If you like music to go with your fanfic, I'm passing along How Now Meow's very good recommendation: "How," by Regina Spektor. The lyrics go with this chapter almost perfectly. Thanks, HNM! :)

The Last Night of the World

As the sun dipped below the horizon of the sea and the sky outside the porthole windows grew traitorously darker, the man and woman inside 'The Purser's Cabin' were simply lying on their backs next to one another, their sides pressing together from hip to shoulder, with the man's hand curled around the woman's wrist between them.

Sherlock was composing a new, dolce adagio arrangement in his mind, and as he fitted the notes together he unconsciously pressed his fingertips into the skin of Irene's inner forearm as if he were fingering the corresponding strings on his violin. He vaguely registered that she had her head tilted towards him and was silent as if mesmerised, presumably since he occasionally started humming fragments of the melody under his breath in a rumbling baritone. Then suddenly without segue or any forethought, he paused mid-phrase and turned his head to her.

"Dinner?"

His very spontaneous, impulsive question surprised even himself, and he was instantly tempted to act as though he had been proposing the figurative rather than literal meaning of the word, out of reluctance to share either her or their very limited time with the ship's other passengers. And yet, the idea seemed appropriate and fitting somehow, so he let the suggestion hang in the air between them, unmodified.

At once her eyes had widened in surprise and then checked his appraisingly, and when she saw that he was serious she smiled with appreciation, although a shadow soon crossed over her features. Neither of them actually acknowledged it, but he knew that they were both thinking about how for them, in a way this was the last night of the world. It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that 'dinner' seemed so apt. . .

They dressed in silence (Sherlock chafing again at his constricting garments and envious of Irene's relative comfort in her pale grey shift dress), and he felt uncharacteristically edgy. The idea of leaving the privacy of their room, as well as shifting from their established dynamic filled him with anxiety. He felt out of his depth and unprepared, even though they would be necessarily going out as Dr. and Mrs. Sigerson and he could ostensibly throw himself into the other role.

It was ironic, for more reasons than he had confronted a cohort of violent fundamentalists for Irene without pause or a second thought: they had also surmounted romantic hurdles much more daunting and significant than simply having dinner. And yet the word itself held loaded implications between them, and he felt his heart-rate increase slightly for a reason he couldn't quite diagnose.

He tugged on his cuffs as he tried to focus on getting into character to distract from his absurd and quite unwelcome nerves, and when he did so, he was suddenly reminded of something else he'd arranged to have purchased prior to the trip to Pakistan.

He hesitated, but only momentarily, before he spun decisively on his heel and doubled back to his suitcase and dug out a small black box.

Things had been far too tense between them when they were last in public to give her the prop, but since they had a charade to maintain, it was important that they get all the details. Because even the finest details were important—usually critical, in fact—and if he did slip up it would be with some minutiae that he overlooked but that his brother's practically omniscient eye spotted.

She was almost at the door when he called her, clearly enunciating, "Erin."

She turned at once, her brows lifting automatically at the use of her pseudonym while they were still in private, and though he was mildly amused at the response he was able to evoke, he was more focused on the items he pulled from the box.

"Ring," he said simply, though slightly tersely, as he lifted up a white gold band, holding its mate tightly in his own palm.

"Yes, of course," she answered briskly and business-like, understanding at once and taking the item from him. Without any hesitation or fanfare she shoved it onto the third finger of her left hand, but he noticed that her movements were jerkier than usual, and that she avoided eye contact.

He registered her mannerisms, but quickly curtailed a train of thought that burgeoned out of the observation, and they wordlessly slipped from their suite to make their way towards Staircase D. This time they headed up the steps towards the top deck, and Sherlock mused that once again the events of only twenty-four hours previous (when he had fled down to the cargo level) seemed like a lifetime ago. The concept was irrational, but in fact each day since they'd reunited had felt like it had been measured in time according to how much he had learned, grown, and adapted, rather than by standard seconds, minutes, or hours.

When they arrived at the ship's mess hall several minutes later, Sherlock quickly scanned the entire room, and his lip curled with distaste. True, the passengers weren't the type of tedious clientele that one would encounter on a pleasure cruiseliner, but they weren't much of an improvement, and he didn't think that any company would be welcome right now. He was starting to deeply regret his suggestion, but he selected an empty table next to an older Irish couple, nonetheless. They were obviously on a trip to celebrate the woman's retirement from. . . education administration, and they seemed like the least offensive choices in a collection of unappealing options. Still, he continued to feel uneasy and vaguely agitated.

