This chapter is my attempt to explain how Ryan can eventually end up with Honey-milk, without exploding from pent up sexual tension.

It's entirely possible that my fellow Castle fans may perceive this as slightly AU or OOC for Kevin, but to me, it's the only way to believe that canon has a shred of credibility, and explains his vamp girlfriend, acceptance of Jenny's appearance in the black book, and a host of other ways that Kevin is too sexy for his canon life choices, in my ever so humble (and possibly twisted) opinion.

Warnings: This may be a more ambitious attempt at character development than my novitiate prose allows. (My Ryan muse is awfully demanding, apparently.) Fingers crossed I can keep you with us, until the laughs and bromance return in Chapter 8.

Chapter 7:

Oh fuck, he's ruined it. All that worry that Espo's temper would screw them over. And he was the screw up waiting to happen. Fuck. He didn't even know what he was supposed to be apologizing for. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He paced in front of the locked door. Praying for a miracle. Praying that he wasn't going to be walking home in this towel. Praying that this wasn't how she would remember him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the restroom door…

Oh fuck, she's ruined it. All that precious clarity, her chance to feel clean, and spacious, and incorruptible for a few stolen moments. To find out what in the world it meant to see her reflection inside him. That was supposed to be the prize at the bottom of this cracker-jack-box of a night. All that orchestration, Jaqui's sweet gift to her, Ryan's sweet intentions, her oh-so-sweet plan for what lay ahead, she'd ruined all of it. She knew better. Why was she so flustered? She must look like a spoiled brat diva, locking herself in the restroom. Was this how he would remember her?

Cassandra pulled the door open a crack, to see if he was still on the other side.

Ryan leaned heavily into the door jam, having gathered his charm together, sooner than she could.

His voice strained in awkward discomfort, "Am I missing something? I thought, you and Javi. I mean...didn't he?"

Just to prove how off-balance she was, Cassandra's mind raced to the conclusion that he was rejecting her because Javier had staked his claim first. 'He thinks I'm sloppy seconds! Damn, Puritans! Damn, Catholic school! How dare he!'

She slammed the door in his face, again.

The kind of black and white moral distinction dominating her fears in that moment, were a distant memory in her life by this point, but somehow in her nervous flailing-tween state it seemed all too real, and her brain was fooled.

Why couldn't she screw her head on straight? Tonight's plan wasn't terribly original. Jax and Cassie had figured out over the years that there was a natural rhythm to Stone's year. Months of working and promoting a film, were best followed by a night of peak human connection, like this one, before Stone retreated into her secluded, hermit-like life for three to eight months, to replenish herself.

During those breaks, Stone's main hobby was trekking through the planet's wisdom traditions, trying on varied spiritual practices, taking pilgrimages, questioning gurus, and the like. She was no disciple, only one-third of her time was spent buying into anything, while the remaining two-thirds kept her skeptical feet firmly planted, in her ultra-modern life. But Stone found pushing her own limits a fascinating pastime, in lieu of auditioning, and subsequently warring with, potential life partners.

So, a night like tonight was her best chance to gather enough savory human connection to sustain her for the next six months, during the long desert walkabout, and mountain ranch retreat ahead of her. The feelings and images she had collected on previous encounters had held a wealth of fascinating material about her world, that she could mine, bit by bit over her months in solitary. It seemed, Cassie could more easily hold onto her connection to the human race, during long stretches of isolation, if she began the evening with a total stranger. Somehow, the further the distance the pair had to travel to intimacy, the more she felt tethered to the greater human experience.

Jax called it her Pisces lap, when Cassie swam way out of her comfort zone to commune with a heterogenous soul. Luckily, Jax could read danger in people as easily as her tarot cards, and while it rarely seemed to help the redhead out in her own life, it was a godsend for Cassie.

But the moment Stone had glimpsed herself inside Ryan, the purpose of the evening had been turned on it's head.

Instead of reaching out to his experience, Ryan had, perhaps unwittingly, reached into hers. The possibility of seeing herself, as lucidly as she was able to see others, was supremely motivating for Stone. She had never been able to shine the light of her gift inward. Instead, she fumbled around in the dark, just as blind, and desperate for answers, as everyone else trapped in the human condition.

