A/N: This idea just kind of came to me and I rolled with it, wondering where it would take me. But I would like to state firmly before you start reading, that this is completely uncharted territory for me. I've written the before and I've written the after but never the whole shebang (pun intended, you'll just have to excuse how bad it is.) If it's awful, I apologise. If it isn't, consider it a fluke. Anyway, shutting up now.

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own them. These characters are the rightful property of AM, ABC and co.

She should have known it wasn't a wise decision to let Castle help her pack up her apartment. Lanie would have been a better choice, but the ME was working – as were the boys for that matter – and time was of the essence before her lease was up. She needed someone's help. It was just unfortunate for her that her fiancé was the only person available to fill that role.

Still, she thought she'd be okay giving him her wardrobe to take care of.

Her bookcases were out of the question – there was no way he would be able to resist the temptation to sneak a glance at every single page of the few photo albums in the hopes of coming across a few captured moments of her teenaged wild child days. She'd seen enough of him in his own kitchen to not trust him with packing up the crockery she'd inherited from her mother. She herself was taking care of that, as well as the few ornaments of her mother's that had migrated their way into her possession and the mementoes of her past travels. She'd already lost one of her vases to his clumsiness in the first few months of their dating.

No, the only thing she knew without a doubt she could trust Richard Castle to take care of was her clothes.

How wrong she was.

Humming quietly, Kate wrapped the last of the patterned plates and placed it carefully atop the stack she had made in the box reserved for her kitchenware. She glanced around; checking there was nothing left to pack into the box but her large collection of mugs and was just pushing the first bubble-wrapped container down beside the plates when Castle's call carried out to her.

"Kate?"

"Yeah?" she called back, hoping that he was not about to tell her he'd just ripped one of her shirts or got dirt on a pair of her pants.

He was closer when he replied with another question of his own, "What's this?"

Spinning on her heel, she cursed internally, staring almost in horror at the tight leather shorts and sequinned tube top in his hands.

"Nothing," she tried to reply, the word coming out choked.

"This, Kate Beckett," he said, thrusting the outfit out towards her, "is not nothing."

She met his gaze in a flat stare, silently ordering him to drop the issue. She really did not want to have to tell him that story, or indeed any of the other tales behind some of the skimpy clothes she'd forgotten were buried in the bottom of her closet.

Either he was too stubborn to give in or completely oblivious to her wordless request, because he continued to pepper her with questions. "How long have you had this?" She glared, temper flaring. "When was the last time you wore it?" Her arms folded over her chest. "Why have you never worn it for me?" The vein in her neck began to pulse as her fingernails dug into the sleeves of her sweater while she fought for control. Suddenly he gasped as a thought occurred to him. "This is from your days in vice! Isn't it?!" Her mouth opened and closed, the temptation to refute his claim to shut down his theory by telling him it was a joke present from Lanie one birthday almost overwhelming her, but he just took her hesitation as her answer and declared, "Oh my God, you have to tell me everything!"

Suddenly he was in front of her, crowding her back into her kitchen counter. The clothes were still clutched in his hands on either side of her body as he leaned in and murmured into her ear, "Were you acting as a hooker, Beckett?" His teeth grazed her earlobe while he spoke, sending a shiver through her. But anger soon followed as she was hit with the memories of those nights, those God-awful, humiliating nights spent on street corners dressed in heels that were almost too high even for her and skirts that barely covered her ass.

Pushing him away with a palm at the centre of his chest and a low growl, she stalked past him and headed into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her before he could even get a foot in the door.

His knock was hesitant, his voice uncertain as he called through to her, "Kate?"

She didn't answer, just leaned further back against the door with her eyes closed. She had yet to see the state he'd left her bedroom in as he'd furrowed through her closet. It didn't even look like he'd packed any of the clothes into her suitcases or the few other boxes she'd allocated for her large shoe collection and many items of clothing – just taken practically everything out of her wardrobe and thrown it on the floor before picking up the next thing.

"I-I'm sorry, I don't know what I said, but I didn't mean to upset you."

