Thanks so much for the lovely comments regarding the last chapter. All writers love feedback. It helps us to continue and motivates us to improve. I think there will be 3 more chapters of this one. The aim has been to keep it humourous, to try and balance the love-lust stuff, to have some fun and offer some alternatives.

I really liked the episode 'Cuffed'. A lot. There are a couple of instances in this chapter where I allude to it, as if in a snide way, but I don't mean it to be negative about the episode or the way canon are depicting a couple in love. It's used for humourous purposes only.

Happy Sunday!

Anticipation is like an episode about cuffing. A pussy in tiger clothing.

It's a waste of time taking Norbert to the ER, but he is so insistent that they bundle him into the back of the car and drive him to the closest hospital. The blood has dried as quickly as it appeared.

After being given a clean bill of health, Gravy and Train sit either side of their employer on the way back to the precinct. They alternate between stroking Norbert's brow, massaging the foot that was grazed by the ricochet, and kissing him so explicitly, Kate has to look twice in the rearview mirror to ensure she's not imagining the One True Threesome.

Nope, there it is. Gravy kissing Norbert. The actor smooching back until he's satisfied, then turning to Train who is waiting with opened lips and accommodating tongue. Their actions are accompanied by a series of sensual sounds. Moans, grunts, murmurs. Guttural sighs. The verbal waves of suggestion are drowning Beckett in frustration and red-raw savagery. It's the last thing she wants paraded in the backseat the car. Except if it involves Castle, herself and a pair of padded handcuffs—

'I thought Norbert Pattinson was heterosexual,' Castle whispers, leaning over the console again. His closeness has Beckett thinking of the earlier drive to Rodman's Neck. It was sexy as hell. The touching, his breath on her cheek, him using the seam of her jeans to advantage. The memory brings a flush to her face and makes her see crimson about the hours still left to kill before she can get him alone.

Will Castle think less of her if she suggests a place that rents rooms by the hour for their first time? It's not like they're teenagers. They should be able to wait a couple of hours, to revel in the foreplay of anticipation and keep body parts within clothing—

'You do know how much that thigh holster turns me on?' he says in her ear, with that pepper of moist heat. Castle's hand moves over the strap of the holster again and he thumbs the band. A shiver sends a whisper down her spine, and the wet leaves her hot between her legs. Je-sus. She needs it soon. She wants it. Does she really care if he thinks she's a ho with a thing for quickies on moth-eaten duvets? He knows her better than that, but she'd do him standing in the middle of this street if they didn't have to babysit Robert Pattinson's cuz.

The sharpening of her recent emotions — affection, readiness to let her mother's case go to pursue something real, attraction, love— has heightened this thing called desire.

Wow, at this silent admission, a bang of endorphins flood her pleasure zones. She's balancing the love-lust equation for the first time and it's as erotic as it is scary. It's like diving off the highest platform. She's ready for that exhilaration, the plunge before the hit of a hard wet.

'Castle, could—'

'And the semi-automatic, too. I'm glad you left the holster on. Pity you left the weapon behind.'

'I had to.' She bites down on further explanation because she's going to tremble. 'But Castle?'

'Yes, Kate?'

He's placing those damn skillful fingers at lower angles against the thigh strap, revisiting a similar path to the seam action from earlier. Kate doesn't want that again — yeah, but she does. She needs more, him, but not now. Not in the car.

But he won't leave her alone.

'Do you know how hot you are when you put your gun into this thing,' he asks, touching the material of the holster while rambling fingers stroke the denim along her inner thigh. 'And when you tuck your pistol down the back of your jeans, I nearly—'

'Can y'all get this thong going a tad faster, Chug-a-lug? Tell Bambette to groove her lube, why doncha. Day's getting old.'

Norbert draws his mouth away from his suck-face to hurl a couple of insults into the front of the car and Beckett feels Castle's fingers stop. She has the sudden urge to kill something. Preferably a two-bit actor with a fake cockney accent, a huge ego and tiny vocabulary. She used to like Demming. A lot. If he got into her car right about now, she'd slap him for his physical similarity to the idiot in the back.

'Hey Norbert,' says Castle, with a typical genial tone. Kate looks sideways for a moment and Castle winks at her. God, they're getting cozy. Pity they can't get naked with that cozy. She siphons the smile that threatens to interrupt her annoyance. 'Why don't you work on a facet of Rook's character right now and learn some real names?'

