171. Food, magical food, glorious food

Beckett is quiet and thoughtful on the way home, with a flavouring of shamefaced unhappiness which Castle is pretty sure is directed entirely at herself.

“Aren’t you going to invite me for coffee?” he says plaintively shortly before she has to decide which home she’s aiming for. She flicks a quick glance at him, from which he determines that she is more than a little nervous that he is going to push her into conversation.

“Okay.”

The cruiser swoops through the streets and lands neatly in a cramped space around the corner from her building. Castle bounces out, waits politely and then collects his Beckett as she locks the car: pulling her close and mischievously nuzzling into her hair and nibbling her ear in foreshadowing of what he intends very shortly. There is a tiny sigh, and a miniscule snuggle. The feeling of shamefaced unhappiness dissipates. Castle relaxes, and rests his large hand neatly over the jut of a hipbone. Conveniently, this allows his thumb to stroke her waist, all the way to her door, and inside, where he takes her jacket off, which conveniently allows him to stroke down her back, which causes her to emit a contented – yes, purr – and curve into his hand.

Shortly, they are comfortably cuddled up, with coffee, with Beckett’s head on his shoulder and his arm back around her shoulders, where it is pleasantly possible to pet undemandingly, or play with her hair, and simply persuade her into Kat-ishness. It doesn’t take much effort.

“Better now?”

“Mmmm,” Kat hums. “I get it.”

“I promised I’d tell you if you were asking too much,” Castle says, a touch reproachfully. “I would, you know.” He pouts, and widens his eyes appealingly. “You should believe me.” He bats his eyelashes at her, and she snickers. “I’m hurt. You should console me.”

“I made you coffee,” she says, in a tone which makes it clear she knows that isn’t what he means, and smiles invitingly.

“It’s a start,” he says, and smiles lazily. His arm slides over her shoulder so that his hand is now sketching randomly over her collarbone, tip-tapping below it and up again. “But I want my Kat. It’s well known that petting a Kat makes you feel better.”

“Evidence?” she snarks.

“Empirical evidence. I always feel better after I’ve spent time petting my Kat.”

He lifts her legs over his lap, and demonstrates petting by stroking down them. Then he demonstrates by stroking back up them again.

“There,” she says. “You must feel better now.”

“Not yet.”

He strokes down the length of her legs. The reason for lifting her slightly becomes obvious, as the stroke takes her pants with it.

“What are you doing?”

“Petting,” Castle says suavely, and runs his hand all the way up again, stopping it high on her bared thigh. There is an indrawn breath. “Kats always seem to like being petted, too.”

“Do they?” his Kat asks in a sultry tone. “They don’t” – the tips of her nails rest at the open neck of his shirt – “object?” There is a soft scratch downwards as his shirt opens. His fingers tighten.

“No. They enjoy it too much.”

“Mmmr?”

“Properly done, petting attends to all the right areas. Uses just the right amount of pressure. Varies between soft and hard, depending on how the Kat might be responding. Of course, it’s obvious if you’re doing it right – ooohh” – she’s applied a little pressure – “because they purr. Like you do.”

“Do I?” but her silky tone is finished with a definite purr as his fingers dance a fraction higher on her leg and glide lower below her collarbone. It’s sweet reply to her hint of claws over his chest, but he can’t resist leaning in to take her mouth for his own as well. She’s so soft under his lips: a hint of a mew when he explores; a soft noise of assent when he nips on her lower lip; a small whine when he stops.

Her hands are delicately exploring under his shirt, guerrilla raiding at his belt and retreating: teasing and playful and naughtily arousing: some way, somehow, she’s happy to be Kat and purr under his touch; curve into his petting, and ensure that he’s as heated as she. He slips along the edge of her button-down, opening up until it hangs loose, then returns his hand to curve around her arm and turn her towards him.

About that point he realises that he is completely undone.   Literally so. While he has been ensuring that his Kat is beautifully only half-clad, she has been ensuring that she has completely unfettered access to him, of which she is now taking considerable advantage.   He makes a sound in his throat that would have been a groan, had it escaped, and retaliates by dropping his head to her breast and taking the hard point into his mouth. He hears her quiet whimper with pleasure, and circles his tongue around her areola so she’ll do it again. She does. He uses his mouth more deliberately, lapping and then suckling: pressure of lips and then a harder force from teeth; soothing from a tender tongue. Her hand moves insinuatingly around him.

