131. The body electric

Castle returns to the bounty spread before him. Beckett is quite clearly very aroused indeed, and he has every intention of stoking her higher. He teases ever closer to her scalding centre, and her commentary rises in pitch. He tugs and slides at the damp fabric between her legs, strokes over it; tantalises and plays. “You like this,” he growls against her, and she whimpers simply from the vibrations of his voice, resonating against fabric and flesh. “But I like it more. You’re so wet, just for me, and now I’m going to make you scream my name; I’ll hold you up because your legs won’t hold you; I’m going to do everything I promised and you’re going to love every last second of it. I’ll lead, and you’ll follow, and you’ll see stars, Beckett.”

He begins again with another sweep of hard fingertips along the edge of her panties where they accentuate the cream of her inner thigh; then along the high cut to her hips. He follows that with hot breath and swift mouth, delicate sharp nips on sensitive skin, and she wobbles. He trails a light, unsatisfying line through her centre, and bares his teeth as she jerks.

“Like that?” but he doesn’t give her a chance to answer before he does it again, harder, slips one long finger beneath her panties and through sodden folds, dragging slickness over her over-sensitive nerves and she’s crying his name: Castle don’t stop again there just like that more Castle. One should never disappoint a detective, so he does it again, and again, and then enters her with a wicked little curl and takes her with his fingers till her muscles flutter around him and he stops: bleeds a baritone rumble of no words but much desire against her stomach once more until she’s dropped back a fraction.

“Don’t stop,” she moans. “Castle.”

“I have a bet to win,” he rasps. “You’re already making a lot of noise.” His voice drops into a velvet semi-bass that he only ever uses with Beckett. “You’ll make a lot more before we’re done.” One-handed, he rolls her panties from her hips, encourages her feet closer and lifts each one to remove them, widens her stance to his measurements again: kisses each fine-cut calf muscle and then upwards, side to side, over her knees. Halfway to heaven, he becomes aware that he is now holding her up, and she is definitely making more noise. He drops little busses further up, and further, and closer, and puts both hands firmly on her hips to hold her still and finally puts his mouth on her and begins to wind her into ecstasy: licking and nipping and thrusting and sucking till she’s screaming his name, a long desperation of Castle Castle Castle please Castle now Castle please and he takes her right up and over the edge and lets her fall.

“You lose,” Castle says happily when Beckett opens her eyes. He’s laid her out on the bed, taking her bra off so that she’s utterly naked and beautiful. “You have to make me another delicious dinner.”

“Mm,” Beckett hums, and looks at him sleepily. “You’re overdressed.”

“Am I?” he asks innocently. “Are you asking me to do something about it?”

Beckett flexes indolently, just like a contented, lazy cat. “If you want,” she purrs, and curves into the stroke of his hand.

“Don’t you want?” he grins, perfectly confident.

She sends a leisurely, languorous look over him. He is instantly aroused. “I could be persuaded,” she husks teasingly.

“Persuaded, hmm? Maybe I need persuaded. I’m quite happy with the position.” He strokes some more, and she pushes back into the touch. “I like you naked in my bed.”

“I like you naked in mine,” Beckett says, possessively.

“No, no, no. This time you’re in my bed. My Kat, all stretched out and strokable in my bed.” He demonstrates. She wriggles. He kisses her. She hauls him down, flicks his button down open and whips it off his shoulders. Then she kisses him. After that he doesn’t remember much. It’s all dissolved in a haze of delight which ends with his Kat sprawled bonelessly across him and both of them completely naked and exhausted.

“We didn’t finish the game,” she murmurs.

“ ‘S not going anywhere.”

“I’m not going anywhere either.”

“I’m not letting you,” Castle says provocatively. “Now you’re finally here because you want to be, I’m not letting you go.”

Beckett raises an eyebrow. “Kidnapping is still a felony, Castle.”

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“Nah. You’d enjoy it far too much.”

“Only if it involved handcuffs,” Castle says, hopefully lecherous, and almost instantly whuffs as Beckett wreaks revenge by leaning a far-too-sharp elbow into his stomach.