'Why?' he asks, snogging Gravy as his hand touches the bulge at the front of Train's pants. 'Youse guise are not innit. The movie, that is, youse not the stars. I don't need to knows your names, roight?'

Castle snorts back a laugh. 'Yeah, but Rook is a man of inquiry. He'd want to know everything.'

'Lookie, Chugs. All I wanna knows is what's for lunch, when I can get a good coffee and when I get to meet wif Nat'lie Rhodes. She's a hottie. Woulda loiked Brangelina, but Nat'lie will do.'

'Pity she's in rehab,' says Castle beneath his breath, moving a hand up to massage Kate's shoulder with the gentlest touch. She doesn't want it. It makes her think of all the things they could be doing. Castle doesn't deviate, even when she shrugs at his hand, but draws her closer with his low, gravelly tone. 'With all the Pattinson media about his number of lady loves, I'm just surprised that he's gay. Probably bi—'

'I don't care what he is, I just want it to stop.'

Castle moves back as though stung by a waspish hornet. Kate knows he's smiling by the tone of his voice and it makes her more frustrated. 'Whoa, Beckett! Who made you the threesome Nazi?'

'I don't know, Castle,' she says, driving with more aggression than earlier, but twice as erratically. 'I just like this dude better with a balaclava on his head.'

'And the risqué sounds are annoying you?'

Aren't they bothering him? Of course they're annoying her! She wants to be making those sounds, not listening to other people making sexual overtures with as much noise as two aroused people pushing against a heavy container while cuffed together, unable to touch in case they somehow dilute the sexual tension!

'I think they should just ... shut up?' She looks in her mirror and stops herself snarking at Castle. 'Get a room ... or just ... get a place ... to be ... intimate ...'

Get a room?

She sneers through her nose in exasperation. This entire day — the dawn call, Gates's orders, the ricocheting bullet — why did they have to coincide with her dawning realization about love and lust and other things starting with 'L?'

Lying down, loft sex, loitering nude, languishing in bed, loofahing bodies in her shower. Licking. Legs. Libidos ...

'Kate?'

She plunges her mind into the present. He's there in her past and future and she's so infatuated, it's ridiculous.

'They're not making it easy to concentrate, Castle, if that's what you're asking.'

She knows he's not. She can feel the weight of his palm against her thigh once more. There's no way Norbert and Co will realize that Castle is touching her at this stage, even without their blindfolds and scanning apps, but Beckett is vexed enough to want to slap Castle's hand away. When she doesn't, he seems surprised.

'I have a plan,' he says, and part of Kate's libido sinks. She knows how this is going to end. Interrupted, flurried, graphically pissed.

It had been fun earlier this morning. She'd played up the motorcycle posture, had taken off her helmet as though she was shucking her shirt, had used the thigh holster as the ultimate prop of revenge for the teasing in the car. Kate had even worked the interrogation room to her advantage. She'd gone in thinking that making out on the table would yank Castle's chains, that it'd would poke at one of his ultimate fantasies. She came out of that room with a greater understanding of herself. Her needs.

That fantasy is hers. As is the kissing on a Harley, having his eyes bore into her back while she wields something semi-automatic, and touching him just out of sight of Captain Fumey Gates.

She's lived every aspect of her Rick Castle fantasies this morning and now she's sick of not acting on them. She's in the mood to be assertive, to initiate and press, undress, flick at his fly and use her mouth on him ... if they could just find some—

'Pull over there, Kate,' says Castle suddenly, as though his cock has the power to read her mind. Now there's a thought.She'd love to tell him about this kink she has in her Castle armour, that she'd like him to be sexual assertive, to lead without her having to make the initial move in the dance. It always works so well, when she instigates non-romantic things, but there's a part of Beckett that wants him confident and dominant in the first instance.

The fact that he was during his denim-over-lace manoeuvre clicks up her wattage to a roar of heated hope. He hadn't been on the bike or in the interrogation room, but if he makes the moves when it counts, Beckett will fold before the dealer has even got his hand into her personal space.

Shit. Her mouth is drier than any other part of her body, the moisture dwindling between her breast cloys at her heart and kicks her lower verve into gear. She finds a terrible place to double park and is about to turn around and order the ménage to stop trois-ing, but before she can (or think about telling Castle that she'd love him to take her somewhere and consensually raze her) he's pulling out his phone and speaking 'Ricky' into the mouthpiece.

