The sight of her spun Sherlock's entire world off its axis.
Or rather, it merged two distinct worlds that he had never expected to even overlap: one of the present, and one of the past... one ruled with an iron fist by his superego and one that had integrated his id.
When he released the taxi door and began to move towards her he felt as if he were still asleep and wading through a dream—the same apocryphal logic seemed to apply. It was only the cabbie's angry outburst of "Oi there!" that made him blink, reach into his pocket for his wallet and then turn to pass a note through the window. The cab accelerated forward with a grinding of gears and Sherlock stared after it until it swerved onto Marylebone Road. Only when it was out of sight did he take a small breath through his mouth, close his eyes for a brief moment, and then face towards Irene Adler again.
Next to his initial shock at the surreal vision of The Woman on Baker Street, his primary response was the same powerful surge of endorphins and adrenaline that he always felt when laying eyes on her for the first time after a lengthy separation. That didn't lessen its impact, however. Despite the precision of his memory, he was never prepared for the vividness of expression, the formidable cunning of her gaze, or the spare beauty of proportion that the real woman possessed. She was no longer just a stand-in confined to his Mind Palace, or a fleeting glance through a dark, seething crowd, or a streak seen through the window of a moving car. She was real and present, and that took his breath away, if only in the very first moment.
His subsequent, but almost simultaneous reaction was a rush of visceral anger that she should jeopardise everything they had done to ensure her survival and ongoing anonymity by coming to London, and that she should be so reckless as to even appear across the road from his flat. But that anger was soon tempered by a voice that reminded him that the compulsion that made her take risks and defy conventions was an expression of the very essence of The Woman that so attracted him. To denigrate one aspect of her character would be to detract from the whole of who she was, and he would prefer her to be nothing but The Woman, and all that entailed. Besides, without the peril she was personally assuming they wouldn't be reuniting now.
He took one final moment to collect himself under the guise of pulling the collar of his coat higher around his face against the icy wind, and then took a step forward, then another, and another, until he was crossing the road towards her on long, brisk strides.
As he drew closer yet another part of him, a very insistent part, envisioned not slowing down but speeding up when he reached her, taking hold of her above the elbows, and using his momentum to crush them both into the side of the building. And then...
He blinked to banish the mental image; it would be better to err on the side of self-control until he could sort out just how these two distinct world fitted together.
Instead he came to a halt two feet in front of her and said, "Ms. Adler, welcome home. Though being out in the open like this is a bit indiscreet." He quickly scanned the area, then turned his serious expression back on her.
"Are you feeling exposed, Mr. Holmes?" she replied, referencing something she had said in their first meeting, and inflecting the last two words with subtle irony. Last time they had seen one another, at an abandoned block of flats where he'd been staying in Turin, they had most definitely been on first-name basis, but that had been Before.
They had almost achieved an approximation of normalcy then—strictly relative to them, of course—but being close to her again now after so long was like returning to a high altitude after months at sea-level. Until he readjusted he would continue to feel dizzy and disorientated.
There was also the matter that during that time she had been informant, confidante and council, distraction, and a lifeline to him... Whereas when he had known her here in London she had been adversary, liar, traitor, and the closest thing to heart-breaker he'd ever experienced, and the collision of all those roles and attributes also provoked the vertigo-like sensation that he could only ever credit to her.
In short, yes, he was feeling very exposed, but it was hardly a new sensation. He always felt that way with her; it was an inevitable consequence of being so seen and understood, and it was additional evidence of how exceptional she was.
Still, he might as well be crossing a chasm in those last few feet that separated them, and he wished that she would do what she did best, and instigate.
The image of pressing her up against the building would not be so easily banished with a blink, but she had always been the braver of the two of them in that sense—had always been the one willing to put more of herself on the line, just as she was now by her mere presence. Ever the dominatrix, she often knew what he wanted and liked even before he understood his desires himself, and she could and did draw confidence from that. For him any move would be akin to a gunshot in the dark—a coup if accurate but potentially disastrous if off the mark. She, on the other hand, was a heat-seeking missile, and her effects were just as incendiary.
