115. Words are all I have

Beckett’s apartment is perfectly tidy and does not smell of pepperoni pizza. Other than that, it’s not at all different from Friday night, objectively. Subjectively, it feels very different. This may, of course, be because Beckett barely allowed Castle to take his coat off before she’d wrapped her arms round his neck and kissed him hard. He’s never going to back away from that invitation. Well. Order.

Some significant time later he lifts off her luscious lips. He doesn’t, naturally, let go. That would be dumb, and Castle tries very hard not to be dumb, especially not in front of Beckett, who is never normally shy of calling him on it if she thinks he is. Anyway, she’s nicely tucked against him and pressed against all the right areas. That would be from head to foot. And tip to root, too. He’s very slightly canted into the cradling of her hips.

“Okay,” she says, surprisingly briskly given their position and her I have been thoroughly kissed face. “I’m not going to rush into calling Dad.” Castle notes the return to Dad, not my dad, or even more distancingly my father. “I’m going to see Burke on Friday and discuss it with him. He’s a total pain in the ass, but he’s clever.” Her mouth twists at having to admit that Dr Burke has a good point. Castle pats the ass in which there might be pain, purely to ensure that there isn’t pain.

“Okay,” Castle says amiably. “So what do we do between now and then?”

“We solve the case, and tomorrow evening we get to watch Espo take on O’Leary.”

“Ooohhh. That should be interesting. What’s the odds? I’ll give you two-to-one on O’Leary.”

“No bet. O’Leary’s big, and good, but Espo’s mean and sneaky. Should be pretty even, till O’Leary gets bored and uses his size.”

Castle makes a face. “But I won’t understand the finer points,” he says plaintively.

“I’ll help you with that,” Beckett says.

“You will?”

“Sure.” She grins exceedingly evilly past his ear, ensuring that he can’t see her expression.

“That’s great,” Castle enthuses. “It’ll really help me writing about it. Will you explain everything?”

“Actually, you’ll learn much better by doing. I’ll get Espo to give you some training.”

Castle squawks loudly and jerks a whole inch away from her. “What?”

“Learn by doing, Castle.”

“No! No way am I getting on a mat with Esposito. He’ll murder me and you’ll all hide the body. I’m not doing that.”

He becomes aware that there is snickering under his ear.

“You’re mean, Beckett.”

“You believed me,” she sniggers.

“That was unkind.”

“You’re the one who said you needed to keep your strength up. So, well” – she sniggers again – “sparring is good exercise and would keep your strength up.”

“I do need to keep my strength up,” Castle growls dangerously. “Maybe a spot of weight training?” He picks Beckett up before she’s quite got the point, and carries her without apparent effort. “Or maybe some press-ups?”

He drops her on her bed, flat on her back, feet dangling over the end, and falls over her, catching his weight on his hands and lowering himself down in classical press-up style to kiss her nose. She scrunches it at him, and laughs.

“Got you good,” she sniggers. (Sniggers? How can she snigger when she’s joking about his mutilation and likely death?)

“And now I’ve got you.” He lowers all his weight on to her and smirks. “You might do all this sparring and so on but I’m much bigger than you and you’re not going anywhere.”

“I noticed you were much bigger,” Beckett husks, and wiggles seductively to check. “But that’s not going to help you.” She reaches up, pulls one arm out from under him, and rolls them.

At least, that was the plan. Absolutely nothing happens. She tries again, with the same lack of result, and looks up at his smirking, smugly satisfied face.

“Do carry on, Beckett,” he oozes. “Please do carry on. It feels so good.” She punches his shoulder. He smirks more widely. “I don’t spar. I do exercise. Weights, and endurance training. So you’re not going anywhere.” He dips his head very slightly to kiss her again, more forcefully, and then rolls them over as Beckett had wanted to do. “But since you wanted to be on top…”

Beckett splutters, and looks adorably confused and frustrated. It’s so cute when she’s discombobulated – and so unusual. Castle lies there and enjoys it, although he’s definitely not thinking of Manhattan. More thinking of the nearer landscape, say within around six inches of him. He does keep his arms wrapped tightly around her, demonstrating the sheer physical strength that he’s tended to keep well-hidden from most people. He’d started with a demonstration of assertive masculinity, way back when, and she’d liked it then, and since; but he’s never really exerted sheer strength to prove he’s – well, er, up to her weight.   Sweeping her off her feet, literally, doesn’t really count.

