L'amour des deux lapins: Taken, Ch. 2, A short, fluffy Caskett WIP
Title: L'amour des deux lapins: Taken
WC: ~2700, Chapter 2, ~4700 total
Rating: M
Summary: "Rabbits are gone. Come home! Who texts something like that? Who texts that and nothing else and then doesn't answer the f***ing phone?"
A/N: Thanks for tuning into the bunnehs (sort of) again in Chapter 1. Again, blame Cora Clavia who beats me about the head and tells me to just post already, even when Brain is irritating and she's inciting me to write meerkats and teeny ponies and stuff; also blame KLFF_, who was shocked-SHOCKED-to see herself being blamed for this. (But she's totally to blame.)
This chapter is M and the M-ness seems to be bleeding into Chapter 3, too. I hope to have that chapter, in which all is revealed, up by the end of the week.
Again, thank you to Lindosaur for permission to use the cover art for the original "L'amour series"!
She's puffing by the time she pushes open the door to their floor. It's only five flights, but she's willing to bet she's established a new personal best time.
She shakes her keys out of her pocket and covers the distance to the door in long, angry strides.
Her hands are steady as she fits her key in the lock. She's beyond furious-beyond shaking-at this point. She wants confirmation that everything is really ok. That this is just some stupid scheme of his.
She wants an explanation.
She wants to kill him.
The door to the loft jerks inward before she even has a chance to turn the handle. It tugs her off balance. She stumbles over the threshold and directly into Castle's chest.
Castle's bare chest.
His broad, warm, reassuring, bare chest.
Her hands splay out over his skin of their own volition. She catches a breath and looks him up and down.
His hair is a little damp. He must have just showered. He smells incredible and it's a damned shame that she has to kill him.
He's standing there in her favorite silk pajama bottoms and a robe she's never seen before, and it's not fair. She's furious with him.
The deep red fabric of the robe hangs open. The ties dangle at his sides, rife with possibilities. That explains the bare chest.
It kind of explains the bare chest.
It's barely six p.m. and he's . . . answering the door like this?
Rabbits are gone.
The fury boils back up in her. The panic. It's going to take more than all that warm skin and the clean scent of him to distract her. More than the sinful contrast of the robe's thick, plush fabric with the smooth drape of silk at his hips.
She's furious, and it's definitely going to take more than that.
"Castle, what the hell?" She shoves at him.
"Kate!" He totters back a step and blinks down at her, confused. "You're not chocolate."
"Chocolate?" She shoves him back another step. She pushes the rest of the way into the loft. "What is wrong with you?"
Now, her voice shakes. It's more than just fury. It's weak-kneed relief that there's really nothing wrong. He wouldn't be lounging around in his damned jammies like some freaking super-villain if anything were really wrong.
The whole thing is just one of his stupid schemes, and she might just collapse as the tide of adrenaline recedes. She's shaking now, and it pisses her off even more.
The door slams behind her. She takes in the scene. There are candles everywhere, mostly unlit. He wasn't expecting her. Not yet. Eduardo was supposed to stall her. But even still, the light is different somehow. Low and warm.
There's just a hint of soft music playing and something smells incredible. Sweet and buttery and rich.
Her stomach rumbles as her gaze travels to the living room. There's gauzy fabric draped over most of the lamps and the gas fire is lit, even though it's a warm evening. The couches and arm chairs have been pushed to the sides of the room, and the coffee table is nowhere to be seen.
The thick pile of the rug is all but hidden under towering heaps of pillows and cushions and bolsters in bright, silky jewel tones. There's a long, low table along one side, a line of neat bowls stretching across it.
She's never seen any of it before. It's like some other world. Like he's tricked her through the looking glass.
She turns on him. "Is this about sex, Castle?"
He stares at her for two seconds. Two seconds only, and then he's on her.
"Yes," he says. Sure hands curve over her hips. He slides his fingers up under her shirttails and pulls her into his body. "This is definitely about sex."
She's furious. She's positively speechless with it, and he's kissing her. He's kissing her, hard and urgent, like he hasn't touched her in weeks. Like he didn't slip into the shower with her just this morning.
He's devouring her without even the courtesy of some kind of half-assed explanation.
"Castle!"
She brings her palms up between them. She means to push him away. She means to shove him off her and demand an explanation. She definitely means to do that, but it's kind of a problem.
There's the whole bare chest thing, first of all. There's the fact that every burning point of contact under her palms feels like it's not nearly enough, and her hands seem to be roaming over him whether she likes it or not.
