125. Your hand moves lower

A tiny drop of oil pools warmly on Beckett’s throat, and is oh-so-gently massaged in and around. Without her conscious consent, her eyes close, and her neck loosens. The scent of the oil rises around her, and helps her to relax further. Another drop falls, neatly between her clavicles, and trickles downward, where it’s greeted by soft fingertips and encouraged to drift over her skin. Another drop, falling at the start of her cleavage, those same fingertips delicately sliding the oil along the valley between her breasts; adding another drop, gliding it sideways on to the swell of flesh; adding a third, spreading it over the white cotton, which slowly becomes transparent, clinging wetly to glistening curves and dark pink tips. His fingers follow the fluid, leaving a trail of sparking heat and desire.

Beckett wriggles slightly under the touch, but is enjoying proceedings far too much to move more. The warm oil is dissolving her into a warm puddle of liquid, and moving, or doing anything that requires more effort than letting Castle play precisely as he pleases, is simply too difficult to contemplate. She soaks herself in the sensual atmosphere around her and lets herself drift. Large, warm, gentle hands glide over her oiled skin and bra, and the heat of the oil and his hands seeps into her and pools and runs under her skin and downward.

He doesn’t move from the slick surface of her breasts: up to her collarbones, down to her ribs; up again, barely enough pressure for it to be a massage, a little too much to be entirely a seduction. Beckett murmurs contentedly and slips further into mindless pleasure, a quirk of a smile curving her lips.

Castle observes Beckett shifting out of both Detective Badass Beckett and Kate (or Katie) who hates therapy into his sexy, cuddlesome Kat who likes being petted and stroked; acquires a feeling of intense satisfaction that it’s taken him less than ten minutes of focused attention, and starts to alter his touch to be quite conclusively seductive. His wicked hands turn to palming and rolling, an occasional soft pinch and pull, asserting his ability to play with her unless she should say stop. She certainly isn’t saying stop right now.

He places a pool of oil, still warm, very neatly into her navel, and uses it to spread out across her flat stomach and the jut of her hips, extending down almost to the narrow lace edge of her panties. Not quite, though. Not yet. He returns to her breasts: long smooth strokes and languid touch, and she melts and flows and pools as the oil did, beginning to arch ever so slightly into his hands, beginning to purr for him. He knows just how sensitive her breasts are, how easy it is to bring her up by teasing her nipples, and now that she’s relaxed and receptive there’s no more need to confine this to massage when he can fondle and play instead.

The oil has soaked completely into the cotton bra now. He slides the translucent fabric back and forward across her, wholly in control of her reactions and her pleasure, and pushes up his shirt sleeve to slip that arm beneath her head, around her shoulders, his hand locking there to hold her close for his touch. She wriggles closer in, tucking her head into the notch between his hip and stomach. Castle’s very happy for her to be there, but she won’t be allowed to tease him. That’s not what this evening is about at all. She’s been stressed, she needs de-stressed, and he knows exactly how.

“Like that?” he asks, knowing from her purring, feline laxity that she does. “Let’s keep doing things you like.” She merely hums, assenting, and bends into him. He continues to tease, overtly sexual now, telling her what he’s doing in a silkily wicked baritone that touches her as surely as his fingers.

He returns to the long sweeping strokes that reach from shoulder to the top edge of her panties, now beginning to soak up the traces of oil that each stroke has brought there Her bare skin glistens slickly. Castle drops a further tear of oil below her navel, and rubs it in. If he were really soothing her chakra points, she’d need to turn over, but there’s no way he’s going to interrupt this seduction by suggesting that she does that. He’ll just improvise. His naughty fingers draw naughty patterns first up to, then over, the rim of her panties, letting the oil seep in and spread translucently there too. He lets his fingers slip and slide, trickling his touch from skin to fabric and back to skin again, feathering closer and closer to a frontal approximation to the rearward location of the root chakra.

