Kate storms into his loft with determination and even in his anger, his aching, he finds it beautiful, always has. Though, his awe is instantly rivaled by incredulity at how simple she thinks it can be, how ready she is to suddenly work with him rather than apart.
"It's not that easy."
Her lips part, speechless for only a moment, the fire of determination she had walked in with slowly beginning to dim under her uncertainty. And good, she's left him uncertain, confused and wounded, for the last few weeks, she can handle the unnerving doubt for a handful of seconds.
"I thought that you… would-"
"Just take you back? In spite of what you've put me through?"
His memory of the night she walked out on him is still clear, her words still imprinted in his mind and ringing through his head with devastating clarity.
I hope you'll have room in your heart to take me back.
And oh, he wants to. Such a strong part of him wants to forget any of this ever happened, wants to embrace her, let her reclaim her place in the hollow spot within his heart that she's left vacant for too long, and tell her they'll do it together – LockSat, fixing their marriage, anything, everything. As long as it's together.
But it can't be that easy.
"Look, Castle, I am sorry. I hate that I hurt you, that was never what I wanted," she confesses, her eyes stripped clean of her defenses, completely unguarded for the first time since she left him.
"But you did hurt me, Kate, and what's worse, you lost faith in me."
"No," she argues, quick and with a single flame of that fire reignited. "I never - I need you, Rick, I didn't realize even how much I needed you until this happened. Please just-" His jaw hardens against the gentle quiver accompanying her voice, the broken quality that bleeds through her words, the unshed tears glimmering in her dark eyes. She has never pleaded with him before, not like this, and it's cracking through his heart in an entirely new, far more painful way. "Don't make me do this without you."
Rick forces his expression to remain neutral, unwavering even as she desperately searches his face with hopeful eyes, his resolve crumbling but his mind working to find the right answer, the best course of action to take, not simply the one he wants. She chose to do this without him, chose to leave him in the dark with no explanation, chose to hurt him, and now she's here, offering him what she should have given in the first place. And he just doesn't know if he can accept it, if it's enough.
Yet can't fathom turning her away.
His conversation with Lucy circles his brain, his hesitation to forgive his wife still lingering in the air, but the conclusion remains the same. He thinks it'll always remain the same.
It's because I'm in love.
He loves her. It doesn't solve everything, doesn't repair the near two months of damage she's done to his heart, the new wounds she had inflicted, but his love for her will always trump all else. He'd still walk through a natural disaster for her, would still follow her anywhere, would still take a bullet with her name on it. That would never change. He doesn't want it to change.
"Okay," he decides, watching her brow hitch with surprise, with gratitude, even though she knows that it isn't actually okay, none of it. Not yet.
Kate has a lot of work to do, a lot of repair and rebuilding necessary for their marriage, for them both, but tonight, he only wants to recapture the celebratory feeling they had shared last week on their anniversary, wants to take the apologies from her mouth with his teeth and breathe his forgiveness into her skin.
He only wants her.
Castle strides forward, sealing a kiss to her lips like a promise, an unspoken deal between them. No more lies, no more secrets, no more separation. Beckett surges into him again the second they part, her hands at his neck, his shoulders, his back, a tentative smile blooming on her lips as she captures his upper lip, spreads relief through the stroke of her tongue.
He snakes his arm around her shoulders, presses her body in close until he can feel every muscle, curve, and contour beneath her blouse rising to meet him. Rick releases a sigh into her mouth, lets himself mold around her, savoring the alleviation of the weight from his shoulders, relishing the feeling of coming home that only she can provide.
"But," he murmurs, pulling back from her, smoothing his hands along her lower back and suppressing a smirk as her hips automatically cant forward. "You do realize I'm going to have to punish you a little first."
Her bottom lip falls victim to her teeth, her eyebrows quirking while arousal floods her eyes, bathing them in darkness.
"Naked punishing?"
"Very naked punishing."
A laugh bubbles at her lips, but he can feel her excitement simmering when she leans in to kiss him again, her teeth scraping his bottom lip, her body thrumming with the barely subdued eagerness. From the day she had whispered in his ear about having "no idea", he had believed her, had formed all kinds of expectations and fantasies about Kate Beckett, and he had been surprised, pleasantly, when he'd finally earned the privilege of having her in his bedroom. Especially when he had learned that it was one place she would allow him to finally take control.
