Hello everyone! Big thanks to Ariel119 as my quasi-beta reader who always catches my little spelling bobos! BIG RED WARNING FLAG - this chapter is NSFW sans doubt ! Read, get some ice water and then review !

Esposito knew he was in store for more than just a quick bit of lovin' from Meredeth the minute he walked through the door. As she'd wanted part of the evening to work on the last scenes of her novel before she sent it to Kristof and then on to the publisher, he'd taken Gil out for beer and pool to stay out of her hair. When he stepped through the door, though, he immediately smelled the tell-tale smell of the dish that always meant he'd get some of the good stuff upstairs in the bedroom, or on the couch in front of the fireplace, or from one memorable time, on the stairs leading upstairs to the bedroom when they'd been too eager to keep it together that long.

Dropping his keys in the dish by the coat hooks, he walked in the kitchen and was hit with the smell of...yep there it was, Heart of Chelios cake: scratch-made French vanilla spongecake divided by layers of candied strawberries and topped generously with toasted coconut and whipped cream. He didn't bother to question how she had the time to do this and finish the writing she wanted to; it was Meredeth, she was some kind of multi-tasking kitchen wizard. Just like she didn't bother to question how he managed to walk Arturo and do his laundry without ruining a single shirt. Some things were just tacitly understood as bending the laws of the time-space continuum.

He leaned in so his nose was hovering less than an inch from the scrumptious looking dish and inhaled deeply, drool nearly spilling out of his mouth. As he wondered how he'd get a taste without Meredeth noticing a chunk of missing cake, he heard the dog's tags jingle by the front door and Meredeth's voice cooing at the mixed-breed as they walked into the kitchen.

'I know, I know, Daddy's home isn't he? Think he managed to keep his mitts off of Mommy's cake?'

'Just barely.'

Meredeth looked up, saw him standing by the cake with a somewhat guilty look. Instead of her usual quick grin and sweet peck on the lips, she sidled over to him, wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him in for a long wet one. Esposito could have sworn he heard his neurons sizzling away in his brain, while somewhere in the fuzzy background, Arturo gave an impatient growl at them, making Esposito chuckle.

'Someone's jealous,' Esposito commented when he broke the kiss. 'Why exactly is there a Heart of Chelios cake sitting and tempting me there on the kitchen counter?'

'Because we have reason to celebrate tonight.'

'Oh?'

'Oh yeah.' Unwrapping her arms from around his waist, Meredeth went to the cupboard to take out plates. She could hardly believe the news herself and had dropped everything to cook up a celebratory gateau. 'I'd just sat down to finalize the dialogue for the final confrontation between Tonio and Sonny Chiba at the courthouse, and Robina calls me with huge news. They've decided to add a second Lady Hawk panel at Comic-Con, just for the mini-series! It's way short-notice, but it's going to be me, Kristof, Bonnie and Mark, the director, and Mila Chaka, Tory Ando, Milo Ventimiglia and Laura Harper talking about the production!'

Esposito rounded the counter and grabbed her in a tight hug. 'Oh, Mere, that's fantastic! Oh, baby, I'm so proud of you.'

'So needless to say, after I got done shrieking and hyper-ventilating with Robina, I went over to Mendelssohn's and got supplies for this very delicious cake. And I was thinking we could eat it along with Crank High Voltage, since it is where I got the idea for it in the first place.'

'Done and done.'

As Meredeth sliced the delectable treat, Esposito set up the DVD player with the low-rent Jason Statham flick, the elation he'd felt at finding the cake only growing. If he knew what followed this pattern next, they would be forced to watch the ending of the film a different time and Arturo would be scurrying under the kitchen table. They ate and watched, and Esposito knew they were right on target when Meredeth dipped her finger into the whipped cream on her plate and flicked it over his jaw, then proceeded to lick it off in one very slow, hot move. He responded in kind by dabbing strawberry syrup on her neck and laying his lips there so he could feel her pulse pick up pace when he nibbled at her.

