For Fictober Day 22: "No promises" combined with "knife against the throat" from "prompts that hit in all the right places" posted by Screnarchive. So…a bit dark. Rated T. Many thanks to Nocturnias for reading it over for me :) Additional thanks to hobbitsdoitbetter for coming up with the idea of a criminal Sherlock calling Molly "Princess" which I have shamelessly stolen here!
She was good, he'd have to give her that. Giving him the slip after fooling him into believing her harmless little kitten act, reporting his actions to Big Brother in the British government…oh yes, she was good, all right.
Too bad for her he was better.
She held very still, as well she might considering the knife he currently held to her throat. His other arm rested against her chest, her little hands gripping his forearm and his other hand tightly holding her close against his body.
Tightly, but not too tightly. He never wanted to cause her pain, after all. He never had, not from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her.
Even now, even knowing she was nothing but a little government spy, tailor made to appeal to him and him alone; even now, holding the knife to her throat and knowing he should simply slit it, side to side in a spray of crimson…
Even now he didn't want to hurt her. "Thought you'd given me the slip, Princess?" he murmured against her ear. An intimate whisper, his breath stirring the wisps of hair that had escaped her ubiquitous pony-tail. Hmm, so that bit of schoolgirlish styling hadn't been part of the act, eh? Interesting.
He felt her swallow, felt the heavy thrum of her panicky heartbeats beneath his arm. And then she spoke, her words inaudible to anyone not standing intimately close to her as he was. "Yes, but apparently not," she agreed. "I suppose I didn't try as hard as I should have. Got sloppy, left clues."
His grip on her arm loosened, turned to a soft caress. "Hmm, something like that. Or…" He eased the blade up toward the lobe of one ear, pressed the cold steel against her warm flesh and grinned as she flinched at the touch. "Or maybe you wanted me to catch you."
A slight hitch of the breath. The continued rabbiting of her heart. Then, the soft touch of one hand, sliding oh-so-slowly, almost a caress, up his arm to rest against his wrist. His own breath caught as she linked her fingers through his. "Maybe I did," she breathed.
Sherlock Holmes, London's greatest criminal mastermind, spun Molly Hooper of MI5 in his hold, deftly slipping the knife into its hiding place, the better to tilt her head up so their eyes could meet. "Maybe you did," he agreed, his voice a low, triumphant rumble. As he bent his head to kiss her, he felt her hands slide up his chest to clasp the back of his neck.
She might have done many things: she might have attempted to choke him (she was surprisingly strong for all her delicate, doe-eyed appearance and slender figure), she might have tried for the knife, or the gun he had secreted in his jacket pocket.
She did none of these things: instead, she kissed him back, ardently, passionately. And when the kiss ended, he found himself asking, "After tonight, Princess, will you stay here or come with me, hmm?"
As she led him up the stairs to the hotel room she'd been hiding out in, lips curled in a secretive smile, she murmured, "No promises."
In the morning, she was gone - but she'd left behind her private mobile number, tucked into his jacket pocket next to the pistol she could easily have used to kill or incapacitate him.
Lying back, a satisfied smirk on his face, Sherlock smoked a cigarette and stared up at the ceiling. She'd given him no promises…but that mobile number was a promissory note, and that was just as good.
The next time he found her…ahh, the next time, she'd have resigned her post and packed her belongings, fleeing Big Brother and his government minions, leaving her past behind and ready to face the future he'd offered her as they made love.
They were each other's drug of choice, after all.