“You like that, too,” he half-growls. “Don’t you?” She arches to his hand, and whimpers softly. “You do. Let’s do this some more.” He adds a final drop of oil to the surface of the fabric, and watches it intently, eyes focused and darkened. The warm liquid seeps through and over the knot of nerves between her legs, and he sops it up with a single firm stroke. She moans, and Castle grins lazily and does it again. “You definitely like that.” And again, and again, until she’s squirming and the hand still around her shoulder is gripping and clamping and the hand between her legs hasn’t dipped below the fabric once and she’s gasping out instructions which Castle ignores with magnificent disdain as he turns her as liquid and flowing as the oil.

“Let’s just keep doing this thing you like,” he purrs, as predatory as a panther playing with the prey under its paw; and does, wholly in control, wholly assertive, till she writhes and moans and gasps his name and finally his fingers slip below the material and over and in and she shudders and shivers and shatters around his hands.

Castle waits for her to re-open her eyes. Depressingly, he does actually have to leave shortly. He would rather be sharing a shower, and relieving his own – er – frustration. Still, he enjoys immensely turning Beckett-Kat into a hot mess of sheer lust, and he’s not a callow youth who can’t control himself.  

In his lap, his Kat stretches slowly, opens huge, hazy eyes and gazes up at him, nibbling her lip in a highly provocative manner. Castle is hard-pressed (oh, that was so not a good word choice) not to sweep her up in her towel, drop her in the shower, strip and join her – and then join with her. He can’t, though. He really does have to go home.

“I have to go,” he says rather reluctantly.

“Yeah,” Beckett says, even more reluctantly.

“You didn’t answer about the weekend.”

No. She hadn’t. That was not entirely accidental. “Um…” she says, inarticulately. Castle looks down where she’s still draped across his lap, a disconcertingly understanding expression on his face.

“Think about it,” he says instead of trying any cajoling. He’d like to cajole, and persuade, and win her over. He bites down on that idea and manages to preserve his record of leaving it up to Beckett. Pushing her about this would be a bad plan. His loft, after all, is a family home.

“Okay,” she says, uncertainly.

“Up to you,” he says more brightly than he feels. “Anyway, I need to go. Stop preventing me, Beckett. It’s not fair.”

“Preventing you? How am I preventing you?”

“You’re pinning me down.”

Beckett manages a patented glare, scowl and eye-roll, almost simultaneously. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snips.

“But you’re not moving,” Castle says in a likewise patented annoyingly saintly fashion, “so I can’t get up.”

“Really? You can’t get up? That’s not what it feels like.”

Castle splutters. Beckett smirks. Smirk is removed when Castle picks her up, along with the towel, and redeposits her further down the couch so he can stand up. Further commentary on his state of frustration is not required. It’s perfectly obvious. He does lean over her, carefully not getting oil on his clothes by staying behind her head, and kisses her with exquisite attention to detail and considerable assertiveness, before he leaves, with a smug Till tomorrow and smirk of his own.

Left to herself, Beckett considers not just Castle’s key, but Castle’s offer of a weekend in his loft, without his family. She has no happy memories of his loft. Every time she’s been there, it’s been tense and miserable: she’s had to keep herself under tight control not to lose her composure, and she hasn’t been back since the evening when her father forced a happy, family – her mouth twists and her thoughts are acid-bitter – dinner on her.

But, a little voice says calmly, but that was when his family – specifically his daughter – was there. This time they won’t be. She had thought that the second brunch meeting would be desensitising. Castle had used the same word. His family won’t be there. It… it might be different. She can’t help feeling it’s – well – cheating, though. But it wasn’t her idea. It’s not her who’s cheating. And, she works out, she doesn’t have to decide now. It’s only Tuesday. Friday is a long way away. She can go and shower and sleep.

So she does. Sleep brings her an idea. She examines it, and finds it plausible. She’ll try. With a get-out clause. It’s not as if they’re outside Manhattan.

Castle rushes into the Twelfth late in the afternoon, having deliberately avoided any possibility of being made to do paperwork, but summoned by Ryan’s text: get here quick, you’re needed. He’s panicked all the way, and bribed the cab driver lavishly to make it here in a ridiculously short time.

“What is it?” he puffs out. “Is something wrong? Where’s Beckett?”

Beckett emerges from the break room, bearing an enormous box. With the cop instinct for anything full of the key food groups of sugar, fat, preservatives, artificial colourants and still more sugar, preferably deep fried, the entire bullpen descends around them with the aspect of a starved flock of vultures descending on a dead elephant.

