Warnings: It's time to reflect for a beat, before the high jinks resume. Oh, and Ryan is finally NAKED! Enjoy, lovelies.

Chapter 6

Jaqui wordlessly wandered away from the action developing at the flagpole, ducking inside the atrium at the far side of the balcony. Ryan decided to follow the path of least resistance, and follow the redhead instead, giving his BFF a moment with Cassie. Despite Ryan's newfound comfort with nude admiration of his partner, he wasn't looking for a threesome. He was already awkward enough in bed, without trying to figure out where to put an extra set of hands.

Once Stone and Espo were alone, she whispered, "Are you comfortable, Javi?"

"What kinda a question is that?" Javi shot back, "I'm tied to a ice cold pole, with women's lingerie, all my business exposed to the city of New York, with a handful of my favorite porn star's pudenda. I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling, but I'm pretty sure 'comfortable' isn't the word to describe it."

"Would you like me to untie you?"

Javi answered, "Yeah!" half impatient, half unsure.

"You were a very good sport, love," she soothed, wrenching the knot out of the briefs binding his hands, dismayed to find that her little game had rendered them somewhat useless as underclothes.

"I know that wasn't your game," she congratulated, "but you rolled with it just the same."

Javi couldn't tell if she was patronizing him. He certainly didn't feel like he had rolled with it. He felt like he was in danger of boiling over, during pretty much every moment of it.

And worse, he couldn't really explain to himself why. Once he started seeing red, it was hard to find the logic lever sometimes. But he madly groped for it now.

He wrapped Cassie's discarded dress around his waist for a pareo, and took himself to the balcony's edge, gripping the rail. Studying the city lights, Espo hoped they would realign into some kind of answer for him.

The straining muscles in Javi's arms and back rippled, in a criminally distracting way, but Cassie managed to stick with him.

"Oh, Javi, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." his voice betrayed a different reality.

She tucked herself behind him, close enough to show support, but far enough to respect his attitude.

He shyly admitted, "Maybe I don't want to play naked, dragon-song bondage right now, that's all," still scrutinizing the maze of lights on the streets below.

"Okay," she agreed easily.

Suddenly agitated again, Javi challenged, "Okay?"

"Sure. You didn't think this was compulsory, did you?" She offered his mangled briefs as a peace offering.

Javi, suddenly a little fearful that he'd shot himself in the foot, again, wrapped his hands up her shoulders, and pulled her in close.

"But, I don't want to leave."

"Good, I don't want you to leave." She stated matter of factly.

His slight squint, and characteristic head tilt, begged her to clear up his confusion.

"You are in charge of you, Detective Esposito," she annunciated the long syllables of his formal name, punctuating them with a combination of respect, silliness, and confirmation that the game was concluded.

Stone continued, "At no time, did I ask you to give up your sovereignty. This may have been my game, but it's only fun if you agree to play along with me."

Javier's mind spun out. Would he ever be able to read women? At least enough to hold down a relationship? Apparently, the mega-release earlier in the night, combined with a litany of personal reflections during the card game, had dropped him into a raw emotional state, which exposed the nerve of this long-running frustration in his life. He could track a potential mate's lust quotient from a hundred yards, but that was as far as his detective skills would go with women.

Fuck if it didn't make him crazy to feel so helpless in the face of his inadequacy. He just wished there were some kind of boot camp to learn this shit, like he had for the military and the force. He wasn't afraid of hard. He'd take hard, over enigmatic, any day. He just needed something laid out for him.

Espo had lucked out in the beginning of the night. Stone demonstrated her intentions with crystal clarity, and luckily, they mostly matched his own. But now, he felt self-consciously adrift. Without the urgent hard-on to guide his purpose, he wasn't sure what was okay to do. It made him want to retreat, and claw onto her, at the same time.

Cassie indicated the reclining deck chairs nearer the suite, facing the skyline. "Why don't we just sit down?"

Javi, so grateful for a direct, transparent request, dropped himself down in the chair, and pulled her onto his lap.

Her wide smile, at this affectionate little gesture, encouraged him to fasten seat belt arms around her waist and squeeze. He might not know what to say, but he knew he wanted to hold onto her.

When she leaned back, and wiggled herself into his thickly padded layers of muscle, she noticed that a few stars were becoming visible in the sky, an exceptionally rare sight over the roaring visual noise of the city.

