They lay on their sides some time later and he plays with her fingers, moving them this way and that as if she were an anatomical model he studies with fascination. Absently drawing patterns with his thumb on the back of her hand, he speaks up hoarsely.

"You were right," he tells her suddenly, "I had no idea."

"Feeling's mutual. I don't think, four years ago, either of us predicted this. Fantasies are one thing, but..."

"Yeah," he responds with dry humor in his voice, she feels his smile curve into her and fade away sight unseen. Something cold runs through her at that. But he makes no further movements, and she shifts again, tries to get closer if she can. His arms tighten around her reflexively as his nose buries deeper into her hair, hot exhales warming a spot on her neck.

"We should get something to eat," she says inanely after a while, wholly unmotivated to move at all to accomplish that goal. He nods his agreement and sits up just enough to hook a dark grey cable-knit throw from the end of the bed and pull it over her.

"I was up here not long ago. I think we have enough for a meal. Didn't bank on this weather," Castle glances out the window, where the storm continues to rage, wind howling and rain battering the immovable structure of the house, "thought we'd be going out, but I don't trust the bridges around here, nor my vision on the windy roads at night." That's right, it is dark out now. She's got no clue what time it is. Her father's watch is back at her apartment, and if there's a clock at all around, she hasn't seen it. Of course, she didn't get much of a chance to critique his décor while they were busy mauling each other.

He shifts away, reasonably, to go fish through his supplies, but she reaches for him and her heart seizes at the inexplicably desolate expression in his eyes. The same one she saw a flash of in her closet. She doesn't understand.

"Castle…" she starts, unable to comprehend his sudden shift in demeanor. He was fine earlier. She thought he was. He was enthusiastic, attentive, playful; incredible, really. Was she… "Did I do something?"

Castle wraps her close, her cheek pressing to his cooling chest. "No, Kate. You're extraordinary."

There's something he's not telling her. Something bothering him. As he pulls away and yanks on his boxers and jeans, she curls up into herself, small and naked on the bed.

He stops, halfway down the stairs. She hears him take a deep breath, and step by step return to the bedroom. She tries to reach for him when he sits on the edge of the bed – needs to touch, to reassure, to be reassured – but Castle shifts away.

With a flat voice, he says the thing she least wants to hear.

"I need to tell you something."

Strung together, they're perhaps the least comforting words in the English language, next to 'we're very sorry to inform you...' That's when she just knows. A part of her has for months. Things have been so quiet...

"It's about my mother's case, isn't it?"

His silence says it all.

"What did you do, Castle?" Mind reeling, Kate tries to drown out the ringing static in her ears, stave off the tide of nausea that threatens to spill from her.

"What I had to," he states resignedly. "When Montgomery decided to sacrifice himself, he called me. He called me to hold you back, and I did it, because it was the way to keep you safe. Do you know why he called me, Kate?" Castle asks sharply, his eyes pained but flashing, "Because he knew how I felt. He knew, and he knew I'd do anything – including and up to making you hate me – to keep you safe. And I did."

The writer draws a deep breath, drawing on his last reserves of strength to continue, and Kate can't do anything but sit and listen, with rising panic at the realization that she has no way out of here, not without his help. She can't leave. She's trapped here. She can't do anything.

"After Montgomery's death, I was contacted by his old friend. Montgomery had a deal, through this man, with the people who ordered your mother's death. As long as you don't push the case, they leave you alone. That deal was passed to me, and I have kept it."

"Wha... how? Why? Why would you do that?" Her voice breaks into a sob. "We were so close! You've lost us a year on this case!"

"I've gained you a year of your life. They will kill you, Kate. They will kill you if you go at this blindly," Castle moves down the bed beside her, ignoring the way she curls into herself and turns away, pulls the throw tighter around her nude body. "I'm not going to let you do that. I'm not going to let them take you, for nothing."

Did he plan this? Think that sleeping with her would... she can't believe that. It's not... he wouldn't do all this just to get her to stop, would he?

"For nothing?" she explodes, choosing anger rather than pain, "my mother's murder is not nothing!"

