and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
- ee cummings
He grins, can't help it, the smile she gave him leeching into his bones. He watches her disappear into her bedroom, the fluid line of her legs, her waist an inverted parentheses. She looks back over her shoulder at him, cracks open on that smile again, the lines around her eyes like rivers.
He loves her laugh lines, the freckle under her eye and the mole at her cheek. Her face a landscape that he'll never stop wanting to explore.
He follows, catches up to her in the doorway, his hands bracketing her hips and tugging her back into him. "Help me get rid of the image."
"Go home," she says, even as she rocks her hips against his, clings to the hand he has pressed to her abdomen.
He growls into her ear, nudges the collar of her shirt out of the way with his nose and sinks his teeth into the sensitive flesh of her shoulder. She whimpers, body curling around his arm. "No. You are the only woman I want."
"I can't stop thinking about her." She whispers it, her voice a fractured and broken thing, and then she's breaking away, sinking down onto her mattress, her toes curling into the rug.
He sits cross-legged on the floor, wraps his hands around her ankles and cradles her feet in his lap, gentling her. "I was trying to sleep with you for four years, Kate. You know I wouldn't-"
"I know," she grits out, her jaw tight. "I know I'm being stupid. I just can't get the image out of my head."
He rises, then, his thighs either side of her knees, hands cupping her face. "You're not stupid."
He's going to have to ask, bear the humiliation, and then she's tugging, hands fisted in his shirt and he's half-falling, catching himself on the edge of the bed with one hand but it doesn't matter because her mouth is searing, branding him, tracing over his eye, the hard edge of his nose, his cheekbone.
He huffs out a laugh, gets his hands under her thighs and lifts, turning to sit with her a hot and liquid thing in his lap. She shifts, her knees squeezing at his hips and he groans, tugs the tie from her hair so her curls spill over both their shoulders. "I want to be the only image in your head."
She's breathing in these sinful little pants against the side of his neck and oh, God, he is going to lose it really soon. "Yes. Just you. Only you."
"Kiss me." He wants to laugh at the way she steels herself for it but she's too tight against him, he hasn't got enough air.
He pauses, his mouth a breath away from hers until she opens her eyes and then he's smiling, kissing her, his mouth viscous at hers. She sinks into him, her whole body a sigh and then he's letting her push him backwards, letting her edge up over him.
His whole world pinpoints to her trembling thighs against him and the way she tastes, how ferocious she is with him, and then she's crawling up his body, her knees suddenly either side of his ears and oh shit-
Kate.
She's ashamed that he finds her watching the entertainment news on her computer at three in the morning, ashamed at the remorse lining his face.
"Kate," the careful line of his jaw breaks, his shoulders curling in. "Come to bed. Don't do this to yourself. The only reason I said yes was to protect us."
She glances up at him, nods. "I know. I know you were just doing what I said. It's okay, Castle. Really. I understand."
"So why are you watching her?" he breathes, coming over to sit on the edge of her desk. She wraps her arms around his calves, rests her chin on his knees.
His hand cards through her hair, so very tender. "I don't know. I just needed to try and see her the way you did."
"I saw you. I looked at her and her eyes weren't green enough, her hair too dark, her perfume too sweet. I looked at her and saw all the ways she wasn't you and wanted so desperately for you to be there instead." He's too solemn, his eyes imploring, and just like that it's okay.
She stands, laces her fingers through his and tugs him up too. "Okay. It's okay. You're right. We're amazing."
He grins, kisses the end of her nose, her chin, tugs her tight against him, arms searing at her back. "We are. And we're not going to be able to work together forever anyway."
"What?" She blinks up at him, her fear a crescendo roaring in her ears.
He shrugs, kisses her eyelids one at a time, hums a sigh into her skin. "Someone's got to look after the kids, Kate."