Reading Between the Sheets
Lying beside Holmes in the darkness, miserable in mind and body, it was half on my tongue to blurt out an apology or an accusation, but pride or hurt wouldn't quite seem to let me, and I bit down grimly on my lower lip to keep the demons inside. I heard the soft regular sound of his breathing, and the slight rustle of the sheets against his pajamas, and wished that I could lose myself in the oblivion—if not the peace—of dreamless slumber.
I lay as still as I could and tried to make my breath settle into the peaceful rhythm of sleep, but my breath left me in a whoosh when one of Holmes' warm, long-fingered hands slipped beneath my cold one and held it.
Tears sprang up under my closed eyelids and I squeezed them tightly shut. It was…it was such a tender gesture, his hand enveloping mine. My eyes felt hot, my chest tight, but the thought of crying somehow horrified me. Instead of a deep, air-suffused gasp, my hand gave a telling convulsive clasp. It was all the encouragement Holmes needed.
He surged up in bed beside me and his free hand went without hesitation beneath the nape of my neck, drawing my lips up to his as his mouth descended over mine. The room was dark, but the moonlight glazed the room in sufficient light for me to see the eager form of my lover and husband as he gathered me against his chest.
I had been miserable, fragile, consumed with fear and unhappiness, but it all fled in the face of this warmth, this communion. I found my arms around his shoulders, and the smooth tautness of his muscles beneath the skin reminded me of the strength that lay so often dormant in his wiry frame. Strength, I thought dimly, and cleverness.
Those beautiful, long-fingered hands were capable of picking locks and forcing puzzles to divulge their secrets. The mysteries of a fairly mundane English nightgown stood little chance, and then his arms were beneath the fabric, beneath me and holding me firmly along his length while his mouth plundered mine with insolence.
I felt the insolence and the joy in him, and a great well-spring of laughter bubbled up inside me even as I found my pride tweaked. Drat the man and blast him!—whatever I might not know about myself seemed irrelevant in this moment of heat and passion—but I was not to be outdone on home turf!
His own pajama buttons were unremarkable, which was just as well. We would have to hunt for one of them in the morning light since my eager hands had not released it before I tore the pajama shirt from his shoulders. The dark curls of hair on his chest were peppered with gray, touching proof of his mortality. I ran my hands over his chest and felt him tremble like a hound quivering to be released for the hunt. Though I could feel his quickened heartbeat beneath my hands, his voice was light and dry.
"Good lord, Russell," Holmes murmured chidingly. "I shall have to find a tailor tomorrow—" His words were cut off abruptly as my fingers skated through his hair and pulled his mouth sharply down to mine. This kiss was the more satisfying because we were now pressed skin to skin except for the annoying presence of his pajama bottoms. If I could have gotten free from his fierce embrace I would have dispatched them with equal fervor, but Holmes' hold on me was unbreachable.
I do not like to be confined. I do not surrender my will easily or comfortably, but the resolute hold my husband had on me was not without purpose. Now that my senses—long ignored by me during our difficult trip—had been roused, I wanted him urgently, insistently, this moment—on me and in me and—
His mouth over mine was gentle, but he pulled me even tighter against him and deepened the kiss until I felt positively light-headed. I let out a gasp, and he used that against me—clever fiend!—to plumb the softness of my mouth with teeth and tongue. It was like melting, like fusing to something white-hot. I tried to right myself in this new universe, but there was no righting, and no need. My husband's arms were warm, and safe—I need not worry about anything. Having secured my goodwill as well as my surrender, Holmes began to press scorching kisses at the base of my throat, against the line of my jaw, beneath the lobe of my ear. I caught his head between my fingers, loving the short, springy feel of his hair beneath my hands, and held his head as though to guide him.
But he did not need to be guided. He knew this sacred land well, and approached it as one who both knows and loves the country he travels through. I had known him most of my life now, and I had never known him to do anything by half-measures. That knowledge—that certainty—made my body tremble violently.
Holmes could be careless of himself and his appearance when in the throes of some mental exertion, but I could tell from the satiny brush of his skin that he had shaved again before supper. I had often liked—though I had never said—the soft scrape of his chin in the morning when I had turned into his arms, playful and teasing. With a pang, I realized it had been some time—too long, in fact, since I had done so. I tried to think back to when we had last—but independent thought was growing more and more difficult as Holmes worked his deliberate way through my last defenses.