Irene followed Sherlock to the simple, unset wooden table in the corner, and after they sat in silence for a slightly tense moment, she stretched out her arm to press two fingertips against his hand. There was a softness and vulnerability to her face as she gave him a small smile that nearly cracked his deadpan, composed facade, and he could detect a glimmer of something that looked like sadness in her eyes as well.

He thought he understood it, and that perhaps its source accounted for why he felt so edgy himself. Now that they were finally having (literal) dinner together, it felt like a farewell, an act of closure. This would no longer be something unfulfilled or unfinished between the two of them that they could privately view as cause for reunion in the future, and he realised that while dinner did seem appropriate because it was the 'end of the world' (their shared world, at least), the inverse was equally true. The act itself was the closing of a door—the full stop of a sentence.

He answered with a small and humourless smile of his own, but opened his hand to catch her fingers, then stared at their joined hands sitting on the tabletop. The sight of him holding hands with someone in public was surreal to him, and though it did help to corroborate their identities as husband and wife, Sherlock knew that this had nothing to do with perpetuating that deception. As unprecedented and unlikely as it was, it was also truthful.

Later, in a subdued but heavy silence they picked at their preset dinners of hot salt beef with Chantenay carrots and herb dumplings, and though Sherlock could tell by their fellow passengers' sounds of enjoyment that it was apparently palatable, he found himself barely able to taste it himself. His usually ravenous post-case appetite that had appeared that morning was now distinctly absent, and though he halfheartedly pushed his food around the plate, it was only because sitting with his hands resting idly on the tabletop was bound to draw unwanted attention from other diners.

His eyes darted up to meet hers every several seconds, expecting her to initiate some sort of conversation, since she had mostly directed their communication in the past, whether it was in the form of a barrage of texts or, more recently, the way she had confronted him the previous night on the cargo deck. In terms of their conversation she was the more dominant and proficient one (she would lunge and he would parry), and it was something he deeply appreciated in her. She could draw him out and tease him, so that it was a very witty, challenging and stimulating exchange, not just a recitation on his part as he pointed out the obvious and everyone else listened. He did enjoy showing off, yes, but at a certain point the delivery itself tended to become a bit dull and repetitive. (To be fair, it wasn't really that way with John either, but neither was it quite so evocative, nor was it edged with the undercurrent of sexual tension). With Irene he could have true dialogue, but she had always been the instigator.

So tonight he had anticipated that she would make wittily layered, ironic banter as her "Erin Sigerson" persona, and that she'd either make oblique or disguised allusions to what they had experienced using clever metaphor, whilst also weaving in sexual innuendo. Instead, she seemed uncharacteristically listless and serious, and flicking his eyes down to her plate, he saw that she had barely touched her meal, either.

For perhaps only the second or third time in his life, when met with the all-too-familiar scenario of an uneasy interpersonal situation, he felt himself wanting and willing to take personal action to ameliorate it—rather than simply ignoring it or exploiting it to serve his own agenda. Because he did thoroughly relish talking with her, and of the two things he most enjoyed doing with her, that he found most stimulating and exhilarating, this they could do in public. . .

His eyes remained downcast as he wracked his mind trying to think of something that would leaven her grave expression, but he wasn't skilled like her in this way, at least not when vulnerable as himself rather than operating under an alias, which granted him the privilege of distance and emotional apathy.

Now that the sentiment was heartfelt and sincere he faltered, and the prospect of speaking to her as Sigerson was no consolation to him after all. Sigerson's relationship to the woman across the table was far too similar to Sherlock's own, and didn't provide him with any respite. And so rather than being able to seamlessly broach conversation as he might have if he'd felt indifferent towards her, everything he considered sounded appallingly contrived or trite.

For possible insight, he looked to his left to observe the couple beside him from the corner of his eyes, noticing at once that their easy and companionably dynamic was predicated on their very long-term relationship. A small frown dented his brow and tightened his lips as he scanned them in one quick but thorough sweep. (Married for at least forty years, evident from a dozen indicators, ranging from their very worn matching wedding bands to the way his tie was knotted, her eyeglasses, and their teeth [artificial]).