“Nope.” He pouts. It has as much effect as usual, that is, none. “I’m hungry.”

“Again? Where do you put it all?”

“I exercise.”

“I noticed,” Castle leers. “We could do some more… exercise – ow! Stoppit.” He rolls over and flattens her into the sheets. “No more of that. Let’s do something else instead.” When her mouth opens on some totally irrelevant words, he kisses her deeply, which progresses to slipping over her and then slipping into her and then it’s just them. Eventually, however, the grumblings of stomachs become too loud to ignore.

“Dinner,” Castle says definitively, “and I don’t mean you,” he hurriedly adds, as Beckett stretches luxuriously and very attractively. He grabs his robe and exits before dinner is once again delayed.

A moment or so later Beckett pads out behind him, swathed in her short silky kimono with her long silky legs on full display. They fall – not without some awkwardness and barely averted crashes – into a slightly dissonant rhythm which gradually metamorphoses into a certain degree of harmony. The counter acquires all the accoutrements of an almost-picnic like meal without disaster, and following the informality of the setting, when Beckett hops up on to a stool, Castle slides in beside her, curls an arm around her and presses a hard thigh into hers.

There is little about the consumption of cold meat and salad, or indeed the rolls that accompany these viands, that inspires romance or lust. The same is emphatically not true of dessert. The arm around Beckett becomes an assertive – but easily escapable, should she so wish – restraint on her ability to lift her spoon.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll feed you,” Castle rasps, and lifts her spoon to her lips. This, it is instantly and painfully clear, was an astonishing mistake. Beckett’s tongue peeks out from her lush mouth, now a little swollen from their earlier activities, traces her lower lip, extends a fraction to flirt with the spoon and then its cream and chocolate contents, and then laps delicately at the dessert. Castle almost drops it. He knows what that luscious mouth can do – she did it. All of it – and she should not, emphatically not, be doing it with a spoon. Not if she doesn’t want bent over the counter and damn the dessert. He emits a growl-groan and thanks his stars that he is not wearing tight pants. Or indeed any pants. His boxers are quite constricting enough.

“If you carry on doing that, you won’t get to finish your dessert.”

“Oh? Is something wrong?” She laps again, sensuously, and adds a swirl of tongue. Castle’s arm flexes and tightens, without any conscious input from his brain.

“No, I’m just pointing out consequences.”

“Poor baby,” Beckett says insincerely. “It must be… hard… for you, watching me eat dessert.” She takes another lascivious lick of the spoon, which is now mysteriously devoid of dessert.

“I’ll show you just how hard it is if you do that again.”

“Is that a threat?” she asks, peeping flirtatiously through her eyelashes.

“No, the threat is that you don’t get any more dessert.”

“So give me my spoon to eat my dessert and you won’t have any more problems.”

Castle growls and mutters. Becket sniggers and snickers – and doesn’t force her hands out of his grip.

“You,” he says direfully, “are a witch.”

“If I were,” Beckett says, momentarily vengeful, “I’d turn Burke into a frog.”

“Not a good plan.”

“Yes it is.”

“No. Can you imagine a six-foot two frog – he’s a little taller than me.”

“Than I, Castle.”

Castle makes an irritated noise. “Leave my grammar alone. Who’s the writer here?” Beckett smirks evilly. “Anyway. You shouldn’t turn Burke into a frog.” His eyes sparkle delectably. “But if you did, can you imagine a six foot two frog? You could” – he pauses for effect – “put him on display and charge admission.”

“Might offset the co-pay.”

“You could sell him to a French restaurant. Weeks of recipes.”

“Eurgh.”

Castle’s hand has dropped from her wrists to her hip. Beckett takes instant advantage and demolishes the remains of her dessert in three fast bites. It’s like watching the doughnuts disappear in the bullpen.

“Now you’ve no leverage,” she points out smugly.

“Oh?” Castle says through a mouthful of chocolate. “On what evidence are you basing that erroneous conclusion?”

