205. Think we're alone now

“Espo, Beckett.”

“Yeah. We had an idea.”

“Techs got into Chef’s phone yet?”

“Well, put the hurry up on them or get a warrant for the records.”

“Put the hurry up on that too, then,” she raps. Jim blinks at the command tone; Castle smiles, seeing his character in his head; and Alexis watches with admiration. “As soon as we get something we need to pick out Bruno’s number. If we’re lucky, it’ll be in contacts, if not, we’ll have to do it the hard way.”

“We’re going to gaslight him. You’re going to call him, pretend to be another diner looking to hire, you got his name and number from a friend of one of the three who tried to sneak out on us.”

“Because you’re the only one who can put on the right accent, Espo.” There’s a distinct flavour of you idiot with which Castle is only too familiar. Jim, it seems from his raised eyebrows, is also familiar with it.

“It’s got to be worth a go. Have you any better ideas?”

“Right. Lean on those techs and the warrant. I want that phone open and I want that data.”

“Bye.”

She swipes off the phone and returns to the table, appearing very satisfied and smiling sharply.

“Thanks, Dad. Good idea. Let’s see if it works.”

Castle notes with no surprise at all that Jim lights up at the suggestion that his idea has helped his Katie’s case. Beckett, who is clearly still running case-thoughts and strategies through her head, hasn’t yet noticed. Although… on a closer look, there’s a crease across Jim’s forehead and a crumple of strain around his mouth. His eyes are indeed brighter, but it’s not all happiness. Some of it is undoubtedly distress: a realisation that Jim’s little Katie grew up, and he missed it: head down in amber bourbon, drowning his grief and his daughter together. Now, Castle can recognise and even sympathise with the considerable toll which this whole debacle has taken on Jim as well as Beckett. No-one’s come out of this unscathed.

Beckett’s focus returns to the present and to present company.

“Sorry,” she says. “Just making sure I hadn’t missed anything.”

Castle sees Jim’s face twist: memory flashing over his visage.

“So like Johanna,” he murmurs, and Castle’s heart clenches on the words. He’s seen the photos, in which Beckett was frighteningly like her mother in looks – and, it now appears, in personality. Every minute, hour, day: sharp-stabbing reminder of his lost wife whenever Jim looked at his daughter.

Beckett, again, doesn’t notice. Oh. Doesn’t seem to notice, but there’s a tightness pinching around her eyes and a downward flick to her lips. Castle slides his hand towards her and dusts a touch over her knee, hidden by the table.   It seems to help, for now.

“Is everyone ready for dessert?” he asks enthusiastically, and bounces up to clear the table. Beckett rises too, intending to help.

“Sit down,” Castle tells her. “Alexis’ll help, and there’s only room for the two of us in the kitchen.” This is obvious nonsense, since he could fit a small herd of buffalo in the open plan arrangement. Still, if it makes him happy… She sits back down.

Shortly, apple tart, caramel sauce, cream and ice-cream appear. Conversation ceases once again, in order to appreciate Castle’s culinary talents, and only really re-starts when the last remaining crumbs are consumed.

“Coffee?” Castle enquires.

“Not for me, thanks,” Jim declines. “These old bones need to get home.”

“You’re not old,” Alexis says, just as Beckett says Dad!, and rolls her eyes heavenward at him.

“You don’t have to go yet,” Castle points out mildly.

Jim grins impishly at both Castle and Beckett. “I think I should,” he smiles. “You two must have things to talk about.” Beckett emits a muffled noise of irritation and Jim grins more widely. “The case, Katie.” She growls.

Castle politely escorts Jim to the door, waving Alexis away. “I thought fathers were supposed to do the disapproving glare and intimidation bit,” he says.

“I think Katie can do all of that for herself, and besides, it’s not good manners to scare your host.” Jim’s smile turns a little lopsided, and then reverts to impish. “If I were you, I’d make sure she doesn’t get away.” Castle goggles. “Though I think she’s already decided you won’t.” Jim steps through the door. “Night, Rick. Thanks for dinner.”

