(no subject)

[mmkaternater]

The NYPD doesn't have an official gym. Not anymore, anyway. Not since the basement in the bottom of the 12th had been found to contain "unusually high levels of asbestos" and not since everybody agreed that it was probably not a good idea for New York's Finest to run on treadmills located underneath five hundred pounds of the stuff. For the last five years, the District Attorney and the mayor had been trying to talk their constituents into springing for a new facility, but response was as sluggish as the blood flow through a diabetic's arteries. In the interim, the New York City branch of the FBI has offered use of their gym to any officer who wants to come in and burn off a few blue calories.

And that's where Castle is today.

Or, would be, more accurately, if he could get past the security cartel in the lobby. Despite the fact that Beckett had finally gotten around to getting him his own sent of presentable credentials, the G at the security desk isn't buying the whole "authorial ride-along" shtick, and Castle has had to sweat through three inter-departmental phone calls, a background check, and a number of pissed-off-looking agents who have filed in behind him, already looking like they just need an excuse to knock a guy's block off.

"I'm with Detective Kate Beckett," he tries again, hoisting his gym bag along his shoulder. "B-E-C-K-E-T-T. Badge number...hell, I don't know her badge number. Page her. She's expecting me."

The badge behind the desk cups his large hand over the mouthpiece of his phone. He looks like the kind of guy who uproots tree stumps in his spare time. "I don't have a record of you on the books, Mr. Castle. You're certain she was meeting you today?"

"Yeah, today. She's got to get re-certified in hand-to-hand combat next week. We were going to practice a few moves."

Stony silence. Castle hears a couple of Gs chuckle in line behind him.

"What?"

"No offense, Mr. Castle, but unless you're gonna' take dictation during her re-certification, she's probably gonna' do better on her own."

Castle casts a glance down to his top-of-the-line sneakers and never-been-sweated-in NYU t-shirt. "You think I don't have what it takes? I'll have you know, I can be pretty intimidating when I want to be. I made a waiter cry once."

The badge chuckles into his collar and returns to his phone call. Castle scans the lobby, touching his stomach with the tips of his fingers, looking dejected. A few seconds later the guy hangs up, gives Castle a tight smirk, and says, "All right, man. She's on her way down to collect you. 'Careful you don't knock her in the head with those forearms of yours."

"Watch it. I can take a maître d' out in two seconds flat."

Comments

[fanofthegenre]

It'd be impossible for her to lie, if Castle did ask. To be able to stand there, her cheeks flushed and her lips slightly swollen from their kisses, and look him right in the eye and tell him no. No, she hasn't missed this, or thought for a good long minute about the memory of his hands or his lips or his skin against hers.

She's never been a great liar. Sure, she can fib a little here and there if it means getting a confession from a suspected murderer, but when it comes to the things that really matter, she's hopeless. Helpless, under the fingers that slowly nudge the fabric of her camisole up her sides and over her head. Beckett snatches it from him and tosses it aside without caring where it lands. Her back makes contact with the wallpaper and her whimper is lost in the shuffle of feet, the kiss that overtakes her with real hunger and passion. Her own hands are already resuming where they left off on his pants, the jarring sound of a lowering zipper giving her away.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

They bump hands, bump wrists, and the contact is ferocious as both of them try to strip one another of the last hallelujah pieces of clothing between them. Castle rocks his hips into her hand, simultaneously working the half-done knot on the front of her pajama pants. The little tie is stubborn and Castle's almost ready to call the Pinkerton guys before he feels the edges go loose, the tension give, and the knot slide away. He pushes his palms over the elastic waistband, sliding cotton over her hips and into two pools around her ankles.

Barely anything between them now but molecules. Castle's fingers curve around the inside of her thigh, just beneath her groin. He lets out a low, husky breath into her mouth when he touches her and realizes she's just as into this as he is.

