"Sherlock wants to rise above us like a snowcapped mountain, but he's actually a volcano, and that's where the story is. You shove Irene Adler in front of him and he just falls apart." -Stephen Moffat
The silence in the flat was broken several hours later when Sherlock announced that he was awake by shouting Irene's name from her room. She ignored him for precisely five minutes before she rose with a tight-lipped smile on her face but butterflied revolting in her stomach, and sauntered down the hall.
He was sitting up with the bedclothes pooling around his waist, and his eyes were bright and calculating. They honed in on her with laser precision and his expression went from one of impatience to dark anticipation in a flash. Every muscle in his bare torso was pulled into a taut line as if he were a drawn bow ready to fire and she were the target.
Only the blend of her native sang-froid and her decade of professional experience kept her from swallowing under the heat and intensity of Sherlock setting his sights on her.
"Five minutes almost to the second. You kept me waiting on purpose." He made a sharp tsking sound but his eyes gleamed like embers as he watched her.
She raised her chin.
"What do you want?"
"I think that should be fairly obvious," he said, his voice low and warmed by a faint purr.
Not for the first time in her interactions with Sherlock Holmes and yet for an unprecedented reason Irene thought to herself Dangerous—and not for the first time she felt an answering thrill race through her veins. This was a conditioned response of her own, though now the source of her excitement was far more carnal than cerebral.
This was a different man than the one she'd had on the sofa, and as much as she had savoured every moment that he had been under her control, this side of Sherlock and the swagger that was both infuriating and endearing had been what had first drawn her to him.
At first it had been because deflating egotistical men of their hot air was one of her life's greatest thrills, and the more arrogant the man the more gratifying his degradation, but then it had been because for the first time in her career she found someone whose conceit wasn't hubris. He really was every bit as special as he projected that he believed, and though he could be immodest he also wasn't quite the insufferable prat that he'd first appeared.
Now, seeing that cockiness present in such a new and intoxicating way made her go almost faint with lust.
She tossed her head, unwilling to give Sherlock the satisfaction of knowing the effect he was having upon her. In their last encounter she'd allowed him satisfaction all too quickly; this time she intended to draw it out – as well as have some for herself.
"You ought to eat something. How many days has it been since—"
"I'm not hungry," he said, but then his mouth drew into a smirk. "Let's have dinner."
She still managed not to lose her veneer of poise but beneath the silk of her peignoir her heart began to pound even harder.
She crossed the room to the bed and there was something distinctly feline and predatory in the way he watched her approach. When she reached the edge of the bed he raised his head to hold her eye, looking both defiant and impossibly tempting.
"You'll need your energy for that," she said, dropping her voice.
"You've already had me wait five minutes—no more delaying tactics."
Her lips twisted into a pleased smirk of her own, and she raised an eyebrow.
"Eager, are we?"
She broke eye contact to rake a look down his body, taking in the flushed skin flecked with perspiration, the barely-controlled heaving motion of his chest, and the raised hairs on his arms, then found his eyes again.
He was ready with some retort, but she silenced him with her index finger, and the firm but yielding feel of his lips sent further pulses of excitement shooting down through her belly.
"Shhh you needn't speak, I've got my answer…" She bent forward to whisper hotly against the shell of his ear, "Body's betraying you."
He twisted his head and she found his eyes an inch away, narrowed and dark as they seared into hers. All thoughts of a literal meal dissipated to vapour under the heat of it, and she suddenly felt as though the room's oxygen supply had been sucked through the vents.
"No," he said, the jaguar purr in his voice intensifying. "I think that this time my mind and my body are in perfect accord."
He slid his hands under her short slip and wrapped them around her bare waist, then pulled her down so that her torso was pressed flushed into his.
For the first time in ages she was struck by the difference in their statures. Their parity in all other things made her forget about it, but now she was hyper aware of how his hands spanned the entire circumference of her waist, the breadth of his toned shoulders that outspanned her by a good few inches, the length of his lean legs as they stretched towards the end bed. Size disparity in bed wasn't new for her; she was petite and she counted fashion models and an Olympic weightlifter amongst her previous lovers, but something about Sherlock's height amplified the new self-assured persona he was adopting tonight – and vice versa.
Something new appeared in his eye, a mixture of dark amusement and arousal, and she knew that he could tell she was considering the shift in power dynamic between them—or at least the appearance of it. She also knew that he could now tell what affect this new demeanour was having on her.
"You like me like this," he said with satisfaction. Irene also discerned a note of wonder that told her he was discovering that he liked him like this too.
"Ever observant."
"I can elaborate," he said, hearing the sarcasm in her voice, but she noticed that he wasn't quite as focused now that she was so close, and that his breathing was growing heavier as well.
