Chapter XXI
Somewhere, NY
"Don't get up yet. Stay in bed."
"Castle!"
"Kate?" He saw her face then as he slowly drifted into wakefulness. It always made him smile, that face first thing in the morning. Except now that beautiful, familiar face was clearly agitated.
"Castle? Did you do this?"
"What?" He felt unnaturally drowsy, as if walking up was much harden than usual.
"Castle, stop saying what and wake up!" Definitely agitated.
"I don't…" He felt it then. The pressure on his wrist and he raised his hand only to discover the metal cuffs. His wrist attached to hers. "We're handcuffed. Kinky."
"Castle it's not funny."
"I didn't say funny. I said kinky." He'd stared up at her then. Still mesmerized. God, he had it so bad for her. "I honestly thought we'd be wearing less clothes if we ever did this."
She'd almost slapped him then.
He had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that it all happened less than eight hours ago.
His very first ride-along.
It had started with a dead body at that sleazebag motel, a guy face-down on the less-than-clean bed. That's where he'd met Lanie Parrish, the ME and good friend of Kate's. He'd been excited to meet her, after everything that Beckett had told him about her, and he hadn't been disappointed. He liked her. A lot. She was smart and sassy and what you saw was what you got. One of his favourite qualities in a person.
What Beckett hadn't told him was that there was a thing between Dr. Parrish and Beckett's partner, Javier Esposito. The tension between them almost had him wishing for some popcorn to go with it. He'd tried to make a mental note of it all, because it was giving him so much fodder for his book.
He was going to give Nikki Heat (he hadn't told Beckett about the name yet, and after this morning, he wasn't quite ready to have that conversation) two partners, and he'd already modelled them after Ryan and Esposito.
Then they'd driven to the morgue, and on the way there Beckett had chewed him out for not telling her that he'd gone to Weldon over Gates' head.
And while he'd done it only because she herself had said that Gates would never go for it, he had to admit Beckett had a point.
"It was my first day back after a month away and I was completely blind-sided! Gates thought I had a hand in it!"
"Why would she think that?"
That had elicited another glare.
"You know this means we have to keep this, us, under complete wraps, right? If Gates finds out that we're…sleeping together, it won't matter that you're best buds with Weldon. She'll kick your ass to the curb before you know what hit you."
"I know." He'd all but forgotten about that part. Funny. How they'd gone from pretend dating to actual dating to now…pretending not to date. "I take it there are no recording devices in this cruiser?"
"Recording devices?" She'd scrunched up her nose and it was adorable.
"Cameras?"
"What? No."
"Okay then." He'd slid his hand over to her thigh, because being around her and not touching her was even harder than he'd imagined it would be.
But she'd pushed it away. "Maybe you should get used to keeping your hands off me."
"Impossible." His left hand landed on her leg a second time, almost instinctively, against his will. "See?"
She'd rolled her eyes while keeping them on the road.
But she didn't push him away a second time and he thought he saw the slightest hint of a smile on her lips.
He'd bought her a vanilla latte before they got to the morgue and gave the barista ten bucks to draw a heart on the foam.
By then she'd almost forgiven him.
At the morgue he'd learned that it was possible to take prints even when the skin had been burned off the fingers of a victim. That was definitely a detail to take note of.
And then, back at the precinct, he'd been the one who caught something that escaped Beckett's attention. The postal bar code on a piece of paper they'd found in the pocket of the victim's pants.
In turn that had led them to a house in Queens, and that's when things started getting really bizarre.
The house had appeared to be empty until they discovered a woman. In a cage.
Beckett had tried to free her and while she was doing that, the woman had smiled at him.
It was the last thing he'd remembered before waking up in a basement, handcuffed to Kate.
They'd figured out they were drugged and dumped, and although they'd butted heads a few times, in the end they'd made a good team. Handcuffed together and trapped in an eerie lair that made his skin crawl, they'd still managed to put their heads together and tried to find a way out. He'd even been able to use his time spent with a safecracker when researching Rising Storm to open a locked box.
This insane first case then got even wilder when they'd tried to break down the drywall thinking there was a person trapped in the next room, only to have a tiger leap out at them.
