Chapter 2

Beckett spun back, but tangled her feet around Castle and fell. Since he wasn't expecting that, and was still hanging on to her, he fell too, which might have been okay if only he hadn't been falling on top of her. He twisted, which only meant that she landed on top of him. Which might still have been okay, if...

If he hadn't then automatically wrapped his arms around her like he'd dreamed about for months and months and pulled her head to his and kissed her. And if she hadn't kissed him back, much harder.

And if Andy the idiot photographer hadn't whistled. Because at that point, Beckett realised what was happening and stopped hard. Almost as hard as he was. And then she scrambled off him, displaying an inordinate amount of exceedingly gorgeous legs and a flash of seriously hot panties, and ran for it. He was barely off the floor – and he hurt: his bruises were already forming – when she dashed through the studio in her own clothes, and out.

Well, that was one great big fucking disaster.

"I think the shoot's done for today," Andy said.

"You don't say."

"Where d'you want the clothes sent?"

"Huh?"

"Your PR guys provided them. Paid for." Andy snickered. "Guess that was in case one of you ripped them." Castle made a very unpleasant noise. "Where d'you want them to go?" Andy said quickly.

Castle thought. "Mine can go back to Paula. Tell her to donate them. Except that leather jacket. I'll take it now. Beckett's...um...look, can you get them sent to this address?" He scribbled. He knew exactly where they ought to go, especially that rollneck sweater.

And then he decided that she couldn't actually shoot him, and went after her. About two steps into hurrying after her, he discovered that he couldn't hurry, because he hurt too much to move quickly. He creaked down the stairs and out of the studio, and whistled down a cab, sitting down with extreme caution. The driver did not exercise caution, extreme or otherwise, and by the time Beckett's block had been reached, Castle was regretting every last pothole. Yes, he was fit, exercised regularly, and was in excellent health – but crashing down on a hard floor with Beckett's weight (which wasn't much, considering her height) on top of him was sore.

Cab paid, he ached and groaned his way into Beckett's block, thanked God for an elevator, and arrived at Beckett's door still – just about – able to move. He knocked.

It took longer than he would have liked for the door to open. On the other hand, she had opened the door, which was an improvement on – exceedingly likely – not opening it.

"Yes?" It wasn't welcoming.

"Let me come in," Castle said pathetically. "I hurt all over from falling on that floor and I really wanna sit down."

She scowled. "You tripped me up."

"C'mon. Please?"

"Whatever."

Castle sidled in, still creaking, and cautiously sat down, wincing with every bend of every joint.

"Try Icy Hot."

"Does it come in bath-filling sizes?"

Beckett cracked a smile. "I'll lend you mine. Two capfuls in a bath will do."

"That and half a glass of neat Scotch."

"Yeah, but tomorrow you'll have a hangover to add to the aches."

"I'd still lose them now."

"Well, I don't have any Scotch, so you'll have to pass on that."

"Are you offering me a bath?"

"No," Beckett said immediately.

"Oh." He managed a cheerful leer. Moving his mouth didn't hurt, unlike everything else. "I'd have thought you might want one. We could have shared the Icy Hot. And the bath."

"No."

Clearly he wasn't forgiven just yet, though he also hadn't been shot or otherwise despatched to the afterlife – if there were no bruises in the afterlife, it might have been worth it.

"Coffee?" she added, as if manners had outweighed desire.

"Please."

Shortly, there was efficient movement in the kitchen and the sound of a kettle boiling. Castle's bleary brain informed him that coffee would help. His bleary eyes informed him that it had arrived in front of him, and then, belatedly, that Beckett had changed into sloppy sweats since the studio shoot.

"I liked the grey sweater better," he blurted out. The doggerel words didn't improve anything.

"I don't want to talk about the photoshoot ever. It didn't happen."

"We'll need to finish it."

"No."

"Yes. If Andy doesn't have enough shots then we'll need to go back. Anyway, you get the clothes whatever."

"Huh?"

"Clothes. They're yours."

"You what now? They're the shoot's clothes, not mine."

"Er...not exactly. Black Pawn paid for them" –

"You mean you did."

