Her fingers squeeze around her thumb in a tight grip. There's a need inside of her to keep her hands occupied with something, to busy them with anything.

Because there's also an intense drive in her system that she's never... ever felt before. With her head aching painfully, there's a feeling inside of her, inside of her heart, telling her to close the distance between them. Not out of lust, because he is very attractive. If she had a lot less self-control and even less shame, she probably would have done it already just for the thrill. But this pull, this drive inside of her, is something different. Her dreams are giving her a sense of deep intimacy with him that she just can't for the life of her make any sort of sense of.

She has memories of what his arms and his lips and his body feels like, but no actual feeling behind it. Like she can describe a food she's never even tasted before.

His baby blue eyes are echoing with a hard pang of sadness as he looks down into the evidence box. She can only stare at them from her place behind him for a few seconds before she has to physically check herself back into place, shaking her head in a small motion and looking back at the floor, catching her breath which she had just realized she had lost.

Her headache pulsates around her skull again when she looks away and clears her throat. "Mr. Castle?" She softly prods.

Rick aches at the sound of her voice, knowing it's her but at the same time, a complete stranger from the woman he was just about to promise his life to. "Yeah?" He manages over the thick blockade his emotions put up around his throat.

Beckett shifts her feet a bit nervously, wringing her hand around her thumb before she asks. "You talked before about," she attempts to get the insane sounding words out in a serious enough tone, "about you and I meeting in some... other place." She minces her words and looks down to the floor. "You seem pretty convinced of it, so I guess I'm just wondering who I was."

Rick turns his head to try and look over his shoulder at her, to at least give her the courtesy of looking her in the eye, but can't manage it besides a small twist of his neck.

"I mean," she chuckles halfheartedly, "you said you loved me in that coal plant, so..." she says, feeling her heart clench uncomfortably at the use of the word, "I'm just curious who I was to you."

Rick cranes his neck downward, his heart pulling violently as he imagines her in her wedding dress, standing in front of him underneath the gazebo in the Hamptons, giving him the chance to tell her how much he loves her, how she inspired him to not only write again but inspired him to become something so much more than what he ever believed he could be and inspired him to be a better man, all before he made the promise to devote his life to her.

But he screwed that up too.

He chuckles darkly to himself as he opens his eyes and looks to a spot to his right against the wall and nods to it. "It was right over there." He says in a light voice as the memory floats back into his mind. "I found this place just below your right earlobe," he says, making a circle over the spot on himself, "that makes you jump whenever I kiss it."

Beckett's heart flutters violently as a tingle rushes up her neck, and knowing he can't see her, she reaches up and traces the spot on her neck just below her earlobe with the pad of her index finger, her blood turning thin at the fantasy of his lips brushing across it.

"If I were the man I made myself into for you," he continues as he looks back down into the box, "you would have been my wife."

Her breath hitches violently, even audibly to herself, when his words hit her brain. This is clearly just insanity. This complete stranger expects her to believe that they were supposed to get married?

"But for whatever reason, I decided to abandon you on our wedding day and leave you standing at the altar." He tells her in a very emotionally heavy voice, his sadness dripping off every syllable. He draws in a long, shaky breath that straightens his posture and rolls his stinging shoulders back. "So for the time being," he says on a deep sigh, "you're just my fiance."

"I-I..." she struggles, her eyes narrowing and her head shaking, trying to make sense of him. "You said you left on the day we were supposed to get married?" She asks, not believing a single word even as it leaves her mouth.

His heart quivers painfully and his eyes burn hotly, the image he had in his mind just moments ago of their perfect wedding day now poisoned by her in her wedding dress, knowing he broke her heart because he never showed. "Yeah."

Beckett's throat wants to constrict, but she doesn't let it and gives his back a simple nod. "Well... knowing me, that be a pretty hard thing to get passed." She tells him, trying to be honest. "I'm not sure I could manage it."

Rick's teeth clench to himself. "Line forms to my left, Kate."

Her breath stops short of her lungs when she hears him, looking back up to the dark, despondent look in his eyes. All she can see now is the dark looks of a man who's angry at himself and angry at the world for being at his wit's end, at a dead end and who's mad at himself for turning down a road that leads to nowhere. Whatever this pull in her system is, she casts it away and corrects herself. "Look, Mr. Castle, you're clearly going through a rough time with... whatever it is you're dealing with, so... I-I think it's best we put some distance between us." She says as professionally as she can.

Rick sighs hard to himself, tired of pretentions and charades with her, whatever version he's dealing with. "You're scared because you've never let anyone get close enough to where you had to put distance between you in the first place." He answers back plainly, looking straight ahead.

Beckett starts backward out of evidence as she continues. "Please, don't try to pretend you know me."

When he hears the click of her heels against the linoleum floor moving away from him, he speaks. "You never had a nightlight as a kid."

His words spear her. Her entire body clenches violently, her head spinning and her lungs emptying in a single gasp as she grabs onto the side of the shelf at the end of the aisle. She spins around with a whip and sees him turned around, looking straight through her with an etched expression.