Her surprise stole a childlike, "Look, stars!" from her, before she could think of anything witty, or guardedly safe to follow it up with.

In that moment, Espo glimpsed the pre-sex-symbol Cassie, and surprised himself with the fierce protectiveness that dilated in his chest. He pulled her back to recline against him again, hoping that some of the unadulterated feeling would just seep into her skin through osmosis, without him having to explain it.

For both, the embrace was so, well, nice, un-complicatedly nice, un-needing of an explanation nice. Javi prayed that they could just stay there for awhile, without words, without the fear of ruining it with whatever lame, lug-headed answer popped into his head. He usually wasn't quite this tough on himself, but this wasn't a very usual night, was it?

Meanwhile, Cassie was sinking into the deep pool of sensation from so much skin contact with Javier, who was obviously in a very different mood than their last embrace. She dipped back into a warm lagoon, tropical, lush, still, and consummately tension-releasing. The surface of the water slipped up her shoulders to lick her neck. Every limb under the water's surface, felt suddenly buoyant, rising from within itself. The chitter of birds, left no empty spaces for bothersome thought. She could float, with a thankfully empty mind, in undulating sensation.

The purring sound of a wordlessly languid tune kept time passing. Was Javi humming in her ear? Or were her sensory synapses over-firing as usual? She found this meditation too nourishing to abandon for the sake of an investigation, certainly more healing than anything she had accomplished cross-legged on her yoga mat. She intended to stay here as long as circumstances allowed, hoping that it would be long enough, that the effects of this fortifying process would be portable come tomorrow.

Eventually, Cassie's revery was interrupted by Espo's light snore in her ear. The thrill of his mundane, vulnerable cuteness rose tingling up her middle. 'Aww, he fell asleep,' she explained to herself. 'He felt that safe, that sated, that sweet with me?' Cassie savored it. Her station, and distaste for longterm monogamy, rarely allowed her moments like this, especially with a man as earnestly real and strivingly good as Javier.

Cassie cast her eyes around looking for something to cover him with. She spied a bedspread, just inside the sliding glass door behind them, and moved quickly to fit it around him, before the night air could poke him awake. She indulged in a long look at his sleeping form, before she laid the lightest kiss on his temple.

Even though Stone would be keeping this moment locked up in her vaulted memories, the sentimental twinge in her chest spurred her to desire her missing compatriots company. She wanted to squeeze Jax right now, nothing would be real for Cassie until she did that, anyway.

Kevin, clasping the shreds of his boxers, nervously peeked inside the atrium door, but was relieved to find that Jaqui was the only one inside.

"Hot bubbles!" Jax wriggled herself in the gurgling water, moaning in hot tub ecstasy. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought that the hotel provided their own mermaid to go with the ultra luxurious tub. With the supple undine waves rippling up her spine, Jax barely looked human. "Hot bubbles, hot bubbles…" she continued to murmur to herself.

"What celebrity rooftop orgy would be complete without it?" Kev asked sardonically. Ryan was thinking that it was Espo's turn to give him a pinch, no way anyone would believe him about tonight, even if he wasn't sworn to secrecy.

The atrium was an experiment in opulence. Kevin rattled off a mental checklist of the elements that made him feel outta his league here. 'Chandelier, overstocked minibar, some kind of heated stone floor,oversized HD screen, white leather lounge,indoor fire pit. Plus, there's a row of remote control buttons for unidentified gadgets lining the jacuzzi console that's as long as Jacqui's legs, and that's saying something. Is that a pool table at the other end? Damn, it sucks to be valiant and underpaid, well, except for tonight. Tonight, the perksare coming to two of New York's men in blue, with interest. If Javi wasn't so busy collecting some of those perks, he'd be giving me a fist bump, right now.'

After sinking into the very large, very clean, rectangular pool of water, Kevin reemerged with a much clearer head. Weird. Hot tubs usually had the opposite effect on him, but this one felt different, more tranquil. He leaned his ears back into the water, crossed his ankles, spread his arms wide, and bobbed to the surface, floating effortlessly.

Jax replied to his quizzical look, "It's salt water...from France."

"Of course, it is." Kevin gave into the sheer absurdity of Stone's pay grade.

