Find Me (BBC Sherlock Fan Fiction)

Chapter 15

Six months earlier - March

She pressed a finger to his lips, a gentle weight in the darkness. 'Don't say it,' she whispered. 'You'll regret it if you do.'

He reached up, latched his fingers around her wrist and brought it up to his mouth, imprinting a kiss onto the smooth white skin. 'I was just going to ask where you were going.'

He was in no mood to argue, sprawled on his back, naked and unselfconscious as his breathing returned to normal and the sweat on his chest began to dry.

Irene stretched out on her stomach in parallel, having resisted his every attempt to put his arm around her, her fingertips exploring the lines of his face. She'd traced his cheekbones so many times he thought she might be trying to memorise them.

'You mean why was I packing the suitcase? I wasn't really going anywhere. I just thought the situation demanded a little urgency.'

She'd flipped off the bedside light immediately after he'd disengaged and collapsed beside her, and now she padded over to the floor to ceiling windows, pulled back the heavy curtains and revealed the stars. The cool light bathed her shoulders, highlighted the tops of her breasts, the inward sweep of her waist. He was quite emphatically not given to pointless flights of fancy but he thought she was probably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He decided not to voice the thought. She paced back across the carpet.

'I met Elsie Cubitt.' He offered her an outstretched hand, which she took, lacing her fingers through his. 'She told me you'd been living in London for a year. What was the urgency?'

She flung a leg across his hips, straddled him and found his other hand, pinning both to the bed level with his head. Then she bent forward, the fall of her hair blocking out anything else he might have chosen to see, turning his whole world into the landscape of her face. He relaxed, allowed her to hold him down as she covered his skin with systematic kisses, forehead, cheeks, nose. Her tongue followed the curve of his chin in a long, tortuously slow glide down his neck, coming to rest in a few staccato kisses on his collarbones. She tilted her head and followed a different path, licking her way up the side of his throat, leaving a hot trail of moisture that ended behind his ear. She bore down harder on his hands so that he couldn't move, turned her attention to the other side of his neck, the wet sweep of her mouth triggering a chain of shivers that rippled down his back.

She returned to her previous position, gazing into his eyes and the half smile on her lips didn't really take the sting from her words. 'I was getting bored. I gave you a year to find me, but that was all – happily ever after isn't really my thing.'

He understood. These were the rules of the game. He could leave when he chose, and so could she – she didn't owe him anything. That just made the fact that the two of them were here together more special.

'Nor mine.'

He sat up, disregarded her resistance, pinned their interlinked fingers behind her back and she shuffled closer, bringing her hips into jarring contact with his hardening flesh. He leaned in and captured her lips in a kiss that began as gentle, the careful, controlled movements with which he was experimenting growing into a wilder, more fierce dance of mouth and tongue as she ground her pelvis against him. He released her arms, brought his hands up to her breasts, filling his palms with their softness and weight and she broke the kiss, arched gracefully backwards, exposing her chest for this attention. He sucked her nipple into his mouth, pinching the other with his fingers to mimic the hard suction he was exerting on its twin and she expelled a long, low moan. The heat between her spread legs increased, but he concentrated on exploring the puckered flesh in his mouth, pulling back to tease the taut point with a lapping affection, then squeezing her breast into his mouth and suckling on it hard.

The sounds of her panting filled the room, filled his ears, echoed around the newly discovered space inside him. The freedom was intoxicating. She showed him the impact his actions were having on her, so he wanted the bite of her pleasure to be sharp, her climax intense, because he knew she'd want the same for him when their positions were reversed.

He broke off, pushed her breasts together in preparation for some complicated piece of erotic manipulation but she placed both hands on his chest, pushed him backwards roughly, then raised her hips and sheathed him inside her.

He caught his breath, but she shook her head. 'Don't,' she said. 'Don't.'

He put his thumb between her legs instead. She rode him delicately at first, a precise, controlled rise and fall of body on body which, although pleasant enough, didn't bring the loss of control he was expecting. He increased the tempo of his rubbing, took a firmer hold on her hip.

Her breathing became fractured, a red stain swept across her cheeks. Now he surged up to meet her every time she plunged down, arched his hips to power into her roughly, rapidly until her muscles contracted around him and a stream of filth poured from her mouth – instructions, descriptions, explicit progress reports.

But he liked it better when her words dried up and all she could do was gasp.

Then the gasping stopped and there was a moment of complete silence, broken only by the wet friction of his hand between her legs. She came with cry and a shudder and she wasn't finished when he heaved her off him, positioned her limp form in a kneeling position on the bed, edged apart her knees with his legs and entered her again from behind. This time with his freedom of movement restored he didn't hold back, putting both hands on her hips and driving the penetration into her, deep and hard. Her head jerked upwards and she cried his name, which he took as encouragement. For the second time he lost himself, gave his mind over to the demands of his body and the clamour in his heart, leaving his mark in the white grip of his fingers on her skin, in the headlong, unco-ordinated, uncontrolled passion with which he took her.

Deep down he was aware that this wasn't making love, or any of the soft euphemisms other people used for sex. This time he wanted to be indelicate, wanted her to know she'd been had. He held nothing back, every grunt, cry, expletive he wanted to utter came rushing out of his mouth, every shudder, every flicker, every shade of pleasure that he felt, he showed.

He came into her with force and a feeling of total and absolute release that went beyond the physical. When he collapsed on top of her and she fell forward onto the mattress in her turn he rolled her on her side, curled himself against her back and held her.

She whispered one syllable 'Think.'

But he was too far gone to wonder what she meant. He had never felt this close to anyone, never allowed himself the license to expose his deepest self, the emotions suppressed so long he hadn't even been sure they still existed.

But here, in this one place, he could give voice to the sudden, powerful feelings, knowing that tomorrow morning they'd go back in their box and he'd carry on with his life as normal. This was the gift she'd given him, this strong, vulnerable, intelligent, flawed woman.

Simply, quietly, he said. 'I love you.'

Here is the pre-order link to my new book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crash-Bride-Sally-Anne-Palmer-ebook/dp/B071RJ8KYJ