He takes a slow step toward her and continues. "It wasn't because you were afraid of the dark. You were. But you always felt it a point of pride to just stare it down. You always felt the need to never let it see you flinch, even if you were scared."

She blinks rapidly a few times and shakes her head, ending the motion with an empty grin. "Nice parlor trick, Mr. Castle." She says and turns back around.

"You had your tonsils taken out when you were nine." He says in a clear cut voice that pierces right through her and makes her stop mid-stride. She whips back around and sees him looking her dead in the eye, confidence and seriousness in his expression as he stares at her. "You were pretty miserable, so your mother stayed home and cuddled up with you and watched reruns of Temptation Lane until you got better."

She can't breathe, can't even think, or feel as he continues to pace his way toward her, almost menacingly.

"You're also a huge fan of Saved By The Bell and dressed as Gene Simmons on Halloween when you were eleven."

As he approaches her, she wants to put her hand out to stop him, but can't move. She's paralyzed. Who is he?

Rick looks away from her frozen, wide-eyed expression and down to her left wrist. With a smooth motion, he takes her wrist in his hand and lifts it up, petting the leather band of the wristwatch with his thumb. "I know why you wear the watch." He says, seeing the scuff marks the watch had before he had it restored for her. "I know you like to keep him close." He continues, knowing she knows. "I know you sometimes worry you spend too much time working and you'll forget to call him once in a while... and that he might fall off the wagon again."

Beckett's heart is pounding violently, painfully in her chest as he gingerly holds her wrist. But everything inside of her comes to a screeching halt when his eyes look up from her father's watch to her neck and she feels his hand move off her wrist. When she sees his hand come into her view, her brain is telling him to shake his hand away, to push it off her. But as his fingers gently brush down the side of her neck, all she can do is flutter her eyelids closed and drift into his touch.

But his touch only lasts a brief second as he pushes the opening of her blouse to the side and tugs at the chain holding the ring, pulling it out from underneath her shirt. He slides his fingers down the chain and she looks down to see him clasp the ring in between his thumb and forefinger.

"And I know why you wear the ring." He says in a low, husky voice. Against everything telling her to shove him away and not even look at him, her eyes flick frightfully up to lock in with his gaze. "I know you built a wall around your heart after she died... how you pushed everyone away so you'd never hurt like that ever again. I know because I bloodied my fingers raw clawing at that wall. And in my world," he says softly, showing her the ring, "you took that wall down... and you didn't need this anymore."

Rick looks up as he clutches the ring in a soft grip in front of her, the ring he watched her tuck away for the final time just before he ruined what was to be the first day of the rest of their lives together. But when he looks up to her, he's brought back to reality by the look in her eyes. All he sees is fear.

This isn't his Kate. The woman he loves is out there somewhere, but she's not here.

After a moment, he blinks and looks away, letting the ring fall from his fingers as he puts a large gap in between them. "Apologies, Captain." He says on a chuckle. "It's probably the bottom of the prescription bottle talking."

Without another word, out of fear he might say anything else he'll come to regret once he gathers what senses he can, he steps around her and moves out of the aisle and toward the stairwell.

But Kate, once he pushes passed her, lets the breath she's holding out in a quick huff, half resembling a choked sob. Her hand wrenches up and she grabs onto the front of her blouse, clutching the ring tightly as her eyes burn.

Come back. I need to show you something down in evidence.

She rereads her text message, watching the time sent time grow larger and larger with every passing second. Where the hell is he? She's getting impatient.

In the distance, she finally hears the door open and her body crawls with hot excitement. They'd made an agreement that the precinct was off limits, but she hasn't had him in days and can't wait the three plus hours it would take to get him in her apartment. His footsteps against the linoleum sound off his approach and her stomach coils with anticipation.

"Beckett?" He asks.

Her bottom lip falls in the soft grasp of her teeth as she hides against the darkened wall in between two rows of shelves.

"Beckett, you in here?"

Castle comes to a stop in front of the table and she pounces at him from the shadows. In one quick motion, she launches herself at him, taking him by surprise and grabbing onto his shirt, pushing him back through the aisle and against the opposite wall, down into a chair that sits in between two shelves. Her hands wrench the striped light blue and white dress shirt with the snap buttons that she's been wanting to rip off of him all day and her legs spread to straddle him. She presses herself down against him and puts her mouth over his in a hot fevered kiss, her hand brushing his hair back roughly and her other hand grabbing his jaw.

"Mmm!" He moans in a high pitched, surprised tone as she kisses him. Even when he's not prepared, he's an amazing kisser. She fists his hair and presses against his lips before releasing him in a pleased, wet pluck and leans back as she straddles his lap, his hands hanging out in front of him and his expression hazy.

"What the hell took you so long?" She sighs, moving her hand off his jaw and onto his chest.

"I thought it was work related. I wasn't exactly eager to dig through boxes of evidence after eight hours."