But perhaps, tonight, with Kevin, all that would change. Perhaps their union would give her the insight that her fasting, meditating, studying, whirling like a dervish, and other disciplines, hadn't offered.

For Cassie, the stakes of tonight's game had been raised.

Finally, Stone realized that she had slammed the door in Ryan's face for a second time. 'Wow, that was rude. Pull it together, Cas!'

She opened the door again, hoping she could still reverse the effects of her boorish behavior, "I'm sorry, Kevin."

Ryan twisted his features, as if it physically pained him to broach a subject so socially taboo. "I don't want to upset you. But you kissed me? um... what I mean to say is, I thought you... I mean I know you asked us both to stay, but I kinda thought, I mean, after the bed... and the pole,... I mean, didn't you kinda chose Javi, after all?"

Damn! He was achingly adorable. She was only half listening.

Then she blurted, "Oh. Oh! ...Oh, you thought?" Now, it was her turn to stammer like an idiot.

Kevin continued the halting conversation,"Is it?..Cause I'm okay... Really. I just…," communicating mostly with his crinkled forehead.

Cassie interrupted, "But, you don't think...I mean couldn't you tell?" When she heard herself, and recognized that they were both mumbling like half-wits, she broke into self-conscious laughter.

Ryan laughed with her, even though he couldn't tell what the joke was, exactly.

"You're nervous!" she shared her epiphany. "You're not disgusted. You're nervous!" She left the bathroom, and laced her hands behind his back.

"And what's even better, I'm nervous!" Cassandra marveled over the revelation, "I'm a squirmy school girl over you, Kevin Ryan."

With fingers laced in his, she lead him over to the lounge, explaining, "I couldn't possibly have enjoyed Javier, if you weren't there."

When they stood in the center of the room, flanked by the fire pit and divan, she drew him in, curled her arms over his shoulders, pressing what little moisture remained on his chest into her own body, popping cool tingles through the thin silk that separated them.

Cassie brought her lips an inch from his ear to whisper, "I've been waiting to be alone with you, all night."

Finally, Kevin's face brightened with the light of recognition, then relief, then astonished disbelief. He felt like an inexperienced kid in her presence, a young nobody, especially now that they were alone. She had just thrown the the heft of her larger than life personage directly at him. 'Her thoughts were preoccupied with me?' Didn't seem possible that the avenue of obsession he'd painstakingly built, could possibly open up, even a tiny lane, heading the other direction.

Her giggle dissolved Kevin into an echo of nervous laughter, mostly because he had no idea what to say.

Luckily, a plan was beginning to form in Cassie's mind. She wouldn't dare come at him directly, again, for fear that she'd see or feel something she couldn't handle. But if she wanted to avoid another disastrously spastic outburst, she had to think of something fast. They couldn't just stand there giggling forever.

"Kevin, I have an idea. Will you humor me, and play along?"

"Ugh, sure. What should I do?" After the bomb she just dropped, Ryan was twice as relieved not to be driving, since most of him hadn't caught up to believing it, anyway.

"Just gimme a minute. Sit down, over there, okay?"

He settled into the bench in front of the fire pit, re-tucked his towel, leaned back on his arms, and reminded himself to breathe.

When she returned to the restroom, Ryan needed to rescue his overactive brain out of an abyss of anxious waiting. He set himself to the task of imagining the algorithmic curve that controlled the dancing lights in front of him. It had taken him a full three minutes to realize that the softly glowing amber-blue flames were manmade, as they ran over the bed of remarkably convincing faux coals. As his eyes searched for the glitch in the matrix, that would reveal the beginning of a looped pattern, he marveled over the lengths that humans will go to, in order to recreate and control naturally occurring beauty.

In the restroom, Cassie weighed her alternatives.

Her plan was a leap of faith, which she wouldn't normally attempt with a stranger. But she needed something comfortable and familiar from her bag of tricks, to ground her, something that helped her feel in control of herself, again.

She might have guessed that Kevin's moral high ground would lead him to frown upon all the elaborate pretense that her plan would require. She certainly had the stack of zealot hate mail, to support her claim that 'the faithful' were predisposed against her more imaginative choices. And her shunned goddess namesake sometimes hung a little uncomfortably around her neck, when it came to distinguishing the perceived value of truth and lies.