Her nails scratch along his shirt, digging into his trapezius muscle in a way he has missed far too much, and Castle retrieves her other hand from the grip it has on his belt, tugs her towards their bedroom.
Her heart is thrumming, pounding so hard that her entire body threatens to shake as he guides her through the study, into the welcome space of their bedroom. She was here only a few days ago, but now that she's dropped the act, given up on any hopes of staying away from him, now that he knows the truth and is allowing her to come back, to come home, it feels different. Even better.
The relief rages through her, has her reaching for him again, threatening to send them both stumbling into the bed when she uses the tangle of their hands to snap him back to her like a rubber band, failing to stop the crash of her body into him. Castle groans as she wraps her arms around his neck and slips her tongue past the seam of his lips when he accepts her into the strength of his embrace.
Castle's hands steady her, squeezing the juts of her hipbones before traveling beneath the flowing hem of her blouse, his fingertips searing her skin, creating sparks of electricity to jolt through her veins.
She raises her arms when he guides the material up her abdomen, over the slopes of her breasts, her head, until its sliding from her arms and fluttering to the floor. Rick feathers a kiss to her bare shoulder, teases the strap of her bra between his teeth and steals her breath.
"Handcuffs, or neckties?"
She knots her fingers in his shirt as he dusts his lips along the juncture leading to her neck, needing to get ahold of herself, but the mere anticipation is almost too much for her.
"Kate?" He pauses at her hesitation, the concern caressing her name burning against her cheek. "If you really don't want me to-"
"No," she husks, nipping at his chin, humming in approval when his hands bruise at her waist. "I want you to punish me."
His knuckles trip down her stomach, jerking her abdominals to attention, and she nuzzles at the unshaven strip of his jaw when his thumb circles the buttons of her slacks.
"And Castle?" she whispers. "Cuffs."
Undressing her isn't an easy task when she's so damn distracting, when he's so intent on reclaiming every inch of her skin, marking her collarbone, memorizing the sensation of her soft but sinewy beneath his palms. She's left in nothing but black lace, toying with the buttons of his dress shirt while his hands map the exposed pieces of her flesh, ensuring to stroke and knead every spot he knows will make her gasp, jerk, and whine against him.
"Castle." Her voice is shockingly needy, a breathless plea that has arousal flushing through his system. "I can't - no more teasing."
"You remember your safeword?"
"Yeah, but I won't need it," she murmurs, slipping her hands beneath the unbuttoned edges of his dress shirt, spanning her palms out over his chest, fitting her fingers into the spaces of his ribs.
She smears a kiss to his throat, the sensitive spot beneath his chin that has a shiver spiraling down his spine, and steps back from him, takes a seat on the bed and eases back until she's perched in the middle, waiting.
Castle shrugs the unbuttoned shirt from his shoulders, feels the satisfaction flare in his chest at the sight of their clothes mingling together on the floor, just like it always has.
The handcuffs lined in white fuzz that they keep in the nightstand had been a joke at first, a gift for Kate from Lanie that they had never intended on using, but he tugs them from the top drawer now, watches the amusement ripple through the pools of lust consuming her eyes. He drops them to his pillow while he climbs onto the bed, skims his palm along the slash of Kate's jaw, tipping her head upwards to sip from her mouth while his other hand trails upwards from the bottom of her spine, hooking in the back of her bra and undoing the clasp.
He knocks her hand away when she reaches for the straps, drawing them down with his own hands, grazing his fingertips along her arms until the lingerie is sailing across the room to join the the clothing pile on the floor.
"I missed your hands," she sighs out, arching her spine the moment his palms cup her breasts, burying her fingers in his hair, knotting in the strands as his thumbs circle hard, his index finger joining to tweak her nipples.
She huffs in protest when he removes his hands, reaching for the handcuffs instead.
"I missed every part of you," he replies, noticing the flicker of apology already in her eyes, the accompanying sorrow, and Rick reaches for her wrist before it can travel to her lips.
He caresses the steady beat of her pulse with his thumb, brushes over the bone of her metacarpal, traces over the river of veins running beneath the delicate skin. Kate descends to lie on her back before he can ask her to, watches with smoldering eyes as he embraces one of her wrists with the metal cuff, locks the other to the post of his bed.
"My police set aren't with me," she informs him, but the lack of cuffs for her other hand isn't a problem.
