Defective and effective✨

The good morning texts had started four months into your relationship.

She sent them whenever she left before you woke up, which was most mornings, because Emily Prentiss operated on a schedule that made normal people feel personally attacked. You'd rolled over one Tuesday to find your phone lit up on the nightstand: Good morning, darling. Sleep well. Don't forget to eat breakfast. Three sentences, punctuation perfect and correct.

You had, after some consideration, decided the good morning texts were your favorite thing. You'd never told her that. You weren't going to tell her that. But you'd saved every single one of them—a scroll of small good mornings going all the way back to the beginning, right there in your messages if you ever wanted to look.

You looked sometimes.

Today's had come in at 6:47 AM, the screen lighting up soft in the gray of the bedroom: Good morning, my darling. Early briefing—I'll be in the office before seven. Be good today.

A normal thing to say. A reasonable thing. Emily said it sometimes when she had reason to believe you might not be—fine, fair, you'd given her reasons before—and you'd read it twice in the warm half-dark with her pillow still carrying the faint smell of her shampoo, the duvet heavy and soft, the room quiet enough that you could hear the low hum of the city already going outside.

You'd typed back: define good

You watched those three little dots pop up. Then disappear. Then pop up again before Emily's reply came: You know exactly what I mean.

And here was where things had gone sideways, because you did know exactly what she meant, and something about lying in her sheets with her pillow still smelling like her while she was across the city in a briefing had made you feel a particular kind of reckless. The room was quiet. The morning light was just starting to go gold at the curtain edges. You were warm and comfortable. Very comfortable.

do i though, you'd sent. seems subjective

It isn't.

pretty sure it is

My darling. A longer pause this time. I'm in a meeting.

oh noooo, you'd typed, and you added a little smile face that you were not going to feel bad about.

She hadn't responded after that, which you'd taken as a win. You'd gotten up, padded to the kitchen on cold bare feet, made coffee in her French press because yours was at your own place and hers was better anyway. You'd eaten the breakfast she'd told you not to forget—half a bagel with cream cheese from the back of her fridge—standing at the counter in her oversized t-shirt, watching the city start to wake up through the kitchen window. The street below was already filling up, cabs and morning commuters, the energy of DC getting itself going.

The second thing had not been planned.

Not exactly.

It had been the fault of the bed, honestly. You'd gone back to it after breakfast with your coffee, just to drink it in peace and scroll through your phone, and the sheets were still warm from both of you and the morning light had shifted in the time you'd been up—coming through the curtains now in long golden stripes across the duvet, the kind of light that made the whole room feel like it was in no particular hurry. You'd set your coffee on the nightstand and pulled the duvet back up around you and settled in. And you'd found yourself thinking, with no real urgency, about the way Emily's hands felt when she wasn't in a hurry. Her patience when she'd decided to take her time with you. Her hands moving over you slowly, like she had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend it exactly there. You thought about it more than was probably reasonable. More than you'd admit to anyone, including yourself on most days.

The photo had felt like a natural progression of events.

You'd taken it without much deliberation—nothing elaborate, just you in the morning light with her sheets pooled at your waist and your hair loose around your shoulders. The kind of photo that said look what you're missing without having to say anything out loud. You'd sent it before you could talk yourself out of it, set your phone face-down on the nightstand, and waited with your pulse doing something slightly embarrassing.

Her response came five minutes later: Hi, baby.

You'd smiled at your phone like an absolute idiot.

Then, thirty seconds after: You're beautiful, darling. My beautiful girl.

A beat. Then one more line, because she must've known what kind of mood you were in: Don't touch yourself. I mean it.

Which was a reasonable instruction. She'd given it before. You'd followed it before. There was no reason today should be different.

The problem was the light, and the sheets, and the fact that my beautiful girl had settled somewhere in your chest. The more immediate problem was that your hand had already been drifting by the time you'd read don't touch yourself—just lazily, fingers tracing down over your stomach, not with any real intent at first. Just because the bed was warm and Emily wasn't in it and you'd been thinking about her hands for the better part of twenty minutes and your body had apparently started making its own decisions.

You read the instruction again, and your fingers didn't stop.

My beautiful girl, the back of your brain offered, helpfully.

