writingwell:

#358 

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Beckett shivered in the quickly cooling air, pulled her trench coat tighter around her, cinched the belt. She had stopped under the awning for a palm reader, though she had no intention of going inside, but now she was watching sheets of rain pound the New York City sidewalks.

Rain soaked the concrete edifices, drenched the piles of uncollected trash, made the thin trunks of urban-renewal trees a vivid slash of brown. Her hair was hanging damply around her shoulders, beginning to curl, and she knew she couldn’t stay here forever.

She had a date.

Her lips turned down and she stepped backwards into the barred window of the tarot shop. Crossed her arms over her chest. 

Not that she was thrilled about the date. She’d just felt like it was time. She was tired of being so by-the-book, her nose to the grindstone, the wet blanket at all their precinct social events.

(Social events? They went to bars and pretended they weren’t getting drunk to erase the particularly bad case away. They went to bars and happily got drunk to celebrate a good ending. They went to bars. That was her social life, and she didn’t do that like the rest of them because the specter of her father’s alcoholism hung over her head.)

But Lanie had set this up after the fireman thing had gone sour. Make-up dinner with Castle had been nice, but no, not a date. Not expanding her horizons and getting out of her comfort zone and-

“Beckett?”

She should have known she’d see him. In a city of millions, in a rain storm as wet as a flood, Rick Castle was striding down the sidewalk under an oversized umbrella.

“Castle,” she sighed, resigned to it.

He ducked under the awning with her and carefully held the umbrella away as he closed it, shook it out a little onto the sidewalk. Fat drops sprayed, but Castle was looking at her, his too-smooth grin on his face.

“Fancy meeting you here. At my fortune teller.”

“At your-” She spun around and saw the evil eye hand in the window, groaned. “Of course. Of course.”

“You know what’s funny? Last month she said I should come late to my next appointment-”

“Next appointment? She’s not your chiropractor, Castle.”

“She’s a consultant. She’s quite good.”

“She’s a charlatan who googles you an hour before you show up to make sure she knows the latest.”

“You’re just a unbeliever.”

She rolled her eyes, wishing she could wait out the storm somewhere else. With other random strangers of New York.

“As I was saying, she told me to come an hour later for a pleasant surprise. And here you are.”

Or she had a scheduling conflict, but Beckett was tired of being the patient rational one. “I’m sure that’s what it was. She knew I’d be here waiting out the rain when, a month ago, I didn’t even know I’d be going on this date, let alone-”

“Date?” His interest gleamed in his eyes, like it always did, but there was a tightness around his mouth she’d never noticed before.

Maybe she’d never been quite this close to him before. The awning was small, the wind was blowing rain in at his side, and he was crowding her.

She just… hadn’t realized he was crowding.

She liked him crowding.

What was wrong with her?

She shifted to one foot to ease some space, but he came in right against her, their raincoats brushing. 

“What date, Beckett?”

“Another of Lanie’s,” she admitted with a sigh.

His eyes traced her face and she turned her gaze back on the rain, that uncomfortable awareness rising in her once more. 

“Forget him,” he said. “Blow him off. Come to dinner with me.”

“Wha-” She turned in astonishment, but he was right there, he was leaning into her with his urgency and certainty, and there was nowhere for her to go.

Their lips brushed.

She should have knocked into his cheek first, or his chin should have caught her nose. Other body parts ought to have collided before their mouths.

He moaned.

A fire burst into flames inside her. She stepped into him and caught his nape, pushed against his mouth for more, something stronger than the electric discharge of lips.

He groaned and grabbed for her, the umbrella clattering to the sidewalk. She stretched up against him, their trench coats hooking, belts and buttons caught, but she had no desire to untangle them.

All her desire was in this kiss.

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