Burning Up - Glee Version
Hem of your Garment - Cake
The Sex is Good - Saving Able
Porn Star Dancing - My Darkest Days
April 13, 1891 (A little after one in the morning)
I felt his mouth on mine, fingers in my hair and the warm press of his body against me. Stubble scraped my chin, hands roamed across bare flesh and a pleasant ache began to throb between my legs. My heart raced in my chest and the world tilted on axis. His hands slid down my sides, around my waist, fingers tugging at the tightly tied laces of my corset. I wanted out of it, out of my many layers of clothing and I wanted it now. I wanted to feel his skin on mine and the press of his body as he pushed me down against the table.
I wouldn't tell him I loved him this time.
I wouldn't.
I poured every ounce of needy desire into touching him. Kissing him. And in return I felt the hardened evidence of his passion pressing against the inside of my right thigh.
And even though I didn't want to say it, I truly didn't, the words I knew were coming still passed from my lips into the air around us. "I think I may love you Mister Holmes."
He pulled back instantly.
My house of cards came crashing down.
His lips thinned in a grimace. He didn't speak when he turned away. When he walked away.
"Sherlock?" But he did not turn around. He stepped further away, closer to the fireplace.
A terrible daunting chill sent my skin prickling with gooseflesh. I shivered despite the warmth of the room because I knew what was coming. I knew all too well. I knew because I lived it and relived it over and over in some ghastly attempt for my mind (or perhaps my sanity) to come to terms with the idea that the very first man I loved could never love me in return.
He was so horribly silent.
Finally, after what felt like forever and a day, "I believe you to be under an illusion of sentiment." The banal indifference in his tone…it cut like slivers of glass against flesh.
Bile, sour and burning rose in my throat. "What?" He couldn't possibly have meant that? "What," and my voice so tiny, so terribly small, "what do you mean by an illusion of sentiment?" My shoulders shook and my lower lip trembled. Tears, uncomfortably hot, burned at the corners of my eyes.
"Madam, you are nothing more to me than a momentary distraction." His lips quirked in cruel amusement at the expense of my heart. "A temporary, entertaining diversion. Nothing more. I would be remiss if I did not tell you that I lack the necessary desires and emotions toward you Miss Edric. nor would I develop them in time."
My throat contracted painfully and my insides suddenly felt so dreadfully hollow. A hole ragged and raw around the edges, a gaping wound where my heart used to be. Pain so sharp in sheer intensity froze my vocal chords into place. Shock kept the words from forming but not the thoughts. Not the thoughts. Those came so very fast, unbidden and unwanted and so excruciating that they scored my very soul. He didn't love me. He didn't want me. Just another mystery to explore.
And he'd gotten what he wanted.
I woke with a rough thickness caught in my throat. A vice grip took hold of my heart and was squeezing the life out of me one tick at a time. Tears burned in my eyes, my throat tightened and for a moment I couldn't handle the pain. It was too much. Too big. The raw, ragged and shredded hole Sherlock Holmes had managed to punch through my chest into my very soul throbbed with every intake of breath. I curled myself up into a ball on the bed and forced my lungs to breathe through until this bleeding agony stopped. It took all I had to shove it all back down into that blackened hollow space that I created to hide my pain these past months.
I lay awake in bed for several moments just breathing, eyes focusing in the darkness. What was it that woke me? It wasn't day yet. Madeline or Martha would have come to open the curtains if it were. It felt late, much too early in the morning for me to be awake. So what was it that woke me?
My answer came with a sharp resounding crack and earsplitting boom that felt as if it shook the whole manor. Terror welled up, choking the scream that wanted to rip its way out of me. The first of the spring storms had been pitiful excuses for weather with raindrops so small they barely tickled the grass. This, this monstrosity that echoed outside the manor seemed so loud and powerful that I feared it before the sound of great fat, heavy raindrops even began to splatter on the windows of my room.
I swallowed down the panicked fear that threatened to overwhelm my rationality and told myself to be steady. I was inside of a large enough building. The windows were closed and the heavy curtains drawn. I was in bed. Another cracking boom had my hands shaking while I tried to light my bedside candle and failed at it miserably. A cold sweat broke out on my skin as the panic set in.
