Thankfully her dad is gone until tomorrow night, otherwise flinging open the front door, getting extremely angry when the key gets stuck in the lock, yanking it out, then slamming the door might cause some alarm. Her bag of food is dropped to the floor as she rips off her denim jacket, turning it inside out when she snatches at the sleeves. Once it's off her arms, she flings it furiously out in front of her, knocking the lampshade against its side before it lands on the couch.

"Uugggghhhh!" She seethes violently.

Her eyes don't burn, but she can feel them get hot and start to well up as she paces into the living room, reaching up and putting her hands in her hair, taking fistfuls as she tries to contain herself.

Who the hell does he think he is! After all the things he said, after spending the entire day with her, helping take care of her, even carrying her to bed after she fell asleep and leaving his shirt behind, after everything they'd talked about, she could have bet her life that he was ready to take her back. He stayed here, held her hair back despite clearly not wanting to be here, she finally got him to open up about himself, and he stands her up for her!?

"Aghhh!" She seethes again, wanting to rip her hair out, pacing frantically in front of the TV.

A fast knock hits on the door, breaking her out of her riptide of frustration and heartbreak. Zapped of her emotions in that moment, she roughs her palms under her eyes and sniffs over her emotionally congested sinuses, brushing her hair out with her fingers and moves toward the door.

But when she looks through the peephole and sees him with one hand in his pocket, hanging his head, she feels her fury ignite through her like a chemical fire. On a very harsh sigh, she pushes against the door and strides away from it in an angry huff.

"Beckett!" He calls from outside. She stops near the coffee table, looking back over to the door with a cold stare, the sound of his slow, patient sounding voice getting the better part of her heart that he always seemed to have control over. "Just so you know, I have to be at the police station early in the morning." He continues in a casual tone. Kate balls her fists up in tight, dangerous, balls. "So I thought it would be best if we just talked now?" He says with a lift in his voice.

"Talk?" She parrots loudly and obviously as she strides back to the door and yanks it open. "Talk?!" Rick just stares at her with a calm, lidded gaze, but she can tell he's clenching his jaw with impatience. "Now you want to talk after I catch you making googly eyes with blondie?!" She scolds him, spinning around and marching back into her living room.

"I guess we're jumping straight to conclusions again." He says, sounding as if he's mocking her while he slowly steps inside and closes the door behind him.

"I have every right to jump to conclusions, Castle!" She fights with him, turning around at the opposite end of the living room to send him an angry glare. "You said you were picking me up." She demands, pointing her finger at the ground, demanding answers from him as he shifts his weight and looks away from her. "You said we were going to talk. You told me you wanted us to talk and you stand me up for her?!"

"I lost track of time, Beckett." He tries to excuse himself, lifting his arms up in the air.

Her eyes burn holes in him as she storms over to him, closing the distance between them in just three very long strides. "What..." she says on her way and grabs his right forearm with both of her hands, "the hell is this?" She says through clenched teeth, yanking his arm up and showing his wrist to him, showing him his watch.

Rick feels his teeth grit and looks away as her fingers dig into his arm for a moment before feeling her toss his arm back down to his side. "Beckett, I'm stuck working with her on this murder case, that's it."

"So you were talking case work then?" She demands, slowly stepping up to him and narrowing her eyes at him, raising her brow, calling him out. "You were talking about the case and you just lost track of time, is that it?"

He feels his throat close again, his chest tighten, and the same scared, vulnerable feeling in the pit of his stomach, terrified of her judgement that makes him close up. "We were just talking, alright?"

"You're lying!" She says, poking him in the chest as hard as she can, seeing an instance of a kind of fear she's only ever seen on his face once before flash across his face for a second. "I know the look in your eye when you're talking about a case, Castle. I've sat across from it for five years! You were not talking casework with her."

"We..." he tries, but fails, feeling just so small for not being able to say it. When his eyes travel away from her, Kate leans over and tries to catch him, raising her brow to demand answers. On a hard, shaky sigh, he meets her gaze. "I was talking to her about us, okay?"

