He can ask and he knows she won't mean her answer, positive or negative, not really. He can't imagine what it's been like to be broken like her. He can't write the scenes she's witnessed, or document the pain she's gone through in the fifteen plus years since her mother's death. Change. It's dirty currency.

Castle brushes his fingertips over her cheek and bends to kiss her again, groping for his wallet in the dark. He senses a rise in her breath and her breast fills his palm and he knows she's ready.

He turns from her body for a second or two, tearing the foil package with his teeth. His back to her in the dark, he can feel the heat signature of her behind him. When he joins her again his hands are full of purpose. They move over her waist and hips, settling behind the flesh of her knee. Breath on hers, he turns her knee outward, encouraging her ankle up over the small of his back.