When Preparation Met Opportunity
Mid-morning sunshine spilled through the portholes in their small but very comfortable suite in soft bars of light, and it grew less watery grey and more brightly golden as she listened to him explain to her all the advanced planning and consideration that he had put into her rescue in Karachi.
"You've thought of everything," she murmured in amazement after he finally concluded, and she felt deep affection warm within her at the sight of the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkling from his obvious pleasure at her words.
The expression was almost unbearably endearing, and her heart started pounding painfully in her chest, not out of the desire she had felt earlier, but out of the most potent brand of sentiment, one which had become almost pervasive in the past twelve hours.
She felt her throat constrict, and with slight effort due to her years of both natural and cultivated emotional detachment, she lifted her chin and met his eyes.
"You invested an unprecedented amount of effort and brainpower, and I'm sure expense, not to mentioned you risked your life. . ." she said, and she knew that he would be able to hear everything else she meant in those words, in her eyes and her tone of voice. You did this for me, not for a case, or the satisfaction of a puzzle, or out of boredom, but for personal reasons. For sentiment. For me.
Plenty of men and not a few woman would do anything for Irene Adler, and though much of that persona was a genuine component of her personality and certainly contributed to why Sherlock was so attracted to her, he hadn't done it for Ms. Adler the professional, he had done it for Irene. It was a subtle but very critical difference.
She would never state those things aloud, but his face took on the same almost severe expression that she thought might be on hers, and she knew that not only had he understood her unspoken message, but he was affirming it.
"I've already told you, I don't do things halfway," he said in a slightly self-important tone, but she heard it for what it was, one of pride and gratification, and smiled.
His answering smile was gentle and held no trace of self-consciousness, and this time his expression struck her much differently, and once again her desire for him rolled over her in wave of heat as if someone had just opened a door to a furnace. It mingled with that impossibly deep care she felt for him to form a heady blend of physical and emotional arousal. Her breath started to pick up.
"Mm, yes, I've noticed that. . ." she replied. Her voice was husky, and just as abruptly as his smile had affected her, her voice caused his pupils to engulf his irises, although she only got a brief glimpse before they were both leaning towards each other.
His long and elegant fingers went straight to the back of the extravagant bra he had just given her and he strained his neck forward to press his mouth the part of her throat he seemed to like best. He unhooked the clasp with expert—and she thought somewhat cocky, given the small but teeth-baring grin she felt against the skin of her neck—ease. Then after one final caress of lips against her throat he leaned back against the pillow to hurriedly pull the scalloped lace straps down her arms, which she lifted to help him.
He threw it off into some corner of the room with a deceptively calm expression and then wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against him, but when their skin connected his pretense of being in control waivered, and to her satisfaction she saw his teeth bite into his lower lip.
His forearms uncrossed and his hands pushed down her lower back, then slid under the fabric of the matching briefs she still wore to take hold of her hips in a firm grasp.
She raised an eyebrow and his nostrils flared slightly as he pressed his hands down while rotating his hips upwards, now meeting her challenge with silent but steely resolve.
As she felt the evidence of his rapidly growing arousal press into her, she couldn't help but once again marvel at the purely physical lust she felt mixed in with her respect for and fascination with him. It was elemental and primal, and her need for him scared her at times with its intensity. Feeling such a way—with anyone, let alone a man—was unprecedented, and it had been profoundly confusing at first, even when her attraction to him had been based solely on their intellectual connection and the narcissism of seeing a reflection of herself in him. But her attraction had developed a physical component as well, and there was no denying that he could turn her on physically just as much as he could mentally.
Now his eyes burned with intensity and were drilling into hers as if she were the most fascinating and alluring puzzle he had ever encountered, and if he searched the depth of her eyes, he would discover the key to understanding her, or his feelings—or possibly an explanation to them. All his powers of observation and the blazing focus of his mind were channeled onto her, and she found it dizzyingly erotic.
Returning his penetrating stare, she ground downward with her own countermotion, and his expression shifted. His intensity remained, but now the look in his eyes was dark and predatory, and wholly prurient.