They'd only made it through the first thirty-seven minutes, long enough to see a trashy Bai-Ling get into a smack-down with a half-naked Amy Smart before Meredeth had all but crawled into his lap and fused herself to his mouth. She tasted like strawberries and cream and heaven, and knew in about two minutes, his pants would probably be tossed over her shoulder to land heroically on the corner of the flat-screen TV. But just as he was moving his hands away from her waist to his belt-buckle, she suddenly stopped.

'Come on,' she purred, 'I have something even better in mind for tonight.'

'Better than Heart of Chelios cake?'

'Way better. There's one condition. You have to keep an open mind.'

The way she looked at him as she stood up and held out her hand to lead him up to their bedroom, Esposito would have committed murder for her and gleeful called every last one of his cop friends to help him hide the body. He twined his fingers through hers and curiosity as much as libido propelled him up the stairs.

Once in their room, with the door shut so a curious Arturo couldn't wander in as he'd done on the night of their eight-month anniversary, Esposito wasted no time in stripping down and sprawling himself on his back on the bed. Normally undressing each other was part of the foreplay they indulged in, but something told him this wasn't going to be a time for long languid kisses and murmured devotions of undying love. This was party-time.

Esposito lay naked on his back on his bed, uncertain of just what his woman had up her sleeve. Her metaphorical sleeve, of course, because she was as undressed as him. In her hand he could see three silk scarves.

'Do you trust me, Javi?' She picked up his arm by the wrist, wound one scarf around it, gave the same treatment to the other one.

'Of course.'

'Good.' From inside the third scarf she pulled a pair of handcuffs he wasn't sure were just toys. Before he could react, she'd snapped them on, effectively chaining him to the headboard. 'Because then this wouldn't be fun.'

He swallowed deeply as she used the third scarf to blindfold him; when he started to panic at the idea of being blind and bound, she whispered in his ear, 'Relax.'

Since he'd lost his sense of sight, and one of his favourite things when they had sex was to look at Meredeth,he didn't see how that was possible. He began to think a little differently when he sensed something near his nose and he caught its smell. He knew that smell. 'Is that coconut oil?'

'Good boy.' She drew the jar away, then dipping her finger tips in, Meredeth began to work the fragrant oil into his skin. She kept her touch firm but gentle, not meant to be provocative in any way, which she knew would get him stirred up all the more. The way his chest was rising and falling, couple with the evidence between his legs, she figured she was headed in the right direction.

Esposito licked his now-dry lips as he felt his body respond to her touch. He hadn't known he'd be into this kind of thing, nor had he expected to find the tender attention so arousing. He felt her near him, her hair brush his cheek as she laid her lips on his and drew away the blindfold.

'This part,' she murmured against his mouth, 'I want you to be able to see.'

With that, she moved down his body, trailing her lips over his skin until she was certain he was going to go out of his mind, before she hit the jackpot and began to touch light, butterfly-wing light kisses, then slow, sticky, lingering ones against where he was both hardest and most sensitive.

Esposito let his head fall back with a thump against the pillows. He loved it when she went down on him, but the most torturous part of it was that he loved to run his finger through her hair when she did, and being handcuffed to the headboard didn't exactly permit that. It only mattered for a few fleeting microseconds, as his brain dissolved into a fizzing mess; the time he'd spent with the silk covering his eyes had heightened his senses and now he felt everything - every bump and ridge on her tongue, every groove of her lips against him, and good God did she know how to use them.

'Meredeth.' It was part plea, part encouragement. She was driving him up the wall and down the other side; as he looked down his body, he saw she'd lifted her eyes to him and was giving him the 'come hither' look that never failed to get him hot. 'Don't stop, baby. Don't stop.'

'This?' She kissed her way up the solid length of him before she took him into her mouth; satisfaction was like fine wine as she heard him choke out an oath, his hips arching off the bed and inadvertently driving him in deeper.

It wasn't earthly, the way she could make him feel like this, like the apocalypse would arrive if she stopped. He knew from previous experience with this particular act that she wasn't a spitter, which somehow made it even hotter. He wanted to touch her so badly, to hold her against him while his hips pistoned him to the brink and then over it. When his nerves began to fray, she stopped and nearly made him lose his mind. 'Mere? Why'd you stop?'