But to his frustration she only regarded him with a look of patient expectation, and with a flash of dismay he wondered if her hesitation wasn't due to the fact that they'd been separated for months, but because she was letting him set the pace after what he had said to her when they had last parted in Italy. It would've been an unremarkable, perhaps even expected, sort of goodbye if they were a conventional couple, but they were neither one nor the other.
Or so he told himself as he looked down at her, his face stoic and impassive but his stomach churning and a months-dormant heat curling up through his body and warming him against the frigid night air.
The silence stretched out between them, punctuated only by a whoosh of a car or cab heading south, or the distant laughter and raised voices of people hurrying towards the Underground before it shut for the night. He wasn't one to concern himself with saying the 'right' thing in a given situation, but he wasn't above wanting to impress her, either, especially since it had been so long since they'd spoken. Nothing would come. He took in her healthy, vital appearance, and opened his mouth, before closing it again with a faintly audible click of teeth. It would be ordinary and petty for him to comment on her looks. Her literal appearance, on the other hand...
"I did see you there, in West London," he said. "How."
She smiled with closed lips up at him over the elegant knot of her sophisticated scarf, and he suspected that his own pupils were dilating as he continued to drink in the sight of her face after being parted for just over a year. That particular smile seemed to fit inside his mind like a key, and light it up. Parts of him that only came to life around her revved higher into gear, and he sensed the concern he'd felt at her brazen return shift into a very different type of tension.
"I didn't want to waste any time," she said with her characteristic illusion of frankness (offering the ostensible why, but not answering his question of how), and he paused his ravenous scrutiny of her face to focus on her eyes. "I'm only in London for a single night—I'm acting as a courier for a certain high-level official I know, and the matter is time-sensitive."
His brow furrowed at her words, which immediately made him forget his series of follow-up questions about her appearance in Fulham Broadway.
"A 'courier,'" he repeated sharply. "Of...?"
"Information, of course," she said, enunciating the words with obvious relish, and he clicked his tongue on his teeth and nodded in acknowledgement.
"Emails can be hacked, phones can be bugged, assistants can be bought off..." he said. "But confide in the woman who already knows your every secret whim and desire and still remains discreet, and who also happens to have a number of passports under a variety of different aliases, and suddenly a communication pathway becomes clear."
She nodded in confirmation, looking pleased with him.
"'Business' must be going well, to introduce you to people powerful enough to have need of an errand like this," he noted, and he told himself that the small twist of displeasure he felt at the thought was absurd and puerile.
"Yes it is—and this is a part of it. It isn't just one errand, Sherlock; this one just happens to bring me back here."
"Information trafficking," he said, his voice flat and the displeasure growing. "That's what you're doing now."
"How do you think I knew to tell you about the Surčin clan in Belgrade?"
He scowled. "I was under the impression that you were just back to old practice—that people confided in you in moments of weakness and vulnerability, and you were able to exploit that on my behalf. I didn't realise that you were deliberately entrusted with that information."
"It's so much easier to just pass on information rather than try to withhold it from very interested, very persistent parties who know what you have. And far less potential for fuss at customs than any other type of trafficking." She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling, but he felt his stomach clench as at least fourteen possible repercussions to her new occupation occurred to him, all of which were very nasty.
He shook his head and his initial anger came blazing back, and the severity of this self-imposed risk made it far less dismissible.
"Yes you can breeze through customs, but that should be the least of your concerns. And—yes—networks may be hacked, phones can be tapped, people can be bribed," he snarled, grabbing her elbow. "But keepers of sensitive information can be tortured."
She raised her eyebrows. "Concerned?" she asked, taken aback by his anger.
"Aren't you?" he asked through clenched teeth, not bothering to deny it. "At least with your cameraphone you also had a passcode that would detonate your device, and interrogators wouldn't know which you gave them, so that you had some sort of disincentive from getting hurt. But barring the equivalent such as a cyanide capsule," he said in scathing sarcasm, "you can't exactly trigger a failsafe to destroy this information. I didn't take you for someone so reckless. You must realise that it's only a matter of time before people start to catch on. You were all about the long game before, why are you acting so short-sighted now?"