She had seen countless shades of desire pass over his face in the past several days: wonder, possessiveness, lust, provocative teasing, tenderness and a half-dozen variants in between, but this was the one she liked best. It was reconfirmation that Mr. Holmes was every bit as sensitive and responsive to her as she was to him, and that she wasn't the only one who was losing her composed, cerebral self to carnality.
The familiar staccato of excitement drummed in her chest, and she let herself revel in the uncomplicated but powerful feeling of raw lust. There were only two things on earth that could cause her heart to pound this deliciously: misbehaving, and Sherlock Holmes. And in this scenario, she got to have both of her favourite things at once.
She saw that he wasn't so lost in a haze of arousal that he failed to interpret her expression, because his eyes narrowed, and with a distinct lack of gentleness, he yanked her towards him as he leaned in.
When he found her mouth he raised one hand to cup the back of her head, while his other arm encircled her waist even more tightly, anchoring her to him. For a moment their lips pressed together with almost bruising force, but then she turned her face and changed the tone of the kiss into one that was far more sensual.
The fingers at her waist dug into her skin and he made a breathy, passionate noise and rolled them over to pin her beneath him.
He hovered over her for a moment, his eyes wide and focused on her face, before he lowered his head and pressed a kiss to her suprasternal notch. He dipped the tip of his tongue into the hollow there, then raised his eyes back up to her again.
She could feel the care he broadcasted when he looked at her as if it was another caress against her skin. It was like minute points of buzzing electricity racing along the path of his gaze, and in its wake gooseflesh rose on her skin and her nipples tingled and tightened.
As he held her gaze he dragged the hand that had been tangled in her hair at the nape of her neck down her throat, over her shoulder, across her collarbone, and around the curve of her left breast. Once he reached her chest, he grazed his fingertips over her skin with deft but maddening slowness, and she realised with astonishment and a flush of excitement that he was teasing her.
He leaned back down again to press his mouth under her jaw, as his fingers traced closer and closer to the centre of her breast, without seeming to make any progress at all.
She heard herself make a small sigh of frustration from the back her throat, and she arched into his touch, but he stilled his hand and pulled away slightly.
A hint of humour appeared on his face, a small teasing expression breaking through the intensity.
"Mm, no," he drawled, one side of his mouth pulling up as he looked down at her. "I think this is rather good for you, actually. Someone shouldn't always get what she wants."
"Do I?" she retorted with a provocative smile and an inviting tone.
Instead of responding with passion, his face shuttered for a brief moment, and she knew that he was recalling the one moment when she had not attained what she'd wanted, and his role in her failure. But as quickly as it had shown, it disappeared and was replaced by an intent, smirking look.
"You tell me," he said huskily, and lightened his touch even more so that she felt like the deprivation of contact would drive her mad.
"Do you?" she breathed, attempting to distract him so that she could press her chest up into his touch.
For a long moment he was silent and she thought he was going to ignore the question, before he answered, "More than I could've anticipated, it seems."
At that he dropped his chin and his mouth went directly to where she most wanted it. A low, pleased moan left her lips, and his hand squeezed her waist in acknowledgement and response.
He continued to focus on her with his lips, tongue, and teeth, and the taut, electric feeling intensified. It was as if a network of filaments connecting her breasts, belly, and between her legs began to light up and give off sparks.
His dark eyelashes brushing the tops of his cheeks, he briefly nuzzled against her sternum before switching to her left breast, and his hand stroked over her hip and down the outside of her thigh to grasp under her knee and hitch it up to his waist. He shifted forward to position himself between her legs then pushed his pelvis hard against her, and through her underwear she could feel every inch of him. He was radiating unbelievable heat, and she thought that that was one difference between penetrative sex with him and the kind she'd had with women. The heat of him when they were skin to skin in the most complete and intimate way possible was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
The sounds of the wind and waves breaking against the side of the ship faded into white noise, and all Irene could hear was the rustling of the mattress and the harsh breathing coming from both of them. The obscene sounds and the feel of him pressing against her obliterated the very last of her self-control, and she became ravenous for him.