She thumped her head against the door, willing the tears pooling in her eyes at the tenderness of his voice to go away.

"Will you let me?"

The hope, the insecurity, the depth of regret permeating his voice – it was all too much. Her hand worked of its own accord to pull the handle down and swing the door open for him. His arms were strong as they folded around her, the stupid costume she'd had to wear gone for the moment.

"I'm sorry," he said again, rubbing his warm palm up and down her spine.

"It's fine," she said breathlessly after a moment, having to force the words out.

"Do you…want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing, Castle, just stuff left over from a few undercover ops when I was working with vice years ago."

He bit down on his tongue to stop his thoughts spilling out. Clearly it wasn't nothing. Kate didn't just overreact to things like a pair of leather hotpants and the suggestion that she'd dressed as a hooker. There was a story there somewhere, and he'd be damned if he didn't hear it.

He nodded, chin rubbing the top of her head with the movement.

"Nothing happened?"

She sighed, pushed a hand through her hair before scrubbing it down the back of her neck, quickly massaging her tense muscles. "It was just humiliating, you know. I'd worked so hard in the academy and while I was a rookie. I was so determined to earn my detective's promotion and get to homicide that when they first offered me work in vice, I jumped at the opportunity, saw it as some kind of fast track. I thought they were finally seeing how good I was at the job, how useful I could be. What they were really seeing was that I was a woman, I was attractive. Only my looks were useful to them; not my intelligence or my theories or my training. I kept the clothes afterwards because I never knew whether I'd go undercover again, whether I'd need them; but I still don't like being reminded of the nights I had to spend standing on a street corner with guys leering at me, calling out to me." She shuddered.

One of Rick's arms tightened, bracketing her waist with the grip of his fingers and his elbow, while his other hand burrowed in her hair, smoothing through the gold-highlighted tangles of curls.

"But it's fine, it was a long time ago and I'm over it," she mumbled with her face turned into his neck. His fingers squeezed her waist at that. She was quite clearly not over it. But he didn't know what to do. He couldn't take back what he'd said and done after finding that outfit any more than Kate could go back and never wear it.

"Sure you don't wanna make some new memories with them before they get thrown out?"

It came out before he was even aware that the thought had entered his mind, and his breath caught in his lungs, the fear latching on while his heart pounded and he actually started to feel lightheaded from the oxygen deprivation.

She's going to kill me. She's actually going to do it this time. Shit, where's her gun? It's not on her bedside table. Oh God. I'm too young to die. There's so much I haven't done. So many things I've not crossed off my bucketlist – wedding in space, kids with Kate, beating Kate in laser tag, seeing Alexis graduate, write serious literature. So many things…

"Castle," she snapped, digging her fingers into the small roll of puppy fat above his hips to get his attention. He flinched, he actually flinched. "I've called your name five times," she told him, unable to stop the quirk of her upper lip as she resisted laughing at him. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing," he squeaked, cursing himself seconds later for that ridiculously high pitch his voice had taken on.

"So you weren't checking to see where I left my gun?" He tried not to look guilty, but obviously he didn't do a good job. Her sigh of annoyance cut through him. "I think I prefer you thinking about me in those skimpy outfits," she muttered, leaving the circle of his arms.

And just like that all of his blood rushed south again, imagined scenarios of her in those sinful leather shorts slapping cuffs on his wrists assailing him. God, it was hot. He almost didn't notice her bending down in front of her closet, scooping up an armful of the halter neck tops and denim miniskirts that were more like belts he had uncovered before sauntering into the bathroom and then his mind caught up with his eyes and he was lurching after her, fingers just catching her wrist.

Her lips barely skimmed his jaw, teasing him with promises of what was to come.

"Sit," she ordered, pointing towards her bed.

As he planted his ass on top of the throw folded and laid along the bottom of the madeup bed, he counted their lucky stars that they hadn't had the furniture moved out of her apartment yet. His eyes bored into the closed bathroom door as he waited, wishing that he could spontaneously develop x-ray vision so he could see her shimmy her way into those incredibly slutty clothes. He sighed. Life would be so much better if he'd been born with an x-gene mutation or dumped in a vat of something radioactive or if he was from Krypton.