You thought about Emily's voice when it went low—the tone that meant she'd made up her mind about something and the only remaining question was the details. You thought about her hands. You bit your lip and thought about her patience, the way she could make you feel the full weight of her attention like something physical.

Three minutes after her text, you reached for your phone with your free hand.

The second photo was just your hand—two fingers raised toward the camera, close enough that there was no mistaking the slick shine between them, the way the morning light caught the stickiness there. You held the angle for a moment, making sure it was clear. Making absolutely sure.

She would know exactly what that meant. You'd made certain of it.

The response took longer this time. Long enough that something started to assemble itself at the back of your mind—not quite regret, but adjacent to it, the quiet reconsideration of whether reckless had tipped into genuinely poor decision-making. You wiped your fingers on the sheet. You looked at the ceiling. You thought about Emily's jaw when it went tight.

Your phone buzzed.

Meet me in my office for lunch, my little darling.

That was all.

You'd stared at it. The my little darling at the end was doing a lot of work and none of it was reassuring. Emily's my darling lived on a spectrum—on one end, fond and easy; on the other, the tone that told you things weren't going to go your way. Right now it was sitting at the far end of that spectrum, and you had put it there yourself, and you knew it.

You'd gotten up to find something to wear.

(-)

The Metro was twenty minutes and three stops.

You'd sat in the window seat and watched the tunnel walls go by and thought, with some thoroughness, about what you had done. The first text—a little bratty but well within the established range of your behavior. The second text, the oh noooo with the smile face, that was also fine, honestly. Emily had been in a meeting and she'd chosen to read her messages and you weren't going to feel bad about that. The first photo had been a genuine impulse, and she had complimented you.

The second photo was harder to justify.

You'd known what you were doing. That was the thing you kept circling back to, sitting on the Metro with your bag on your lap and DC sliding past outside. You'd read don't touch yourself. You'd looked at it. And you'd kept going anyway, and then you'd taken the photo and held it up to make sure the light caught it right, and that was a sequence of decisions, not a single one. Each one had been made with full awareness of the one before it.

You didn't have regrets. You had arrived at this conclusion after eleven full reconsiderations and you were sticking to it. But you were also aware—had been aware since the moment you'd read meet me in my office for lunch, my little darling—that you were about to sit across from Emily Prentiss and account for yourself, and that was a thing you were allowed to have feelings about.

And feelings, you had.

(-)

The BAU bullpen had its own kind of energy at midday.

A low steady hum of keyboards and quiet conversation, people at their desks with lunches going cold beside their monitors. The overhead lights were the flat institutional kind that made everyone look slightly tired, but the bullpen had accumulated enough desk lamps and personal effects, years of lived-in use, that it felt less like a federal building and more like a place where people had genuinely settled in. You knew most of the faces by now, several names. Garcia had hugged you the third time you'd come by and called you a gift to the universe, which had seemed excessive but you weren't going to argue with Penelope Garcia about anything, ever, under any circumstances.

Nobody looked up when you came in. You were a known quantity here—Emily's—and that was apparently sufficient.

Emily's office was glass-walled, which you'd always thought was an interesting choice for someone who kept as much close to the chest as she did. The blinds were open. You could see her through them from halfway across the bullpen—head bent over something on her desk, silver hair catching the overhead light, the set of her jaw that meant she was working through something. She looked completely composed. She always looked completely composed. It had taken you a while to learn to read the variations inside the composure, but you'd been paying close attention for months and you were getting there.

She didn't look up when you pushed the door open.

"Close it behind you," she said.

You did.

She let you stand there while she finished reading. Turned over a page, scanned the back of it, set it down and squared it against the desk edge with careful precision. Then she looked up at you.

Emily Prentiss had a way of looking at you that you'd never quite gotten used to. Not the profiler thing—or not only that—but the way she looked at you when you were alone with her and she wasn't performing anything for a room. Direct and patient but warm underneath, and right now the warmth was present but it had company. You felt the full weight of her attention land on you from across the office and stay there.

"Hi, love," she said, her voice even and calm. "Come here, please."