She saw everything she was feeling reflected in Sherlock's tense features. Then with an almost inaudible growl, he rocked back onto his heels, slid his fingers under the elastic band of her lace and silk knickers, and tugged them down her legs and over her feet. With a flick of his wrist he threw them aside, then turned back to her with a searing look of resolve in his eyes. Of the same mind, she pulled him towards her and pinned him between her knees.
His look of single-minded intent waivered, and he leaned in and kissed her deeply, as if to refortify himself in their connection. But as soon as their lips broke apart, she rested one hand on his back to pull him closer, and reached between their bodies to take hold of him with the other.
She listened to his breath catch and then return in short, sharp pants, and she savoured a feeling of self-satisfaction for just a moment before she pressed her fingers into the skin on his lower back. He took the hint and with a piercing look into her eyes, he slowly sunk into her.
It was only their fourth time, and Sherlock still wasn't entirely confident at the beginning, even though he probably thought that he concealed that from her. He should've known better than that by now but it didn't matter, because she found both his uncertainty and his compensating bravura endearing, especially since he lost all traces of self-consciousness as soon his baser instincts took over. Then his demeanor was altogether different.
She'd had certain expectations of him despite his inexperience, given his highly observant nature and masterful understanding of causes and effects. And she'd thought that if he should err towards selfishness, she was well-equipped to correct that behaviour so that she also got what she needed.
But he had been even better than she'd assumed. His initial period of slight insecurity grew shorter each time, and she suspected it might be totally gone by the time they parted ways that evening—as long as they spent the day the way she intended. Also, he was much less selfish than she had anticipated, and he was flying through the learning curve much faster than she could've hoped. Already he seemed to be pick up on the various things that both she and he found especially arousing, which reminded her...
She stretched her neck to press her lips up against his ear. "You feel so good," she told him on a purring exhale, and she felt his entire frame stiffen and saw the pulse at his throat spike.
It was certainly true, but she had an ulterior motive for making the comment. Something Sherlock had done the previous night told her that he might very much like a bit of well-placed vulgarity, and she was never wrong about determining what people liked. On an impulse he had whispered low and throatily in her ear that he wanted her, and telling her had clearly excited him. That he should find that so arousing made sense: he loved the sound of his own voice, loved narrating, and most of all, loved showing off, and she thought that if she encouraged this, they might both benefit. 'Both', because her motives weren't altogether altruistic; even the idea of his deep, desire-roughened voice dictating what he was doing to her or what he wanted to do to her filled her with dark thrill of anticipation.
But on this occasion he would be the one to react to her words; he made a faint but passionate sound and pressed into her harder, rocking her against the headboard.
For the moment she let him have full control, utterly engrossed in all the physical indicators of an aroused and sexually engaged Sherlock Holmes. She took in the rapid pulse in his carotid, the small sounds of exertion coming from the back of his throat, and the way he seemed totally lost in sensation. At the last observation she was distinctly reminded of how he had looked when he had been lost in thought before her in front of the fireplace of his London flat all those months ago, and a blaze of gratification curled low in her belly at the memory. She had wanted him then, and now—to be indelicate—she had him. And of course he would commit as fully to this as he did everything else he undertook; he 'didn't do things halfway', after all.
After he managed to acclimatise a bit, he seemed to notice her watching him, and his face took on a darkly speculative expression.
She reached up and touched the crease at the edge of his mouth with a fingertip, and his eyes darkened further.
"I was just picturing another..." he started, sounding hoarse. He cleared his throat. "A different..." His voice faded off and his gaze searched hers, gauging her reaction, while desire rolled off of him in waves. She felt exultant; first the talk (they would work their way up to the 'dirty' part) and now he was being proactive with actual suggestions.
She felt her lips bend into a leering smile. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of coming between Sherlock Holmes and an experiment," she said, and he looked into her eye for a beat longer, then smirked.
He answered in his much more familiar assertive voice, though it was tinged with a new coarseness, "Useful to know, as I have a number in mind..."