As with his and Irene's relationship, the woman directed the conversation, and so it offered him no guidance into how to approach her now, but that was where the similarities ended. The husband readily agreed with all of his wife's remarks (ranging from the quality of the meat to the loveliness that had been the sunset to the complaint that cargo ships didn't have stabilisers as cruiseliners did, and so it was taking her more time to get over her nausea), with a genial and easygoing patience, seeming content to simply be in her presence, his eyes shining with gentle affection.

A week ago Sherlock would have scoffed derisively, pitying and writing off the man for his small little life, for being so simple as to actually take pleasure from his wife's mundane and tedious running commentary, but now he found himself transfixed. His parents had hardly been paragons of loving commitment (well his father certainly hadn't been, whereas his mother had actually been afflicted with precisely the opposite problem: she'd cared far too much for the man, to her great detriment), and his work rarely exposed him to the healthiest or most successful of relationships, to put it mildly.

And now something he'd have previously dismissed as so banal was suddenly strangely riveting, and he experienced a somewhat familiar flash of envy, although was a slightly different sort of ache than he'd had when he'd wished he could be ordinary so that he could experience romantic attachment as others could. He had dispensed with that particular folly because individually they were anything but, and yet they had still managed to come together and become something even greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Too great, perhaps, because what they shared was intense and incendiary; a once-in-a-lifetime passion which would spark up, blaze, and then flare out, too brilliant and dazzling to be sustainable. It could never be the long, steady low burn of lifelong commitment. . .

He had learned a great number of things in the past few days—his learning curve was so vertical it was practically positively-skewed. One particular epiphany was that just as he knew that there were a variety of sexual intercourse types, he now understood that there were equally as many or more 'phenotypes' of love and sentiment, even just within eros love alone (as opposed to philos or agape love).

And while he would always fiercely guard his experience with one narrow type amongst the large sample (when he'd never thought he'd want, let alone have, even that), he also understood that the vast majority of types were still entirely closed to him, and would always remain so.

He would never have the cozily companionable shared life the couple next to him enjoyed, at least not with Irene. And if not with The Woman, then not in any romantic terms at all, he knew. He could perhaps envision such a future with John in the philos context, which was maybe just as incredible because he'd never had such friendship before, but that would only happen if John didn't find such comfortable long-term romance himself. It's what his flatmate thought he wanted, after all (although Sherlock had his doubts about the actual validity of that).

Sherlock suddenly became aware that he had been staring for too long, and when he cut his eyes back to Irene, she was observing him with a perceptive expression on her face. This time though, her look wasn't a deconstructing one, but was empathetic.

Their eyes remained fixed to one another's, their shared gaze strengthening until it was forged as if in platinum, and he was on the verge of suggesting that they call off this attempt/experiment as a bad job and have a go at the metaphorical version instead. Because while his appetite for food was negligent, he was becoming increasingly consumed with lust as they sat so close to each other, not actually touching but locked in a kind of embrace nonetheless.

Apparently she was of a like mind, because he felt her unshod foot press against his ankle, then boldly drag up the interior of his calf and past his knee. He felt his breathing deepen immediately, and he must have correspondingly flushed, because she gave him a slow, sinful smile, one eyebrow quirked up. It was a very welcome change of expression from the restrained, introspective look she had worn all throughout dinner, and he felt himself immediately responding to it, beginning to warm in places that had grown chill during their tense meal.

He was about to clamp his knees shut to trap her leg before her foot could probe further, and demand they return to the room to finish in private what she had started, when the older woman to Sherlock's left leaned in conspiratorially, invading his personal space.

"Newlyweds, are you?" she asked, and Sherlock realised that both she and her husband were turned towards him and Irene, smiling knowingly and expectantly. The woman apparently took their slightly startled, raised eyebrows as confirmation, because she continued as if in explanation, "You have a glow." She turned to her husband, "Don't they?"

"They do, love, they definitely do," her husband agreed good-naturedly, apparently happy to back her up.

Sherlock was annoyed by the presumptuous interruption and mentally sneered at the term 'glow,' but also privately conceded that she was perhaps somewhat perceptive. He supposed this was the closest approximation to a honeymoon he would ever experience, and she must have based her observation on something.