She didn't answer him but her silence was all the confirmation he needed, and he bit his lower lip and passed his eyes down over her body, then he put a hand under the curtain of her hair and drew her head down so that his lips were pressed against her cheekbone.
"You never thought you would, yet here you are," he said in a voice little more than a baritone vibration. She could feel his words as well as hear them, and the effect was potent. "Because if you're ceding any control it's only because I'm seizing it, and you find that exciting."
She couldn't help herself from swallowing now, though she managed to maintain the proud tilt of her head.
"Do I?"
"Yes," he said, drawing back to look her in the eye. "Because you credit yourself for this – for me like this. You think you've 'melted the glacier,' and you're rather pleased with yourself. In fact, you consider it one of your greatest victories."
"Oh I'd say that this is a win for both of us," she replied in a husky murmur, and after a pause he gave a low hum of agreement.
She threaded her fingers through his hair and then began to lean towards him, but with a fervour that took her aback he closed the distance first and kissed her mouth open with a hunger that showed exactly where his appetite lay.
She locked her elbows around his shoulders and met his passion with her own, meeting every bold thrust of his tongue with a caress of hers and tilting her head when he deepened the kiss. For a time she remained straddled on his lap as they snogged like teenagers, artlessly and with utter abandon.
It was Sherlock who finally broke their connection when he threw them both to the side and then rose over her, caging her between his arms and legs.
Their eyes met and sparked in mutual challenge - she wouldn't go so far as to say she was ceding control but he was correct that she certainly was exhilarated by this new dynamic. They challenged one another in every other arena, and it was always to their immense satisfaction and their mutual betterment. It had only been a matter of time into his abbreviated learning curve with this beforehe'd feel that he could challenge her here as well, and she shivered in anticipation at how his characteristic confidence – and even moreso his need to show off – would translate between the sheets.
He noticed (of course he did, because despite her teasing he really was ever observant, and there was no time that she was more appreciative of that than now) and the look that had glinted in his eyes took over his entire face. That feral, uninhibited expression lit up her limbic system and a fresh dose of adrenaline coursed through her system, making her forget everything except the sensual luxury of his bare skin on hers and the rioting of every nerve in her body.
He bent down and kissed her again, and she couldn't help the low moan that vocalised the breath she let out in a rush. She felt radiant and alive in a way that she had only ever connected with Sherlock, which no other person had ever evoked in her, and if she couldn't cede all control to him, she could at least give in to that.
Making a sound that rumbled from deep in his chest he dipped his head to her throat, and the last coherent thought she had was, Oh yes, she certainly could.
Three quarters of an hour later they lay side by side, their limbs askew and layered over one another's as their unsteady breathing slowed.
"Is that what you think?" Irene asked when she came back to herself. "That I've 'melted the glacier'?"
She was genuinely curious and wanted to follow-through on what he'd meant, although she couldn't help the slight mockery in her voice at his phrasing.
"I believe I said that that's what you think."
She ignored his non-answer, rolled onto her side, and lifted her head to prop it up on one hand.
"You're wrong, you know."
His opened his mouth as if to speak, but apparently his mind was still too glazed with endorphins to formulate an answer.
"You've never been a glacier, Sherlock. As much as you might try to emulate him you aren't your brother, 'The Iceman'. You're not a river of ice," she said conversationally. "I'd say you're the opposite."
She broke their shared gaze to stroke her hand down the long line of his arm, still hot under her touch from the blood pounding through his veins, and then looked up at him. "If anything, you're magma. You may have developed that cool, hardened outer shell but just beneath that…" She let her arched eyebrow and suggestive smile convey the rest.
He regarded her without expression for a moment, then said, "You see that."
She nodded, but he shook his head, a small dent of frustration appearing between his brows.
"No. I mean…" His brow furrowed even more. "You see that, because it's true with you."
She knew that he was only admitting that because he was in that post-coital golden moment when his filters were down, but it didn't make it any less true. It was another way of putting things he'd said before about her being an exception, but such candidness was rare enough that she hadn't become inured to it, and she felt her heart began to pound for an altogether different reason.
He didn't make such an admission so that he'd hear something back from her, or expect her to answer, but she found that she wanted to.
"You do too," she said, "…see me," and speaking the words made her heart-rate escalate even further. Few things could affect the unflappable Irene – she could give the most outrageous commands and make the most audacious demands – but that simple confession took a different and unfamiliar kind of courage.
"Yes," he said simply. She knew he still considered her the most enigmatic of cyphers, but she hadn't been referring to that side her of and the fact that he understood the essential of her statement verified his 'yes.'
He pulled her against him then and she went, their embrace validating and soothing the terror of vulnerability.