[fanofthegenre]

Her own responding noise is soft, higher than his sounds but also low in its own right, and here she's completely exposed, bare to him, naked and wanting and unable to voice anything to that want, so she settles for pressing against him, into the hand that urges between her thighs, while simultaneously trying to wrack her brain for the memory of how to get back towards her bed.

They're close enough, though, for her to manage that much. She steps out of the fabric coiled around her ankles and guides him against her, skin against almost-skin. Without his belt, Castle's pants are already slipping down to his knees, which means he'll have to get rid of them if he has any hopes of following her into the bedroom without tripping over himself. She doesn't pause, doesn't stop to switch on any lights. Just crawls onto the bed, her unclothed form briefly illuminated by the light of the street lamps that filters through the window blinds, stripes of white and black gliding over her shape when she looks back over her shoulder at him, propped up on all fours.

"Well?"

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Trousers sagging sadly around his ankles, Castle has a hand on her hip and then she's shifting away from him, pulling the electricity of the touch out of reach while she disappears around a doorframe. He follows like he's on a tether, walking out of his trouser cuffs and just leaving them in her hallway, a shed Armani skin. Dazed and half delirious, the sight of her on the bed hits him like a truck between his ribs.

Well?

Well, indeed, Detective Beckett.

"I'm," he begins, and finds his mouth desert dry and uncooperative for whatever he was going to say next. He tries again: "...I think I'm okay without the handcuffs."

He eases a knee onto the edge of the bed and reaches for her, palm sliding down the slope of her naked back. He bends to kiss the twin dimples on either side of her spine, lashing his tongue over her skin while his hand glides around to the inside of her thigh.

[fanofthegenre]

She does grin, however brief it may be, and the second his mouth makes contact with her skin it disappears off her expression altogether, replaced by eyes fluttering shut and several soft sounds caused by their meeting. Her back arches, spine coiling like a cat stretching lazily, and then she eases over onto her side, then to her back, her gaze finding his in the near-darkness.

Her arms reach out to him, beckoning him down, clinging to him in the same manner that her legs do around his lower half. The kiss she presses to his mouth is slow, easing, similar to the way her hips fall into a teasing grind below. Close but just not close enough - not yet.

"In the drawer," she whispers, nipping at his jaw. "The bedside table."

With Castle, she's learned that it pays to be prepared.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

He kisses the side of her mouth and then gives the aforementioned drawer a sidelong glance before his grin takes over. His hand squeezes her hip. "Your handcuffs or your telephoto lens?" He slaps his fingers around the edge of the drawer and peels it open, feeling blindly inside. 'Edge of his fingers catches the side of a flat, familiar-feeling box and he turns his lips back to hers. "Or something more fun," he teases.

'Knee bracing himself up off the mattress, Castle pulls the box from the drawer and catches the lip of it with his thumb. Either he's got it by the wrong end, or this particular box hasn't been opened before. He has a wild, thrilling picture in his head all of a sudden of Beckett going down to the corner drugstore for a box of condoms, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and an oversized beach hat.

He pulls one from the box and tears the foil with his teeth, maneuvering his hand between their bodies to take care of his boxers and the rest of it, a divot stamped between his eyes with the focus of it all. She's watching him, he knows, and he wants to kiss that sultry, knowing smirk right off her lips. She gets to him, even now. Especially now.

Her skin is pale, her eyes clear when he looks into them. 'Little flecks of moonlight in her irises and Castle feels himself swell again. He catches her mouth with his and the kiss is slow and easy. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?" he whispers.

[fanofthegenre]

There are times when she has to acknowledge the ideas his imagination comes up with as completely ludicrous, but here, he would be correct in guessing that the task of going down the street to the drugstore had been a particularly covert operation - during which she had tried to hide her face and her badge at all times. The box had practically burned a hole through the bag all the way back, and by the time she'd arrived at her apartment, she'd simply tossed it into the nightstand drawer without even looking at it for very long. At the time, she'd thought it was a bad idea - who knew if what had happened that one night was going to happen again - but now, she's silently thanking herself for having the presence of mind to take care of this in advance.

