A/N: Thanks again to everyone for following, favoriting and most of all reviewing this twisted little tale! For those who are concerned, I promise, I don't write anything that doesn't come out with a happy ending, no matter how dark it gets before the light at the end of the tunnel finally appears. That being said, warnings for drugging and noncon/dubcon in this chapter and violence remembered. Gratitude as always to broomclosetkink for endless cheerleading and to moonmama for invaluable betaing skills and to Adi Who Is Alos Mou for her inspiration. Oh, and of course I own nothing.

Chapter 6: His Terms

A half hour after he'd sent the text, Sherlock heard a discreet knock on the door to his flat, followed immediately by the sound of it opening. Mrs. Hudson walked in, then stepped aside as the new maid – he never bothered with their names unless his devoted housekeeper indicated he needed to know them – followed her in, carrying a pair of dinner trays with covered dishes carefully stacked one on top of the other.

Sherlock eyed them from his seat on the sofa, flicking the ashes from his cigarette into the Limoges saucer he used as an ashtray – a souvenir of sorts from a particularly successful venture a few years back. Combining blackmail with kidnapping was a delicate process, but the heiress in question had turned out to be far more intriguing than any other victim his men had taken, and he'd actually done as promised and set her free once her father paid the ransom.

The new maid reminded him of his former hostage, at least on a physical level; they were both tall, willowy, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with hair a certain shade of chocolate brown that appealed to him aesthetically. However, where the other woman was grace personified, this woman seemed nervous, almost clumsy as she deposited the two trays on the kitchen table, nearly spilling Molly's tea as she did so.

Sherlock frowned at Mrs. Hudson, who quickly ordered the girl – Sally, she called her – back downstairs. "I'll set these up myself," she said, which was preferable anyway. She, at least, Sherlock could trust. He'd literally saved her life when he made her violent brute of a husband "disappear" twenty years ago, when the pair had been servants in his parents' country home.

He'd been fifteen then, precocious and bored and experimenting with everything from seducing the housemaids – ridiculously easy, even then – to seeing how easily he could ruffle his elder brother's seemingly unruffleable feathers (also ridiculously easy once he discovered his brother's taste in women, cigars, and gambling dens). Hudson had been the perfect butler, his wife an impeccable cook, and during one particularly boring summer they'd spent in exile from the city (his attempt to embezzle money from his father's law firm having been deemed "unacceptable behavior") he'd discovered everything there was to discover about Hudson and his wife.

The man was, to put it bluntly, a brute. Only in his skills as a butler did he show any poise or expertise; otherwise he was willfully undereducated, a ruthless philanderer, and regularly beat his wife into a bloody pulp whenever the elder Holmeses weren't around to criticize the effect this had on her usefulness.

Sherlock had lured the man onto a motorboat, taken him down the river to a secluded spot, and stabbed him to death. He had fond memories of that, his first kill, and wished he'd been able to retain the knife as a souvenir. Ah well. He'd carefully wiped away his fingerprints, then wedged the knife between the corpse's belt and trousers before weighting the body with stones and dropping it into a particularly deep section of the river. He'd then gone back up the opposite direction and faked a boating accident that the police still believed had led to the man's disappearance.

Mrs. Hudson, however, had correctly interpreted the self-satisfied smirk on Sherlock's face when he was brought back to the house, wrapped in an orange blanket and escorted by overly solicitous emergency personnel eager to stay in the influential family's good graces by treating their youngest son as if he were made of glass. She'd known then exactly what he had done and had declared her loyalty to him that day, as soon as the immediate fuss died down and the two of them were able to be alone. If she believed it was because Sherlock felt some sort of compassion for her, that was her delusion – and a useful one it had proven over the subsequent decades.

In truth, he'd only done it because he was tired of being dismissed by Hudson as a mere child who had no true power over him. Also because Mrs. Hudson's cooking was truly outstanding, and he was almost as tired of being fed cold tongue and salads on the many, many days she was too incapacitated by her husband's beatings to cook a proper meal.

She didn't care how Sherlock earned his money and power. She didn't care that he was constantly moving household, uprooting her from one London flat to another on a whim – their current stay at Baker Street was the longest he'd asked her to remain in one place due to his unwillingness to remove Molly to another location. She only cared that he'd done her this one mercy, and felt that she owed him her undying loyalty in return.