I couldn't light the damn candle and the storm sounded as if it sat right atop the manor.
The quaking of my hands spread until my whole body tremorred. My teeth chattered. Gooseflesh had me shivering in the cool air of the room. Far too late in spring to have a fire going and much too early to open the windows to let the air in. Glaring at the general area where the candle should have been and wishing it would light did nothing for me in the slightest. I settled for burying myself under the blankets, curled into a tight, shivering ball.
The storm would end soon. It had to. Nothing that powerful could possibly last forever. With my eyes squeezed tightly shut I tried to focus on breathing and forgetting the squall that thundered outside. It would pass. It had to.
It just had to.
With a sigh that attested to how tired he actually was Sherlock took another shot of his brother's best brandy. Tired because his body managed to acclimate itself (without his consent) to sleeping regularly and getting into bed at what everyone else seemed to think passed for a decent hour. For someone used to being up at all hours of the night the feeling of being this tired at two o'clock was a foreign, somewhat disconcerting feeling.
The pitter patter of rain began just as he tipped the glass canter over his glass.
As he had many times before, Sherlock sat mulling over a subject that caused his a great deal of annoyance. Perhaps musing was a better word for it. Brooding? Contemplating? Pondering? Considering. Yes. Considering. Because he was not one to brood. Or muse. Certainly he did contemplate and often, yes he did ponder. Another shot of brandy burned its way down his throat.
His attempts at breaking up his brother's wedding were going about as well as seducing the bride to be. Which, to say was not going well at all. As of late the red haired siren refused to be in the same room with him unless absolutely necessary. And when she was the infuriating creature ignored him. Ignored him. Him. Of all the women in the world he could have…developed a vague tolerance to…it had to be her. A woman that drove him to distraction.
If he had not been so irritated he might have found this occurrence utterly fascinating.
The detective turned yet another page of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. "There's no use trying," Sherlock murmured, speaking Alice's words as if they would lend him some clarity should he hear them, "one can't believe impossible things." A statement he agreed with wholeheartedly. Because, by his logic, once that which is impossible is excluded what is left, however improbable must be the truth.
He looked down at the page again. Some people, he found, often left notes to themselves in their books. Either on slips of paper or written on the empty spaces provided by the margins. Often those notes led to questions the book's owner needed or answers to or observations that held correlations to the life of the book owner. Unfortunately for him Naoi was not such a person. The siren took excellent care of her books aside from dog-earing pages here and there. There was no distinct pattern to the order in which the pages had been turned down, nor were there any particularly worn pages to draw his attention. Previous to meeting this woman Sherlock maintained that obvious facts were the most elusive. Now he knew otherwise. There was nothing more elusive than a woman who was most certainly the most distracting (frustrating) creature in the known world.
He closed the book with an audible snap. What better way to obtain answers than to go directly to the source of the questions?
"Have you gone mad?" She hissed at him in the semi-darkness of the hallway. The light from his candle lit the worried lines on her forehead and the object horror (or was it terror from the storm?) that filled her blue-grey eyes. Naoi cast a wary glance down the hall, "Mycroft is sleeping not two rooms away!"
Sherlock snorted and pushed past her into the utter darkness of her bedroom. "My brother sleeps like the dead." He lit the candle by her bedside and then another that he found on the mantel over the fireplace. Then he set down the book he had been pondering with its spine flat against the painted wood. It fell open to the very page he had been reading just as it had the first time he attempted to discern what exactly it was about this book that held Naoi's attention. "Explain to me if you will why you find this page fascinating."
He turned expecting her to yell at him, hit him, any sign of her volatile personality and instead all he received in return was a curled up ball of fright and terror yanking the covers of the bed of her head. By the dark purple circles under her eyes and the wan coloring of her skin he had deduced within mere moments of her opening her bedroom door that it was the storm not his knocking that woke her. He did not, however, fully comprehend how scared she actually was until that very moment. Frustrating as it was he would get no answers until she was calm and from the count between the crashing of thunder the storm would not be dissipating at any point in the near future.