Castle closes the door from habit and not from any conscious action, and returns to the family room somewhat shell shocked.

“What did Dad say to you?” Beckett murmurs.

“Nothing much,” he evades. “I think he approves of me,” he adds smugly, and revels in the disgusted noise which Beckett makes.

“Eww, Dad,” Alexis complains. “So not cool.”

Castle makes a face at his daughter, who rolls her eyes at him but arrives in the kitchen to help tidy up. Beckett manages one trip from table to kitchen counter before she is spotted, growled at, and packed off to the couch to behave like a dinner guest – there is some emphasis on that word – and await coffee. Her protests are, once more, entirely ignored by both Castles.

As soon as the cleaning up is done, Alexis says goodnight and disappears upstairs. Her vanishing act is both impressive and embarrassing.

“I think we’re alone now,” Castle hums, half in tune and mercifully quietly. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

Coffee and Castle arrive forthwith. Castle’s arm arrives around Beckett forthwith, too. She snuggles in without a hint of resistance and lays her hand on his leg. It’s not quite seductive, but it’s certainly suggestive.

“I brought a bag,” she says, unexpectedly. “I didn’t want Dad or Alexis to see it so I left it in the car.”

“Give me the keys and I’ll go get it,” Castle offers.

“’Kay.” She hands over the keys, and curls deeper into the couch.

Castle looks back from the door at the sight of a relatively relaxed Beckett happily cuddled up in the corner of his couch, shoes off, toes tucked up, and thinks how far she’s come. Just his mother’s party, now. One last step, and then this can become their reality.

He retrieves the bag and with some difficulty resists the temptation to peek. He’s pretty sure that would spoil the surprise.

Beckett’s sleepy, sexy smile when he returns makes him certain that there’s a present for him within the bag. Present, in this case, really meaning wrapping for the real gift: his Beckett in his bed. His answering smile is as slow, sleepy and sensual as hers, and a moment later they’re snuggled close together, anticipation scenting the air as their coffee is consumed and cups set down.

“I think it’s bedtime,” Beckett breathes into Castle’s very receptive ear. It becomes even more receptive when she follows up with a delicate little nibble of the lobe. He likes that.   Ohhhh yes.

“I think so too,” he growls. “I think you brought something pretty.”

“Do you?” she asks, in a teasing, sultry tone, and nibbles along his shadowed jawline, ending up just short of his mouth. This is not at all fair to Castles. Kisses should definitely end on his mouth, from where he can return the favour. Still, there’s more than one way to skin a cat – or a Beckett-Kat. Perhaps not skin, either. More, well, strip. On which happy thought, he tugs her up on to his lap, cradles her face, and kisses her hard. She might have started it, but he’s not going to be chasing the game. Chasing Beckett until he catches her and she turns into purring, sensual, sexy Kat, now… well, that’s another matter.

“That’s more like it,” he says, some moments later, and immediately kisses her once more, before she can slither away. He doesn’t want her slithering away just yet: she’s here in his loft (again) and he wants to enjoy it. Her. Them. He carries on kissing her: her hands around his neck; his slipping round to her nape, down to the small of her back, across to her hip. She sighs a little, wriggles to become closer, and gives in to his demands.

After far too short a time, Beckett pulls her lips from Castle’s excellently talented osculation, then detaches his hands by means of a contortionist’s twist, fold and wriggle to leave her a foot out of Castle’s astonished clutch. She throws him an entirely wicked come-hither glance, and sways towards the bedroom with a swing of her hips that he’d much rather feel against his when he’s buried inside her. Another heated, heating glance scorches towards him.

He doesn’t move.

“You brought something pretty,” he says again, in a deep velvet baritone designed to stroke down every sensitised synapse.   “So I’m giving you time to put it on.” He smiles, lazily predatory. “I like surprises,” he purrs. “I like unwrapping presents, too.”