It's then that Kate's heart feels as if it's shriveling into a raisin in her chest, taking her lungs, along with her ability to breathe, with it. On weak legs, she shuffles away from him, looking at him with wide, emotionally laden eyes. "You talked to her..." she says back in a small voice, "about us?" She finishes, her voice barely there.

"She's just easy to talk to, that's all." He says in a tight voice, his stomach churning, but manages to muster up a shrug.

"How the hell-" she spits, sending her palms into his chest and shoving him, "could you do that to me?!" She spits.

Already feeling weak, Rick is thrown off balance and falls back against the front door. And in a flash, he feels no stronger than a little boy. He just feeels so small. She'll never listen to him. He can't even get her to calm down enough for two seconds to explain himself and she's already trying to push him out of her life. He'll just never be what she wants, no matter what he does. In that moment, with his heart in his throat, feeling emotionally battered, his hand finds the doorknob and cranks it, pulling the door open.

But Kate reaches up and pushes the door closed again, using her other hand to push against his shoulder and force him to turn and look at her. And when he meets her eyes again, she knows without a doubt the look in his eyes and exactly where she's seen it before. The only time she's seen that scared look in his eye before was the night she brought those emails to him that Tyson wrote.

"You're not leaving until you answer me, Rick." She says in a harsh whisper, pressing her finger into his shoulder.

"Kate, we were just talking, that's all." He says in a shaky voice.

"I try to get you to talk about us and all you do throw me off, but all of a sudden you can talk to a woman who wants to sleep with you about us?" She demands, keeping him pinned against the door by standing directly in front of him, giving him nowhere to go.

His jaw clenches and his teeth gnash together, his eyes narrowing painfully.

"What was her expert advice, huh?" She asks, raising her brow. "Dump me so she can get her shot on top of you?" She tosses at him.

"She's not like that, okay?" Rick says, feeling as if he has to defend Sierra. "If you have to know, most of it was about me and why are you so upset that I was talking to someone?" He begins to fight back. "You were talking to someone behind my back for an entire year and I never once held that against you."

"I was talking to a liscened- clinical- therapist!" She punches, poking him in the chest with each word. "And I was talking to him because I wanted to be the kind of person that open up to you so we could make it work."

"And I don't need someone to talk to?" He pushes back.

"Why can't you just talk to me, Rick?" She fights back, her tone violent and angry. "I'm right here, just talk to me, damn it!"

"The fact that you don't understand what makes talking to you so damn difficult for me right now astounds me, Beckett." He fights back.

"You can push me away as much as you want, but I know you still love me!" She says, taking another step toward him, keeping him pinned against the front door.

"Believe me, I'm thinking I have good reason to push you away if you're going to cross the line into physical abuse every time we have a fight." He retorts.

But with that, she's fed up with him, and grabs onto the top of his dark burgundy dress shirt and starts to make her way through the living, dragging him along with her. Rick can only silently comply, having no physical strength left in him as she drags him behind her down the hall and into her bedroom. "If you don't love me," she says as she enters her bedroom and lets him go, going over to her dresser, "then what the hell is this?" She demands as she yanks open his drawer and tosses his pale white-blue shirt at his face.

Rick pulls with shirt off his face with numb feeling hands. "Kate, it was just-"

"Don't try to spin it, Castle." She says and storms back up to him. "I know you still love me." She says, taking the shirt from his chest and tossing it back into the open drawer. "What this was was you just want to see me hurt just like you did with that stupid stewardess!" She says, her emotion finally getting the better of her as her voice cracks.

"For the last time, Beckett, I never touched Sierra!" He says loudly. "And I must have been right all along, you really must not love me at all if you think I'm that cruel."

"Don't you dare try to tell me that I don't love you, Rick. I love you with all my heart!" She says in a cracking voice as she steps up to him again.

"I don't think you do, Kate." He tells her in a weak feeling voice, his heart feeling like it's quivering and weak in his chest. "Because right now, it feels like you're two seconds away from packing up and never talking to me again."