"Woman," the exasperated detective went to the bed and began to pull at the covers, yanking them back even as she clutched them for dear life. "You are safe within the confines of the house. No bolt of lightning will…" the words died in his throat when he pulled back the final sheet. The impossibly tiny ball she had managed to curl herself into combined with the innocently white nightgown, her long loose hair and pale bare feet made her seem almost childlike in the glow from the candle. And as much as her irrational behavior should have annoyed his logical mind, it did quite the opposite. Wordlessly he blew out the candles, rearranged the sheet, blanket and quilt, shed his robe and slippers and slipped into bed beside her. Sherlock set his arms around her waist, pulling her up into his embrace, pressed his chin into the crook of her neck and curled himself to fit against her.
Agonizing minutes passed as she shivered against him. Her skin felt as if she had been standing in an ice locker in mid-winter without a scrap of cloth to shield her from the cold. "You are safe," he whispered gently against her ear. He used one hand to brush back the red-gold hair he loved to muss so that he could peer down at her face in the darkness. "Naoi," he said her name to draw her back from whatever terrified meanderings her mind could come up with. Gently he squeezed her, "Naoi you are safe." For several breaths she did not respond and a slight panic began to fire itself up in his gut. Then the shivering stopped and her breathing which until that point had been much too quick, evened out.
Tentative, icy fingers sought his and willingly he laced his fingers with hers. He had no idea how long they stayed like that, safe to say that he could not seem to bring himself to care. Sherlock, who was indeed a rational, objective and admittedly analytical man found himself contented to lie beside this nonsensical, infuriating, beautiful woman. In the darkness he heard her draw in a breath to speak and then he heard her pause. She leaned into him, and somehow he knew it was coming despite not wanting to hear it. He knew it and he didn't stop her. Didn't turn her head to cover her mouth with his and still the words before they could ever leave her lips.
Maybe Watson was right. At heart, Sherlock may very well have been a masochist.
"I didn't lie," she whispered to him. "I do love you."
He opened his mouth to reply but nothing came to him. He, Sherlock Holmes, was at a loss for words. He…liked her. He liked having her near. She distracted him, intrigued him, she could be so utterly fascinating sometimes. And she understood him. For the most part. There were things about him that perhaps she might never understand but the same could be said for him about her. He would never fully comprehend why this unearthly creature could allow her heart to choose him of all people to devote itself to. His mind would never allow his heart to do the same.
So that was the answer he gave her. Because that was the only one he had.
"My head," Sherlock told her softly, "has always ruled my heart."
Silence reigned after his whispered confession. Her fingers tightened around his.
Sleep claimed them both.
A few hours later Sherlock opened his eyes, uncertain of what it was that had woken him. In the darkness he found that the bellowing storm outside had long since ceased and the world had quieted to the soft breathing of the woman beside him. Slivers of moonlight slipped through the break between curtains to inform him that yes it was still night and no, he would not have to leave her bed just yet. Unlike in London the sounds of the night dropped off here until quiet darkness surrounded them both. He took note then that at some point during their sleep Naoi had rearranged her body so that she faced him. Their legs had long since become entwined and he felt no immediate need to rectify the situation. He closed his eyes to breathe in the scent of her, vanilla and the sweetness of almonds and strangely enough the faint hint of apples combined with cinnamon. It stirred the desire to pull her closer so that he might bury his face in her neck where the scent would be strongest.
Strands of golden-sunset fell across her forehead and with a gentleness he wasn't aware he possessed until that very moment, Sherlock brushed them back, tucking them behind her ear. Her breathing changed almost the instant his fingers ghosted across her skin. Blue-grey eyes more grey than blue in the darkness opened sleepily. He was rewarded with a sleepy smile that spoke volumes. One of her hands moved to his face, the backs of her fingers playing like feathers over the stubble of his chin before delving into the hair at the nape of his neck. Then Naoi tugged him forward drawing his face closer to hers.