Her expression had gone blank during his tirade, and she pulled her arm from his grasp then said coolly, "The 'long game' didn't work out as intended."
"Arguably better than did your ad-hoc plans, if you'll recall how I found you in Pakistan," he retorted, feeling a brutal sort of satisfaction at throwing that in her face, even while he knew it might have been unfair. "Word gets around, people talk, make recommendations. You're clearly good at what you do, you'll get a reputation."
"Discretion is a two-way street—my clients understand that," Irene said, her voice resolute. "Each of them believes that I'm doing them a one-time favour because they're especially valued customers, and I make it clear that if they tell anyone what I did for them, not only will that information became public, but so will every degrading thing they've ever begged me to do to them."
He continued to glare at her, nowhere near convinced that that was adequate.
"You didn't seem to mind when it was information that lead you to key members of Moriarty's syndicate," she pointed out.
"As I said, I was under the wrong impression. I didn't know its provenance."
She cocked her head. "That's hardly my fault, is it? You're the brilliant detective; you should've detected. Besides, I think we can agree that that wouldn't have changed a thing."
His frown tightened. "You risked everything by sharing that intelligence."
She nodded once, her lips pouted thoughtfully.
"Yes. But isn't that what we both do?" For each other, he read in her eyes, as clearly as if she has said it. "For the game?"
After a moment of thought he gave a quiet "Yes" in answer to both the said and unsaid, then sighed. It broke some of the tension.
"You're receiving generous compensation, at least," he said, his voice returning to normal volume. "Since really London's the last place you should be."
"Oh it should go without saying that I am, but that hardly influenced my decision. The risk is part of the reason I accepted this job," she said, then repeated, "It's what you and I do."
At that she tipped her head back against the wall with her usual casual elegance, and the barrier between them dissipated even more so that he sensed the pull between them intensify. Because again the phrase held the double meaning: yes, they both relished a good challenge from their work, but this was also another risk she had assumed for the sake of them. His heart, which had managed to resume a somewhat regular rhythm, lurched hard again, and he felt a dizzying rush of infatuation (or... perhaps something more complex) for her, as well as the thrill of fear that still always preceded his loss of control with her.
She released his gaze to look around them with interest. "And I have to say, it is good to be home." She looked back into his eyes. "Isn't it?"
"Yes. Although... it's been more of an adjustment than I'd assumed," he admitted.
Her expression softened, and became almost tender. It was a glimpse of the woman she had become to him since they had both acknowledged and given in to their mutual attraction and sentiment, years ago now and on the other side of the world. From the corner of his eyes he saw her lift her arm, and his heart-rate sped up even further in anticipation of (at last) her touch.
She stretched her hand to his face and traced two fingers down the side of his cheek in a caress that expressed the sentiment before she spoke the words:
"Yes, a lot has changed—but also nothing has changed. Do you understand?" she asked, and her fingertips came to a light rest on his collarbone.
His automatic reaction to her trading coded sentiment for sincerity was the desire to contradict her, to tell her that she shouldn't presume to speak for both of them, and that perhaps things had changed for him. But he knew that she would see through that pretence in an instant, and know it for the equivocating it would be. His angry concern for her safety minutes before made any denial useless.
"Brushing up on philosophy when you're not passing international secrets?" he asked drily, deflecting instead.
"I'll take that as a yes," she said, her voice deepening into a purr, and he opened his mouth to reply, but she raised her index finger and pressed it to his lips.
"Mm, time for you to shut up now," she murmured, then drew the finger down over his chin.
A pleasurable chill raced through him at her words and the way she spoke them, and as he always and inevitably did each time they reunited he gave in to her, and by extension, his own desire.
Breathing out a low exhale, Sherlock stepped forward to close the last small gap between them and loom above her petite form. He tilted his head forward and swept his eyes over her face, which was raised to his and close enough that he could catalogue all the various signs of desire on it. They noticeably increased with his proximity and he gave a faint, pleased smirk at that, even while he felt his own responses rioting in answer. Then, looking directly into her eyes, he wrapped one arm around her waist and one hand around the back her neck, and pulled her up to him to press his mouth against hers.
