by Eva Chase
“You play violin?”
Sherlock made a noise of agreement and sank into the farther of the two armchairs. “It keeps my mind well-tuned,” he said, with no noticeable awareness of the pun. “I create my own compositions from time to time.”
Of course he did. If I spent more time in his presence, I’d probably discover he baked pastries to rival Hermé, regularly swam the English channel in three hours, and found the time to persuade endangered animals to breed in between all that and his detective-ing.
As I sat in the other chair, he lifted an elegant wooden pipe from a side table and brought it to his lips. I raised my eyebrows at his pensive puff of smoke. “I wasn’t aware the hotel allowed smoking.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “A pipe is a far cry from cigarettes and cigars. It’s a meditation.”
From the earthy scent of the smoke, his meditation was Brazilian in origin. At least it was a reminder that he didn’t feel many rules applied to him.
“And has your meditating taken you anywhere useful?” I asked, kicking my feet up on the edge of the coffee table, legs crossed for modesty in my dress.
“If it had, I’d hardly still be at it,” he said in a sardonic tone. Then he sighed, rubbing his face. The dark brown waves of his hair fell across his high forehead in their usual disarray. “It really is a bitter irony that our efforts are so often hindered rather than helped by the police force employed to solve this city’s crimes.”
“Well, we know they’re not giving us a warrant based on what we’ve got right now,” I said. “So, how else can we make the case against Richter? Hashing it out between the two of us might spark an idea.”
Sherlock’s expression was doubtful, but he lowered his pipe. “There’s no way to determine what was on the photograph that was likely blackmail material. No security cameras covering the area of road it would have shown. I’ve spoken with a few of our victim’s colleagues, and they weren’t aware of him carrying any photos or having any interactions with Richter, although he did make a phone call on the day of the murder that seemed to have him quite agitated. The number couldn’t be traced. The councilor’s behavior is a dead end.”
“The shape of the blow—a forensic artist might be able to reconstruct the weapon from that to prove it’s a match,” I suggested.
Sherlock shook his head. “Only the base, and that base might belong to any number of objects when we can’t bring in the one we believe it is for close examination. The only reason we’d assume that statue was the murder weapon is because of our other investigations, which are technically speculative in the eyes of the law.”
I tapped the arm of the chair as if in thought. “If we could prove that the victim met up with Richter, then— But there wasn’t enough evidence on the body to be sure of the murder site. There must be traces of blood wherever he was killed. It’s almost impossible to fully clean a messy murder like that unless you’ve prepared for it, and Richter obviously acted in the heat of the moment.”
“From your report, you had the dogs go out to try to pick up the victim’s scent,” Sherlock said. “They didn’t discover any possible sites.”
“They didn’t. We could start from tracing Richter’s movements, since we didn’t have him to consider as a factor before…” I bit my lip. “His collection manager didn’t seem to know where he went when he was away from the airfield, though. It sounds like he was on his own. We don’t exactly have a plethora of traffic cams in Freising, but we might get lucky.”
“I’ve already checked that angle. Another dead end. There is also no documentation connecting the two men. I determined that the victim dropped in on Cavalier’s a few years ago while visiting London, but even if he saw Richter then, that’s hardly the basis for a murder charge. There was no outside DNA found on the body. Believe me, I’ve looked at this from every angle a dozen times over.”
I cocked my head at him. “Are you telling me that this brute of a man is smarter than the great Sherlock Holmes?”
“No,” Sherlock said immediately, his ego ruffled. “His wariness simply gets in the way of many of my usual tactics. I would put out feelers about his connection to the victim or the blackmail to try to stir loose a telling response, but given his history, chances are he’ll simply pack up his artifacts and leave, and then the one piece of evidence we do have will be completely out of our reach.”
I made an irritated sound. “It’s so frustrating to have that evidence right there and not be able to take it.”
“Richter requires more subtlety than the average criminal, but the answer will come to me.”
Sherlock said the last statement definitively, as if that were the end of any possible conversation on the subject. Then he settled deeper into his chair, his eyes going distant as he raised his pipe to his lips.
So very helpful. I leaned back in my own chair and found the thick line of my braid pressed uncomfortably against my spine. It wasn’t as if I needed to keep my hair tied up any longer. I tugged off the elastic and ran my fingers through the strands to pull them loose across my shoulders.
When I glanced up again, Sherlock’s gaze had refocused on me. There was something I couldn’t quite pinpoint in his expression, curious but hesitant. I swiped a few stray waves behind my ear. “What?”
“Your relationship with both Garrett and John has become rather intimate in a short time,” he said in that matter-of-fact way of his.
Ah. So he wasn’t completely out of tune with those sorts of signs. I let the corner of my mouth lift in a slanted smile. “Given that we’re all consenting adults, I’m not sure that’s at all your concern.”
Sherlock opened his mouth and paused for just a half a second, so briefly I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been studying his response. There was that hesitance again.
“I only hope you’re taking care to ensure any emotions that arise don’t interfere with our work,” he said.
