Rick again took advantage of her moment of distraction and reversed their positions. Somehow in the process, limbs tangled with sheets, and they ended up half-mummified, giggling as they tried to extract themselves from the bedclothes without extracting themselves from each other. Rick finally gave up and broke their intimate connection in order to expedite their escape. Kate let out a little "oh" at his withdrawal and his eyes snapped back to hers to see her laughter fade to lust.
Once they had kicked the sheets to the end of the bed, he settled between her thighs, propping his weight on one elbow, and reaching up to trail his other hand along her shoulder, her collarbone, and up her neck. She shivered when he reached the angle of her jaw. His lips replaced his fingers at that spot, where he could feel her pulse pounding. He laved at the skin with his tongue, memorizing the sound of her breath catching and then escaping in a sigh. His fingers traveled back down her side and felt the tensing of her muscles as he passed the slight protrusion of her hipbone. He slid over the curve of her hip and down the back of her thigh, applying pressure behind her knee to raise her leg. As she wrapped it around his waist, he shifted his hips and entered her again with one firm stroke.
"Rick." It was a breath, not really a statement.
He otherwise remained still inside her, but his lips made their way to hers. His memory flashed to the previous night, when he had been pressed nearly this close to her, begging with whispered desperation for her to close those same lips, quiet her cries of anguish rather than her gasps of pleasure. The contrast of cradling her against that unyielding car rather than her soft, warm bed, crashed over him. Needing to erase that memory for both of them, he gently caressed her lips with his, just a whisper of a kiss at first, expanding and pulsing with want and need and love. As he deepened the kiss he continued to tug behind her knee to raise her leg higher, pressing her thigh to the bed against her side.
Her eyes widened at the shift of their angle and he broke the kiss to speak.
"Is this OK? I'm not hurting you?"
"No. Please…"
He blinked back the flash of another, silent "please," and began to move.
It started as just subtle shifting against her, but that motion drew a strangled moan from her lips and she threaded her fingers into his hair to pull his mouth back down to hers. He kept the pace slow at first but despite his earlier teasing, his control was reaching its limits. She was too warm and too tight and so sexy with the flush of arousal on her cheeks, and god he was making love with Kate, and without any of the physical aspects of their situation, that thought alone was enough to make him come undone.
She seemed to have lost her concentration for kissing, let her lips go slack against his and then pulled away and slightly to the side. He pressed his cheek to hers and bit his tongue to keep from telling her once and for all what he felt for her. So many emotions were warring: the love and the lust and the despair and the need to prove that they were both alive and the utter rightness of this. If he started whispering things against her skin, he might not be able to hold back. He knew anything he said now would stain. His intentions for a life beyond tonight, a forever together, would linger, tattooed on her flesh for her and the world to see. He would mark her with his words, and as much as he longed to make her his, he feared she would balk at that permanence. And the last thing he needed was to have her pull away from him before they found that forever. He didn't think his heart could handle it. So he settled for whispering her name into her ear, hoping that with time, she could accept his whole heart and give her own.
She had matched his pace until that moment, and then she seemed to become impatient, speeding up the movements of her hips up against his. He increased the force of his thrusts and synched with her rhythm.
As her back arched and her timing began to falter, he could hold back no longer.
He pulled back to look into her slightly unfocused eyes and she nodded slightly, her hands shifting to frame his face and fix his focus on her. It was as though she was making sure he saw exactly what he was doing to her.
He felt the first flutters of her climax as she whispered his name. Her eyes closed briefly, but she seemed to force them open to find his again. His restraint dissolved and he was pushing deeper and harder and finally pulsing, spilling his release inside her as she continued to clench around him. The force of his orgasm ripped through him and the power of their combined pleasure pulled a cry, more of a sob that might have been her name, from deep in his chest.
The thought that he probably shouldn't just collapse on top of her right now did cross his mind, but his body wasn't capable of reacting, so he collapsed anyway. She didn't seem to mind. She was stroking her hands up and down his back, alternately kneading his muscles with her long fingers and scratching his flesh lightly with her fingernails. She had hooked her leg back over his hip when he released his hold, and he settled some of his weight on his elbows, wrapping his hands behind her shoulder blades. He used seemingly his last ounce of strength to lift his head from her still-heaving chest. His body was shaking; he knew it must be the adrenaline, but nothing like it had ever happened to him before. She was watching him with a sated glow and a tiny curve to her lips. He pulled in breath after breath, trying to regain some control as she watched him.
"Kate." It came out so rough and strangled that he cleared his throat and waited a moment for his heart rate to drop down to a more reasonable flutter before he tried again.
"Kate, I swear if you laugh at me right now I'll never recover." She looked legitimately confused despite the fact that she was grinning already.
"Why would I laugh?"
"Because what I'm about to say could be the single biggest cliché, well maybe the second biggest cliché, for a ruggedly handsome and award-winning writer to come up with at this moment."
Her face had shifted to an expression he couldn't quite interpret. Love, yes, that was still there, and it had been all night, he now realized. But it was mixed with confusion, and maybe fear? Enough of that.
"I have never felt anything like that with anyone before."
At that her eyes unclouded and her full, open-mouthed, unreserved smile graced her features. To her credit, she didn't laugh, but she did let out a breath she must have been holding. Her look was contagious, and he kissed the tip of her nose with a chuckle. She dialed down the smile and looked up at him through her lashes almost timidly.
"I'm really glad you said that, because I was pretty sure if I said it, you would feel obligated to say it back, even if was a lie…"
"Not a lie." He punctuated each word with a kiss to her nose, her cheek, her chin.
