A/N: Thank you for the lovely reviews my dear fellow Castle addicts – forgive me for not responding individually to you all – I hope you don't mind. You can thank my dearest 'Purplangel' who begged me to extend this to at least 'four' chapters. I don't know that I have more than three – and this is shorter now than originally intended so that the story plays out a bit longer, but I can never resist her, so there will now be more of this to come!
Chapter Two:
There's an alley next door to Slaughter's chosen sleazy cop bar – isn't there always in Manhattan. Beckett hates alleys. Hates them. She doesn't let the reason why even enter her mind though – and with a long struggled for mastery the thought sparks and she immediately shuts it down. She has too, because she has to deal with bodies in alleys all of the time and she'd be completely paralyzed if she couldn't.
Still there's an alley – and it's convenient if nothing else. She'll take convenient. She'll take and she'll use it. Let Detective Slaughter assume this is what she meant by 'kinky'. Let him think that she just can't wait to get into his pants – can't wait to get her hot, desperate little hands all over him. And his broad, rough, strong ones all over her in return.
She can of course. She doesn't want any part of him anywhere near her in reality, but this is for Castle (she reminds herself sternly) and for Castle - Kate's accepted now that she can and will do almost anything.
So she heads directly into the alley, and Slaughter's voice comes from behind her when he says,
"Where you going Beckett? Let's just go back to my place, s'not far and I can hail us a cab."
Beckett shakes her head, continues to walk away until she's far enough into the alley for her plan to work, because she needs a clear spot of wall and nothing in the way of her feet – and then she spins around; beckons him with a crook of her index finger and a sly naughty smile creeping slowly across the planes of her beautiful face.
She takes a calming breath, centers herself and tells him,
"Don't tell me you really wanna wait Ethan . . . I might change my mind and then where would you be? All hot and hard and aching for me . . . don't you really want me right now?"
She swears she can see his jaw drop from here. He swallows heavily and then she sees him scan the skivvy alley slowly, only a mild hint of disgust in his pale eyes.
"Seriously . . . here?" He asks, the low register of his voice noticeably even lower than normal.
Kate beckons him again. It's dark in the alley, but an overhead window casts just the right amount of ambient light across her face for him to read her features clearly. She paints them with lust; she has to drag out every perfect picture memory of Castle that she has to accomplish it – but she does it. The look in her green eyes becomes molten, wanton, until she looks positively sex-starved and its way more than Slaughter can resist. He laughs, a coarse and crude sound that bounces off the brickwork around them.
"Beckett . . . you are a hellcat." He murmurs appreciatively.
He advances on her then, all brash over confidence and pumped up ego.
Atta boy, you just go right on thinking I'm so hot for you that I need you now; hard and fast and up against the wall.
Kate shivers just for a moment at that thought. Because Slaughter is not the man in her mind, and the mental images suddenly cascading through her brain - of Castle taking her in just that way - is doing insane things to her insides. Real want hits her out of nowhere and she has to concentrate fully to push it aside – there'll be a later for that . . . there will, she makes that promise to herself.
They'll be a later (hopefully soon) where there's time for everything that should exist between them, she won't rest now until that's so.
That's a big part of what getting this coat back is all about; staking her claim over him and making him understand that she is. That he's hers – in all the ways.
Slaughter stops barely an arms length from her, he reaches out and cups her elbow in a firm grasp, tries to pull her against his chest and into his arms, but Kate is too fast for him. She twists at the last second, and uses her momentum to spin him about until she can push him backwards, only the tips her fingers against the wall of his torso. She walks him back, step by step until his back finally hits the alley wall.
"Easy hunnie." He leans down to whisper in her ear, the alcohol on his breath forcing her to want to hold her nose.
Kate plasters a pout on her face, tips her face up to his, leans in as if to kiss him but pulls up short, barely millimeters away.
"Don't want to go easy on you tough guy. I want it rough, dirty . . . and take that damn jacket off Ethan – you're reminding me of him."
Slaughter looks momentarily confused and then he smirks.
"See I told you Beckett – not enough man for you."
Kate forces herself to grin back, "I'm not the one in the girly leather coat Detective – don't you know you'd look so much hotter in it if that thing was black?"
Slaughter shrugs.
"I like it – but if it bothers you we can't have that now can we? He tells her.
Kate shakes her head. She pushes at the brown leather as if she's impatient, and he's so eager to oblige her now, so desperate to get in her pants that he shrugs out of it, lets it fall off his shoulders as she tugs it free of his arms. Once it's off him and safely in her hands, Kate beams at him and then in a move he would never see coming – even if he was stone-cold sober, she drops into a slight crouch and kicks her right leg out to sweep his out from under him.
He drops like the proverbial stone. All two hundred plus pounds of him hit the concrete of the alley on his tail bone and he yelps in pain as his head also hits the wall behind him to boot.
Kate's fifteen feet from him, Castle's brown coat securely in her hands before he can blink.
"Hey." Slaughter yells at her. He rubs at the sore spot on the back of his skull and winces as he tries to get his feet under him again. "What the hell was that for you bitch?"
Beckett continues to move away from him, at the end of the alley she turns, just before she hits the relative safety of the street.
He's still struggling to his feet, but he's just managing to get himself upright again.
"Payback." She calls to him. "For taking unfair advantage of what wasn't yours, and for daring to lay a hand on my partner Detective Slaughter. Now if you know what's good for you - you'll stay away from Richard Castle . . . or you'll answer to me."
She goes to leave but he calls out to her again.
"Witch." He yells impotently after her.
Kate turns back a final time and smiles, holds up Castle's coat and makes an exaggerated show of slipping it on over her own. 'Yeah but I'm his witch Ethan – and don't you ever forget it."