Kat’s sly smile turns the anticipatory tension another notch tighter. As if she were the Cheshire Cat, or Kat, it’s the last thing he sees as the rest of her disappears. He sits tight, letting her play out her game. He’ll play his own game soon enough, and it’s only fair that he should ensure that she’s as aroused as he is.

In fact, by dint of physically sitting on his hands, Castle manages to delay standing up for precisely eleven minutes. That’s the point when he hears his bathroom door reopening, and fails utterly to stop his body from rising from the couch to investigate the extremely interesting contents of his bedroom.

He is certainly not disappointed.   Nothing about Kate Beckett, thoroughly feline and totally Kat, in his bedroom could ever disappoint him. However, just as a black belt is, though the top rank, divided into dans, so Castle’s level of Beckett-appreciation, though always high, has divisions of intensity. Currently the division he’s occupying is marked as maximum.

His Kat is lying seductively across his pillows on his bed and gazing at him as if he’s edible. (He is, but only if Kat’s doing the eating.) It therefore takes him a moment to rip his gaze from hers and take in her attire. It certainly couldn’t be called dress. It doesn’t cover enough. In fact, it hardly covers anything. For a woman whose last ten years have barely encompassed relationships, she sure does have an astonishing collection of drop-dead sexy lingerie. This is no exception. He could call it a nightgown. It’s being worn at night, and it might just about qualify as a gown. Maybe. If it were six inches longer.

Mostly, it’s black chiffon, almost translucent. The outfit appears to include a pair of panties for which the term brief is entirely inadequate. Brief would imply a little more fabric. The garment is more remarkable for the extent to which it uncovers than covers. He doesn’t realise that he’s already growling deep in his throat. The top piece is also mostly black chiffon. It has two thread-thin straps. Its lace-rimmed upper edge rests one single solitary inch above her nipples, which are already taut. The lower hem finishes one inch below the panties. It has a crimson ribbon snaking through its centre, tied at the top in a small, neat, and above all inviting bow. A similar bow decorates each side of the panties.

Castle’s growl becomes far deeper and much more predatory. This is no fluffy, playful kitten, nor yet affectionate Kat. This is a full-fledged tiger, who’s pleased to play and keep her lethality restrained, though it’s there beneath the invitation. Just as with any big cat, there’s danger in the air, scenting her seduction with savagery.

His brain ceases utterly to function about the point she bites her lip and then licks it lasciviously. He doesn’t need it. All he needs is the instinctive response to her open invitation.

Instinct has him rampantly naked before he’s reached the bed; instinct hauls his beautifully wrapped Beckett from her languorous lounging on the pillows; instinct sets his mouth firstly to hers and then to her proud breasts and hard points tipping them; instinct rips the bows open and casts the chiffon aside to leave her stunningly, louchely naked, slick and hot in his grasp.

But it’s experience which allies with instinct to instruct mouth and hands to tease and tantalise and torment; tongue to touch and taste and drive her frantic; teeth to leave small nips everywhere but where she wants them most; fingers to frolic and wreak joyous havoc through flesh and folds.

Of course this tiger-Kat fights back with her own bright-burning wickedness and hunger of tongue and teeth and fingers; but in the end size and weight and sheer hard muscle-strength gives him the advantage: she succumbs to him and screams his name into the pillows in which her cries are muffled; and then opens to take him into her, perfectly fitting, perfectly matched as he calls her name into the hot wet haven of her mouth and spills inside the cradle of her body.

They lie, satisfied and sated, together; nestled as peacefully as two now-sleepy tigers when the hunt and the feeding are done.

“Mine,” Castle murmurs into her hair, clasping her close; and then more smugly, “I knew you’d brought something pretty.”

“My Castle,” Kat mumbles, nine-tenths asleep already. “Mine, love you.”

“Night, love,” Castle whispers, so only she can hear, and she makes a small sleepy noise and curls against him. No tension now, no worry or thought or sleeplessness; simply calm acceptance that she’s here and complete relaxation.

He slips into slumber with everything he hadn’t known he always wanted (until nine months ago) right here in the palm of his hand.