He's smooth. He's confident and dropping studio names, chatting entitlements, contracts, deals and what he has said to whom in the past. Kate is caught in the crossfire of Castle negotiating on the phone, Gravy Train whining, and Pattinson asking why they'd stopped. For a moment, her head is spinning so fast, she feels like a diabetic with a face full of candy floss just after she's disembarked from a whizzy ride. She needs to get out of the car, breathe some pristine, downtown NYC air.

Kate slams the car door on the testosterone. She leans against the driver's side, unfazed by passing traffic and buzzing city sounds, trying to get a handle on another one of Castle's plans and what might be in it for both of them. Time alone? Freedom from a movie entourage of three? Coitus interruptus even before the ball is in the coit.

She'd settle for a hot make out session on a couch which has just enough room for—

'Beckett?'

Castle pips out of his door and jack-in-the-boxes his head over the car roof to toy a smile her way. Her heart warbles a combination of silly love song and sex rock, and she's so struck by Cupid she feels vulnerable, exposed, foolish, empowered and excited all at once.

What the fuck?

'Where's the closest helipad?'

Just as she thought: WTF? But his grin draws words from her as easily as it increases her heart rate. She knows helipads like all cops know city egress points. 'Two blocks east of here, on top of—'

He's on the phone again and she's murmuring the rest of the details to the crowded sidewalk.

Bending back into the car, Kate notices Pattinson, Gravy and Train have resumed their smut-fest, letting hands roam freely, mouths straying south, groans hitting the air with the rabidness of a modern-day porn movie. She waits for Castle to sit and explain. He does sit down, but spends a few seconds watching the show in the back seat.

'Castle?

It's laced with humour. She's relieved to see that Castle is as affected by the unnerving antics as she continues to be.

'Right, yes,' he says, straightening the snug of his pants so that he's more comfortable. The play of material across his groin snatches at her imagination and she wonders just how much he's been packing in his piece — not that she's interested in comparing size and weight. She's all about the finesse and mischief-making as far as Castle is concerned. Sort of. And she's crazy 'bout him. Yeah, kinda. Because ... there's this love and lust thing happening and ...

For crying out loud, now she's feeling horny in her heartstrings as well? When he turns to her with this look that shanks want and love, her chest concaves into rubble.

'I've organized an aerial tour of New York for our special guests, Beckett,' Castle says, loud enough to be heard over the Choir of the Erogenous. 'The studio owed me a ... a ... favour, and ... Kate? What's wrong?'

Her eyes are his window to her soul. There are less places to hide what she's feeling.

'Nothing. Castle, nothing,' she says, holding out her hand and catching his on his thigh. Castle looks like he might turn gaseous and helium his own airship over NYC. 'I was just ... listening to what you were saying. The, um, aerial tour?'

Castle straightens, keeps her hand trapped under his own and turns to face the front of the car. 'We don't need to go, Kate,' he says out of the side of his mouth. 'The tour? We can put the three of them on it ... a couple of hours tops, I thought we might ... I thought we might ... um, can I take you out for lunch?'

He keeps his eyes ahead. She doesn't answer, but smothers her mirth with an arched eyebrow. 'It's 10.45 am.'

'Coffee? I'll take you out for coffee. A coffee date, Beckett. No strings attached, and you don't know how excited about this I've bean ... um, bean as in—'

'Don't tell me you're making coffee jokes now, Castle,' she says, gunning the engine as hormones gun through time and space to frisk her sexual furrows. This is gonna be some hot coffee, she cannot wait for the heat to filter through her system. 'And trying to explain the joke as well?'

'No explanation needed, Beckett. You know that. I'm just thinking of other ways to get into your Gloria Jeans ... oh, I mean to get you into Gloria Jeans.'

She'd laugh, but Castle finally shifts his sights and pops his head through the seat to interrupt threesome paradise. 'Get ready you famous people,' he says and Norbert's head flicks around immediately. 'We've organized a sightseeing trip that you'll never forget, at the studio's behest. You'll be airborne before you know it.'

Driving sedately for the first time in a day, Beckett takes that as literally as he's intended.