"Then you haven't been paying attention!" She says emotionally, poking him in the chest again. "Because I've been telling you for over a month that I'm here to get the man I love back but you just can't seem to get it through your thick skull that that might actually be you!"

He can't respond to that behind a scared gnashing of his teeth, feeling his eyes burn.

But Kate is already off and she can't stop it now, keeping on him as she slowly paces her way toward him, inching him back toward the door to her bedroom. "You're too scared that there might actually be someone in this world that actually loves you for who you are! You're too scared to admit that there's someone in your life that will give you the kind of love that you deserve and that she's standing right in front of you." She says, backing him into her bedroom door, seeing him shake his head as he backs away, his eyes scared and fearful. "You're just too scared to admit that I might be the love of your life!" She says, raising her hands up to shove him back again.

Something then breaks inside of him, and Rick reaches up and catches her wrists before she can land the blow, grabs her arms and pins her against the wall to his right.

Her back hits the drywall and she lets out a grunt, feeling his hands tighten around her arms for a second as he presses her against the wall. "Stop it, okay?" He says in a shaky voice, his grip relaxing on her arms.

Snapped out of her riptide of anger, she has a chance to look up to his eyes. God, he still looks so scared. But... she can still feel his hands... gently holding her.

"Why is it so difficult for you to believe that I just might need something else?" He says to her, his shoulders deflating and his voice weak.

"Because you still love me." She answers him with a softly raised brow, a soft smile appearing on her face.

"What difference does it make if we're going to keep doing this to each other?" He asks her. "This can't go on."

"Then why are you still holding me?" She asks back in a soft voice, hearing him gasp slightly as his hands stop on her arms.

Because it's only then that Rick realizes that his hands are still holding her arms, carefully and gently, his palms resting against her warm skin and his thumbs petting gentle lines against her biceps. When he realizes it, his heart folds. She just feels... so...

"It doesn't mean anything." He says as his brow furrows and his jaw clenches.

But Kate just smiles and leans in toward him. "Then let go."

Kate watches him closely, as his eyes stare at his hands on her arms, still gingerly holding her. After a moment, she feels his thumbs brush back against her arms again, making her heart skip. When they stop, his darkened eyes flick up to her and she feels herself lock up.

In a blinding second, he pushes her back against the wall and puts his mouth on her in an ignited kiss, his grip on her arms tightening as his lips sealed against her's fully move, starting to almost feast on her lips in a wave of quick, open kisses, his tongue already darting in once and her's darting right after it when his lips chomp down on her. With another frenzied motion of his lips, he kisses her fully, as passionately as he can, mashing her head back against the wall and pulling on her arms, feeling a fire of frustration, anger, and impatience in his breath and in his lips.

Her hands find his stomach, her fingers fist into the fabric of his shirt, and she pushes him away, the sound of a loud smack of their lips hitting her ears. On a gasp after he stole her breath for himself, she looks over to him, stunned. All she can see is the darkness in his eyes, the deep and low hanging furrow in his brow, the tight knit in his jaw.

While she pants, her brow starts to lower and her eyes start to darken. If that's the game he wants to play...

Her hands fist his shirt again and she yanks him back toward her, catching his lips in another sequence of frenzied kisses, lit with anger and frustration. "Mmm!" She moans into his mouth angrily.

"Mmm!" He moans right back as he presses her back against the wall, stepping forward to pin her with his body. Her heart jumps when she feels his hips press her back, her legs already opening for him as she continues to fight with his lips and his tongue. She feels the weight get taken off her feet as his pelvis presses against her, her hands still fisting against his shirt as she pulls him against her. Still so caught up trying to keep up with his frantic lips as his mouth devours her's in a slew of kisses, she's caught completely off guard when she feels him grab both her legs and yank her up, giving her entire body a hard shove up against the wall.

"Uughh!" Kate grunts into his mouth, her legs wrapping around his hips and her ankles hooking together. As her lips slowly start to move into kiss him again, her hands out in front of her, she feels the skin on the back of her thighs tingle with excitement as his fingers dig roughly into her legs. "That all you got?"