They'd barely escaped with their lives after climbing onto the container that he'd opened and then finally being found by her partners.
Back at the precinct, he had a giddy sense of relief wash over him. Turns out the woman in the cage, back at the house in Queens, was part of an exotic animal smuggling ring. She'd drugged and captured them both to see what they had on the transporter that she'd killed.
"Here you were saying that your work days weren't exciting enough for a novel," he told her after her partners left. "Are you kidding me? I think today alone is enough for at least one novel. Maybe two."
She smirked. "This, today, was not a typical day."
"You mean I don't have to worry about getting eaten by wildlife on every case?"
"If the next case involves an alligator on the loose, I'm handing in my badge."
"But I tell ya, after that experience, if I ever have to be hitched to someone, it would be you."
"Hitched?"
How the hell had that slip of the tongue made it past his lips? "Hitched?" He was in full denial after that. "No, I didn't say hitched. I said cuffed. As in handcuffed."
Amusement danced in her eyes. "It's okay, Castle. I understood what you meant and for what it's worth, if I ever have to spend another night handcuffed to someone I wouldn't mind if it was you."
"How about tonight?"
She full-on smiled now, picking up her motorcycle helmet, and damn, if it wasn't the hottest thing in the world, the way his mind already imagined her weaving that bike through Manhattan traffic.
"Too soon?"
"I'd say. Also, next time, let's do it without the tiger." She walked off with a grin, leaving him all sorts of hot and bothered. "See you tomorrow, partner."
He called her not long after he got back to the loft. Because his first day shadowing her had been crazy, and he was still running on adrenaline. And what he really wanted to release it with was was]sex.
Not just sex, but sex with her. His new favourite pastime.
"You still mad at me?"
"Yes."
"You are?"
"I suppose I could forgive you if you bought me a vanilla latte every day this week,"
"How about every day the next three weeks?"
"Deal."
"Can I come over?"
"No."
He couldn't help the disappointment that washed over him. It made his shoulders sag. "You are still mad at me."
"I'm not," he heard her yawning. "But I am tired. Today was a hell of a day."
"It was."
"Kate…" He sighed, aching to have her in his arms. "Tell me we're still gonna see each other. We don't have to head out together but no one at the precinct will know if I hop in an Uber and head over to your place." Her apartment was an older walk-up. It didn't even have a doorman.
"Yes…" He could picture her face when she said. Smiling. The sound of her voice always changed when she smiled. "Of course. We just have to be careful. We can't hang out in public in Manhattan. You never know when you'll run into a cop."
"I hate this…"
"You wanted this," she reminded him. "For your research."
"I know. I'm sorry." He couldn't argue that. He hoped that in a few weeks he'd have the gritty realism, the details and the atmosphere, that he needed for his new book. With luck it wouldn't require as much time as he'd spent researching at the CIA for Derrick Storm.
"Castle…it's not just that. I've leaned on you a lot lately," she confessed. "I need to stop. Learn to stand on my own two feet again."
He wanted to tell her she could lean on him as long as she liked. But he knew it wasn't what she needed to hear. "All right then. Sweet dreams, Kate."
"But I am putting a pair of handcuffs aside for the weekend."
He ended the call with a grin.
He'd have to find the time to get a tiger outfit before Friday night.
Beckett was right. Not every case was as intense as his first one.
Their next homicide was a victim of obvious domestic violence. There were three witnesses who saw the ex-husband enter the woman's apartment. Who heard the heated fight and the sounds of furniture being thrashed.
CSIs were in the apartment and again the ex-husband's prints were all over the place.
It was as close to an open-and-shut case as Castle could imagine. All they needed to do was find the guy.
"Every beat cop in the 'hood is gonna have him on their radar the next few days," Ryan explained to him. "We'll get him." Castle had to admit that of Beckett's two partners, he liked Kevin Ryan the best. He was the kinder, gentler of the two men and he didn't seem to mind having a writer tag along on their cases. He was patient and enjoyed explaining things. There was no macho posturing.
Javier Esposito more than made up for that. And sometimes Castle even suspected he had a thing for Kate, which made him want to do some posturing of his own.