“Got you good,” he murmurs, and strokes lazily down her back and over her hip. The scowl that’s being directed straight between his eyes is rather deflating to the libido, but on the other hand (he uses it to pet her hair) it’s so much fun to get one over on Beckett that he thinks it’s a fair trade. He continues to sport the smug smirk.

“This is not fair,” Beckett grumps.

“But it would have been fair if you’d used your training to defeat me?”

“Yes,” she says, very illogically.

It’s Castle’s turn to cock a quizzical eyebrow at her. She flumps down on to his chest and mutters darkly into it. Her commentary does not sound flattering, from the fragments available. Castle doesn’t care, while he’s surrounded by Beckett. He toes his shoes off, wriggles into a comfortable alignment which preserves his armful of Beckett, and closes his eyes peacefully.

This action does not meet with universal approval.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Snoozing. Waiting for you to stop sulking at me.”

“I am not sulking,” Beckett states in tones conveying Castle’s impending doom.

“Oh?” Castle says interestedly. “What are you doing, then? Enjoying my muscular company? Taking advantage of my broad chest and firm pectorals?”

“Watching your ego expand, Narcissus.”

Castle snickers. “You’re just miffed” – Beckett squawks – “because you didn’t get your own way.” A disgruntled mutter arrives below his chin, swiftly followed by some rather more audible commentary on overgrown wannabe macho men. “That’s not nice. I don’t comment on it when you maul my nose or ears, do I?”

“Yes.”

Castle is stopped. “Not often.” He thinks he hears a disbelieving harrumph. “Anyway, you’re where you wanted to be. On top. So why are you still grumping at me? Come up here so I can kiss you.” He doesn’t give her time to move before he moves her anyway.

Beckett is more than a little surprised that Castle hadn’t been flippable, and is consequently considering appropriate revenge. Whether or not he spars or takes some other form of exercise, she’d appreciated the muscles without thinking that it might imply that he wasn’t exactly easy to push around. She does manage to kick her shoes off as he drags her up over his body. She does not want dirtied bed linen.

Before she can think up a suitably vengeful solution to Castle being an overgrown bully, he’s quite unfairly persuaded her head to arrive at his and kissed her smoothly and deeply. She hadn’t even had a chance to resist. Not even a chance of some token resistance to prove a point.   It’s not fair. She’ll have to come up with another form of vengeance later. When he’s not kissing her. When she can think. When she isn’t kissing him. Or cupping his face, or nibbling the lobe of his ear (he wriggles, mmmmm, that’s right where she wants pressure), and down his neck (this is not popular, from the come back noises emerging from his vacated mouth), or slipping downwards to his chest and incidentally opening his button-down on the way. Purely accidentally, of course. As was her happy little purr when his skin was exposed. Anyway, that was totally buried by Castle’s predatory rumbling growl, so it didn’t count.

She ghosts her lips over Castle’s nice firm pecs with particular attention to the use of the edge of her teeth to add a little hint of spice as she slides over his nipples. She can feel Castle – er – standing to attention against her stomach. He’s certainly paying attention now. There will be no more snoozing. That was just plain rude. Even if she had been sulking, which she hadn’t, because she does not sulk.

She wriggles a little further down, and draws a delicate pattern with her tongue right around his sternum. Simultaneously, she takes advantage of Castle’s loosened arms to slip sideways, whereupon her hand – totally accidentally, naturally – slides across the front of his pants and – oh dear – appears to become stuck on a prominent bulge right in the middle. Ooops. Especially ooops, because that appears to have recalled Castle from merely paying complete attention to full participation. She is not on top any more. This is – well, actually, pretty much exactly what she’d planned. It’s just that she’d planned it starting from being able to flip Castle. Oh well. She’s flexible.