Feeling her breath fan into his mouth, Rick squeezes her legs, leans up, and kisses her again as hard as he can. Once his lips are sealed against her, her head pressed back against the wall, he feels her hands go into his hair at the same time she's moving her lips against him and delving her tongue inside of his mouth. When she tries to make the first move by taking a tight fistful of his hair, he tries to get the better of her by pressing his hips against her as hard as he can, making her breath hitch. He doesn't give her another second before his hands leave her thighs and grab onto the bottom hem of her shirt, whipping it off her and over her head.

"Ah!" She grunts as he rips the shirt from her. If they're really doing this, she's not going to lose. God, he frustrates her so damn much!

Right as he's tossing her shirt to the floor, she's latching onto his jaw and yanking him back up to her lips, kissing him as hard as she can with her fingers digging angrily into his scalp. "Mmm!" He yelps into her mouth, which gives her the signal to envelop his neck with her arms and roughly move her hand up through his hair and dig her nails into his head.

But she's caught off guard when his arms go around her, snaking around her back and easing her body toward his chest. "Mmm..." she moans in a long breath, feeling the warmth of his arms on her skin again, making her heart swell, even as they continue to battle for dominance with their frenzied lips. It's only a second after that she feels her bra slacken around her, making her breath catch and her lips stop mid-kiss.

With her forehead leaning down against his and her arms around his neck, she feels him toss her bra out to the same side as her shirt, but she begins to fight him again, pulling on his neck and taking his bottom lip in between her teeth for a second as her hands find the opening of his shirt.

"You're not stopping me," he says as he feels the back of her fingers graze his chest and his hands start to move around the warm skin on her ribcage.

"Neither are you," she pants into his mouth as she begins to unbutton his shirt, moving with as much clumsy speed as she can, taking his lips back. Once she's half way down, he surprises her by moving his hands and cupping her breasts in tight hands, pressing her back against the wall. "Huh!" She gasps against his lips, but still manages to fumble for the last few buttons before she moves her arms back around his neck, pulling at his shoulders once more to deepen their still frantic kissing, and reach down his back to tug his shirt out from his pants.

Once he leans forward and presses his chest against her's, Kate inhales a long, slow, satisfying breath into her lungs, feeling the incredible feeling of the skin on skin contact of their bare chests pressing together. God, it feels amazing, she thinks to herself as their lips start to slow down.

Rick moves his hands down her sides while her legs vice him, still pinned against the wall with his hips. Her hands travel from disheveling his hair to moving over his shoulders and down his back, her fingers and palms tracing the new patterns in his new muscles, her breath getting tighter and her center coiling more and more with every firm outline she feels on his back. Her hands soon travel around his shoulders to his chest and her palms greedily slide down his pecs and his clearly defined abs that she's never felt before.

Oh god, he has abs now.

"Mmm..." she moans from her throat deeply while she kisses him slowly, then leans back and looks down to his chest. On a very shaky sigh, she feels her mind go blank and her heart flutter like a trapped butterfly. Her hands travel weakly down the hard lines of his very toned muscles, almost as if to make sure they're really there. "You really look great, Castle." She moans as she opens her mouth to let him capture her lips again.

He moves his lips around against her's in another slow motion before answering her. "Are you saying if I looked like this in New York, you wouldn't have left?"

Her hard breathing comes to a dead halt and she stops in the slow motions of her lips, leaning back to see that he's actually serious... and her anger fires right back up. Unvicing his hips from the tight grip of her legs, she puts her palms flat on his chest and shoves him off the wall, enough to lose his balance and stagger back, falling back and landing on the bed behind him. She doesn't waste any time in going after him, toeing off her shoes in her pursuit, leaning down and grabbing his wrists, then moving on top of him in a straddle, trapping his hands up by her sides.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" She says through clenched teeth. "I love you for you." His eyes just get darker as they flicker over her expression. "You didn't look like this our first night together and it was still the most amazing night of my life."