While the first moment when he laid eyes on the Woman always came along with an endorphin high, it was nothing compared with the first real physical contact after months of deprivation. First it soothed all the desires that had built and escalated in her presence, and then it set them ablaze.
Irene made a soft noise in the back of her throat and slid one arm around his shoulders to thread her fingers into the curls at the base of his head, then pressed her nails into his scalp. It was just sharp enough of a bite to make him gasp against her lips, and he felt hers bend into a smile in answer, before she tilted her face to recapture his and then deepen the kiss.
It felt the way the scotch that was still on his tongue tasted: smooth but infused with searing heat, and promising imminent intoxication. Giving a low moan, he tightened his arm around her waist so that she was hauled to her toes even in her already towering heels. Her hand in his hair tightened in response, tugging at the follicles, and he tore his mouth away from hers to press it under her jaw and trail a chain of hot, moist kisses down her throat.
With his mouth on her skin and her hands in his hair, all the months of their separation and distance and all the work he had done to become "Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street" again dissolved, along with any and all the concerns that seeing her again had raised.
Her faint, husky sigh drew him back to her parted lips, and as their mouths melted together again he instinctively pressed his body into hers until she was pushed up against the building. A small portion of his mind noted that this is what he had wanted since he'd first seen her leaning here, but then she nudged back against him with a well-aimed roll of her hips and all the higher processes of his mind temporarily shut down.
The spell broke some time later when a passing group of teenagers wolf-whistled and called out suggestive comments, and breathing hard, they pulled apart, but their shared gazes remained glued and unwavering, if also unfocused.
For the second time since they'd reunited he couldn't think of a single thing to say, but now he didn't feel that the situation called for any words. The prickling agitation that had so bothered him at the pub-turned-bar had vanished, and had been replaced with a sense of contentment. Though he had experienced a similar feeling earlier that evening with his friends, this was far more poignant and sustainable. It grew from the bond of unconditional understanding he shared with The Woman, and it was what he had yearned for in that moment with John and Lestrade, realised.
"Mmm. Happy New Year," she hummed, looking up into his eyes through hooded lids, and after a moment he recalled that those had been the words of the first—and for a very long time, only—text he'd ever sent her. He was certain that the reference was intentional, and it illustrated how much could change in three years. It also showed just how much hadn't changed at all: The Woman was almost as much a mystery to him now as she had been on that previous midwinter's night, and that was one of the highest compliments he could pay her.
"You're a bit late," he said with an amused huff, referring to her response to his now years-old message as well as the fact that it was already well into January.
The hand that he had settled on her shoulder lifted to her face, and he cupped her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb and keeping his eyes fixed on her mouth.
"Afraid it couldn't be helped," she murmured in a throaty voice. "I was tied up with that high-level diplomat I mentioned."
He gave a small and distracted smile, then bent down and kissed her again. Her mouth was soft under his for the length of several heartbeats, then she nipped his lower lip and looked up at him through long, black lashes.
"Well. The reverse, actually." She gave him a wicked smile that transmitted directly to his groin, and his hand tightened on her waist.
"Not such a happy new year for him," he said, his voice rough.
"On the contrary," she corrected. "But never mind, forget about him." She stroked her fingers down his torso, making his abdominal muscles jump under his shirt, and the hair on his arms rise. "Are you going to invite me in?"
Frowning at the abrupt realisation that for caution's sake he should've done that before they'd even exchanged their first words, he shed his coat in one smooth flourish and settled it around her shoulders. Her hair was a style different from any he'd seen before, so that wouldn't be as immediate a tell as it once might've been. However she hadn't shed all her signatures; that audacious flash of red would be an instant giveaway if anyone were watching them, though at least the shade wouldn't appear on the greyscale feed of the public cameras.
And let's hope for some sectarian uprising to occupy Mycroft away from a random, casual intrusion, he thought, his mental tone wry but the sentiment genuine.
"Shoes off and under the coat," he instructed. "And collar up around your face."
She looked amused at his commanding voice but complied, then raised a pert eyebrow at him. The expression drew attention to the fact that he'd had her recreate the secondary look she'd assumed when they'd first met, and it put additional speed in his steps as they crossed the road.