As he floated, he tried to picture his future self at the precinct next week. He told himself the next time he was hunched over paperwork, with that all too familiar knot of discomfort seizing up his back, he would be coming back here to float, in his mind at least.

He wondered if Castle had one of these things hidden somewhere, maybe on the roof of his building? Or in the Hamptons? He wondered how he might bring it up, without raising suspicions, about the idea's origins.

Oh jeez, keeping all this from Castle and Beckett was gonna be close to impossible, if they got a whiff of it. And it wasn't like he could just avoid the conversation altogether. They would need to be debriefed. He and Espo would need to rattle off all the intel they had just collected, without a hint of anything but a run-of-the-mill canvass and interview. Ugh! He decided to put that thought out of his mind, total buzz kill.

Instead he brought his mind back to tonight, Cassandra, Javi, Jaqui, the party downstairs. This was the closest he'd ever come to a threesome. He realized he didn't know where all of his clothes had landed, probably something in the police handbook that prohibited that, specifically.

It was hard for him to get used to how relaxed and trusting he felt. Why didn't he feel like this more often? Obviously, it was part of his job to be guarded at work. But what about his time off, did he ever relax enough to feel this good? He couldn't think of any examples. Probably, the end of Madden night at Javi's was the closest, after he'd drank his limit. It occurred to him that that was kinda pitiful.

The feeling he had now was more than loose, he felt restored. He wasn't the defenseless Jello blob that had wobbled out of the bedroom a few hours earlier. Now, he felt like he had been taken apart, piece by piece, cleaned out, reconditioned, and reassembled in perfect health. He couldn't imagine how he could remanufacture this feeling for himself in his everyday life, though. He wanted very badly to remember it, so he could mull it over. A big part of him wanted to believe that money and celebrity weren't required to get to this excellent internal state again.

Forty minutes later, the rebuilt Kevin Ryan emerged from the tub, naked, dripping, and exuding more confidence in his body than he'd felt in years, maybe ever. He ran his fingers along his scalp to smooth his hair, and took a long slow stretch, reached his arms overhead, bowed to one side, then the other to feel into all the places in his back where the pain had vanished. He even arched backwards without wincing.

"Fantastic" he breathed, examining his limbs to see if he looked as different on the outside, as he felt on the inside.

Jaqui couldn't look away from the hypnotic rivulets making their way down from his hair, between his shoulder blades, into the small of his back, over his impossibly picturesque derriere, through his matted leg hair, darkening the porous stone floor beneath him. A sharp hissing sound rose from each drop on the heated stones, as their edges converted to steam. To Jax, Ryan's lithe figure, and angelic skin, seemed a little too good to be true, like he was only a reflection on still water. She felt sure he would vanish in the ripples, if she dared touch him.

"Wanna towel, loverboy?"

Just as Jax had hoped, he turned toward her, revealing his boyishly unmarked chest, and more water trailing through fair hair. She motioned toward the rack on the far side of the atrium, and settled in to enjoy watching him walk past her.

Watching Ryan rub himself dry proved instructional. It revealed which parts of his body he took for granted, and which he took extra time and care to pat dry. When he wrapped the soft white towel around his waist, it hung low on his hips, exposing the most delicious line on his body- that ridge of muscle above the hipbone, where his abs pour into his navel.

Kevin's muscles were subtle, not bulging like Javier, but somehow that made his navel look even more intimate and vulnerable. Jax would wager that Kevin wasn't the type to walk around shirtless very often. Her thoughts cursed the cruelty of it, 'Pity the loss to womenkindeverywhere, and menkind, for that matter, because he could undoubtedly turn a few'.

Kev wondered aloud, "Do you do this everyday? The water, I mean...No wonder Cassie is so ageless."

The expressive bend in his boyish features started to push his 'cute factor' off the charts. Jax began to feel a little uncomfortable with the twinge of desire rising through her midsection. Although she adored looking, she had strict self-imposed limits, that were drawing dangerously near at the moment.

Luckily, for Jax, an overly-dramatic voice floated in from behind Kevin, shifting the mood.

"You are too kind, Mr. Ryan." Stone was dressed in her Kimono again, wisps of her hair, wet, from another shower. Kevin turned, surprised to hear Cassie addressing him so formally, even in jest.

