THREE
The first sound out of Kate's mouth when she entered Rick's apartment for the first time was a gasp. From the exterior of the building they entered, she'd suspected that his apartment would be nicer and fancier than the one she shared with her father, but she hadn't expected this. The kitchen was open to the sitting room and appeared to be able to fit more than one person at a time without them bumping into each other! The sitting room had space enough for a couch, and two chairs, and a coffee table. Perhaps most shocking of all, he had windows! And not just tiny slivers of glass that barely let in any light. They were floor-to-ceiling windows and there were three of them totaling almost ten feet across. She'd never seen such windows in a home before, only in office buildings.
"Oh Rick…wha—how?"
"What do you mean how?" he asked with casualty, almost like he wasn't aware he had the most luxurious apartment of anyone she'd ever known.
"How do you have an apartment this big. How do you have so many windows?"
His reply was a coy, "Maybe I have a secret too."
She folded her arms and narrowed her gaze at him. "I've seen you in the showers; I know you're not a woman."
Presumably not expecting such a comment, Rick laughed heartily. "No, I'm not a woman, but I do have a secret life."
"What does that mean?"
He gestured for her to follow him and she did, walking in between the couch and chairs to reach the bookcase built into the wall at the far side of the room. From the second shelf he pulled a hardcover book and then handed it over to her. "Here."
"Flowers for Your Grave?" she read the title with slight confusion. Not sure how it related to his alleged secret life, she merely said, "I've read this."
"I know I saw it in your room."
Her confusion deepening, she asked, "So why are you giving this to me?"
He turned back to the shelf, grabbed two more hardcovers, and handed them both to her. "Not just this one. These too."
Kate observed the books in her hand, two of which she had read; the third she had not. The spines had the titles of the book as well as the matching name of their author. The covers were similarly styled and, since she had liked the books she read, she wondered briefly what the third might be about. Still unsure of how these books were involved, she asked, "What do Richard Castle's books have to do with your secret life?"
"They are my secret life; I'm Richard Castle."
Kate blinked. "What?"
He tapped his index finger against one of the books. "I wrote these."
Kate felt her face flush and she shook her head ever so slightly. "No, you didn't."
He replied confidently, "I did."
"But—but—they came out ages ago!" she spluttered. The first book he handed her, Flowers for Your Grave, was actually one of her favorites. She had read it multiple times and knew it quite well. When she first read the book, she assumed it was quite old given the number of female characters. Curious, she'd actually looked up the publication date on one of her subsequent reads and was shocked to find it was actually published when she was a child and not before her birth. Still, it had been published many, many years prior. "You would have been-"
"Twenty," he finished for her. He took the novels back, reshelved them, and then turned to face her while casually resting his hand on the back of one of the chairs. "I never really liked formalized education, but I did like to learn—mostly about the past. I spent hours in the library reading old newspapers, letters…anything I could get my hands on that was from a different time—from before. Then I started with stories of my own and wrote and wrote until I got better. When I was twenty my manuscript was purchased and published. The publisher took on two more before I was dropped for low sales. After that, not sure what else to do, I joined the police academy."
"But you…you never said anything."
He shrugged. "You never said anything about your secret."
Annoyance shot through her and she replied with a challenging, "You cannot possibly think our secrets are close to the same magnitude."
He shook his head. "Of course not, but we all have our reasons for not revealing things about ourselves, about our pasts." She was quiet for several moments, waiting for him to continue, until he did with a rather sad, "I felt…embarrassed. Embarrassed because I failed at something I really wanted to succeed at. Embarrassed because I wasn't good enough."
"Oh no." She reached out and placed her hand on his forearm. "I don't think that at all. I really loved the two books of yours that I read. I actually thought the author was much, much older—like possibly even old enough to have experienced some of the before times."
Rick smiled genuinely. "That's actually a really great compliment; thank you."
She smiled, too. "You're welcome. Do you have any other secrets you're hiding that you'd like to reveal?"
"No—not hiding anything else; I promise." With that, he gave her hand a squeeze and then nodded towards the kitchen. "C'mon; let's eat."