"Castle, close your eyes," Kate commanded from the other side of the door.

His finger was in the air as he replied, "But I'm meant to get to see."

Still, he complied, covering his eyes with his second hand, waiting until she said, "Okay, you can look," before he removed it.

His eyes ravaged her, speech completely impossible. The only sound that left his open lips was a gulp. He shifted back on the bed, reclining to try and ease some of the pressure around his crotch where his jeans were suddenly way too tight. The pinch of her lips told him she saw exactly what effect the outfit – or lack of – was having on him.

"So," she murmured after a few minutes filled with his silent staring. "I should probably go and change into one of the other ones, right?"

He nodded, clearing his throat roughly until he could speak. "I really think you're going to need my help – those laces look difficult."

She looked down at where his hand was vaguely gesturing – the laces keeping the two halves of her top together, though the way the material covered her chest was anything but modest. Smirking, she crooked her finger at him, hand clutching his shirt the instant he was within range.

"You sure those big fingers of yours are gonna manage?"

"I could always use my teeth," he suggested lowly, hands already skimming over her bared midriff before trailing over the laces.

"Good enough." Her response was little more than a whisper, words breathed out when the sensation of his fingertips ghosting over her became too much and all she wanted was for the stupid material between them to be gone.

She huffed out a breath as she dumped the last box in his bedroom. That was everything. It had taken a few days – probably because Castle could be pretty obstinate when he wanted to, and he'd been pretty determined to be handsy when the only times they were alone was when they were supposed to be sorting and packing her stuff.

Her bed and excess furniture – the things they didn't really need two of – had been donated to goodwill stores. A bunch of her clothes had made their way to some of the city's charity shops, along with some of her books. All in all, her apartment had suffered a proper clean out in the process of her boxing up her life to move it all into Castle's loft. Looking about his space now though, her stuff – her vases and antiques collected from travels around Europe and Asia – looked at home. Her mother's plates were already safely stowed in his kitchen cupboards along with her favourite mugs. The bookshelves that helped form the divide between his office and the living room now housed her books as well as her glass ornaments and that model ship she'd had ever since she was a child. A few pieces of her art had migrated into the loft, hanging over the staircase, but other bits were in a storage facility until they decided what to do with them. All in all, the move had been a success. All she had left to do was migrate into their shared wardrobe the few bags' worth of clothes that had remained at her apartment while she spent all her time in his – theirs now, she reminded herself – loft.

The first few pairs of jeans that appeared were quickly unfolded and refolded neatly before being stacked on a free shelf, her t-shirts joining them. Work shirts and slacks were hung beside his own dress shirts and pants, their two sides meeting neatly in the middle. She had just removed a bunch of stiletto heels and sandals and chucked them into the bottom of the wardrobe – there being far too little space left to even attempt some kind of tidy order – when she came across it, the raunchy red top with the laces still untied but threaded through the holes on either side of the garment's two edges.

He didn't.

But he had. Her hand soon came across the denim skirt that completed the ensemble after a moment's digging in the box.

You are in serious trouble.

He didn't have to know her as well as he did to realise that the text was about that top and skirt he had managed to save from the bin bag of things that were being dropped down the garbage chute because she'd deemed that no-one would ever buy them from a thrift store anyway.

He gulped, tried desperately to refocus his attention on whatever Paula was saying, failing miserably because she really was going to kill him this time. He knew for a fact that her gun was in the safe in his office because he himself had put it there. That would have been reassuring if not for the fact that he had given her the code for it – Alexis' birthday – months ago when she had first begun staying the night at his place and heading into work from there rather than returning to her own apartment first.

You are so dead.

He slid his phone back into his pocket. Obviously she'd found the leather hotpants too.

