A/N: Rating didn't change in this chapter, but will in the next. It ran longer than I anticipated, and I couldn't justify making it any longer with where I plan to go with it. Rating will change the next chapter. But with this chapter, reader discretion is advised.
The seconds feel long, almost like minutes, but in reality, it was just a brief pause to take a quick breath, figuring out what the hell they just did to each other.
Her grabbing him out of nowhere, unexpectedly even to her, kissing him with lips that felt better than any others he's had before threw all of his selfless ambitions of telling her about his own secrets are gone. He's been under her spell for longer than his pride will allow him to admit, and he's just been looking for an excuse to cut all the chains holding his self-control.
And her kiss didn't just give him that excuse, it gave him every single reason in the world to let himself take the leap.
Her eyes are half-lidded, her hand resting against his chest, her ring finger slipping through the hem of his shirt and tickling his bare skin, accidental or on purpose, he'll take it. Their minds seem to click right at the same time, their eyes dancing between each other, both wondering what they just did and what they will do about it. In two quick motions that takes less than mere seconds, she wrenches his shirt in her fist again, his arms goes around her mid-section, and their lips slam against each other in a huff of hot breath an unquenchable passion.
Neither of them take time to wind up, their springs have been retaining four years' worth of tension. The shockwave of exited blood racing through his veins would scare him in a normal situation, but with her, it was almost expected. Her lips are devouring his, robbing and chipping away at his self-control with every frenzied pass they make against his. For once, he feels like he's fumbling with her. His hand is on the small of her back, but can't seem to just sit still and pull her into him.
But she's making up for it by pulling herself up to him, a brief thought skirting its way into her quickly hazing-over mind that her lack of heels presents a challenge she's never anticipated but will gladly hurdled whenever presented to her again. Her hand lets go of his shirt that's making it impossible to feel herself being pulled up against him and reaches up to pull at his jaw, the tips of her fingers teasing his earlobe. Her mind is being consumed with getting more of him, as quickly as possible. A quick addict to a drug she's been, until now, hesitant of, being him.
His lips light her whole body with a fire that demands it be left alone with the source to just burn. His hands finally find their way around her, one pressing against the small of her back and the other going up to the back of her neck, making her acutely aware of his bicep bulging into her side as he holds her head against him.
She feels her legs give out to her weight when he captures her bottom lip, keeping it to himself with a light tug of his teeth. She just takes this momentary opportunity of weightlessness to vice her arms around his neck, holding herself to him as she presses her lips against him more than she ever has to anyone else before.
The tight knot in her stomach coils even more as that brief, rapid thought skirts past everything he's doing to her. That it's never been this way with anyone else. She stops returning his fervent barrage and forces herself to stop, only for a split second, with her lips still grazing his as his arms fold in around her. It's in this brief second that she admits to herself that this scares her. But when his fingers go from the back of her neck to the arch of her back and fan out, she finds her feet again and gives in.
It scares her, but it's worth every ounce of terror.
Once she finds her footing again, pressing up on her tip toes to repay him for her brief interlude, she unsnakes her arms from around his shoulders, leaning back down but not letting his lips go as she grabs the ends of his collar and starts pulling him out of the kitchen. His seems to plant his feet at first as she struggles to pull against his shirt with their lips still tightly sealed against each other.
But she still pulls at his shirt, even after she feels herself being let out of the protective cocoon his arms were, his hands now barely holding onto her hips. His mouth finally lets her go and she leans back with a huff, her fists still latched onto his collar. His lips are puffed and his eyes are hazy.
But hers… they're darker, lusting, demanding, not taking no for an answer, almost animalistic. It's not his body that's stopping him from just launching forward and taking her right now. Every physical thing about him is screaming at him for not listening and just giving into her, so much it's almost painful. "Beckett…" He breathes.
It his damn conscience. It won't leave him alone. He can't do this to her. He can't just keep quiet about it. There's no positive outcome here. "This way." She hisses on a pant. God, they're both panting already and all they've done is kiss. Telling her is going to be impossible.
He finally feels his conscience give him permission once his eyes find a sliver of her bare stomach. His patience should be rewarded, his dedication to this, to them, his belief that they could amount to something, and that something would be amazing, and that it would be worth it.
His eyes flick back up to hers, finding her glaring at him, her shoulders panting, and her lips having evidence of his being there. In that moment, his mind gives his body the permission it's been pleading for and leaps forward, trying to grab her up in his arms, but she escapes him. Still latched onto his shirt, she starts backward through her apartment, toward the open door that leads to her bedroom across the main room of her apartment.