He had long ago determined which approaches to his flat best evaded CCTV, and had paid off members of his homeless network to routinely vandalise those with the most direct views towards his building, but at points when being recorded was unavoidable he shielded her, or angled her body away with a hand to the small of her back that he didn't drop even after they'd passed through.
He suspected that with some distance it might occur to him that he had permitted lust and sentiment to cloud his judgment, just as it had moments before, but he rationalised to himself that she had introduced the risk before he had even arrived at Baker Street, and now he could only minimise potential damage. Though yes: he wanted her and wanted to be with her, and this was hardly the riskiest thing they had ever done together—not by a long shot.
When they did step onto the landing in front of his building he drew out his keys, then looked back at her over his shoulder. He was unsmiling but knew that she would see the humour in his eyes when he asked, "So would you prefer to enter the front door this time, or can I offer you a leg up?"
Without hesitation she replied, "Oh Mr. Holmes – both."
He gave a low hum of appreciation, and unlocked the door. The moment he was through the entrance he turned on the spot and pulled her in roughly by the wrist, his mouth descending on hers again at once. He rarely caught her unawares and he exploited the fraction of a second that her jaw went slack, twining his fingers into her hair to angle her face against his and pushing his tongue past her parted teeth.
She opened her mouth further and he didn't hesitate to intensify the kiss, while she slid her hands under the lapels of his suit jacket and started to shove the material from his shoulders. Without breaking away contact he rolled his shoulders back to help her shrug him out of it, and it fell to the floor where it was immediately forgotten.
Making a breathy noise of satisfaction that was unduly attractive to him, she smoothed her palms down the length of his back, then began to tug his shirt from his trousers.
He caught her hands in his and crossed them behind her back, pulling her tightly to him so that he could feel the outline of her breasts for the first time in months. Even while his rational self was lost in the kiss his body was hyper-receptive and aware; here was that part of him that he had so uncomfortably repressed earlier in the bar, unfurling after he'd kept it tamped down all these months, and the thrill of giving into it pounded in his veins.
They broke apart a moment later, both breathing hard, and he stared down at her, her face upturned and her hair askew in haphazard strands. In many ways her face was more familiar to him than his own, and yet still he could never look at her enough. He was one of the most observant people in the world, and yet each time he gazed into her eyes he saw something new and enthralling.
The moment lengthened and something in her expression changed and deepened, and when she tilted her chin by two degrees he understood and acquiesced.
When their lips came together next it was gentle, soft, and slow, and communicated the mutual depth of feeling that was the foundation for all of their lust. When they had reunited for the first time since Karachi it had taken them months to rediscover that particular kiss, and it was still rare. More than even the most uninhibited sex, this laid him bare to her, and vice-versa.
When it reached its conclusion she slid around him with a feather-light caress down his spine that made him shiver, slowly drew off her gloves, and then threw him a look of explicit invitation over her shoulder as she made her way up the stairs.
If he hadn't still been immersed in the aftermath of that particular kiss he would've smirked, because of course she would take the lead even in his own home. Instead he followed, further absorbed by the sway of the perfect ellipses that were her hips.
When they reached the upper landing he opened the door for her, and she strode inside, looking around.
"So. No more John Hamish Watson," she said, then turned to him and cocked her head to the side, watching him.
"No," he replied. He would go into greater detail about his current arrangement with John and his feelings on it later—perhaps tomorrow; now was not the moment. With so little time that was theirs alone, he wasn't about to shift focus to someone else.
"Which means... we have this entire place to ourselves," she went on with the barest suggestion of his favourite smile, and she sauntered over to his sofa, then turned to face him. "Any ideas in that big sexy brain of yours?"
"One or two," he said in a low, tight voice, and he crossed the room to join her. She stood in place and watched him approach, raising her chin as he drew closer to maintain their eye contact.
He reached up to tangle his fingers into her scarf, then pulled it away from her throat and dragged it down her chest, running the back of his hand over one breast. He rubbed the swathe of fabric between his index finger and thumb then tossed it aside, having mined all the data he needed.
