A/N: I have the best readers in the world. Seriously, guys, THANK YOU SO, SO MUCH! The response to the last chapter has been mindblowing. I feel so incredibly grateful and honored and blessed. I love the Castle fandom.

BTW If you want to stay informed about my updates or kick my butt when I'm taking too long, feel free to find me on twitter AT MelBerlin.

But now, because you're not reading this for my rambling, without further ado: Chapter 14.

Day 13: Again

He collapsed on top of her sweaty body, but was careful not to crush her. A minute passed as they tried to get their breathing down to a normal level. Every time Kate inhaled, her nipples brushed against his chest. Rick nuzzled her cheek, a dazed smile curving his lips against her skin.

"I won the bet" she said after a while and grinned deviously at the ceiling.

"I couldn't care less" he admitted and trailed lazy kisses down the column of her neck.

She sighed and angled her head to give him better access. They were still joined and he was softening inside her, but neither made a move to pull apart.

"Actually, I cheated" she said after another minute of silence and her fingers came up to brush lightly against his sides. He knew her expressions by heart and could tell without looking at her face that her brows were cutely puckered. His insides stirred as he recalled the look in her eyes when he'd woken up and caught her pleasuring herself. He should have known that she would play dirty.

"Oh yeah you did. Glad you're admitting it" Rick agreed with a chuckle and went back to work on the other side of her neck.

"No, not just now…" she replied, but trailed off as he began to suck on that sweet spot behind her ear. "I mean…" she pressed out and gripped his waist when his tongue slipped out to taste the saltiness of her skin. "I mean I cheated earlier."

He pulled away and propped himself up on his forearms to look into her eyes.

"You cheated? When?" He watched her curiously. Not for one second did it cross his mind that she could mean that she cheated on him. He knew that she would never do that. They had both said always, on several occasions, and they meant it.

"You remember last Saturday morning? That dream…wasn't exactly a dream…" she admitted and tried not to blush but failed miserably. Rick's face split into a wide grin and he enthusiastically kissed both of her burning cheeks.

"You…that was…you're going to be the death of me, Kate!" he laughed and watched the embarrassment on her face turn into a shy version of pride.

His eyebrows suddenly shot up.

"That means I won!" he exclaimed and pressed his lips to hers. Her lashes fluttered and then closed.

Kissing down her throat and along her collarbone, he moved a bit and realized that his legs were still trapped in his hastily pulled down pajama pants. When he reached down to get rid of them and subsequently started to pull out of her body, Kate moaned her disapproval and tightly held on to his back. "No, don't go yet" she whispered and he chuckled.

"Can't get enough of me, can you?" he teased and lightly scrapped his teeth against her shoulder. She arched her back into his touch, her internal muscles clenching around him briefly, and he noticed once again that her appetite was insatiable.

Rick's hand left the pillow by her head and slid down to cup her breast. Her nipples hardened instantaneously.

"The bet was a stupid idea," she murmured, her hands traveling up his back and gripping his shoulders.

"Yeah" he agreed and smiled, his almost limp form slipping out of her.

"Rick" she gasped in protest, but he was already moving away, his open mouth gliding down to her free breast, his tongue slipping out to tease one nipple as his fingers pinched the other. She made a mewling sound that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He nipped his way across her soft flesh.

"What… do we… do now?" he managed to ask around her hot skin.

"Make up for lost time…" she whispered and threaded her fingers through his short hair, anchoring him to her.

"Why, my dear detective!" he whispered back, his breath tickling her.

"I never thought I'd hear you say something like that. But oh well, if you insist…"

He leered at her and she confidently smiled back. Pushing him slightly backwards, she sat up, only to reach down and aid him in ridding his pants.

"I insist" she grinned when they settled back onto the mattress.

"You do, don't you?" he said and his hand reached down to cup her heat, wasting no time and dipping a finger into her. She squeezed her eyes shut and released a shaky breath.

"Oh God. Oh yes."

His touch was shallow, barely there, but her two orgasms before had sensitized her nerves. Her fingers laced into his hair again and pushed his head down. She wanted, needed more.

Rick didn't reject her demand per se, but took his sweet time getting his mouth to where she wanted it to be. He loved it when she was squirming, slowly getting impatient. His tongue drew tantalizing circles around her breast before he sucked the peak into his wonderfully hot mouth. He repeated his torture on the other side, his finger all the while inside her, but only ever so slightly moving, providing not nearly enough friction for her liking.

"I missed this" he spoke against the underside of her breast, nipping at the globe, then soothing it with a talented flick of his tongue.

"Yes" was her only response. She wasn't really in a state of mind anymore to reply coherently.

"I missed you" he admitted, but she wasn't in the mood for his sweetness and roughly pushed his head further down her body. He dropped a kiss to her belly button, trailed a line further down, but then deviated from his assigned path and kissed her hipbone, her thigh, everywhere but where she ached for him.