You crossed the office. She watched you do it with her hands folded on the desk, and every step felt like it had some weight to it—the short distance between the door and her desk somehow longer than it had any right to be, the office quiet in a way that made you aware of your own footsteps. She didn't look away. Didn't shift or move, just watched you come to her with the patient attention of someone who had already decided how this was going to go and was simply waiting for you to arrive.

When you reached her side, she tilted her head fractionally, an instruction without words. She'd always been economical like that. A tilt of the chin, a look, a hand at the small of your back. She'd never needed much.

"Emily—"

"Mommy," she corrected, quiet and automatic, the same tone she'd use to note a factual error.

Something in your chest did what it always did when she said it like that. Like it was simply true. Simply the right word for what she was, nothing to make a production of.

"Mommy," you said, watching something settle in her expression. "Someone could—"

"I'm aware," Emily said. "I've worked here for years." She reached out and tucked a piece of hair back from your face, her fingers lingering at your jaw. Her touch was light. Her eyes weren't. "You had quite a morning, hm?"

"I—"

"The texts," she reminded you. "And then the photo." Her thumb moved once against your jaw. "Which I meant what I said about. You're a beautiful girl and you know it." A brief pause with a point to it. "But then the second photo. Now that was a surprise."

You said nothing. There wasn't much to say.

"Three minutes," Emily said. "I told you not to touch yourself and it only took three minutes. And then you sent me evidence to make sure I knew." Her thumb made one slow arc against your jaw. "That wasn't an accident."

It wasn't a question.

"No," you said, biting your lip.

"No." Her hand dropped from your face. "Turn around. Hands on the desk."

The surface was cool under your palms. Through the glass you could see the bullpen—anyone who looked at the right angle would see you standing at Emily's desk with your hands braced, which wasn't unusual. People leaned over Emily's desk to look at things all the time. Case files, photographs, maps spread out for a briefing.

From a certain angle you were just having a meeting.

From a certain angle.

"Mommy," you said, hating the smallness of your own voice. "Someone will see."

"Then maybe," Emily said, moving directly behind you, close enough that her voice was more felt than heard against the back of your neck, "my little brat should have behaved."

She didn't sound angry—and you were grateful for that, the way you were always grateful that her version of this was quiet. She simply had the situation in hand and you were the only one who was rattled. She reached around you and moved the papers to one side of the desk, clearing the space in front of you with unhurried efficiency.

"You made your choices this morning, darling. This is what comes after choices."

Her hand settled at the small of your back, warm through your shirt, and pressed you down against the desk.

"Consequences."

You gripped the edge of the desk and reminded yourself to breathe.

Her hands found the hem of your skirt and pushed it up. Then her fingers hooked into your underwear and pulled them down without ceremony, rough enough that the elastic ripped. The sound seemed to fill the quiet office, and you were almost certain it was entirely in your head, but your face went hot all the same.

"Mommy—"

"Shh." Her silver hair brushed your shoulder as she leaned over you, her voice dropping to just above a murmur. "You're going to take it. You know you are." Her lips were almost at your temple. "You know why this is happening."

You did know why. The morning arranged itself in sequence—the texts, the light through the curtains, the first photo, the second photo, the slick shine on your fingers, three minutes. Yeah. You knew.

She stood back up. Waited exactly fifteen seconds. Just when you were ready to lift your head and ask what was happening, the suspense making you shiver, her hand came down.

The first one landed clean and sharp, and you bit the inside of your cheek hard against the sound that tried to come out. The sting bloomed immediately, heat radiating outward from the center of it, and then her palm was there rubbing slow circles, pressing the warmth deeper. A deliberate contrast. Sting, then soothe.

"Oh, look at that." Her voice had a quality you'd been trying to name for months and still couldn't catch. Satisfied. Fond in a way that had an edge to it. "My brat's ass turns a lovely shade of pink." Her fingertips grazed lower as she rubbed, and she paused. "How cute."

Heat crawled up the back of your neck that had nothing to do with the spank.

Three more came in succession—measured, each one distinct, each followed by that same slow pass of her palm. You were gripping the desk edge hard enough that your knuckles had gone pale. Your hips kept trying to press back and you kept catching yourself doing it, which was mortifying and also completely involuntary.

"Be still," Emily said.