'I want you inside me when you come.'

Said so simply in her throaty sex-bomb voice, Esposito couldn't imagine a better aphrodisiac. He closed his eyes, heard that impossibly sexy 'oh' she made as she clenched around him, a tight, intoxicating vise.

'Do you know you do that?'

'What?'

'Make that little sound,' he told her, imitating it as best he could; as he'd kept his eyes shut, he could only feel her watching him as he added, 'Every time I enter you, you moan like that and it's so fucking sexy.' He opened his eyes, saw the heat in her face as she dragged her hands down his stomach, left them pressed there as she began to rock her hips back and forth on him.

She'd never done this before, Meredeth thought absently, never imagine she could have this kind of intensely erotic experience, and yet here she was with her hot, hot- blooded man handcuffed to the headboard and naked underneath her. Each one brought her closer and closer to the point of ecstasy, and despite all the demands and pleas in her mind, the only sound she let pass her lips was the little 'oh' that he'd told her was so fucking sexy. As she orgasmed, it came out of her in a low keen of unadulterated pleasure; as the tide ebbed, then crested again, she felt it rocket through her. Riding high, she dragged him into oblivion with her.

She collapsed on his heaving chest as she blinked, just to make sure she hadn't gone blind from her own lust. When she felt him wriggle a little underneath her, she wordlessly reached over to the bedside table and found the little silver key; seconds later the cuffs were popped free and his arms were tightly around her.

'Holy Christ, Mere,' he murmured. 'I think Valentine's just got shoved out of the top five.'

'Agreed.'

'But why the handcuffs?'

'Honestly?' When she felt him nod, she turned her head to look at him. 'Last October when I saw you in your Kevlar and poking that asshole Raines in the chest with your SWAT rifle, after I got done being scared, I just wanted to jump on you. Since I figured gun-play and sex don't mix, handcuffs would be the next best thing. And,' she added, walking two fingers up his chest, 'I get to cross number two off my top five sex fantasies with you list.'

'Oh really?'

'Mhmm. Especially considering they were your cuffs.'

'My...' Esposito trailed off as she got the devilish gleam in her eye when she'd pulled a fast one on him. 'You mean those cuffs are the ones I take with me to work everyday?'

'Yes.'

'And you chained me to our bed with them.'

'Ja.'

'And then you blindfolded me, rubbed me down in coconut oil, gave me a blowjob, then banged my brains out.'

'Oui, si, sim and da.'

Esposito could only smile at her, tug on her hair. 'Just out of curiosity, what is number one on your list? I want to make sure my affairs are in order in case I croak in bed with you.'

'Who said it would be in bed?' When he groaned, Meredeth laughed and pressed a kiss to his chest before getting out of bed and finding her kimono. 'You ready for round two?'

'I ain't no stallion, babe.'

'I happen to think otherwise, but that's not what I meant. I'm kinda hungry again and I could use another piece of cake.'

'On one condition.' Esposito sat up, drew his knees towards his chest and rested his elbows there as he watched his girlfriend tie the belt of her robe. 'You are my plate.'

'Well in that case, we'll skip the ice cream.'

Esposito stared at her a moment, then got out of bed to put on his fuzzy green bathrobe. 'Never, ever skip the ice cream. We can finish watching the movie too.'

When they went into the kitchen, the house line rang and Esposito picked up. 'Hello.'

'Hey, thought I'd catch you at home.'

'Castle, what's up?'

'Just working on a case with Beckett, thought you might wanna take a look at the ballistics report and give us a hand, since that seems to be kinda your thing.'

'Can it wait until tomorrow morning?' Esposito watched Meredeth slice the cake and lick whipped cream off her thumb. She hadn't done it to get him all stirred up, but the way her eyes sank closed as she moaned over the taste told him his night with his lady was barely started. 'I'm a little tied up tonight.'

R&R&Enjoy.