But all night, Kevin had demonstrated himself to be the best kind of dichotomy. On the one hand, he held himself to impossibly high standards of polite conduct. And he chose upstanding, almost cliche, straight-and-narrow life choices. Obviously, his pledge as a public servant was a commitment to redeem the ugliest of human failings. It spoke volumes, especially since Ryan talked about it without a shred of ego. She wondered how he processed it all, especially since Espo claimed Ryan didn't drink enough alcohol, to even be considered a real Irishmen.

On the other hand, Ryan's eyes were absent of any holier-than-thou zeal. In fact, he seemed utterly uninterested in passing judgement on others for their fleeting diversions, or on himself, for that matter, for his own open mindedness.

All four of tonight's players had admitted a fairly wide range of taboo predilections during their Go Fish confessions. But Kevin's reactions proved nothing but supportive, compassionate, understanding, or at the very least, openly curious.

Maybe it was his youthful glamour, but Ryan's go-with-the-flow nature appeared to be more than passivity. Cassie read it as steadfast protection for his companions' dignity. And it did make her feel safer than she usually did with strangers, exactly as Kevin had promised, in his opening overture to her.

Jax certainly could pick 'em.

Kevin turned when he heard Stone open the bathroom door, and noted that she had made some 'adjustments'. It looked to Ryan like she had tied her hair up in a ponytail, securing it with the belt of her kimono, which no longer needed a belt, since it was now tied in a knot over her midriff, revealing white lace boy shorts, and suggesting a little bit of everything underneath them. The addition of tiny black reading glasses, made it more difficult for Ryan to make eye contact, as she was purposely looking past him, into the distance.

She made her way to the end table near the divan, sat down facing obliquely away from him, and crossed her legs. Sitting up straight, and looking attentively ahead, she folded her hands in her lap. Kevin searched for his cue, but got caught up in the miraculously different air she had created. She was a chameleon, he barely recognized her, under this new carriage.

Suddenly, she raised her hand, her eyes addressing an apparently invisible third party. In a shockingly non-Cassie voice, she volunteered "Sister Ignatius, I'd be happy to help Kevin with his lab, if you'd like." The innocence and conviction in her intonation harbored no hint of mocking, even when she followed up with, "I believe he needs help with his covalent bonds."

Ryan's mind was invaded with the all too clear image of a young Ms. Stone, already an international sex symbol, sitting next to him in a half-empty lecture hall, under the watchful eye of the implacable Sister Ignatius, who droned on about 'ions' and 'cohesion.' And, it was no surprise to Kevin, that the actress was giving him a hand job under the desk. With stunning detail, he saw her hands wrapped around his member, the sound of the desk thudding every third stroke, coupled with his own stifled whimpers as he struggled to maintain the illusion that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

Apparently, one part of him really liked this image, cause it was fighting its way out of the towel wrapped round his waist. The slightest squeak from Ryan's throat alerted Stone that it was time to move forward with the scene.

She approached, "Can I sit here?"

Ryan stared blankly at her request, still fan geeking on how she had transformed her gait to walk over to him.

She continued her lines, "How about I see what you have so far?"

Kevin crossed his legs in embarrassment, when he realized that the stiffness under the towel was the only thing his body was 'working on' at the moment.

But Stone took Ryan's hand as her prop, drawing her fingers over it to study imaginary equations.

She glanced over her glasses to Ryan, but not to break character, just to shyly smile. She was flirting, like an all too believable young woman, who had nothing but virginal interest in her study partner. "You know, I noticed you missed P.E. today?"

Ryan finally put it together. Cassandra Stone was friggin' roleplaying him! His mind screamed, 'Lottery ticket! Lucky Bastard Award - won. Espo officially owes me paperwork.'

Kevin's mind exploded along the edges. Firstly, how did she know that his ultimate turn on was an erotic roleplay? He hadn't revealed it as his deep fried twinkie, mostly because he didn't think of it as a vice.

Imaginative scenarios balanced out Kevin's stress level, and put his overactive mind to constructive use. Without it, he started over-thinking things, and gave himself insomnia. He had always done it, and at this point, it was just something he consumed as normally as coffee, the sports pages, or his multivitamin, a daily staple of his intellectual needs.

But this was not an anonymous phone sex operator, on the other end of a burner phone, who awkwardly called herself Sandy or Cas, at his bequest. This was the authentic article.