"I'm trying—"

"Try harder." Her palm came down again—harder than the ones before—and your whole body lurched forward into the desk. Her free hand pressed flat to your lower back immediately, holding you in place. "There. Stay there."

She wasn't rushing. She never rushed anything, and the deliberate pace of it was its own torment. Each spank gave you just enough time to process the sting, to feel the heat building and layering across your skin, before the next landed. She varied the spots, and by the time she paused you were breathing in short, uneven pulls and holding the desk like it was the only fixed point in the room.

Out in the bullpen, someone laughed at something. Normal sounds. Normal afternoon. The total disconnect of it made your face go hot all over again.

Emily's fingers trailed down slowly, past where she'd been rubbing, and then they stopped.

"Well," she said.

You closed your eyes, already aware.

"Well." Quieter, and there was something in her voice that wasn't quite amusement but lived right next to it. "Look at this." Her fingers shifted—just slightly, just enough—and the slick sound was audible to both of you in the stillness of the office. You wanted to evaporate. You wanted to sink into the ground right then and there.

"All of that," she said, thoughtful, "and you're soaking."

"Emily—"

"Mommy."

"Mommy." It came out rough. "Please—"

"Oh, 'please'?" She withdrew her fingers with maddening calm, and the loss of even that incidental contact felt deeply unfair. "I've barely done anything yet, darling." She shifted to your side—just enough to sit at the edge of your vision—her hand still resting light at the small of your back.

"Although," she said, working through something out loud, "I think I understand it now."

You were not going to let her have this this. Your pride would not let you.

"Sh-shush. It's not—"

A spank landed directly on your cunt, her fingertips hitting your clit. You had to bite through your lip, it felt like, desperate not to cry out.

You were going to let her have this.

"The glass," Emily said, her thumb making one slow circle at your back. "It's the glass, isn't it? The fact that someone might hear."

Another spank landed at a different angle, and you made a sound you'd been working to suppress, and she went very still for a moment.

"Yes," she said, quiet and certain. "That's it." Her focus sharpened—you could hear it in her voice. "My little brat gets wet from being spanked in her Mommy's office because someone might hear. Because she might get caught." A brief pause. "That's a little pathetic, sweetheart."

You felt your cunt drip down your thigh.

"Or," Emily continued, like she was amending her notes, "if I'm honest, it's very on brand." Her hand moved from your lower back, trailing down. "Let's see how pathetic you are, huh?"

Two fingers pressed against you and slid in without resistance—smooth and immediate—and the sound you made was not quiet.

"There she is," Emily murmured.

Your hands scrabbled at the edge of the desk. She hadn't started slow. Two fingers curled inside you at a pace that had you up on your toes in the first few seconds, your whole body either trying to chase her hand or get away from it. The stretch, the fullness, the relentless curl on every stroke that found the same spot over and over. You could feel it in your thighs, in your stomach, heat climbing fast and steep. The slick sounds in the quiet office were unavoidable and obscene, and you were past caring about them—past caring about anything except the pressure of her fingers and the angle she'd found that made your vision blur at the edges every time she curled them just right.

Your knuckles had gone white on the desk edge. The surface was warm now from your palms, and you gripped it like it was the only thing keeping you in the room. It was, more or less. Your hips kept making small involuntary movements, pressing back toward her hand, and each time they did Emily made a quiet sound behind you that you felt more than heard.

"You're adorable," she said, and she meant it. You could hear that she meant it, which somehow made it worse. Her free hand pressed firm between your shoulder blades, holding you flat against the desk. "Absolutely shameless. You slid right in, darling. No resistance at all." The curl of her fingers hit something that made your vision go white at the edges. "Pretty little slut."

A moan came out of you that was too loud for a glass-walled federal building, and Emily made a quiet sound above you that was distinctly less composed than her voice.

"That," she whispered, "cannot happen again." She didn't slow down. Her fingers kept their pace—relentless, that curl on every stroke—and you could feel yourself building already, embarrassingly fast, your thighs shaking with the effort of staying standing. "The agents outside will have questions I don't feel like answering today."

