A/N: Happy Castle Renewal Day!
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Beckett driving the Ferrari was possibly the hottest thing Castle had seen in his whole life. He needn't have worried about how she'd handle it because she was awesome with it. Dirty jokes flitted about his mind when she wrapped her fingers around the shifter but he didn't voice them; crudeness might detract from the pure sexiness of the moment. Her hair was lifting behind her, allowing the passing street lights to highlight the lines of her neck. The short dress was riding up her thighs to reveal the sexy play of muscles as she worked the pedals in her heels.
It was totally worth letting her drive.
Forced to stop at a red light, Beckett looked over at him with exhilaration in her eyes and caught him staring at her legs. He only shrugged, leering. This, the car and the dress and the heading toward a night club for undercover work, this was all brimming with role-play, and it was exciting. Beckett must have been feeling it too, Castle thought, when she bit her lip purposefully and let her teeth worry the flesh. When she used both hands to shake out her hair and smooth down the wind-blown fly aways, he swallowed. She shimmied in the seat so the dress crept higher and laughed at the smoldering look it earned her.
She was giddy and mischievous. A vixen, he thought, and while they were stuck at the light she reached over and scraped her nails over his thigh from his knee to his hip. She was teasing with her touch, enticing and delectable, and if Castle hadn't known they'd be getting out of the car in a few short minutes it would have been easy to give in and let themselves get carried away.
Instead he lifted his voice over the growl of the engine, "Green light."
Beckett's lips parted in a surprised, devilish grin, and Castle shook his head at the shiny darkness of her expression. "No, not..." He lifted her hand away from his, uh, hip, and nodded forward. "The light's green."
Beckett's eyes flicked back to the road, and she smiled in playful disappointment. "Ah." With a roar, they were off again. "I guess this is almost as much fun as the other thing," she said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the whip of the wind.
Castle smirked and shook his head. "Hardly."
"I said almost, Castle."
What he'd been able to keep himself from doing in the car became infinitely more difficult to resist when they entered the club and Beckett started dancing. She was slipping between club-goers, shifting her hips and using her own hands to drag her skirt a little higher, dipping low and looking over her shoulder at him with a dirty grin. The light was low and red-hued, the shadows adding definition to the skin revealed by the low neckline of her dress and glinting off of her lips when she called, "You comin', Castle?"
Oh, this was so much better than when he'd been forced to pretend he didn't notice those things.
She wasn't even moving to the music, and it was somehow even sexier that way. The beat was heavy, the crowd moving as one, but Beckett was a little lost in her own high. When she dipped again and dragged a hand down the satin of her dress Castle groaned and moved up behind her. "Let's pretend," he let the words spill through the tumble of her hair, "that we aren't here to drag some creepy coke dealer into custody."
It was just a game, wishful thinking, and he didn't expect the way she arched her back and pressed her ass back against him with a little swivel at her waist. His nose tucked into her sweet-smelling hair he could only see her lashes flutter and her cheek raise in a smile. Unable to resist the urge, he gripped her hips solidly and pulled her back against him, a seduction thinly veiled by the pretense of dancing, and hissed at both the sensation of the contact and the flare of pain the grip caused in his hand. Beckett turned to glance over her shoulder at him with subtle concern, still moving in an entirely un-subtle way, and locked her dark, dark eyes with his.
"Too much?" she hummed, and turned all the way around in his grasp, sighing when the movement caused his hands to slip around her sensitive midsection.
"Not enough," he countered. He wasn't about to let a little discomfort cut this moment short. "Seriously," he whispered, "let's forget about the work."
"I'd love to, Babe, but I see the guy over there." She spun back to face him with a knowing grin at the arousal in his eyes, pressing indecently against him one more time. Beckett leaned up and slid her lips and tongue against his in a quick, dirty little kiss, then whispered for him to get some drinks. "And keep an eye out."
Then she turned back toward the target and started sliding through the crowd toward him. Mind hazy, Castle watched her go before heading to the bar. It took him longer than it should have to get drinks (damn bartenders and their need to serve every hot girl in the room before they even glance at him) and the heat and fun of their play had faded by the time he had the martinis in his hands.
The residual good humor drained away as he awkwardly lifted the glasses over the crowd, trying to find a comfortable way to hold the glass in his bad hand. The crowd that had been a moving beat that fed his energy with Beckett while they were flirting and dancing was now an annoyingly drunken obstacle as he tried to make his way across the room.