Rick slips from the edge of the bed, trots into the closet to retrieve one of the silk ties they've used in the past. The cuffs are fun, always fun, but he was partial to the softer material of the ties, the certainty that no harm would come to her in the heat of the moment. He still had a scar from that first time, when he'd become a bit too… excited with Kate on top of him and his hands cuffed to the posts of her bed in her old apartment.
"Too loose?" he asks as he strings up her other hand to the opposite post, studying her test the restraint, unable to break the knot of the tie.
"Perfect. Now, come on," she mumbles, rolling her shoulders and restlessly flexing her toes, but she isn't the one in charge tonight.
"Don't rush me," he warns her, a smirk curling at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes narrow on her. "You're not in a place to be making any demands."
Rick lowers his hands to his belt buckle, grinning at the sharp but subtle inhale that passes through her lips as he slides the leather from the loops of his jeans, unbuttons his pants and draws the zipper down, noticing her fingers curling at the task she usually takes pleasure in executing.
He doesn't join her on the bed until he's down to his boxers, climbing up from the foot of the mattress, crawling forward until he's settled between her bent knees. The rise and fall of Kate's chest quickens and he balances one hand near her ribs to lean forward, steal a kiss from her mouth that has her chasing after him the second he pulls away, craning her neck and causing the links of the cuffs to rattle.
Her knees snap at his hips, attempting to clamp around them, and Rick raises an eyebrow at her.
"Want me to tie these up too?" he challenges, coiling his fingers around one of her ankles, teasing the protruding bone with his thumbnail, and Kate growls at him, drops her head back to the pillow.
Castle slides his hand up the muscle of her calf, curling behind her knee and squeezing. Her legs fall apart around him, one of her heels digging into his flank, but that's fine. He likes the pressure she applies when he places his open mouth to her stomach.
Rick listens to her bite back her moans, those lovely mewling noises clawing at her lips, begging to be set free as he skims the contracting muscles of her abdomen with his lips, teases at the waistband of her underwear with his tongue, and sucks at the skin stretched across the hollow spot of her hipbone until it blossoms red beneath his lips.
Her thighs tremble, held apart by his shoulders as his head ventures between the vee of her legs, releasing a long exhale that has her squirming, demanding he remove the only barrier left between her and his mouth.
"Oh fuck, Rick, please," she gets out, on the razor's edge of a sob as her entire body seizes at the touch of his mouth to her core, the heat of his tongue through the lace of her underwear.
Her hips buck, writhing with impatience, and Castle nips at her inner thigh, smirks at the twitch of skin beneath his lips.
"Punishment, remember?"
He leans back ever so slightly, surprised to hear his own breath rattling in his chest, desperate for her, to taste her, to feel her fall apart at the mercy of his mouth, and tears her underwear down her legs, hearing a slight rip of fabric before the lace is finally gone.
Castle wraps his arms around the back of her knees and spares a glance upwards to see her chest heaving now, a thin layer of sweat glistening along her skin, her hands in fists at the headboard. Gorgeous and already balancing on the edge.
Kate cries out, her body instinctively arcing, rising towards him, the moment his tongue slicks through the exposed heat of her. She's already so close, already surrendering to the release he coaxes from her body, the tremors racing through her limbs, the spasms already spreading from where his tongue works to catch every last drop of her, where his mouth suckles at her clit.
"I missed the way you taste," he hums, hearing the sob breach her lips this time, choked and ragged, ripping through her. "I missed making you come with only my mouth, watching you fall apart."
One final exhale to her center, one last touch of his tongue, and she shatters, her spine arching from the bed, his name leaving her lips on a crumbling breath, and this was only the beginning of what he had planned for her.
Castle gives her no time to recover, to float back down from her high before he's freeing her hand from the silk restraint, draping it across her eyes instead.
"Rick," she gasps in surprise, unable to do much else. "What-"
"You left me in the dark for nearly two months, Kate," he murmurs at her ear, his voice a delicious husk heating the cool shell. "Now it's your turn."
Her body is still in a haze of pleasure, vestiges of white-hot ecstasy still streaming through her veins, her heart still hammering too hard to manage a deep breath, when all the air stolen from her lungs the second he slides inside her. But oh, it doesn't matter, shit – she doesn't need to breathe, doesn't need the oxygen, she just needs this.
He gasps at the clutch of her muscles around him, closing like a fist, unwilling to let him go.
"God, Kate." His hips pitch forward, rocking into the cradle of hers, and she's so thankful for the freedom of her hand, the ability to thread her arm around his neck and fist her hand in his hair, an anchor in the darkness. "I missed this."
