Hot breath shudders free from his lungs and she pants against his lips. Dirty blasts of moist air stain his skin, tasting like her.
Everything tastes like her.
His head is spinning and every grunt of oxygen that he drags inside just about does its job before he's tugging in another, trying to calm the racing of his heart. The ache in his lungs.
Their hands are still joined, palm to palm, knuckles crushed together and resting on top of her thigh, damp with exuberant sweat. The pad of her thumb sweeps over his skin, little flares of unintentional electricity racing out and sparking at the bone.
Every now and then she jerks, shocking him with the sensation, and it takes everything in him not to give into the urge to collapse against her.
He pulls out. Slow, drowsy with satiation, delaying the inevitable separation of their bodies and the space that he knows is going to come flooding back in.
Castle - not wanting to detach from the fiery depths of her swollen, succulent body, but unable to bear the shaking of his legs while still buried inside her - steps back.
He feels Beckett's shivered reaction, the silk of her insides quivering deliciously as she finally releases him.
He slams a palm to the wall behind her head, drops his face into the curve of her neck and tries to remember how to fucking breathe.
She is exceptional. Beautiful.
He's in love with her. He knows it as surely as he knows what just happened was amazing and wonderful - mind blowing - and should not have taken place in the bathroom of his book signing.
Not the first time. She deserves better than that. She's worthy of more.
So much more.
Castle just needs to tell her that and get them both the hell out of here. They need to be somewhere secluded, somewhere he can take his time. They need to be somewhere with a bed and endless hours reaching before them so can he show her in finite detail exactly how amazing she truly is.
He can still taste her in his mouth, feel the wetness of her drying on his thrumming skin. And he's still touching her - not convinced he'll ever want to stop - his nose in the sweat dampened hollow of her throat, inhaling.
He touches his tongue to the skin there, slides it against the moisture and salt, hums and opens over her pulse. God, she tastes good. Like sex and sunlight.
She smells like it too.
It's making him ache again, he wants her again and Castle drags his hand down the wall to the back of her neck, pulls her head in sharply and meets her lips.
He wants her to understand a little of the shock and energy and utter confusion his realization has plunged him into. He's in love with her, no doubt. Not the words she inspires, not the character on the page, not just the woman who could tear him apart with her bare hands and not just the woman he had sex with.
He still can't believe that.
The shock of it ripples through him and with his pants around his ankles and her bare from the waist down he plunders her mouth, ignores the cold tile and the heat that is finally tingling through his frozen fingertips.
She grunts, surprised by his sudden attack and still trying to recapture her own breath, and Beckett stumbles her way into the kiss. She's artless and graceless and raw. Uninhibited and perfect.
She bites at it, at the swirl of his tongue and soft tangle of their lips, bites at him until it's just as much her kiss as it is his.
Until it's theirs.
She moans. A low and feral sound that springs from the back of her throat. Not the passionate cry of release and not the sultry sigh when he entered her.
This sound is new.
Softer, lighter, the hand holding his releases and her fingers climb up his chest, her other palm rises too and together they merge either side of his ribs. Her hands climb his back, fingertips gentle and seeking and in time they slide into his hair.
Her fingers curl within the strands, slight tugs that hold him in place and make his eyes close at the sensation. She moans again, almost purrs into the depths of his mouth and then her hands are dropping, palms hot as they swoop down to cup his jaw.
The tip of her fingers starts to slowly trace his earlobes, the first touch anything like a caress he's felt from her all night, something beyond indecent and hot as hell.
Loving not lustful?
They pull apart slowly, his hands in her hair and the silk of her cheekbones clinging to the knuckles of his thumbs as she nuzzles closer. Her eyes are wide and staring and so very open that he can't help sinking into the warmth of her body, his nose just touching the tip of her own.
He finds some sort of truth in her eyes, a shared knowledge and he has to tell her, has to let her know how he feels. How amazing they were together.
"Beckett, that was - " He whispers, awed, lost for words.
And almost instantly, as if she knows exactly what he's thinking she's shoving him away.
Her eyes harden, her lips narrow, a brittle blink and she reverts instantaneously to the woman who strode in here less than half an hour ago out for his blood.
Kate drops down from the sink as Castle stumbles back, his eyes losing their magnetized hold with hers as he turns to catch himself on a stall door.
When he turns back her dress is in place and she's running cold water over her hands trying to smooth down her hair.
"Beckett - what the -?"
She turns and his voice falls away at the look that falls stark and pale over her face. With quiet deadly steps Kate moves closer and her hand clamps over his mouth. "Shut up." She hisses.
His eyes narrow. Lips pressing into the palm of her hand. She growls, shoving him backwards when she's confident he'll stay silent.
She adjusts her dress, doesn't even throw a second glance at the underwear on the ground at their feet before she heads for the door.
He cleans himself up in a rush. Hurries and tugs his clothes back into place so he can chase after her.
"Beckett." He tries but she's already flipping the lock, her fingers clenched around the handle, knuckles white and voice cold, whispering, her eyes flaring when they find his.
He sees it then, the hurt that lingers within her.
Her lips clench.
She sounds bitter when she bites out the words. "You have no idea how much more there is to Nikki Heat."
She pulls the door and turns on her heel, without a second glance, she's gone, leaving Castle shocked and alone in the bathroom.