'He cradled her unconscious body in his arms,' Rick thought, 'searching for signs of sexual violence.' Hickeys. 'For the traces on her porcelain? Fawnskin-soft? On the skin so long untouched (well, better part of a year, so far as he knew), so long desired, now ravaged from her own need, in the hunger of relief so deep — in the relief of a hunger so deep—'
So deep in him he was now mentally writing crap. But he was holding his dear one, holding his Kate, and she was relaxed in his arms, and yeah, there were some bruises. Thank God they had avoided rug burn. There were some bruises he knew he had nothing to do with, the marks along her left wrist left by Ryan's hand as he had lifted her to safety. A bunch of nasty ones that suggested she had not included all the details of her fight with Cole Maddox. The ones that didn't show, wouldn't show, except in the way she made the life she had reshaped the day before.
He had always been able to lose most of his worries in a woman's body. (Lord knows he had practiced.) At least for a couple of hours, pure play, pure fun and skill and joy. He'd wanted to be a generous lover from the time he understood those feelings were about 'sex' and that that was usually better with another person. Conspiring with another body to tease the most ridiculous and sublime and tooth-clenching feelings out of one another, even when he knew he'd never see that other body again. As he grew older he'd come to realize not everyone built their techniques? Habits? Encounters? on that foundation, which was disappointing. He had a certain respect for hasty, needy couplings but none for perfunctory, phoned-in, phony (how were things supposed to get better if you didn't give and receive accurate feedback?). Oh, and sex performed on someone else's script — if you moved a certain way because you thought that was how you were 'supposed' to move, unless it was one of your first times to the dance, he, thought, it was boring. He never could get into 'scenes,' because improv was usually so much better.
Was it possible to guess someone's bedroom style from their demeanor outside it? He had become better at it, which had narrowed his roaming appetite. And he had loved some women deeply enough not to resent their inexperience, or their inhibitions. Outright kink kinda scared him; in his late twenties and his early thirties he had been ashamed of being, secretly, closer to vanilla than he thought Richard Edgar Castle ought to be. But these days he was proudly out to himself and anyone who got close enough to ask: there were a lot of kinds of vanilla, particularly if you included rum-raisin and occasionally (you devil), butter-pecan…
Beckett sighed and stirred in her sleep and ripped him back to the moment.
Richard Edgar Castle was screaming BEST! MOMENT! EVARRRR!, with a lot of footnotes about the whole series of moments from the knock on his door last night.
Richard Alexander Rogers was also happy, but he admitted he was pretty much physically and emotionally toast. Nicely-done, buttered toast, but in need of some down time. In so many ways.
Rick Castle, who was probably who he was, was happy, sated, joyful, hopeful, exhausted, and worried sick.