His skin had become her unintended canvas, it seemed, the vivid pink hue of the four bands that crawled down the line of his shoulder blade absorbing Kate's attention as she watched him cross the floor from their bed to the bathroom late that morning.
She always tried to keep her nails on the shorter side, for work, certainly, but also for Rick's benefit, for the very reason that found her there naked amongst the rumpled sheets with a wicked grin on her face. That was what he brought out in her, that passion, fierce and relentless. Oh, it'd always been there, and she'd known so, but no man had ever been able to draw it out the way he did, and his body carried the manifestation to prove it.
Spring showers had settled over the city and looked to be parked there for the weekend, which wasn't entirely unwelcome, as it turned out. They'd just managed to crawl free of seventy-two hours of case exhaustion, and Saturday found them in full embrace of their two well-earned days of leisure and of one another, and their only plan ahead was to have absolutely no plan at all.
Rick shuffled back into the bedroom mid-yawn, and Kate pushed up onto her elbows, the sheet exposing her breast as it shifted with her new angle. He walked around the bed, pulled aside the curtain at his window, and gazed out at the grey on the other side, her eyes tracking his every move.
"Are you going to get back in here, Castle, or stand there and spy on the neighbors some more? You know if you can see them, they can see you, too, right? There's no way they've earned that show you're giving them."
He angled back, around the lamp on the nightstand that was obstructing his view. "Missing me, are we, Detective?" He could already feel his body in its reaction to the sight of her, despite having just come down from a tremendous height-one she'd taken him to. "It's wet, sexy," he said as he climbed back into bed beside her.
The errant sheet lingered without correction, purposely, of course, his unapologetic admiration her grounds. Kate knew his words were of the morning, but they plucked her string nonetheless, and he couldn't have chosen them more deliberately. "It is," she purred in reply, the sound of falling rain at the windows inconsistent to the point of perfection. "Turn around, Castle." The command was odd, sudden, yet he obliged without question.
"I like it better when I can look at you, especially when I know you want me to."
She rolled up onto her knees and crawled towards him, closer, to investigate, as was her specialty. What she found was no longer just four lines. They had texture now, definition, a rawness that resembled art. "Does it hurt?" she asked, and a part of her selfishly hoped for the other answer, the one she shouldn't have hoped for, the one that meant he would be reminded.
Rick could feel her warm breath on his skin's wound. That was how close she sat. "It stings a little bit." He'd already studied it in the bathroom mirror, as successfully as he could, given its position, and in the quiet, he'd heard her breath all over again, her moan amidst its creation. "But I think it's hot as hell."
Kate leaned in and pressed her lips at its edge. "Guess you'll have to be on the bottom this time, so I don't make it any worse."
Rick slowly turned around to her. "I'll be anywhere you want me to be, but are you sure you're ready? It's only been-"
"You know better than to ask that," she tsk-tsked, stepping on his foolish words. And he knew damn well. "Maybe you're projecting, huh?" Her fingers began to draw upwards along his thigh as she continued her tease. "Maybe you're the one who isn't ready."
He captured her wrist without breaking eye contact. "As you were about to discover for yourself, Dick Castle and I are very eager to start all over again. No one ever said there wasn't any fun in the chase."
"Tell me you did not just say what I think you just said." He'd let it fly without even a blink, and from the look on his face, he had no idea what it was that instigated her remark. "Did you just refer to your penis as Dick Castle?"
He responded with a boastful snicker. "I just came up with that, off the top of my head, just now. I'm almost too good, sometimes, I swear." Relinquishing his hold, he pushed his fingers between hers and folded them together. "Come on, you can admit it. You're a little bit impressed."
"You mean horrified? Embarrassed? Questioning our impending marriage?"
"Don't even joke about that. There's no way in hell you're getting out of marrying me, not with just two weeks to go. Connelly would never let me hear the end of it." With a squeeze and a tug, he maneuvered her into his lap, her legs in straddle. "And I love you too much to let you go."
Kate clasped her hands around his neck, played lazily with his hair. "Is that what I feel?" she asked with a deliberate downward glance.
"Oh, he loves you, too. A lot. And he is now at your insatiable need's command." When he came for her lips, she pulled back.
"Excuse me? My need?"
He tried to steal a kiss a second time, again unsuccessful. "Don't be bashful about it. He's flattered. We both are."
Kate grabbed a handful of his hair in a fist and held it tightly. "Stop referring to it as a he, Castle, or by any other name. Whatever you think that is-cute or charming or funny-it isn't. And there is a big difference between need and want. As an example: I need you to hear what I'm saying right now. I want you to take this," she went on before reaching down and clutching him in her other hand, "and…" The remainder of the wish she pushed into his ear in whisper.
The sound that emanated from him was both weird and wonderful. "I guess that's the difference between you and me, Beckett," he could only sputter with the purposeful slide of her fingers. "I'm big enough to own up to it. I need everything about you."
"The difference, Castle? Singular? Please, there are so many differences between you and me, I could write you a book. And you don't have to brag. I'm well aware of how big you are," she quipped with an audible smile, her innuendo utterly devoid of innuendo.
"Okay, you know what I think we should do, Detective? After we do that thing you whispered a minute ago, I mean, obviously." Kate released him, finally, and dropped back onto the bed. "I think that for the next two weeks, until you walk down the aisle to me and officially become the luckiest woman in the world, we should agree to refrain from all fun of the naked variety. I bet we find out who needs what then, and I bet you crumble long before I do."
She all but laughed in his face. "Are we wagering on this nonsense of yours? What do I get when you come begging for Pussy-Kate?" Rick's mouth fell open, quite literally. "I'm good, too, Dick Castle," she said with focused attention on her subject. "Now do you see how weird the name thing is?"
"I'm sorry. I'm definitely going to need a minute. Or five," he replied once he succeeded in locating his voice, and then he sat there, still, as he heard hers play over and over again on a loop.
"Fine, Castle, how about this? How about when I kick your ass at this, just like I did with Scrabble, you have to give up playing video games for six months." She stretched out her leg and poked him in the side with her toes. "Did you hear me?"
Though with his blank stare it appeared he wasn't listening, he heard every word. "I did, and I think it doesn't matter what your terms are because you're the one who's going to go down in flames."
With the sudden injection of excitement, he crawled to her, knelt in the space she created for him between her legs, their muscles hugging him at the hips. Her body was entirely exposed, save for the line where her arm lay draped across her belly, and the remembrance drawn delicately in black ink on her skin, the one no one else but him would ever again see, unanticipatedly served to inspire his own term for their as yet unagreed-upon agreement.
"Tell me what you're thinking about," Kate said when his fingers gifted her goosebumps but then abruptly stopped their drift.
"How about when I win, you have to get something of my choosing tattooed on your body wherever I want you to?" He equaled her certainty, her confidence in ultimate victory, and that turned her on even more than she already was. "And, I promise, it will be something beautiful and elegant, like its bearer."
She considered it for a moment, or pretended to, at least. "Okay, Castle, no video games for you or a tattoo for me." It was really all too easy. There was no way she'd ever lose. Not in the game of restraint. "Should we shake on it?"
Rick angled himself over her and dipped for her ear. "You're going to remember what's about to happen every minute of every day until you can have it again," he said in painful promise, knowing the next fourteen days of his life would be the very same.
"I need you to stop fucking talking now, Castle," Kate told him, unfazed by her own rather desperate tone.
"Need or want?" he asked smugly before he gave her both.