By the time he got to them, he could see the handoff going down. Under cover of the table and the loud noise of the club, the sleazy dealer was palming a stash to Beckett. There was just enough time for jealousy to swing through Castle's blood at the way that creep was smiling at his girlfriend, his eyes drifting down her chest, then Beckett was slamming the guy down on the table and slapping the cuffs on him.
The bouncer took a menacing step toward the commotion, and Castle reacted with instincts he didn't even know he had. He tossed the drink in his right hand at the guy's face, the olive bouncing off of his nose, and tossed the glass aside. He heard it shatter against the ground as he drew his gun from his shoulder holster in a slick move. Incensed, the bouncer wiped the alcohol out of his eyes and turned on him only to come face-to-face with Castle's gun. He froze.
"Take it easy, bub," Castle smirked at him, wiggled the barrel of the gun, and took a leisurely sip from the martini he was still holding in his left hand. It was pretty good, even if his hand was killing him.
"Castle!" Beckett's voice broke through his totally noir moment, and he looked over to find her stretching one hand toward him. "Cuffs!"
"Oh, right! Sorry."
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"That was so cool! Did you see, Beckett? Did you see how I didn't even spill the drink I was holding? Just like James Bond."
Beckett shook her head but smiled, handing their prisoner over to some unis to get him into interrogation. "I'm gonna go change, James. You want ice for your hand?"
"Why would you change?" Beckett gave him an unamused look, and headed toward the locker room without answering, so he called, "Yes please! Ice would be good."
After she'd gone, he turned back to the bullpen, full of himself. Pleased to see Ryan and Espo still there and working steadily, he walked over with some added swagger and sat on Ryan's desk.
"Boys, don't be jealous, but I just took down the bad guy and didn't even spill my martini. Just like James Bond."
Ryan and Esposito looked up slowly, in sync, and each raised one eyebrow. "Castle, you know James Bond wasn't a real cop, right?" Ryan asked, dismissive.
Castle scoffed. "Not the point. I was so cool in there, I could have been the star of my own movie."
"Castle," Esposito chimed in, "Real cops don't care if they get a little messy in a take down. And the word is that Beckett took the guy down."
"I got the bouncer," Castle said with an unconcerned wave. "And you guys are just jealous of my cool."
The boys laughed and turned back to their work, actively ignoring him.
"You guys," Castle continued, "just fear that you may never live up to the high standard of cool that- oh, hey, Beckett's back." He hopped off the desk, stumbling over his own feet in an attempt to stand quickly, bumping his hip against the corner of the desk and knocking over a jar full of paperclips. With an exaggerated sigh, he leaned down to pick them up, promptly bouncing his head off of the desk drawer handle. "Ouch!"
"Yeah, double-oh-seven," Esposito mocked him, "we're super jealous of your moves."
Rubbing his forehead, Castle narrowed his eyes at him. When Beckett approached, now in jeans and a blazer, he took the ice pack she offered and held it briefly to his forehead. Beckett looked at him quizzically, but he waved her off. "So, we questioning that guy tonight?" he asked instead.
"Well, I am." Before Castle could interject, Beckett held up a hand. "Sorry. The guy likes me, I think I'll do better on my own."
"Seriously? I'm missing all the best parts of this case. First the butler, then the confession..."
"He hasn't confessed yet, Castle. And really, you don't think tonight was the best part of the case? Because I do."
She looked at him meaningfully, a little bit of saucy in her voice and a lot of heat in her eyes.
"Oh, well, yeah. That was great." He smiled at her for too long, until the boys were clearing their throats. Castle turned to stare at them. "What?"
"Nothing, lovebirds."
Beckett flushed lightly and headed off toward interrogation, and Castle just glared at Esposito. He readjusted his ice pack over his hand and flexed the fingers gingerly. "Hey. This is getting better."
"Good to hear that, Castle. The place hasn't been quite so much fun without you around." It was Montgomery, wearing his jacket and carrying a briefcase as he headed out for the night.
"Oh, Cap, I can't believe you told him that." Esposito sat back in his chair and held his palms out in mock disbelief.
"Yeah, Captain. Think of the long term effects this is going to have on his ego," Ryan added, shaking his head. Montgomery only laughed but before he could head out, Ryan added, "Hey, you never told us what you'd do if you won the lottery."
Montgomery nodded and turned back to them, . "I'd buy a big ass boat, with deep sea rods hanging off the stern." He shook his head. "It's sad, you know. Guy won the lotto, shoulda been the best day of his life. But it caused all of this misery."