"So how long is it you've you been married then, pets?" the woman pressed, turning her body to face them fully, as if settling in for a long conversation.

Now he stiffened, her question having resonated far too close to his recent, angst-ridden thoughts for his comfort.

Fortunately Irene was quick to cover for him, and she grabbed his hand again, holding it a little too tightly herself. "Since the day before yesterday," she answered in what sounded like breathy jubilation, but he could tell that she, too, felt strained.

Fortunately neither seemed to be paying attention; both had aaahed at her words.

"And so that's why we haven't seen them until just now," the older woman pointed out teasingly, exchanging a sly look with her husband. "We were just like that at the beginning too, weren't we?"

The man smiled fondly, and then said, "Right you are, love."

Irene ("Erin") beamed convincingly, but he could barely manage a smirk, and he was regretting his choice of seats now. For some reason he felt acutely unsettled, for reasons beyond the disruption. He took a mental step back to pinpoint the source of the feeling, and he realised that it was at least partly that he didn't care for how now he and Irene were holding hands as a way to actively perpetuate the lie. Using that specific act in such a way felt like a trespass, like it cheapened what was real—the small share of genuine sentiment he was able to experience.

He slowly extricated his hand from hers under the guise of reaching for his glass of water, but he saw her eyebrows briefly draw together, although they quickly smoothed again, and he doubted the other couple would have noticed.

As they made their way back to the room just ten minutes later, having made a somewhat graceful escape thanks to Irene's smooth wit, she fitted her arms through his and slowed his half eager, half agitated pace. Her contact was grounding, and he felt some of the tension (that had started to build throughout dinner and then further re-accumulate during their forced social interaction) abate, though not entirely.

"Do you think that that could be us in forty years, darling?" she asked as they approached their door. Her voice was light and playfully sarcastic and he understood that she was still (mostly. . .) in character, although her eyes continued not to match her tone.

To his surprise the question didn't alarm him, not really, even if he took it seriously. Perhaps because it was simply so outlandish in light of their very imminent separation—and because of just who they were, and the type of relationship of which they were capable. And that awareness inspired an altogether different reaction in him: something bittersweet and difficult to define.

He wasn't ready to confront the reality of their parting just yet though, so instead he replied to her in kind, smirking, "As if you could ever get me to agree with everything you said."

He tossed a wry look over his shoulder at her, and when she saw his sardonic expression she answered with another smile of her own, which quickly replaced the flash of something else he had first glimpsed on her face. Something that corresponded with how he felt himself.

He faced forward again to unlock the cabin door and they slid into the unlit room, and when she closed the door the darkness intensified so that only the silver moonlight that filtered through the small window outlined the furniture and each of them. Her hand reached for the lightswitch but then paused and dropped without pressing it, and instead she moved towards him.

"True. . ." she agreed slowly as if thoughtfully. "But then, I wouldn't want you to. How very dull."

The tenuous and rather affected humour on their faces faded into solemn seriousness as the eye contact lengthened and became electrified, just as it had in the mess hall before they had been interrupted.

They would not be interrupted now.

All at once they reached for each other, coming together in a desperate, needful embrace. Top layers were unbuttoned, unzipped, and peeled away roughly without ceremony or care, followed by Sherlock clawing uselessly at Irene's bra clasp, momentarily forgetting the mechanism of its release in his haste and want, and failing once, twice, three times to unfasten it, swearing in increasingly greater agitation each time, before she pulled the material roughly over her head herself, then crashed back into him again.

After an entire day of leisurely, protracted touching, extended teasing, and sensuous, tender exploration of each other's bodies, it seemed that neither of them had patience for any additional foreplay. And after his complicated and rather intense thoughts at dinner, which had been followed by their searing, sustained eye contact, he wanted her now—partially because he needed to burn away the pain of those thoughts and make himself forget (at least for a short while), and partially because he could not bear to be apart from her for another minute, another second, longer.

He needed that intimacy and closeness with her more desperately than he had thus far in their relationship, even more than the previous night when they used their bodies to reiterate everything that they had said to one another, and even more than the night before that: their first time.

That had been a powerful physical impulse, underwritten by the emotions that had brought him to Pakistan, but now the need driving him was almost purely emotional, and just so happened to manifest physically (it was, after all, eros love he felt). But even though the physical was practically incidental, it was acutely compelling nonetheless. The closest approximation to it was the sensation of withdrawal from stimulants: actual bodily discomfort and emotional anxiety combining to make him frantic and single-minded in his need.