"I can't—" Your voice came out in pieces. "I can't help it, Mommy, please—"

"You can," she said. "You will." Her hand left your back. A moment later something soft pressed against your mouth—your underwear, or what was left of them, the elastic stretched and snapped, the slightest bit damp (yes, you had been wet as you walked in). "Open."

You opened. She pressed the cotton between your lips, not deep, just enough. The faint taste of your own arousal on the fabric pulled a helpless sound out of you. Emily smoothed one hand briefly over your hair before it returned to your hip.

"That's better," she said. "Don't you dare drop those pretty panties."

She wasn't gentle about it when she started moving her fingers again. She knew your body, and she used that knowledge without apology. Her fingers worked you with a focus that reminded you, not for the first time, that Emily Prentiss was very good at everything she decided to do. When the angle shifted you cried out against the gag, muffled now but still audible to her, and she catalogued the sound with quiet attention.

"Good girl," she said—confusing given the context and also exactly what you needed to hear. Your hips pressed back against her hand. "You're close already. I can feel it." Her fingers curled and held the pressure, and you bit down on the cotton, making a desperate, muffled sound from somewhere well past dignity.

"All because of the glass," she said conversationally, confirming something she'd already worked out, reminding you. "Because someone out there might know exactly what I'm doing to you right now."

The orgasm hit fast—too fast to brace for, too fast to muffle entirely. You came with your face pressed to her desk and her fingers inside you, your own ruined underwear between your teeth, shaking hard. Emily worked you through every second of it without letting up until the last tremor moved through you and left you limp.

She didn't stop.

"Mommy—" Against the gag it was barely sound, but she heard it.

"I know," she said. "One more."

"I can't—" You tried to say, though it came out as a bunch of muffled gibberish that Emily somehow understood.

"You can." Her thumb found your clit while her fingers stayed where they were, and the sensation after the orgasm was so acute your legs nearly went out. She stepped in close behind you, her body solid, steadying you. "You can, you will, and you'll thank me after." Her thumb moved in small, steady circles. Her fingers resumed their curl. You were crying now—actual tears tracking down your cheeks, your hands opening and closing against the desk edge because there was nothing else to do with them. "That's it, darling. Let go for me."

The second orgasm was longer. Deeper. It took you apart differently than the first. It was less urgent, more total, the kind that started in your core and rolled outward until your whole body was caught in it. You sobbed against the gag with your vision gone blurry, and Emily pressed close behind you, murmuring something low and warm against the back of your head that you didn't catch the words of but understood anyway.

Her fingers went still as you came down. Stayed still while you breathed, while the shaking worked its way out of your limbs. Her hand at your hip made slow circles.

"There," she said, quiet. "Good girl. That's my good girl."

You stayed against the desk because it was the only option. Emily gave you the time without comment—her thumb at your hip, her body steady and warm. When you finally stirred, she reached up and gently removed the makeshift gag, setting it aside on the desk, and helping you upright.

"I've got you," she said. "Take a second, sweetheart."

You took several. Your ass ached deeply. Your thighs were still trembling. There were tears drying on your cheeks and you were standing in her glass-walled office with the bullpen carrying on outside like nothing had happened at all, and Emily's hands were steady at your shoulders.

"Sorry, Mommy," you managed.

Something in her expression shifted. The authority didn't leave it—it never entirely left it—but it made room for something else. The warmth she had when she'd brought you through something and was checking that all of you had arrived intact on the other side. She smoothed your skirt back down, ran her hands over it once to straighten it, and turned you gently to face her.

Your eyes were probably red. Your face was definitely a disaster. She looked at you like you were something she was glad to have.

"I know, my darling," she said. "You did so well. Mommy's so proud of you. Such a good little sweetheart for me."

She guided you to the small sofa along the side wall—the one with the folded throw blanket that had appeared there a few months ago without either of you remarking on why—and sat down, drawing you into her lap with the ease of something long-practiced. You went without resistance, your face finding the familiar curve of her neck. She pulled the blanket over you both and her arm settled around your back.

Outside, a desk phone rang. Someone answered it in a low voice. The building kept operating, indifferent and steady.

Emily's hand moved into your hair—slow, even passes from your temple back. She didn't say anything. You didn't either. The silence was the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need anything added to it, and you let yourself sink into it by degrees.