Hands off, buddy. You might not know it yet, but she's mine.
Something else that Castle hadn't known was that Kate was the one who always spoke to the next of kin. She was the one who went to see the woman's parents to tell them that their daughter had been beaten to death by her own husband.
Castle had no idea how she did it. How she somehow found the words and the dignity that the family needed. How she was able to take their grief and anger when they lashed out at the police. At her.
If he didn't know her as well as he now did, he wouldn't have noticed the toll it took on her. She was so good at compartmentalizing and keeping things close to the vest.
"Is she always the one to do it?" he asked Ryan. He was sitting at a chair next to Beckett's desk and her partner was within easy earshot one desk away.
"Do what?" Ryan asked, hesitantly tearing his eyes away from the computer screen. Beckett was right. He was the computer nerd of the three of them.
He remembered the way she'd described the three of them to him one night. "I'm good at looking at the big picture. Taking the evidence and putting the pieces together. Sometimes I can put it together three or four steps ahead of what it is at the present. Ryan is good at the details. He'll comb through camera footage with the patience of Job and catch the tiniest details that Espo and I might miss. He's really good with numbers too. Financial records, things like that. And Javier, he's…a machine. He gets things done by any means necessary. Brute force if need be. He'll spend twelve hours canvassing neighbourhoods on foot and then doesn't blink if I ask him to check on a lead an hour out of town. He's relentless. The three of us make a good team."
"Is she always the one who talks to the victim's family?"
"Pretty much," Ryan tells him. "She's better at it than we are."
"But it's hard." And unfair, he wanted to add.
Ryan had his full attention now. "It is. But she's good at it because she's been in their shoes."
Castle nodded and pulled out his black Moleskin. It was almost full and he'd need to bring a new one to the next case. Nikki was going to be tough and no-nonsense, but she'd also have Kate's heart.
He couldn't console Kate, after she spoke to the next of kin but he could go out and get her a second vanilla latte, which made Ryan grunt when he saw Castle putting it on her desk. "So 'cause she's your muse, you're sucking up to her? What are we, chopped liver?"
The next day an officer found the guy they were looking for and his attorney made an offer. A guilty plea for a reduced sentence.
Case closed.
The one that followed was definitely more up his alley.
A naked man who somehow catapulted from the eighth floor of an apartment building straight into the produce stand belonging to the supermarket below.
It was a wild scenario that got even crazier the deeper they dug.
Turned out the man had multiple identities and then Lanie's autopsy revealed not only that he hadn't been pushed but rather poisoned. After sleeping with no less than two women in the hours before his untimely demise.
And all that was before they turned up a dozen scorned women, as well as a ring of pick-up artists and an El Al flight attendant who was a possible spy.
If he'd read a novel with that kind of plot, Castle would have rolled his eyes at the outlandishness of it all.
By the time it was over, he was almost a little disappointed that the man's death came down to corporate espionage gone wrong.
"Pretty much all homicides boil down to passion, revenge, or money," Beckett reminded him when it was over. "The psychopaths who do it for kicks are still pretty rare. Thankfully."
But more than the case itself, Castle enjoyed the fact that he was starting to contribute something. He had theories of his own and some of them even brought in leads.
He was surprisingly good at this, and sometimes he even felt like he was one of them. Right now he was bantering with the boys about Ryan's bizarre lime juice fast and his upcoming wedding, while Esposito was on a mission to torment the hell out of his partner. Castle got a kick out of Esposito's mad jealousy when he heard that Lanie was bringing a date to Ryan's wedding.
As a thank you for letting him into their world, he bought them all a fancy coffee machine.
Truth was, he mostly did it for Kate, knowing how much she loved a good cup and seeing how the precinct brew was barely fit for human consumption.
It's where he found her now. In the break room, her hands cradling a ceramic cup of his Italian brew with a happy sigh.
It was so ridiculously easy to make her happy.
"Hey…" Her face always lit up when she saw him and there was no one else around.
"Hey back."
"You know Ryan really likes you. He feels kinda bad that it was too late to invite you to his wedding so..."
