Slippery When
Title: Slippery When
Author: Cartographical
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Castle, Beckett, and the Ferrari go to Connecticut.
Rating: NC17
Word Count: ~1800
Spoilers: Lucky Stiff, vaguely.
Notes: This takes place some magical future in which Castle and Beckett have lots of sex. Its existence is owed to Jill, who I guess is not a horrible person despite how intensely mean she is to me, and you wouldn’t be reading it if Cora Clavia hadn’t lovingly (or, well, at least persistently) pestered me into posting it.
Disclaimer: If Castle and Beckett were mine, that Ferrari would see a lot more action.
The engine hums as Castle accelerates out of a particularly hairpin curve. Trees and asphalt and her life flash before her eyes. Beckett discreetly digs her nails deeper into the smooth leather of her seat.
“We survived dinner. I would be so disappointed if we burned to death in a flaming wreck when we were only an hour from Manhattan,” she says, pushing her hair off her cheek yet again. She’s only been in the Ferrari a handful of times, never outside the city, and all of her experiences with the car in the traffic-crammed streets of Manhattan had led to appealingly windblown curls. Gusting along the Merritt near Trumbull at a cool eighty is a different experience, and now that Castle’s driving, she has nothing except her fear of imminent death to distract her from her hair whipping repeatedly into her eyes.
“Hey,” Castle says, a reproachful whine creeping into his tone, “you promised that if I was on my best behavior during dinner with the Yalies that I could drive home and you would keep the critiques to a minimum.”
“I think we both let you get away with a rather lenient definition of best behavior,” she says, even though, all things considered, he’d done quite well -- he hadn’t started spouting theories about little green men or the CIA, he hadn’t knocked a plate of chicken cacciatore off the table, and he had generally managed to be polite and charming despite the increasingly looming potential of Mr. and Mrs. Metzger’s son marrying his only daughter.
“If I’d been anything less than intensely enrapturing you never would have let me behind the wheel.”
“And I wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of my impending death,” she retorts, huffing in irritation as her hair tangles around her neck.
“It’s not like you’re not entirely terrifying when you’re driving this much horsepower.”
“Yes,” she growls, “but then I’m driving.”
“Do you know what you need?” Castle asks brightly. Something in his tone makes her wary.
“A seat on the Amtrak?” she bites out as he drops down to fifth to hug another curve.
“You need a distraction,” he continues, ignoring her. He kicks back up to sixth but then slows a little, scooting over to the right lane and flicking his eyes briefly over her in a way that can mean nothing good.
He moves his hand from the gearshift to rest just above her knee. She’s suddenly hyperaware of the smooth silk of her dress, sliding over her thigh an inch above his pinkie, of the heat of his fingertips, resting lightly on her leg, of the slow ignition of a coil of warmth in her stomach.
His fingers absently skitter patterns on her skin. “Twenty questions?” he asks.
She wants to hit him. She lets the feeling shine through.
His fingers inch up to the edge of her dress, worrying the silk between his fingers as he chances another quick glance at her. “Okay, not twenty questions. Punchbuggy?”
His index finger inches under the dress. A low, pulsing heat races up her leg, swirls between her hips. She thinks back to the murder victim they found behind a dumpster at the edge of Central Park after a two-week heat wave. Bloated bodies, she tells herself, decaying, bloated bodies.
“No? We could try mental chess again. I promise not to call you a cheater this time.”
“You’re about to lose the hand, Castle,” she warns.
“Just being friendly,” he says happily, sliding his fingers up another half inch. “You wouldn’t maim me, would you, Beckett? How would I write? How would I feed our legions of unborn children?”
“Legions?” she asks on an exhale, sounding far more breathy and far less angry than she’d hoped.
“You seem very fertile,” he supplies as his fingers dance inwards.
“Get your hand off of me and watch the road.” She curses the husky rumble of her demand.
“I have,” he says, hand slipping ever higher, “this amazing ability to multitask, Beckett.”
The pad of his thumb brushes over her lace-covered hip. She shifts in irritation. (She does not squirm with arousal. Kate Beckett does not do that.)
“Castle. We are driving down a public highway.”
“It’s Connecticut,” he responds divisively. “It’s Connecticut on a Monday at midnight. Maybe a raccoon will see us.” Somehow, she’s let his hand creep even higher. His fingers flit over the very top of her underwear, fluttering over the soft skin of the bottom of her stomach.
“I think you have some misconceptions about the Nutmeg State,” she says.