"Javi has called off the game," she explained, obviously a little disappointed.

"Is he okay?" Ryan asked with an apprehensive crinkle in his brow, "Did he lose his cool?"

Cassandra crossed the room to her BFF, "No, he's lovely. I left him taking a little nap out there, but I covered him up with something cozy. I figured he deserves the rest." She put her arm around Jax, and gave her a sweet kiss on the cheek, reconnecting. For few moments, the women exchanged some whispers out of Kevin's earshot.

Once the giggling had died down, the still wet Irishmen addressed Stone, "Can I talk to you a moment?"

Ryan needed to share something, something that couldn't wait another minute, no matter where this night was going, or if she would end it, now that she'd had her fun. He brought himself close enough that Cassandra could see the sincerity in his eyes.

"Cassie, Ms. Stone, I can't thank you enough for tonight. My partner and I, well... we see some shit. Things I never wanted to see. Things that can make it difficult to just be a normal person, even when we aren't on the job. But tonight, well, I've never seen Javi so happy." Ryan's eyes filled with gratitude and selfless concern for his partner.

"And I feel better than I have in years." He placed his hands on her arms to assure her this wasn't some kind of line. "That's because of you, and you, Jax." Tipping her drink at him, Jaqui smiled when he caught her eye, just before she ducked out the door, a bundle of wet towels over her arm.

The very intentional grasp of his hands and eyes, immediately took Stone back to the moment when she first met this young, eager detective. Just as then, her head swam, the lights seemed to refocus on different details, the situation seemed somehow simpler when he focused his keen intent like this. As if all the world's distractions, and uncertainties, were swept from her view. The only word that seemed to resonate with the feeling was 'decluttered.'

In Ryan's embrace, the images confronting her looked oddly more like a Pottery Barn magazine, with carefully chosen details, for clearly identified purposes, and nothing extraneous. Lived in, but not messy. By contrast, she would equate her current lifestyle to a month old copy of Rolling Stone, perhaps found in a doctor's waiting room - great content, but worn and missing a few pages.

She clamped her hands onto his elbows, to assure he wouldn't let go. She was suddenly terrified that as soon as he released her, she would feel like a lesser person, a confused and distracted person, a morally inferior person. And maybe that was cheating, but if she had any hope of finding this kind of clarity again, for herself, she would need to study it more, to grok it fully.

"Kevin?" she asked, still clouded by sensation.

"Yes, Cassie."

"I need to ask you something important."

"Of course," his eyes betrayed nothing but openness and trust, "What is it?"

"Actually two things"

"Shoot."

"The first is..." She kissed him full on the mouth, with all the urgency of a bright-eyed teenager. She almost knocked him over with her enthusiasm, she was so eager to dive deeper into this exchange.

But she wasn't prepared for what she found there. Clear as day, she saw an image of herself, outlined in bright precision, a surprisingly flattering portrait of Cassie Stone at her best, glowing, generous, and warm-hearted. Her mind raced, trying to squeeze the image into something that made sense.

She'd tested the bounds of her gift before, with a wide range of strangers. The experiences had run the gamut from distasteful to fascinating, but she'd never seen herself in any of them. The variety of images had been beautiful, exotic, bizarre, hilarious, so many things, but never personal.

Her eyes flew open in shock. She was even more desperate to know him now, and nearly tackled him with her kissing exuberance.

But Kevin wasn't responding to her urgency. She pulled away slightly to check his reaction, suddenly terrified that he had lost interest, that the window to this unique opportunity was closing, before she could even get inside. His naturally unassuming nature had given no indication that something had changed for him, but she was suddenly aflood with anxiety.

Her throat caught a stab of rejection when she discovered his brow, furrowed in concern. 'Fuck, he isn't into it,' surprising herself with just how upsetting this news proved.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" she tried to recover quickly. Her well-practiced self control seemed unable to kick in. In an unexpected reflexive panic, she raced to the restroom to hide. It was totally illogical, but she couldn't get hold of her disappointment, and the irrational shame burning her cheeks.

Ryan chased after her, "Wait, Cassandra."

The door slammed in his face.

"Cassandra, please come out." He banged on the door. "Cassie, please."

I hate cliffhangers! I'm so sorry to leave it here. Post a review and kick me into posting Chapter 7 asap.