Even though he was lifting himself off of her and moving off to her side, she felt a rush of hot, heady arousal at his words. Suddenly she was struck with a vision of what it might be like to experience something relatively sustained with Sherlock. They were already so compatible in every way, and he was dismissive of societal norms or preconceived ideas, obviously unafraid to attempt new things, direct and pragmatic about what he wanted, and delightfully inventive about how he achieved those things. This could be just the beginning, she thought, and at the prospect another shot of adrenaline coursed through her body. The glimpse of the physical relationship they could have together was dazzling in its potential.
Meanwhile, panting heavily against the back of her neck so that small puffs of air made the sweat-slicked skin below her hairline tingle, Sherlock pressed up behind her, then wrapped his arm under her leg just above her knee and pulled it up and back towards his hips.
Irene saw what he meant to do and leaned forward slightly, bracing against the mattress, as he took himself in hand and shifted his weight so that he could position himself between her legs. Then with a shaky sigh that she found both endearing and incredibly arousing, he rested his forehead on the back of her shoulder and pushed upwards, connecting them again after two shallow strokes.
At the first full thrust in this new position he gave a low whimper, grasped the thigh he cradled more tightly in his arm, and pushed his lips hard against the top of her spine. By the third thrust he had opened his mouth and was sucking hard enough that she knew it would leave a bruise (again—she had spotted several from the previous night when she'd been in the shower), but she found that she didn't mind the adolescent behaviour in the least. In this way Sherlock was somewhat of an adolescent, but moreover, the marks were physical proof that Sherlock Holmes had unraveled, and she had been the cause.
They hadn't yet attempted this position, and it took several moments to find the right rhythm, but when they did, she immediately knew it from the way her back arched and nerve endings all throughout her body seemed to resonate in harmonic accord. As one, the two of them moved in a flowing, rolling motion, with one of Sherlock's arms wrapped around her leg and another spanning across her belly, pinioning her tightly against him. Her hips were flush with his, and her spine was pressed to his abdomen, while the backs of her thighs covered the front of his, and their legs tangled. Time stopped, thoughts stopped, and all that mattered was the perfect synergy between their bodies.
Several minutes after they mastered this new position, he pushed his hand down her belly and pressed it against the juncture between her legs. There he began to stroke her in time with the pistoning of his hips, and she felt a moan leave her lips as she pushed back against him. She felt liberated and sensuous in a way that she used to witness and evoke on a daily basis with her clients, but that she rarely permitted of herself.
Unlike Sherlock, she didn't lack in sexual experience, but very much like Sherlock, she found most of her thrills elsewhere, and distinctly north of her genitals. When she did get involved with someone, it was almost exclusively for some manipulative purpose or, more rarely, her own physical gratification. It wasn't so much that she'd been careful not to prevent an emotional component from ever developing, so much as she had just never been disposed to any of her lovers that way. She had certainly never before been tempted to relinquish her upper-hand or control to the degree she had with Sherlock in the past two days, and was on the brink of doing again. But she had never trusted anyone else in the ways she trusted Sherlock Holmes, and she had never wanted anyone else in the uncomplicated and agenda-free way that she wanted him. (She and Sherlock were complicated, yes, but she had come to understand that her feelings for him were anything but.)
With Sherlock, not only was sentiment a key component to their developing sex life, but it was the entire, precipitating reason she was in bed with him at all. And so in many ways, including the most significant, this was just as new and unprecedented for her as it was for him.
With that thought in mind she tossed her head back, and although it was a strain, she managed to catch a glimpse of his face over her shoulder. He looked up as well, and their gazes snapped together.
If he could only see himself, he wouldn't recognise his expression, she was sure. It must be the same with her, she realised, as she met his intense, worshipful look.
Something profound clicked into place then. It was more than just the feeling of connection and simpatico with Sherlock that she'd felt building between them since they had met, it was one of total oneness. It reminded her of the bright red plastic View-Master she'd had as a child, which displayed stereoscopic images off of an inserted disk. When not in full focus one could see the two overlapping images, separate but distinct mirrors of the other, but when they slid fully into place and merged, they became much more than the sum of their parts; they were three-dimensional and vivid. She was experiencing that same brilliance and clarity now.
