1044. Chapter 1044

After Flowers for Your Grave

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Why would you think I'd own Castle after 1043 prior disclaimers? Rating: T Time: See above.

Author's note: I was looking through my stories for a plot device I'd used before and found chapter 56 in this series. I read it and thought I could do better. This is the result.

Kate Beckett stared for several seconds at the unfamiliar ceiling above her and then began silently berating herself. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so careless? And with him of all people?

It took her only a few seconds to realize that all the self-recriminations in the world weren't going to solve her problem. The only thing she could do was get up and get out of here. Hopefully without him seeing her.

She got out of bed and headed for the front door. And then he was standing right in front of her, blocking her exit from his bedroom.

"I heard you get up. I'm making breakfast, How would you…"

"Castle, "She snapped, "get out of my way. I'm leaving."

Castle didn't move, but rubbed his chin. "Don't you think it would be better if you had some clothes on?"

Kate looked down at herself. She was completely naked. He hands flew to cover herself.

"You must know I've seen every bit of you, Beckett. And every bit is excellent."

"This couldn't possibly get any more humiliating. Where are my clothes? Give them to me right now!"

"I can't." He said, clearly enjoying this

"Yes, you can. I want my damned clothes and I want them now. Do you understand that?"

"Your clothes are in the washing machine. They went in not five minutes ago."

"Why the hell are they there?" She was almost screaming now.

"Duh! Because they're very dirty. When you kissed me last night, you were up against a wall in that alley and your clothes got very, very dirty. Not as dirty as you got later in bed, but…"

"I kissed you? In your dreams." Suddenly a thought occurred to her. "Wait! All my clothes are in the laundry? Even my underwear? What have you done with them?"

"Just your pants, jacket and blouse are being washed. Your…other clothes are where you left them."

Kate noticed that Castle's eyes had shifted to a point behind her and over her right shoulder. She turned to look. There on the top of the valence of the bedroom curtains were her panties. She stomped over towards the curtains.

"Just when I thought this couldn't get any more humiliating." She muttered.

"Beckett, as much as I'd love to see you jumping for them, I put a robe on your side of the bed."

She grabbed the robe and put it on as fast as she could. Then she stood by the curtains and jumped up. She was tall and athletic, but she kept missing by inches.

"Perhaps I could help?" Castle was standing right beside her.

She glared at him and moved out of his way. He got her panties on the second try and handed them to her. "Your bra is under my pillow, I think. You were going to use it to tie my hands, but I started tickling you and…."He stopped when the glare got more intense. "Um, your shoes and stockings are at the end of the bed. Beckett, it'll be a while before your clothes are done. I'm making us breakfast. Why don't you take a shower? There are some fresh toothbrushes in the left-hand cabinet.'

"Castle, I have to go to work. I can't sit around here with you!"

He shook his head slowly. "You know, although I do have an ego, I prefer for people to just tell me they don't want to be with me rather than lie."

"Have an ego?" Beckett yelled. "You have all of the ego there is. And what do you mean by lie?"

"Before we left the precinct, I heard Captain Montgomery tell you to take today and the rest of the weekend off. In fact, he said if you came in before Monday, he'd have you escorted out."

Kate blushed and looked away from Castle. That was exactly what Montgomery had said. "I'm sorry. He did say that. I forgot."

"Good! Then you will stay for breakfast. How do you like your eggs?"

"Scrambled." She said, realizing that, somehow, she had agreed to have breakfast with Richard Castle.

Once Castle was gone, she went into the bathroom, locked the door and took off her robe. She wasn't surprised to see that Castle had a shower you could wash an elephant in. Nor that the shower controls looked like they belonged on a space shuttle. He also seemed to have every male grooming product known to mankind. She decided on a bodywash that smelled of Bay Rum, and a shampoo that smelled of coconuts. Neither were what she would have used herself, but they would do. After studying the shower controls for a moment, she set them for a nice hot spray from three sides. She stepped in and began relaxing.

