Inherited Traits III


Stepping out of the cab was like moving from one world to another, disorienting and surreal. He reached back to hand her out and she put one foot to the curb, her leg severely gorgeous, breath-taking, thought-ending. When she emerged to stand with him, he had lost all sense of time and space.

She smiled, her face turned up to the steel and neon facade of Q3, and something amused passed over her lips. "Maddie said it was in homage to P3."

He blinked. "P - What?"

Kate brushed her hand across his bicep, the material of his jacket crunching (loudly, it seemed, too loudly, why was his jacket starched?). She smoothed his lapel. "No, it's nothing. The club in a tv show we liked when we were in high school. Witches." She wrinkled her nose and passed him.

Castle hurried to hold the door for her, subtly trying to gauge her mood, how he was doing here.

She was inscrutable. He found himself challenged by her, wanting to take it up a notch, wanting to prove himself. But his words wouldn't come; he couldn't think of a single clever thing to talk about.

He hurried into the restaurant after her (he kept getting left behind). He laid his hand on her lower back as he stepped around to the hostess station.

She shivered, at least there was that; at least he had the ability to make her shiver.

He smiled at the hostess, pleased. "Two for Castle, reservations were last minute."

"Oh, yes. Ms. Queller said you were coming. Right this way." The hostess turned from the chrome and wood station, menus cradled against her body, her pony tail flipping. Castle glanced back to Kate, to share the incongruity of the swinging blonde pony tail, but she was reaching out to take his hand.

He was surprised, but he took it, their fingers lacing immediately. Like that was a thing for them now.

It gave him a little thrill, a crackle of energy.

They followed after the woman as she threaded through packed tables and lively groups. The bar was at the far wall, bottles in beautiful bright colors, the pendant lights throwing out neon blues and yellows. The hostess stopped at a table near the opposite wall, far enough from the bar that there was a strange oasis of quiet in the midst of the revelry.

Castle pulled out Beckett's chair. She gave him a strange look but sat down, an elegant move, the tilt of her neck under the lights making his guts clench. He couldn't help leaning down and brushing a kiss to the slope of her exposed shoulder, and then he found his own seat. When he lifted his head, he found her cheeks flushed.

But she didn't look daunted. She had the grace to hold his gaze.

The hostess cleared her throat, placed menus strategically. "Your waiter is Ramon. Can I start you on something from the bar?"

Kate demurred, touching her fingertips to the rim of her glass. "Not right now. But I'll look at the wine list."

Castle nodded agreement (though she hardly needed his approval) then glanced to the hostess. "Scotch on the rocks."

The woman left, Kate pulled the wine list towards her, tilting her head to study it just as she would a new piece of evidence. Castle was suddenly aware of being nervous. He wondered if he should have offered a wine suggestion, if he should have waited to drink with dinner like she would be. They always did this, went their own ways. In sync but definitely independent people.

"What will you have?" he asked, unable to hold it back.

She lifted her head. "House white, I think, because I'm ordering fish. I've been here a few times, and the mahi-mahi in zesty basil butter - it's so very good." She flushed again, and he wondered if she was just as nervous, if his lack of cogent conversation was making her voluble. She wrinkled her nose, flicked her fingers at him. "I'm sure you could come up with better words for it."

"At this moment. Probably not."

She cast him a side-eyed look, and he let out a breath, determined to come clean.

"You have me at something of a disadvantage. My words have left me." After the cab ride, after the way she had turned into his body and her knees had pressed into his thigh. She was watching him now, studying him, and he gave her a crooked smile in return. "Charming has left me. I'm still back in that cab, feeling your lips on mine."

Those lips curled. "That's charming enough for me."

He let out a little breath of pleased surprise. "Well, good. Though it might be the best I offer for the whole rest of the night."

Even as he said it, he wished he wasn't, but she just shook her head, and leaned in, and caught his hand in hers, squeezing his fingers. "Just us, Castle. You and me. Every week in the precinct, out in the field, digging through garbage cans and rifling through a victim's pockets. Doing that conjoined twin thing, bouncing case theory around. It's just us."

"Yeah, you and me." He really liked just us. He grinned. "At least Madison isn't hanging around."

She laughed, pressed a finger to her lips as if unable to keep a secret. "Well. She poked her head out and waved like an idiot when we sat down."

He grunted, glanced over his shoulder. Madison had long disappeared, perhaps back into the kitchen, though he knew she worked the bar and the hostess station in equal measure. When he turned back around, Kate was laughing at him a little.

But the atmosphere was both intimate and foreign, and she was wearing this black sheath dress that made her legs impossible and her collarbones like marble, and he was finding himself running perpetually at a loss.

"Thought making out in the cab would have helped, Castle."

