Notes: Reader luvmymissionary suggested I post Ch. 17 from This Nikki Heat Thing as a one-shot. Instead of just reposting the one chapter, I decided to include the beginning of 18 to round it out better and give readers of the original story a preview of what's to come.

There's some interest for this to be continued as its own AU piece. I could get on board with that. I'm pretty sure Castle and Beckett could be persuaded, too. Stay tuned for an AU Chapter 2.

Whatever You Want

Beckett versus Lady Irena. What had he done so right in a former life to see that unfold before him today—in a playroom, no less? Clearly karma thought he had been very, very good.

He'd thought that a wife/fiancée catfight was hot. That had nothing on the domme/detective battle he'd witnessed while perched unobtrusively on the spanking bench. Both women were intelligent, strong, and self-assured, attempting to tear one another down with nothing more than a surprisingly civil talk of legalities and privacy. But there had been an undeniable energy in the room that struck him with a new frisson of arousal. That was a scene he couldn't help but continue in his mind at night.

What began as a fantasy of them double-teaming him—and surely Beckett's teasing question, "Think you can handle two women at once, Ricky?" would have undone him on the spot—instead became a fantasy of the women vying for him. They didn't collaborate. They competed.

So very, very good.

There was only one problem.

As generous as the Universe was to him, it had sadistic timing.

The other night, he'd decided that he was never going to finish his manuscript—at least not one he'd want to publish under his name, let alone one that would make Beckett like him any better—if he let himself give way to fantasy without also concentrating on his plot.

He could still touch himself. He could still think and dream about anything he wanted; he knew none of that would change, nor would he want that.

But since the other night, he had forbidden himself from writing more sex scenes unless they were integral to the plot. As it was, he was still removing sex scenes that didn't really fit that bill and cutting out details that went beyond what Black Pawn would want. Privately, he didn't care what he wrote; he had few hard limits. Professionally, a vague line was set before him. He liked to toe that line and maybe even nudge it further without actually crossing it. He liked to pretend that Black Pawn was his bitch and not the other way around.

So he put in the time and did the work to advance the plot and minimize the gratuitous stuff, really tried to craft both a good story and a good apology, but really, he couldn't help but wonder. What were the odds? He had just resolved to scale back when a pro-domme was killed and hung from the monkey bars.

Seriously?

And then Beckett was oh-so-nonchalantly identifying custom cuffsand assuring the guys that that position was entirely possible. (Castle prided himself on believing a great deal was possible; admittedly, that position stretched the bounds of even his imagination. Just how flexible were Kate Beckett's mind and body, anyway?)

She had barely played with him ever since he offered—only half-joking—to rub lotion on her to protect her sensitive skin from the Cuban rays, and then suddenly today, all bets were off. While she threatened to zip him up in a leather hood and teased him with words like hot, wild, and kinky in that excruciatingly sultry voice, the glint in her eye was more playful than ever. Darkly playful. Dilated pupils playful.

Either she really did have a new boyfriend bringing out her naughty side, or . . . she had Castle.

Ricky, according to her.

She had referred to him twice—for investigative reasons, of course—as my boyfriend, Ricky, and even Barry from The Love Shackle had made some priceless assumptions about them, but Castle still couldn't gauge whether or not she was actually seeing someone else. One dinner out did not a relationship make, and he knew she wasn't obligated to tell him; he wasn't looking for a breakup before they ever got started. Still, he was hopelessly curious.

Is that why she'd made no move to go out with him again after their night at Remy's? Or was it all just part of the game they played?

Taken or not, the sheer number of fantasies that she had evoked in him in just one day was insurmountable.

It was going to take measured effort to plot his story and stay on-task with all of that still running on a loop in his head.

Cruel, cruel universe.

So very, very good.

Kate had no plot—at least nothing worthy of a procedural story. And no matter how much she tried to make the connections, she still didn't always know how or why the characters ended up where they did.

But she was getting better at something.

She was getting better at incorporating details whether they had everything or nothing to do with where she'd been lately or what she'd seen, blending what she knew and what she imagined. She was getting better at imagining, at going with the flow and letting Nikki and Rook do all the talking.

Among other things.

"If we kissed right now," Rook said, burying his gloved hands in the pockets of his thick coat, "do you think our tongues would freeze together?"

"No." Nikki didn't even slow down, walking with purpose through the woods on the snowy mountainside.

When she glanced at him over her shoulder, he still looked skeptical—a surprisingly good look for him. "How sure are you?"

"Sure enough."