It didn't even occur to her to admonish herself for such fanciful thinking, the feeling of intimacy and belonging was so all-encompassing and true.
A chill of mingled euphoria, exhilaration, and fear raced through her body, causing her to shudder, and Sherlock clearly felt it though he seemed to misinterpreted it as something physical. He bit his lip, hoisted her leg up further, and tilted his hips, achieving an even deeper angle that made her drop her face back into the bed and moan into the duvet. After a moment she reached behind her and grabbed his arm, pulling herself back up and twisting her neck to regain eye contact.
The open, almost loving look was gone, replaced by an unapologetically hungry and demanding expression that sent a dose of arousal and expectation downward.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn't maintain the slightly awkward position, but when she faced forward again and closed her eyes, she still saw his dark look imprinted on the backs of her lids. With that last image in mind, she let herself focus more on the sensations, and she lost herself to everything but the anchoring feeling of their physical connections until pleasure buzzed just under the skin of her entire body.
Ever the astute pupil, Sherlock muttered something into her ear that was not so shocking that it shook her out of her haze of mounting bliss and desperation, and yet just indecent enough. He followed up with quicker movements of his hand and the slightest additional pressure, and suddenly she was leaning back into him, overwhelmed by the blossoming, intensifying flares of pleasure that had almost taken her by surprise. They radiated from her centre all the way out to the tips of her limbs and the top of her head, so that for several mindless, timeless moments she was not so much a body as she was a woman-shaped constellation of bright, dazzling fireworks that detonated in rapid chain reaction.
Several moments later, she swam back to awareness to find him pressing his face onto the top of her shoulder, his rocking motions slower and shallower as she shuddered through her climax. After catching her breath a bit she took the opportunity to pull away, and before Sherlock had a chance to protest, she pivoted on her knees, pressed his shoulders back into the bed, and straddled him. As soon as she reseated herself he let out a low groan at the change of angle, and his hands clamped down hard on either side of her waist.
With ever-increasing alertness, fascination, and even new stirrings of lust, Irene watched as Sherlock now began to unravel beneath her. The flush had spread from the tops of his cheekbones across his entire face and chest, perspiration beaded up around his hairline and temples, and his jaw was hard-set with tension. Except for his look of determination, there was no trace of the aloof and cerebral genius, and as charismatic and enthralling as she found him that way, she also thrilled in witnessing his undoing. Part of it had to do with the innate rush she got from witnessing anyone shake apart because of her, and he had seemed a particularly imperturbable and unattainable challenge, but that was the very least of it. She didn't want to overanalyse the 'why' in the moment, but her instincts told her that it mostly had something to do with the fact that as vulnerable as she was making herself with him, and as much as she trusted him with that vulnerability, he was just as willing to do the same with her. And for both of them, that was equally anomalous and significant.
He didn't shy away from her close stare now, and in fact it seemed to spur him on even more. He reached up to wrap his fingers around the back of her neck and curl his thumb under her chin, holding her face in place as he returned her look through narrowed eyes, and she held his wrist in her hand and squeezed.
Still, after another several moments it seemed as it were too much; he squeezed his eyes shut and his lips pulled away from his teeth as his head tipped back onto the mattress, exposing the straining arc of tendons in his long, pale neck. She was tempted to give him a dose of his own medicine and barrage the area with love bites, but she knew how unwise it would be to give into that particular urge, even taking into account his proclivity for scarves. She'd have to wait for a more prudent time to get her way in that respect, but she was more than confident that that day would come, and she could be patient. In the present, she settled for weaving her fingers through thick locks of his hair and pulling, and she smiled in gratification at the resulting grunt.
His hand dropped from her throat to blindly grope for her hip, and when he found it he clutched onto it, and with both hands he pulled her down against him even harder. With his eyes still tightly shut he gasped on an inhale and moaned on an exhale, and repeated the motion again, and then again, faster each time, until he abruptly froze mid-thrust.
With an avid stare she watched all the minute changes in his face and body as he climaxed, every muscle tensing beneath her and his fingertips digging into the tops of her thighs. It was empowering, but now that she had finished herself what she mostly felt was deep tenderness.
