Chapter Text
Kate picks up a shirt she finds on the back of a chair - not the one he wore last night, the one she took off him, that's somewhere in the hallway - and throws it on. Even if Martha and Alexis are supposed to be in absentia, she isn't taking any chances.
She knows the place well enough now - she did live here for several days, after all - that she makes coffee without thinking much about it. While it brews, she goes back into the bedroom to see whether he's awake yet.
He lies as she left him, flat on his back and sprawled out as if holding the mattress in place. He's a big man, and it's a big bed, but Kate still gets the impression of a child flinging himself into sleep like he flings into everything else.
Oh, God, she's watching him sleep. Could anything be more sappy?
Kate goes back in the kitchen to doctor the coffee, smiling to herself. Over the past twelve hours her assessment of what is sappy has been revised. Maybe it's because she spent the night with a brilliant wordsmith; phrases that would have sounded hilarious coming from anyone else sounded right at home in Richard Castle's mouth.
His mouth. She has to breathe deeply when she thinks about it. She's been diligent about maintaining her emotional and physical boundaries, especially with Castle, so when her emotional barrier went down last night, so did the physical. With a crash.
She's felt his arms around her before, his hand brushing the skin of her back lightly above her low-cut gown, his cheek against her hair, the vise grip he had on her mouth as he dragged her away from Roy Montgomery's last stand. And, of course, he's kissed her before, if only in a desperate charade.
It was his mouth that had taken her first, last night, just this side of his front door, a plunging, hungry assault, as if he didn't think he'd get another chance. His hands were on her shoulders, her waist, her head, in her hair, but it was only to steady her while they kissed.
The wall she'd said would take some time to come down? It had vanished instantly at the look in his eyes, lit by a flash of lightning through the window, a look that rewarded her and warned her at the same time.
She's stood in the bow of a boat on a stormy sea once, and it felt just like this. Exhilarating and dangerous and primal, and most of all, free.
At last Kate shakes herself out of her reverie and picks up the two mugs, heading back to the bedroom. When she gets there, Rick is sitting up, looking bewildered, until his eyes fall on her and his face lights up with a smile.
"So it wasn't a dream."