Her hands are small and slim, but Castle knows what they can do. He's seen them reach for a gun with the kind of speed that would put spaghetti Western stars to shame. He's watched her in hand-to-hand combat and felt sympathy pain for the guy who walked away with an ugly left eye. There's a permanent stamp of gunpowder on her right index finger, just beneath the knuckle.

Castle has a writer's callus there. Beckett's got gunsmoke.

She touches his skin and he draws in the muscles of his stomach, in part out of surprise and in part out of a hard-wired need to look good for her. His hand slides down the column of her throat, over her slender shoulder and over the bumps of her ribcage. He holds her hips in his hands, thumbs pointing downward.

He releases a breath against the side of her mouth and it's low and scraggly, like he's been running for a long time. His lips find the corner of her mouth, then the powder-soft line of her jaw; a trail leading back to and beneath the curtain of her hair.