“I like this,” he growls deeply. “I like you all soft and giving and mine.” His hand slips over her leg to trace gently along the line of her panties. “I like you caught in my arms and curved against me and as close as you can be.” He kisses the arc of her breast. “I like you purring and mewing and moaning.” His fingers slip under the fabric of her panties, and she lifts her hips into the touch. “I like it when you run your hands over me – oh! – just like that.” He plays a little through the damp heat, circling over exquisitely sensitive nerves. “But I like all of it much better in bed.” He stops. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Why? I’m happy right here.”

“You’ll be even happier in bed.” He smiles a heavy-lidded, lazy, sensual smile, and licks his lips. “More room.” He stands her up, before she can argue any more. Her hand wasn’t giving him the impression that she doesn’t want to play: she was just being mischievous. In more ways than one. He rises and pulls her in, encouraging her to flow over him and rub against him. His palm envelops the swell of her slim ass, and then he lifts her up to lock legs around his waist and takes her to bed.

He slides the shirt from her shoulders as soon as he puts her on her feet again, which move she copies, and then raises the stakes by pushing down his pants. He grins. “Patience. We’ll get there.” There is the start of a growl, which he deals with by the simple method of kissing her deeply and undoing the catch of her pretty lace bra as he does. She presses into his chest and the heat rises between and around them: skin to skin; stretches up to kiss him back and doing so slithers over every inch of his torso. It ignites him.

Her panties hit the floor; her back hits the coverlet; and Castle falls on her. He just wants her. He hasn’t been able to do more than kiss her, far too briefly, since Tuesday, and he’s as addicted to her as she is now to him. She opens around him and he settles above her, nibbling down through her clavicles and cleavage to the planes of her stomach and then, with a gravelly rumble of delight, lower. He adores turning her to a melted mess, and this does it for her every single time: his hands around her hips to hold her for his avid mouth, the scent of her body, the sheen of her arousal flooding around his fingers, his tongue and lips drinking her down.

Of course, it’s not entirely unselfish. Seeing her completely overwhelmed really, really does it for him. Knowing that he can do this to her trips a whole series of primitive male instincts, starting with sheer lust and finishing with absolute possession, for ever. He tries to keep them under control, most of the time, but here in bed, with his Kat soft and yielding and utterly his, they take over. He settles to his pleasure, and hers: delicate flickers of tongue, gently wicked strokes of fingers, until she’s completely his; and then harder touches, taking her with mouth and hand and sending her higher and higher, writhing and then bucking, moaning and finally screaming out his name.

He wriggles up the bed to keep her firmly against him. “I feel so much better now,” he murmurs. “I told you that petting my Kat makes me feel better.”

“I’ll buy you a kitten,” his Kat says naughtily.

“Wouldn’t be my Kat, though. So it wouldn’t work.” He pulls her right over his chest. “It’s got to be the right Kat. This one.” He slides, once, twice, and then thrusts home. “My one.”

“I feel better too,” she hums, and puts her head on his chest, over his heart. Her eyes drift shut as her hand slides into his.

“Good.” He squints down his chest at her closed eyes, the lashes sweeping her creamy skin. “I have to get home.”

“Yeah,” she yawns, without cracking an eyelid. “Tomorrow. Dinner. I’ll text you, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Castle agrees, and slides out from under her without noticeably rousing her. “Tomorrow.”

“Hey, Dad,” Beckett says as Jim opens his door, quite early on Saturday morning. She is bearing two stuffed-full shopping bags.

“Katie,” he says happily, and reaches out to hug her. She steps into his embrace, and hugs him back with barely a hitch. Neither hug is exactly unconstrained, but they’re much warmer than at any time since Christmas Day. “What’ve you brought?”

“We-ell,” she says with a sparkle of mischief, “I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce you to the best Georgian cuisine” – Jim almost represses a groan – “but I didn’t manage to persuade you to like it any time in the last five years so I didn’t waste my money.”

“Phew,” Jim says. “I’m sure it’s really good, but no matter how I try I just can’t get along with it.”

“So I decided to play it safe.”

Jim looks interestedly hopeful. “Yes? What’d you choose?”

“We’re going to fix slow cooked pork, dauphinoise potatoes, sliced cooked apple, and spinach.”

“Sounds great. I can peel the potatoes.”

