I'm back with another chapter. Thank you so much for all of the reviews/comments on the last chapter. I truly appreciate them!
I'd like to mention review in particular: a review by mscarboncopy, who said she basically lurks but rarely leaves reviews for stories. However, she did this time, and I am so grateful for her taking the time to let me know what she thought of the story. There are so many people—the vast majority, actually—who follow stories and never give any feedback to the authors. This is an amateur writing site; if we don't get feedback, how are we supposed to improve our writing? So you are one of those people, please reconsider. You might even reap the benefits by having better stories to read. If you follow a story, you do have an opinion on it. If you like what an author is writing or have constructive feedback to make something better, then please tell that author, even just in a PM. The feedback is so important. So once again, mscarboncopy, thank you!
Disclaimer: still don't own them. If I did, I wouldn't be watching and rewatching sneak peeks as much as I am.
Kate felt lazy. She felt content. She wasn't really asleep, not fully, not anymore. She had been sleeping, she supposed, but she woke just a little when she shifted in the bed and felt an arm snake around her waist and pull her back against a very warm, very muscled and very naked body.
Castle.
Yeah, she remembered now why she'd been sleeping.
They'd both needed a nap. They'd really needed a nap. Even though her eyes were closed, she still couldn't help grinning at the recent memories.
With the memories and the arm that was anchoring her to the warm body behind her, she had no desire to do anything but stay right where she was. The weight of his arm around her felt wonderful, and she could feel his breath on her shoulder as he exhaled. He didn't appear to be awake, and she found the fact that he pulled her to him in his sleep just a little more than sweet. Normally, she might have found it a little ... much, but not with Castle. And not in her current state, with the recent stress from the case, her injury, and finally seeing Castle again after all this time. And then, finally, she thought with a smile, doing a lot more than just simply seeing him. So yeah, she was just going to enjoy the new, but good, feeling, and stay put, snuggled into him as she was. And a little more of a nap sounded good too.
She was just about asleep when she woke up again, but this time not peacefully. All of a sudden, there was a sound that seemed to reverberate throughout the previously silent room and it startled her into almost sitting straight up, even though she still had that arm around her waist. Her heart was beating fast, and she felt ... danger.
The sound, she discovered—courtesy of her ability to give a split-second assessment of a situation—was coming from the floor, where Castle's pants were lying in a heap. As she listened to the sound, looked around the room and processed it in her mind, she sighed and rolled her eyes as she realized what it must be. She nudged her bed partner, who had just now begun to stir and sit up a little.
"Wha ... huh?"
"Castle! Your phone! That is your phone, isn't it?"
He sat up a bit and listened to the tune that had jolted Kate out of her almost-sleep state, had first given her the unconscious feeling of danger, and then had made her roll her eyes. It was the ominous theme music from 'Jaws'. "Oh, that's just Paula calling," he said as he flopped back down in the bed.
The phone kept playing the tune of impending shark doom—which, Kate thought briefly, was kind of an appropriate ringtone for the abrasive agent—and Rick tried to tug her back against him but she stopped him. "Aren't you going to answer it?"
He yawned, and then said, "Nope," after which a big, sloppy grin appeared on his face.
But Kate was still worried; after all, her last memory of Paula was her spiriting him away at the precinct a month before. And if Paula couldn't reach him now, like she couldn't reach him then ... "But won't she—"
He started shaking his head. "Nope. She doesn't know where we are, remember?" Thankfully, the ominous-sounding ringtone stopped just then as the call apparently went to voicemail.
She had forgotten about that little tidbit. "Oh, yeah." But with everything else, she still felt like they were borrowing trouble by him avoiding her. "Castle, you really need to call her back."
The smile dropped off his face. "Are you in pain?" he asked out of nowhere.
She thought about it. "Well, that was random. But no, the shoulder isn't too bad. But why? Am I grimacing or cringing and I don't know it?"
"No, I just thought you must be overcome by pain and aren't thinking clearly if you actually want me to interrupt our time here by calling Agent Piranha."
She gave him a mini-glare. "I thought she was a shark, hence the 'Jaws' ringtone on your phone?"
He shrugged. "There's no good music for a piranha. And it's close enough ... they're both nasty fish with a lot of teeth."
She rolled her eyes again and went back to his original question. "No, I don't want to interrupt our time. But whenever you avoid her, bad things happen. Do I need to remind you about when Martha let her into your loft? She had to hunt you down because you wouldn't answer her calls?" She saw him cringe a little bit at the memory of that not-so-fun evening.