That, and no doubt because he allowed her a certain amount of autonomy and the power she'd always craved but never been allowed to enjoy, including the authority to hire and dismiss servants at will. The only time he insisted she inform him of her decisions was if the servant in question turned out to be a police plant or informant to a rival crime lord. Not that he had many left, certainly not in England, but still. Any such issues were to be dealt with exclusively by him.

Mrs. Hudson had given him their agreed-upon signal by calling the maid by name in front of him. Something was suspicious about the new girl. Good. He could use a distraction from the mystery of Molly Hooper; he'd agreed to give her this night, and since his current experiments were at a point where he was waiting for results, he would use the rest of the evening to focus on finding out exactly who "Sally" was really working for.

oOo

Molly didn't remember falling asleep after she'd choked down the tea and toast Mrs. Hudson had brought her after her bath.

Sherlock had ordered the meal for her – chamomile tea, which she loathed, dry toast and a bowl of some kind of porridge she could barely stand the sight and smell of although Mrs. Hudson was an excellent cook. An excellent cook, an excellent housekeeper – and about as friendly and comforting as Cinderella's stepmother. So like the other Mrs. Hudson and so unlike her. Just like Sherlock.

Molly had learned during her first week in this strange new world that trying to be friendly to the old bat brought nothing but contempt from her and amusement from Sherlock. She'd finally given up after being told with brutal honesty by Mrs. Hudson herself that she had no desire to "get to know" a woman she considered at best a temporary resident in her employer's life. Thus their relationship, such as it was, remained strictly business-like; she procured things for Molly that Mr. Holmes ordered her to procure, instructed her and corrected her behavior when necessary, and made sure she ate when not dining with Mr. Holmes.

Tonight, Molly was informed, Mr. Holmes was concerned about her health. Which apparently translated to, therefore you'd best choke down as much of this as you can, girly.

The "or else" didn't need to be spelled out.

Molly did her best. When she had drained the cup of the horrid-tasting tea and nibbled the crusts off the two slices of toast and at least made an effort to taste a spoonful or two of the porridge, Mrs. Hudson seemed satisfied, rose to her feet and took the tray and its contents back out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Molly had curled up beneath the covers, staring bleakly at the wall until, at some point, sleep had overtaken her.

She was awake now, however, not because it was morning or because her stomach was upset or for any other simple, normal – safe – reason.

She was awake now because there was someone in the bed with her.

Sherlock.

She stiffened as his arms encircled her, adrenaline flooding her system, bringing her slightly more awake and groggily aware as she felt his lips on the nape of her neck. She was wearing one of the skimpy nightgowns he'd provided for her, but hadn't she still been wearing the warm dressing-gown when she lay down on the bed earlier? When had it been removed, and why couldn't she remember doing it, had Sherlock…

"Relax," Sherlock murmured, his voice lowered to what she now thought of as his mock-seductive register. "I promised you the night."

"But, but you're here," she managed to stammer out in spite of the heaviness of sleep still clogging her tongue…why was she still so tired, why was it so hard to focus? The adrenaline coursing through her system should have cleared her mind better than this. "What do you..."

"Look at the clock," he ordered her, and she turned her eyes obediently toward the small digital alarm on the bedside table. "What time is it?"

"Half midnight," she replied, eyes widening as understanding of his twisted reasoning made its way through her molasses-thick thoughts. "Oh, God," she moaned as his fingers began stroking her arms. "No, please, I meant a full night, not – "

"My house, my rules," he rumbled in reply, once again placing delicate kisses along the back of her neck.

She shivered as she felt her body inexplicably responding to his touch, as even the small amount of mental clarity she'd gained from the effects of the adrenaline began to abate. The clinical part of her mind, the part that frequently stood back from her more emotional self and labeled and processed in the background – her inner Sherlock, as it were – offered up an answer. "The tea," she managed to gasp out when all her lips seemed to want to do was moan in pleasure as one of his hands moved down to cup her left breast. She could feel the slide of his thumb across her nipple, felt it hardening in response to the delicate touch and shivered again as a blaze of heat flashed across her body, beginning in her sex and reaching fiery tendrils down her legs and up her spine, spreading across torso and throat and face.

She felt him chuckle against her. "Yes, Molly, the tea. Very clever. And if necessary it will be the tea the next time I wish to claim your body. But," he added, pulling her close against him, close enough that she could feel the shape of his arousal against her backside, close enough to tangle his legs with hers, "we'll talk about that in the daylight. For now, I have other plans for your mouth."