Now that some of the initial overwhelming rush of seeing her had calmed into a more manageable buzz, he could look beyond her mere presence, and read where she had been in the months since he had last seen her.
This is also what they did.
He found that using all of his senses to study her body, in order to slowly but thoroughly discover where she had been when they were apart, was equally as if not more intimate than undressing her one article at a time, and just as arousing as any other type of foreplay. It was something that was theirs together, and only theirs.
They were well matched, though their approaches varied. While his methodology was clinical and detail-orientated, she often got to the truth by manipulating him into revealing too much—usually through intellectual, emotional, or sexual provocation, or a potent combination of all three. Seeing the exquisite way her mind worked, particularly in the context of their physical relationship, made sex all the more personalised and stimulating, and he was disappointed that she couldn't have a turn now, since she knew precisely where he had been these past months.
Still, he could.
He leaned down to her, savouring the moment of anticipation, before he brushed his lips against the outer shell of her ear. He was gratified to see her give a slight shiver.
"When you were 'tied up'," he said, his voice low and warm.
"Mm?" she said, reaching for his hands to entwine her fingers with his.
"You were in the northwest part of the island of Borneo."
He pulled back to see that her eyes were cast down and her lips were curved into a smile of pleased expectation, which he knew from experience was an invitation for him to continue.
"The Sultanate of Brunei," he stated, confident again with this familiar, though always exhilarating, territory. "The eastern, more elevated region, to be more specific; near the capital but not quite in it. Perhaps a country chateau outside of the city—discreet and scenic, but close enough to reach the office should the need arise, given you mentioned a high-ranking government official..."
She looked up with eyes that smouldered in a way he recognised, and which both his mind and his body found stimulating in equal measure. The union of the clever and the provocative, it was both who she was and what she liked, and through her it had become what he liked as well.
Understatement, an avid voice in his mind said, as she used their joined hands to push him to a seat in the centre of the sofa, then slid forward to straddle his lap, her knees pressing into the worn leather on either side of his hips.
"And what makes you think that?" she asked, her face hovering inches above his and her blue eyes dark and encouraging.
Aside from the divested scarf and gloves she was still dressed for the cold, but there were a few observations available to him. He released her hands and ran his palms down the tops of her thighs and then skimmed his fingertips back up underneath them, then repeated the circuit, drawing out the moment.
"You were wearing a ceremonial textile called a pua kumbu, as a scarf—tsk, bad," he said lazily, and looked up at her through his own darkened eyes, then lifted his arm to curl his fingers through the ends of her hair and tug.
She rolled her head back into the pull, exposing her long, graceful throat, and Sherlock's mind swam from the powerful eroticism of the combined intellectual and physical stimuli.
"And judging by the weft of the cotton and the fading of the dye, I'd say it's at least a hundred years old," he continued, though a bit more breathless. "There's only one region in the world that such an object would originate, and that the state of Sarawak, in the part of Malaysia located on Borneo. They're considered rare and valuable cultural objets, especially one as old and in as fine condition as this one, so it would make sense that a 'high-level official from the area would give it to you as a token. But what would you be doing in Sarawak, a region almost no one outside that geopolitical area knows about let alone cares about, where there would be no one with sufficient power to entice you—when Brunei is just next door?"
She gave a small hum of encouragement, and the sound threatened to derail him.
"One of the wealthiest states in the world, and devout enough to appreciate your particular stock-in-trade: boundary-pushing liaisons, but no actual sex," he said, still determined to finish before she could distract him entirely, which she was doing her best to accomplish. She had managed to get his shirt the rest of the way free from his trousers, and was tracing the edge of her index finger down the seam of his fly with the barest hint of pressure. He only took it as a sign that he was correct, and she was resorting to dirty tactics in order to salvage a win—or at least a draw.
He stared at her finger before snapping his eyes back up to hers, and he saw that she was watching him with a pronounced smirk on her face; it was almost identical an expression to one she sometimes wore when there were no barriers between them and she had him worked up just to the edge of climax.