He catches her right outside the door, pushing against her side and pinning her against the wall, one hand grabbing her leg, yanking it up his side by her knee. Her breath is caught in her throat as the mosh pit her heart is in just intensifies and he finds her lips again. Once the breath gets let go, it turns into a deep moan, resonating from her stomach, making his tongue feel amazing as it slides against hers, absorbing the vibrations of her voice.
She's never let anyone do this to her. She always… always needs to be in complete control. Needed to be. But she just willingly let him take complete control of her, maybe even encouraged it… and she's loving it. His kisses are pressing her head back into the wall, she not being supported by her own legs, her hands are mindlessly wandering his back and his hair. After hooking her foot around his leg, she pushes her fingers into his hair, grabbing a handful as his teeth nip and tug at her lips.
"Kate…" He pants against her lips, calling her attention but not stopping. Her heart quivers at the sound of her first name being said by him in that tone. It just makes every limb that's squeezing him squeeze him that much tighter.
But her reaction to his call that he needed to say something made him loose track of what it was he needed to say. Her legs squeeze his waist tighter, her fingers squeeze his hair tighter, and her hand presses his back into her harder.
"Door." She breathes between kisses. "Bedroom." She pants again, sounding addlebrained. "There." She says, throwing her arm out from around his neck, grabbing the door frame leading into her bedroom.
He stops his relentless venture after her and leans back just enough to miss him. She lets out a high pitched groan of frustration at the loss, not trusting her own legs to keep her upright, but stands up on them anyway, shaking as they take on her weight. God, he's making her legs shake. Her stomach coils even tighter at the anticipation.
She acts quickly, pressing against his broad chest and turning him around, pushing him through her bedroom door. He falls back against the side of her unmade bed, stumbling to crawl backward to the center, his eyes glued to her as she goes after him, crawling up her bed over him to finally settle, straddling him with an evil, happy grin.
"Kate, there's some-"
"Castle." She stops him, her fingers having just undone the top button of his shirt, and now have grabbed the fabric and tugged, frustrated. She leans down, her arm bracing her beside his head, while her other hand puts a finger of his lips, in a way that lets him know she's teasing. "You have been talking about this… for four years." She pants with a shake of her head. "Now that we're finally doing it… please… shut up-"
"And kiss you?" He finishes, the old cliché coming to mind.
But she shakes her head again, her breath still heavy. "No, just shut up."
She doesn't let him respond and kisses him anyway, pressing her lips to his hard, pushing him back down against the pillow. As her fingers continue to dance their way down the hem of his shirt, unbuttoning it with quickness and precision he would only expect out of her, he gives up hope in telling her before this is over. Even if she would let him, he couldn't bring himself to do it and end this.
She undoes the last button and pulls on his shirt, untucking it as much as she can on her own without his help as he forces off his shoes with his toes. Once she has his shirt open and untucked, her fingers fan out against his bare chest, her light panting letting out a small shutter as he leans up against her hands to pull off his shirt. Her hands follow him, her hands going over his shoulders with her thumbs hooking the sides of his shirt, pulling it off over his shoulders, surprising her by kissing her once he's upright.
She lets out a small squeak of a moan against him as she smiles against his lips, grabbing his shirt once he pulls the sleeves off and tosses it haphazardly against her bedroom wall. It's not a second after his hands are free that they go to the hem of her shirt. Without reservation, he pushes it off her, her excited, giddy laughter ringing in his ears, making his heart flutter. She takes a hold of her shirt once it's out of his reach and throws it against the opposite wall she tossed his shirt against.
A thought shoots into her mind, wondering how quickly he can discard her of her bra. She cocks her brow and smirks, mentally timing him, but when she looks into his eyes, they're frozen. It only takes a moment to follow his eye line to find what he's looking at, and once she realizes what it is, everything comes to a grinding, screeching, heavy hearted, halt.
His eyes are frozen on the small, puckered touch of skin in the center of her chest, smaller than a dime. His throat closes at the sight of it. He's never seen it before now. His right hand lays against her side, but once his thumb grazes the scar there, his hand jumps off her, suddenly afraid he's hurting her by touching her there. But his hand is only off her skin for a moment before she grabs his hand and softly presses it back down to her skin, pressing his palm back down against the straight, wrinkled line of skin going down her side. She won't have him afraid to touch her. She didn't even think of this when he was whipping off her shirt.