"You're serious? You really want me to call her back? Now?" His voice was a little bit disbelieving, with just a hit of Castle pout.
"Not really, but if you can call her now, then she hopefully she'll leave us alone in peace after that. Maybe," she added seductively as she trailed a fingertip down his bare chest, "if you call her now, she'll leave us alone for the whole, long night."
"Okay!" he replied quickly, and a little breathlessly. How quickly this woman could turn him into mush. Well, turn his brain into mush, anyway; other parts of him were anything but mushy around her. But he still made no move to get his phone and just continued to stare at her.
"Well?" she prompted.
"Oh, you meant right now? Sorry, I was just enjoying the view." He smiled a roguish smile as his eyes raked down her body and then back to her face.
She looked down at herself and realized that she wasn't covered at all. She was just sitting there, calmly having a conversation with him and wasn't wearing a darn thing except for the small bandage on her shoulder. And she hadn't even realized it.
Calmly, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he got to her, she reached over to the end of the 'bed' to where one of them had thrown his shirt. She smoothly put her injured arm through the sleeve first, and then shrugged the other arm in and over her shoulder. As she started buttoning it up, Castle started whining. "Ka-aaate!"
"What?"
"Come back to bed," he asked in a slightly pleading tone. Then, his eyes got momentarily big before his face settled into another grin. "You know, I really like the way that sounds. You, me, bed. All in the same thought. Together." He waggled his eyebrows. "In a bed," he repeated. "And take off the shirt."
"No. The shirt stays on," she proclaimed, "until you call Paula."
"Ka-aaate!" he whined again, but she only responded by tossing his phone at his chest.
"Call her," she ordered him, "and then let's order that room service. Now I definitely need some food."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
He'd told her to try the chicken. Over the course of the last month, he'd had one too many mediocre or downright bad room service steaks, and he wasn't anxious to try another. So Rick told her to choose two chicken entrees. He also made Kate answer the door, lest the waiter recognize him and end their anonymity in the room, while he hid behind one of the rock walls.
As they ate their chicken, Kate used the opportunity to give him grief about what she'd heard of his end of the conversation with Paula.
"So let me get this straight: she now thinks that you ... shall we say ... succumbed to the charms of some little Richard Castle groupie? Like she slipped you her key and you actually decided to use it?"
He had the grace to look a little sheepish. "Well, you're the one who made me call her back!" He gave her a look before sticking a piece of chicken in his mouth.
"Well, you're the one who was just supposed to be vague and tell her you'd see her at your next event!"
"She wanted to go over something on the itinerary with me! She wanted to come to my room! I had to tell her I wasn't there, and then she wanted to know when I would be there."
"Couldn't you just tell her not to come over ... that you were sick or something?" Kate countered before tasting a forkful of her rice.
He shook his head. "That woman has no concept of boundaries. She thinks that since she's seen me naked, she's just automatically entitled to burst in on me whenever she wants now. Goes with sickness too ... doesn't matter to her. I wouldn't be surprised if she scares the little flu germs away."
He didn't notice it, but Kate's eyes had widened slightly during his mini-monologue on Paula, and now she set her fork down and just stared at him with an incredulous look on her face.
"What? Do I have sauce on my chin?" he asked self-consciously, not able to decipher her look.
"Castle," she began, "how long have we been involved?"
"I ... uh ... is that a trick question?" he wanted to know. But honestly, he didn't know how to answer it because he knew they were actually involved in some strange way long before either of them admitted anything, or before it was official.
"No. Just answer the question."
"Uh ... well ... uh, do you mean since when we went to the Hamptons during the blizzard?"
She looked momentarily surprised. "Yeah. Of course. What are you talking about?"'
"Never mind. So, oh, a few months, I guess."
"A few months. Good." She nodded. "Castle, what did we just do in that ... bed type of thing over there? Twice?" She bobbed her head backwards toward the bed, but her eyes never left his.
Rick couldn't help the slow smile that formed on his face at just the mention of what they'd done, twice, even though her question was kind of off-the-wall. But then he saw that she wasn't smiling, so he forced his mouth back into a neutral look. "Uh, Kate? Since you were a rather ... active participant, I thought you knew what we did."
"Yes, I know what we did. And you seem to remember what we did, and how long we've been involved. So, Castle, would you please tell me if you really think it's a good idea, considering what we just did for the first time, to tell me that your agent—the one you are very actively trying to avoid, I might add—has seen you naked?"