"No, that's silly. Tell him not to feel bad. There's no reason. Better yet, I'll tell him!"
"You gonna let me finish?"
He watched her take a sip of coffee and suddenly his mind went back to all the other wonderful things she was capable of doing with those lips. "Sorry. Yes."
"I told him since I RSVP'd for two and haven't been able to find a plus one, I'd take you. Problem solved." Her lips curved into a smile from behind the coffee mug. "Wanna take me to a wedding tomorrow night?"
Castle did take her to the wedding and he enjoyed every second.
Kevin Ryan's friends and family were very different than the society crowds he was used to. Loud, boisterous, and crazy Irish-Americans who instantly made him feel like he was part of their family.
Best of all, going as Kate's date meant that it was okay for him to hold on to her when they made their way past the pews. He marvelled that she was able to walk at all in those impossibly high heels. He had to pry his wandering eyes away from that short, skin-hugging dress she wore. It highlighted not only those perfect legs but nearly every inch of her gorgeous body.
He wanted to dance with her as the festivities went on late into the evening, but he knew if he did he'd give them away. There was no way he could dance with Kate when she was dressed like that and keep his hands from roaming all over her body. Not possible.
So instead he danced with some of Ryan's nieces. And Lanie too.
"It's been a while since I've seen her this happy," Lanie told him when they were close enough on the dance floor.
Lanie was the only other person, aside from Martha and Alexis, and his doormen, who knew about the two of them. "It's been…wonderful." he told her, at a rare loss for words.
Jenny came to their table later that evening too, more than a little tipsy. "I'm so glad you came, Richard. Kevin's told me all about you shadowing them for your latest novel. I can't wait to read it!"
"I don't know if I had the chance to say it yet, but you're a beautiful bride and I'll be sure to get you a signed copy."
"Thank you," she turned to both of them with a giddy smile. "You two would make a cute couple. Too bad you didn't catch the bouquet, Kate."
Castle could have sworn he saw Beckett blush. "I think your bridesmaid was very happy she caught it."
It was nearly three am by the time they slowly extricated themselves from the party that would probably go on until sunrise.
"Come home with me tonight," he told Kate as he helped her into the light jacket she'd left at the coat check. "It's Sunday tomorrow. We'll sleep in and I'll make you breakfast."
"Oh fine, twist my arm." She had some champagne and wine tonight too, but didn't seem the least bit affected by it. He'd been reluctant to drink at all during their first few dinners together after her confession at the hospital. But she'd quickly called him on it.
"I noticed that you don't drink anymore."
"I don't need…"
"Castle, don't handle me with kid gloves. I'm fine to have a glass of wine with dinner. If I start downing hard liquor to get to sleep, feel free to call me out on it."
"Okay. I will."
He thought they'd be too tired to do anything but collapse into bed when they got to the loft but a quick shower together proved him wrong. How naïve he was to think that he wouldn't be wide awake as soon as he took off that tight dress of hers in the bathroom.
She undressed him too. Slid off his tie and roped it around his neck. "Have I told you how handsome you looked tonight?"
"You might have. But you can tell me again."
Then she'd pushed him into the shower and turned on the water.
Slid down along his body until she was on her knees, eye level with an increasingly erect part of his anatomy. Water poured down over her when she looked up at him with a grin before her mouth had other plans. A maelstrom of sensations ran through him until a combination of her lips, tongue, hands, and the streams of hot water brought him closer to ecstasy. He fisted her wet hair and arched his head back in response to the flood of pleasure. Felt himself coming hard and fast and then savouring the release until his legs trembled.
Still on her knees, Kate straightened her spine and ran her hands up the back of his thighs until he managed to grab her arms and pull her up alongside him. Wrap his arms around her until she was so close that he could feel her heart pounding against his.
"I didn't expect…that."
Her lips found his mouth. "Guess I wanted a taste of you tonight."
Castle reached for her shower gel and lathered it up in his hands, nudging her to turn around so that her back was to him, before running his soapy hands all over her body. Arms and breasts and belly, until his fingers ended up between her thighs and then snaked inside her, giving her back some of the pleasure she'd given him. He pulled her in tight just as she shuddered and moaned and slowly came undone.