There's the fact that every part of him that isn't bare chest is no help at all in reminding her of what she meant to do with her hands in the first place. Because the robe is lush and thick in her fists. It reminds her of lazy, rainy days spent entirely in bed, and the silk of his pajama pants all along the margin of his hips is driving her insane.
There's the fact that she's not entirely sure she could push him away right now. He's . . . intent. He's pinning her to the door and jerking the jacket from her shoulders. He has her half out of her shirt already, and his mouth is sharp and insistent everywhere it travels.
He catches skin between his teeth. It's just the right spot. It's just close enough to pain to give her a brief flare of focus.
She jerks one hip toward him and damned if that doesn't backfire. He's learned something about using his full weight advantage somewhere along the way. His thigh is right there. It's blocking her hip, and he turns into her. The move brings his body not-quite-flush against hers. Perfectly, brilliantly not quite flush.
She cries out. His name and more, though she doesn't know what. It's loud. It rings out. From the ceiling. Off the granite of the counter and every single metal door frame in the place.
It's loud. It drives him on.
"Yes," he breathes. "Yes. God, Kate, I love hearing you."
He rakes his fingers down her sides, scraping bra straps along her arms as he goes. His mouth follows, rough and marking when she tries to twist away from him again.
She's gasping, trying to get a hold of herself. She needs to keep quiet. There's some reason for that, she knows. Some part of her mind repeats it over and over: Quiet. Not here. Quiet.
But he's having none of it. He's relentless. All hands and teeth and encouragement. Demands.
"Just us," he whispers. "Just us, Kate."
"Castle!" Her mind clears for half a second. Just us. That's . . . not good, right? It shouldn't be just them.
Quiet. Not here. Quiet.
And there's something she's supposed to be doing.
He says it over and over. A chant. Just us.
The words remind her. A fleeting, ragged thought that comes and goes again.
"Castle," she says again, but it's a moan this time. His hands travel down her body. They pull her hips into his.
It's a long, tortured moan and he's rumbling open-mouthed words between her breasts. "Yes. Just like that. Just like that."
And it's gone. She can't remember what she's supposed to be doing other than this. Only this.
He feels the shift in her. He hears it. He feels the softening of her spine. He moves with her this time. He peels her off the door and works her arms free of the dangling remnants of her clothes. He folds himself around her, holding her up as he coaxes one foot, then the other out of her heels.
She loses height. Glides down his body, bare skin to bare skin. She hears her own voice. Words and things that don't quite qualify. All of it dirty and sloppy and begging for more.
He gives it willingly. His mouth moves over her, hot and rapid and urgent enough that she can't keep track of it. One ruthless, burning palm rasps over her breasts and the other is busy at her waist, fumbling with button and zipper. Not quite pausing. Pressing tight between her legs and moving on again. Too soon. Too soon.
He talks to her. Teases words up and out of her. Declarations and ripostes and curses until the walls ring with it. Sounds and words and not quite words.
He has them moving somehow. Even with all that, he somehow he has her against the counter and he's following the fall of her dress pants down her thighs and over her calves. He steps her out of the pooled fabric and she curses up at the ceiling, wondering how the hell she got there.
His mouth works its way back up her legs. He skips from one to the other, lazy and slow and maddening. She writhes. She reaches out blindly for his hair, his ear, anything to make him move faster.
She bends. Falls over him to close her teeth around his shoulders. To stop her own cries.
Quiet. Not here.
"No." He grabs her wrists. His mouth opens high against the inside of her thigh.
"No," he says again. "Just us."
He forces her hands back. He uncurls her fists, finger by finger, and plants her palms on the counter behind her. He slides both palms up from her hips and over her ribs. He teases her spine upright until she's standing tall and her throat is long and her mouth is open wide.
"I love to hear you, Kate." He drags his lips higher and higher.
Something dark ripples through her. Something that tastes like fury. She vaguely remembers that she's supposed to be killing him. That's what she's supposed to be doing, but the thought is useless to her now.
Her head thrashes forward. Side to side. She looks down and the sight almost undoes her. Her fingers white and bloodless. Stark even against the pale stone of the counter. His face tipping back as he watches her. Urges her on with his tongue in more ways than one.
It almost undoes her. It makes her knees weak. It curls her fingers hard over the lip of the counter and arches her lower back. It drives her hips closer to him.
To where his mouth is busy at the crease of her thigh.
To where his fingers paint pictures over her hips and low on her belly and he looks up at her, patient darkness and something on the wrong side of playful casting shadows on his face.
To where he asks what she wants.
