Chapter Fourteen
Lying on that roof with her felt like the passage of both minutes and a life time, as he became a quivering mass of textile sensations and overwrought nerves. Her trust in him as she relayed stories for each small mark her body bore was enough to force him to mindfully keep his hand from shaking.
She had graced him with a shocking level of trust and faith in him. So much that he didn't know how he had even managed to hold it together enough to get through it all. Her skin under his fingers was an odd culmination of his rich fantasy life, his intrinsic curiosity and his deep admiration of her strength. She had lived through more than most women ever would, but she was stronger than most of the men he knew. There was probably a correlation to be drawn there, but he had been too unfocused to find it in that moment.
If he had been surprised by her not only accepting, but encouraging his touch, her subtle hint at a question was enough to shock him. He'd heard that song a couple of times in the loft when Alexis was in control of the stereo, but it wasn't until he was lying on the roof beside her, with silence surrounding them and nothing to focus on but the night sky and soft lyrics in his ears, that he actually listened to the words. They had struck a chord with him. The thought of how closely it resembled his own feelings and desires towards Kate occupied his mind enough to hold his focus for entirely too long.
After he'd finished his exploration of Beckett's scars, he was surprised when the song they were listening to stopped in the middle to be changed back to the one that had haunted him while it played earlier. His mind was sent reeling with the implications of that selection while he searched Kate's expression for any indication that she had actually intended to select it.
His ability to read her had flown at the window long before, during his tactile exploration, but something seemed to pull him closer to her anyway. While the conscious part of his mind was certain that the change in music had been a mistake, some kind of slip of her fingers, the unconscious side of him took over, as if some unseen force guided his mouth to meet hers.
He couldn't ever remember a time when kissing someone had been such a sensuous act, but in that moment he could think of nothing that could even put words to what he was experiencing. He still found it hard to describe, even to himself, and he had been there.
When she responded to him instantly, with a smile he could feel against his lips, she confirmed the intentions in her action. That had been his last coherent thought for several of the longest most intoxicatingly seductive minutes of his life. The feel of her mouth against his, the subtle sounds she made and the taste of her in his mouth was drugging and while he had been lost to her long before that moment, he had never been so utterly gone.
It seemed a long moment of gentle caresses and deep soul-searing kisses later, that reality returned and he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He cursed his hyperactive mind as he finally pulled his lips from hers to tug her into an embrace as he worked to calm his breathing and heart rate. He couldn't stop himself from dropping several light kisses against her hair as she rested against him with her head on his chest and her hand sprawled possessively across his stomach.
"Kate," he spoke her name desperately into the night, surprised at the emotion in his voice as he allowed himself another moment to breathe before he continued. "Just, give me a minute."
She lifted slowly up to look down on him with a questioning expression before she completely disregarded his request and moved to take his mouth again. He moaned at the feeling of her pressed so tightly against him as her mouth moved passionately against his. His mind short circuited again and he completely forgot why he had pulled away to begin with.
Her hand found the hem of his sweatshirt and dove beneath the material. Her hand had easily found his skin and sent it tingling and burning in the wake of her gentle caresses. He couldn't imagine a reason he'd ever want to stop this and could see this moment growing to be the eternity of his existence. His mind wondered at the changes this moment would bring and how having her as more than a partner at work would build an entirely new reality for them. It would not be an alteration or aberration of their current reality, no; something like this would alter their relationship on every level.
His thoughts finally returned to why he'd pulled away, just as he felt her rock softly against him and she released a deep moan to the silence of the night. His hands moved quickly, one stilling her hips, the other tunneling into her hair to gently pull her mouth away and move her enough to catch her eyes in the pale moonlight. "God, you're beautiful." he managed to pant out reverently and almost kicked himself for lack of originality. He was a writer, he could do better than that, but he could only speak the truth in that moment and his thoughts were less than eloquent. "We have to stop." he finally amended, garnering a teasing tilt of her lips.
"And you say I'm a tease." she responded silkily, turning her head to brush her lips over the palm he had move to her cheek before turning her eyes back to meet his. "Why?" she asked when her joke didn't garner the expected result.
Castle laughed, but it was more nervous than genuine, "Give me a minute to scoop my thoughts off the roof and I'll probably remember."
