“What if we cannot cure you of this disease that may be imaginary?” Her fingers squeezed on her upper arms.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” He raised an eyebrow, waited. The answer she wanted was impossible, though he held himself back from committing truly awful acts, time might eventually wreck his balancing act. Contemplating that was a worry he would avoid.
He’d worry about the present, though really getting this young woman to obey was nothing like a worry—it was a joy.
Her fingers loosened, lifted from her skin. She gave her arms a last squeeze before placing her hands on her lap.
“Not there.” He indicated her hands with his gaze. “On the table.”
A muffled word from her might have been a profanity but he ignored it. Sherlock stepped away a half pace and scanned her from top to bottom, lingering on the contours that advertised her sex. It was impossible to deny the pull, the effect of this woman on him. His cock hardened, ached, throbbed. All the good things happened. He adored the contrast of her nipples against her skin, the heavy appearance of her breasts, and how the inward curving of her waist would let a man hold her in place while he kissed her.
What would she taste like, at neck, at navel, or if he licked her all over? He suppressed a shudder but sighed.
“Beautiful. Eat this before we go.”
He rummaged in the coat he’d left slung over the chair and retrieved an apple, a flask of water, and a wrapped piece of Wensleydale cheese. Then he handed them to her and waited for her to bite into the fruit. While he fetched her clothes and placed them beside her on the table, she ate—crunching through the apple swiftly while taking small swallows of water.
When she’d finished everything, he held up a finger.
“I’ll get a steamcab to take us past your flat. Your lease will be paid out and terminated, your belongings collected, then we return to my lodgings. Mrs. Hudson won’t take to a female being added to my rooms, so I’ll have to sort that out. But you will be filling me in on every detail of your machine and this strange energy.”
Carefully, she placed the apple core on the table, perching it on one end, and she cleared her throat. “A hotel would be the decent thing to do.”
She still thought him decent? Not today. Not with her.
The tail of something like anger lashed—a caged tiger at the back of his mind… lust, it was a nasty sort of lust. She was of the family of his nemesis. The things Professor Moriarty had done in the past…
“Perhaps, but you’ve forgotten so easily. I make the decisions and the rules. I’m never going to be decent with you. Put your hands on the table again, flat, palms down, and no slouching and staring at me like you want to bite me. Push your chest out.”
Startled, she hesitated but reluctantly obeyed and sat waiting, mouth awry in that nervous gesture he’d seen before. He moved in and stood over her, nudged her thighs apart with his knee then raised the knee to settle it between her thighs at the center of her sex. He pressed there, rhythmically until he heard her gasp.
Her head bowed low, lower. The fingers of hers that he could see had grabbed onto the table, hard.
Then he said quietly, to the top of her head, “I know you’re liking this, Miss Willa. That surely is a bad thing for such a delicate young lady? Is this your clitoris? Freud described it well, and I do believe he attributed it to the female orgasm.”
He pressed harder on the spot where that fabled female nub resided, and put a hand over her closest one, holding her slender fingers to the table, while he slid his other hand behind her to grab the cheek of her bottom and prevent her escaping. “Anatomy is my specialty.”
“You mustn’t—”
The desperation in those choked out words almost made him laugh.
“I disagree.”
Then he leaned in and put his mouth to her hair and kept pressing, releasing and pressing, while he judged the rising tempo of her body—her breathing, the writhing tension in her muscles, and the thump of her wrist pulse.
When she seemed about to reach the ultimate in pleasure, he released her and stepped away, then waited for her to calm and dare to look up at him.
“How very nicely you behaved. You deserve a reward. Miss Moriarty, have you ever pleasured yourself as I pleasured you with my knee?”
Tersely, she shook her head, and he noted how she fought to minimize her inhalations.
“Good.” Sherlock reached out and tilted her face upward with the nudge of his knuckles under her chin. “Because you’re going to do it for me, next. I’ve seen how whores do it and am happy to instruct you.”
Her hushed no was delightfully horrified.
He’d been expecting to find someone harder than this beneath a fake outer shell. Was she really this easily disturbed?
He wasn’t going to tell her the true horror he’d deduced—that this table in this room had possibly been used for murder or torture. The anchor points, the table—these might have been merely for deviant sex, but there was also the blood between the tiles, the missing women, and the one unusual clue—the symbol painted in white, high on the wall, of a distorted star, with a snaky blob and a halo within its outline. That must mean something.
He looked back at Willa.
What a shock to discover that solving the puzzle of this woman was invigorating him more than the most difficult of his cases had ever done.
“Put your hand between your legs.”
8
Humiliation
His instruction mortified her. What he’d already done was awful, but this was surely worse?
“Your hand. Between. Your legs.”
She had an inkling that if she moved any slower, he would do something she would regret more than he would. Yes, the threat of criminal charges hung over her… yet she’d begun to doubt he’d follow through unless she was really… hmmm.
His gaze bored into her. She sucked in a breath and dragged her hand over her thigh.