"No, it's not. It's something big, and it's part of something a hell of a lot bigger. And you will never get justice, or truth, or get to expose this... thing, for what it is, if you are in a bodybag because you played into their trap."

Opening and closing her mouth repeatedly, Kate finds no words will come out immediately. He's right. She knows he is and she hates that. There's nowhere for her to go, nowhere to run to, no way to get back to the city immediately. She's trapped.

"Are you asking me to choose?" she finally asks. She can't do it. Not like this. Not when they had it all in front of them, so close...

"Yes," he says decisively, a hard edge to his voice. He sounds far too much like a cop, and the dark edge to it sends shivers through her, "I'm asking you to choose to stay alive."

"And that means giving up on finding my mother's killer? Fuck you, Rick," she hisses, acid dripping from every note, "Oh, I already did." She won't cry. Won't. Won't. "Was that your plan?"

"Christ, Beckett! Grow up!" Castle shouts, startling her. He's never talked to her like that.

"I didn't sleep with you to trap you, or to manipulate you, and I'm very sorry that you think that, that your mistrusting heart always jumps to the worst possible assumption. I love you. I loved you a year ago, I loved you when you died in my arms, I loved you when you left and didn't call for three fucking months. I loved you when I knew you lied to me. Fuck. I tried to leave, I tried to do what I had to, to... remove myself from you, so that I could uphold this deal easier, so that I could protect you without it hurting all the goddamn time." Vegas, right. He said he was trying to get over her... what exactly, she wonders, did she pull him back from with her call?

A deep, gloomy sigh punctuates his diatribe, but she needs to hear the rest and stays quiet, her anger and confusion stuck firmly onto the backburner for once.

"I'm not asking you to give up on the case," Castle finally says, trying and failing to keep the begging from his tone, "I'm only asking you to not run out into the line of fire and get yourself killed for it. I- if you still want me around, I want to be there when you put these dirtbags under the jail, rather than being the one to put you in the ground if you want to be another pawn in their game. You move now and they will take you out, and this case – and all the others connected to it – never gets solved."

She chances a look at him and regrets it instantly. It's laid out for her right there, written in every determined line of his face. Fear, anger, regret, stubbornness, love. Most of all, the latter. The thought of him burying her like she buried her mother and they buried Montgomery makes her sick, her empty stomach churning with angry acid.

"If you can promise me to do this right – to not run out in front of the firing squad or chase some merc down a back alley on an impulse – everything I've learned is yours. It's not solved, but... I've gotten closer, closer than where we were before it all went to hell."

Castle looks deeply into her eyes, sincerity pouring off him in a way she hasn't seen before. "And – it's important that you understand this, Kate: whether you're with me or we go back to just being partners or you banish me forever and I end up solving crimes in Cabot Cove, I'll never make this – us – a condition. Not for the evidence, not for help, not for my support," he pauses, allowing his promise to sink in, "but if you can't do that, if you want to get yourself killed, I can't be your enabler. I will not sit back and watch you die, I-" she cuts him off.

Decision made.

She seals her promise between their mouths – hers seeking and desperate for solid ground, and his unresponsive – and crawls up his body. He tastes of her still and she grasps at his face, willing him to believe her, believe she'll take the future he's offered. It's a clarity she didn't expect, but with it, her anger dissipates and all she can think of is reassuring him, making certain he understands her choice.

"Castle," she sighs, "I just want you." She's said those words to him so many times in her dreams, in fantasy, it's relief to finally say them to him aloud. She'll let him pull her back. Let the case go, altogether, if she has to. But he's not asking her to do that. He won't make her choose, if her life's not in danger. And she loves him more for that.

"Please," she begs at his lips, and he's not moved, she thinks it's time he changed that, but why isn't he responding? "Please, Castle, I want you. I don't want to... I want more to this life than that."

His clever fingers walk tentatively up her side, shoulders, back, settling at the nape of her neck. Slowly, gently, he lays back, swinging his legs onto the bed and bringing her atop him. Strong arms loop through her own, bringing her onto his chest, though not holding her down in any way. She's free to go and all she wants to do is stay.

