SUPPLY AND DEMAND
RATED M
CHAPTER THREE
She doesn't mean for it to keep happening.
But now that she knows what he tastes like, how he sounds when he's at her mercy, she can't get enough.
It starts as the occasional rendezvous, a way to relieve tension after - or during - a case. And they never meet anywhere other than the fifth-floor supply closet, an unspoken agreement that their dalliances never leave that room. It's like Vegas: what happens in the supply closet stays in the supply closet.
And then she meets Tom.
He shows interest in her from the start, and she'd be lying if she said she didn't find him attractive. So she stops dragging Castle upstairs. And when Tom invites her to his place for drinks after solving a case, she convinces herself to go. And he's...fine.
But he's not Castle. So she breaks things off with him before they start anything more.
She's about to tell Castle that she wants more than their hookups when Gina arrives and practically glues herself to his side. He doesn't say outright that they've rekindled their romance, but he also doesn't seem too eager to keep her at an arm's length. So Kate wishes him a good summer and watches him walk away.
The next week, she meets Josh. He's nice enough, decent enough in bed, and provides a good distraction for the summer, until he informs her that he's leaving for Peru for six months, and they decide to part ways.
Castle comes back in the fall, apparently single, and barges his way back into her life.
She manages to ignore the tingling between her legs at his mere proximity, at least for a few weeks.
She can almost feel his jealousy when Royce appears, and maybe if she was still the young naive rookie who thought the world of her TO, he would have a legitimate reason. But not now. No, Castle has spoiled her.
When she realizes Royce was playing her all along, though, that he'd double-crossed her for a shot at the treasure, her heart breaks into pieces.
She knows that everyone can hear her tell Royce she'd loved him. Back then, she'd been convinced that she did. Now, she's not sure that she wasn't just grasping at anything or anyone who made her feel anything but grief.
She doesn't look at Castle when she walks away after the phone call, but she knows he's watching, and she scrunches her nose to keep the tears from falling.
Her feet take her towards the stairs, and she walks up to the fifth floor, moving on autopilot. She's not going with the intent to lead Castle there for sex, or at all, just to take a few minutes to compose herself. But barely a minute after she shuts herself in the supply closet, there's a knock on the door, and a familiar name saying her voice.
She swipes her thumb under her cheeks and sighs before opening the door and stepping to the side to let him in.
Castle shakes his head and joins her inside. "That bastard," he snaps, "how dare he. After you helped him with the case, shared information, and he goes behind your-"
She lunges into him, cutting him off with her mouth against his, and he grunts, opens his mouth at the insistent prodding of her tongue. She's not interested in talking, in reliving her heartbreak, especially with someone who's so recently messed with her feelings, too.
She grips his jacket and slicks her tongue against his, and she yanks his shirt from his pants, rakes her nails across his skin.
Castle's hands palm her hips, but he doesn't tug her into him as he usually does, or pin her against the door.
"Kate," he gasps, tearing his mouth from hers. He drops his forehead to hers, breathing hard. "Wait."
She unbuckles his belt and unfastens his pants, desperate to see him, to feel him, to taste him. She pushes him until his back hits the door, and she drops to her knees, frees his hard cock from his boxers.
She trails her lips along his length, breathing him in, feeling the heat pool between her thighs. She grips his base with one hand, pumping him with a sure fist, and she unbuttons her pants, slides her other hand into her panties.
She groans when she slicks her fingers through her folds, rubbing at her clit, rolling her hips into her own touch.
Castle's head falls back and hits the door with a soft thud, and his hands drop to her head, fingers tangling in her hair as he pumps into her mouth.
She can feel him pulse and swell, telltale signs that he's close, and she removes her hand from her pants, grips his ass to guide the movement of his hips.
"Kate-" he grunts. "I'm-"
He grunts a curse before he can say another word, but she's already prepared, just fits her lips around the head of his cock and sucks as he spills into her mouth.
She runs her tongue down his length as he slumps against the door, and he trails his fingers through her hair, his touch light and tender.
"You're amazing," he husks, leaning down and tracing her jaw with his thumb. "I didn't follow you here for that, you know," he adds with a crooked grin.
Kate stands and takes a few steps back, leans against the shelves. Her core is almost throbbing with need, her own touch only serving to rile her up even more than pleasuring him. "I know," she assures him.
"We're in the middle of a tough case," Castle continues, "and after what happened with Royce-"
"I don't want to talk about Royce," she interrupts, pushing herself from the shelves and approaching him. She crosses her arms in front of her and pulls off her shirt, and as she drops her bra to the floor she realizes that this is the first time he's seen her topless.
Actually, her thought continues when she kicks her pants and underwear aside, it's the first time he's seen her completely naked.