He chuffs. “Any state so obsessed with such a sexy spice cannot possibly have any problem with what we’re about to do.” His hand starts creeping downward.
“And what, exactly, are we about to do?”
Grinning, he shifts so that his whole palm rests flat against her stomach. The ache that’s been building tightens, and she has to clamp her teeth over her lower lip to keep her breathing regular.
“Why Detective Beckett,” he says, trailing his fingers in lazy circles just above the top of her panties. His fingers slide down suddenly, rough over lace, and she can tell from the goddamn grin spreading across his face that it’s immediately obvious how wet she is, “I didn’t know you cared.”
“It’s too bad,” she gasps, “that you won’t live to walk Alexis down the aisle.”
He presses hard against her for an instant. Her pelvis jolts up involuntarily. The nylon of the seatbelt bites into her hipbones.
“Foul ball, talking about my only daughter, talking about my only daughter getting married, when we’re engaged in such intimate activity.”
“You should be engaged in driving,” she says, but it comes out as a breathy gasp as he traces ever-more-firm circles over her panties.
He doesn’t respond with words, just nudges his hand beneath her underwear, and then his fingers are on her, unencumbered by silk or lace, stroking gently. Her hips buck harder up against the seatbelt. She tugs against the restraint, stares down at the release button, briefly considers the possibility of just taking the damn thing off. Castle must catch her gaze out of the corner of his eye, because he tsks. “Safety is important, Beckett. I must insist that the seatbelt stays on.”
She glances over at him, at that stupid self-indulgent smirk on his face that betrays how proud of himself he is for getting her this worked up. "Stop looking so goddamn satisfied," she growls.
He dips his index finger into her in response. The seatbelt’s going to give her a hideous bruise if she can't keep her hips from jerking so hard. "Now, Beckett, why would I be satisfied?" He stills his now-rhythmic motions for a beat, and she grinds up against him, huffing in frustration.
“Oh, come on,” she finally grits out, trying to dampen the need behind the words with an exaggerated eye roll.
“You’re right. That was rude,” he says, starting up again in earnest.
Her breath hitches. His gaze, still fixed on the road, turns serious, intent, an expression she can’t quite handle as they whip down the Merritt at an easy seventy-five. She shifts, stares into the darkness over the passenger door. The next few minutes hurtle by in a haze of sensation:
The silhouettes of trees, etched out of the shadows, whipping past, too quickly for her eyes to grab onto any one.
Her hair lashing against her cheeks, her throat, her neck.
The smooth, soft leather of the seat giving slightly as she grips, digs her fingers in.
The wind, cold on her forehead, on her arms, on her exposed thighs (her dress rucked up around her hips, providing no protection from it).
The hammer of her heart against her sternum, not quite drowned out by the whistle of rushing air.
Castle’s fingers, filling her, the heel of his hand bumping against her clit.
Heat, pooling low in her stomach, fizzing through her body, building, building...
Abruptly stopping. His hand is resting demurely on the gear shift before she even quite registers it’s gone.
“What the hell, Castle?” she snaps, but then she sees the higher headlights of a pickup, and a Ford F350 is whisking by them doing what’s got to be a brisk ninety, and she’s feeling her right bicep tense in a primal desire for a gun.
“Sorry,” he says, not looking particularly apologetic at all.
The truck is gone and his hand is back before she can get berate him, and he has her back to where she was in the quarter mile it takes to get them past the last Greenwich exit. And then she can’t feel the wind or the leather, can’t see the car or the trees - there’s only the warmth of his hand and the coil of pleasure and desire and need tightening and tightening and tightening.
Her breath catches and her hips jerk into the air, punching up hard against the seat belt, and a low moan reverberates in her throat before coming out as an embarrassing, breathy pant.
“I think I like the Nutmeg State,” Castle murmurs, carefully drawing his hand away. She jumps as his fingers brush over her hipbone.
“This is not our new Connecticut activity,” she says, trying to sound acerbic or at least disinterested, but the ripples of her orgasm soften her words.
“Really? Because I strongly feel that it succeeded in livening up an otherwise slightly banal evening,” he says, beaming brightly.
“You’re far too pleased with yourself,” she murmurs, relaxing back into the seat and letting her eyes slip partway shut. For some reason, she’s not minding the tangle of her hair around her neck as much as she was earlier.
“I’m sure your retaliation will be swift and brutal,” he says. It used to disturb her, how easily he can tell she’s plotting something, but now it’s almost comforting.
“Oh, Castle,” she murmurs, letting her voice lapse into her bedroom sotto. “You have no idea.”
X
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