“You can’t deprive me of dessert any more.” Obviously Beckett thinks that this is a clinching argument.

“True,” Castle drawls, as he checks out the situation to ensure no collateral damage will result from his next move. And then he tugs Beckett off her bar stool and into his broad frame, pins her hands out the way and grins wolfishly. “Now you’ve no leverage. I’ve got all the leverage.” He leans in dangerously: very assertively male. Beckett’s eyes darken and dilate. Nervousness is not the dominant expression. Nor is naivety. The slick, parted lips and deliberately erotic lick of her tongue over them is proof of that. He also remembers how receptive she had been – how she had invited – a little light bondage and a lot of gently forceful, assertive strength.

He slides off his own stool and looms up over her, lets go of her wrists only to haul her against him, angle her head and capture her mouth. Her hands slip into his hair, she softens and curves into his hard body; her lips open and welcome him in, and he envelops her in his bulk and just a smidgeon of forceful strength. She sighs quietly into his kiss and melts for him.

The kimono is draped suggestively over Castle’s robe. Beckett is draped sensuously over Castle. Deep, quiet breathing indicates sleep. The open drapes allow a trickle of moonlight to stripe across the two intertwined bodies.

Beckett wakes, deep in the night, unpleasantly sticky and sweaty. She’s still nestled against Castle, curled in the crook of his arm. He had been very satisfyingly predatory, possessive and primal: forceful in all the best ways. However, much as she had enjoyed it – all of it – she is slightly sore and nastily sticky. She uncurls and carefully detaches herself from Castle and the tangled covers, and goes to run herself a hot bath. A shower is too noisy. She borrows – thieves – a large splurge of muscle relaxant that she finds after some searching, and slides contentedly into the water.

The tub is soothing to muscle, stubble-scraped skin, and mind. Beckett applies a leisurely touch to soaping herself, enjoying becoming clean, enjoying the memory of Castle’s touch: hands and mouth and hardness, and then lets body and mind float free. The aroma of the soap is redolent, of course, of Castle’s usual spicy, male scent, but naturally his soap would co-ordinate with his aftershave. That’s soothing, too: it’s very comforting and safe to be surrounded by aroma-of-Castle or indeed body-of-Castle. Or preferably both. Castles are supposed to surround people – her – and keep them safe. She luxuriates in the heat of the water and gives thanks that she’s been able to get this far.

A thought floats into her relaxed brain. Castle had, in a fit of possibly insane brilliance or brilliant insanity – it’s about the same where he’s concerned – suggested that she play Sorry again with her dad. It occurs to her that she and Castle had – sort of – made up over the game; and that, as she had earlier thought, she and her dad had last been wholly comfortable together while playing it. She sniffs, and slides deeper into the hot water, which is very consoling. Her thoughts drift back over Christmas, and the two psychotherapy sessions which have included her father.

She wants so badly to believe him: that he’s telling the truth. But she’d wanted to believe him equally badly ten years past; she’d wanted to believe him any time these last weeks. In between, she’d hoped and pretended and told herself that she did believe. His distraught face swims in her mind’s eye: utterly appalled at his own words and behaviour, at the truth. Or had he merely seemed so, because despite all this long, unhappy story she still wants so badly to believe him?

She’s used to assessing witnesses, suspects, other cops: she’s trained to do so quickly and accurately. Her reputation depends on sifting truth from lies, motive from mess, relevance from the irrelevant. She is – everyone says so – brilliant at her job: commendation attends her team and her: top of the stats and at the top of their game. So why, now, here, doesn’t she trust her judgement when it comes to her father? She doesn’t. But if he were part of a case, she’d be very inclined to believe him.

Slowly, it dawns upon her that her uncertainly is because she is deeply emotionally involved: her judgement may be compromised because of it. She doesn’t know what is knowledge: dispassionate and objective, and what is emotion: subjective and error-prone.   She pursues that thought as she would hunt down a perpetrator, and considers it as she would that same perpetrator in Interrogation.