“What’ve you got there?” he says, more than a little ticked off that she’s evidently just fine and Ryan’s pranked him into rushing here like a St Bernard galumphing up the Alps on a rescue mission. He scowls at Ryan, who smirks.

“Wait and see,” Beckett says irritatingly.  

Castle scowls more blackly. “I thought you were hurt, or ill. Why am I here? There hasn’t been a body drop.” Then he looks more closely.

“What – why are you carrying a gigantic cake box?”

“Cake?” says the bullpen in ravenous unison. “It’s a cake?” Castle is drowned under a tsunami of cops all heading for Beckett. When he disentangles himself, he finds that the cake box is no longer in view. At the same moment, so does everyone else. A half-nanosecond after that, he notices that Beckett’s desk is sporting the gigantic cake she has brought out. Half a nanosecond after that, so does everyone else. And half a nanosecond after that, Beckett’s command voice cuts through the air.

“Back off,” she says, with her hand on her Glock. The impending wave of sugar-deprived cops collapses back in on itself, whimpering. “All of you back off.” She grins very widely. Castle acquires a feeling of absolute terror, five minutes too late. “I’m a Detective,” she says, “and I detect that Castle is guilty of having a birthday without telling us. Without damaging the cake – ‘cause if you do you won’t get any – do your worst, guys!”

Montgomery, watching unseen from his office doorway, smiles, smirks, sniggers and then full-out belly-laughs at Castle’s appalled face as the cops congregate around him. Montgomery knows what’s coming, but Castle is clearly imagining mayhem. Beckett’s looking very mischievous. Montgomery concludes she’s pranking Castle into thinking he’s about to be covered in shaving foam, or decorated with something glittery, or taken to the gym for a sparring lesson.

“Happy birthday,” they all chorus – and then run for Beckett’s desk, where the cake is waiting.

“C’mon, Castle,” she says with an evilly gotcha grin, “you’ve got to cut it up, birthday boy.”

Ryan produces a knife from the break room and Castle doles out cake to everyone, who return to their desks sighing happily over delicious sugary fattening cake.

“How did you know it was my birthday?” he asks, around a mouthful of cake.

Beckett colours up. “Looked it up,” she mutters, embarrassed.

“Thank you,” he says. It dawns on him that Beckett, who wouldn’t celebrate her own birthday with so much as a cupcake four months ago or so, has gone to some trouble to make sure he celebrates his in the Twelfth, regardless of what or where else he might celebrate. (Dinner tonight with his family, at Le Cirque, in fact.) Birthday cakes of that size are not mere off-the-counter impulses. This was planned. Of course she’s taken the opportunity to tease him – he had really thought that his next stop would be some sort of hazing – but no. She’s overcome her vast reserve and hatred of anything that might be a celebration to give him a birthday surprise. A public birthday surprise. He could cry with happiness.

“And…”

“Mm?” he emits, muffled by the truly excellent cake.

“… um…” No-one else is within earshot, and anyway the noise of an entire bullpen munching enthusiastically on cake would cover almost anything short of a Fourth of July brass band parading through the precinct. “…um… I’d like to come to the loft but I don’t know if I can do it but can we try? But I might have to go home.” The colour in her face is now scorching, and she won’t meet his gaze.

“Okay,” is all he says for now. “Okay, Beckett. We’ll talk about it when we need to.”

Dr Burke is contemplating the curious case of the Becketts, aided by a pot of tea. He has resolutely ignored the nagging desire to purchase a packet of chocolate cookies, not being swayed by his baser instincts and certainly not being in need of any external assistance to resolve the difficulties which they have with each other. His main concern, today, is Mr Beckett. Mr Beckett, on hearing Detective Beckett’s thoughts on the period of his addiction, is entirely likely to be shocked, horrified, and made utterly miserable. All of those are manageable, and expected. More concerningly, Mr Beckett may also be plunged into guilt of his own, which will then require treated. Dr Burke will, if necessary, recommend another practitioner. While successfully treating Detective Beckett will be a considerable feather in his professional cap, he has no desire whatsoever to be further enmeshed in the Becketts’ affairs. One Beckett, he considers, is enough for any psychiatrist, in any one lifetime. Were he a follower of Buddhism, he further considers, he would have accumulated an enormous quantity of merit.

