Chapter 10

Her lips formed a hard line, and she huffed a breath through flared nostrils, trying to scowl anywhere but at his face. "It's not going anywhere. It can't."

He released her wrists and slipped his hands up to cup them around her fists, and kissed the back of her knuckles, right where she might have punched him had she been able to hold onto the anger she employed every time fear reared its ugly head. She didn't try to pull away. She wanted to want to.

"Depends on how much we want it." His voice softened, not pleading, but reassuring. "We're right here, love. Tearing ourselves apart for the worst reason. But we have so many good reasons to pull together, just for once. Give each other one more chance."

She almost winced, as if dodging a blow. "Can we, uh, not limit it to one?"

His eyes dazzled her, but he wasn't smiling yet. "Two would be good..."

She looked at him sidelong, and almost squeaked it. "I'm so bad at this."

"I know – me too!" he added hastily. "We might need to try, a lot. Three, 3.1415 nonrepeating, twelve, forty-two, elventy-one, as many as it takes. It might get old. So might we."

She'd been trying to avert her gaze, now it was full on, and he felt its warmth pour into him like a hot toddy on a cold day. "So, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time." This seemed to be a new concept to her, and it occurred to him that her perfectionism, which made her police work so brilliant, might hurt her when it came to letting others see her vulnerabilities.

He stroked strong, comforting hands from her wrist to elbow then up to her shoulders. "Is anything ever perfect?"

A smile of realization gleamed slowly across her face like dawn light spreading. "No. But..." she canted her hips toward him and laced hands around the back of his neck. "Yes."

She leaned in and kissed him softly, and he softly returned it, then their lips opened and the last vestige of control or reservation snapped in both of them. He growled low in the back of his throat, and pressed his thigh up, rock-hard and muscular between hers, catching her weight, and she was thrilled to land there and ride for all she was worth. She cupped her hands around the back of his skull, he gripped her lower back, rubbing up and down in long, sensuous strokes. The house phone rang, and they were kissing, their mouths hot and sweet with ardor, so they didn't really notice Eduardo's voice leaving a message. "Mr. Castle, there's a Mr. King here to see you. Shall I send him up?"

Two minutes later, the phone rang again. "Mr. Castle, Ms... I'm sorry, what was your name, Ma'am? Grafton. Ms. Grafton here to see you. Shall I send her up, or give them a seat in the foyer?" Castle didn't notice this at all, because he had his hands up inside the front of his old Queen T-shirt, and Kate's soft-firm, pointy-round cupcake-sweet breasts put every brioche ever made to shame. Kate didn't notice either because Castle's hands were so big and so warm and so very gentle, sliding and twisting and rolling on her skin like an otter playing on a waterfall, the soft brushing finger pads and the hard, hard knuckles drumming and the wide, firm palms kneading the muscles, gentling the bones.

A minute after that came another phone call, and Castle's phone also buzzed in his back pocket. This he also didn't notice, because now neither he nor Beckett was wearing a shirt, and she was riding his leg with her hipbone pressed deliciously against his groin, and his tongue was circling her right nipple while his fingers brushed and gently pinched the left. She feathered her fingers across his flat tan nipples and the sparse hair on his chest, and she forgot every word but "Ohhhhh."

About 45 seconds later, they did not hear the ding of the elevator door down the hall, because he had his hands down his own pants, no, they were The Pants Formerly Known as Rick's, and he was digging those palms into her glutes, and they were kissing again, and she was gasping against her own wetness, and he was possibly even harder than he'd been before the French clowns escaped the Nash earlier in the day.

Twenty seconds after that, five guests in the hallway heard a thud and a gasp, and the door lurched slightly on its hinges. This was because Rick and Kate had flipped, and he had her back up against the door, and was yanking the pants down around her ankles without even needing to unbutton them because they were just loose enough. The door shuddered again when she leaned back against it and he knelt before her, and she slung a foot up onto his broad and manly shoulder, and he kissed his way from breast to belly and on down, intoxicated by the sight and the scent and the feel of her.

