A/N: Friendly reminder that this chapter is rated M.
He stares up at her with eyes that sweep unabashedly over her frame, awe and arousal swirling together, while his hands map her newly exposed flesh with unhurried adoration.
"I love you," he murmurs, so simple, so much, and she can't believe she has it back, can have him back.
"I know," she whispers, stealing his hands from her sides to interlace their fingers. She rests their sealed palms over his head as she leans in to kiss his mouth, painting a prayer against his lips, stroking rapture along his tongue. "Love you too. Never stopped."
Castle tightens the embrace of their fingers at her words, growls at the grind of her hips in his lap and the glide of her tongue in his mouth. He may not remember the entirety of his six years without her, but his body does. He won't survive much longer. Won't survive the night if she continues to move like that.
He squeezes her hands once in warning before he rolls them over, catching her gasp with his teeth. He sucks her bottom lip into his mouth, tending to the flesh with his tongue while his hands part with hers to coast along the expanding branches of her ribs, climbing to the hills of her breasts.
A moan hums in the back of her throat when he covers the swell of black lace with one of his palms. He hooks his thumb beneath the material to sweep across her nipple, earning a harsh jerk of her hips. He follows the path of his hands with his mouth despite her whine of impatience, his lips quirking at that familiar sound of disapproval. But she obediently arcs her spine when his hands span her back, unhook the clasp of her bra.
The black lace falls over the edge of the bed and he covers the tip of a breast with his mouth.
"Castle," she gasps, one of her hands instantly flying to his hair, scoring his scalp with her nails.
He hums, laves her nipple with his tongue, attends to the other with the brush of his thumb.
He could do this all night, worship her chest, make her come from the work of his mouth and the caress of his hands alone, but she's writhing restlessly beneath him, on the verge of begging.
"Come back. Up here," she gets out, her chest rising and falling rapidly. He drifts to the middle of her sternum just to feel the erratic rhythm of her heartbeat beneath his lips.
"Not yet," he murmurs, his words whispering against her scar. "I've missed you, everything about you, and I want to rediscover every inch."
A guttural noise snags in her throat, a catch between a whine and a moan, and Kate snakes one of her legs around his waist, drags the weight of his lower body into hers.
"You think I don't want the same thing?" she husks, her eyes on fire when he lifts his gaze, finds her staring down at him.
"This first," he murmurs, scraping his cheek, the light layer of stubble, to the sensitive swell of flesh before he pays homage to her opposite breast. He sucks her nipple to the roof of his mouth, presses his thumb hard to the other and circles in the way that used to drive her crazy. Just to hear her cry out.
She doesn't disappoint.
Castle finally abandons her breast to continue down the line of her body, lips caressing the rungs of her ribs that stutter with every glance of his mouth. His teeth nip at her belly button, snag in the waistband of her underwear.
Her hips lift from the bed when he eases the matching lace down her legs. She squirms, her body restless beneath the pin of his hands bracketing her waist. In response, he skims his lips along her abdomen, feeling the muscles jerk and contract beneath his tongue. She's panting beneath the ministrations of his touch, her lower body quivering in anticipation, and her hips bucking at the nuzzle of his nose to the soft skin where her hip meets her thigh.
"Fuck, Rick, please," she gets out and he can't help smirking.
He scrapes his teeth against her thigh before finally brushing his lips between her legs. Her entire body jolts, spine arcing from the mattress.
A sob breaches her lips, her breath hitching with it.
He strokes his tongue through her folds. Her hand clenches in his hair, the other clinging to the sheets, and all it takes is the suckle of his mouth to her clit to have her shattering.
He almost forgot how strikingly beautiful it is to witness Kate Beckett fall apart.
Castle is journeying up the length of her body when she opens her eyes, brushing gentle kisses to her skin that still cause her sensitive flesh to shiver. She hums as he reaches her mouth, the taste of her still on his tongue, and her eyes slide open once he pulls away. He's resting above her on his elbows, his gaze dark and shimmering and so deeply in love with her. It never fails to take her breath away.
"You okay?" he murmurs. His body draped alongside hers, frissons of pleasure still rippling through her bloodstream from every point of contact.
Kate hums, words not her forte at the moment, her mouth curling into a smile. "Better than I remembered."
"Just from that, huh?" he teases, looking amused and a little proud too, but his expression is so tender, adoring, and she rolls her eyes, shifts her body closer to seal against the front of his.
"Castle," she groans, rocking her hips into his, feeling the thick length of him trapped between their abdomens, hot and hard, even through his clothing. "You're still wearing pants."
He huffs into her hair before pushing up from his elbows; she already rid him of his belt somewhere in between their transition from the door to the bed, so it doesn't take long for him to shove the slacks from his hips, his boxers going too. Then, finally, he's lying naked above her, so much of their bodies already aligned.
Kate arches to kiss his mouth, cradling his jaw in her palm. She feels the bone working against her fingers as she parts her lips, hums around the stroke of his tongue, matching the rhythm of her hips to his slow glide.
He falters for a split second when her other hand scales along his side. She ventures along the plains of his back, the rough terrain of raised flesh beneath her fingertips.
"Rick," she whispers, sweeping her hand up to the plate of his shoulder blade, splaying her palm there. She closes her eyes when he presses his forehead to hers, their noses clashing as their lips graze. "Stay with me."
