(Totally different and I don't know where it came from...and rest assured, I am working furiously on finishing HOPE and INTERIM and the other stories...I am interested in knowing what you all think...so please review)

He never meant to sleep with his subordinate. It was an accident. An aberration brought on by adrenaline and guilt. A moment out of time. It had just happened, and they'd both agreed it wouldn't, shouldn't, happen again.

They'd both felt comfortable with that decision. She knew enough about human behavior to understand how sex was an affirmation that they were both alive. Understood that he was feeling less of a man since the New York explosion, and that he'd needed a woman to conquer after such an horrific case. And the lack of a condom meant nothing, she was thirty-six years old and had had a few lapses in the past, nothing had happened then, so she wasn't too worried about now—that's what she had told him the next morning. It was just one time, an aberration that meant nothing. Just two people taking comfort from one another.

So nothing changed between them on the job, or anywhere else.

If his eyes happened to linger a little too long on her face, he didn't think she noticed. If he'd taken to walking directly beside her whenever the team was on the move she apparently paid it little thought. He'd started doing that before they'd slept together, so how had anything really changed? Because she made him feel comfortable with his newly acquired disability, if he could even call it that. He still had partial hearing, wasn't totally deafened by that explosion.

But he didn't have to prove himself with her, not the way a man intrinsically did with other men. So of all the team, she was the easiest for him to be around. She'd understood that.

She was even more conflicted with him, that's what he'd noticed. No accidental brushes against him, but she didn't hold herself away from him, either. She was still wary of him, but he suspected it was on a more sexual level than ever before. Before it had been a professional preservation, now it was personal.

And if he couldn't stop thinking about that night, about having her beneath him, around him, hot and ready, the problem was entirely his.

He watched her more. Knew his gaze was pulled in her direction much more than it ever had been. Before that night, she'd not been on his radar, not that way, anyway. She'd just been a member of his team. He'd deliberately held himself back from her, and had begun distancing himself from the rest of the team when Elle Greenaway had been shot. So she'd never had a chance with him. He knew she was ok with that, knew she hadn't truly liked him for at least the first year she'd been with the team. He understood that and he respected her for the way she'd handled the animosity between them. And they'd both been ok with things between them recently.

Until that night a month and a half ago.

If he was brutally honest with himself, he'd admit it. That night haunted him. Consumed him. Those big dark eyes looking at him with lust and longing were what he saw in his sleep every night. Dreams of that 

lean, perfect body he'd had curled against him for one glorious night was what woke him from his sleep every night. He wanted it again. And again.

But he wouldn't do that to her. She'd been there for him in his darkest moment and he would never do anything to jeopardize what made her happy. And the BAU made her happy. He wouldn't take that away from her. Never.

And a relationship between them, team leader and subordinate, could be potentially devastating for her. She'd bear the brunt of any fallout, gossip, snide remarks. Not him, it was never the man who suffered, even in today's modern times. The last thing he'd ever want to do was jeopardize Emily's happiness.

So when he realized what he did, the guilt flooded him. Because he wasn't the least bit unhappy about the results of that night. He'd been aware of the need for birth control, but the primitive part of him had screamed against it. So he hadn't. And he'd not given her time to object.

So there he sat, up in his office, alone and separated from his team, watching her from the window—a thirty-eight year old, divorced father of a three year old, with another child on the way. And she hadn't told him that last part. Not yet. And he was getting impatient.

It had been the coffee that tipped him off first. They'd been in Chicago two weeks prior. An officer had walked by, coming within two feet of where he'd stood between Emily and a very pregnant JJ. He'd not missed the way both women had turned a little green when the smell of the man's coffee had reached them. Emily had said nothing, just put one hand over her mouth, a surprised look widening those demon dark eyes of hers. Emily was never sick. Never, not even a head cold back in February when the rest of the team had been down with one.

JJ had laughed, teasing the older woman about sympathy pains. Emily had claimed it was bad Chinese. He'd watched her a little closer that day, just to make sure she wasn't coming down with something—even food poisoning. She was fine after that.

Then it had been a dizzy spell. They'd been in the briefing room, in that same Chicago precinct, and had stood to leave. She'd been one of the last ones out of the room, having been engaged in conversation with a flirtatious detective, and Hotch had waited for them to finish. He'd paired her off with him for interviews that day. He'd watched as she stood, then sat back down quickly, one hand going to her forehead.

He'd rushed to her side, one hand automatically going to rest on her back. She'd looked at him, then, with a slightly confused look in her eyes. Told him she'd skipped breakfast and was feeling light headed. He'd bought her a candy bar.

Then she'd been unusually tired. She'd drifted off less than five minutes after the plane had taken off for DC, her head falling softly on his shoulder. He'd sat beside her almost unconsciously, something he did a lot of as of lately. It was six o'clock in the evening and she was out. Completely. Emily was the team insomniac, and there she was sound asleep against him. It had taken every ounce of resistance he had to not wrap an arm around her and tuck her against his chest while he sat there talking to Dave.

He doubted Dave had missed his feelings. He knew they had to have been written all over his face for the older man to see. But Dave didn't comment on it, just lowered his voice, from his own seat next to the sleeping JJ.

Hotch wasn't blind to the apparent physical signs, either. Her body was curved, and he knew from first hand experience those curves were just in the right places. And he'd done enough studying of her body in the last six weeks to realize that some of those curves were changing. Her chest had gotten slightly bigger, and it wasn't from any weight gain.

She was more sensitive there, too. He'd seen the almost imperceptible gasp when he'd unconsciously brushed against her. At first he thought it was because of that night. Then he realized it was, but not in quite the way he'd first thought.

He was almost one hundred percent certain—Emily Prentiss was pregnant with his baby. What he wasn't certain of was whether she knew it. Yet. It was only a matter of time before she did.

What happened after that was anybody's guess. He knew what he wanted, but in reality, it was all up to her.