“You can slice them, too, and even peel and slice the apples. I’m not letting you near the cooking, though.” She’s unloading food into his kitchen as she’s talking, along with a collection of cooking dishes.

“Haven’t you forgotten something, Katie?”

“Huh?”

“What about dessert?”

“I thought” – she smirks at him – “that I’d get that cake mix” – Jim splutters and hoots with laughter – “but then I thought I’d better not poison Alexis.”

“Hey!” Jim emits in mock-indignation. “What about not poisoning me? Or Rick?”

“Alexis is cute…” Beckett ripostes.

Jim sighs. “Taking the mickey out of your dear ol’ dad. I’m doomed.” Beckett laughs, and any slight remnant of tension between them dissolves.

“I got the ingredients for a cheesecake,” she says, with a wide smile. “Blueberry.”

“Wonderful. Whipped cream?”

“Yes, Dad. But won’t you think of your arteries?”

Jim splutters again. “I won’t peel your potatoes,” he threatens. “Then what?”

“I’ll blame you for the collapse of dinner, the stock market and world peace,” Beckett flips at him.

“Well, if it’s a matter of the stock market, I guess I’d better get peeling.”

“Let me get the pork started first. It’s got to cook practically all day, so it needs to start now. We can do the rest later on, this afternoon.” She flicks the oven on to start heating, then briskly assembles a chopping board, pile of bagged spices and already minced roasted garlic and lemon zest, and starts on measuring ingredients for the rub.

“When’d you do the garlic?”

“I woke up early,” Beckett says, “so instead of going for a run I did it then, and the lemon zest. It didn’t take long.”

Jim stares at the back of his daughter’s head. Katie’s putting a lot of effort into this. “Okay,” he says. “So d’you need me to do anything now?”

“Let me measure everything out, then can you mix it really well – don’t drop it” –

“I wouldn’t,” Jim says easily. “I’m not that old and infirm.” –

“while I make sure the meat’s trimmed.” Her hands are still efficiently measuring out dry spices and then the garlic and lemon zest into a medium-size bowl. “There.” She hands him the bowl and a spoon, and begins to slice the excess fat from the pork. After a few minutes, she’s done.

“Okay, let’s have the rub.” Watched by Jim, she massages it thickly into the meat, covering every inch of it, using every crumb. “Right. Into the oven we go.” She puts the meat into a roasting tin, puts it in the oven, and sets the timer for 8 hours. “That’ll be done just about six. Shall we tell them to come over just after?”

“Sure. Now what?”

“I don’t think we need to peel potatoes or apples till after lunch.” The equipment she’s already used is hitting the sink. “If I clean this up – you can dry” –

“I hate drying.”

“I hate it more, and I cooked so I get to choose – then I’ll make the cheesecake and then it’s got all afternoon to chill. Should take us up to lunchtime.”

“We could go get a pizza,” Jim suggests, a fractional flavour of uncertainty in his voice.

“Okay,” Beckett says. Somehow, the discipline of cooking, sharing a kitchen with her father but with something that both of them can talk about and work together on without needing to go near a single sensitive topic, is leaving her almost relaxed. “After lunch, we could play Sorry? I’m looking forward to beating you.”

“Sure, Katie,” Jim says with feeling. “That’d be really fun. But I’m going to beat you.”

“In your dreams, Dad.”

She washes up. Jim, grumbling under his breath, dries.

The cheesecake base doesn’t take her very long, and when she pops it into the second oven she clears up as efficiently as earlier. Jim keeps on grumbling sotto voce about having to dry, which Beckett ignores quite happily in favour of starting on mixing the filling while the base cools.

Cheesecake baking, kitchen tidy, spices back in Beckett’s carry bag, and the vegetables in the fridge for now, Beckett stretches lavishly. “There.”  She looks hopeful. “Is there any coffee, Dad?”

“You haven’t had coffee?”

“I did. It was just a long time ago.”

“Better get you some more.”

Jim makes them both coffee, and marvels very, very privately at how well matters are going. He is unutterably relieved and happy that his daughter is so at ease with him: even if it’s only temporary he thinks that she’s made huge progress, very suddenly. He hopes with all his might that they are moving firmly to a better place. He also wonders how much of this has been prompted by Martha Rodgers’ behaviour. Me against my brother, my brother and me against the rest, in fact. Hmmm. Jim’s sunny mood acquires a slightly tarnished edge.