His question, the compliment, removes every other thought from her mind, and there may be a tiny tremor in her eyes when the kiss breaks and she leans back to look up at him, her face hovering inches from his. There's that smirk, maybe, but there's a tenderness in it too that she doesn't know if she's completely comfortable with. Not to mention that when he calls her beautiful, a part of her wants to withdraw and let the layers swallow her up all over again.

Instead, she presses her forehead to his, and her hips align with his, and she reaches to take his hand, lacing their fingers together and letting them come to rest, still joined, beside her right cheek.

"No, but I might believe it if you say it's true," she whispers back, her voice cracking on the last syllable.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Beckett's shy about compliments and anything else that paints her with any colour other than the ones she's used to. Castle feels her consider the notion that she might be (is) beautiful and knows that she's having a hard time chewing through it. That, he thinks, I might change if I could.

She draws his hand up beside her cheek and he lets his thumb out to caress the high, slender curve. His lips find the corner of her mouth in a soft, simple kiss. Some of the earlier, hallway heat has died down and Castle is at turns happy and anxious about what it could mean. 'Second time today that he might have said something that's put her off him. Slick, shallow fear slides around the bottom of his stomach for a second or two before he hears her return whisper.

Rather than speak, Castle kisses his answer against her mouth. 'Finds himself between her legs and pushes gently at the warm, right place. A second. A breath. The world's heaping sensation on his back and it comes out in the form of a sigh as he sides inside her.

[fanofthegenre]

It'd been simpler for her to compartmentalize when she'd first picked up Heat Wave; Nikki Heat was just a character - and okay, maybe she shared one or two similarities with Beckett here and there, places where Castle had almost quoted her verbatim. She'd silently marveled to herself as she continued to turn the pages, wondering just how closely he'd been listening to her over the past few months. Closer than even she'd realized, no doubt - Castle's powers of observation, among other things, are one of the main reasons his books sell the way they do. He knows people: how they behave, how they react. It's why he knows a suspect's motives. It's why he knows how to write - how to write her.

Her body surges upward to meet him in a response that joins them more completely, and Beckett doesn't even attempt to hide the series of sounds that hover in the air between her mouth and his. The movement is slow, at first, the establishment of a rhythm that works, but once it's found, she rocks underneath him, hips rolling. There's a sheen of sweat on her thighs, anchoring them to either side of his waist, and her lips find a place to hover near his ear, giving him the opportunity to hear every sound he creates within her, even the softest of gasps.

"Castle," she sighs, and when she opens her eyes, her lashes brushing against his temple, she finds that her cheeks are damp.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

It's a parlor trick, what he does. A bit of close-up magic that sells, and every once in a while gets him a spot on the New York Review of Books (sometimes a good spot, if the columnist's stance on getting gifts from authors is adjustable). But Castle's not a fool. He knows what he's writing is impermanent and that for all his posturing (around Beckett especially) he's just a guy with an active imagination who happens to have a knack for reading people.

What she does -- what she's made herself -- actually matters. And if he's able to read her, it's only because she's the only thing in his world in a long time that was worth writing.

Their bodies rise and fall together. Castle drags his foot over her ankle, ridiculously trying to interlock toes with her, try to bring them closer than they already are. He hears her sigh and it nearly breaks him. 'Turns his nose against her temple to see the pale, silver shine on her face. He touches his lips to the high place on her cheek. "It's okay," he whispers, half out of breath, "I'm here."

[fanofthegenre]

The wave of pleasure starts low, burgeoning deep in her core like a slow-burning fire that gradually begins to accumulate its heat. It spreads outward in a pulsing spiral that eventually makes its way down the muscles in her legs and arms until it feels like it's emitting from her toes and fingers, through every single part of her, enough to overwhelm and nearly choke the rising moan in the back of her throat. Beckett manages a gasp, at least, an audible signal of encouragement, tasting salty remnants of tears on her lips and the indefinable flavor that she's come to know as specifically belonging to Castle himself.