"Tell me, Kate." His lips brush up one thigh and down the other. "Tell me what will make you scream."
He almost has her. Just the word and he almost has her, but she swallows it down. A scream. She stiffens her spine against it. She's supposed to be killing him. Even if she can't remember why, exactly, she's supposed to be killing him, not giving in like this.
He feels this, too. This shift. He feels it and answers. Something uncoils in him and everything converges on her. Lips and tongue. Teeth and fingers and intent and he's talking. Low and casual with a dead serious edge. He's telling her it's hopeless. That she'll give him what he wants eventually.
It's persuasive.
"I like both," he says conversationally. He drags the wide flat of his tongue between her legs. "Sooner. Later. I like both."
He pulls his mouth back. She whimpers. She jerks toward him. Tries to follow, but his fingers arc sharply over her hip. They hold her in place. He smiles as he presses a sticky kiss at a chaste distance along the outside curve of her thigh. He smiles, but it's a warning.
"I like to give you what you want." His palm slides down and his thumb hovers over her clit, not quite touching. Maddeningly not quite touching. "But you have to tell me."
And then he's touching her. The barest flick of thumb and index finger and tongue and lips and then he's gone again. He's pulling back and gone and the last frayed end of her will snaps.
"Your mouth." It starts as a whisper. Something almost breathless, but he's there. His mouth is there. On her. Instant and reverent and knowing and her voice climbs. "God, Castle, your mouth."
Her voice climbs. It fills the room. The two words run together, over and over, and take up all the air between them.
She's screaming.
They're on the living room floor when she comes back to herself. She's a pile of heavy, warm limbs draped comfortably against an array of pillows.
The candles are lit. Scent winds around her, sweet and heavy. She has no memory of how it happened. Any of it. No memory at all of how she even got here.
She remembers sound. Sensation. Heat and a thrumming ache turning sharp inside her. All of it overwhelming and everything in him coaxing her to let go. Willing her. Making her.
She remembers sound. Just that.
And here they are now.
He's lost the robe. Her hands tell her that when she has the strength to lift them. When she finds warm skin beneath her fingertips.
His head is somewhere around her middle. He's diligent. Kissing and murmuring. Narrating and still teasing shivers and small noises from her. She drags a foot up his calf and feels the whisper of silk.
Wrong, she thinks in a disjointed sort of way. He was half naked when she got here and somehow he still has his pants on, and that's just wrong.
She shifts her hips. Her skin drags over something soft. Something heavy with the borrowed heat of his body. The robe. The one he lost somewhere along the way. The one she's never seen before.
He must have spread it out and arranged her on it and she has the feeling that should annoy her. She has a vague sense that all of this will be really infuriating as soon as she remembers why.
Her fingers make their way down his spine in a heavy, unkind drag of fingernails. She's pretty sure she's pissed at him. In the lucid moments between waves-in the narrow spaces between his words-she's pretty sure of that, and she might as well start saying so with whatever parts of her work.
That doesn't include her voice at the moment. Her throat is raw and her tongue is tired and clumsy feeling. She remembers the world filling with sound and her face goes hot.
Quiet. Not here. Quiet.
She tries to move away. She tries to lift her hips or turn her shoulders. She tries to remember, but even the flickering candlelight feels heavy and everything smells good. Everything feels good.
She stirs and his hands press her back into the pillows like giving in is the last thing on his mind. And, anyway, she really is sinfully comfortable.
She stills. He smiles into the arc of her ribs and resumes whatever it is he's doing. Going over her body millimeter by millimeter like she's undiscovered country. Narrating. Making her forget.
Her hands travel down his back again as he climbs up and up. Her fingers reach the silk line of his pajama bottoms. His super-villain jammies. Her fist bunches at the fabric and it all comes back to her. It comes back to her in a sudden slam of memory and she surges up.
"Castle!"
She twists. She pushes. Hits out at him clumsily and wrenches her knee up to waist level. She has him on his back in an instant. She straddles his hips and and shoves his shoulders to the floor as he grabs for her.
"Whoa, Kate!" He holds his hands up in surrender. "Easy."
Her head snaps toward the hutch, but it's covered. Draped in something heavier than the translucent, floating things over the lamps.
"The rabbits are gone," she hisses.
He blinks up at her, disoriented. Awed and hazy eyed. He tries to sit up. He's coming after her again and . . . No. Just. No.
"Castle." She tangles her fingers in his hair, none too gently. "Rabbits."
"Oh, yeah."
He smiles.
He chuckles.
She almost kills him right then.
"Kidnapped."