Her heart is already battered from the harsh, unending slam it continues to make against her ribs, still held together by nothing more than a few band-aids that had been layered over the self-inflicted cracks on the night of their anniversary, but they were useless now, ripping apart under the longing twining through his words.
How could she have ever jeopardized this? How could she ever choose to walk away?
"Let me see you," she groans, releasing her grip on his hair to claw at the blindfold, but Rick pins her hand above her head, laces their fingers. "Rick, please-"
His hips twist with his next thrust, ribbons of scalding pleasure rippling through her system, sparking through the tips of her fingers, her toes, her breasts, lacing through her spine like a livewire, and she's not going to last, can't possibly survive-
The blindfold lifts and her eyes fly open, immediately lock with the blown pupils of his, the indigo rings of blue lining the edges staring down at her, and she arches up to claim his mouth, ignoring the dig of the handcuff into her skin, barely able to feel it beneath the perfect pressure of his lips over hers, the overflow of sensation spreading from the drive of his hips.
"Kate, look at me."
She hadn't realized her eyes had disobeyed her, fallen closed against the glorious onslaught of the wild rhythm consuming them both, and it takes all of her energy to peel them back, to meet his gaze once more.
"Please don't stop," she whimpers, feeling him purposely slow, and dropping her head back to the pillows on a groan, pushing her breasts into his chest, shuddering when he takes the opportunity to graze his lips over the faded scar between them.
"No more bullshit," he husks out against her throat, seeking her mouth as his hips thrust shallow and sharp, and she tightens the hand beneath his. "I'm in love with you, Kate."
She mewls, undulates beneath him, desperate, and he stops completely, allows her to feel him so solid and needy inside her, pulsing with the desire for release just as badly as she is.
"You're my wife."
"Yes," she gasps, digging one of her heels into the firm muscle of his ass and earning a harsh nip to her bottom lip in retaliation.
"We're a team."
"Partners," she affirms, moaning at the returning press of his lips, the rewarding renewal of rhythm he's set between them. "Always."
Rick's hand curls around one of her knees, cracking her open just a little wider, just enough, just enough to break her apart and take him over the edge with her.
Castle sinks down on top of her, unraveled and boneless, breathing out a contented sigh when the haven of her body curls to embrace him.
"Good punishment," Kate rumbles beneath him, her voice still raw with sex as she nestles in closer, slipping her hand from beneath the trap of his palm to snake her arm around his waist, and - he should probably unlock her other hand.
Castle stretches to reach the key on the nightstand, inserting it into the lock of the handcuff and gently drawing her arm down from the bedpost.
"Shit, Kate," he sighs, easing off of her so he can properly examine her wrist, caressing the angry red skin encircling the bone. "I'm-"
"No, it's fine," she murmurs, shaking his concerned fingers from her wrist to reach for him instead, drawing him back down to lie beside her. "Doesn't hurt. Just a little too much friction."
Her eyebrows arch and he huffs at her, smears a kiss between her brow as he winds his arms around her naked body to cradle her in close. Kate hums, a satiated sound he's heard plenty of times after sex, and nudges her nose to his cheek, dusts her lips along the bone.
"I'm not leaving again," she swears, kissing the corner of his eye.
"Kate-"
"No, listen to me," she murmurs, her eyes liquid gold and pleading with him as she unfurls from the tangle of limbs and pushes up on one of her elbows. "Castle, I know it's going to take time for me to prove it, to regain your trust, and I'm more than willing to do that," she insists, so utterly serious, and he nods his agreement, grateful that she's aware of the path, the work, still ahead of them. "But right now, this is me promising you that no matter what happens, with LockSat, with anything that may come our way in the future, we're going to approach it together."
The remaining doubt in his chest disintegrates, swept away into the sea of bliss still singing through his bloodstream, and Rick curves a hand at her neck, draws her down until her forehead can press a kiss to his.
"No more time-outs."
"No," she agrees on a breathless little chuckle, sliding her leg to curl over his thigh. "This one was long enough to last a lifetime."
Beckett sighs, the guilt still lingering in her gaze, and nudges him onto his back, half of her body still draped across his and now rising to hover above him.
Castle quirks his brow. "I had no plans to punish you further."
"I know," she mumbles, dusting a kiss to his lips before trailing a leisurely, detailed path down his torso, branding every strip of his skin she touches. "Doesn't mean I'm done seeking forgiveness."