As she let herself soak, her mind went back to the night before. She had accepted the dinner invitation from Castle for one reason and one reason only. She was determined to show him that she was not one bit impressed with him. She was not impressed with his wealth. She was not impressed with his friendship with the mayor or Judge Markway. She was definitely not impressed with his juvenile antics involving a police horse which had been stolen. Stolen, not borrowed. She was not at all impressed with his autographing the boobs of hundreds, or thousands, of empty headed bimbettes and celebutants. She was not impressed with one damned thing about Richard Castle. Well, maybe she was a little impressed with his help on her case. But she had already been worried about the fact that Kyle Cabot had made mistakes in the murders that someone obsessed with Castle and his books would not have made. He noticed Johnathan Tisdale was dying and that Harrison Tisdale would have used a second passport. But she would have figured those out as well. And then he had gotten captured by a murderer. No, Castle had been a small help, no more.

She thought back to their dinner date. She had assumed that he'd take her to some trendy spot where everyone would notice him and make a big fuss over him. Somewhere that he could be photographed with what he would assume would be his latest conquest. Some place worthy of the Richard Castle that lived his life on Page Six.

But he had not done that. He'd fooled her. On learning that she loved Chinese food, he'd taken her to a little place in Lower Manhattan that she'd never heard of. She had noticed they were the only non-Chinese there. When they walked in, the owner greeted him fondly and called for his wife to come and see Rick. They chatted about Rick's daughter, Alexis. Apparently, they came here to keep Alexis out of the paparazzi's spotlight. Everyone else came to see Rick: The waitresses; the cooks and even the dishwashers and busboys. Some of the customers knew Rick as well. Castle was having a wonderful time talking to everyone as if they were old friends, which they obviously were.

Then Grannie Chen came out to see Rick. She was over ninety, Rick said. She flirted shamelessly with Rick and he flirted shamelessly with her. When Introduced to Kate, Grannie Chen looked her over and pronounced her verdict.

"She is much too good for you, Richard. You should ask her to marry you now before she wises up and runs screaming from you."

While Kate blushed deeply, Castle explained that he wasn't the type to ask someone to marry him on the first date. "I'll have to ask her on the second date." Kate blushed some more.

When it was time to order, Kate thought it was odd that the other waitresses stood behind the one taking their order. In fact, everyone in the restaurant seemed to be paying close attention to them.

"Watch this, Beckett. I've been practicing." Castle proceed to order their dinner in Chinese. As he did so, the waitresses started giggling. Soon two of the waitresses were laughing so hard that they had to hold each other up. The waitress taking their order tried to keep a straight face, but giggled every once in a while. And everyone else there seemed to be greatly enjoying Castle's performance. Finally, he was done.

The waitress looked at her note pad. "Let me see if I have your order correctly, Mr. Castle. Deep fried fountain pen, sweet and sour brick, 144 duck muffins, baked chicken squawk, Shanghai needles, fried rice with horse shoes, and two bowls of plastic soup. Did I get that correctly?"

"Yes. I believe that's exactly what I ordered." Castle said with a perfectly straight face.

"Perhaps your girlfriend could order for you both?" The waitress asked sweetly.

She was going to correct the waitress. She was most certainly not Castle's girlfriend, but it seemed pointless to get into some long winded explanation as to why she was there with him. She said nothing.

"Go ahead, Beckett. Everything here is excellent, except for the deep-fried fountain pens. They're way too crunchy."

Kate managed to order without laughing too hard, but it was difficult.

The dinner was one of the best she'd ever had and she made sure she told that to both Castle and the owners.

As they ate, they talked about the Tisdale case, which led to a discussion of police work in general. Castle seemed to have a very wide knowledge of police operations, not just in the US but abroad. He was also knowledgeable of forensics, autopsy protocols and court cases of interest to the police. He interspersed his serious comments with funny stories about things that had happened to him while researching with various police and intelligence organizations. He seemed to Kate to be a very different person than the Castle she'd known earlier that day.

When they left, they cut through an alley to get to his car. Kate had decided beforehand that she would kiss Rick at the end of the date. She'd give him the exact same peck on the cheek that he'd given her after giving her a copy of Storm Fall. She thought that kissing him goodnight at her door might lead to him trying to follow her inside. Kissing him in the car might lead to her being trapped in the car with an over amorous Castle. She decided to give him a quick kiss in the alley.