Wrinkling her forehead, she cocked an eyebrow, hoping for reprieve.
“Now!” he barked.
Her hand jerked. “Shite,” she whispered, resorting to the wide vocabulary of curses picked up from living in an army barracks in several different countries. The hand, which she refused to admit was hers, was between her thighs.
Bad, that was the word she had almost thought before. She’d have to be very bad, very disobedient, before he’d throw her away to that Lestrade. Because she knew the look of an addict, and this man was fairly salivating over the prospect of… doing things to her.
Carnal pleasures. She gulped. Admitting to herself that she felt similarly drawn to this dark, handsome, infuriating enemy of her family, was definitely a sin.
He wanted her to pleasure herself. I may not be pure and innocent, but this is wicked.
Just by being there, even unmoving, the pressure of her hand, squeezed as it was between her thighs, conjured up the ache he’d created with his knee.
Willa shuddered. “What do you want me to do?”
“Stimulate yourself down there, however it is you wish to.”
“But I don’t wish to!”
Not exactly. Why was she doing this again? It was mercenary to be wicked just to get money or favors. All the reasons piled up. Liking it made it worse not better. He’d said he despised her family, if not her. Which somehow turned her on even more. Worse again. His hot gaze made her want him, want his breath and his hands on her. If he would touch her... She did this for gain, and because it felt good, and because he made her, except that was a lie, wasn’t it? She should’ve said no—
“Willa!”
She jumped, squeezed her hand with her thighs and felt that pulse surge, roll through her.
“I shouldn’t,” she said softly.
“You should and you will. Now. Stop thinking, start doing as I say.”
His shadow swept her and, startled, she found his hand covering hers below. He gripped her hair at the nape, saying as he lowered his head and kiss
ed her hair, “Now.”
His fingers pushed between and over hers and made her delve deeper. He turned her hand, palm upward. A mess of wetness made her fingers slide, and she found she’d pressed too far and found her entrance, the tip of her index finger slipped inside and she gasped, “Oh.” And sucked in a breath, held it.
Her finger curved inside her, her walls pressing in. Heat roiled, bloomed, made her nipples harden into aching pebbles.
Sherlock bit down on her neck as he forced her to penetrate herself then slip out that finger, then push it in. The pain from his bite, his hand on her neck, her forbidden actions, and him beside her, inside her, almost… everything merged into a glorious rising storm.
She shuddered, groaned, rocking on her own fingers.
“That’s it,” he murmured, kissing her again and biting higher, going all the way to her ear lobe and sucking there. “Play with yourself. Show me what you look like when you’re in the middle of sex. There, this place too. Your clitoris.”
He directed her lower hand to that swollen nub, the devil’s playground, some called that spot. That secret, hidden part.
He pushed her finger and thumb over it, encouraged her to massage while he shoved his own fingers along her now very slippery slit, and pushed inside.
“Shall I fuck you down here, with fingers and cock, both?”
His questions drove her into whimpering, drove her pleasure higher, and without him telling her to, she opened her legs, straining to be penetrated deeper.
His dirty fingers left her below and slipped over her belly, dipped into and past her navel, then upward to reach and cup her breast. And… and to roll his thumb over and around her nipple.
Lightning would’ve had less effect.
Sobbing a single cry, she stiffened, thrusting her chest forward just as he lowered himself and sucked on the other breast. Willa shuddered and moaned into her first-ever climax with a man watching her.
Under her breath, she confessed, “So… bad. I shouldn’t have.” Her panting underscored how overcome she had been… was.
“Oh, you should. Bravo, Miss Moriarty. Well done.”
“I’ve never…” Telling him more was fraught with a whole new unexplored type of danger.
“Never what?” And with those words, Sherlock drew her hand higher, the hand that was wet with her own juices, and he slipped those very fingers into his mouth then licked and sucked them dry.
Horrified, she let out a squeak. “I won’t say. You cannot make me.”
“Never?” His eyebrows tweaked upward as he returned her hand to her thigh. “Truly?”
“Never,” she said firmly. “Let me dress now, please.” She was still panting—evidence of the climax she wished she could make vanish.
“I doubt that, miss. Very much. Get dressed.” He swept his hand toward her clothes. “I’ll deal with the never later, perhaps in the steamcab.”
Wary of this plain instruction, she slid her bottom off the table, hopped to the floor, then began to assemble her clothes. Everything was there. Even her shoes. Thank god they’d not torn anything when they’d wrestled her down. That thought dragged her back into that terrible moment, and she stopped dead.
She was okay now, mostly. Unhurt.
More than unhurt, for as she dressed, the dying ache and odd sensations between her legs reminded her of what she’d recently done, as did his study of her every move from where he slouched in the chair with his coat on his lap.
She was grateful for the coat, for she’d seen the signs of a man with a large erection before he’d sat. There remained no doubt in her mind that he meant to put that inside her, soon. That he hadn’t already was either a blessing, a regret, or something worse.