As if sensing that he did not have my complete and undivided attention, Holmes set about claiming it. This time I did gasp as his hand moved languidly down the line of my body, coming to rest with proprietary interest on my hipbone. There was a moment, then, when we were both uncomfortably aware of the lack of flesh over my bones, and this awareness seemed to arouse some implacable beast in my husband, unsettle some long-settled place.
"Dammit, Russell," he muttered, then those clever hands began to work their magic, drawing—no, demanding—a response from my fevered skin. I heard a sound like a groan and realized belatedly that it came from me. That, too, seemed to rouse him, and he caught my mouth beneath his again. Some of the tenderness was gone, stripped away by my need and his, and his touch became more urgent. He was drawing me, pulling me toward some mythical place with his touch and his kisses and by sheer force of will. My arms were locked around his shoulders now, our ribcages pressed close, so when the world erupted into pieces around me he was there, holding me, coaxing and cajoling and urging me with hot, hasty words past the edge of reason.
"Holmes! Holmes, darling!" I heard myself cry, and the absurdity almost made me laugh. I never called Holmes "darling," and, for his part, he rarely even called me anything but Russell. But he was doing so now, whispering sweet, incendiary things against my throat while my body bucked and trembled helplessly. I thought I had given everything, but there was no respite from his deliberate plunder of my body. Impossibly, I felt my senses stir anew, felt my mind go foggy as the sensations of my body reigned.
"Come now, Russell," Holmes was saying, his voice languid and teasing, although I could hear, beneath the surface, the huskiness of need. He wanted me, and that part of me that had first thrilled to know it had never dimmed, but now—this moment, he wanted more than carnal knowledge. He wanted me, and wanted to know me and wanted for me to know myself understood, cherished, known. All this and more was in the smoky, electrifying feel of his hands and mouth on my skin. Holmes said something in Yiddish—a silly endearment—and the sound made me shout with laughter, and then passion. I said…I said several things, some I don't remember, but when sanity was at last restored to my mind if not my mutinous body, I opened my eyes to find him looking at me.
God—the look in those hawk-like eyes. I might have been prey before a predator for all the mercy that they showed, but I was not afraid—I was transfixed, transported. The want in them, the urgency, the command.
It was the latter that made me raise my chin—and a look of defiance lit up behind my eyes. Holmes saw it—I saw him see it—and the quick dark look of satisfaction, of challenge thrown down and engaged made his breath go harsh. I reached up and bit him firmly on the neck, and heard with satisfaction a groan wrenched from some deep place inside him. His heartbeat quickened, and I felt his pulse, hot and rapid against my own flushed skin.
I twined my arms around his neck, my legs around his torso and nipped him impudently on the collar bone.
Someone spoke my name, difficult to hear above the pounding of my own blood, but I silenced him with kisses and little teasing bites across his jaw. Holmes was strong, but I had the arguable advantage of youth. With the element of surprise, I pushed him onto his back and reached for the tie of his pajamas. He made as though to help me, but I pushed his hands away impatiently. His expression, stunned and more than a little amused, goaded me on. When I had what I wanted, I leaned across his heaving chest and kissed him open-mouthed.
My advantage—and my vantage point—were short-lived. Holmes made a sound very like a growl and tumbled me down, limbs intertwined. His weight on me a blessing, his breath in my ear sweet music because I had him, and he had me, and neither of us would yield, or give ground or rest until there was nothing left to yield, or give, or take.
There was something wickedly indecent at sitting across the breakfast table the next morning—him shaved and showered and more coolly distant than was his wont, me reserved and even brusque. The energy of the previous night hummed between us like a wire, making my pulse thrum beneath my pale skin. Only once, reaching absently for the coffee pot, did our fingers touch, but that touch make my skin jump and I saw the quick, dark gleam of passion flare behind those cool grey eyes. Cool now, I should say. I withdrew my hand quickly, but Holmes moved slowly, and I felt his eyes on me though I daren't look.
He asked me something and I answered rather flippantly, irritation in my voice. The puzzle of my childhood was beating at me again, flaying my strung nerves, but Holmes presence across the table was a solid, comforting warmth.
"Do you want more, Russell?" my husband said, ostensibly talking about coffee. I raised my blazing eyes at last to meet his.
"Of course," I said coolly. "I always want more."