A/N: Please note that the rating on this story has now been upped to 'M'.
Chapter Twenty One: How long I've waited for your touch.
In the bedroom that's been their retreat for years now he takes her in his arms again. He pulls her against the wall of his chest and when Kate's head comes to rest beneath his chin; Castle lets his eyes fall closed. His entire focus becomes the feel of her just breathing with him and together they let the hugeness of reaching this moment sink in.
That they've even made it to this place of understanding, forgiveness, and unity – it's a victory neither expected but that both of them have been longing for. And it almost feels too real to the writer. He's hyper aware of everything, his senses are all heightened and the storm howling outside is a marked contrast to the peace that resides within.
The bedroom has become his crucible now, where all the scattered pieces of his life and his heart will coalesce back into a complete him. His skin already feels alive with it, as Goosebumps break out all over and adrenaline surges like fire down his veins. Want pools low in his abdomen and Castle feels as if he's burning up with it, with just the anticipation of being with his wife again.
There's a hungry beast brought back to life inside of him.
Their romantic relationship was always so intensely physical, and many times he's felt that loss acutely over this past year. He's berated himself for it to. Told himself sternly over and over again that it was wrong to mourn that, that next to the loss of Jackson it should feel trivial. But it didn't. It really didn't.
And he suddenly feels free to admit to it now. Hell he's forty five years old and he's been living a reality where he was never going to make love again. Kate was lost to him and he'd long ago faced the fact that if he wasn't going to be with her, then he wasn't going to be with anyone. After the way it is between them, their fire, well no-one else . . .
"No. No-one else. No-one, Castle."
At the sound of her soft voice he raises his head, pulls back enough to look down at her, the quizzical look in his eyes speaking for him.
"I could hear you thinking." Kate whispers quietly. Her right hand comes up and brushes through the hair at his temple, before she trails her fingertips in a reverent caress along the side of his face.
His lips quirk up, "Oh really?" he asks. "And that was the thought in my head huh? You're sure?"
Kate nods.
"You were thinking it. I just . . . I sense it, Castle. How weirdly alive you suddenly feel, how you can't believe we're really here." She smiles tremulously, "How you just know you can't be with anyone else like this - just me. I don't deserve that devotion, but I feel it all the same, Rick. I can't even imagine it."
He smiles.
"I don't want to imagine it. And you're right, Kate. I was thinking there could only ever be you."
He takes a deep breath and releases his hold on her body to tug her further into the bedroom by her hands. Rounding the foot of the huge bed, he stays her there, and then he bends, busies his mind and his hands with lighting the fireplace. He turns it on but turns it down low, the heat isn't really needed although the room is a little chilled, it's more about casting the room and the palate of their bodies with the fire's ethereal glow.
When he turns his attention back to Kate he finds her smiling down at him, her eyes welling with emotion.
"Ever the romantic," she murmurs, almost under her breath, the words really solely for herself but they hit him. They fill him up with the need to do what he spoke of earlier – celebrate this, her, them, their reconciliation, their love, their son – all of it, Kate most especially. Because the truth is without her recent courage and determination, he would have missed out on this. He'd already given up on them, he really had, he'd let her go.
He'd let her go! Oh, God. He'd actually let go of this.
Castle surges to his feet and in one movement he lunges at her, his kisses frantic and almost terrifyingly needy. He's swamped by it, huge waves of sudden contrition for his failure to continue to believe.
"I'm sorry," he pleads against her mouth. "I'm sorry for giving up on us. Baby, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Kate. Forgive me."
Oh, Castle. No.
She kisses him back passionately for only a moment. Soothes the fear she can feel free falling through him, before she pushes against his shoulders, eases him back so that she can bury her head against his chest once more. His heart pounds wildly beneath her cheek, loud and strong. It speaks to her of how fierce is his love for her, how honest and true.
"Don't say you're sorry," she chastises him sternly. "You have done nothing wrong and have nothing to be sorry for, Rick. Castle, do you hear me?"
She tightens her hands on him, pushes her upper body ever more firmly against him.
There is a quaver in his low reply, a sorrow. "Kate, the divorce papers . . . "
"Were my wake-up call," she finishes for him. "The night that I came home to you - you told me that nothing would ever make what I'd done to our family okay. That me leaving when you needed me the most was unforgivable. You said you had no more fight left in you, hell you even told me you didn't believe that I'd ever loved you, Castle. That you didn't think I even knew how . . ." she chokes up then and the steady cascade of words stops. Kate clenches her fingers tight, her nails biting into the soft flesh of his forearms, and she tries to gather herself enough to refocus on what she needs to say.
"I was so angry, wrong, I . . ."
It tears at her, the dismay written on his gorgeous face, but it steels her also. She nods, tears gathering in her eyes as she forces the emotion back down her throat. "You were reacting, lashing out, I know. I know that, babe. But you giving up is so very unlike you, Castle. It's in such contradiction to who you really are that it was exactly the catalyst that I needed. You reaching that point is what's brought us back here, so don't be sorry for it. Don't ever be sorry for it – please.