When they did collapse in bed, a good chunk of her long hair was still wet and parts of it were splayed across his chest, cooling him on this hot summer night.
He was trailing his thumb across her back while drifting off. A lot of pleasant thoughts roamed in his sleepy brain. How wonderful this evening had been. How he already knew he wanted to make love to her first thing in the morning.
What he didn't expect was for a phone to ring and to jar him out of his thoughts. How long had he been asleep? It couldn't have been very long.
It woke him up and he watched with blurry eyes as Kate reached for it in the darkness.
"Beckett…yeah…I'll be there."
"Be there?"
He saw her silhouette in the darkness, slipping out from under the covers[added s] and sitting on the edge of the bed with a yawn. "We got a body drop."
He rubbed his eyes and saw the time lit up in red on his dated, digital alarm clock. "It's not…even 6am. On Sunday. You're off?"
And that's when he learned that homicide detectives don't really have set days off.
If there's a homicide in their jurisdiction and one of the detectives is on their honeymoon, the next available ones get called in and do overtime.
"I have to go to my place. Get changed," she mumbled, getting up.
He threw off the covers too. "I'll come with you…"
"No. Stay here. Sleep. I'll call you later. We can't exactly show up at the crime scene together anyway."
"Kate…"
She bent over to give him a peck on the nose. "Don't argue with me before I've had my coffee."
It was hard to argue against getting some sleep when his body craved it so badly. He wanted it for her too. Wanted their morning sex and pancakes, especially since she hadn't been here all week. "Okay…go and catch this asshole. Make sure he does maximum time for ruining our weekend."
"And killing a guy…" he heard her say from across the room.
"Yeah…that too."
They did catch him later that week.
Castle went on to shadow her for another month, during which she'd landed three more cases that filled up another Moleskin and would make Nikki Heat one of the most complex, layered characters he'd ever created.
There was one that involved his friend, and mayor, Bob Weldon, that caused considerable tension between them, especially as Beckett insisted on following the evidence, while he couldn't help but follow his heart. But even when they butted heads, which they inevitably did, being the two alphas that they were, there was always a common ground that brought them back together. A mutual desire to do right by the victim.
His favourite case by far was one that involved a timeless and priceless piece of jewelry called the Blue Butterfly. Thanks to his imagination and a diary they'd found that belonged to a 1940s gumshoe named Joe, Castle was transported back in time. Joe was a bit of a mess until he fell hopelessly in love with a gangster's moll named Vera. Naturally, he'd pictured himself as Joe and Kate as Vera.
Best of all was the ending, when they discovered that Joe and Vera hadn't been killed, as they'd been led to believe, but that they were still alive. And still in love!
Castle's respect for Beckett grew with every case. She was determined and meticulous. She didn't back down and she never compromised when it came to the truth. He was beginning to understand why she'd been frustrated at being assigned to babysit him in the Hamptons.
He too was starting to feel like he was part of the team. Sure his theories sometimes elicited a few groans from the gang and they didn't always pan out, but the truth was, they often led them in the right direction. Even Gates, on rare and grudging occasions, had to admit that he was right.
He wanted to keep doing it. Not just because he knew it would help inspire at least half a dozen Nikki Heat books, but because he was loving it.
The first book was nearly finished now and would soon be ready for the editing process. He had a feeling, deep in his bones, that it would be a hit. It was why he was already confidently planning several others.
But more than that, for the first time in his professional life, he felt like he was part of something bigger, something that truly made a difference.
Except the only way to keep doing it was to continue keeping his relationship with Kate under wraps, and it was already wearing on both of them. The clandestine encounters had been fun at first, and maybe they'd even heightened their desire for each other. (They'd slipped into her place during a case more than once, both of them firmly convinced they'd die if they had to wait until evening to touch each other.)
Except now it was getting hard. Beckett was getting tired of sneaking around and so was he. She deserved better than this charade. Besides, he was damn proud of her and wanted to let the world know that this extraordinary woman was his. As much as Kate Beckett could belong to anyone.
He'd knew have to make a choice. Not yet, but soon.