And so as soon as he kicked off his own underwear and almost tore her expensive new lingerie in his haste to strip it off of her, he pinned her against the mattress and entered her hard, and at the forceful contact they sharply let out the gusts of air that apparently they'd both been holding. For him, it was also a sigh of profound relief, although this was so much more than the equivalent of a 'hit.'

Still, his desperation was far from assuaged, and without any pause or prelude he immediately established a relentless rhythm above her, as if his present passion could compensate for the future, when they would be deprived of each other.

She grasped his arms tightly as they moved together, her eyes wide and smoldering and piercing his as if she could see the entirety of his being, and was wholly fascinated with and intoxicated by what she saw. He knew she was witnessing him come undone again, naked not just in the literal sense, but also in his open admiration and awe of her. It was a bespoke vulnerability, customised for her alone, and he knew that she was aware of that, and that she found it empowering. He was glad; he wanted to give that part of himself to her, and he eagerly accepted it when she offered him her bare, essential self, knowing that it was equally tailored for him as well.

No one else would ever see them like this, but it was more than enough that they could. They were magnificent.

Growling out a low moan, he yanked her legs forward to pull them tighter around his waist and then reached between their flushed and surging bodies, his roughness matching the fierce intensity that burned within him for her and the bitterness of knowing that this was their last time together. Over the course of the day he had acquired tremendous and in-depth knowledge of her body, and he now knew what she liked. Watching her hungrily, his eyes aflame, he pressed the pad of his thumb against her in a continuous anti-clockwise circuit, prompting her to toss her head back with a long, shaky sigh, and clench her thighs around him.

Yet even while he surrendered to his most primal and base urges, a small but somehow still-cognisant part of his mind was whirring at full speed, looking for a way to defer their parting so it didn't actually have to be their 'last time together.'

I could go with her to Piraeus, at least, he thought desperately, rationalising: It would only add a few additional days to my itinerary. . .

He looked down into her ardent, focused face, and something in his chest twinged excruciatingly at the fact that he was scheduled to leave her in just a few hours.

Too soon, he thought in furious objection, as he roughly palmed first one breast and then the other with his free hand. He had only just come to full terms with his sentiment and he wasn't willing to so readily abandon it. Perhaps their relationship wasn't destined to endure for life or even close to such a stretch, but it certainly hadn't burnt out yet. Quite the opposite: it still blazed white-hot, and he couldn't imagine having the self-discipline or restraint to turn his back on that (on this) so prematurely.

He leaned forward with a guttural groan and pushed his mouth haphazardly into hers, overcome with the need to cover every part of her. . . to possess her completely, and offer himself up for her ownership in return. It wasn't enough to connect with her physically, he was seized by the desire to join with her in every sense: crawl inside her and perceive with her mind, see through her eyes, feel with her skin. . . for them to merge so closely with one another that they became one whole for at least a short time, so that when he did have to leave her, traces of one would continue to remain in the other. It would be a much rawer and more immediate way than her elegantly composed room in his mind palace, and right now, raw and immediate deeply appealed to him.

But. Did he have to go just yet?

John was set to return from (what was it?) some type of family function the night after Sherlock returned, but surely Sherlock could come up with some pretense—fabricate some case in. . .wherever, I'll fill in the details later, he thought feverishly, momentarily pulled back into the physical when Irene planted her heels on the bed and started lifting her hips up to meet his thrusts. The fierce, possessive look on her face told him that in a sense, their hearts and minds had converged; that she was thinking and feeling all the same painful things as he.

It took him several minutes before he could regain enough coherency to continue evaluating the possibility of continuing on with her for longer.

It's not unprecedented, Sherlock justified to himself. After all, he had traveled to Minsk, Belarus the previous year for several days to determine if a case involving an Englishman named Mr. Bewick were worth his while. It transpired that it hadn't been, but he knew that this certainly would be.

He pressed his face into her shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut tightly, inhaling her scent and feeling dizzy from the fragrance, from the pleasure coiling inside him, from the savage intensity of his feelings for her, from his dilemma. . .