The office smelled like her—the same light scent from her jacket when she pulled you in close, something clean and faintly of cigarettes. You'd always noticed it. You'd noticed it the first time she'd stood close to you and you'd been noticing it ever since in the involuntary way you noticed things about Emily, which was thoroughly and without meaning to. Through the glass, the bullpen moved in its ordinary patterns. Someone walked past with a coffee mug. Someone else was on the phone, gesturing at nothing. A completely normal afternoon in a federal building.

None of them knew.

The thought landed somewhere odd—not embarrassing, exactly, more like a of a secret that was only yours. Emily's thumb moved at your back in a slow arc, and you pressed a little closer and let the thought go.

Your breathing evened out. The trembling left your legs. The heat across your ass was settling into a deep, grounding ache you'd still be aware of tomorrow morning, which was presumably the point. You could feel Emily's heartbeat under your cheek—steady, safe—and you focused on that while the rest of the room came back to you in pieces.

"Are you okay, darling?" she asked eventually.

"Yeah." Still a little rough. "'M okay."

"Good." Her thumb moved at your back. "Pain?"

"Little," you said.

She made a small sound—understanding, satisfied with that answer. Her fingers kept moving through your hair, and you let yourself stay heavy in her lap and not think about anything in particular.

At some point she'd have to go back to work. At some point you'd have to get back on the Metro. At some point the afternoon would have to reassemble itself into something practical.

You were aware of all of this in a distant, theoretical way, the same way you were distantly aware of the city outside and the bullpen through the glass and the rest of the world continuing to exist. None of it felt particularly urgent.

Not yet.

"Hungry?" Emily asked.

"A little."

"I did say lunch." She shifted slightly, leaning toward the desk without dislodging you from her lap, and producing a white paper bag—the kind from the deli around the corner from the building, the logo printed small on the side. Of course she'd had it waiting. Emily had never arrived anywhere unprepared for anything in her life, and apparently that applied to this as well. She found a wrapped sandwich and handed it to you, then retrieved her own.

"Turkey," she said. "They were out of roast beef."

You ate in the comfortable quiet of two people who didn't need to perform anything for each other, the sounds of the bullpen filtering through the glass in a low, easy hum.

Your ass ached every time you shifted. You shifted less.

She was watching you—you caught it at the edge of your vision.

"What?" you said.

"Nothing." She looked back at her sandwich. A brief pause. "Drink some water, baby. Bottom left drawer."

You retrieved water from the drawer and drank it, and she watched you do it with an expression you weren't going to put a name to, because you'd already been reckless with your feelings once today and that felt like enough.

The light through the blinds had shifted to mid-afternoon gold by the time you'd both finished eating—the flat overhead fluorescents softened by the warmth coming in from outside, making the office feel less like an office and more like somewhere you might want to stay. You'd ended up with your legs across Emily's lap, her hand resting easy and warm at your ankle, the blanket still around your shoulders. The deli bag was folded neatly on the corner of the desk because Emily folded things neatly. Her jacket was on the back of her chair. Through the glass, the bullpen had thinned out a little, the midday energy settling into the quieter pace of afternoon, people back at their desks with their heads down.

You were looking at the ceiling and thinking, idly, about the morning. About the way the texts had felt in your hands, lying in her sheets. About the light through the curtains and the recklessness that came from being comfortable and in love in a way that made you giddy when you thought about it. About the second photo, which had been a choice, which you had made knowingly, which had resulted in exactly the afternoon you were currently having.

You were thinking about whether you had regrets.

You didn't, you concluded for a final time.

Emily set the paper bag aside. She looked at you, and you looked back at her, and something in her expression settled. She reached over and took your chin between her fingers, tilting your face toward hers. Her thumb moved once at your jaw. Her eyes were warm and certain, and there was a smile at the corner of her mouth that she wasn't making any effort to suppress.

"That was fun, darling," Emily said, in the mild tone of someone making a perfectly reasonable observation.

"Fun is a way to put—" You found yourself shushed by a finger on your lips, and Emily's eyes looked into yours with an energy you knew by heart.

"But maybe that sore ass of yours will finally get it through your head that Mommy knows best."