Castle doesn’t seem to want to bother with any more verbal foreplay. Her silk t-shirt has disappeared – she might have heard it swish over the floor if she hadn’t been panting and gasping – and he’s pressing down with that lovely firm chest and ohhhh she loves it when he’s assertive. It feels so very, very good to be soft Kat, enclosed, covered, caressed and loved. Well applied strength is just fine with her. Well applied fingers work, too. And lips, currently working towards her ribs. Or somewhere in that vicinity, anyway.

She allows her fingers to do a little work of their own, producing a very pleasing groan-growl and a marked increase in the speed of her pants departing her legs. In perfectly reasonable and understandable retaliation, she shoves his shirt off his shoulders and points out her action with a light scrape of fingernails over the revealed skin.

“My Kat’s got claws,” Castle murmurs silkily, and demonstrates his enthusiasm for the thought by drawing the lace-shrouded tip of one firm breast into his avidly seeking mouth. “Try not to draw too much blood,” he says around it. Hmmm. Blood doesn’t wash out that easily. On the other hand, she’ll absolutely take the extra washing if he keeps doing that. Ohhhhh. No-one except him has ever made her feel like that simply by attending to her breasts.

He does keep doing that. In return, she lets her fingers do some walking, and then a little delicate tracery in sensitive areas, and then a little removal of some fabric which is in the way – and then it’s all taken out of her naughty hands as she’s stripped in two rapid, forceful movements: she opens to him, and takes him in. Or is taken. Whatever. Thinking is not required. Encouragement does not appear necessary, but it might be helpful, so she provides some, just in case. She follows up her carefully judged stroke of fingers with a totally filthy murmur describing how he feels: right here right now right inside.

On balance, it was a major mistake to try to match words with a wordsmith. That is a game she is exceedingly unlikely to win, especially now that Castle’s taken it as a challenge. He’s stopped moving and withdrawn – huh – stopped kissing her – double huh, with a side of irritation – and his mouth is at her ear.

And then he starts to talk. Well, murmur, in a deep furry baritone that drizzles sex all over her skin and massages it into every nerve ending. He licks at the sensitive spot behind her ear, and then begins.

“Shall I tell you how good it is to have you, hot and wet and tight around me? To be all the way inside you? To have you under me, open and ready and mine?” She mews. “To know that with barely a kiss you’ll be damp? That if I kiss you your mouth will be pliant and soft and giving?” The mew shifts towards a moan.

“Or maybe I should tell you how hot you are in those tiny little scraps of the sexiest silk and lace that you wore in the Hamptons? When I watch you in the precinct you’ll know I’m thinking of them on you and you’ll remember what we did and you’ll be all wet, all for me.”

He nips her ear, a tiny sting, and soothes it. His arm is across her, a hard thigh between her legs, pressing and a little rough where the coarse hair rubs her, his arousal evident against her hip.

“Or maybe I should tell you how it feels to make you gasp and squirm against me because I’ve put my lips on your breast and taken your nipple into my mouth and sucked. I know how much you like that. Almost as much as I like doing it.” He does it, briefly, and her hands clutch at his hair.

“Castle!”

“See?” He does it again, which is really totally unnecessary because she’d got the point the first time, when he took the point… ohhhhhhh.

“Or how you taste when I put my mouth on you; let my tongue play and circle and tease you? How you writhe so that I have to hold you still? How you whimper and moan and then scream my name? How it feels when I know you’re so close and everything goes still just for an instant before you shatter?”

“Shall I tell you how it feels when I touch you? When my fingers find that you’ve soaked your panties and slide them over you, tantalising you? When I slip under them and find you there, slippery and squirming and desperate for more? When I stroke you and maybe pinch just a little harder and you cry out my name? When you’re hot against my hand and my fingers are inside you, filling you, taking you?”

His fingers match his words, thrusting in counterpoint.

“Or maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I should tell you how good you feel cuddled against me, soft and curved and petted and cherished? How I feel when you’re soft Kat for me, only for me, and I know that no-one else even knows she exists?”