She smirked then, teasing and slightly predatory, "Well, until you remember. . ." she trailed off as she leaned back into him, brushing her lips across his just the barest caress before he was holding her back again.
"Not helping." he informed her, but he couldn't stop the grin from forming on his lips at just the thought of her in such a light and playful mood. "We should go inside."
Even in the low light he could see her eyes dancing with a lightness they rarely held, "Worried about a little roof burn?"
It didn't take long for that thought to conjure images of exactly how one might get red, raw skin from stripping bare against the rough roofing tiles, but he blinked them away. "I'm going to start a fire." he began, distancing himself from her emotionally if unable to actually part with her physically at that moment. "Then we'll roast some marshmallows and you'll let me gather my thoughts enough to form coherent sentences again."
"Maybe," she teased, somehow breaking his grip to kiss him again, just a light fluttering of her lips on his until she pulled back enough to finish speaking. Each word vibrated through him from the warm wash of her breath against his slightly parted mouth, her lips moving against his own as she spoke and the rumble of her chest as she formed each sound into words. "Just maybe, I'm excited at the prospect of reducing the great novelist, Richard Castle, into a state of complete and total speechlessness."
He groaned and moved back to her kiss before forcing himself away. "I think you have successfully accomplished that goal and now it's my turn to accomplish something."
She had apparently noted the seriousness of his conditional statement as the teasing fell away. She seemed to pack this whole event up into some box deep inside herself as she finally moved away from him and stood up. He almost cursed at the mild hurt he saw in her eyes because he knew she thought she was getting the brushoff.
He knew it was probably a mistake to try and explain through a lust addled mind, but he didn't think she'd make it back inside before she'd swept this whole experience into a dark box somewhere. He didn't want her to pull away simply because of the perception that he was going to, so he leaned back into her, feeling her lips against his own and he swore he could feel it as that shell around her broke open again. "Kate, you probably have no idea how much I want this, how long I've waited for this moment." he started, watching the uncertainty fade and that natural curiosity sweep her features.
"You tried to get in my pants the second day you knew me." she responded, her tone light and teasing, just enough to let him know that she knew sex wasn't what he was talking about at all.
He smiled down at her, slightly frustrated with his stance on the incline of the roof, "I don't want any part of this to feel like a mistake." he informed her and then held up a hand to stop her protest as she opened her mouth, "I'm not saying that it would, but I want you to think about something for just a minute."
There was a long silence while he attempted to organize his thoughts when everything in him was screaming to kiss her again, pull her against him and take everything he had ever wanted. He watched as she shot his attention all the hell with a small teasing smile and a tilt of her head, "Was there anything specific you wanted me to think about or do I just stand here thinking about a random something?"
He chuckled, feeling suddenly nervous. "I just. . ." he squeezed his eyes closed and let out a heavy sigh. "I can't think when you look at me like that." he informed her, a hint of frustration in his words that she hopefully understood was directed at himself and not her. He laughed when her hands came up to touch his sides and his eyes opened again to glare at her in reprimand as he took her hands in his and turned her away from him. "You're not helping."
"I don't know what you're talking about." she responded with artificial innocence dripping from her tone.
"Listen," he replied, his arms coming around her from behind as he pulled her back against his chest and leaned down to whisper his statement across her ear. "If you don't stop teasing me, I'm going to take you right here on the roof and then we'll both be pissed about the friction burns."
Her chuckled was dark as if his challenge were some kind of treat she looked forward to. He shouldn't have been surprised when he felt her rock her hips back gently to rub herself against him. "Is that a promise?"
He groaned as he felt his self-control slipping away again. His mouth descended on the space behind her ear, dropping to work across her neck until the only sounds in the night were harsh breathing and the moist sounds of his mouth on her skin. He used a hand to guide her head to meet him in a kiss that was intoxicating in its ferocity. As soon as their lips met, tongues came out to dance together, teeth nipped and nibbled, each taking and giving in a hot passionate display of all they had reserved.
It seemed a long time later that he was finally able to pull himself away from her again. "Wait." he panted as he dropped his lips back to her neck. "We can't do this here."
"Here, as in the roof?" she asked, turning to face him, probably to get a read on his emotions behind the statement.