His eyes are drawn back to the scar in the center of her chest. His hand on her side is still hesitant, but she's holding it to her side, waiting until the caution his hand is radiating with fades. She can feel it wanting to pull away, but she keeps it pressed there until he stops. His eyes stare at her gunshot scar for a long moment, and she can see him replaying that day in his head.
"It burned…" She starts, her voice soft and hesitant. She's only gone into this level of detail with Burke. "At first, when… I felt the bullet, it-" She clenches her teeth, briefly focusing on Castle's warm hand against her side, "it felt like I was being run over. I didn't even feel you tackle me. My whole body was screaming at me. It felt like I was being pulled into myself. I was…" She pauses to try and gather the tears forming, but decides to revert the energy to telling him what she needs to say. "I was so scared."
His eyes never left her scar, his brow furrowing. His other hand finally lifts up and his fingers reach out to touch her, but he stops, just tickling the skin. "I should have been faster." He says heavily, still not looking away from her scar.
"Rick…" She says with a shake of her head, knowing where he's going and won't let him get there.
"This didn't have to happen. I would have taken it."
She quickly puts her hands on his jaw, forcing him to look up to her with desperate eyes. "Don't… Castle." She softly scolds him. "I won't let you."
"You're assuming I would have a choice, Kate."
"You do." She tells him, her arms going around his neck as she still sits straddling him, and he sits up right, his hands softly caressing her scar tissue. "I won't let you do that for me, Castle." She can't admit to him why, not yet.
"That's where you're wrong, Kate." He says, his eyes softening up to her. "I never have a choice when it comes to protecting the people I love. I'm a slave to it. I'll abandon every principle I have, every sense of right and wrong I had to if it meant keeping you safe."
"Don't do this, Rick. You'll lose yourself." And she loves who he is, she finishes the thought in her head.
"If I don't, I might lose you, and I'm not letting that happen again."
"I'm right here, Castle." She says, trying to bring him back by petting his hair with her hand. "That bullet wasn't meant for you. You have Alexis to think about."
"I also have you to think about, Kate." He says, pushing back harder and harder on this. "I already had you die in my arms once, I'm not letting that happen again." He pushes, his voice hard and his eyes steely.
"Rick." She tries, caressing his earlobe with her thumb.
"I'm not going to just sit on my hands because I was too cowardly to act, knowing I could have done something to stop it. I'm not strong enough to survive losing you." He says through clenched teeth and glimmering eyes.
She pauses and looks at him with a soft gaze, trying to be as gentle and loving with him as she can, trying her hardest to bring him back to her. "Yes you are, Rick."
He looks down for a minute, chocking on words before he unclenches his teeth. She can feel his shoulders relax under her touch, but not by much. "I don't ever want that strength tested, Kate." He tells her, giving himself away with a momentary shake in his voice.
She lets out a long breath, running her hands over his bare shoulders and rests her forehead against his. There's a silence over them as he engulfs her again with his arms. She feels the emotional distance close when she feels herself in the protective cove of his arms again. She lifts her head off his and softly presses her lips against his forehead. She looks back down to his eyes, seeing a desperate longing shining in them. "Tell me again."
His eyes flutter for a second before he seems to dawn what she's asking for.
"I don't want those words tainted with the memory of that day anymore." She says, putting a hand on the side of his head, petting his hair with her thumb. "Tell me again."
He lets out a short, shaky breath before looking up to her again. "Promise me something." He says.
She flashes him a quick open smile, letting him know she's open to him. "Anything."
He turns up to look at her, his muscles still tense, his jaw still squared off, and his eyes still hard. "I can't have you dying in my arms again, Kate. I won't go through losing you. I already lost you once and you weren't even mine to lose. I'm not losing you ever again." He struggles, voice trembling. He looks like he's holding so much in, like he's about to break.
He's always been strong for her. Now he needs her to be strong for him. She softly takes hold of his jaw, "You didn't lose me, Rick." She says, pressing down on the tense hand that's been teasing her scar since this began. "I'm right here, right with you. I'm not going anywhere, and I don't plan to, okay? Hey…" She says after his eyes fall off hers, she brings them back with her hand, still outlining his jaw. "You're amazing, Rick… but tell me again. I'm listening this time… really listening." She puts her other hand on his jaw. "I promise."
He pulls her in, his arm going across her back and latching onto her shoulder as he slowly rolls her over. She lets out a long breath, feeling… secure under his solid weight as she reaches up and grazes her fingers across his cheek.
That hard, shaky, cold, steely look in his eyes is replaced with the look she's familiar with; a look of hope, passion, love, caring, gentleness. "I love you, Kate."