Was that really all he was thinking about? A niggling suspicion tingled over my skin. I shifted in my chair, slipping my legs off the coffee table in a way that let my skirt ride a couple inches higher above my knees. “We had sex, not a romance,” I said. “There’s no reason for any emotions to get involved except enjoyment in the moment.”
There. He tried to school his expression impassive, but a flicker passed through it anyway. He was curious—curious about what his colleagues had seen in me? About what we’d gotten out of those encounters?
About what he was missing?
A giddy wave tickled through me, washing away any lingering uneasiness after Bog’s tricks in my room. From all available evidence and my own observations, I’d believed that Sherlock Holmes was impervious to this particular temptation. It appeared there was a crack in his ascetic persona after all. A crack I’d opened up.
I’d hooked his mind—I could hook him right through his passions as well if I played this moment right.
It was a risk. Who could say how a man like Sherlock would respond if I outright shattered his sense of himself as a man without lust? But I needed him caught up in me, I needed him engrossed to the point of obsession, now more than ever.
And I also wanted this. I wanted to find out what I could experience with a man whose wits might match mine.
That thought sent another little thrill through me. Maybe I had more in common with John than I’d considered, even if our penchant for risk-taking wasn’t what he’d meant when he’d mentioned kindred spirits.
“From my observations, human beings are rarely able to separate physical intimacy from tender emotions so neatly,” Sherlock said. “And there are simpler ways of gaining bodily satisfaction.”
“I suppose,” I said, staying right where I was, my gaze holding his. “But it is a rather special sort of gratification. How much direct experience do you have on which to base that kind of judgment?”
“I had a few encounters in my college years. They were a lot of effort for little reward. There was nothing about them I’d recommend.�
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I smiled fully, just barely holding my lips back from a smirk. “I think you’ve missed out, then. A good ‘encounter’ can be incredibly stimulating to the mind as well. You’d have to recommend that.”
“If I believed it,” Sherlock said in a skeptical tone, but his eyes hadn’t left mine. I was sure of the avidness I saw there now.
“So we have a difference of opinion,” I said, resting my elbows on the arms of the chair. “What if I could prove it to you?”
Chapter Fourteen
Jemma
Sherlock had been sitting nearly motionless before, but now he went completely still. “How would you expect to ‘prove it’?”
Oh, he knew. I could see that in his face, in the brief bob of his throat.
“I don’t think you’re really so unaffected,” I said, settling more languidly into the plump cushions of my chair. “I bet I could provoke a reaction from you without touching a single place we’d consider overtly sexual. Will you take that wager?”
“A reaction,” Sherlock repeated.
“You’ll be undeniably hard. And if I win that bet, I get to show you how much more you can feel, without restriction.”
A faint smile crossed Sherlock’s lips. He really thought I might not be able to live up to my word. “And if you don’t?”
“I will,” I said. “But for the sake of argument, what would you want? I’ve got a connection to a commissioner in Munich, if you want to take on more international consulting. I could write a report praising your talents.”
“You’ll end whatever you’ve started with John and Garrett beyond the work,” Sherlock said abruptly.
I studied him. Interesting. Did my involvement with them bother him on some level, or did he simply figure that if I couldn’t win this bet with him, I must be wrong about whether I was distracting them?
“Deal,” I said, and stood up. “No time like the present.”
It was rather gratifying simply seeing Sherlock so startled. “Now? I—” He recovered himself quickly. “Do you want me on the bed, then?”
“No,” I said before he could do more than start to get up. “Right there will do. But… in the interests of ensuring we can confirm the results of this experiment, I will need you a little less dressed.”
His eyes narrowed, but he eased out of his housecoat. “That does seem reasonable.”
“Pants too,” I said, gesturing. “The rest can stay on. I’ll work around it.”
He shed his slacks, revealing a pair of striped boxers. As he settled into the chair again, I came around the coffee table.
“Anything else?” he asked, in an impressively even tone.
“You’re perfect,” I said. “Stay exactly where you are.”
I climbed onto the chair, straddling him with my knees on either side of his thighs. Lifting myself up a bit, I was face to face with him as I undid the top buttons on his shirt. This close, the blue of Sherlock’s eyes was even more piercing. The earthy smell of his tobacco mingled with a sharp tang of aftershave. He put on such a cool demeanor, but everywhere our bodies touched, his felt blazing hot.
Fuck the risks. I wanted this man too damn much.
And I knew exactly how to get to him.
“It’s fascinating how many nerve endings an earlobe has,” I murmured, tracing my finger along the shell of his ear. I circled my thumb over the soft flesh at its base and leaned in to nip it between my lips, the smell of him filling my lungs. “Each one of them ready to light up at the right sort of touch.”
Sherlock’s pulse thumped under my palm where my other hand rested just beneath his shoulder, only speeding up a smidge at my attentions. Not so much an ear man, apparently.
I tipped lower, my breasts just shy of brushing his chest, and kissed one side of his neck while I stroked my fingertips along the other. “The neck too. All that vulnerability tied directly to the brain, ready to go on the alert with pleasure just as much as it can with pain.”
“Is this going to be a biology lesson?” Sherlock asked, but he couldn’t mask the roughening of his voice. He was plenty sensitive here.