She tilts her chin, feathering a kiss to his mouth. Castle shudders out a breath, his lashes fluttering like butterfly wings against her cheeks.
It's all so delicate.
"I'm with you," he murmurs, his body sinking deeper into hers, every inch of her exalting at the weight. Her thighs spread wider, embracing him. "Always with you."
Castle's hand slides into her hair, tangling in the strands as he drapes his mouth over hers. He kisses her deep and thorough and rich while his other hand trails along her outer thigh. Her legs wrap high around his waist reflexively, sense memory taking over. Because she could never forget how good they are together, no matter how hard she sometimes tried.
She slips a hand between them. He chokes out her name as she caresses him with her fingers. She curls her hand around the solid heat of him - before she guides him home.
Kate releases a whimper, soft and breathless, when he slides inside of her. So effortless and deep, her entire body curling around him as their stomachs brush and their hipbones kiss. He has to take a second to breathe, resting momentarily with his lips to her neck, painting his mouth there, his tongue, the moment he can spare the oxygen. It causes her to arch, managing to take him even deeper, rob him of air all over again.
"I missed you inside of me," she breathes, rolling her hips, earning a barely controlled thrust in response. He curses into the warmth of her neck, licks the salt from her skin.
"Not gonna last if you say stuff like that," he rasps, following the column of her throat back to the haven of her mouth, catching her bottom lip between his teeth.
"It's true. God, I missed you, I love you," she gasps, her arms wrapping so tightly around him as he withdraws, plunges back in. Her body clutches him with every thrust, so snug and wet and velvet with heat that he just wants to bury himself inside of her, never stop.
His fingers curl around the back of her knee, slick with sweat, and hitch her leg higher at his hip. He hears her whimper into his neck while he tries to blink past the white spots dancing like stars ready to combust through his vision, the heat spreading so fiercely from where they're joined. And he just wants to be closer, wants more, the need building with fervent urgency-
Castle gasps, from both surprise and the change in angle, when Kate suddenly rolls them over. She's always able to execute that maneuver with such ease.
"Fuck, you're so good." He can't help dropping his head back into the pillow, groaning as she plants her palms to his chest. She rises and falls over him, twists her hips. He grips her thighs hard enough to bruise.
He can no longer tell where he ends and she begins, but it's still not enough. Not until he pushes up on one arm, circles the other around her waist, the friction sparking bright and intense and coaxing him to the razor's edge of release. Kate falls into him, her arms lacing around his neck, her teeth pinning her bottom lip but unable to stop the sharp moan that slips free. It slices through him like fire as she rocks in his lap, hard and needful.
"Castle," she pants, her breath hitching. He cradles her body against his, uses whatever leverage he can manage to shallowly thrusts his hips, buries the broken keening noise that escapes his mouth in the refuge of hers.
"I love you too," he murmurs, his voice dripping with it now, every nerve in his body alive with electricity on the verge of combustion. It's a miracle they made it this long. "So much, Kate. Always you, just you-"
She comes apart to the chant of his words at her cheek, crashing against the shoreline of his body. The crest of her orgasm draws him over the edge with her, into a sea of pleasure so deep he almost drowns in it, willingly succumbs to it.
When he swims back to consciousness, the ripples of release continuing to lap at his senses, Kate's body is still curled against him. Her heart is pounding a relentless rhythm against his chest and he carefully eases back to rest against the headboard.
She sighs, a contented sound, her head tucked against his jaw and the heat of her breath spilling past her lips to pool in the hollow of his throat. Castle presses his lips to the first place he can reach, whispering a kiss along the dampened skin of her forehead. He's missed this too, the molten drape of her body over his, sinking deeper with the post-orgasm looseness of her limbs, how warm and pliable she is after sex.
He combs gentle fingers through her hair while hers flutter to life at his side. They drift around to coast along his back once more, over his scars. But he doesn't tense at the touch, doesn't feel the phantom flicker of pain racing through the healed strips of tissue or the threat of a flashback at the edge of his mind, only knows the warmth of Kate's fingertips branding his skin.
"You were right," he mumbles, his voice rough but sated. Her eyebrow rises beneath his lips before she lifts her head, the dark fringe of her lashes, to see him. "Better than I remembered."
"Mm," she grins, craning her neck to paint a kiss to his mouth, dipping her tongue past his lips and stroking languidly along the roof of his mouth, making him dizzy with the intoxicating taste of her. "But we're never waiting that long to have sex again."
"No, that's a definite never," he concurs, smirking beneath her lips, grunting at the lazy rock of her hips in his lap. "Oh, Kate, not-"
"Shh, I know," she murmurs, drawing one of her hands up his side, splaying her palm over his chest, his heart. "There's no rush, Castle. We have all night."
He sweeps his hands down her sides, spans the expanding branches of her ribs with his palms as she fuses her mouth to his, stokes the embers flickering back to life in the pit of his stomach. She was right, they have the night, and he wants to take his time, relearn every inch, every sound, every glimpse of her. He never wants tonight to end.
"It doesn't," she breathes, and his brow creases before he realizes he must have spoken the thought aloud, let it slip past his lips loud enough for her to hear. Kate holds his face in her hands. "This doesn't end, Castle. We don't."
He doesn't have the words to express his recurring gratitude, his love for her. His disbelief that he's back here with her at all. His only answer is to reclaim her mouth with his own, pour everything he can't say with words into the work of his lips against hers, the devotion of his hands to her body, late into the night.