Naked? Did he say that? To Kate? Oh, yeah, he thought, he did say that. Oh. He opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it again, thinking better of saying something when he saw one of her glares directed at him.
Finally, he had to speak; he knew she was waiting for him to say something. "I ... uh ... suppose ... uh ... not really?"
She just looked at him. Damn her 'look'. No wonder she was such a good cop. She had that 'look'. He just didn't like that look being directed at him.
"Not really? Castle, I know you weren't a monk. But I really don't want to hear about any of those past ... exploits, in any way, shape or form." She paused for a minute. "Got it?"
He nodded, not really wanting to speak at that moment.
"Good. Now, getting back to our topic of conversation before you decided to put bad images in my mind, she thinks that you're enjoying the charms and talents of some nubile young literary type?"
He sighed. "Hey, I did what you asked, okay? I called her back. I told you it was a bad idea!"
"But why couldn't you just be vague? Give her non-answers? Or—here's a thought—make something up! You do make things up for a living, you know," she finished dryly.
"I tried to be vague! But she started firing questions at me, and then it was really hard to focus because you were walking around the room in my shirt, and your legs ... I haven't seen that much of your legs since—"
"Castle!" she warned, interrupting his tangent.
"Oh, yeah, right. But you distracted me, and I said I wasn't going to be there, and she just ran with it. She was like a dog with a meaty bone." He bared his teeth for effect. "And then ... she just ... uh ... kind of assumed ..."
"That since you weren't going to be in your room, you were in someone else's room?"
"Well ... yeah. I never actually said where I'd be. And I couldn't really tell her that I got another room or she'd really know something was up."
"So you think this is preferable? That she thinks you found some bimbo? Especially when you've told her several times that she shouldn't be trying to set you up with anyone on this trip? God, Castle, what is she going to try next, if she thinks that you're 'eligible' again?"
His face fell. "Oh," was all he said as he thought of the further implications. Oh. If Paula thought he was with another woman, then ... "Well ..." But then he shook his head as all of a sudden, he was hit with a new resolve. He looked around the room. "Look, I don't care. You shouldn't either. Paula will be Paula. But we're here, and," he grinned as he rubbed his hands together like he was getting ready for a good prank, "she has no idea where I am. I even put this room under a different name, so she won't find us."
His voice had a different edge to it now, and she picked up on that. She looked around the room too, mirroring the look he'd just given seconds ago. The rock walls, the 'tent', the open sky' above them. In a way, this was their own little secluded paradise. Sure, the rolling room service table didn't really fit, but she could overlook that for the room and the man who was sharing the room with her.
"Okay," she said simply.
He looked puzzled for a moment. "Okay what?"
"Okay to ... everything. We'll deal with Paula later. But you're going to mute the ringer on your phone, and I'm going to try to forget that we were interrupted by your agent, or that you're supposedly enjoying the charms of some groupie."
He grinned. "You can be my groupie. I'd love to enjoy your charms."
"Oh, I'm sure you would." She smiled at him coyly.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
He was cleaning up their room service dishes while she explored the room after hanging up a few of her clothes. There were still parts of the room that they hadn't yet seen, mainly due to the rather immediate distractions from other activities pretty much as soon as they'd entered the room. While wandering around, she rounded the corner of another uneven 'rock wall' and then she stopped dead. Looking up, she thought it looked like it was ... no, it couldn't be. But she saw some of the controls and buttons that blended into the wall, and she knew that it really was what she thought it was.
It was a small, secluded little alcove. There was a tile floor, once again designed to probably resemble rocks. A subtle drain was in the floor, a floor that gently sloped downward and most likely would be transformed into a small pool, or bathtub, when filled with water. From the drain and partially from not finding one anywhere else, she knew this had to be the shower/bathtub, but it was like no other shower or bathtub that she'd ever seen in her life. But looking out at the fake rock outcropping that jutted out from the wall, she was intrigued and just a little bit amazed; it looked like a waterfall. Or it would be a waterfall when she turned on the water.
She walked over to the controls and turned them on, also muting the lighting in the enclosed area. Sure enough, as soon as she turned on the water, it bubbled and fell over the fake rock outcropping into the open area below.
Oh, my. Seeing it, her mind was now running wild with possibilities. Visions of standing under that waterfall with Castle began to fill her mind, and she almost felt like closing her eyes and getting lost in her imagination. Even despite the last several hours, she was so used to only imagining him in her mind because they'd been apart for so long, and she was almost falling back into that trap now. But her eyes flew wide open when it fully hit her that Castle was just in the other part of the room, and he could ... they could ...