“I thought you might appreciate the scientific explanation, since you expressed so many doubts,” I said, my voice still low, my breath grazing his throat.
“I’m aware of the basics of the physiological process already.”
“But most lessons sink in better with an active demonstration, don’t you think?” I smiled against his skin and tasted his smoky scent with a flick of my tongue. My fingers glided up to the crook of his jaw and down to his sternum. Sherlock drew in a breath with a slight hitch that set off an ache between my thighs.
“Those tingling nerves are encouraging the blood vessels to dilate all through your mind, urging the blood to flow faster.” I kissed my way down to his collarbone, slow and lingering. Then I reached for his arm.
I caressed and then kissed the underside of his wrist as I unbuttoned the cuff of his sleeve and eased it up his arm. My fingers teased over the lean muscles to the inside of his elbow—and paused.
Most people would have taken the faint pink mottling there for normal skin variation. Would John even have noticed it? It didn’t speak of an intensive habit—I’d seen what that looked like. But the pale impressions were just a little too regular to be natural discoloration.
I stroked my thumb over the area and looked at Sherlock. His eyes gleamed, a flush starting to seep over his cheeks. He hadn’t conceded anything yet, but this moment felt more intimate than any I’d shared with Garrett or John.
He read the question in my eyes. “When the boredom becomes too much between cases, I occasionally take cocaine by injection. I’m extremely careful with my dosing. The energizing and clarifying effect on the mind outweighs any ill effects.”
That great mind of his didn’t know how to deal with stillness, did it? I touched the side of his face with an unfamiliar twinge in my gut.
“All the better that we’re having this… discussion, then,” I said. “You can get just as good a high from the right sex with the right partner without burning out fragments of your beautiful brain.”
How much less interesting would this world be without at least one man like him in it to challenge me?
Before he could argue against my claim, I turned my attention back to his arm. I traced up and down the sensitive skin with a feathered touch. “Those sparking nerves and that rush of blood heighten the senses, so that each new point of contact comes into sharper focus.”
My lips followed my fingers with testing kisses. Sherlock’s pulse fluttered, and his body seemed to sink deeper into the chair with ebbing resistance, but I wasn’t quite satisfied yet.
I slipped my other hand under his shirt, careful to avoid the area of his boxers and his nipples so he couldn’t claim I’d violated the terms of our wager. He might be slender, but compact muscles covered every inch of his frame. He didn’t come by his knowledge of the martial arts just through observation. Maybe someday we’d get to spar in a more literal way.
I fanned my fingers against his taut abs, meeting them with tempting softness, and heard Sherlock swallow. His body shifted almost imperceptibly, as if it’d tried to rise to my touch but he’d held it back.
Very good. Neck and stomach. I could work with that.
I let my voice drop even lower. “The more aroused the body becomes, the more oxytocin floods the brain, relaxing and wiping away stress to clear the mind.”
Drawing a gentle circle on his palm, I raised his hand to suck his thumb into my mouth. A quiver ran through his legs. I caught his gaze as I rolled my tongue around him and then released him.
“But the real high,” I murmured, tipping to kiss his neck again, “comes from the dopamine that’s being triggered too, lighting up all the best spots inside your skull—ones no drug is going to reach. And as all those effects come together and build, the high can carry on and on…”
I stroked his abdomen with both hands, switching to a teasing graze of my fingern
ails and back to feathered caresses as I nibbled along his jaw. Sherlock had barely stirred, but his skin felt twice as hot as it had before. His pulse stuttered against the press of my mouth. I drew every ounce of sensation I could from the side of his neck with lips and tongue and the tips of my teeth. Then I nipped him just above his collarbone.
Sherlock’s hips jerked up, flooding my own body with arousal. I had him, as sure as anything. He went still again under me, but there was no mistaking that response or the growing raggedness he couldn’t smooth from his breath.
I wasn’t in a hurry. I licked the spot where I’d nipped him and sucked on the pulse point above it, just shy of leaving a mark. My hands eased a little higher beneath his shirt. Then I shifted backward to glance down between us. An erection I’d admit was rather impressive tented his striped boxers.
I looked at Sherlock with an arch of my eyebrows. “I trust we can agree on the winner of our bet?”
His cool blue eyes were outright glittering now, sharpened with desire. It sounded as if it took some strain for him to keep his voice steady. “It would be unjust for me to deny it.”
A smile curled my lips. “Then this is mine.”
I slipped my fingers around his erection through the cotton fabric. Sherlock’s eyelids drifted shut. His cock twitched against my palm. Heat and need pooled at my core, but all my focus stayed on his responses. I stroked him from base to head, reveling in the desire that emanated from this one part of his body.
It wasn’t good enough, touching him through a barrier. I dipped my hand beneath the waistband and eased his boxers down until I’d completely freed him. His cock rose rigid, almost parallel with his torso, the tip glistening.
I slicked that liquid over his length and leaned in. My other hand slid up to tease my thumb over one of his nipples, earning me a quiver that told me he was sensitive there too. I brought my mouth to the other side of his neck.