"How much is 'enough'?"

She stopped just ahead of him and pivoted on her heel to lean in beside his ear and whisper something he wouldn't soon forget. Then she continued on the path alone, leaving him stunned in place.

He took a second to recover. Only a second. "Are you volunteering?"

"Just walk, Rook."

He fell in step behind her. "Wouldn't be worried because you don't think it's that cold out, or because you aren't wet for me right now?"

"Walk," she commanded.

"Ah, so you are wet." He cocked a brow at her when she finally looked over her shoulder again.

Wordlessly, Nikki pushed him against the nearest tree and grabbed his wrist. Without bothering to remove his slim leather glove, she shoved his hand inside her panties.

He moaned against her cheek: "I can't feel you through my glove."

Her voice caught at the sensation of Rook's leather-clad fingertips as she murmured back: "I didn't do it so you could feel me."

She was in charge. He knew that. He just thought that he would enjoy it more often.

It had been fun to watch her debate client rights with Lady Irena yesterday, and to watch from the Observation Room today while she dominated William Caraway, the Smart Ass Masochist. It was less fun to watch her order Ryan and Esposito to the dungeon and assume that Castle would still gladly accompany her to the university. And even less fun to realize that she was right.

Damn it, Beckett.

Not that he was making an appointment anytime soon, but now that it was known around Lady Irena's that they were investigating a murder, he would have liked the opportunity to go back. Certainly beat the university where that self-righteous professor had insinuated that Castle had a little mind for laughing about Jessica's choice in research. If he was going to be humiliated either way, he'd take the ladies in leather.

But, as he was reminded yet again, riding along with Beckett meant he didn't get to call the shots. It was her team, her turf.

While Ryan and Esposito headed out, shameless grins on their faces, Castle decided to make the most of the situation and have fun the old-fashioned way, trying to coax her into a round of storytelling with him.

"That Kelly seemed so unassuming. I wonder if she has inner crazy-eyes," he said. "One day, she sees Jessica's research. . . ." Then he trailed off deliberately, waiting for the magical moment that Beckett would pick up from where he left off.

Instead, she grabbed her keys from the desk and shrugged ambivalently, as though he should be grateful that she heard him at all. "Anything's possible."

Not the response he'd wanted, but he could work with it. "Can I drive?" he asked, brightening.

"Except that."

He scowled behind her back as she headed out. He knew well enough that she never let him drive, but it was just hard to fathom how she could be so relentlessly mean, denying him so many pleasures at once. Had she no mercy?

Looking over her shoulder, she called for him, her voice barely low enough to assure him that she wasn't overheard: "Castle, you coming or do you need to be leashed?"

No mercy whatsoever.

At least she was wearing leather.

They hit a snag after they found the lipstick print in Mistress Red on the wine glass. Namely, that Lady Irena was suddenly unreachable.

There was little else that put Beckett in so fowl a mood besides hitting a snag both so late in the workday and so close to solving a case. If the domme had been reachable—and if the ensuing interrogation had gone more in the detective's favor than their first encounter had—Beckett might have been soaking in a tub within the hour.

Alas, she was at her desk, staring in the face of dead-ends on the domme's whereabouts because, like any clever and infuriating suspect, Irena had apparently turned off her phone and gone without using her credit cards for at least the past six hours. She wasn't at home or at work.

The receptionist at the House of Pain had been particularly unhelpful, reciting that it was none of her business as to where the Lady of the House was on her own time. Even Beckett's powerful personality and the benefit of the law could do nothing to get information out of her if Lady Irena had already guaranteed that the information was not available. She had, and it wasn't.

Beckett was about ready to go medieval, as Castle had put it last time.

It was too bad that Castle didn't take the hint now.

He was all for holding out for a shred of possibility, but all he could see was that Beckett was exhausted and frustrated and this investigation was up in the air and going nowhere like a submissive in suspension.

And he had secretly hoped that he would be able to convince Beckett to go to dinner with him.

His mother and daughter both had plans with friends and it was less a matter of not wanting to be alone as it was an interest in rekindling whatever the hell they had at Remy's and combining it with the inferno that was the cumulative sexual tension of these past two days. He always did like science experiments, especially those with the potential for sparks and explosions.

But the only sparks he was igniting tonight were on Beckett's short fuse, and he didn't know any better than to get out before she blew.

He didn't say so, but he just wanted so much to see her smile. He set a mug of coffee on her desk; she didn't even twitch.

"How's it going?" he asked tentatively.

"She's got my balls in a vise so about as you'd expect."

