed indefinitely, and I agreed. But time has passed, and I'd like to reopen it."

He visibly winced as he remembered that night, instantly knowing what she meant. It'd been early in their relationship, when every touch still seemed like a minefield thanks to what had happened to them in Albania. She had taken a work trip to Philadelphia, leaving just one night after she sent his mind reeling by telling him in her bed that he wouldn't always have to be so overly gentle with her. He'd spent her entire trip trying not to obsess over the idea and failing miserably. Then she'd returned home from Philadelphia a day early, slipped into his bed in lingerie, and he'd gone at her like a madman thanks to his own ill-advised fantasies and his medication-induced belief that she was just a dream. It was what had happened next, with her panicking and just barely stopping him before he could make an already delicate situation a million times worse, that had convinced him the idea of being less than gentle with her was something he didn't want to think about again.

Ever.

Before he could even reply to her current request, not that he had a freaking clue what he was going to say anyway, her cell phone chose that exact moment to start ringing and snap him out of his reminiscing. Feeling like he was moving underwater, he let her go when she pulled away from him to retrieve it. He leaned one hand against the counter as he stood staring down at the cold surface, still reeling and not really listening to her end of the conversation.

When she hung up her phone, she stood staring at it for a moment. "That's odd," she remarked, more to the phone than to him, though that comment popped his eyes up in her direction immediately. Just the mere mention of their not-so-long-past ordeal had him on the alert to anything out of the ordinary.

"What's odd?"

She barely spared him a glance, still watching her phone as though she was waiting for something. "Hm? Oh. Nothing. I'm certain there's a logical explanation. We will have to continue this later. A body's been found in the park, although I'm…uncertain which park. I'm supposed to receive a text with the coordinates and details of the….ah! There it is." She was halfway to the bedroom to start getting ready when she turned back around with a questioning look on her face. "Why isn't your phone ringing, Booth?"

"Huh?" One mystery explained, he'd already gone back to brooding about the much more mystifying idea that he apparently wasn't doing it for Bones in the bedroom. But he did manage to snap out of it enough to realize that she'd asked a pretty damn good question. Why was she getting the call if he wasn't? He picked his phone up off the counter, noting that he had no missed calls. "I'm not sure…"

His phone beeped with an incoming text almost immediately, and he waved it at her reassuringly after scanning the screen just long enough to see that he was indeed being called to a crime scene in the park. She just shook her head at him and smiled before disappearing to get dressed.

… ooo … ooo …

They really had no more time to discuss anything. He'd desperately needed a shower, and she'd had her typical overwhelming obsession with getting to the crime scene as quickly as possible before some incompetent could compromise her evidence. Since he had no desire to bail her out for assault, and really wouldn't wish her tainted-evidence-wrath on his worst enemy much less some poor innocent crime scene tech, he decided not to hold her up.

They crossed paths at the bedroom door. She was already sailing out of it fully dressed, just as he had finished quickly cleaning up his mess in the kitchen and was on his way through to the bathroom for a shower.

"Meet you there?" he asked, his hand reaching out to catch her at the waist and stop her.

She stretched up and gave him a quick kiss, all too quick for his liking, but again: evidence. If there was one thing Bones liked more than either him or sex, it was uncompromised evidence.

"Yes, that will be fine. I'll see you at the park."

He hadn't expected her to say anything else, so it surprised him when she called back to him just a few steps away.

"Booth?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you please think about my request?"

She didn't wait for an answer, which was probably a good thing. It would have been nearly impossible to convey without a heavy dose of sarcasm just how little chance there was that he'd be thinking about anything else. And sarcasm, he well knew, was just lost on her anyway.

"Gee, Bones, do you think?" he finally grumbled to himself anyway, but not until after he heard the door shut.

… ooo … ooo …

He slammed every drawer in the bedroom with much greater force than necessary as he rifled through them to find the clothes he'd need. Slammed at least one of them a second time for good measure.

The briskly angry way he scrubbed himself clean in the shower probably didn't do great things for his skin, but he was in full-fledged pout mode and didn't care about much other than the perceived attack on his sexual prowess.

Geez, what had been the first thing out of her mouth after the first time he made love to her? Something about him being right, that slow and gentle had been immensely satisfying, and how they had broken the laws of physics?

It wasn't like it should come as a surprise to her how he felt on the topic. She was the one who'd apparently memorized every word of his speech in the diner about it, a long time before either of them had decided to admit to each other that they'd both been thinking about them when he said it.

And he had been gentle with her. Unfailingly. From their very first time, and every time since.

He'd been careful, too, about making sure she was comfortable at every step. Not that there had been a lack of passion. There certainly hadn't. It's just that when he was inside her, he knew what a gift he was getting, and he wanted to treat that gift right. Meaning that, ever since they'd been home from the cabin, he made sure things ended up in one of their nice soft beds every time, no matter where either of them started things, with him using every ounce of restraint he had to keep his hands gentle and his thrusts in check - all of which was pretty damn impressive, as far as he was concerned, considering some of Bones' better efforts to break that steely control. And he had not even one time gone at her quite the way he did that night she came back from Philly. He'd handled her like fragile china.