"No," he explained as he cradled her head in his hands and kept the eye contact she had initiated. "Here as in on vacation." She didn't seem to have a response to that and simply tilted her head a little to ask for elaboration silently. "You know that feeling you get when you're away and the whole world seems so much bigger, everything feels different and you just know that your whole life is changed because you have this amazing new perspective?" he didn't wait for a response. "That's what vacations do to people, but when we go home and go back to our lives. . ." he trailed off, neither willing, nor apparently able, to put that statement to words.
"You think I'll change my mind?" she asked, her tone even and her expression not giving away her opinion on the subject at all.
He felt his gaze falter, slip from hers, because he couldn't read her anyway and something in him didn't want to recognize her agreement before she voiced it. It was a long silent moment before he felt her arms come up across his shoulder so her fingers could glide across the back of his neck and toy with the hair at his nape.
After a long moment, he raised his eyes back to hers and saw her understanding. "Ok." she responded simply with a subtle nod. "No further then." she agreed, sort of, with his statement, "But that doesn't mean we're going backwards and when we get home, you're going to teach me how to make that lasagna you brought over the other night."
He couldn't stop the grin at her subtle statement that she wasn't going to change when they went home. She was telling him clearly that she didn't believe this had anything to do with location and probably everything to do with timing, but with Kate Beckett, he was not willing to leave their moment to the slim possibility that reality would seem so much more real back in Manhattan. Forcing himself to avoid her seductive lips, he leaned into her and placed a gentle kiss against her forehead. "Thank you."
Somehow, they made it off the roof and quietly worked together to get a fire started. Once Castle had the kindling lit, he left her to tend the flames with larger pieces of wood. He tossed a bag of marshmallow her direction, glad for the forethought of possibly roasting them in the morning.
By the time he made it back to the living room, arms laden with blankets and pillows, she had already located the roasting sticks near the fireplace and preloaded two of them with a marshmallow a piece. "What are you doing with all that?" she asked as she turned to offer him one of the metal roasting sticks.
"Picnic." he offered with a shrug as he dumped his haul on the couch and proceeded to ignore the proffered treat while he laid out blankets in the space between the love seat and the fireplace before piling the pillows against the front of the couch and giving a dramatic bow with a flourishing wave of his arm.
She simply rolled her eyes at his ridiculousness, but smiled as he finally took his marshmallow and sat beside her on the hearth. He noticed that she had loaded the wood left of center in the fireplace and was going to suggest she throw another small log on to even things out when he saw the method to her madness. She carefully held her marshmallow on that side of the fire, allowing the heat to cook it to a golden brown as she slowly rotated it.
He watched her method for a long moment before he reached out with his own stick, shoving his marshmallow directly into the flames until it went up completely and he pulled it back to wait for it to finish charring to black crispy perfection.
"That's gross." she informed him, rotating her marshmallow again.
He smiled in response as he carefully pulled the charred skin off the treat and ate it happily, leaving the gooey center on his stick for a moment to cool before pulling it off with his teeth. "You don't know what you're missing."
Kate shook her head at him as if he were insane and went back to her intense focus, rotating the stick one last time. "The taste of char and smoke? Yeah, I think I have a clue." she informed him lightly as she pulled her golden brown marshmallow from the fireplace and inspected it a moment before carefully plucking it off the stick. "You, on the other hand, lack patience." she informed him as she offered him her treat.
Castle shook his head, "You go ahead."
Kate, however, was stubborn. "No, you need to try this right after your last one so you can provide a definitive statement on the difference in flavor profile." she offered, her tone proclaiming that she wasn't going to take no for an answer, but still with the same lightness she'd possessed the entirety of this evening.
Castle was the one to roll his eyes that time as he accepted her marshmallow, "Do I need to cleanse my pallet with some water first, Chef?" he teased.
"You might want to just to wash that burnt flavor out of your mouth, but that's a whole other story."
Castle scoffed, "I'll have you know," he started and took a bite of her toasted marshmallow as he gathered his thoughts into an appropriate statement fit for teasing her in their subtly shifting rapport. Instead of actually being able to come up with anything, he simply savored the sugary goodness on his tongue, "This is delicious." he informed her, taunt forgotten as he tried to run the numbers in his head.
"See, I told you." she smiled smugly, but he simply shook his head at her in disapproval.
"I didn't say it was better." Castle responded indignantly, "and even if it is, which I'm not saying it is, it's not five times better."