"Hang on a second." Kate paused just before she sat down on Rick's sofa. They had just finished their meal, which was not only delicious but also pleasantly surprising as she had no idea that Rick could cook so well. With the meal cleaned up, they were about to play the Scrabble game she agreed upon before arriving at his apartment that evening. Now, though, as she watched him pull out the game board and set up their respective tile trays on the coffee table, she began to second guess his seemingly casual game suggestion.
"What?"
"I agreed to play Scrabble before I knew you were a published author. Now I feel like this was a trap."
"Oh, it was."
"Rick!" She gasped at her companion who then broke out into laughter.
"Don't worry Beckett; I'll let you win the first round."
She felt a flame flicker to life inside her and stood up a few centimeters straighter. "You'll let me win?"
He smirked at her. "Yeah."
Determined, she sat down on the floor in front of her side of the coffee table, and said proudly, "I can win on my own, thanks."
He eyed her, dubious. "But you just said you fell into my trap."
"Well, I can get out of it without your help."
"Guess we'll see," he replied casually before holding the bag containing the letters out to her so she could make her own selections.
As it turned out, she could not, in fact, extricate herself from his trap. She'd been close—within fifteen points of winning during their second game—but she just couldn't eek out the win. Not that night anyway. In fairness to herself, it had been many years since she had played Scrabble. Even if she regularly read and wrote police reports, being generally comfortable with language and being put on the spot during a game were very different things. At least, that's what she decided to keep telling herself.
"I like this, you know," Rick said as he slid the Scrabble box back under the coffee table, where the other games were stored.
"Winning?"
He chuckled. "No. Hanging out with you. Spending time with you outside of work, just the two of us—like this."
"I like it too," she said easily. She had always enjoyed spending time with Rick, whether that was at work when they were working together on one of their cases, or outside of work when they were drinking beers, playing poker, or taking in a baseball game. In fact, there was rarely a time she didn't enjoy being with Rick, but nearly all those times she hadn't been herself. The closer she felt herself drawing to him, the harder it had been to hide such a huge part of who she was. Now that she didn't have to hide at all, spending time with him was even easier and, if possible, more exciting, because now he was enjoying time with the real her, not the version of herself she had to put on to keep her and her father safe.
Rick sat beside her on the couch, picked her up hand and pulled it into her lap. He gazed at her for several moments with an unreadable expression before he asked softly, "Will you be my girlfriend?"
Kate immediately felt her stomach flip over in her gut and her eyes burn with tears. She had not expected such a question from him but hearing it had her overcome with emotion. For her entire life she believed she would never be in any sort of relationship, because to do that would mean revealing who she really was. Until she met Rick, that didn't seem plausible. Then, the more she got to know him, the more she allowed herself to fantasize about a time when he might want to be with her too, but it still seemed so improbable she could hardly let herself believe.
Unable to stop the tears, she turned her head away from him, feeling slightly embarrassed.
Rick gripped her hand a bit more firmly. "What is it? Did I say something wrong?"
"No, no." She sniffed and looked back towards him. "I've just really wanted that for a long time."
Relief exploded onto his face, and he sighed out, "Oh Kate. C'mere." He pulled her body close to him and wrapped his arms around her back to give her a tight hug.
She hugged him back, sinking into him and resting her cheek against the top of his shoulder. They held each other for over a minute before a wave of anxiety swept through her. Feeling it only fair to confess, she leaned back to she could meet his gaze and said, "I really want this, but I don't know how to be a girlfriend."
He smiled and brushed away some of her tears with the pad of his thumbs. "That's okay, I don't know how to be a boyfriend. But we can figure it out together, right?"
"Yeah," she agreed. Then, she let him draw her in for a kiss.
Alone in his apartment, their kissing quickly grew even more heated than it had been in her bedroom a few days earlier. Though Kate had felt rather unsure at several points during their first kissing session, she found herself easily slipping into a more at-ease state. Kissing Rick was beginning to feel natural to her and she found herself much more comfortable with touching him all over his torso and not just keeping her hands mostly around the area of his mid-back. Rick, it seemed, felt the same for he began tugging up the hem of her shirt so he could splay his fingers across her bare skin. When his fingertips very lightly tickled the skin on her lower ribs she gasped from the surprise of the tingles that shot down her spine.
"Kate." He husked out her name while bumping their noses and foreheads together. "I—I want to take your shirt off. Is it too soon?"
"Uh…" she hesitated for a second, more surprised at the request than anything, but then she nodded in agreement. "Yeah—I mean, no; it's not too soon."