Rick surprises her, using his strength to get his wrists back and grab onto her's, then roll over on top of her. "Be honest, I know you always liked the cut guys."

She wraps her legs around him again and rolls him over again, getting her hands back and going to undo the fasten on his belt. "But I love you."

He leans up suddenly and slams his lips against her in a hard kiss, going back to the battle for dominance by just trying to see who could kiss the hardest. While she unfastens his belt and rips out of his belt loops, he unbuttons her jeans and wraps his fingers around the top hem in the back, pulling the tight-fitting denim off of her. She jumps when the back of his fingers graze along the curve of her ass, her breath catching in the middle of another fiery kiss.

Once her jeans are balled up around her knees, he rolls her over, her back landing square on the surface of the bed, taking her jeans off her legs and throwing them back against the wall behind him. "Just don't tell me who it is you've been with since we broke up." He says as his hands start to slide greedily up her long, toned, beautiful legs. Hearing her scoff loudly and roll her eyes, feeling her pull him closer to the edge of the bed when she wraps her legs around him again, he grabs onto her hips and pulls her body closer to him, her center hitting his hard erection in a forceful knock, making her yelp. "It was painful enough having to picture you with Vaughn."

"Ugh," she groans, her chest heaving already as she stares at the ceiling. "For the millionth time, Castle, I never kissed him, get over it." She slurs as her head nods back and forth.

"And I was never even interested in Sierra." He points out as he puts his hands on the bends of her legs, spreading them and leaning down.

"You were interested in her," she slurs, "but only because you wanted to see me-Huh!" She gasps loudly as his mouth lands suddenly lands against her quivering folds. She can't even breathe as he forces his mouth against her, his tongue already delving inside. "Oh..." she maons loudly, her voice strained as her head leans back, pressing back into the bed and her eyes rolling back into her skull, "God!"

Her legs shake violently as they lay draped over his shoulders while he goes on quickly devouring her, his lips pinching and massaging, then his tongue lapping, stroking, flicking, and delving. Her soaked folds wet his stubble, her hips buck up against his mouth desperately, her heart pounds against the front of her ribcage like a jackhammer, and her willpower and clarity are already untwining.

Once his hand right hand slides down the inside of her leg, wantingly pinching the flesh of her thighs as he goes, he surprises her and fires his fingers inside of her.

She becomes completely undone the second he curls his fingers up as he does.

"Oohhh!" She cries through clenched teeth, her head pressing deeply into the mattress. "God, Castle!"

As Kate bucks and mewls frantically against the bed, Rick leans up with his lungs drains of air. "Wow," he states as he watches her legs twitch, "either you're a lot better at faking it than I thought or you really haven't been with anyone."

On a hard sigh, she shoots up from the bed, slams her lips onto his, and forcefully starts to shove his pants off his legs, groaning in frustration against into his mouth when the get out of reach. She releases him with a hard pluck, wraps her legs around him, flips him over into the bed, and straddles him, forcing his cock inside of her all I one quick move that only takes a second for him to be buried inside of her.

"Ugh!" He groans hard as she takes him inside of her, his fists balling up tightly in the sheets. She's already tightening herself around him, her hot center gripping him mercilessly.

Kate digs her nails into his chest lightly as she bucks her hips against him in one forceful motion. "I never faked it, Castle." She scolds him as he lays underneath her, flexing his entire body. "And you think it doesn't hurt me thinking of all the women you've been with since we broke up?"

"Mmm," he groans and looks up to her with hard, narrowed eyes, "I haven't been with anyone either, Kate" He says, his teeth still gnashing together. "Sierra asked me out over a month ago and I turned her down."

"Uhh!" She cries out as her hips start to move against his pelvis on their own, his hard erection feeling so satisfying inside of her again. "Which just proves," she says as her head lobs back, forcing her to lean back and brace herself against his knees as she rides him frantically, "that you were just out to hurt me. You didn't even call me, Castle!" She fights with him, crying out up toward the ceiling.