Mr Beckett should, as the previous time, be pre-briefed as to the likely content of the session, in order to be able to listen and not react with high emotion. Dr Burke expects that there will be quite enough high emotion even with pre-warning, and does not appreciate the possibility of free fights over his expensively soothing furnishings. He continues to ponder until Mr Beckett’s arrival is announced.

“Good evening, Jim.”

Dr Burke considers Mr Beckett’s demeanour, and notes the signs of stress in the lines around his eyes and mouth. However, his eyes are clear, and although Mr Beckett appears tired and indefinably older, there are none of the signs that would indicate that he has resorted to alcohol or similar substances. Dr Burke is slightly reassured.

“Hello. I didn’t expect to be seeing you again this soon.”

“No. Nor did I. It appears that Detective Beckett has undergone something of a change of heart, having had time away from the city to consider the events of the previous session with you. Painful as it was for you, it has achieved something of a breakthrough in her thinking.”

“Rick took her out of Manhattan?” Mr Beckett looks thoroughly pleased with that piece of information. “Good. That’s very good. Even if neither of them are telling me anything.”

“You need not worry about your daughter’s relationship with Mr Castle. They appear to me to be very content with each other.”

Mr Beckett relaxes considerably. “So, about tomorrow,” he says. “I guess you don’t think it’s going to be easy on me, since I’m here.”

“No,” Dr Burke says bluntly. “I do not.” Mr Beckett’s expression is one of scared resignation, though there is also a look of determination which is disconcertingly similar to that which Detective Beckett had worn when stating that this session should take place tomorrow. “However, at her session last Friday, your daughter informed me that she had been considering whether to call you directly.”

Mr Beckett is clearly astounded by that statement. “She what?” he emits.

“Mr Castle persuaded her that it would be more sensible to have a joint session.” Mr Beckett opens his mouth. “I concur with that view.” He closes it again. “I conclude that your daughter is hoping to re-establish relations with you. If she were not, she would not have considered calling you.”

“Oh.”

“However, the only way in which you will achieve a renewed relationship – you will remember that I have noted that this may be on a different footing to the relationship which you had when your daughter was nineteen – is if the whole truth of what she experienced, both emotionally and externally, is laid out.”

“Oh. But didn’t she do that last time?” Mr Beckett looks quite ill at the thought of a repeat of the previous meeting. Dr Burke entirely sympathises. He would, in Mr Beckett’s place, consider illness if that were to reoccur. Fortunately, he believes that this will not be the case, with a modicum of preparation and some care by both Dr Burke and Mr Castle.

“Last time, Detective Beckett was more concerned with telling you of your actions. This time, she needs to inform you of her own emotions and actions in response to yours.” Dr Burke steeples his fingers. “Your daughter does not believe that you have ever forgiven her for – as she put it – abandoning you. Nor is she confident that you will understand why she did not tell you of her feelings at the time when you were endeavouring to make amends.”

Dr Burke does not mention what those emotions had been. That would be unhelpful at this stage. That must wait for Detective Beckett to speak openly to her father: a happenstance which has been non-existent until very recently.

“You will recall that I mentioned that her first therapist had been incompetent. The issues we are addressing now spring from that incompetence.”

Mr Beckett is apparently devoid of thought or understanding. His face is entirely blank.

“Jim?”

“How can she think that? How could she ever think that?”

“That, Jim, is something your daughter needs to analyse for herself, which is part of the purpose of tomorrow’s meeting.” Dr Burke pauses. “Now, let us turn to specifics. Certain matters will be the same as last time. Time out will be available on request, and should be used as often as you require it. Mr Castle will ensure that your daughter has support; and your sponsor is welcome to be here, although in another room.”

Dr Burke smiles reassuringly at Mr Beckett. “I do believe this to be significant progress, Jim. I know it is very hard to work through, but I have considerable hope. Your daughter is a remarkable woman, and she is motivated to resolve the issue.”