He winced as he eased the door shut, hoping the grind of the latch moving through the latch strike and the click as it slid home were not as loud as they sounded to his ears. He'd opened the door slowly, peering around for her before he pushed it open enough to slide through. His coat was already off and he hung it with extra care so the buttons wouldn't jangle. He toed the floor for a moment. Honestly he wasn't sure what to do. Should he seek her out, apologise profusely for overstepping his bounds? Or should he just hide upstairs somewhere?

Eventually he swallowed his fear and stepped cautiously forward, expecting her to spring at him any moment. After another brief check of the kitchen and living room, he headed into his study and noted the partially closed bedroom door. It seemed to open in slow motion, revealing her sitting on their bed. Waiting for him. In those hotpants. And nothing else.

"You took your time," she purred.

"Fuck." It wasn't just her body that had him breathing heavily; it was the way she gazed at him from under her hooded eyes and that sultry tone of voice. She was a total seductress and he would never get used to it.

She smirked, teeth digging into her bottom lip because, God, she hoped that they would get to that.

He moved, unbuttoning his shirt while he walked.

"This is a nice surprise, Beckett."

Sitting back and watching as he pulled his unbuttoned shirt off, she hummed in the back of her throat, mischief dancing in her eyes, before reaching out for his belt, flicking it open with a jerk of her wrist, fingers 'accidentally' brushing parts of him that ignited his veins, made his blood sing.

God, the things she could do to him with just one touch. One look. One kiss.

Her lips were soft beneath his as he bent his frame over her, fingers catching at the hard angle of her jaw, sliding up over her ear and tangling in her hair. Her mouth fell open on a sigh, tongue darting out to mingle with his, lightly stroking a greeting. He could almost laugh at his own stupidity, thinking she was that mad at it, if she hadn't suddenly managed to get her hand into his pants and give him a squeeze. He groaned, thrusting into her closed fist. She just couldn't play fair, could she?

"You'll be the death of me Katherine Beckett," he muttered against her lips, feeling her smile wide.

"At least you'll go having a pleasurable time."

He groaned at the way she tightened her grip on him as her voice dipped and drew out every syllable of that word. Pleasurable. Damn right he was going to have a pleasurable time. But so was she.

Pulling her hand away from his painfully hard erection, he gripped both of her wrists and pinned them above her head on the bed, forcing her to lie on her back underneath him. He looked her in the eye for a moment, almost daring her to object, before he ducked his gaze and instead focused his attention on one of her nipples, sealing his mouth over it, teeth grazing the flesh, making her squirm and mewl. He forgot all about her keeping her hands above her head to palm her other breast, rolling and pinching her neglected nipple between his thumb and finger. In the back of his mind, he applauded himself for his forgetfulness, enjoying the way her hands suddenly landed on his shoulders, nails briefly digging and breaking his skin before her hands slid up into his hair and tugged his head down further, pressing her breasts to his face.

He bit his tongue to keep from smirking as she moaned, protesting the loss of his mouth. But he just pressed a tender kiss to the circular scar resting between her breasts, fingers running over the surgical scar along her side as he so often did, before trailing his lips lower and lower, sending her spiralling higher and higher. She was completely breathless, strung so tightly she could do little more than watch as he circled her bellybutton with his tongue, sending shivers through her core.

His mouth, his kisses, descended to the waistband of the hotpants and she breathed out a yes, sure that he wouldn't hesitate to remove the last of her clothing. But instead, her continued to tease, waiting for her to snap, casually running his hands up her sinfully long and slender legs from ankle to the back of her knee first. He could see her frustration spread as he refused to move his hand up her thigh. Even when he complied with her silent demands, ghosting his hand up the inside of her thigh, he stopped before he reached her centre, enjoying another huff of displeasure from her. Resting his head against her hip, he smiled into her stomach as she shifted, desperate to make contact with some part of his anatomy.

"Castle," she finally exclaimed, only to be left moaning as he pulled her hotpants down with on swift motion and ran one of his fingers through her soaking heat.

"God, Kate, you're so wet-"

"-I've been waiting all afternoon," she groaned, rolling her hips onto his hand as one of his fingers slid inside her and the base of his palm rested against her clit. Adding a second finger, he worked her higher, watching a flush spread across her chest and up her neck to colour her cheeks before he let his head drop between her legs and his tongue dart over the bundle of nerves. Her inner walls clenched around his fingers.