Coffee in hand, Beckett perches on her father’s plump armchair and appreciates the aroma of slowly cooking pork.

“You’ve planned a really good dinner,” Jim ventures cautiously.

“Yeah. Um. Well.” Beckett blushes.

“Apart from that Georgian stuff, I didn’t know you could cook.” He takes a very tentative step on to the thin ice of their past.

“I don’t have much time to cook, but sometimes it’s relaxing, if I’m not in a hurry.” Beckett’s answer is almost equally tentative. Both of them can sense the fragility of the surface over which they’re skating.

“Um… your mother used to have a slow cooker, so she could just throw it in and it’d be done when she got home,” Jim says very carefully, and hopes that the tension he feels isn’t the ice cracking under his feet.

There is a slight but significant pause. Beckett surveys her father very sharply, and finds in his tight face both biting memory and desperate plea.

“I thought about that,” she says, and her father’s face sags in sudden relief at disaster avoided; a potential span of bridge built, “but the hours are so random that even then I’d ruin more than I ate.”

“Fair point,” Jim concedes. He has a sudden thought, to take them back to firm ground. “Did I hear you telling Dr Burke that he’d helped you solve a case?”

“Oh, yes, that.” Beckett grins, displaying a distinctly predatory edge. “I got to interrogate him.”

“Turning tables, eh? Bet you enjoyed that.”

“Mmm,” she says happily. “I sure did.”

“He wasn’t a suspect, though – was he?”

“No. A tennis coach up at that smart club in Midtown – the Manhattan Central Racquet Club?” Jim nods, recognising the name. “was shot, but down at the Seward public courts, so that’s why we got it. Anyway, it turns out that Dr Burke plays at the Central, so I shook him down for all the information he could give me.” Her feral smile glints.

Jim grins at her. “And?”

“Okay, so it’s certainly not a story suitable for dinner if Alexis is there, so…” she pauses, and quirks a smile.

“Katie…” Jim says ominously. She smirks at him.

“All the coaches were stunning, like they’d been picked from a model catalogue. I was suspicious already, and then one of them admitted to escorting” – Jim gasps – “and to cut the story short, it turned out that the manager was running an escort service off the books.”

“Wow. And?”

“Oh, he did it. We got him all tied up. No way he’ll walk.”

“You get some real interesting cases. That chemist, escort rings…”

“We get all the weird ones. The boss likes it that way. Anyway, pop-and-drops are boring.”

“You always did hate being bored.”

“Yep. Still do.”

At that convenient point the oven timer beeps loudly to indicate that the cheesecake is done. Beckett takes her coffee with her as she extracts the dessert so that it can cool, inspects it carefully while draining her cup and pronounces herself satisfied.

“If we went for lunch now, and didn’t take too long, when we got back it could go in to the fridge to chill.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

Father and daughter exhibit exactly the same pizza-inhaling tendencies, drain their sodas, and speed back to Jim’s apartment in double-quick time in order to have time for their Sorry game before dealing with the next stage of Beckett’s culinary masterpieces. Beckett wins. Jim grumbles. She hands him the bag of potatoes triumphantly.

“Okay, you start on the potatoes, and I’ll do the final topping for dessert.”

Jim eventually unearths a peeler from his cupboard and begins. Beckett, having finished the topping long before he’s halfway through, starts on coring the apples.

“C’mon, Dad, speed up.”

“You sound just like your mother,” Jim says without thought, and then drops the potato he’s holding into the sink with a splash when Beckett gasps. There is a gaping silence.

Beckett makes an immense effort to force out words. “I thought you’d slowed up with age,” she manages. “Maybe I should make you practice. Hire you out to a fries-making factory.”

It’s not very funny. But it works for just long enough. Jim squeezes out a brittle effort at a laugh. “I don’t think fries need anti-trust advice.”

Beckett takes a breath, and another, and cores an apple with just a little more force than is really necessary. Jim peels the maltreated potato with venom. The scrapes echo in the uncomfortable silence.

“Did she really tell you that?” Beckett asks in a very small, tight voice, after a moment.

“All the time.”

There is a small, tight silence, matching the small, tight words. “Pass me the ones you’ve done, and I’ll slice them,” Beckett says, still exerting tight control of her voice. Jim complies. An instant later the sound of fast, sharp slicing begins. Jim keeps peeling.