The drug, as she discovered later, was one part sedative – which was why she didn't remember falling asleep, or notice when Sherlock entered the room and removed the dressing-gown from her body – and one part sexual stimulant. The formula, of course, was of his own creation, and could be strengthened or weakened depending on what level of reaction was wanted from the victim.

In Molly's case, he'd had Mrs. Hudson give her a low enough dose of the sedative to allow her to sleep for six hours – enough to get her to midnight – and just enough of the stimulant to allow her to react to his touch, but not enough to turn her completely mindless with sexual desire.

He could do that as well, she was also informed – and he would do it, with or without her consent, if she continued to withhold herself from him as she'd done upon their return to the flat.

But all that came hours after the rising of the sun. For now, in the darkness of the bedroom, all she knew was that she'd been drugged, that she was fighting her own body's arousal, and that Sherlock was doing his very best to seduce her into giving him the reaction he wanted.

And Sherlock's very best made a habitual overachiever look like the worst layabout ever.

He turned her to face him; she struggled a bit, but it was hard to fight when her own body was urging her to cooperate, and her mind was fading in and out on her the way it did when she'd had a few too many glasses of wine on ladies' night out with her girlfriends back home. His lips touched hers, softly, so softly, his tongue gliding into her mouth (when had she opened it, allowed him entrance?), his teeth nibbling on her bottom lip and pulling moan after moan from her traitorous throat.

His kiss grew deeper, more demanding, and Molly felt a wave of mingled shame and arousal flushing her body, heating the flesh until she was sure she must be glowing and red as a sun in supernova.

Then Sherlock slipped down her body, using hands and tongue, teeth and lips to mark her, to bring her body to quivering life even as her mind continued to drift and fade, in and out, until there was nothing left to her consciousness except the reactions he was so expertly evoking from her.

His tongue on her breasts, circling each nipple in turn, teeth nipping gently before moving downward, fingers and lips caressing the sensitive bottoms of her breasts before sliding to her abdomen. His fingers joining his mouth, ghosting along her flesh, raising goosebumps and moans in their wake.

His hands easing her legs further apart as he settled himself between her thighs. His mouth – oh God! – his mouth pressed against the damp heat of her sex, his tongue and lips working in tandem with his fingers as he licked and probed and rubbed the slick entrance and surrounding flesh, teasing and taunting before finally bringing his tongue to where she needed it to be.

No. Wrong.

With a hoarse cry, Molly managed to scramble away from Sherlock, nearly tumbling onto her face in her haste to leave the bed and his poisonous presence before the unthinkable happened.

Drugs or no drugs, there was no way she could let him give her an orgasm, it was wrong wrong wrong…

Strong hands grasped her around the waist before she could untangle her feet from the sheets, tossed her back onto the bed facedown, grabbed her wrists and hauled them down by her sides.

A knee shoved her legs apart as she felt a panting breath beside her ear. "I told you, Molly, whether you fight or cooperate doesn't matter, as long as you react." Then he bit down on the juncture of her neck and shoulder as he wrestled her arms together until they were trapped between his body and hers, one hand still gripping her wrists as he pressed himself into her, thrusting hard into her moisture-slicked opening.

She cried out, half in rage and half in unwanted pleasure as she found herself once again being driven to an edge she desperately wished to avoid – but the stimulant in her system joined with the almost unbearable friction of his rough movements against her body, the continuing murmur of his velvety baritone in her ear, and suddenly Molly found herself tumbling, falling, flying over the edge and into the abyss, crying out his name as he released his grip on her hands and continued to suck and nip at her neck, marking her, branding her, claiming her as his.

She hated him. If she thought she could get away with it, she would murder him for everything he'd done to her, but he kept a tight grip on her even after his own climax had burst into her and he'd pulled her over onto her side, curling around her, still inside her, not releasing her even so they could clean themselves. His grip remained tight, possessive, even as his breathing evened out and she felt the lean length of him relax into full sleep, felt him finally slip out of her even as the tears slipped from her eyes.

oOo

Sherlock leaned against the bedroom doorjamb, took a drag off his first cigarette of the day, and watched as Molly slept. The sun was about to rise, and he'd awoken relaxed and refreshed the way he always did after a spectacular bout of sex. Two such sessions less than twelve hours apart had left him in a fantastic mood, even if he'd had to force his partner the first time and essentially force her the second time.

Not that such a thing had ever put him off before. Nor was it putting him off now; he felt no regrets for indulging himself so shamelessly, even though he had more than enough other projects – personal and business – to take up the time he was currently occupying with his ongoing fascination with his otherworldly "guest."