Never before had she initiated in their tryst and Sherlock, brilliant as he was, felt dumbfounded as this woman pressed her mouth to his. The kiss was tentative at first as if she were afraid he might push her away. When he didn't her tongue flicked his lips in a move that he recognized as something he taught her. A powerful heady swell of masculine pride went through Sherlock. His hands found purchase at the small of her back though they were not content to remain there as the instance of her kisses increase in fervor. Daring that she might stop him his hands began to roam, carefully at first, down over the lush curve of her bottom to the swell of her thighs and up again. He squeezed and she moved her hips to press against his.
In the darkness Sherlock moaned out a sound that fell somewhere between an oath and a prayer. Unable to sit back and allow Naoi the reigns to this moment he pushed her back against the sheets with an urgency that bordered on madness. His mouth took hers, tongue plundering the sweetness of her mouth, fingers unable to stay still as they explored through the cotton cloth of her nightgown. He cupped the bottom of one breast, thumb barely touching the nipple through the cotton and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath from the woman beneath him.
Her pupils dilated with desire for him and he smelled the faint musk of wetness stirring between her legs. Daring he eased her legs apart. Her nightgown rode up to just above her knees. Naoi made no move to stop him. Her hands clutched at his shirt, pushing and pulling at it until it came untucked and unbuttoned. His suspenders slipped off down his arms while tentatively curious fingers ghosted their way across the planes of his stomach. Sherlock groaned into her mouth, the muscles of his lower torso fluttering in response to her innocent explorations.
For a breath he pulled back, whether to draw out the moment or to steady himself before falling into this well of insanity he wasn't quite sure. Blue-grey eyes, pupils dilated and hazy looked up at him. Her breath came in puffs and despite the warmth of the room and the proximity of his body to hers Naoi shivered in his arms. It occurred to him at that moment that he could take her here and now and she wouldn't stop him. She would call his name. She would give all of herself to him and the knowledge made a possessive part of him demand he stop stalling and get to the main event.
The part of him that was still (despite a near gargantuan effort) a gentleman rolled off her to fix their positions before she could protest. He would not defile her honor. His depravity did know its boundaries and ruining a woman before her wedding was not on the list of things he planned to do before he died. Naoi made sounds of protest because while he saw the folly in him taking her right there and then she did not. With a rough jerk he stopped her from turning over to face him and instead pulled her rump against the painful hardness between his legs. Her protests stopped mid-breath. Satisfied that he quieted her, Sherlock began a torturous exploration of all the parts of Naoi he had never allowed himself to touch before.
Her hips which were soft, ample and yet not quite as bony as her frame implied, yielded to his hands. His hands followed down her thighs, carefully taking note of the lines or lack thereof in her frame. She was softness and curves which delighted him to no extent. Just as his fingers came into contact with the frilly edges of her nightgown he pulled back. Temptation to lift her skirt and take what he wanted had his mind teetering on edge already. He settled for hooking one of her ankles with his and parting her legs so that he could touch the insides of her thighs through the cloth. The heat from her core increased with the soft panting of her breath. Sherlock buried his face in the crook of her neck and ignored the overwhelming need to explore that moist patch of red-gold curls. His hands found her hips again this time moving over her lower stomach. The muscles fluttered under his ministrations, tightening and releasing in pleasure and anticipation no doubt. Carefully he caressed her sides, stroking down then up to just under her breasts then down once more. He found the middle of her stomach and drew a lazy line up to her breast bone.
A pleasured sigh fell from her lips followed by a softly spoken, "Sherlock…"
Refraining from cupping the fullness of her breasts was an exercise in self restraint, one he was proud to win out on. Sun darkened fingers glided up to tease the sensitized skin of her bared neck. He scraped his stubble jaw against the erogenous zone he had long ago located between where her shoulder joined her neck. Naoi shivered in his arms, her own hands reaching out to seek anything to grab onto. One of her hands found his thigh. The other clutched desperately at the sheets. The confines of his trousers bordered on unbearable. Sherlock once thought he knew all there was to know about torture but in this instance he found he knew absolutely nothing. This was a taste of heaven in the depths of hell. And he only had further to fall.
Gingerly, so that she could stop him if she wanted, he lowered the straps of her nightgown to glide over her shoulders. Her fingernails dug into his thigh, her breathing sped up and for a heartbeat he was sure he felt her muscles tremor in excitement. Or panic.
