Misconception
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The chicken is browning on the stove. There are vegetables already being stir-fried. Castle is frozen where he stands with the echo of the door slamming in the loft.
Kate reaches past him and flips off the burners, one after another, click, click.
He looks at her.
"I'm not hungry," she explains. Her lips turn up.
He dives in for her, her mouth clashes against his, their bodies collide. She moans and arches - arches - up into him and he clutches her waist, grips her ass and drags her closer. Her arms around his neck again - might be his favorite, the way it pushes her breasts against him - and her fingers rake through his hair, nails at his scalp.
He hisses at the sharp sting as she digs in, but she gives him no quarter; their bodies tangled and his back hitting the center island with a crunch. She bruises his lips, he kneads her ass, she moans and drags her knee up his thigh.
So hot.
"Kate," he says, hoarse and gulping air. She doesn't leave his mouth alone long enough for any other words - but there should be words - and he growls and rolls to put her back against the counter.
They've been here. They've been this far, at this counter, and hurt each other badly before they had a chance.
He can see it in her eyes; her hands go still on his shoulder, the back of his neck. She's breathing hard and his heart is pounding out of his chest.
He grips her hips and hikes her up on the counter, shattering the deja vu, writing a new scene. Her face breaks open with surprise, arousal, and she widens her thighs, draws her legs around his waist, and pulls him in.
He grunts when they meet, his stomach to her heat, and she cups his face and bends forward, licks at his lips before taking a kiss. He's fierce with need now, blood roaring through his body, her scent, her arousal falling over him. He tears himself away from her mouth, rooting down her throat, teeth scraping skin, and she gasps, bowing back into his arms, her body writhing to meet him.
He reclaims territory he lost hours ago. Reclaims, possesses, stakes. He braces her with an arm and moves his other hand in to unbutton that shirt, that damn shirt, emblem of all the ways she was closed against him, walled up against him, she knew, she lied, she knew, and he rips ferociously through each button.
Her skin is soft, yellow-cream and rippling against the jerking movements of his hand. The backs of his fingers brush her belly button and she makes a sound - an urgent, needy sound - and he leans in and places a feral, biting kiss to the skin there.
Kate clutches at his head, and his knees slam against the cabinet. She swirls her fingers at his ear, gripping painfully as he's hunched over her. He releases her belly button and presses a softer kiss, spreading open her shirt and rubbing his hands up the sides of her ribs.
Her knees tighten at his shoulders, hooked there by her ankles, and she tugs on his head, pulls him up to meet her mouth. The urgency hasn't faded; it tastes sharp and bitter and tangy, like lemons, has the same sweetness to the flower, the promise of nectar. He clutches the span of her ribs, can feel how hard her heart is beating in those telltale veins, and he deepens his kiss.
She responds. Curls in around him, breathless mewls in her throat, and he memorizes those sounds, that need he's found in her that echoes his own. Desperate not to have it stop, ever stop, to never be pulled away from her again.
Her shirt gets stuck at her wrists, her shoulders wriggling to work it off, and he can't be bothered to offer help, to release her; he's a lodestone to the true north of her mouth, and his thumbs have found the underwire of her bra.
She whines in frustration, rocking up against him, and he's turned on by having her at his mercy, those noises and the effort of her body for freedom, less clothes, more skin. He takes a fistful of material in the back and twists, and her arms are pinned by her shirt, her breasts pushing against him, her mouth wide and gaping and smudged by his mouth.
He stares back at her, breathing too hard, actively restraining her, and her lips curl up into a devious and soul-crushing smile.
"Is that how it is?" she hums.
Oh, God.
And in some twist of her torso, shimmy of her arms, she's yanking out of her shirt and trapping his waist between her powerful legs, even as her arms come around and her hands give a vicious stroke and squeeze to his pants that has him bent double. She catches his head and pulls him upright again, latches onto his mouth as she works him.
He groans and leans forward into her body, aiming to press her down to the granite, thrusting, but she flinches and jerks up, gripping his ear so hard he yelps.
"Knife - knife," she gasps. "Oh, God."
He clutches her, one shoulder and a hip and her skin bare and pressed against him, her bra heaving with her breathlessness, and her laughter comes spilling out over the top of his confusion.
"Oh," he says (he sounds inane, whipped, broken in half), "the knife."
For the carrots. And - vegetables. And dinner.
I'm not hungry.
Her legs flex and then drop from his waist; he palms her thighs and peers past her to see the kitchen island still littered with knife and cutting board all askew. The half-chopped squash has rolled. Carrot peelings are smeared.
His blood still thunders in his head. He can feel her laughter dying against his throat as he feels her there, kissing him again, slow, wet trails of her lips, and his eyes fall closed.
She's seducing him. Touching her tongue to his collarbone, nipping down to the hollow of his throat, murmuring something to his skin he isn't allowed to hear. Her teeth at his heart, her wet, tonguing kiss after it, and he lifts his hands to cup her head. He rubs his thumbs along her ears, just to see, and when he gets to the soft skin below, just above her jaw, she moans.
She doesn't stop open-mouth kissing him. He's drugged by her. Silky hair between his fingers, heat at his throat and over his chest.
He's drugged by her and it loosens his tongue.
"I'm so in love with-"
The rattle of the door jerking in its frame interrupts him. The outraged exclamations behind it, a flurry of light-knuckled knocking, and yoo-hoo, Richard! flooding through the door and into the loft.
Kate lifts her head. Blinks at him, eyes large and dark like some nocturnal creature, hair in a sexy mess around her head.
From my hands.
When did she unbutton his shirt? And his - pants. Practically off his hips.
His Mother's voice comes loud and strident and not-amused as she calls to him from beyond the door. So help me, Richard. If you're in there with that blonde idiot-
Kate stiffens and her hands drop from him.
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