His gaze is hooded, eyes so dark in his face in the dim light that none of the usual blazing blue can be seen. Like lasers these dark and foreign eyes dissect her, seek out if she really believes this, until finally he must find what he seeks.
"Never," he growls, "No, never again."
The words are such a relief.
Their movement towards each other is perfectly in sync then. Castle's arms wrap low around Kate's hips, while her hands come straight up to cradle his face. Their lips meet sweetly, the kiss not desperate, not tinged with grief or sorrow. Acceptance, thankfulness, the wonderful familiarity of long-lovers seeps throughout it. And as it naturally deepens the igniting of true passion inevitably begins.
Impatient, Kate's small, elegant hands slip beneath the T-shirt Castle is wearing. She maps the warm skin of his torso greedily, eager to memorize him all over again. The material bunches over her wrists until she's forced to break from kissing him so that she can tug the garment off over his head. It dishevels his hair, and he hasn't shaved today, a thousand butterflies erupt within her because he looks delicious. There's an edge, a new strength, hard won, and she wants to feel him within her, wants to be taken by him more than anything.
Bare-chested he divests her of her own waffle-shirt swiftly, then tugs her impatiently back against him so he can feel her skin on his as he goes right back to kissing her again. He's ruthless, dominant, she can feel a years worth of yearning as his mouth moves restlessly over hers. Then he frees her mouth to attack the long column of her neck, breathlessly she yields it, her slight fingers busy on the knot of his sweatpants as she gasps loudly against his shoulder.
His clever mouth bites words into her collarbone and down across her chest, thick fingers hooking into her bra straps and tugging, twisting, removing until he can gain free access to her breasts.
It's torture, sweet and gratifying and she's beginning to wonder how she's lived, how she managed to draw breath in world where there wasn't this - where she wouldn't allow this to exist.
"I've missed you," she whispers, the knot of his pants giving finally, allowing her hands to wander, to pull his lower body towards her by grasping greedily the curve of his backside. "So much," she adds, as she feels him against her stomach. Hard and hot, the sensation pulls a whimper from her, has her own lower half surging against him, weeping and wet.
Large, impatient hands tug her yoga pants down the long length of her legs, and Kate steadies herself with a hand on his shoulder as she lifts her foot free, and then lifts the other to kick the dark fabric away. As her husband straightens she leaps, wraps her legs around his waist and the next thing she knows he's lowering her onto her back on the bed.
He crawls over her, flushed and intense, kisses her with a wild abandon before he breaks away only to drop kisses every inch of her stomach as he makes his way down between her legs.
He's almost dizzy with desire at this point. The way she tastes, the way touching her again feels - how damn long it seems now since the last time she was here beneath him.
But every part of her is as he remembers. Nothing is dull in his recall; he knows every place that she loves to be touched. Even the way she arches - so needy, the sounds she makes, everything is as it's always been. Plain cotton underwear is all that separates him from the most sacred part of her, but he's so desperate for her taste in his mouth that he can't wait, he just pushes the barrier aside as he lowers his head. His tongue delves immediately inside, the essence of her plentiful, flowing into him.
He glances up her, expects to find her head back, hands fisted into the linens of the bed. Instead he finds her silently watching him, her legs shift wider, her eyes plead. He slips two fingers inside of her and watching her, watching him, he lowers his mouth to her core again.
She comes for him with a wordless scream - instantly; the moment that his digits curl and he applies pressure from the flat of his tongue against her clit.
Such naked love in her eyes. Kate lets it openly cross her face as her body spasms around his buried fingers, and she owns the moment for him. Lets him cause it, lets him know explicitly in her watching how amazing it feels to her, how amazing she thinks he is, this is, they are - all over again.
"Rick-"
His name is a plea for now, right now, please now, and he hurries to answer it.
He pulls her underwear away, kicks off his pants and mentally congratulates himself for choosing today to go commando, then he surges back up the bed towards her. He wants to sob with relief as her legs wind around his waist, and then her hand closes tightly around his length; stroking him for only a moment before she locks her eyes on his and guides him within.
"Kate-"The choked intonation of her name tells her everything. How dark the time that's been missed, how much pain has been endured, how all of it falls away in this moment now that she's joined with him once again.
"I'll never leave you." It's an oath, vowed against his lips as Castle lowers his mouth to kiss her. And he doesn't have to ask his heart to believe it. He doesn't have to depend on the hope; he just knows that it's true. They've overcome the worst that life can throw at them as a couple; there is nothing else more traumatic that they can ever be asked to endure.
And here in their bed they've come back together. They are stronger, forged by that ultimate adversity into something breathtakingly beautiful once again.
"I know," he replies, the words low, graven, nothing of platitude in them, "I know it, Kate."
Somehow their hands shift, fingers interlocking, palms locked tight and with accord they move as one entity. Thrust and parry, an undulating, synchronous motion as old as time, they come together again and again, throwing themselves headlong into the flames.
The consummation is blinding, ecstatic, freeing. It rises quickly, an inexorable molten tide that washes them away only to cast them back to each other. Finally.