Thirty seconds after that, he was rearranging her entire universe from a cramped little lonely box into a field of comets in orbit, an elllllipticalllll orbit, oh, yes, as she clenched and shivered under his ministrations. Elliptical has all those extra Ls because of that thing he was doing with his oh, my god, his tongue and the lower lip and the upper lip and the soft, gently scratchy, lacy-feeling beard and yes, andyes, the tickle. Elllipppiticccallll.

Outside in the hallway, twelve authors and one comic book illustrator stood together, puzzled, listening to the sound of a woman moaning on the other side of the door. Thud.

Terry said, "Do you suppose Castle's acting out a murder scene?"

"Hard to say," said Andy.

The elevator came back up again, and the next author, who was a Hobbit fan, peered happily over his white beard at the crowd on Castle's doorstep and observed, "I see they have begun to arrive already," then nerd-snortled at his own clever in-joke, which nobody bothered to laugh at because he'd said it at every single salon for the last twenty years. He took out his phone cam. "Anyone else recording this?"

"George, you are such a little perv!" said Ursula. "Put that away or I'll pop you one." She was the oldest writer there aside from Dorothy, and really, you don't want to mess with either of them.

Dan said, "I have the most brilliant idea. Maybe we should just go up on the roof and see if they've tapped the keg yet." They trooped off down the hall.

Dorothy glanced back at George. "Come on, George. It's none of your beeswax."

Beckett and Castle didn't hear them because she'd stopped him, half-dragged him to the living room, and was sitting on the clear tempered glass coffee table, leaving a little smear mark in the shape of an iris bud. She snaked one slim hand up the leg of his canvas shorts and cupped silken weight through silkier boxers, then raked her short, groomed nails over the rough fabric, eliciting a shudder and hiss.

The timer for the brioche went off, and neither Castle nor Beckett heard its loud, insistent beeping through the next minute, focusing instead on the sound of her pulling his zipper down and her pulling both shorts and boxers down to his ankles, and her low, appreciative chuckle.

"Well," she said. "It appears I went to the right produce stand after all." For a minute the beeper went silent, and the only thing one could hear in that room was the sound of music from the roof through the skylight, but they didn't notice that, either, because she could not grasp anything beyond her hands and his everything and his gasp and his moan and his rumbled, "Oh, Kate. Yes, Hard, like that."

A minute later the brioche timer started its beeping again, but neither heard that because now he was on his back on the rug (the couch was really too narrow) with his gracilis muscles cradling her ears, and he had his head on one of the scatter cushions with his jaws bracketed by the sweet satin of her thighs, her hips poised over his smiling face. "God, I love this view," he sighed. He was headed for fucking ecstasy, and he fully intended to take her with him when he got there, but not too soon.

The brioche timer stopped, then started beeping again as a reminder a minute later, but they didn't notice, and they didn't notice more knocking, nor the doorbell, nor a key in the door. All they could hear was their own breathing and the roar of their hearts, their bucking hips matching in rhythm, still slow but no longer gentle, hotter than nuclear fission, pressure building like a dirty, dirty bomb.

They didn't notice Martha tiptoe in with the flat of her hand acting like blinders against the view on the other side of the sofa back (all she could see was a woman's long foot, the toes curling as a man's large hand (presumably Richard's clenched her ankle.) The man's voice - definitely Richard's - grunted, "Wider. That's... mpfh." Martha almost-silently whispered, "Don't mind me...!"