"Well," Castle squirmed: Beckett's grasp of economics was clearly as sound as her grasp of evidence and procedure, "indirectly, I guess, but I certainly didn't buy them."

"It's your PR budget, so you paid."

"So?"

"So not mine. Yours."

"They won't fit me."

Another smile sneaked on to Beckett's face without her permission, and was ruthlessly removed. "I'm not taking clothes from you."

"They won't suit Alexis, and Mother's never knowingly worn anything that doesn't burn out my retinas. They really did suit you..." he trailed off enticingly.

Beckett suddenly remembered the white dress and the snuggly grey sweater. But...she didn't want to be under any obligation to Castle at all.

"I'll pay for them," she said. She knew she couldn't afford all of them. He might be able to drop close to $3000 on clothes without thinking, but she couldn't.

"What? No!"

"Yes. Or you take them to the nearest thrift shop."

Castle didn't like that suggestion one little bit. He thought fast. "Okay. You can pay for them by finishing the photoshoot."

"No!"

"You'll have to anyway. Montgomery will insist."

"Only because you'll tattle. I never wanted to do it."

"But you liked the clothes," Castle insinuated.

"Not the point."

"You did. You snuggled into that sweater like it was your first teddy bear." He just managed not to say and it was so cute I could have kissed you right then, especially since he had kissed her, a few minutes later. And she'd liked it... if he wasn't so bruised he'd try it again now, but if he bent forward he might never be able to straighten his back ever again. He tried for a shuffle towards her, which simultaneously achieved around three inches' movement and a flash of pain.

"What's wrong?"

"When I fell, I think I hurt my back."

"Really? What are you doing here if you've hurt yourself that badly?" Idiot was clearly implied. "Why aren't you seeing a doctor?"

He gazed pathetically at her. "It didn't hurt so much when I...er...um."

"Came hotfooting over here to annoy me some more."

"Yes...er... no!"

"Oh?" The fearsome sight of the raised Beckett eyebrow didn't soothe Castle's ailments at all.

"I didn't come to annoy you."

"So what did you think you were coming for?"

Castle's face turned blank. "You were upset," he eventually said. "So...um...I came to make sure you were okay."

"Having upset me in the first place? How exactly was that supposed to work?"

"You didn't seem too upset when you were lying on top of me kissing me!" Castle growled, stung by her patent disbelief.

"You kissed me!"

"Yeah, and don't tell me you didn't like it. You kissed me back and if it hadn't been for that idiot photographer whistling you'd still be kissing me now."

"I would not!"

"Would so."

"Would not. Making out in public is tasteless."

"So you'd have done it in private?"

"What?"

"You said it was tasteless in public. So obviously you don't think it would be tasteless in private."

Her mouth opened and shut without words emerging.

"So we should do it again."

"What?"

Castle lost his limited patience. "Stop deflecting. You were kissing me just as much as I was kissing you till you spooked. You liked it."

"Not the point."

"It is so the point. Why'd you keep pretending there's nothing there when there obviously is?"

"Because I don't want to be part of your celebrity lifestyle! You drag me into it every chance you get. Dumb fundraisers full of barracuda-billionaire seekers, photoshoots – this is the second one, let me remind you, after that one in the precinct: book launch parties, readings" –

"You didn't have to show up at that reading, that was all your own idea!"

"The rest weren't. You even had that damn reporter at the precinct to go with the photoshoot and I don't want any of it." She hunched defensively into her corner: mug wrapped in her hands like a gun.

"That's it? That's your excuse?"

"If I wanted to be in the public eye I'd have stayed in modelling" – she broke off several words too late.

"I knew you were a model." Castle smiled slowly. "Well, well, well. That explains a lot about the photoshoot."

"Oh, so now you're interested?"

It stung. "I thought it was pretty clear I was interested from moment one," Castle snapped.

"You'd flirt with anything: living, dead or in between."

"And you wouldn't? What was that you have no idea if it wasn't you flirting?"

"I don't flirt with every passing guy."

"Just with me? Isn't that interesting? You flirt with me," he said, lazily, "but not with anyone else. What was it you said... oh yes. I'm a one-and-done sort of a girl. Tell me, Detective, am I your one?"

"You arrogant jackass!"

"That's not a denial."