Something went wrong. She had intended to kiss his cheek, but somehow her lips found his. Worse, she couldn't seem to pull her lips away from him. Then she found herself pulling Castle into the darkness of the alley, away from the streetlights. Oh my god. She thought. I got myself against that wall and I'm sure the damned wall was as filthy as the rest of the alley.

Her arms found themselves around his neck and she had pushed her body against his. She began rubbing her boobs against his chest, then moved back slightly to allow him to cup her boob and gently stroke it. She got her hand down his pants and found his erection and stroked it.

He began moving her towards his car. They kissed and petted the whole way to his car. Kate hated to let him go so they could get in his car.

While recalling the date, Kate noticed that she was soaping her boobs and rubbing them lasciviously. She at once dropped her hands and washed the soap off of her.

What happened to me that night? And now? She thought. Sure, it's been a long time but I've never reacted to a man like that before. What happened to me?

The rest of their date was clear to her now. She did remember throwing her panties in the air on Castle's bed. He had started kissing her and then moved down her body, paying very close attention to her boobs and especially to her nipples. Then she found his head between her thighs. She had had oral sex from men before, but they had always stopped after a minute or two. She had no idea how long Castle licked and kissed her, nor how many orgasms she had. But when he was done, she was completely limp.

At least Kate had thought she had been completely limp. Castle started kissing up her body and when he reached her lips, she felt him enter her. His hands were all over her and he was doing things inside of her that she had never experienced before. And then, after a brief break, he had done it all over again.

"Crap." She muttered. "I have no reason to complain about Castle." She finished washing and shampooed her hair, then dried off, brushed her teeth and finally used a hair drier to dry her short hair.

When she came out into the kitchen, wearing the robe, Castle was standing on the other side of the island looking very serious. "Detective Beckett, it appears that last night I inadvertently overstepped boundaries that you set. For that I apologize. Once your clothes are dry, I'll take you home and…"

"None of this was your fault, Castle." She interrupted. "I was a willing participant in everything that happened last night. Everything."

"Very willing if I recall correctly." Castle smirked.

"I need to apologize to you. But, last night was not me. I'm not an easy lay or a one-night stand. I'm…"

"I know."

"You know? How?"

"Easy. Grim, serious and dedicated Detective Kate Beckett? Who has to be ordered by her boss to take a long weekend off? And who has to be told that if she shows up at the precinct, he'll have her kicked out? That's not a wild and crazy party girl. Your social life must be nonexistent."

Before Kate had to defend her admittedly nonexistent social life, a bell rang behind Castle.

"That's the toast. Since I didn't know what you liked, I made a little bit of everything for breakfast. We have bacon, scrambled eggs, hash brown potatoes, sausages, pancakes and waffles. Oh, if you want either of those, you have to try the maple syrup. I get it from a little place in Vermont. There are also cinnamon rolls and toast. I have coffee for you as well as OJ and apple juice. If I missed anything you need, let me know and I'll see if I have it."

Kate was happy to be able to eat breakfast without having to talk to Castle. When they were done, they cleaned the plates and put everything in the dish washer.

"I need to shower and shave myself. I'll be back in a bit. Feel free to look around."

Kate decided to do just that and started with his bookcase/office wall. All of Castle's books were there as well as mysteries starting with Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, Erskine Childers and going up to Steven Patterson and Michael Connelly. There were more than just mystery novels, Castle had books on just about every aspect of policework. He also had books on intelligence agencies: The CIA; Britain's MI 6; the Israeli Mossad; the Soviet KGB and the Russian FSB; the Gestapo and others she was unfamiliar with. He also had history books, going from Xenophon's Anabasis to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and up to the Iraq and Afghan wars.

She moved to see his DVD collection. It was separated into categories. The largest seemed to be children's' and young adults' films. There were lots of spy and cop movies. Moving to large science fiction section, her eyes settled on one particular DVD. She took it out and looked at it. The paper insert of the robot and the blonde was familiar as was the title. The legend on the bottom was not. She opened it and found nothing inside but a DVD with no markings at all on it.