"Okay." He immediately reached for the buttons on her shirt, but she grasped onto his wrists to stop him.
"Wait, um…we're in front of all those windows."
"Oh. Right. Forgot." He laughed, and then pushed himself up off the couch before holding out her hand. She grasped it and he pulled her up as well before leading her down the hall past the kitchen to the single bedroom. It wasn't as spacious as the main room of the apartment, but certainly larger than hers as it contained a king-sized bed, though there didn't seem to be too much extra space in the room because of it. As there were no windows, Rick turned on the lamp sitting on top of the nightstand. Then, he returned his fingers to the buttons on her shirt.
Feeling nerves bubble in her stomach, Kate tried to distract herself by asking, "Have you, um, have you ever seen a naked woman?"
"Only pictures and videos. And I've used those brothels."
Kate nodded, understanding he referenced the brothels populated by woman-emulating sex robots for men's sexual needs. She, of course, had never been inside one, but knew how they generally worked because her coworkers would occasionally discuss them within earshot. Thinking about the advertisements she'd seen for them she asked, "Aren't those robots rubbery?"
He paused his unbuttoning and considered the question a moment. "Kind of. I guess they seem okay since there isn't a lot to compare to."
Kate scrunched her nose, disagreeing with that statement. "You're a human with skin. You know what skin is supposed to feel like."
He considered her comment for a moment before relenting, "Okay, there's a lot you can trick yourself into believing since it's the only option."
She laughed lightly. "Fair enough." She then felt Rick begin to peel her button-down shirt off her shoulders and helped him by shrugging it away. This left her in a white undershirt, which she reached down and pulled up and off using the bottom hem. This left her in another white sleeveless garment that covered her torso down to her belly button. "This is, um, to hide my breasts," she explained to him.
Rick skimmed his fingers along the bottom edge of it and pinched lightly at the fabric. "Do you wear it all the time?"
She shook her head. "Not in the evenings or overnight. That's one of the reasons I live with my dad—so I can get a break from all this."
He frowned and said, "I wish you didn't have to hide. You're so extraordinary as you are."
Feeling her cheeks blush from the words, Kate decided to continue the task at hand and angled her body slightly away from him so she could remove her bottom layer, which was a bit snug, so she had to work it up and over her shoulders. She then dropped it on the floor with the rest of the items she wore and turned back to face him. He gazed at her breasts for several seconds before looking up to her and grinning in a way that made her laugh.
"You should take your shirt off too; it's only fair." She suggested and he agreed, quickly divesting himself of his own button-down and undershirt. With both of them topless, he guided her to sit on his mattress and then he sat down beside her and kissed her once more.
Kate quickly decided that she liked feeling the heat of Rick's skin directly beneath her fingertips and not through his shirt. Moreso, she liked feeling his hands on her bare back; it felt as though each point of contact ignited an electric spark that soon had her tingling all over. When he moved his right hand to splay over her ribs and creep up her chest, she felt herself tense slightly, unsure of what it would feel like when he touched her breast, but she quickly found it to be delightful. In fact, when his thumb grazed over the peak of her nipple, she jumped from the electric charge of it.
"What? What? Did I hurt you?" Rick asked with concern.
She shook her head. "No, it feels good. I was just surprised; no one has ever touched me there before."
An excitable expression crossed Rick's face. He placed a rough but brief kiss upon her lips and then cradled her breast with his right hand once more. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the tip in concentric circles that had her arching her back into his touch. "That feels good?" he husked. She whimpered out an affirmative response and he nodded, moving his left hand to mirror the action on her other breast. Kate felt her body sizzle from the contact, sure she'd never felt anything like that in her whole life. Her eyes drifted shut as she focused on the sensations, shocked at how deeply she could feel them resonating within her core. After a minute when Rick moved his right hand, she felt disappointed, but only for two seconds, because then she felt his lips against her. He kissed her breast softly a few times before capturing her peak between his lips, which had her mewling for more.
Kate was so distracted by the new sensations she was feeling, she didn't realize Rick had begun to lower her body until she felt her head connect with the mattress. She opened her eyes briefly to rearrange her position so that she was laying crosswise on the bed with Rick stretched out beside her, lavishing attention on her right breast. His left hand then began to drift down her torso and across her hipbones until he stopped abruptly.