Beckett retreated into her corner with the hostile demeanour of a trapped wolf. Castle, with care, managed a slide closer.

"You can't deny it. If you could, you would have – and you'd never have kissed me back." Another slide. It wasn't as painful this time. She was running out of room. "Would you?" He stopped. Pinning her into the corner wasn't going to be a good move: she could and would kill him with her bare hands.

So the obvious solution was to test the water while sure her hands were occupied. He stretched his out, and caught hers. His thumbs rubbed over her wrists. She stared at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking the initiative," Castle said smoothly. "You kissed me back, so now I'm holding your hands. It's a bit pre-teen, but you spook at a batted eyelash so I'm guessing you want me to take it slowly."

Beckett stared even more. "You're crazy. You're absolutely insane. You're on a different planet" –

"Yeah, the one where you kissed me" –

"Will you shut up about me kissing you?"

"So you admit it?"

Beckett snapped her hands out of his and, childishly, sat on them. "No. This never happened. Today was just a bad dream."

"Okay, then." Castle stood up, slowly, and tried an exploratory stretch. It wasn't quite sore any more.

"Huh?"

"I'm going. I'll let you know when the next photoshoot is." He walked, still a little tentative, to the door. "Night." He'd never walked out on her before: always stayed around… Maybe it was time to try the other option. Mentally, his fingers were firmly crossed. Physically, they were on the handle, pressing it down, beginning to open the door –

"Don't you want to drink your coffee?" she asked.

She sounded pleasingly uncertain. Calling her bluff – sort of – was actually working. Castle shrugged, still at the door, though he'd released the handle. "You don't want my company, so I'm taking the hint."

"I didn't say that."

"It was pretty clear." He feigned indifference.

"Don't be ridiculous. I like your company. I just don't like photoshoots." She glanced at him, a hint of worry on her face. "Your coffee's here."

"I'll get it to go on the way home."

"Don't be silly," she snipped.

"You can drink it."

She half stood, then sat back again. "I don't like the way you take your coffee."

"You drank the precinct sludge. You'd drink motor oil if it said coffee on the cup." He'd turned around, and now turned back to the door. "Anyway, I'm going."

"Don't go."

Celebratory fireworks went off in his head. Obviously, no-one had ever walked away from Beckett before, which was hardly surprising. She held world records for playing hard to get – she was hard to get. But she didn't like the tables being turned and she didn't like being even temporarily rejected and oh yes the balance of power had just shifted to a lot nearer equality. As long as she never got a look inside his head, that was, because the moment she found out how totally into her he was he'd never have a hope.

"Now you want me to stay?"

"I said so, didn't I?"

And there was the Beckett barrier of snap, snip, and snark.

"Still doesn't sound much like it. You're cross about the photoshoot and you wanna write today off as if it never happened 'cause you're embarrassed. Well, that's fine, but I'm not embarrassed and I'm not writing it off like it never happened."

He opened the door again.

It slammed shut with his back against it as Beckett's hand slammed past his ear.

"Holding someone against their will is a crime," he pointed out primly. At least, that was what his brain said. His body had other ideas. It locked its arms around Beckett and kept her right there where she'd landed hard on his lips. One hand knotted in her hair. The other slid down to her ass and pressed her in, right up close and as personal as could be managed with their clothes on.

Walk out on her, would he? Reject coffee and not even respond to being asked to stay? No way. She'd gone through three hours of fucking photoshoot for his dumb books and he wouldn't even have coffee with her. No. Fucking. Way. She shoved the door shut and then she didn't know how or what or why but they were kissing again and she was …he was… He was firm and sure and confident and all around her and that hadn't been the plan at all because she was going to not kiss him and even if she had it would be a quick see what you'll be missing then shove him out the door because if he didn't want to stay then she wasn't going to keep him.

Him turning the tables was absolutely not the plan at all. She should stop kissing him. She should stop letting him press her against him and stop letting him have a hand in her hair and stop letting him pull her leg up around his waist so that she was open to him and just simply stop –

But she couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. And there was no dumbass whistling photographer to disturb them and make her realise what she was doing.

