A/N: WOW! Thanks everybody for the response to this! I love your reviews and your song suggestions will be used somewhere along the line since they are perfect. I might post the Nikki Heat playlist to my Tumblr, let me know if you want it and I will let you know how to get it in the next chapter! I had writer's block with this one, so I put on the song and wrote. I don't think it is as good as the first two installments, but here it is! Enjoy and please R and R.

"The storms are raging

On the rolling sea

And on the highway of regret

The winds of change

Are blowing wild and free

You ain't seen nothing

Like me yet." ~Lyrics by Bob Dylan, as sung by Adele

The next time he wakes up he feels the distinct lack of her presence in the bed next to him and a sick sense of panic runs around and settles on his heart. Had it all been just a beautiful dream?

He shoots up and rubs the sleep dust from his bleary eyes, his breathing ragged. The wild beating of his heart thrums in the royal of his veins and then abruptly calms.

She's there. On the edge of his bed in one of his oxford shirts, colored in both shadows and darkness by the slants of early morning like that are trickling through his blinds. She is contemplating something with a tender and wondrous written into her gorgeous features and he almost doesn't want to interrupt the moment.

He crawls across the bed to press a kiss right above the collar of his shirt and he feels her relax and sag against him.

He pops his head over her shoulder and stops to whisper something in her ear.

"I am glad it wasn't a dream."

And oh, oh, oh her heart is breaking for him in her chest, breaking for the fact that he loves her that much, the he has loved her that much for such a long time now.

She turns to meet his gaze.

"So Nikki Heat has her own playlist on your iPod?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." He smiles sheepishly and it makes her want to kiss the boyish grin from his handsome face. "Ah." He is being bashful and it is so absolutely adorable she almost can't stand it. "Every time I had any sort of writer's block I would put that playlist on and it would remind me of you and help me write."

She grows silent and thinks about what he really means. This playlist was for all the times they had grown frustrated with each other, for all the times that she had failed him as a muse because she had been wrestling with her own demons. But it was that hard road that brought them here, he'd been her guiding light through the darkness of the woods.

She scrolls through the list and places a soft kiss upon his lips.

"Dance with me?" she asks as she springs up to snap the iPod into the iHome that is sitting on his dresser and the sight of her standing in the middle of his bedroom in nothing but one of his shirts almost roots him to the spot. He moves to pull on his boxers.

"Of course."

She puts it on shuffle and he comes to meet her just as the first bars of the song drift into the room.

When the rain is blowing in your face,

And the whole world is on your case,

I could offer you a warm embrace,

To make you feel my love.

He has pressed his lips to one of her ears and is whisper-singing the song to her. His hot breath against it makes shivers gallop up and down her battle-bruised spine, even while her heart is spinning a slow waltz inside her chest, contracting and filling it up as he sings to her, making her feel like she might cry.

How could she have been so blind to it? And so headstrong and proud that she hadn't been willing to admit how desperately her heart needed his?

When the evening shadows and the stars appear,

And there is no one there to dry your tears,

I could hold you for a million years,

To make you feel my love?

How many times had he saved her life? And now he was saving it again by taking her in his arms and making her whole, putting back together what the world had torn apart.

I know you haven't made your mind up yet,

But I would never do you wrong,

I've known it from the moment that we met,

No doubt in my mind where you belong.

Her chest grows even tighter and she feels the weight of her emotion pressing down upon it, forcing her breath out of her in a long, hitching sigh.

Those words. He had been willing to wait for her for so long, keeping himself at a distance, loving her in so many little ways each day. He was the boy who waited. She had glimpsed the scars of this sometimes when he glanced at her over the past night, caught the fact that he was still unsure as to weather she would shrink down and run away.

She gives his hand a little squeeze and raises her lips to his for a heart wrenchingly tender kiss. When they break apart the message in her eyes sends a thrill through him. I'm here. To stay. My mind is made up. All I want is you.

I'd go hungry I'd go black and blue,

I'd go crawling down the avenue,

Know there's nothing that I wouldn't do

To make you feel my love.

Just then his phone rings. He sighs into her.

"I have more important things to attend to than a phone call."

She rolls her eyes and he delights in the goofy half smile that engulfs her features as she swats him in the chest.

"Answer it. It might be Alexis." And then, a phrase that makes his heart leap, "I'm not going anywhere."

The storms are raging on the rolling sea,

And on the highway of regret,

The winds of change are blowing wild and free,

You ain't seen nothing like me yet.

He walks into the alcove and when he looks at the number he feels as if a bullet has hit him square in the chest and the shrapnel of it bounces around his insides and weakens him in the knees.

"Castle."

"I'm afraid we no longer have the upper hand Mr. Castle, the information I received from Roy has fallen into the wrong hands." Mr. Smith pauses on the other end of the line and it feels like an eternity of nausea to the writer on the other end. "They'll be coming for her. Despite the recent turn of events, they still want Kate Beckett dead, she has gotten herself too deep into this."

Like hell, Castle thinks angrily. Like hell. He isn't going to let anyone come in between the future he is sure him and Kate have together.

"If I were you, I would bring her somewhere off the grid, make her hard to find. They need to get the message that she is no longer a threat to them, or, even if she is, that she is going to make herself hard to find. They won't stop Mr. Castle. Not until she is dead or someone takes their Kingpin out. Protect her."

The phone clicks on the other end. Mr. Smith is gone. Castle peers into the bedroom at Kate through watery eyes and takes a beat to pull himself together for her.

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true,

Oh there's nothing that I wouldn't do,

Go to the ends of the earth for you,

To make you feel my love, to make you feel my love.

She smiles at him when he swoops back in and kisses her.

"I realized I forgot one before."

He looks at her curiously.

"The songs. They make sense now Castle. That's our language too. The songs make sense."

He feels his world crashing around him, because he can't imagine a life without her in it. She sees him force away a shadow that has flitted across his eyes.

"Come away with me."