He swallowed and nodded and screened out every anatomical comment that came to mind. "Maybe you should've told her not to leave town," he said, trying to be helpful, "though I guess that wouldn't have worked as well this time, her being a lawyer."

"Castle, I'm not in the mood." She still didn't look at him, and even though he knew what had her upset, the lack of affirming attention was eating at him.

"I guess she would have known better." His face opened with suggestive mischief, the kind he thought she might genuinely appreciate. "Maybe you should've tied her to a bed."

"Castle," she snapped, finally looking up at him. "Go home."

He did, but he felt like he'd been put in the corner alone.

He would have preferred a spanking.

She wasn't as hard on anyone as she was on herself. She hung around a bit later at the precinct, beating herself up about not staying one step ahead of the suspect, but eventually she needed to yield to the fact that she couldn't camp out in the bullpen all night, waiting for Lady Irena to turn herself in.

Beckett went home.

Being a Smart Ass Masochist wasn't really working for Richard Castle. Sitting alone in his loft, his own little corner of SoHo, he came to terms with this.

Two factions were warring inside him.

First there was the part of him that refused to let Kate Beckett go, the part that couldn't do so if he tried. He wanted to be with her, and not just be with her—entwined with her limbs in all their lithe glory—but to be with her, to stand by her, to keep her company even in her missing-suspect misery.

Then there was the part of him that refused to disrespect her wishes. Wanting to be with her didn't seem to be a good enough excuse to inflict even more misery on her, to make her feel either ignored or unheard altogether. He didn't want to prove that he was just as selfish and inconsiderate as she ever believed he was.

Do whatever you want to do. You always do, anyway.

It was the first time in a long time that he thought of that fight at his book launch, back in the fall.

His complete and total failure to figure out what he really wanted, let alone to tell her; the way he only infuriated her somehow instead. The furrow in her brow as she provoked him in kind. Neither one of them actually saying much of anything. The torrid dance that accomplished nothing but driving them away from each other.

They had worked through that on some surface level—never to any great depth or detail—but it seemed like an awful lot of pointlessness in hindsight.

And he had a point to make.

The knock on her door was crisp; the rhythm vaguely incomplete, as though interrupted. She knew why when she opened the door to reveal Castle shifting a brown paper bag in his arms. It was haphazardly wrapped in a white plastic bag with a big yellow smiley face printed on the front.

He offered no greeting; only explanation. "Handles broke."

She noticed them and nodded dumbly, still making no move to beckon him inside. "Chinese food," she said, as though he needed her to tell him what hot, steamy thing smelled like that and came in a bag with a smile.

"It's the future," he said, voice equally informative, face still deadpan. She'd said for future reference. She never said when.

"Yeah," she agreed, but before she could make up her mind about how this was going to go, he was already walking past her and setting the bag down in the kitchen, stoically relieving both the weight and the burn of his hands.

His relief was subtle enough that she wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't been watching so closely; still poised at the open door as though she might actually kick out a hungry, wounded gift-bearer.

She wasn't unaffected at the sight, but she showed no sympathy, either. Likewise, she didn't order him to go, but she wasn't exactly playing hostess.

It wouldn't have mattered; he made himself comfortable, shrugging off his coat.

Without saying so, she tried to rub in the fact that coming over uninvited and without calling first was dumb on his part, even if he wasn't entirely unwelcome: "What if I'd still been at the Twelfth?" she asked.

"But you weren't," he replied, effortlessly retrieving her silverware as though he did this every night.

She spoke over the untimely grumble from her gut, woefully reminding her that she'd neglected herself tonight; that he'd been right not only about where to find her but also about the state of her stomach. "But what if I was?"

"Then the food would've gotten cold by the time I found you."

No conceivable response could have thrown her off the way that did.

The idea of him going through the trouble of pursuing her, trying both her apartment and the precinct, just to bring her Chinese food?

It wasn't like she would have expected him to wait endlessly at her apartment door to surprise her. She just would have expected him to give up or go away or—not to have tried at all.

In fact, she'd told him not two hours earlier to go home. What the hell was he doing here?

Even as he pulled out a few takeout containers that smelled like salvation, she allowed the venom to surge back up inside her and asked pointedly: "And what if I'd had company?" She did her best to make it sound like that actually could have been a possibility.

But he didn't miss a beat. "Then you would've had to fight for the second fortune cookie."

At that, she rolled her eyes and shut the front door, seizing the opportunity to hide a trace of an unbidden smile, and joined him in the kitchen.