Castle follows her lead, and once his clothes join hers on the floor they take a few moments to just look at each other. Eventually, he steps towards her, closing the gap between them, and he lifts his hands, traces the undersides of her breasts before teasing her nipples with his thumbs.
Her breath hitches in her throat and she arches into his touch, pushing her breasts into his hands, a wordless plea to touch her more. She slides her hands around his waist, sighs when his body presses against hers, his cock hardening between them.
He abandons her breasts long enough to cup her jaw, and his thumbs brush across the swell of her cheeks. "Kate, are you okay?"
It's the crack in his voice that breaks her.
Before she can stop herself, her arms are around his waist, tears pouring from her eyes as she cries into his bare chest. He holds her to him, one large hand cupping the back of her head as he presses his lips to her hair.
After several minutes her tears begin to subside, and when she realizes where they are, standing buck naked at work, she steps away, her face warming with embarrassment.
"I'm sorry," she rasps, and she sniffles, bends down to pick up her shirt. "I took advantage-"
"No you didn't," Castle interrupts, curling his fingers around her forearm, halting her effort to dress. When she meets his eyes, he continues. "I could have stopped you, Kate. But for whatever reason, you needed that release." He lifts the corner of his lips and chuckles. "And, well, you're really good at that."
Kate huffs a wry laugh. He's not wrong; she is good.
She cups his jaw, her fingers brushing against his earlobe, and she lifts herself onto her toes and brushes her mouth against his. "Thank you," she whispers.
"For what?"
"I don't know, for being…" She shrugs and kisses him again, slicks her tongue against his lips before stepping away. "Finish this later?" she asks.
Castle flashes a crooked grin. "Just try and stop me," he teases.
They don't finish it later.
In fact, they don't see the inside of the supply closet for months.
The arrival of Natalie Rhodes throws her off almost as much as Natalie throws herself at Castle. It throws her for a loop when she catches them kissing in the elevator, but the next morning when Natalie admits that they had not had sex, Kate almost sighs with relief.
She intends to pursue Castle after Natalie leaves, but then Ryan and Jenny get engaged, and she's so caught up with happiness for her friends, that she doesn't notice Castle leave.
He doesn't hide his surprise when she shows up at his door a few weeks later and asks him to accompany her to see Raglan. But he agrees, of course, staying at her side, even when Montgomery forces her off the case.
And then a kiss in an alley, the familiar slide of his mouth against hers, breaks down the last shred of self-control. She almost forgets that they're on a case when his fingers tangle in her hair, but the crunch of boots on gravel manages to cut through the lust fogging her brain.
She joins him in the back of an ambulance after it's all over, and she takes his injured hand in hers, keeps her gaze locked on the bandage as she re-wraps his hand. She hadn't seen him tackle Lockwood. But she'd watched as he pummeled the hitman, no concern that Lockwood probably could have overtaken him if he'd had a moment to recover.
She'd assumed he would stop punching after Lockwood lost consciousness, but Castle had just hit him again and again. The look on his face when she'd said his name tells her that, if she hadn't stopped him, he may have just kept going until Lockwood was dead.
"You okay?" she'd asked, hoping that her voice didn't betray the tremble in her body.
He'd looked down at the unconscious man underneath him, and when he'd met her gaze, she'd seen a peace that she hadn't expected. "Never better."
His eyes are soft now, as she finishes wrapping his hand and lifts her gaze to his. His physical attraction to her has been very obvious since the beginning - an attraction that is very much mutual - and she's suspected for some time that his feelings may run deeper.
But tonight, she thought she was about to watch him kill a man for her. And that terrifies her more than admitting her own growing feelings.
So she pulls away.
She ignores the desire all over his face when he looks at her. Ignores the flutters in her stomach, or lower, when she catches a whiff of his cologne or hears his rich laugh.
Ignores the look in his eyes after they save the city from a dirty bomb, the relief and something else, something she doesn't want to admit is probably love.
She doesn't want to admit that she feels it too.
She'd almost told him, when they were freezing to death in the freezer, that she wants more out of their relationship. But she'd lost consciousness before she could say the words, and he pretends like he didn't hear them.
And they move on, circling each other but never making a move, a cycle of longing looks and almost-saids and "never minds."
He wants to kiss her in LA. If she's honest with herself, she wants to kiss him, too. Take up their charade outside of the supply closet, have sex on a soft, horizontal surface for once. But she doesn't make a move, and neither does he. They just gaze at each other, naked desire in their eyes, too damn afraid to vocalize what they have, and what they want.
Just a few short days later, she's burying her captain, who'd died saving her life moments after she'd learned of his involvement in her mom's murder.
And then a bullet pierces her heart, and Castle whispers four words that change everything.
I love you, Kate.