Castle does not love Beckett’s alarm, either for its volume or timing, and he especially does not love that its klaxon noise means that she will now waken up and, worse, get out of bed. On the other hand, his shower is definitely big enough for two. And washing in pairs has some very interesting side-benefits. It does mean that they have to wash all over again, though. Without the side-benefits.

At least they have a case.

Beckett also brought clean clothes, which is encouraging, even if she does pack away her scraps of sin. He’d try to persuade her to leave them, but they do need cleaned. Not, quite, repaired. He’d managed not to tear them. That’s better than his tiger-Kat had managed on his shoulders.

Beckett emerges from the bathroom far too quickly to look as composed as she does. However, she’s – “Haven’t you forgotten something?” Castle askes, confused.

“You mean my lip gloss?” she smirks. “No. I didn’t forget it. I just didn’t want to smudge it.” She slinks the last step between them, stretches up and takes wholesale possession of his mouth.

“Now I’ll put it on.”

“Not yet you won’t,” Castle rasps, and catches her back in to do some ravaging of his own. When he’s finished, she’s lax against him. “Now you can put it on,” he says to her dazed eyes. “See you in the precinct.”

The sway of her hips as she leaves nearly makes him haul her straight back to bed.

In the bullpen, safely ahead of Ryan and Esposito, Beckett considers her murder board with a homicidal glare for its lack of information. About all she’s got right now is a timeline and the victim’s ID. Her prime suspect, Bruno, is in the wind. She growls ferociously – and rather too loudly. Montgomery pokes his Captainly pate out of his office to find out what new terror is pacing his precinct.

“Ah, Detective Beckett,” he says smoothly. “Isn’t the case progressing?”

“Not unless you let me squeeze Perlmutter till his pips squeak,” Beckett emits.

Montgomery winces. “I can’t have you physically encouraging him.”

“I want his results,” Beckett complains.

“Yes. Indeed. Well, instead, I wanted a word with you, Detective, and if you’re stalled on the case, it might as well be now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beckett automatically stands and follows her boss to his office.

“I’ve been watching you, Beckett.” Oh God. Now what? “Seems to me that you’ve cleared up whatever was wrong a few weeks back.”

“Yessir,” she says on a sigh of relief.

“I still want you to follow the same protocol relating to any alcoholics on your cases. Castle will stay with you and report directly to me. But you don’t need to get my permission to work the cases as long as you do that. I’ll re-evaluate whether I need Castle’s reporting after the next one.” He chortles, suddenly. Beckett looks questioningly at him. “That man can’t write a basic, plain, factual report to save his life.”

“Sir?”

“Never seen so much flowery description in my life. Tell him to cut it out. If I see one more reference to your emerald-hard gaze” – Beckett emits an extraordinary noise and winces, and Montgomery guffaws – “in interrogation, I’ll be interrogating Castle myself.”

“Yessir,” Beckett manages, and retreats at full speed, followed by the sounds of amused Captain.

Fortunately, she has calmed herself down when the boys arrive, all fired up and ready to go just as soon as the techs get into the phone or the warrant comes through.

Which is not yet happening, as Castle discovers almost as soon as he walks in. Something about the black roil of raging frustration around Beckett’s desk and person tells him that much. He puts her coffee down before she can see him, but just as she’s reaching for it, the phone rings.

“Beckett.”

“Okay. There shortly.” She swipes off. “Finally, Perlmutter’s managed to pull his scalpels out his ass and do something.”

“You’re not saying useful there,” Esposito points out, almost as sardonically as Beckett might.

“Yeah, I’m not. Chances of it being useful are fifty-fifty, on past performance,” she returns, equally dryly. “You coming, Castle?” She sweeps out, Castle on her heels.

At least, he’s on her heels until he’s out of sight and the elevator doors have closed. Then he stops any hint of following and simply slings an arm around her: utterly confident that she won’t flinch or shake him off. Nor does she, until the elevator creaks to a halt, when she’s abruptly two feet away.