His fingers are like ice when they slide inside.
She clenches around him roughly. Feels his thumb smear heat and wetness over her and then press down. Another dart of frozen precision and ecstasy.
She doesn't know how long his hands were in the sink, plunged deep in cold water, but now they're deep inside her and the hot and cold combination is blurring her mind.
Shards of molten ice scatter through her sending sharp ripples of pleasure in every direction.
Her head hits the wall behind her and when Beckett leans away, desperately dragging air into her lungs and riding the upward surge of his hand, she knows.
She's not going to survive this.
She's not.
"Castle." She croaks, and her head rises, the touch of his fingers curling upwards, stroking, drawing her nearer, pulling her closer.
His eyes flick up, lashes parting slowly, his mouth still open on her thigh and -
"Oh."
Beckett flinches, clenches, feels his tongue strike out over her leg like a snake bite. A flash of nipping teeth and coiling perfection.
But his eyes.
The anger within her seems to coalesce, in drips of sultry irritability, temper pushed to its limits, her grievance rolls down her body like thick, boiling oil, seeping into every crack and crevice.
It rolls, ripples and surges in time with his movement - the fluid, harsh in and out of his fingers, the dirty liquid slap of her enjoyment filling in the gaps of silence - and it drives itself down her body to pool between her thighs.
Exasperation rises, antagonism chasing it skyward. Animosity, outrage and annoyance lick at her flesh like lovers. Every feeling she has ever had for him or felt in his presence - good, bad or otherwise - come at her.
They surge together, work against her, drive that thundering pulse to her heart, to the tips of each limb and swell each mounting crest until it's larger than the one that came before it.
Banter nips at their heels and as if hearing her train of thought his tongue darts out again, tastes her, swirls over her relentlessly until she's inhaling and holding on and nothing else exists.
Nothing.
Castle's fingers are up between her legs working her with the ease of their rapid back and forth repartee. His lips on her skin, chattering away and his hair in her clenched and shaking palms - it should feel shocking but ... but -
"Beckett." He growls, dark laughter hotly seeping inside her. Untangling her hand, thumb sweeping over her knuckles until he's tracing his fingers down the line of her cleavage, he demands, "Breathe."
He tugs on her chain, pulls until she has no choice but to sit up and force his fingers to slide deeper, "Breathe."
"Fuck." She gasps, loud, carnal, sensual, and her anger simmers hotly again.
He's winning.
He's extraordinary not her.
He's stealing her breath and driving her crazy - always, always driving her crazy - and -
"No."
No. She came in here to prove a point.
"No." She says again, harder, more forceful, her nails digging into his wrist and her whole body shivering when he pulls his fingers from inside her.
Slowly.
She aches at their removal. Screams internally. Empty, the loss severe.
His eyes lose the mask of arousal instantly, her "No" resonating deeper than perhaps anything she has said before and Castle freezes.
Her ribs hurt, lungs burn. Muscles contorting rapidly to catch her breath and their eyes hold, vision blurred with nothing but each other.
Her cheeks are pink and his face is flushed and the crimson surge of blood over his lips darkens when she pulls his fingers up from her hip and slides them into her mouth.
"Beckett."
His voice is a whisper, awe chasing the letters of her name over his tongue. She trains her eyes on him and writes every single one of them at the tip of his digits.
Her tongue swirls, flicks, dances and he licks his lips as if tasting her again, her flavor now a memory that lingers. Vivid and pure.
His pads are calloused, rough under her tongue and crinkled like he's spent too long in a steamy, hot bath. Not buried knuckle deep inside her.
Her taste is sweet on him. The essence of Castle sharp behind the tang of her own body.
She bites at his knuckles, smirks around the length of his fingers when she rolls her tongue and pulls him deeper, feeling his hips thrust into the empty space between her splayed legs.
He should fill it.
She hooks her leg at his hip, bites and sucks his fingers, tangles her own free hand in his belt loop and pulls him closer.
The blue deepens and just before his lashes fall and he hides it away, Beckett catches sight of it. Something she thought she saw earlier, - that something she leaves unnamed and out of sight, locked deep in her own chest - more.
This means something more.
"I thought - ?" His voice is deep, dark, quiet. Relieved.
She shakes her head, releases him, "You. Now."
Their eyes meet again, his fingers driving themselves into her hair, angling her mouth, kissing her hard and fevered.
Happy?
He kisses her like he means it. Devours, takes and conquers like before, but he gives it all back, pulling her with him.
Her hands find him as he strokes inside her mouth.
He's wider than she imagined, longer too, and hard and thick and every other word that does nothing to drown out the fact that she is holding Castle in the palm of her hand in the most intimate way possible.
She hears a rip and tear, feels him fumble between them, the soft crinkle and whisper of the protection he envelops himself in becoming a startling, cacophonous, erotic roar.
Their fingers tangle and soft latex grazes her skin.
Beckett shivers.
Mouth to mouth, lips wet with each other's kisses, noses brushing, their breath becomes one long, mutual sigh.
She blinks, but can't escape his focus.
It's there again, that something in his eyes.
He grips her thigh, pulls her forward and slips his thumb between them. A spearhead to his invasion.
She gasps, wraps her legs around him, an arm clinging to his neck as she lifts up to meet him and he pushes inside.
He goes slow, a steady glide through ready, wanting, willing wet lips, deeper and deeper as she parts around him.
Every millimeter tingles.
Every centimeter burns in the best way. Every inch he gains within her makes her muscles judder and ripple and oh -
Oh.
Her head hits his shoulder. She buries her face in his neck.
Her ankles lock at his back. Her knuckles white in their straining grip on his shoulders.
He withdraws, pushes back in and she's done for.