“Or maybe that’s all wrong too. Maybe I should tell you how I feel when you take me in your mouth: when your lips are hot on me and your mouth wet and you play with me? How it’s always too good to resist? How you make me hard with barely a look and a kiss? How you undo me with your mouth, whether around me or on my lips, and then take me into your body and it’s everything?”

He moves across so he’s over her, settled between her legs where she wants him, but he doesn’t enter.

“Should I tell you how I lose myself in you, how I know you’re lost in me, when we’re together? How there’s nothing left in the world but us, as close as we can be?”

He shifts a fraction, preparing; poised.

“Or I could simply tell you that I’m yours, and you’re mine. That I never want to let go of you. That together we’re everything each other needs.” He thrusts into her needy, waiting body. “Should I tell you how you feel right now? Tight and fluttering and hot and wet and right on the edge and now!” and he drives them both right over.

“Or maybe I should only tell you that I love you,” he says softly into her hair, “because that’s enough.”

“Love you too,” she murmurs in return, soft and sated and satisfied. “That’s enough for me.”

Some time later, when he reluctantly has to leave, she cuddles his love to her heart and sleeps soundly.

Beckett wakes up bright, enthusiastic and raring to go. It occurs to her, as she’s humming happily under a hot shower, that this is more like Castle’s normal state than hers. On the other hand, she has a case, she has a witness, who might rapidly become a suspect, and something to do: to wit, chase down this witness-suspect. Karlen Petersen is right at the top of her to-do list. As, in fact, could the landlord usefully be. Something about him twitches her instincts, and it’s not only the implication that he exudes homophobia. Unpleasant as that is, there’s something else. She is definitely keen to get going, and get going she does, arriving at her desk nice and early and promptly burying herself in the information they do have.

Not long later, with the application of some logical thought, she has an extensive – and rational – to do list. Things have been a little scattergun so far, and now it’s time to impose order – now that they have some matters upon which to impose it. She grins nastily at her basic list, and begins to expand each section, flicking her attention back and forth from her murder board. She’s so happily absorbed that she doesn’t notice Montgomery pass by.

Montgomery, however, notices her. He also notices, with a swift glance at his watch, that Beckett has entirely forgotten his edict that she is to work her shifts and nothing more. He considers his options as he makes himself a coffee. He could call her on it. He considers, and rejects, that plan. Even from his brief wander past her, it’s perfectly obvious that she is much happier with life. He might even have heard her humming. On balance, he thinks he’ll ignore the early morning, though he’s intending to preserve the beady eye at the end of shift.

Beckett looks at her list with considerable satisfaction. It’s neatly laid out, though the less said about her handwriting the better, and covers everything she can think of in perfectly logical and detailed sections. She stretches widely, and swings briskly off to get a coffee from the break room, mulling over her lovely logical list as she does.

She wants to start with Karlen Petersen and the landlord, Michael A-something.   Ahlbrechtssen. That’s it. Michael Ahlbrechtssen. There are too many consonants in that name. It’ll barely fit in forms. She very much wants a reason to haul in the landlord, but she can’t find a sound reason. Gut feel just won’t cut it. Karlen Petersen, on the other hand, will, if only she can track her down.

She strides back to her desk, and contemplates her list. First off, get Ahlbrechtssen into the system and see what pops up. Second, while some poor benighted person – Ryan, say – is running that, she’ll have another go at tracking Karlen Petersen. And Ryan can just run her in a bit more detail –

Ahh. That’s what’s been nagging at her mind. Names. Specifically, surnames, and even more specifically the surnames of the landlord and the lab tech. (The landlord and the lab tech? Sounds like a really bad Wattpad romance.) They both sound very… Nordic. And aren’t a lot of Nordic people related, somehow? Maybe that casual statement about the landlord would turn out to be cousin to a lab tech wasn’t so dumb after all.

Where the hell is Ryan? He should be in by now. It’s only half an hour before shift starts. She needs him to get started. And Espo. He’s probably resting for tonight’s exhibition match with O’Leary. Beckett smiles nastily. Espo’s going to get a hell of a shock.