She starts to tense - another signal, digging her fingertips into his shoulderblades and curling her toes into his calf. There's almost a part of her, in the depths of this, that wants to call this as close to perfect as she's likely to manage to get to.

Castle whispers that reassurance in her ear and she nearly sobs, flying up to him, trembling in his arms even while she urges him over to his back, turning and turning until she's the one hovering above him, gazing down at the shadows of the blinds over his face. The motion of her hips slows. She's pacing herself - and maybe him, too. She wants to make this last. The change in angle hits a deeper place and her thighs tighten around him, her lips parting as her breathing quickens.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Something's changed since the last time. Because of the case itself, the dead-ends it's produced, or the two dozen or so nights since they found one another like this, bare and stripped of artificiality. Her bed is the same and the dance is the same, but something in her is different. Not just a hunger -- a need, one that spills out of her and into him.

He's barely aware that she's moved him until it's done. She's above him now, breasts full and bare by moonlight, a stripe of sweat between them. "Ah, Beckett --" a rough whisper or a sigh or both. The pace of her hips is maddening at first and he wants to rebel against it; but then he catches the colour of determination on her face and realizes that she wants to savor this, draw it out. Not to torture him, for once, but because she wants to stay in this place as long as she can. Castle will be there until she's ready to come down again.

His hands curve around her waist, knees bumping her up so that the angle is deeper. 'Haze of sweat in his eyes that he blinks away like a salt burn, and her face hovers above him. He doesn't want to blink, for fear of losing that face.

[fanofthegenre]

There's a moment where she senses she's almost on a precipice of sorts. The question seems to be whether or not she can keep this light, fun - or delve deeper into heavier emotions. She has an obvious need for him, a hunger for this, but she doesn't want it to sweep her away. She doesn't want to be overcome by it. If there's anything Beckett fears most, it's having no control of the situation. Maybe this is her way of regaining it.

Regardless, there's nothing but sincerity in her eyes as she gazes down at him, lifting one hand with only mild difficulty to brush the damp pieces of hair out of his eyes. His thighs urge her up, preserving the movement, and she leans forward, resting her chest against his, her nose tipping up under his chin while their lower halves do the work. Her hand slides along his opposite cheek, cradling his face gently to her own, a stream of gasps flowing freely from her slightly parted lips.

"Castle, I - "

Anything she might have said, caught up in the emotion of it all, breaks off to a cry when she tenses again, hard, squeezing him to and against and inside. A good few breaths of time pass before she's finally riding out the sensation to relax, lingering on top of him as she waits for his finish.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Later, when he's in the cab as the city comes awake around him, Castle will remember that she started to tell him something and that she never finished the thought. He will proceed to spend the next three days obsessing over what it might have been. Now, though, it's hard to think about anything except for the way she rides him -- commanding, but not domineering -- and how good it feels when she lays her body down over his, mirror images of the same hungry shape, her breath in his ear.

The muscles of her hips tighten under his hands. He feels her toes start to curl against the inside of his calf and he knows she's starting to fall; she doesn't make much noise, but the overwhelming pull of her around him speaks more than words ever could (even the ones he writes).

He pushes his lips against the curve of her cheek, where the tears have since dried. 'Starting to feel the heat and pressure at the bare of his spine, the burn in his calves as he exhausts himself more than he did at the gym this morning. Beckett's hands are still on his face, her thumb at the base of his ear. All sound is magnified. Her name, grating out of him as he pulls her hips one final time, sounds like wind in a tunnel: "Beckett --"

It's like being pulled apart and put together again. His limbs surge with adrenaline, brain pumping at least a thousand different feel-good chemicals into his body, heightening everything: her smell, her taste, the nudge of her knee against the inside of his thigh. Everything is brought into focus for a brief, ecstatic second. He opens his eyes. She's still there. He lets his head fall onto the pillow, breathing staggered and low.