Okay, so maybe in retrospect he had been holding back. A lot, and probably to the point of going overboard. And just maybe, deep down, he knew that. He'd just also been so thorough about not stopping until she was utterly boneless and sated in his arms that he just hadn't expected her to notice, much less call him out on it; although he probably should've, considering how much she'd always liked to talk about "passionate, uninhibited relations" even back when they were still just partners.

But dammit, after being forced to hold her down underneath him in that goddamn room in Albania, to restrain her while she fought him thinking the worst was about to happen to her at his hands, and after everything that had happened afterward with her fear and flashbacks about him, he wasn't taking any chances. She'd not had a single fear reaction to him since they started making love, and he wasn't about to risk toppling that delicate balance by doing anything he didn't already know was safe. That was just the way it had to be.

Or at least it was the way he'd thought it had to be. Right up until 10 minutes ago when he found out that the woman he'd thought he was keeping fully sated and blissfully happy was instead dissatisfied with him.

Shit.

Sure, she'd tried to assure him that she wasn't. Had sounded for all the world like she meant it, too. But he was a man, and a fairly well experienced one at that. He knew damn well what it meant when a woman started bringing stuff like this up.

Add to that the fact that Bones had started out with a prejudice against monogamy as a satisfying lifestyle to start with, and that brought him to the real reason he was slamming drawers and sulking:

What if Bones was starting to get it in her head that this thing wasn't working? He'd started the morning musing about how soon would be a good time to pop the question. But what if, God forbid, she was nowhere close to the same page? What if she was wondering if her needs might best be satisfied somewhere else? The more he thought about it, he could practically hear her spouting stuff about brain chemistry and cycles of attraction. What if 10 months, a year, two years, whatever…was all he got?

He wanted 50 years. At least.

… ooo … ooo …

Brennan alternately squinted into the sunlight and then down at the coordinates on her phone as she made her way through the far outskirts of the woods surrounding the very expansive Northwell Park, far away from any easily navigated trails, looking for the crime scene. For at least the fifth time, she stopped to hitch the strap on the heavy bag of equipment to a more comfortable position over her shoulder. She'd already been walking for quite some time from the middle-of-nowhere location she'd been forced to park her car, and it was unseasonably warm outside.

Despite the fact that she was relatively certain Booth was needlessly worrying and quite possibly pouting, and therefore not the most pleasant company after the topic she'd finally broached, she was beginning to wish for once that she'd waited for him to complete both his typical brief shower and his inordinately long hairstyling regimen so they could have ridden together.

But that thought was soon forgotten when she pushed through a particularly thick canopy of brush and entered a small clearing cordoned off with crime scene tape, revealing a body in its midst. She stopped and blinked in confusion.

Where was everybody?

She was unfamiliar with the FBI official who'd called to request her team's assistance at the crime scene as a special FBI project. But as the coordinates he'd texted her immediately thereafter were clearly correct - she could see the body right in front of her, after all, and clearly someone had been here to mark the crime scene - she had no doubts regarding his veracity.

What was unusual was that there was no one else in sight. No one from the Jeffersonian, no FBI agents, no local or park police, no annoying civilian bystanders.

Nobody.

"Hello?" she called out, waiting a few moments for a reply. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

She quickly opened her phone's call history, squinting against the sunlight to read her screen, intent upon speaking with the FBI official who had initially called her. A flash of irritation went through her as she realized she'd paid little attention to his name. She'd been too focused on why it wasn't Cam calling her. She couldn't even recall his title.

Booth would have remembered name and title, and possibly even have known names of the man's family members. The thought made her scowl.

It appeared to be a moot point anyway, as her call wasn't going through. Squinting once again at the display, she could just make out the "NO SERVICE" message. Which meant she couldn't call Booth either, to find out who had assigned them the case. She frowned again at the phone, shielding it with her free hand to ensure she had read that no-service message correctly. Duty had called her into this park in the past, though perhaps not nearly so far off the beaten path as she was now. The cell reception was normally excellent despite the rugged surroundings.

Looking around, she briefly considered leaving her equipment and making her way back to her car to see if her phone would have better reception there. But she could hardly leave the body unattended. In fact, she intended to have a strong rebuke for whomever was responsible for leaving the body unguarded to start with. Anyone could have strolled into the middle of her crime scene and contaminated evidence, although even she had to admit that it was unlikely anyone other than the murderer would have happened across such an out-of-the-way place.

Indecision filled her, along with a tiny nagging edge of worry at that very discomforting thought. But she could see from the edge of the clearing that the body was fully skeletonized, just as she preferred. And she knew that Booth would not be far behind her, once he was satisfied with his hair, at which time they could solve the mystery of the other missing personnel who should be in attendance.

So she opted instead to go ahead and begin her examination.

She opened her bag, donned her gloves and removed the equipment she needed. But she had knelt alongside the skeleton for mere seconds before her mouth fell softly open, her eyes widening.

"Oh my God."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Technical Note: For anyone who knows the area, the D.C.-area parks that will be mentioned in this story are fictitious. I researched actual parks nearby, but have never been there and didn't want to take the risk of getting something wrong and pulling the reader out of the story so I just created my own.