She is still deeply, bitterly, desperately hurt by all her father’s actions. Her emotions bear no link to her professional annoyance at the act of murder, at the life cut off untimely, the waste of some victim’s potential and future. This is not that feeling. This is deep and festering hurt.

And realising that: that her uncertainty and roiling feelings, her long-buried resentment bubbling to the surface, her inability to judge and sift the evidence and reach a reasoned, provable conclusion are all the result of the pain she’s been squashing down, ignoring, denying and concealing for ten years; finally realising that truth, she begins, quite silently, to weep.

Castle wakes up just about far enough to realise that he is revoltingly sweaty and that he doesn’t like it. Not sophisticated or suave at all. That established, he also becomes vaguely aware that his personal Beckett-blanket is missing: absent without leave. He concludes that she’s got up to think, again, probably accompanied by some form of midnight snack; and decides not to disturb her. If she’s awake anyway, it won’t matter if he puts the shower on, and maybe she’ll hear it and join him. He heaves himself out of bed and towards the bathroom, in which process he entirely fails, owing to his sleep-soaked state, to notice the thin line of light that would indicate that the bathroom is already occupied. He pushes the door wide open and stands stock still, blinking foolishly in the unexpected bright light, observing a crying Beckett in his bath.

“Why are you crying in the bath?” he asks, stupidly, still sleep-fuzzed, and walks towards her. He cuddles her into his stark naked chest, and pats gently. After a moment, he firmly slides her forwards and slips into what he discovers is still very hot water, settling behind her and crossing his arms about her, bringing her back against him to be wrapped in. “Hey, hey. The bath is full enough. You’ll spill   it, or cool it down.” He continues to burble softly into her hair: silly, soothing, meaningless nonsense. Beckett remains silent and still. She might have stopped crying, but without turning her round he can’t be sure of it, and he doesn’t want to do that. Well. He does. But it really wouldn’t be a good idea to have her straddling him right now.

“I got up to have a shower,” he says instead. On an unhappy noise, he adds, “Bath is good too, but I want to be clean. I’ll be back. Pass the soap, please?”

Soap appears. Castle extracts himself from the bath, now a little cool, and switches on the shower, which is hot. He showers swiftly, swathes a large towel around himself, and discovers that Beckett has vacated the bath and disappeared. A crumpled towel on the rail suggests a return to dryness, which he hopes also means a return to bed, where shrouding darkness might allow both cuddles and confidences.

Beckett is indeed buried within the bed, though in the brief gleam of the bathroom light before Castle switches it off it appears that her eyes remain open. Castle tucks himself into bed and then tucks himself around Beckett, who, while clean and smelling rather disconcertingly of his soap, is rigid-limbed and not soft and sleepy at all.

“You’re thinking too loud.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” She forcibly tries to relax, which is not precisely successful. Still, she’s against him, even if he does feel as if he’s holding a sun-warmed marble statue.

“I’m trying to stop thinking and go to sleep.” That doesn’t sound much like conversation will occur. Castle relieves his disappointment by placing tiny kisses on the back of her neck. She shivers, but it doesn’t feel anything like desire. He wraps her closer to warm her chilled soul. It takes several minutes for her truly to ease, and more than that to drop into sleep, whence Castle rapidly follows her, his arm remaining close about her body.

Beckett wakes still enveloped in Castle and consequently finds herself part-broiled – the man is never chilly – and part-roasted. She extracts a leg from the comforter and hopes that if the extraction cools the blood within her leg that same cooled blood will circulate and cool the rest of her; mainly because she doesn’t want to extract herself from Castle’s sleeping grip. She is beautifully nestled in a large cosy frame in a large cosy bed in a large yet cosy home.

Uh?

She can’t have thought that already. She just can’t. She barely made it here. She nearly turned round and fled straight to her own home again. Has she really just thought of here as a home? That’s insane. That’s – too fast. Too fast and covering too much up. She’s made that mistake in spades already. Until she can face the whole of the family that belongs here, in here, that’s a thought that’s a long way ahead of where she is.

But it’s a good thought. It’s good to have a goal.