"Best. Sex. Ever."
Her smile returned, along with a decided twinkle in her eyes.
"I told you, you had no idea."
"And you were correct," he nodded. "Damn. Remind me again why it took us this long?"
He shifted his hips to separate them, turned onto his back and pulled her against his side. She tucked her nose in just under his collarbone and found his right hand with her left, intertwining their fingers. Her expression turned serious, her eyes sad.
"I think sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom to wake us up."
She spoke the words against his chest, and with them, the cloud of Montgomery settled over his heart again. He felt compelled to respond.
"Losing someone we love makes our own lives more precious."
And damn it, something good had come out of their loss. As twisted and terrible as it seemed, he had to credit Roy with the step they had taken tonight.
She was broken. So was he, he'd be the first to admit how messed up he was about relationships with women other than his mother and Alexis. But now at least Kate and he had the chance to heal together; to build up something stronger and greater than either could be alone.
He was tired of being alone inside his heart. He wanted someone to share the space with. Now he would get to stand beside her, not just as friend and partner, but as her other half. She had let him in, and he couldn't see how she would manage to push him away at this point.
She had faded out during his internal monologue; he thought she might even be falling asleep. But she roused from her daze to speak just above a whisper.
"I wish I'd had you around the last time."
Oh, he hadn't even thought of his words in that context. From everything he knew about her first great loss, she had shut everyone out, taken risks, lived dangerously. If anything, the loss of her mother had caused her to place less value on her own life. He hugged her tighter against his chest.
"I wish I had been there, too. But I'm here now. For whatever you need. I always will be."
A wave of exhaustion washed over him and he felt his lids drooping. After a few moments, she pulled away and turned toward her side of the bed. His heart dropped into his stomach thinking she was content to sleep outside the warmth of his arms, but she merely flicked off the bedside lamp, reached down for the covers, and returned to her former spot, snuggling into his side. He let out a sigh and placed a kiss on top of her head.
"Goodnight, Kate."
"Yeah, Rick, it really is." She settled her palm against his ribs just over his heart and sleep overtook them.
When he awoke, he was alone in her bed. It was still dark, but he could see a glow filtering in from the living room. He resisted the disappointment and fear creeping into his heart and rose. He slipped his underwear on and padded quietly out in search of her. He found her on her couch, laptop open on her bare thighs, notebook open on the cushion beside her. She had pulled on his button-down over her underwear, but she'd left most of the buttons undone, and the bluish light from the screen gave her face an ethereal glow. He couldn't help the quirk of his lips at this view of her, nearly naked except for his shirt. Eyes focused on what her fingers were typing, her brows were just slightly scrunched, giving her that adorable look of concentration. He'd seen it so many times at the precinct. Now this version would be forever burned into his brain.
"Stop staring Rick. I couldn't sleep. And I needed to type this up anyway." She hadn't moved; her eyes remained on the screen as she spoke.
He couldn't help the little pulse of happiness when he heard his given name fall from her lips so effortlessly.
"Hey." He grabbed his undershirt and slipped it on. "Want company?"
"Sure. I'm almost done. Just a couple more sentences." He settled next to her on the couch and placed his palm against the nape of her neck, under her hair. He stroked lightly, just needing the contact. Her eyes closed briefly and she tipped her head back to push into his touch.
They were silent as she typed, scrolled back, edited. He had no idea how much time was passing. He could watch her like this forever. She was writing, doing what he loved, but he knew what she was writing was more meaningful than any of his own novels had been as he was typing them out. In this moment, despite the sad reason for her task, he envied her. Her words had weight. He would hear them tomorrow and remember sitting her with her as she created them. When she clicked to save the document and close it, she finally turned to look at him.
"I think I could sleep now." She looked tired, but the corners of her mouth turned up as she closed her computer and set it on the table. "Back to bed?" She stood and held out her hand. He took it and kissed her knuckles before standing.
"Sure. And I won't even haul you off like a caveman this time." She pulled him into a hug and tipped her head back to look up at him. He ran his hands up and down the planes of her back and she gave him a wry grin.
"So you do have the capacity to learn from your mistakes." His heart skipped a beat, but he tried not to let the twinge of fear show on his face. He didn't want that word associated with anything that had occurred tonight. He kept his tone even and light.
"Except that I would hardly call that last trip to your bedroom a mistake. I like that shirt on you, by the way." He was simultaneously making sure she wasn't regretting their earlier actions and giving her an out if she was.
"No, just the mode of transportation, my paranoid Neanderthal. I guess the ends can justify the means just this once. And yeah," she shrugged her shoulders slightly, "it's comfy. It smells like your cologne."
He leaned in for a soft and thorough kiss, pouring his relief into the connection.
He stopped in the bathroom on his way back to her bed, and when he climbed back in, she was facing the opposite wall, still and seemingly asleep. But as he pulled the covers over himself, she scooted back until she was flush against him. He wrapped his arm around her waist, finding that she'd exchanged his button-down for a soft cotton camisole. He reached up to smooth her hair over the pillow above her head and nuzzled his nose against her neck. He felt her relax back against him and it struck, him not for the first time tonight, how well they fit together. He could get used to this.
This time he stayed awake until he felt her breathing even out. When he was sure she had fallen asleep, he quietly whispered against her skin.
"I love you, Kate."
A/N: Despite the fact that this is a missing scene from the end of season 3, I maintain that it IS possible this could have happened. The way they never talk about anything, I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't mentioned it since then.
-K. C.