She loses time altogether. His hands roam her body again, without intent of escalation, and he twitches under her own, allowing at last her equal search, unhurried and thorough like good explorations ought to go. Her mouth slips from his for air and her nose nestles into his neck and shoulder as he idly strokes his biceps, tracing patterns and feeling the ridges of him, an attempt to memorize.

Castle sighs, bone-deep and purged by truth, the same release she felt the night before. If pressed, she'd say she wished they'd both been truthful before, but she can't bring herself to regret doing things the way they did. They've always been a little off-center, a little out of normal order, and this was no different. She's got a million questions, but none besides this that need answers right now. He's promised her quid pro quo, after all, and he's nothing if not a man of his word. With this out in the open at last, they have a solid foundation. That's what matters. Going forward.

She strokes his shoulders, traces the shell of his often-abused ear in an altogether new (and significantly less painful) way, smiling sappily at the near purring noise he emits. She'll have to remember these things he likes, the way he's so obviously taken inventory of her likes and needs.

"Do you love me?" he asks out of the blue, small and barely audible, and her heart melts. He's shy. Richard Castle, shy, and his voice so insecure. Sweet, undemanding. His commanding presence of earlier is gone, replaced by something warm and unsteady and she thinks she understands. He just needs to hear it again.

"Yes," she answers decisively, wriggling down into his grasp, as close as they can come. "I love you."

Castle combs her hair with his fingers, careful to avoid the knots that have formed, rolling the two of them onto their sides and burying his nose in her neck, inhaling deeply before speaking into her skin.

"If you do not love me I shall not be loved," he whispers, presses a ghost of his lips across her flesh that sends a tiny shock through her, "If I do not love you I shall not love."

Words won't come to her, the feeling she can't shake that they've just sealed something more permanent than a mere relationship returning in force. She reaches blindly for him, contact landing on his cheek, stroking him with the backs of her fingers. He's quoting something, but she hasn't the energy to ask fully. "Mmm?"

"Beckett. The Samuel variety." She laughs then, at the quote source, at the insanity of what they've been through in the last 24 hours, at him, at her, and he follows soon enough too, until they're both struggling for air against each others' lips. They've only just come down from it when her stomach growls loudly and the fit begins all over again, as much a release of stress and tension as at the noise.

"We really should get something to eat," Castle states at last. Kate makes a soft whining sound.

"Don' wanna," she grumps childishly, flicking his ear. "But okay."

She throws his sweater on (to his self-satisfied grin), follows him down the stairs, and sets about going through her suitcase, looking for something to wear. Grabbing her makeup kit, a simple sweater and pair of jeans, she finds her leather-trimmed undergarment set. And no others.

"Really, Castle?" she grins to where he's rummaging around in the house's small kitchen. She can't see him, nor he her, but evidently he knows exactly what she's referring to.

He calls back, "Those things have Vice written all over them."

"Yeah, your vices." When did he sneak them in there, come to think of it?

"I make no apologies."

Rolling her eyes, she traipses back upstairs and locates the bathroom on the other side of the fireplace, stopping first to stoke the fire. Rounding the corner, Kate finds the room clad predictably in concrete, stone and glass. Glancing in the mirror, she finds her hair hopelessly matted and attempts to comb through it. Lovebites blossom poppy-red across both breasts, one dotting her neck just high enough to force her to wear a turtleneck or get creative with makeup for a day or two when they go back.

Jackass.

When she emerges a few minutes later, dressed and hair in some semblance of a braid, the smell of something cooking fills the home. She finds her way to the kitchen, Castle's disappointingly-clothed back is turned to her as he hovers over the cooktop, pouring off water from the gnocchi that now sizzles in a pan with some kind of sauce, peas, and pancetta. He jumps a bit when her arms wrap him from behind, hitching under his arms and securing around his shoulders. Pressing her cheek to his back, she finds herself quite unwilling to stop touching him.

"Hey," Kate murmurs as she inhales the delicious scent of dinner.

"Hey, yourself," his even voice comes as he twists in her grasp to press a kiss to her forehead, looking her over with appreciation before turning back to his task of spooning the gnocchi into one large bowl, garnishing it with black pepper and cheese.

He wriggles from her embrace brandishing a single spoon and a single fork.