Now, he grappled with the double exposure of Cassandra Stone's actual personality, as he came to know it over the course of the evening. And that would have been plenty to make him come, at the first suggestion of a fantasy scenario.

But Ryan could hear his mind screeching, as he struggled to square himself with the fact that the role she slipped into, had doubled back to him. By becoming the girl next door, Stone became someone much more like him in her inhibitions, someone well within his reach.

Yep, it was gonna be a fucking miracle if he could hold his load, until she touched him.

Kevin tried to play along, "Really?" But his voice trembled with the effort it took to wrest his mind away from the hundreds, maybe thousands, of pleasurable scenarios he had created for her, in his mind over the years. He tried to study the details right in front of him, to stay present.

Cassandra full on blushed, before she continued, "Well, I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I watch you sometimes. Did you know, that before you throw a lay-up, you lick your lips in concentration?" She leaned in, "and I sometimes imagine you are preparing to kiss me, with that same zeroed focus."

He tried to answer, "Is that so? I never…" she cut him off with a quick elbow jab to the ribs, and forceful "Shush, sister's coming. Sit up straight." Ryan reflexively jumped, with the sit-at-attention-and-look-innocent drill, still alive and well in his muscle memory, but now rarely used unless he and Espo were pranking Castle, or surfing porn at Tech officer Tory's workstation.

Ryan watched her out of the corner of his eye, while she readjusted her glasses, and trailed her eyes across the room following her invisible schoolmarm.

Stone mimed a reading of her own palm hand notes, until her eyes glanced out the side of her glasses, whispering with a gossipy lilt. "My lab partner told me that Sarah Jane still has a crush on you, ya know. She seems to think that you'll be asking her to prom. I told her that's crazy," Her voice drew itself into the same conspiratorial tone Kevin had used on her earlier, "I'm the one who most appreciates watching you walk down the hall, and the way you rub the back of your neck, when your not sure about your answer in class," Her confession skated the edge of vulnerability and lust, "how much I want those hands to knead me like that."

"Think of baseball, think of baseball. Do not come yet, dumbass!" he scolded, trying to counteract her over-effectiveness.

As he groped for something appropriate to volley back, she nonchalantly glanced behind herself, for the covert opportunity to whisper in his ear. "Meet me at my house after school today, okay?" Her head motioned to the swank cream colored leather divan, before she rose and walked in that direction.

Pretending to pay attention to the fake blackboard ahead of him, he shifted his now uncomfortable, seated position, and breathed back, "K."

Before he rose and followed after her, taking pains to hide how ill-fitted his towel had become, he chided himself,

'Hold it together, Kev, you can do this. Pace yourself.'

After Kevin sat down, Cassie straddled his lap, moving fast enough that he would have no chance to protest. She bit into his angel-fine earlobe, explaining, "My parents are out of town for the weekend." Kevin dug his fingers into the plush leather, grasping for his self-control.

She kissed his neck, sucking hard enough to mark him. "And I know we agreed that we would wait, until after exams…"

She bit his shoulder, eliciting a moan from the already defenseless Ryan, "But, Kevin, I feel so safe with you…"

She ate the crease where his shoulder met his neck, sucking hard enough to brand him for a week. He rolled his head away, yielding to the pleasure.

Kevin panted, "There's really no reason to wait…" His head lolled backward in ecstasy, nodding in full agreement that 'waiting' sounded like needless torture.

She continued to suck a dark line of broken corpuscles around his collar bone, cementing their small future connection, however ephemeral, by giving him at least a fortnight of reminders in the mirror.

Cassie brought her forehead to his, and dared to look into his azure eyes, now dark with desire, testing her plan, and her resolve. Her heart rose to the crest of a roller coaster, teetering at the brink of falsehood and honesty, she shakily released her grip on the safety brake, admitting,

"You make me feel like I never have, with anyone before you." Cassie hoped her performance was enough to mask the fact that she was actually baring her soul, and damn near terrified by it.

Fully aware that she risked losing herself, and her role, in the sensation, Cassie brought her open mouth to his. She gave into a long, enveloping kiss. His responsive lips and sharp taste, sent a waterfall of energy pouring down her body, pooling between her thighs. She rubbed herself slowly against his firm display of appreciation through the towel.