The way she so casually mentioned making out hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. He had to rub his hand over his mouth to close it, and he shook his head like dog, struggling to come back from that image. "Helped. Yeah. Definitely. For the time it took to get here." If he sounded indignant, it was only because he was desperately trying to keep up his side of the conversation.

She only smiled. He heard her shoe drop under the table and he tilted his head to look, but before he could find her shoe to give it back, her toes were inching up his shin.

It wasn't erotic. It was - surprising.

And then she curled her toes around to his calf and hooked there, catching him. Smiling. Coy.

How in the world did she have so much confidence?

And then her foot slid into his sock and caressed his ankle and it was very much erotic, entirely erotic, oh God, she wanted to kill him, didn't she?

xxx

He wasn't cute.

He wasn't sweet.

She used to think both of those applied to him, because he had chosen his daughter, he had never let Alexis believe anything else. But at this moment, oh no, Rick Castle was not at all sweet or cute. He was predatory, and intense, and she had his full and blazing attention.

She had only done it to herself. It was her own fault, teasing him in the cab and under the table.

Okay, be honest. Touching him in the car, her mouth against his, her knees pressed to his hard thigh, her lips brushing his neck - she hadn't been teasing. She'd been unable to help herself, memories of those kisses stolen inside a hotel lobby, and she'd wanted them again. To settle her nerves maybe. To have all their firsts out of the way so she could relax.

She was picking at her fish, waiting for the next thing he did. Madison had come around to their table just once, hugged Kate around the neck, disappeared. She'd sent a complimentary bottle of white to the table, definitely more than just the house wine, and now Castle had finished off two tumblers plus two glasses, and she'd had the rest, and she was beginning to think they were slightly tipsy.

Only slightly.

It was just the way he looked at her, cataloging her every small gesture, staring when she laughed, studying when she put a bite in her mouth. She had long ago stopped poking the bear, but he continued to reach for her, reacting to the least little thing.

He liked to touch. How could she have forgotten? It was a large oversight. Her foot under the table had declared open season, and he was using it to his distinct advantage.

His fingers stroked hers on top of the table. Over and over while he talked, his eyes warm and pleased. The deadly combination of his voice, the tenor of sex in it, combined with that touch, again and again, rhythmic, knowing-

The knuckles of her first two fingers were numb and over-raw from the sensation. It was setting up a clutch deep in her stomach that had her unable to swallow another bite.

She dropped her fork, glanced to the open floor of the restaurant, seeking distraction even as his fingers played with hers. He was finishing his own fish - he'd taken her lead ordering - and yet he continued to talk, making her laugh when she least wanted to, telling stories about sneaking around behind Gates's back when Kate had been recovering from a gunshot wound.

"Esposito has mad skills," Castle praised. "He dodged ole Rusty Gates and-"

"Rusty," she snorted, her head jerking back to him. He was glowing with recollection. "Castle."

"Iron Gates is better, yeah, but at the time, she was saying the same old same old. We were all frustrated." Some of the glow dimmed, but he didn't let his smile drop. He simply pressed on. "After Espo sneaked the folder to the dead drop, I would pick it up and meet Ryan at a 'body' and we'd hash out our next move."

And yet all they had found had been dead ends and mysteriously-set fires. She had somehow forgotten, in her frustration, that Rick Castle had spent his summer doing the only thing he knew to do for her. She wouldn't call, she couldn't, and he couldn't reach her any other way.

It made her sad. And with the wild party going on at the bar and the bitter couple just to their right, the world was discordant.

His fingers slid away from hers. He seemed to sense that her euphoria had plunged. "Dessert?" he murmured.

Oh God. "I want to get out of here," she said quietly.

Castle's face shuttered; he dropped his gaze to the table. "Yes, of course. Long day. Work tomorrow. I-"

"No, not an excuse to cut this short," she murmured, realizing her mistake. His misconception of her natural reservation. She leaned forward to hook her fingers in his, purposefully caressed his thumb with her own in reminder. "I just don't want to do this here. Any more, Rick, and I'm not sure either of us will be able to walk out with our dignity intact."

His eyes creased; he lifted his head and grinned at her. "You might be right. And I might need to sit here a moment. Have another glass of wine?"

She laughed but shook her head, pressed her hand to the top of her glass when he lifted the bottle. "Oh no. Very bad idea."

"Or very good idea."

"No need, Rick." She let the rest go unsaid, what he could count on tonight, and she sat back, releasing his fingers. He seemed flustered, turned on, confused; he must have no idea about her sometimes.

She kind of liked it when he wasn't so confident, liked especially him trying to impress her with all of his best stories, best behavior, best lines - and then how it degenerated into their usual. She liked hearing him brag about having her back despite her being incommunicado all summer; she liked that he could laugh about those empty months.

But she had made him wonder.

And it was time to put a stop to that. It was time he had a partner whom he could depend on. Who never made him doubt what they were.

xxx