They throw options around like they're choosing chocolates from a box of decadent favourites. His loft, her apartment, a playroom — she laughs it out between the first time he kisses her, and the increasing realization that he's going to be assertive — or the closet hotel.

'The Surrey?' she says, when he puts it out there. She's just about to restart the engine after depositing the threesome with the studio-approved helicopter tour, but Castle can't seem to stop finding her lips with his own. It's car kissing. Crowded, awkward, a flail of hands on buttons, heads at angles, mouths misdirecting tongues and teeth. 'That's kinda a waste. We have to be back in two hours, Cas—'

He pulls her hand away from the steering wheel, crowds her over the console of the car and kisses her with such shocking intensity, she struggles to open her eyes when he draws away for the first time. He nudges her lips further apart for a second taste, groaning his tongue into her mouth, then retracts for the second instance, but her eyes are still closed and his forehead is pressed against her own.

'After ... afterwards, um, after we finish ...'

He clears his throat, sits up and smooths out her hair. She feels his fingers at her buttons and wants him inside her shirt, pressing and thumbing, down beneath her underwear, touching and circling, but all he does is make movements to straighten everything. As though if they pretend to concentrate on being less disheveled, they'll forget the howl of sexual crank that's straining to be ... cranked?

Beckett opens her eyes to find Castle looking straight ahead, holding her hand in a neutral position on the central console. 'After we finish at the precinct for the day, Beckett, um, I propose ... I propose ... I want to propose that ...'

'You want to propose?' she echoes, grateful for the humourous coping mechanism they both use on occasion.

'I propose to ask you back to our suite at The Surrey,' he says, deadpan, but she feels a gentle squeeze to her hand and the subtle deepening of his voice. 'And perhaps we can go out for dinner, take the night to get to know ... get to know ...'

'Each other?' she teases, driving so badly, she wonders if she needs an academy refresher course.

'The place. Get to know the place—'

'The Surrey?', she says, adoring the verbal upper hand for the moment. Kate knows she can lose this any time, with just a small physical change to the synergy, so she revels. 'You want to spend time there getting to know The Surrey?'

'Yes ... and no. Kate?' He brings her hand to his mouth, dusts her knuckles with his tongue and she's as dissolved as an Oz witch on a wet day. 'I'd like to spend the night there, with you, have some dinner, share a drink. Even ...'

He waits for her to interject, but she's muted. Kate's somewhere between promising the tin man an oil massage and the scarecrow a bristly stuffing. She can feel Castle smiling into her palm as he turns her hand over and kisses the flatter surface. If this is love, she's so far into it, she's unsure what to feel. Where to look.

'We could eve talk about our day. Once we get rid of Pattinson, our time is our own. Kate? And there's no one waiting at home for me this evening.'

If she met the lion on her yellow brick road right about now, Beckett would purr. She feels like lapping and stretching and curling up round Castle's leg, just so he'd keep touching her, keep trilling words in her ear. He's a romantic guy. She's ... well, she's not ... a guy, orthat romantic, by nature, but God help her. He makes her feel like she's a BAMFing princess who can be queen of his rook for as long as they complement each other on the playing board.

She doesn't know where to look or how to see with these strange, love-tinged glasses on, so perhaps it's just a matter of feeling. Not over thinking. Instinctual, gut-driven stuff.

'So,' he concludes, and Castle is suddenly mellow, gentlemanly and Beckett wants the promise of assertive back as soon as possible. 'A couple of hours at The Surrey now won't be a total waste if we make an entire night of it, Detective Beckett.'

She nods, eyes on the road, heart on her sleeve that's furthest away from him in case he sees it there and realizes he almost owns it. Not almost. He does, and has for a while.

'Don't know about you, Beckett,' he says, interrupting her quiet contemplation as they stop at lights. According to the navigational system, they're less than ten minutes from the front of The Surrey. The computer-generated voice of the system has never been to The Surrey with Castle, Kate figures, otherwise they'd be some inspiration and colour to the woman's tone.

'Hmm?' is about all she can manage as the lights go green.

'But I'm really looking forward to getting to know The Surrey.'

A laugh bumbles in Kate's throat but it quickly turns into a catch of breath as Castle rumbles words that no one else can hear. Incredibly hot considering that they have no company.

'Apparently the pattern on the mattresses look amazing from the top.'

It's all she can do to stop herself telling him every single fantasy she stores in the plot of her Richard Castle novels right there and then.