She was totally drawn into the role now, not really planning out what she would say next. But when Ryan attacked her neck to sink a deep purple mark of his own, one dark enough to haunt her for the coming week, as well, she lost control of her voice.

Without realizing it, she sighed "Will you be my first?"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she worried that they were over the top. That the thought of her as a virgin, would be laughable to him. It would have been laughable to her, just an hour ago.

Her face dropped away from his, "I understand if you're not ready..." she tried to give him an easy out, and save herself the embarrassment.

Kevin took a beat to savor it, and considered his response options. Slutty? Innocent? Naughty? Nerdy? Joc? There were a lot of possibilities. Unknowingly, he let her stew in her fears of rejection.

Finally, he lifted her chin with his finger, and decided to go with "Cassie, I'd be the luckiest man alive to be your first. On my hardest days, you are the reason I get out of bed. And most nights, thinking of you, is the reason I can drift off to sleep" He had no problem keeping his ultra-convincing straight face, because this was sorta true. He just left out all the jerking off, that accompanied those wakings and sleepings.

When he finally pushed himself inside her, it didn't feel like he'd imagined. It wasn't risqué or forbidden, or even especially wild or smutty. Maybe the role play was still working on him, maybe it was her eyes locked on his, convincing him that she was utterly present. But she felt like a girlfriend, his girlfriend, one that he had been long-distance dating for years, but had had to wait a *really* long time, until the moment they could finally be intimate.

He really didn't expect his all-purpose, porn star, sow-his-wild-oats-before-settling-down, one night stand, fantasy girl to feel like 'making love'. He was quite sure he wouldn't last long, having almost come in his towel at least four times, by this point. But while he was inside her, employing all his newfound, hot tub infused energy to thrust into every inch of her, he honestly believed that she loved him. Stupid, huh? But what did it matter? It was his dream girl, he could dream.

Cassie's instincts were more right than she could have guessed. Merging with Ryan proved to be way more than she could handle. Her neatly wrapped pretenses unwound when he entered her. A white hot stream of light cauterized her chassis.

In yet another role reversal, instead of getting lost in sensation, and losing her grip of outside reality, she was every bit present. Her search for her own image, and increased self-knowledge, was utterly wiped away, and replaced with an all encompassing focus on Ryan. Not the metaphorical Ryan in the sanctuary, but the flesh, and sweat, and restless sinews right in front of her.

She cataloged his every detail, the shadows clinging to every curve hollowed out by his straining abs, the tufts of hair she had tousled out of place, the delicate curves of his young face, the sweet sound of his effort crashing against his lungs, and the cocktail of a dozen emotions washing over his face, as the waves of pleasure and effort collided inside him.

For a few precious moments, she managed to stay totally anchored in the here and now.

Her synaptic overload blurred into waves of abstract light, heat and color. She couldn't speak, and could barely move. She could only shout her desire through her eyes, hold onto him, and pray he would continue. As her brain burned off years of extraneous complications, and sullied delusions, she understood why his kiss had such a unique effect on her. Every stroke consummated her immaculacy.

For a woman who began her career with porn, and had been working inside the vicissitudes of Hollywood for well over a decade, purity, or even a feeling akin to it, was the holy grail.

When he collapsed into the fold of her neck, wearing his most unguarded smile, panting in joyful exertion, Cassie sent one grateful tear to Jax for saving her life, again…..This time, when Cassie didn't even know it was in danger of being lost.

Unlike Espo, who had needed a pinch to convince him that his fantasies had crossed over into reality, Ryan was overcome with certainty that his world had just changed.

He had been searching for something to kickstart this shift, since he made detective. While Ryan had no doubt that he would rise to his responsibilities, unfailingly, even as the risks of the job, and looming full-fledged adulthood, increased. Still, he often felt small inside himself. As the stakes continued to raise, he wondered how he could encompass more internally, so he would be better prepared to take care of everyone around him.

Right now, he knew with utter certainty that the internal 'Empire of Kevin Ryan' had just expanded to include a new fortifying territory.

Thanks for taking that deeper dive with me, certainly the most "outtamyleague" chapter of this story. Now it's time to swim back to the surface..stay tuned for playful pillow talk with Ryan ;) and Espo's return.

Giggly roller coaster laughter to my incredible 'strangers' Trish, Selim, BS and JJ for their advice, and to Suz for the ribald review.

Reviews and PM's would be so helpful.