"What…what's this? What am I feeling?"
"Hmm?" Still in her haze of pleasure, Kate's brain couldn't fully process his question and the relative location of his hand for several moments.
"What is this? It feels like-"
"Oh!"
"Oh!" Both Kate and Rick gasped at the same time, her from embarrassment and him from revelation.
Almost gleefully, he asked, "Do you have a fake dick in your pants?"
"Um," she hesitated. "More like…fake balls."
"Oh my god!"
"Don't laugh," Kate grumbled at him, but it was far too late for that.
"That's hilarious. Let me see!"
Feeling a bit embarrassed, she crossed her arms over her chest and mumbled, "It's not interesting. I just had to do something that would be convincing to a casual observer."
Rick arched a skeptical eyebrow at her. "How many guys did you think were staring at your crotch?"
"Well hopefully none, but…I've been doing it since high school when guys were a little bit more interested in playfully crotch punching each other."
He smirked wistfully. "Oh yeah, I remember those days. But I still want to see it! Here, let me-"
"Woah! Hang on!" She gasped and grabbed his arm right before he was about to plunge his hand into the front of her pants.
"Sorry," he responded, half laughing.
She pushed herself up into a sitting position, letting her legs dangle over the edge of the mattress once more. "It's okay. It's just sewn it into the underwear, so it doesn't shift around on me."
He nodded, his expression reflecting understanding. "You don't have to take them off if you're not ready."
She gazed at him tentatively. "Are we ready? I mean…that seems like a big step." Given their present state of undress, they seemed drifting towards that step quite steadily, but she didn't want to fail to acknowledge the fact that it was a big step. However, much she wanted it and was intrigued by it, it remained something she'd never done before and didn't want to dive headlong into without proper consideration.
Rick sat up beside her and rested his forearms against his thighs. "It is a big step."
Kate thought for a minute about their present situation and how they had gotten there. If she had been writing a plan for her life, she probably would not have anticipated her first sexual experience happening so abruptly, but she also could not have begun to fathom how incredible it felt to be close to someone in that way. Not just someone—Rick, a man she trusted implicitly. A man she cared for deeply. A man who was kind and thoughtful and would never hurt her.
Leaning into him, Kate pressed a kiss on his lips and, with her hands lightly atop his shoulders she said, "I can't imagine this with anyone but you."
"Same."
Unable to help herself from pointing out the obvious, she said, "I'm sort of the only one you could do this with."
His eyes flashed with something that almost seemed like hurt. "That's not why…how I feel about you started long before I even knew what was beneath your underwear."
She nodded. "I know."
"Do you? I need you to really and truly know how deeply I care about you. And that I want to spend all my time with you. And that laughing with you is something I've enjoyed for a very long time."
She cradled his face with her hands and assured him, "I know. I really know."
"Good," he said before kissing her.
"You can, um, take off my pants if you still want to."
He nodded excitedly, so she stood up off the bed to give him easier access. He made quick work of her belt and trousers. Once they'd pooled around her ankles, she stepped out of them and let him reach for the waistband on her brief-style underwear. He tugged at them, which resulted in the band flipping down towards him because of the weight of her attempt at a prosthetic. When the flesh-toned object was more-or-less directly in his face, Rick burst out into hysterical laughter.
He rolled sideways on the bed, folding his arms across his stomach as he laughed. "Oh my god…they're actually in the shape of balls."
"I wanted them authentic," Kate said, not sure if she should be slightly offended or laugh along with him. Instead, she focused on pushing the underwear off her hips and letting them fall to her feet so she could step out of them as well.
"That's…that's…oh god—sorry, sorry. That was just so funny." He swiped at his eyes with his knuckles as his laughter began to calm down.
"I'm glad I could entertain you."
After collecting himself, Rick dragged his gaze the length of her now-nude body and then reached out his hands to place at her hips. He pulled her forward and onto the bed such that she straddled his lap with her hands braced against his shoulders for support. "Something tells me we're going to entertain each other a lot tonight."
Kate let out a nervous laugh and, after nibbling on her lower lip, confessed, "I don't know if I'll be very good at this."
He skimmed his hands up her back and cradled her body into his. "Don't worry; we'll figure it out—together."