"Pick your weapon," Castle grins. For a man with borderline-excessive tastes (if the loft in the city is to be believed as a product of his taste), she finds it unexpectedly hilarious that he appears to have only one set of silverware, one pan, one bowl here. No visible dishwasher, either. She gathers that he does not often entertain.

"What is this, Thoreau's cabin?" Kate teases, selecting the fork none the less. Castle shrugs, laying an arm across her shoulders while walking them through to the large living space.

"You're the first person's seen this place in the years I've had it, architect and builders aside," he says, sitting carefully in a large leather chair that they both fit in quite comfortably and digesting the idea that Castle had this place built and it's likely a product of his imagination as much as Nikki or Rook or Derrick Storm is, "though I like to think it's not quite as basic as Walden."

"Not even Alexis?" Castle shakes his head.

"No. I don't get up here often, but when I do, it's to write – usually – and to remove myself from all possible distractions. Don't think Alexis even knows this place exists."

She's flattered to have been invited into his sanctuary, and more than a little grateful in hindsight he's brought her here rather than the Hamptons. Though she's sure they'll get there eventually, it's a significant relief to be somewhere less… baggage-laden, given the summer of two years ago.

"It's fantastic," at last looking around, she admires the space. Simple, unmistakably masculine, and elegant all at once. Spearing a gnocchi and popping it in her mouth, her eyes slide closed. Food always tastes good when one is hungry, but this is truly delightful, "and so is this!"

"Enjoy it, last thing we've got until morning," Castle remarks, "besides coffee. No promises on how good it is, but it'll keep you human until we can get into town."

"Hmmm," she snuggles closer, relishing his company, thinking about what they'll do when they get back to the city. She'll want to look over whatever he's found on the case, yes, but surprisingly, she's less concerned about that. If he's not chomping at the bit now that she knows, it's likely not time-sensitive information. He said they can't go anywhere with it right now. Thus, she resigns herself on that front and vows to think no more of it than necessary in the next two days. Her main concern is Lanie. The boys. Alexis. Martha. Her father.

"Think we should tell them right away when we get back?" her question comes out lazily, "or do we want to play with them a bit?"

Castle takes advantage of her distraction and scoops a generous amount of pancetta for himself.

"Duh," he says after swallowing, "play with them. I know for a fact Ryan and Esposito have a pool going on, and half the precinct with them."

"Oh? And how do you know this?" Her eyes narrow playfully at him.

"I lost money on that bet more than three years ago," he admits. "I know, I'm sorry; cocky son-of-a-bitch. I thought for sure you'd succumb to my winning charms and put in $100. Ryan's winning, by the way. His bet from day one was that it'd take 5 years and he's been taking everyone's money little by little for years. Espo said six months initially and has gradually increased his estimates – he keeps losing, of course – and most of the rest of the precinct was somewhere between weeks and months at the beginning."

Beckett snorts. She knew about the bet – via Lanie, whose frequent pushing was at least partially motivated by her own stakes in it – and she can't even find it in her to be annoyed by it. Not that he doesn't get his ear twisted for his part in it, while she expertly stabs the rest of the pancetta from the dish. They finish the food off in silence, simply enjoying the meal and each other.

"I think we should tell my mother and Alexis, and probably your father, too," Castle says seriously as he rises to clear the dish and she follows him. "In case..."

"Yeah," Kate agrees faintly. "We don't want them thinking we're still on the outs, or whatever, if something happens."

Castle says nothing, just nods his head and pulls her to his side, kissing her hair. He washes and she dries, and moves to put the dish in the lone cupboard above, only to discover a full set of bowls, plates and flatware for at least four people. Giving Castle a withering look, she puts it back with its set just the same, breaking into a smile and kissing him soundly for his sheepish little-boy look. God, they're both turning into saps. Stupid, sexy, saps. She quite likes that alliteration.

"Bath, and bed?" he questions, as if still unsure of what liberties he's allowed, despite all that she's let him do and as much control as she's allowed him thus far. Reassuring him, she twines her fingers through his, leading him back toward the stairs much in the same way he led her earlier.

"Sounds like a plan."

One more to go to bring this thing full circle. Comments, questions, concerns, complaints or constructive criticisms? Review ALL the things!