"Fuck," he slightly lifted his head to pant harshly against the underside of her jaw, his hair plastering to the side of his face, and she affirmed back, "Yes," sounding breathless and tense herself as he hauled himself up on his palms and locked his elbows on either side of her face.

Arms trembling with effort, he dropped his head forward just as she tilted her chin up to meet his lips, answering his urgency in equal measure.

How was it fair, he castigated bitterly as their mouths met and melded together, to find the one woman who understood him, with whom he could truly be himself, who showed him everything that he'd never known he could be capable of needing, and gave him all of that and more, who made him a better and stronger person, just to so quickly lose her. The one woman who mattered. . .

No, he asserted defiantly, rejecting his indulgent self-pity (a trait he utterly loathed in general, and in himself in particular) in favour of decisive action. He would go to Piraeus. If their circumstances dictated that they could never see one another again, at least they would have more than two full days together. I can manage that, he asserted insistently. It doesn't have to jeopardise the plan in any way.

And then, feeling the calming satisfaction that came with deciding on a specific course of action, he turned the power of his full focus onto her once more.

They had become so entwined in one another that it was as though the boundaries of his body and hers blurred and dissipated, and even as the scope of his focus narrowed, it also deepened, and he felt as though his desperate desire to unite completely with her had been fulfilled. He felt attuned to her in every way: he could read every sensation she was experiencing in the tension of her stomach and the tremble in her limbs, and he could understand every shade of emotion she felt by the look in her eye, the crease in her brow, and the curve of her lips. And he knew that she could do the same.

So even while the reality of their impending separation (whether it was that night or in a week's time) hung over him like the sword of Damocles, he was filled with a sensation of joy at the incredible intimacy of the moment, and it was euphoria unlike anything he had felt before. It wasn't tied to a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction as the elation and glee he derived from his work were; it was far simpler and purer than that. It was a deep validation of his essential self as revealed to Irene, absorbed and filtered by her, and then projected back to him as a very flattering version of himself. It was a man that he could feel proud to be in his entirety.

Sherlock was perfectly aware that he frequently came across as insufferable and arrogant to his colleagues and flatmate, and while much of it was certainly genuine, derived from his unassailable confidence in his intellect, it was also partially a crafted persona. He was a man of great contradiction: one part of him engaged with his surroundings and the world more deeply and thoroughly than anyone else (anywhere, ever) and was excessively self-assured, while the other part of him completely abstained from certain facets of life and experience. Yes, he justified it by asserting that such interactions were distracting and 'bad for brainwork,' and that was undoubtedly true to an extent, but there was more to it than just that.

Everything he had ever witnessed or personally experienced growing up had taught him that sentiment and attachment made one vulnerable, and his own differences only served to cruelly underscore that perception. So during his late adolescence and into early adulthood he had systematically weaned himself off of his desire to connect with others and had limited socialisation to instances when his work called for it (and he could hide behind a created identity, so that it wasn't really he, Sherlock Holmes, speaking the words). He didn't actively enjoy keeping other people at arm's length, but neither did it compromise his work or himself. It was just his lot, and he had accepted that.

Or so he had thought.

Yet in the past few days he had made himself completely vulnerable to Irene Adler, had torn down each one of his carefully constructed and repeatedly reinforced walls to bare the whole of his heart to her. And though he had struggled at every juncture—fighting to uphold each subsequent barrier out of his fear—he was now experiencing the astonishingly worthwhile reward that came after all that hardship.

And in the wake of feeling that, he wasn't sure that he was interested in returning to the way he had lived before—in fortifying himself quite so securely again. He sensed something within him shifting and transforming, and he didn't feel quite as determined to so hermetically seal that part of himself off from the world, even after they were parted. Because perhaps with sentiment, sometimes the pain wasn't from losing, but from growing and gaining. . .

He slowly reemerged from his awed thoughts to the slick slide of skin against skin that was stimulating his every nerve ending, and sought out the anchoring bond of her gaze to pull him firmly back into the highly erotic moment. He lifted his face and held it just over hers, pausing only to gently brush the tips of their noses in a gesture that made his heart swell with a tenderness that mingled potently with their passion, and then looking into her eyes. He noticed that she was watching him with unguarded warmth and something that almost looked like reverence, and he knew instinctively that his flushed expression broadcasted the same emotions to her.