Rick launches his hips up, diving inside of her folds as deep as he can. Hearing her loud yelp and feeling her body freeze and her folds coil around him, he takes hold of her sides and pulls her down to the bed, her body bouncing limply as her back lands on the mattress. He doesn't waste any time in diving back inside of her, rapidly moving in and out of her, hearing her cry out as he leans up and takes hold of her legs. "I lost track of time!" He hisses as his sweat starts to slicken his skin, pounding into her.

"Ooh, Castle!" She moans loudly, her mind blanking.

"You know I would have come."

"You were..." she tries as she mewls frantically, trying to catch up with him as he pounds against her, "you were talking to her, oh... god!" She gives up.

"Mmm!" He stops, burying himself inside of her as deep as he can go and leaning down, bracing himself over her as her hands find his chest.

And it isn't until she pulls her eyes open for a dizzy haze, panting, and looks up to his eyes that it hits her, and she's finally given a grasp of what they're doing.

They're not making love. He's not taking her back, not opening up to her. All they're doing is fighting, just with sex.

But feeling him again, his body on top of her, tasting his lips again, his scent... she just misses him so much. She knows in this moment that it's wrong, that if she said to stop, that he'd stop. But she just wants him more than anything right now.

"Just take me, Castle." She whimpers.

Rick pants, his sweat stained brow furrowing, "What?" He says in a low, unquestioning tone.

Kate launches herself off the bed and slams her lips against him in an angry kiss, gripping his hair with her fists, and releases him. "Take me now, Castle!"

Rick kisses her again, freezing as she turns herself around and bends over in front of him, reaching back to put her hand in the curve of her ass, spreading it open for him with an angry, firey look in her eyes as she stares at him.

His mind is blank and his body is moving on it's own over to meet her, placing his hands first on the perfect curve of her ass, then to grip her hips as he delves inside of her again.

"Yes!" She cries out as he enters her, leaning her hips back to pound back into him, wanting more of him. "More... more!" She exclaims as he picks up speed and force with every hard thrust.

She groans as her shoulders fall down to the bed, her hands reaching back behind her and her nails digging into the top of his as he grips her hips, still thrusting into her.

"Don't stop," she moans again. "Don't you dare stop," she continues, her voice breathless and weak.

With that, he reaches down and grabs into her upper arms, pulling her up off the bed upright, then moving his arm around in front of her and bracing it around her shoulders, moving his other hand to her hips to arch her back.

Rick moves her hair out of the way with his chin and puts his lips to her jaw, breathing against her.

"Harder," she moans, reaching behind her and putting her hand in his hair.

Rick pounds into her again, holding her to him with his arm across her, going in and out of her as fast and as forcefully as he can, hearing her cry out with each quick motion. As her cries get higher and higher, as her insides twitch around him harder and harder, with one last hard thrust, he spills into her.

And in that moment, feeling him pour into her, she comes undone, unspooling around him. But he reaches down with his opposite hand and presses his fingers down against her clit, and she screams, her orgasam earthquaking through her entire body, harder than she's ever felt before.

"Aaahhh!"

A few seconds later, her head limp and swimming, his legs his arm fall, and Kate falls down to the bed on her stomach, completely unable to been move, or even catch her breath. And it's only another moment when he falls into his back next to her, as dead as she is, the only sound she can hear over the intense ringing in her ears is the sound of their pants echoing off the walls.

Soon after that, she falls asleep, but not before a terrible, sinking, cold feeling snakes into her heart.

What did she just do?

A/N: it never ceases to surprise me that whenever I start to delve into Castles psyche, I'm always met with reviews from the people that don't have a problem reading entire novel- length stories about Kate pushing him away because of her problems and expect him to just sit there like an emotionless plank of wood. No, im not talking about the ending, i knew the reaction I would get to Castle getting mad, thats hoe ypu were supposed to feel. Yeah, I know how I wrote the ending of the last chapter, and yeah, I did it on purpose. I told you from the beginning that these two characters are both still human.