They were too enthralled (and that is the word because they had both become slaves bent on their mutual ecstasy) to notice her heels click on the polished floor. Martha tottered to the oven, opened the door, grabbed a pot holder, yanked out a perfect pan of golden brioche, set it on the counter, turned off the timer, hurried back toward the front door, stumbled on a blue nitrile glove ("Ugh! Oh, dear!"), recovered her balance, and scurried out of the loft, swearing silently to herself. And nobody saw her shut that door behind her, lock it, and sashay over to the elevator, laughing her head off. Rick and Kate certainly would have been mortified, had they noticed, but it was a secret Martha took to her grave, and they never even thought to ask.

No, there was too much on their... minds. Rick's focus was divided between what he could do to the outside of Kate's body, and what he could do to the inside of Kate's body, and what Kate's mouth was doing to him.

They still didn't notice the sound of music, conversation, and occasional laughter drifting down through the skylight from the party on the rooftop. This was because Kate was panting a stream of obscenities in English, French, Russian, and Serbian during those moments when her mouth and lips were not stretched to their maximum. He was, just for fucking once, utterly lost for words other than 'Ah!'. They had come to a frenzied pace, racing their own heartbeats, and then she went still, arcing down into him like a double rainbow of joy. She screamed his name, over and over (it did sound rather like 'asshole!' come to think of it) but it was hard to tell with all her lips spread wide and utterly and compleltly oh god full ah those fingers and mouhth and sucked so hrad, so deepley, so fiercilely, that I cant' even rementmbor how to spell it how it feeled anymsore;m an he ellipseded into her like a tousnand clowns being oh, holy hotshot out of a canon and neighther one new wicht was Rate and rich saw Castkett Kake because oh words not none there are, Chaucer coulda nere writ so well the bright fier of theyre wholly transport.*

Whew.

Kate collapsed down onto his body, her hips on his chest and her cheek resting on his inner thigh, one hand wrapped around the back of his right knee and the other firmly gripping the instep of his other foot. She sighed and closed her eyes with a happy hum and a wiggle, and they lay there for a while, just breathing. She felt him yawn beneath her. He patted out a soft rhythm on her perky little bottom and croaked, "Roll over."

She did so gingerly, her upper body supported by his knees like a lounge chair, her bent knees lolling, her feet somewhere around the top of his head, her sweet-tart center fully exposed to his appreciative gaze. He wiped his face on the back of his right forearm. "Mmmm. Center of the universe."

She reached out to his hands, spreading his fingers, and they interlaced, but he couldn't sit up enough to kiss her knuckles. He grinned at her. His short beard looked a little sticky and there was a thread of blue denim lint stuck in his front teeth. "I envy your gynecologist."

Her hair was a disaster, her lips (on both counts) still swollen. She blinked sleepily at him. "I like you a lot better than Dr. Pomatter."

"Dr. Pomatter? Goofy name."

"He is a little goofy. And he's almost as cute as you are. But I like you a lot more."

"I like you, too. C'mere." He pulled her upright and she flailed around, crunching down on his chest a little (Ow!) and they laughed, then she scooted down (accidentally bumping him with her knee) ("Ow! Careful! I'd like to have another kid someday!") until she was lying with her head on his chest.

She said, 'It smells so good in here. Brioche and mushrooms and jalapenos. Who knew?"

"I think it's the sex," he said dreamily. His eyes had drifted closed. "Tired. Drove down at 4 a.m."

"Aww, poor baby," she cooed.

He grinned, absolutely loving that. "Timer should go off any minute, then we can bring the brioche up to the roof. I think somebody might be up there."

Kate finally noticed the music. It wasn't Kenny G. "You think your guests miss you?"

"I'm usually late. I'm sure Eduardo just sent them straight up. They know to make themselves at home."

"mkay."

Without intending to, they drifted into a short nap, with Rick's phone buzzing periodically in his shorts pocket somewhere on the other side of the coffee table, and a delicate little snore from Kate's very delicate little nose. The dryer stopped contributing its white noise to the symphony, and let out a discreet chime to indicate its cycle had finished. They didn't even twitch.

END CHAPTER 10

A/N
*I'll never read Joyce again. That sex scene nearly killed them.