Her mouth bent into a faint smile, and she lightly grazed her fingertips along his collarbone then down his arms, teasing him with the barest whisper of a touch. Shivering even though his flesh was suffused with heat, he whimpered huskily and his eyes fluttered closed. When he wrenched them open again a moment later, her smile had widened and become mischievous, and he ducked forward and thoroughly kissed it from her lips as he tangled his fingers through the waves along her hairline.

The desperate, forceful desire that had previously pounded through his veins had given way to more sensual, tender passion as they had found in each other what he'd so vitally needed, although he could sense another type of urgency building within him, quickening and coarsening his movements.

He noticed the physiological signs of approaching climax in her too, and he felt his expression darken with prurient intent. Being able to coax and manipulate her towards her peak was incredibly erotic to him, since it allowed him to blend his sharp perceptiveness and acumen with his sexuality, and it also perfectly represented the complex balance of their power dynamic. But ultimately he valued this component of their intimacy because he couldn't imagine finishing unless both of them found release; anything less would be contrary to their entire relationship as corresponding counterparts, as equals.

Muttering low and breathlessly into her ear (he had developed quite a taste for understated lewdness in the right moment), he was gratified to see a flush rise up along her chest, shoulders, and cheeks, and her pupils dilate even further. He was confident that she had ever blushed in the course of her work, no matter how extreme the scenario or kink, but a few carefully selected racy words from him seemed to have quite an affect on her. He followed through on his words with the actions he had promised, and she suddenly shuddered against him, her breathing becoming harsh and erratic.

He eyed her almost ferally, taking in the jumping pulse at her throat, the beads of perspiration on her forehead and between her breasts, and the tension in her thighs, and then picked up his pace, canting his hips in such a way that he could reach the part of her that had proven most sensitive, single-minded in his determination.

Her hands flew up to cup the back of his head and she threaded her fingers tightly in his hair and stared up at him with pleasure-glazed eyes and red, parted lips. Then with a breathy moan she pulled his face down to press her mouth and nose into the side of his throat, and though it broke their eye contact, he could still read the progression of her arousal in the body that was pressed against him and all around him, and in the hot, irregular breaths that gusted out against his own febrile skin.

She seemed to hover right at the threshold of rapture for an endless, interminable moment, her fingertips digging increasingly more sharply into the back of his neck. But then she froze and tautened like a bow, and he watched her face with smoldering concentration, deriving almost as much satisfaction from witnessing the pleasure coursing through her as he would when he experienced his own release.

And then suddenly his outer world shrank just as his inner world amplified. The curious but now-familiar sensation that they had fallen sideways into an alternate reality in which no one existed but themselves returned, and the place where they were joined was the centre of that world. And as everything else faded away, his other senses compensated and heightened, and each one seemed to respond with frenzy to the slightest stimulation. The bedding pressing into his palms and knees felt like another caress, the sound of their sighs was practically pornographic, and the scent in the room was an aphrodisiac. He raked narrowed eyes across her body, and the intensity of his attraction to her made his state of unabating arousal almost physically painful.

He let out a low whine of desperation, but it wasn't until tore his eyes away from her breasts and looked into her face, where he found the heat of her impassioned gaze on him, that he felt the pleasure finally break and stream through his body in indescribably glorious, pulsing waves. Their shared look had caught, held, and swelled, and it was the deep emotional and intellectual bond signified by that eye contact that had ultimately pushed him over the edge.

He fought against the compulsion to squeeze his lids together and concentrate on the physical ecstasy pounding inexorably through him, and instead he immersed himself in her expression, etching it into his permanent recall. His wide eyes darted frenetically as he noted everything he could, knowing that it was his very last chance, and in his absorption and stress he brutally caught his lower lip up in between his teeth.

But he couldn't feel any pain, at least not yet. Even as the final aftershocks of pleasure faded away, he remained focused on binding her face and the feeling of this physical bliss together in his memory, so that he would never think of one without also evoking the other, at least in some small part. It would be a consolation when they each retired to their own corners of the world again, returning to their lives of status quo detachment.

No, he didn't presently feel any pain, but he knew that it would come soon enough.

"The wonderful thing about falling in love is you start to see yourself through their eyes. And it brings out the best in you. It's almost as if you're falling in love with yourself." (Playing by Heart, 1998)

Thank you for reading, and comments are sincerely loved!