As he let out a torrent of breath he had been holding and then started taking in fresh gulps, she leaned forward and rested her wrists on his clavicle to stroke his cheeks with her thumbs. In what looked like a post-coital daze he encircled her wrists with his fingers, and they stayed that way for the length of several dozen heartbeats.
When she rolled onto her back and looked up at Sherlock, he opened his eyes and returned her gaze through heavy lids. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes glassy, and clumps of his hair were either standing on end in wild disarray, or else plastered against his forehead and temples. A single rivulet of sweat was running down his face in the hollow between his cheekbone and his jawline, and if she weren't feeling so spent, she would've been tempted to lick it off.
But despite his wanton, thoroughly debased look, there was a sense of quiet satisfaction and peace emanating from him, reaffirming to her that everything she had felt, was feeling, was real and reciprocated.
Several moments passed in which their breathing slowed and deepened and their febrile skin cooled, and an almost reverential atmosphere developed between and around them. Irene didn't feel the need to make a remark to leaven the situation, or steer it in a particular direction. She was naked in every sense of the word and yet she couldn't remember the last time she had felt so at ease and content in her own skin herself—not even during the times she had worn her nudity as 'battle armour'. She didn't want or need any armour at all, now.
As far back as she could remember, she had been able to read others—what they expected, what they wanted—and moderate her demeanor and behaviour in reaction to what she saw. She suspected that it initially began when she sensed she wasn't quite like her peers and had used it as a defense mechanism. Unlike Sherlock, she hadn't retreated inward as a result of her otherness and tried to ignore teasing with occasional episodes of lashing out. In characteristic fashion, she had taken control of the unfavourable situation and had modified her own behaviour to secure the results that she wanted: being liked and included.
Or perhaps she had developed this almost pathological need because nothing she seemed to accomplish as a child had ever fazed or impressed her parents, and so she had been ever-desperate to understand them and discover something that could make them seem to give a damn about her.
But regardless of the original cause, it quickly developed into something more. At around 11, she learned that the dual skills of understanding what made her classmates tick and being able to manipulate their perceptions of her could secure a lot more than just being liked. She could get things and she could get compliance: like a set of high-end ballpoint pens a fellow student had brought home from a trip from Germany, or the last chocolate milk at lunch, or the sworn secrecy of a classmate who had caught Irene staring into her locker mirror, intently watching several fellow 7th graders get undressed in the changing room after Girls' P.E. in its reflection.
She only became bolder and more adept, and when her mother divorced her father and moved them to her mother's native Wiltshire the following year, Irene had found that her talent for reading and manipulating people transcended national borders and cultures. Almost to her disappointment, the English were just as susceptible to her as her American peers had been.
She wasn't a sociopath, she knew that. After she had been separated from her grandmother, she had been desperate to find someone else who could understand her, who could look beyond her pretense and call her out, or challenge her by not so readily giving her what she wanted, once she had seemed to give them what they wanted. She wanted someone to see.
But people were shallow and fickle, and no one ever had—not even Sherlock, at the beginning. (Or was it that he saw all too clearly...?)
That was probably why she had become so attracted to him, she mused, not for the first time. It was more than his brilliance and his appealing brand of egotism, as attractive as she found those traits—it was because she had somehow sensed that she might finally be recognised, and known, and understood.
"Nine," he said, his low and throaty voice breaking through her thoughts.
She blinked and tore her gaze away from the trickle of perspiration to look into his eyes. It was clearly not a reference to her pulse, but she couldn't decipher his non sequitur.
"Times you said my name—or partially said it, which I decided counts," he explained, and there was a distinctly self-satisfied look in his eyes, although it wasn't all arrogance. She detected some pleased awe and slight disbelief beneath the tone of smugness.
Her lips curled into a smile as she lifted her hand to trace the path of another bead of sweat between his pectoral muscles. "And how many times did yousay my n—"
"Not sure, I was a bit distracted, you know." He caught her wrist and pinned it against her chest, causing her heart to skip a beat despite how satisfied she already felt.