"I'm sure it's not, because it's probably more like fifty times better than eating something that feels like dirt on your tongue." she cocked her head to the side and shot him her best 'don't give me any crap' expression.
Castle shrugged, "Eh." he retorted noncommittally, "It's simple math, detective. See, if it takes five times as long for you to prepare it, then it would have to be five times as good in order to be worth the effort."
"How about if I add that you can't kiss me if you taste like burnt sugar and wood smoke?"
Castle laughed, "Wow, that's got to be a record. We aren't even officially anything yet and you're already threatening to withhold affection. You, Detective, play dirty."
She smirked and he almost swallowed his groan as she fixed a heated look his direction, "You haven't seen anything yet."
Ignoring her, because it was the only way he'd be surviving the night, Castle got off the hearth and fetched them glasses of water to wash down the sugar as she roasted two more marshmallows her way. Her efforts gave him time to grab a few other provisions before he came back to sit against the pillows in front of the couch.
Kate held the finished marshmallow out to him with the stick and then jabbed it into the coals to cook of the bits that were left behind. She followed suit with her own treat and metal roasting stick before pulling his out and clearing any debris before she settled it carefully in the rack beside the fireplace. She continued with her own and he was almost sad when she moved over to sit beside him, because he had enjoyed observing her and not feeling like the action might get him slapped. Kate settled beside him with a weary sigh and then took a long drink of ice water before she popped a finger in her mouth to suck the sticky remnants off the digit.
He almost groaned again and wondered how he could have gone so long with such control, but as soon as he got a green light he was raring to go at the drop of a hat. He took a moment to talk himself down as he reached across to feed the half of his remaining marshmallow to her. The woman was going to kill him. He was certain of it, as she took the treat from him and captured his finger as well, gently pulling it into her mouth and allowing her tongue to swipe up every bit of sugary goodness before releasing the digit back to him.
He had grabbed a bottle of wine, in case she wanted to have a glass before bed, but the tired look in her eyes spoke her disinterest in the gesture. Kate laid her head against his shoulder and they sat together, staring into the small fire, both apparently content with this new level of approved touching and allowed a comfortable silence to settle over them.
When he felt her start to drift off, he carefully led her down to the blankets he had laid out and adjusted so he could lie beside her. She seemed less interested in the pillows than she was in getting closer to him and he smiled again at what good fortune it was. He never would have believed that they would be here when two days ago he had been braced for the worst holiday weekend of all time. Instead, he was curled in front of a fire with Katherine Beckett curled against his side in a turn of events so radical he never would have been able to write it.
Castle relaxed into the pillows behind him enjoying the feeling of Kate's body snuggled against his side, her head resting on his chest. Her breathing evened out to signal sleep had finally claimed her. While he knew it was ridiculously late, or early depending on how one looked at it, he felt none of the familiar pull to follow her into sleep. Instead, he was certain he would be up for hours dissecting their night and hoping that everything had actually happened the way his tired mind was reminding him that it did.
x.x.x
A/N: Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I updated this! I know I said it was a side project, but I'm a little ashamed to have let this go so long with nothing happening. I'm actually glad to see summer coming to a close. Not only does it mean it will start to cool down a little, but also with my daughter back in school and a regular schedule, maybe I'll get more writing done. I'll try not to let this go so long before the next update regardless of what's going on with my other story and my life.
On a related note, I will never leave a story unfinished. I hope it never goes this long again, and I can't promise that it will necessarily be timely since I do have another story in the works, but I will make more of an attempt to get back here more than once a month. Ridiculous. At this rate there wouldn't be a new chapter before the new Castle and that's just insane because it's still so long away. According to my widget, 24 days, 22 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds. Of course by the time I was done typing that it was wrong, and by the time you read it, whatever time zone you're in it will be way off, but that's not the point.
Review that made my day: VACastleFan, for amazing words of motivation and inspiration, not just about my work here, but about life in general. You are an inspiration to me to keep plugging along in writing and real life. Thank you. Oh, and if you do get fired because of me, I just found out they're hiring at my work, but you have to live in Spokane or Iowa, so that really only helps you find a replacement job if you're in one of those locations, but I'd put in a good word for you. Just brace yourself to put on weight because sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is not the healthiest career choice.
Thanks to everyone for reading.