Oh, yeah.
She remembered the cosmetic bag in the other part of the bathroom, and she knew she had some waterproof bandages in it, to be used for the express purpose of keeping her shoulder wound dry while showering for the next several days . She was sure the nurses hadn't really intended this type of 'showering' when they'd given her the bandages, but she really didn't care too much about that rght now. So she stole into the other room to quickly replace the bandage, and then scurried back to where the water was still gently flowing down over the rocks. Stripping off the hotel robe that she now wore, she stepped into the gentle cascade of the warm water. Looking around as the warm water sluiced over her body, it was hard for her to believe they were really inside. In a hotel.
The scene was perfect. Well, it was almost perfect; it was just missing one thing. Castle. And she needed to remedy that.
"Castle?" she called out. There was no answer for a couple of seconds, so she called his name again a bit louder. Finally, she heard his voice as he was obviously walking closer.
"Kate? I have my phone muted now. Hey, where did you go? Are we playing a game of hide and seeee ... " His voice trailed off as he came around the rock wall and stopped in almost precisely the same place she had. However, he had a much better view than she'd had when she first walked into the room; she'd just seen an empty, cave-like area that she eventually surmised to be the shower. But he was now seeing the 'waterfall' in all of its full functioning glory, in muted, indirect lighting, with the falling water making an almost musical twinkling noise as it hit the tile and the slight water pool now forming on the floor. But the item that riveted his attention was what was in the middle of the waterfall right now.
It was one very wet, and very naked Kate.
And he was struck dumb by the sight. Air exchange in and out of his lungs proved to be a very difficult thing for him to accomplish all of a sudden. His mind flashed back to when he walked in on her in the bathroom in the Hamptons after the blizzard, and she was in much the same pose now, except she was standing up. She had her head tipped back as the water cascaded over her hair, and one hand was combing through the wet strands. But this time, her eyes were open, smoky with newly rekindled passion, and they were fixed directly on him. She stared at him, and she let him stare at her for several long, loaded moments before she finally spoke in a low, seductive tone. "Are you going to join me, Rick? The water is nice and ... hot."
Of course the double-entendre wasn't lost on him, and he blurted out on a rushed breath, "That's not all that's hot." But he needed no second invitation as he shucked off his own robe and threw it behind him as he walked down to stand before her under the falling water. Once again, they just stared at each other for several moments. He lifted his hand and ran his fingertips lightly down her arm reverently.
"This is one of those times," he said in a low voice, "that I still almost can't believe you're actually here."
She smiled a little smile at him. "I know. I even had to catch myself before ... remind myself that you were just in the next room and not a plane ride away. Seems kind of silly, considering; you know, before when we ..."
"I can relate. Do you know how many times I've woken up over the last month and thought about the Hamptons, and our sleeping arrangements during that blizzard?"
Knowing it was a rhetorical question, she didn't answer, but instead leaned forward and kissed his chest, resting her hands lightly on his hips. She felt his fingertips graze lightly down her sides, and she had to hold back an involuntary shiver from the light caress.
He tore his eyes off of her to look around. "This is amazing," he said, referring to the room and the ambiance of the waterfall shower.
"You didn't know about this from the hotel book?"
"No. It said something about a waterfall, but I didn't expect ... this."
He looked down at her again, and then lowered his lips to claim hers in a tender kiss. After pulling back, he said, "The room is nice, but you're even more amazing."
He was gazing at her with that rare intensity that he sometimes showed, and it almost took her breath away. But still she managed to say one more thing.
"You're not so bad yourself, Castle."
And then their lips met again, and hands gently caressed warm, wet skin, and no more words were spoken between them for quite a while as they began to thoroughly enjoy Grand Canyon-themed waterfalls and all that they inspired.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
How did that work for some visuals at the end? I hope I described it well enough to paint some sort of a picture in everyone's minds. I tried to inject some fun, some humor and a bit of romance, so I hope that worked for you.
I just love picking on Paula. I know the agent, as portrayed that one time on the show, is just rather pushy and blunt. She's not really as terribly obnoxious as I portray her, but it's just so fun to write her like that. And really, some of that is just my Castle's interpretation of her, and of course her bad timing in relation to all things Caskett.
I always appreciate hearing your thoughts on the chapter.