No, he was content for the moment to simply stand and smoke and watch this perfectly ordinary woman sleep, to continue to put off his necessary trip to the bathroom for his morning ablutions – and a damn good scrub under the spray.

She could use one too; the room still reeked of sweat and sex mingled now with cigarette smoke, but he made no move to awaken her or open the window. He doubted she'd fallen asleep until well after he had, and idly wondered how much of that time had been spent thinking of ways to kill him.

He went half-hard at the thought; would she ever allow herself to be driven to the point where she might actively, seriously contemplate murdering him? It would be delightful if she did, if only because she would have finally crossed a boundary he knew she'd drawn in her mental landscape. She didn't necessarily consider herself better than him or the other denizens of his world that she'd encountered, yet he could tell she thought of herself as a moral person; certainly moreso than he, at the very least.

His gaze grew abstracted as he weighed the relative merits of attempting to actively corrupt her versus simply observing how far along such a path she might be driven to progress on her own. It was an interesting intellectual exercise, and if he ever grew bored with her, he might consider such an experiment.

Of course there was always the possibility that she was one of those annoyingly pure souls – such as a certain sour-faced detective inspector who continued to act as a thorn in his side – who simply could not be bought or ruined. Who somehow managed to find a way to retain their morality, their sense of ethics, resisting temptation even in light of the harsh realities of the world around them.

If anything, he supposed he should admire Lestrade more since he'd actually been born and raised in this world, whereas Molly's kindler, gentler universe had given her what might be considered an unfair advantage in the arena of moral certitude. She'd no doubt faced fewer challenges – or temptations – than DI Lestrade.

All in all, he found he preferred his contemplation of Molly Hooper, if only on a purely aesthetic level. He certainly felt no compulsion to mark Lestrade's body the way he did Molly's.

In fact, the idea of permanently marking Molly Hooper, identifying her as belonging to him and him alone, held a great deal of appeal in the moment. A tattoo, perhaps, of his monogram? SVH on her hip or thigh, the curve of her breast, somewhere she could never ignore it but for his eyes alone unless he wanted others to see it? Of course, tattoos could always be erased, lasered away, and if she were ever removed from his possession – unlikely as that event was, despite his brother's continued pressure on him to at least allow his own scientists to examine her – he wanted there to be no doubt as to who had claimed her. Who owned her.

She would hate that as much as his sexual claiming of her body. She would fight against it, even with the threat of a beating hanging over her head. There was no question in his mind as to the outcome of such a struggle, but it didn't make the contemplation of the moment any less savory.

As he watched her, the cigarette dangling from his lips, he found himself absently turning the ring bearing his initials around and around on his finger. Mycroft had his own version, a family tradition going back centuries, rings given to each Holmes upon reaching the age of eighteen...if they lived that long. The rings were always purest gold but the jewels surrounding the raised initials in the oval center were the owner's choice. In his case, a circle of blue sapphires that, he thought smugly, exactly matched his eyes when he was angry. If he did force Molly to wear a tattoo, he would certainly make sure it was in that very color.

She stirred and sighed, once again catching his attention. His eyes tracked every move, watching avidly as the sheet twisted around her naked form, revealing the curve of her left breast, the whiteness of her inner thigh.

He had better things to do. He was a busy man, not some moonstruck adolescent fucking his first virgin. He should let her sleep, to recover her strength for the trials of the day ahead; he didn't want her too exhausted, not this early in the game he was playing with her. He would break her spirit eventually, but he wasn't tired of her yet.

He should shower and clean himself and prepare for the no doubt busy day ahead of him, after having taken so much time off yesterday to devote himself to further observation of – and interaction with – his pet project. He should look further into the matter of his newest housemaid, Miss Sally Donaldson, who appeared not to have existed before last week.

He should do a lot of things.

What he did do was stub his cigarette out in the ceramic ashtray resting on the edge of his dresser, shuck off his dressing gown, and climb back into bed with Molly.

He didn't bother with anything so hypocritical as an attempt at seduction, not this time. His half-hard erection had, rather than dying, had sprung into a full hard-on, and he suspected that even if there was another woman available to him, the one currently squirming beneath him, whimpering for him to leave her alone (please, please, Sherlock, stop, don't), would still be the one he would choose to share himself with.

And he still had absolutely no idea why. The very mystery of his reactions and responses to her was enough to ensure his continued interest for a long, long time to come.