With deliberate slowness he eased the bodice of her nightgown down while his other hand hiked the skirt upward so that it bunched at her waist. Naoi turned her head into the pillows but Sherlock would have none of that. She had no reason to be ashamed and he would not let her feign innocence now. They were too far gone for that.
He nipped at her earlobe none too gently and ordered in a voice so rough he barely recognized it as his own, "I want you to watch the way I touch you." In his arms she shuddered, nodding as she turned her gaze back to the exposed flesh of her breasts and the way they filled the palms of his hands. Her skin flushed warm as his fingers teased her nipples, deftly stroking, circling, pinching until her back arched and her head fell back against his shoulder. Blindly she sought his mouth, kissing him with such hungry desperation Sherlock thought he would reach the limits of his endurance right there and then.
"Please…?" Came her quiet request against his mouth. For the life of him Sherlock could not recall any moment before that when anything had sounded more erotic than Naoi pleading for his touch. Who was he to deny her?
Unable to stand having the blasted nightgown shielding his over the shoulder view of her body, Sherlock shifted away from the object of his desire for a moment. Naoi only seemed too eager to aid him in ridding herself of the wrenched cotton creation that had barred his ministrations. No sooner had he dropped the white bundle of cloth off the side of the bed than their bodies pressed back together, her back to his chest, his chin tucked against her shoulder and his hands on her hips. And her pert bottom pressed against the straining hardness in his trousers. In a moment of pure selfishness he slid his fingers between her thighs.
He couldn't resist the soft sighing moan that passed from her lip as he pressed gently in exploration. Soft, whetted skin parted in surrender to Sherlock's questing fingers. The sounds she made drove his actions, stroking slowly here, rubbing a little more quickly there. Then his thumb teased circles around the sensitive nub buried under skin and moist wet curls. Her hips bucked against him and a cry he was sure the whole manor would have heard was only just covered by his mouth over hers. A litany of his name, yes, and oh dear lord fell from her lips. Her fingers kneaded at his thigh and the sheets.
It was only when Naoi whispered a desperate plea for more that he attempted the press of one digit inside of her. He found her slick and hot and wet and it was all the better to ease his finger in and out of her. Her thighs clenched together around his hand, every breath a whispered yes, yes, yes. He dared another finger, receiving a husky wanton moan that threatened to shatter his self restraint. Only moments after beginning to stroke his thumb faster to match the rhythm of his fingers, her body shook in his arms, the walls of her sex convulsing in erratic ripples that gave him little warning. His hand covered her mouth as broken, breathless cries fell from her lips.
They two stayed like that for several moments, both breathing hard, unable or unwilling to remove themselves from one another. Sense eventually returned to Sherlock. It was no doubt close the time when the servants would begin to get up and be about the house. He would have to leave or risk ruining Naoi. As much as he had been for destroying her wedding he would not be the hand that undid her honor publicly.
Sherlock smoothed back the hair on her forehead, now dampened with sweat and kissed her ear, "I must go."
Her reply came in a sleepy murmur of, "No. Stay."
He would have loved to. Truly. But he could not. "Tomorrow."
"Today."
Kissing her ear once more, "later Naoi. Sleep." He stayed long enough to be sure that her breathing evened out, and then he was gone.
Forever has just ended. I hope you liked it. If only you guys knew how many rewrites this chapter has gone through... Let's say this. I have a separate word file for all the junk I take out of a story. When I started this chapter is was 36 pages long. It is now 43 pages long. Yes. That's how much junk I've written and rewritten.
As for my reviewers I love you guys! You're amazing. Thank you for sticking with me. I hope you're not disappointed.
A few months back I had an anonymous reviewer (who only reviewed chapter one) tell me that my story sounded like Twilight. I would like to address that. Thank you! If my work ever ended up half as popular as the Twilight franchise has I would be a millionaire. And you would still be a mindless hater/troll. Muah!
Edit: Guys, I LIKE Twilight. Until the middle of Breaking Dawn and then I just ignore the rest of it. So please, you may not like it but remember that I do.