"A cross—er—crossroads for many of the world's most wealthy and powerful players, and yet far enough away from London both geologically and culturally that you would enjoy relative anonymity," he ground out. "Your gloves are a special type of very fine silk, from the Bombyx mori moth, which isn't exclusive to Brunei but is prevalent there."
She dropped her head and pressed her lips just below his ear in a kiss that made his pulse spike, then brushed her mouth along the side of his neck, before ending with a sensuous kiss above where his shirt opened at his collarbone.
"You also have new. . . earrings. And by the. . . warmth of the silver shade of the metal it could be platinum, palladium, or. . . white gold," he managed, and the pitch of his voice had dropped part of an octave. He felt the words rumble in his chest as he spoke them, and noticed how her breath caught and then sped up at that, which in turn made his own quicken. "You've worn them for at least several days judging by the small vertical creases in your earlobes, and slight scuffs say that they're not as hard as platinum, and so they're probably white gold. That region has a number of gold mines, and I've noticed a predilection of yours for jewellery as souvenirs."
"And the chateau, how did you get that?" she asked, her eyes warm and her pupils blown wide, and she began to work her hands down his chest, undoing his shirt, then lightly scraping her nails down the skin she revealed.
He paused to watch her through half-open eyes, appreciating the symmetry in how he revealed her bit by bit through his deductions as she gradually revealed his body by undressing him. He reached up and slid his hands down her arms, feeling her muscles work and flex under his palms as she unfastened each button.
"Do you forfeit that question?" she prompted after a moment that was silent except for the sound of his heavy breathing, and he blinked languorously.
"It's a bit dim, but I can tell that the skin on your face appears redder and drier than usual, suggesting that you've been at a higher altitude, where ultraviolet rays are much stronger," he recited unevenly, his eyes transfixed by her lips, and his body starting to feel heavy and taut with desire. "You use a sheer foundation with incorporated SPF, but that factor isn't strong enough to withstand increased UV, and your skin type easily burns. Hence the more elevated region, which is close to the capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan."
His mind went blank and it took him several seconds realise that he had reached the end of his deductions.
"It all fits," he concluded in a blend of cockiness and gratified relief.
"Mmm," said Irene, and she bent in close, creating fantastic friction in the process. "Very thorough," she murmured, her breath hot against his ear.
He exhaled through his mouth, then brushed his hands down her side to grip her hips, and pull her down more firmly against him. "Thank y—"
"And very, very wrong," she cut in, then pulled his earlobe into her mouth and scraped her teeth over it before settling back on his thighs, her face radiant with triumph and arousal.
A frisson of electricity jolted through him from the pleasurable, wet contact, and delayed his reaction to what she'd said.
When her words did hit him his eyes widened and he gave a small frown. "What—all of it," he asked.
She gave a hum of confirmation and leaned down to give him a light but very sensuous kiss, then pulled her lips away from his just far enough to murmur, "Everything else aside – why else might my face look that way? And this time, Sherlock, it might be better if you didn't think at all..."
The furrow between his brow deepened at that, but he laid his head back against the cushions of the sofa and cast his eyes over her face. He noticed that her lips, which were partially open and showing a glint of white teeth, were wet and swollen from their kisses, her eyes were black pool surrounded by the thinnest band of blue, and the pulse in her carotid artery was bold and visible. Taking in all the obvious signs of her physical excitement made him consider the last part of the equation, and then it clicked.
It didn't reveal where she had been, but that didn't seem to matter nearly as much as where she was in the present moment: in his lap and slowly, deliberately rotating her hips.
"You aren't sunburnt... it's vasodilation. You're flushed," he said, his voice strained with arousal from how provocative she looked, and the fact that she had outmanoeuvred him.
He reached up to cradle her cheek in his hand, and felt the heat radiating into his skin.
"Now we're getting somewhere," she answered huskily, leaning into his touch.
She reinforced her point by slipping her hand under the band of his pants at the small of his back, sliding her fingertips along the edge and then smoothing over it again in a maddening pattern, her touch just a whisper against his flesh. It was just enough to stimulate all of his nerve endings and send blood rushing to the surface of his skin and elsewhere, but not nearly enough to satisfy the hunger for her that was growing more voracious by the second.