"I guess it turns out that way sometimes, when we get what we think we want," Castle said. He was about to make a flip comment about how that's not how it turned out for him, but was distracted by a flicker of something dark over the captain's features.
Ryan noticed it too. "You alright, Cap?"
Montgomery seemed to shake himself, and shook his head at them with a rueful grin. "Sure. Just all this new budget paperwork from 1PP keeping me busy."
He bid them goodnight and turned to leave, Castle and the boys accepting his explanation at face value. Captain Montgomery had gotten pretty good at presenting a mild and good-natured front in the years since Beckett had been working at his precinct. But he knew he had been slipping lately. Everything reminded him of deception and eventual catastrophe.
Tonight, he found himself, yet again, thinking of the moment when Beckett would learn that he'd been complicit in her mother's murder. If that ever happened, she would be rolling along down a road of good leads and almost answers, finally getting what she wanted, and then she would learn about his part. And he was no fool, he knew she looked up to him. A mentor of sorts. It'd be a sucker punch at a wedding, out of left field and totally devastating. His deception meant that if she ever earned the justice she was seeking, she'd be left in the ruins of betrayal.
He sighed. When he got home, he was going to give Evelyn a big kiss and drink a cold one. It was time to stop giving in to this new habit of the morbid, and go back to just being the Captain. Everything else was out of his hands.
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Castle had his hands in her hair and his lips on her collarbone just moments after they'd gotten to her apartment. Beckett gasped at the sudden assault, leaning in to him and letting her head fall back. But this was happening fast, and she wanted to change first. So against her better judgment, she tugged on his ears until he worked his way back up her neck and her jaw and finally pulled away to look questioningly at her.
"Wait a second. Let me go do something."
"I thought that's what we were doing."
Her head fell forward with a little laugh and she pinched his butt before she headed down the hallway toward her bedroom with an extra sway to her hips. Castle watched her go, typically entranced, then stepped over into the kitchen to get some water. Clubbing is thirsty business, he decided.
He heard her coming back to him and glanced up mid swallow, only to suck some of the water into his windpipe instead of swallowing it. She'd put her dress back on, even the heels. She waited with a little smirk until he stopped hacking, then stepped over to him and rested a hand on his chest.
"Sorry," he wheezed. "Took me by surprise."
"Yeah, I kinda meant to."
"Mean."
"You think so?"
Beckett slipped her hand further up to curl around his neck, moving fully into his space and swaying a little. It was only then that Castle realized there was music coming from the bedroom. Seriously, he was going to have to work on his observational skills when he was distracted by her general hotness. But self-improvement could come later, and he finally looped his arms around her waist and started dancing with her.
"Not always mean," he amended with a small laugh. "Sometimes very nice."
Beckett hummed in either amusement or acquiescence, he wasn't sure, and reached up to kiss him lightly. Then, keeping their lips close enough to brush as they moved, she turned slowly in his arms so that her back was to his front. She kept one arm flung up and around his neck, but the other lowered so she could curl her fingers around his wrist.
Still swaying, dragging her closer, Castle pressed his palm against her lower abdomen, his fingers playing over the satin of her dress.
"We should go dancing," he murmured, kissing her lips and then nuzzling through her hair until he could kiss the spot behind her ear. Beckett made a noise of annoyance, and he chuckled. "I don't mean right now."
"Good." Beckett dipped and rose in front of him to the music, the rhythm purposeful, using her grasp on his wrist to lower his hand even further. "Thought maybe you'd misunderstood."
"No," he chuckled again, pressing his fingertips into her flesh and starting to walk her toward the bedroom. "No, I'm with you."
"Same page?"
"Mmmhmm." His response was muffled against the skin of her neck, a little frustrated when the tight fabric of her dress prevented him from really touching her the way he wanted to. He nipped at her skin and kept them moving. "Much as I love this dress, Kate, I have to take it off of you now."
"M'kay." The words were a sigh between deep breaths. "I'll keep the heels on."
Castle groaned and laughed. "You're the best."
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A/N: Thanks for reading! I truly am thankful for the support I've gotten on this story. :)
Also, I had a nasty note about posting on time PM'd to me today. Luckily, that person said they were unfollowing, which is probably for the best. But for those of you who've been so kind, I thought I'd clarify that when I said I'd be posting 'tomorrow night' I meant right now, though I can see now that it seemed I meant yesterday. 2 a.m. was my morning yesterday, and 1 a.m. is my night time tonight, so I've only had one sleep since I posted last. (That's how I count days when my schedule is silly.) Sorry about that, I didn't think about it being closer to 48 hours than 24 between chapters.