[fanofthegenre]

It's not the first time she's left him hanging, and it certainly won't be the last. Now, though, the focus isn't on what she might've said (I need you) or even what she never would have thought to say (I think I might be falling), but what she voices against his jaw in several quiet, harsh pants of breath as she tries to regain control of her racing heart.

She pulls away from him without really losing the warmth of him, preserving the contact between their bodies when she drapes herself along his side, one arm lazily slung across his middle. She hides her face between his head and the pillow, her fingertips drawing invisible symbols over his ribcage in light, slow touches.

She'll have to move, eventually. They both will. For now, though, she's content - perfectly content - to linger here a while longer. She doesn't close her eyes. She doesn't want to lose that visual confirmation of his presence just yet, even if she can feel his chest heaving under her bicep. Her lips push a brief kiss to his neck, one that nearly deepens when she tastes the tang of sweat on his skin.

"Castle," she sighs, less of a conversation starter and more just a quiet acknowledgment of the way he's managed to make her feel tonight.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Castle pushes his chin toward the ceiling, fixing his shoulders against the pillows so he can pull his arm out from underneath her and wind it around her shoulder. Her skin is damp in the places his fingertips touch. 'Same kind of buzzing, frenetic heat that he knows has taken possession of his own body.

"Mnh," he murmurs, then qualifies it with a more descriptive follow-up: "Me too."

He curls her shoulder in toward him and drops a light kiss onto her temple.

[fanofthegenre]

It'll take some time before she feels like she's back to a regular temperature, or even before her skin doesn't feel electrically charged, overly sensitized, the nerve endings firing to the places his hands touch on her body. She stretches against his hip as though she's trying to remember what it felt like to be tense.

"Mmm," she echoes, and then props herself up on one elbow, her hand skimming over his chest.

"Want some water?"

She's somewhat parched, and understandably so.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

His throat is a rough tangle of dry thicket. "Yeah --" he touches his fingertips to the inside of her elbow "-- let me get it. You just stay right there." He pushes his feet against the bottom of the bed to work the sheets away from his ankles before he sits up, blinking equilibrium back into his brain.

He turns at the waist just before sliding out of bed, drawing his thumb and forefinger under her chin to kiss her again. "Gotta' say, I like that workout more than the other one."

The floor is cold, so he raises up onto the balls of his feet, comically postured, and makes his way out of the bedroom to the kitchen without a stitch of clothing on. In the living room, the DVD menu cycles over and over. He rummages through her kitchen cabinets for a couple of clean glasses, coming up with two short tumblers that he fills at the tap. He stands in front of the sink and gulps one glass whole, then fills it again and brings both back to the bedroom.

"Though, I guess, when you think about it, they both kind of had the same conclusion --" he passes her a glass "-- me on my back, sweaty, out of breath."

[fanofthegenre]

There's a moment when she's left alone, quiet and dwelling apart from the noises Castle makes - the creaking of the floorboards, the brief squeak the faucet makes when he twists on the tap in the kitchen, the groan of the mattress when he settles back in near her again. She cradles her head in her hand, elbow making a slight indent in the pillow, and then reaches out to accept the cool glass, sipping steadily.

"I was going to see if you were ready for round two, but if you're still recovering - "

Her eyebrows twitch over the rim of the glass, though she makes sure to finish off its contents before setting it aside next to the glaring red digits on the alarm clock. Relaxed, for the moment, she pulls the sheets up around her and rests her head against the pillow, grinning up at him.

There's no way in hell the image of him tiptoeing out of her room stark naked won't be burned into her memory for weeks - even months to come now.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

He drains his glass and reaches over her to put it on the night stand, pausing for a second to press his lips to the turn of her neck. "I'm sure I can dig deep down and find some reserves." His hands, comfortable and familiar now, slide over her hip.

[fanofthegenre]

She sucks a quick breath in through her teeth, a soft hiss of pleasure, her skin still alive and humming with every touch of his hands and lips. Her arm slides around his neck to draw him in with a whisper:

"I could just tell you had it in you all along."