When he sucked on the inside of her thigh, she bucked off the bed, but he firmly pressed her back down. Only reluctantly she relaxed and he rewarded her with a deeper thrust of his finger, his mouth still on her thigh.

Kate was panting and sweating, but she managed to concentrate and string several words together. "You…ohh…are giving me…hickey…"

He smiled against her skin, but didn't release her until he was sure that she would indeed be marked afterwards.

"You're not going to leave this apartment for a long while" he promised and finally, finally let his tongue swipe along her folds. She mewled and moaned and he added a second finger and licked her clit and grabbed her waist and pulled her closer all at once and it was great and enough and too much and she shattered underneath him because she couldn't take it anymore. But he didn't stop or slow down and neither did her tremors and it dragged on, and dragged on until she forgot her own name.

He pulled his fingers out of her and drew his mouth away and she sighed. Rick licked his own fingers clean and watched her shake with occasional aftershocks, her eyes still closed and her head bent back, pressed into the pillow.

"You're beautiful" he whispered, but she couldn't respond yet. He kissed his way back up her body, slowly, gently, not arousing but soothing her. The thunder of her heart threatened to burst her ribcage, so he took his time and paid homage to every millimeter of her until he didn't have to fear for her health anymore.

Then he kissed her mouth, a sensual and all-consuming kiss that made her toes curl. He could still do that to her.

"I missed the way you taste…" he sighed when they broke apart for air. She kissed the corner of his mouth, his chin, his neck and he buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply.

"And your smell…god, that turns me on!" he groaned, and to underline his statement he thrust his hips against hers, proving that he was indeed fully erect again.

"Already?" she whispered incredulously into his ear, her voice higher than usual and still a little breathless. He took another lungful of cherry-scented air and then slightly pulled back.

"What? It's been 20 minutes, my darling detective! You know that's long enough for me" he commented and winked at her. Then the teasing left his expression a little and he was just going to tell her that she didn't have to feel obliged to do anything, that she should take her time, for as long as she wanted, but she shut him up by rolling from underneath him and flipping them over.

"I missed you, too" she confessed softly and slid down his body, sitting up until his tip nudged her opening. His hands moved up to her waist, his thumbs lightly caressing her creamy skin.

"Slow, Kate. Slow" he told her and then neither of them could speak as she lowered herself down, taking him inside, inch by inch, torturously slow.

His hands weren't guiding her, merely supporting her as she rose and fell above him, her strong thighs performing their task almost effortlessly, even after an hour of exhausting sex. She was tight and wet in the most delicious of ways and his hips automatically met each of her thrusts.

When they had found a slow rhythm, one of his hands slid up to palm her breast and she sighed in pleasure.

After a while she tilted her hips, falling forwards to brace herself on his strong shoulders, and the new angle was so perfect for both of them that they moaned in unison. Her fingers dug into his skin when he went deeper than before and his hips stuttered with the impact of her desire. Damp hair stuck to her forehead and he reached up to brush it away. She kissed his palm, an intimate gesture that turned him on even more than any of the other things she was doing to him.

It wasn't long until he could feel himself coiling, but he didn't think that she would be able to orgasm yet again, not so shortly after shattering so completely, so he opened his eyes and looked up at her.

"Kate?" he croaked and she met his gaze. The glow in her eyes mesmerized him and he couldn't help but pull her down to him. He kissed her hungrily, their hips speeding up without a conscious decision from either of them.

He bit down on her bottom lip and released it, only to ravish her jaw and suck her earlobe into his mouth.

She cried out and he realized that maybe she wasn't so far from orgasm after all.

He clutched her tighter and drove into her with a fury that made him see stars. She pulled back until he was almost all the way out of her and then pressed down on him, over and over again, her nails marking his skin, the pain mixing with the pleasure into a wild, ecstatic force.

Her breathing was erratic and the noise she was making was a pleading whine, but she couldn't help it. Thirteen days without sex and then three orgasms in one hour were not situations her body was used to, though the latter occurred far more often that the first. Her inner muscles fluttered, but it almost hurt because she couldn't find release.

Rick seemed to read her thoughts as he loosened his grip on her and helped her raise herself up. She moved back until she was sitting on him again, and then carefully brought her knees up so that she was completely open for him. He knew what she needed and his fingers found her clit immediately.

A ray of sunlight filtered through the blinds and illuminated her figure above him. His breath caught in his throat and his thrusts became irregular.

"Kate" he groaned. "Kate, I…I'm going to…" And then he came, hard and powerful, and she clenched around him and half laughed, half sobbed with joy when finally her tension released into violent shudders.

They collapsed again, this time with her on top, but she rolled off him and stretched luxuriously on the bed. She drew in a shaky lungful of air and exhaled with a deep sigh. "Amazing" she whispered.

He turned his head to take in her satiated smile and pulled her sweat-slicked body closer to his. "I love you, too."