She rolls her eyes and scoffs loudly just before she grabs onto his collar and sends herself back down onto his lips, pressing his mouth open with her lips and moving her tongue inside, her spine crawling in a heavy pang of ecstacy. She kisses him as deeply as she can, moving back to apply as much pressure against him as she can when she feels his hands take her thighs and squeeze.

She takes her tongue back and releases him again, his hair pleasantly disheveled. "Next time, hurry the hell up."

"If I'd known this is what you were after, I would have." He says, raising his brow.

"I didn't want you walking in here with a big, doofy smile on your face, telling everybody in the precinct what we're doing." She says in a whisper, her lips almost brushing against his.

"And instead, you're going to have me walk out of here with a much more telling smile on my and your face."

"We'll go out the back." She says just before she descends on his lips again, devouring him in another fever pitch of passion, letting loose a storm of moans as their chests mewl against one another.

"Mmm," she groans when she feels his hands travel up her legs jealously. She sinks her teeth down onto his bottom lip, giving it a light tug for a second and soothes it over by capturing it in between her lips and sucking it in and then going back to kiss him fully. Her heart is pounding with excitement so hard as she mewls against him, a layer of hot sweat breaking out over her skin.

She feels his fingers at the top button of her white blouse and she presses her chest out and lets his well-trained fingers fly down her shirt, unbuttoning it in a flash as he kisses her. Feeling the cold air of the evidence room hit her, she bucks into him and takes the tops of his shirt in a firm grip. She stops kissing him for a moment to give in to her smile and she grins against his lips, letting out a laugh as she rips the snap buttons of his shirt open in one swoop. He gasps loudly and his chest heaves up against her.

"Uhhh..." he moans against her lips, "that was so hot."

She chuckles against his lips and kisses him again. The forbidden edge of all this, knowing that even if this was happening in the privacy of her apartment like she'd planned on this morning, it could spell a disaster for their new relationship, it just adds to the suspense and makes the already incredible physicality of their relationship so much more exciting.

Her hands jealously massage his chest and she continues to kiss him while he pulls at the bare skin of her waist and the small of her back.

But they both jump when her phone rings in the pocket of her slacks. On a gasp, she pries her lips off him and looks to her pocket. Rick's head falls back against the brick of the wall in crestfallen impatience, his shoulders sagging.

"No," she tells him, grabbing the back of his neck, "keep going." She demands and yanks his lips back to her as she digs her phone out. She blindly fiddles as she gives his lips one last hard kiss and steers his lips off her and down the column of her neck. Her thumb taps against the screen of her phone, her boyfriend's lips pressing hot-breathed kisses against her neck, and she puts her phone to her ear.

"Be-huh-ckett." She bucks into him, her entire body jolting violently as his lips find just the right spot underneath her right earlobe.

"Uh..." Ryan starts on the other end of the line, "Beckett, you okay?"

Rick's lips continue to assault the long expanse of her neck as she fists his hair, pulling him against her and not letting him stop. "Yeah," she says in as normal a tone as she can manage. "Just on the treadmill. What's-" she twists again as he finds the crook of her neck, "-what's up?"

"DNA came back on our victim. It wasn't a match for the other murder, but Gates wants us to keep looking for a connection."

Kate massages the back of his scalp with her nails and steers his lips down the length of her collarbone, her head going limp and her mind going blank at the incredible feeling. "Okay," she slurs, "I'll head down to evidence and..." she says, moving her hand out of his hair and down to his shirt, pushing it haphazardly down his back, "get to work." She tells him, eyeing the appealing bare skin of her boyfriend's well toned back.

Not bothering with a goodbye, she hangs up and lets her phone fall out of her hand and clatter onto the floor to free her hand and push his shirt off his shoulders that much quicker, taking his lips back as quickly as she can. With his chest completely bare, she mewls against him as she presses him back into the wall.

"You know," He says against her lips, "you have no idea how many times I've had this fantasy."

She smiles against him, sliding her palms down his heaving chest as her undone blouse falls off one shoulder. "Making your dreams come true, huh?"

She feels him smile against her lips and she pulls back when she feels his hand slide gently up to cup her cheek. She looks back, sinking herself into his palm and putting her hand over it and petting his knuckles with her thumb, looking back into his soft, loving gaze. "You are my dream come true."

On a long breath into vibrating body, she feels her eyes peel open.

Once she realizes she's staring at the ceiling of her office, Beckett pushes herself upright and sees she's fallen asleep on her couch that sits adjacent to her desk. But everything is still happening to her. Her heart is still racing wildly, her skin is still hotly flushed, her lips still feel tingly and raw, her hands still feel jealous from his chest, her legs still feel like they're mewling against his hips.

An angry flash boils into her system and she fights with the air in front of her on a tight groan of frustration before forcing her aching head down into the grip of her fingers, pulling at her hair.

It's not happening. They're just dreams.

They're just wild fantasies, just like her therapist said.

Because whatever she keeps feeling in these dreams just can't be real.

A/N: Let me know what you thought of this dream. Got pretty hot'n'heavy, huh? ;)

I have one or two more planned, semi one shots I want to sprikle in that are two short to just post on their own, so I'll add them here. Let me know what you think.