Suddenly, she broke around him, tremors wracking her frame while she reached for him, pulled him up her body to kiss him with bruising force though how she still had the strength was astounding.

When her breathing slowed, and their kisses were soothing, small pecks every few moments, she murmured, "I was supposed to be your hooker."

He grunted a laugh. "Best. Damn. Hooker." Each word was punctuated with a kiss. One on her lips and then two love bites on her neck and clavicle that were sure to leave deep, purple bruises.

"I'm serious," she complained, pushing him up, then surprising him with one of those quick movements of her legs. He was never entirely prepared for her to flip them over.

The breath rushed out of him. But he wasn't sure whether that was anything to with how heavily his back hit the mattress or whether it stemmed from how glorious she looked rising over him, knees either side of his body and her heat tantalisingly close to his cock. If only he didn't still have his boxers on.

Her breasts brushed his chest as she laid herself over him, brushing her lips over his jaw, while her fingers ran teasing circles around his nipples much like he had just done to her.

His eyes rolled back in his head. If she wasn't a goddess, she was a siren sent straight from the depths of the ocean to seduce him into a stupor.

"Kate," he groaned, hoping to speed her along. One look at her grin though, and he knew he was going to be getting a taste of his own medicine. It was a good five minutes of her trailing her tongue down his body before his boxers finally hit the floorboards. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait as long before her mouth was wrapped around his cock, all delicious heat and downright dirty strokes of her tongue along the sensitive underside of his member. There was no way in hell he was going to last if she kept up that bobbing of her head, let alone the hollowing of her cheeks as she sucked him down until his tip was brushing the back of her throat. "Kate, stop," he choked, well aware that any second now he would be coming, spurting his essence right down her throat. If anything, his words spurred her and she grabbed his hips, making sure he couldn't move away.

The tingles had stopped long ago. He was consumed by pressure he didn't think would survive until all of a sudden it was gone and he was coming in her mouth and she just swallowed it all, every last drop. The grip he'd maintained on her shoulders was probably too painful, but he had to hold onto something because it was simultaneously too much and not enough.

She released his softening member and sat astride his hips once more. The feeling of her heat, still sopping wet, worked wonders on him. Grinning at the feeling of his arousal underneath her, she rose slightly and tilted her hips to take him in, moaning as he stretched her. With every downward thrust she made, she rolled her hips and ground her clit against his pelvis, soon bringing them both to the brink again.

He knew she was close, could feel the fluttering of her walls around his cock, and he didn't think he was going to last much longer. He rolled her onto her back with a gentle hand on her shoulder, before creating a trail of fire down her body with it as he stunned her with a deep and powerful thrust. Her knees sprang up on either side of his body, changing the angle of penetration, pulling a loud moan from her.

His fingers rubbed over her clit again, giving her that extra bit of friction as his penis drove into her again and again, finally finding that spot that made her keen deliciously as orgasm finally hit her like a freight train, the catalyst for his own release. His name fell from her lips like a whisper, her arms locked tight around his neck, keeping him close as she rode out the waves and aftershocks.

"Kate," he gasped, arms shaking as he fought to maintain his braced position. His muscles gave, sending him collapsing on top of her where he buried his face in her sweat-slicked neck, lathing his tongue over her hammering pulse. When he had the strength to move again, he barely had the mind to roll over, and settle her on top of him instead.

He was covered in sweat, probably stank to high heaven of sex. But why should he care when his fiancée was still draped pliantly over his body, one leg tangled between the two of his? Her every breath washed over his chest with every exhale, warm but somehow cooling against his heated skin.

"You'd have been a great hooker."

Shit, had he just said that outloud?

He didn't understand what was happening at first in his post-coitus haze. Eventually his mind caught up to what he was seeing and feeling though and he realised the shaking of her body in his arms was her laughing at him. "That was the idea, stud."

"So, can we keep the clothes?"

A/N: So… Was it awful?