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We will eventually take this story to an M rating... We hope you'll be okay with that. Either way, we'll give you a fair warning and a chapter break, so you can duck and cover ;)
Enjoy the next chapter!
Lina and Lu


Two.

He lets her catch her breath while he cleans himself up in the bathroom, finally shedding the shirt that never quite made it off his shoulders. He throws a haphazardly glance in the mirror and is struck by how broken he looks, how shaken. He brushes the pads of his fingers under his eyes and rests his hip against the cold marble counter, takes a deep breath, but finds that it does him no good. Four years he's been waiting for her, and now that she's finally in his arms he can't grasp it, can't understand it.

The need to know what's going on, the writer's craving for explanations and reasons that he's pushed down for the past half hour, is bubbling up inside of him, struggling for a way out.

They need to talk.

He walks back into his study just as she's flinging off her bra without pretense, her wet hair wrung out and thrown over one shoulder, their discarded clothes ordered neatly in a pile on his work desk. Her naked body looks sinful in his dark study, all soft skin and harsh bones outlined by the silver light from outside; the storm died down sometime in the last minutes, when their pounding hearts and rushing blood had been all they were able to hear.

"Kate," he says, and tries to put as much stern determination as he can into this one word. Her dark eyes find his and he's rooted to the spot, frozen stock-still as she advances on him, her endless bare legs taking long, swaying strides that make his insides jump and spin and curl.

"Rick" she husks, all playful and reprimanding and 'I don't want to talk', and damn, he can't resist her when she slides her slim, nimble fingers down his bicep. He swallows thickly, fights through the fog in his mind and prepares to talk, but oh, her tongue is in his mouth before he can formulate any kind of sentence.

He sighs into her, can't help it, not when her toes brush against his foot and dance up his calf as her lips play with his, their warm bodies molding together perfectly. His arms wrap around her back and pull her up against him, his hips canting towards hers even as he wills himself to push her away. She bites on his lower lip, tugs as he moans helplessly into her mouth and his own fingers betray him, tracing firm circles against her back, her shoulders, the sharp edge of her hip.

"Kate," he tries again, panting against her hot, parted mouth as she breaks for air, but she shakes her head, her eyes surprisingly bright and happy and flirting, and not nearly as haunted as his; probably for the first time in all their years together, their situation is reversed.

"I know what I'm doing, Rick" is all she says, her nose bumping his as her nails scratch low on his stomach, his muscles clenching and hips bucking so that he has to close his eyes. And then she's pressed against him, the slim length of her body rubbing in all the right ways against the entire length of him, her wet mouth nibbling on his earlobe as she palms his butt, and he's gone, so far past gone, and it suddenly doesn't matter anymore what changed, what her reasons are, because talking is totally overrated anyway.

"Take me to bed, Castle," she husks in his ear and okay, maybe talking isn't really that overrated, maybe she should say more, tell him exactly what she wants from him, that sexy voice of hers rushing through his veins like a drug, his skin shivering at the way she calls his name.

He scoops down, hooks his hands under her thighs and pulls her up, her body only a light weight in his arms, her legs clutching him tightly, her breasts pressed flat against his chest and oh, that teasing mouth of hers is still at his ear, cheering him on, whispering the dirtiest little things in his ear that almost make him buck his knees and drop her, almost make him lose his balance in the doorway to his bedroom.

A four letter word slips through his lips and she squeezes her legs together, undulates her hips against him and bites his chin, whispering "Yes, yes, that."