"But you've managed to give me a very precise count of how many times I said yours," she retorted, watching how the strong pulse in his throat was as well before flicking her gaze up to his.
"Yes." Now as he looked down into her face his eyes were smoldering again, filled with the same intense and unchecked emotion that she had felt moments before.
"I can see I need to do a more thorough job of distracting you next time," she murmured, only mostly teasing.
She didn't think he was going to say anything more, but then he said in a rumbling but steady voice, "When you said my name, it...I took notice of it." She could tell that he was trying to appear matter of fact, but the grave tenderness in his eyes spoke to the depth of sentiment he was experiencing.
As she looked at him, she was struck by how remarkable it was that he permitted himself to feel and express this again, given the final dénouement between them in London. They might have both sensed the potential for something unique and unnamed between them when they had first become acquainted, but any nascent attraction could have very well been destroyed by everything that had come to pass on that god-awful night.
Still, she had come to believe that although he had been deeply hurt and caught unawares by her perceived treachery, his essential sentiments towards her had not and would not change. She had been sure that after his feelings of betrayal subsided, he would begin working to ensure her safety, and she had been right.
It was only now, taking in his soft, unselfconscious expression, that she realised how remarkable that really was. It struck her how powerful his feelings for her must actually be, if he—Sherlock Holmes—were willing to set aside his bruised ego and fractured pride, and not only risk his life to save hers, but make himself emotionally vulnerable to her yet again.
She recalled when, with barely-contained pain and grim satisfaction, he had looked her in the eye and punched in each of the four letters of her pass-code into her cameraphone, thereby conscientiously bringing about her downfall. In the immediate aftermath of that night, she had been devastated in equal measures by the fall itself, and the way she had permitted sentiment to lead to her it. She had been horrified that Sherlock had found and exploited the same weakness she had found and exploited in him, and even in her initial despair she had recognised that they were probably experiencing the exact same brand of self-loathing and recrimination.
Yet her sentiment for Sherlock in and of itself hadn't been her undoing, she had realised in the countless hours of reflection she had spent on that night. Sherlock wouldn't have been so eager to see all her meticulously-planned schemes fail, and be the one to cause it, had she had not made him into such a fool in her pursuit of them.
But her actions—making him feel special and making him feel, making him want to impress and protect her and making him want her, and then showing him that it had all been a calculated act to get what she wanted from him and that he had allowed himself to be manipulated—could not have been more emotionally damaging or humiliating to Sherlock if they had been designed for that purpose. Then, of course, her taunts about her connections with Jim Moriarty had obviously added insult to injury. And worst, this supreme humiliation had taken place directly in front of his cold, detached elder brother who was the true 'Ice Man' that Sherlock never would or could be.
As she lay pressed against him now, her head rising and falling with his breathing, she thought of what she might have been doing at that precise moment, if she had kept her former alpha-numeric code rather than changed it to the first part of Sherlock's name. She knew precisely where she would be, since she had planned several years of her post-professional life with as much care and precision as she'd applied to her intricate exit strategy. But as she thought of the cosseted and secure but ultimately uninteresting existence she would've lived, it didn't hold the attraction to her that it once had. There was no place for Sherlock Holmes in that existence, and if she'd wanted excitement, she would've had to generate it all on her own. She was certainly capable of it, but it wasn't nearly as fun.
Perhaps that's why he was so willing to forgive her past betrayal and risk the peril of sentiment again, she thought. For a variety of reasons, both emotional and intellectual, she made life more interesting and satisfying for him as well. To a man like Sherlock, 'interesting' was imperative, and she knew that anyone who caught and held his attention was rare and valued.
Or perhaps, like her, he just couldn't help it.
As if he could discern her thoughts, Sherlock let out a quiet sigh and curled towards her, resting his head in the hollow between the side of her face and her shoulder and stretching his arm across her chest to cup a hand over her left breast. Now the connection felt warm and grounding rather than arousing, and a faint smile touched her lips.
She lifted her arm to rest her hand on top of his wrist and thought, bluntly and without any affect, it's quite possible that I'm in love with you.