And then his hand slid under her sweats and on to the soft skin of her back where it scorched and she stopped thinking about anything at all except Castle and his broad span covering her back and his mouth sliding away from hers which was not allowed oh my God do that again as he nibbled at her neck to make her wriggle and roll against him and oh oh oh he kissed her again and he was just so good with his tongue that she didn't even notice her sweatshirt disappearing until it was gone. How he'd managed that she had no idea, since she was so tightly plastered against him that she'd have sworn she could count the hairs on his chest by touch.

On balance, of which she had nearly none thanks to Castle's expert kissing and extremely experienced touch – he hadn't got close to an officially erogenous zone but right now her whole body was one continuous erogenous zone – she didn't care how the hell he'd done it as long as she got to do the same.

She insinuated slim fingers between them, tracing over his collarbones, down the length of his sternum, from side to side, scraping the cotton over his chest and nipples, still kissing him, or being kissed, as she opened the buttons.

Through his fog of sheer lust and rampant desire, Castle dimly realised that his shirt was open and there was the delicate slither of silk over curves against his bare skin. His hands moved from her hair downwards and worked their way around the band of the bra, finding a little lace, searching out the neat mounds. He loosened his grip so that he could see…

Holy shit. That would have been a photoshoot and a half. Even that little black dress hadn't been like this. It was black. Ebony, against the ivory of her creamy skin. He wanted to lick over every inch of cream. It was translucent, though: silk chiffon: too ephemeral to confine or restrain her – but it wasn't necessary, because those were the most perfectly pert breasts he'd ever seen: small, sure, but neat, firm – and exactly sized to fit his hand. Only his hand. Between one breath and the next he'd drowned without a struggle.

Unbidden, his hands released her narrow belt, the button of her pants, the zipper: pushed down to reveal more...

Oh God. Oh fuck. He was on the verge of explosion and he was hardly touching her now, just his hands lightly on her hips and a beginning-to-be-confused expression on her face and he couldn't have that: he couldn't let her ever think that he was reluctant or stopping or anything but worshipping. He leant forward, fighting for control, and planted a very deliberate kiss right in the centre of her cleavage. She sighed, but it wasn't sad; took a sharp breath, but it wasn't shocked; moved, but it wasn't away.

His eyes told her everything she needed to know: flaring wide in stunned appreciation, dilating to swallow up the bright blue with black, blown pupils. And then he leant forward and kissed the centre of her cleavage just above the vee of the bra and that wasn't only lust: wasn't only hot flirtation and raw desire. Between one breath and the next she'd drowned without regrets.

She reached for his hands, met them, tried to press him back against the door, found herself forestalled by greater strength and gathered in once more.

"Slow down," he murmured. "No hurry now. You're gorgeous." His words slithered over her skin, coating her, seeping in and softening every sensitised nerve so that she curved into him and curled close and all her taut tension dissolved into his hands and the delicacy of his seeking, questing mouth moving oh-so-slowly across her breast, ever closer to the peaks of her nipples through the light covering.

"Ohhhhh," she breathed, and felt the smile against her skin; the slight flex in his hands where he balanced her as her head dropped back and her hips tilted forward into his: widening around him where he rolled into her; hands at his shoulders.

"Beautiful." He undid his own pants, one handed, kicked out of them, stopped playing with those wonderful breasts and lifted her. "Bed." Beds were soft, comfortable, and carried no risk of falling over. He wanted to savour her. Touch and taste and take it slow and tease and tantalise: take them to the stars.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

A guest made the point that Beckett should not have been ordered to do this as it is basically forcing her into photos which will objectify her as a sex object (the review is well thought out and worth reading). That's true. However, the whole show was based on that same premise: that a senior professional woman can be ordered to allow a man who merely wants to tip her into bed to follow her. In real life, of course, the union would likely support a harassment suit and he could be prosecuted for stalking/a restraining order could be obtained - at least, one would hope so.

However, I'd just like to direct the guest, and everyone else, to my own blog post which discussed why this might be acceptable on screen and/or in fiction where it would absolutely be unacceptable in real life. See [www] goodreads dot com [backslash] author_blog_posts [backslash] 17386563-romance-and-metoo-romance-or-harassment, or search Goodreads for SR Garrae.