She had this emptiness and had been imagining him fucking her ever since he’d made her masturbate. Fuck, and how the Germans loved that word. She knew the use and meaning of it, and of worse, but Frederick had been the most pitiful of lovers and had demanded she simply lie still while he ploughed her. But at least they’d been married. Not this time. Marriage was the ultimate excuse.
Before she pulled up her stockings, Sherlock gave her a handkerchief to clean her sex. His knowing smirk almost made her throw it in his face.
Before this, intercourse had been as interesting as watching a horse do it. Now? Now, she had this Sherlock Holmes and he was making her take pleasure in a way any decent woman would protest.
Admittedly, when Frederick died, she’d fallen into wildness. She’d gone a little crazy and sat in hotels by herself, moping at first, then exulting at the freedom. She’d bought clothes she loved that were too revealing by the standards of less than ten years ago. She’d travelled from Europe to the Arctic before joining her father in Russia, and she had certainly been seen as a woman of a rebellious nature, but she hadn’t stepped over her own line of morality.
Why this? Why had she given in?
Because Sherlock was far too… something? Dominating? Partly that. Just the memory of his voice and his eyes on her while she pushed her fingers inside her sex made excitement shiver through her.
As she tied the last bow on her corset front dress, she wondered if this was how a fallen woman felt on the first day on the job? Probably not.
She felt good and bad, horribly sinful, and lost at sea, all at once. Hating this man should be number one on her list of things to do.
When she took a deep breath and turned around, he rose from the chair, and she had to tilt back her head to keep a proper watch on him.
Funny, but she’d forgotten how tall the man was. Lord. Make that dominating, ruthless, evil, and a whole lot of adjectives that were managing to drive her insane with lust as well as slide a modicum of fear beneath her ribs.
“Very nice. Your legs and bust are duly recorded as being magnificent.”
Well.
“Sir, I am still a lady. Whatever you make me do is not to be counted against me.”
“You lodge a protest?” He smiled. “Noted. Discarded. I plan to see more of you, every part, naked, any time I ask you, even while we work on this machine of yours. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
Fuming as they ascended the stairs and went down the hallway to the front door did nothing except remind her of how powerless she was, unless she wanted to risk jail. He’d blackmailed her into this. She must not forget that.
9
Over His Lap
The steamcab Sherlock hailed had a separate driver’s cabin set higher than the passenger cabin, which suited his purposes just fine. He gave instructions through the mouth tube then sat back and eyed his new partner, Willa Moriarty, who’d sat herself on the opposite seat and opposite side.
Partner, hmmm, in several ways that word fitted.
She’d tucked herself back into the same dress he’d seen on the airship, but then she must have a limited supply of clothes. The red dress ended just below her knees, had a ribboned and buttoned bodice, a white collar, and beneath it her legs were covered in heavy black stockings. The dress did have a cuteness to it and made him want to see what was under the skirt, again.
That need annoyed him.
It wasn’t long since she’d sat before him doing utterly rude things to herself on his orders.
Sherlock rubbed his chin, which was sprouting more hair than he normally allowed.
He had the sudden and tantalizing idea of buying her the clothes he wanted to see on her—which was an idea for the future. He’d never been that sort of beau, in fact had never been a boyfriend at all. Those words, boyfriend and beau, made him grimace.
One by one, he reached for the window blinds and lowered them. “And so, what was this thing you could never tell?”
Willa’s expression turned to stone. “If I were to tell you, it would make it the opposite though, Mr. Holmes.”
“Enough with the defiance, miss. I am not repeating my threats every hour. Decide. Obey or do not obey. If the latter, I’ll tell Desmond up there.” He pointed at the roof to where the driver sat. �
��To take us to Scotland Yard, where they will enjoy extracting a confession from you.”
“Rubbish,” she said. Her feistiness was rising like a dragon on a mound of gold, and here he was with a big handy sword.
“No, not rubbish.” He checked his pocket watch. “For the next few minutes we’ll be going through an area where harlots, whores, and deviant assignations are the usual. Come over here and lie across my lap, now, or I’ll roll up those blinds, strip you again, and let everyone see it happen, and more.”
Her mouth formed a horrified O.
“After what you’ve already done for me, why hesitate at this?”
“Because,” she said quietly, “I’ve had time to think, and I’m dressed, and this is not normal, sir. Because you’re chipping away at my morality.”
“Morality is for average, unimaginative little people.”
“You of all people, say that?”
“You’re delaying the inevitable. Yes, I said it. I’ve never done what everyone wanted me to.” True, very true, but he’d have defended a lady’s honor, if he needed to. “You, however, are going to do what I want you to do.”
He shifted to the middle of the seat then pointed at his lap, watched her look from the windows to him, then shut her eyes, then she slowly slipped to his side of the carriage. Without another word she lowered herself and lay across him.
Victory.
Hauling her a little further was done easily until her rear end was over where he wanted it—where his cock was hardening, of course. “Very well done, miss.” He was sure he sounded like a well-tuned, purring motor. The erotic thrill of manhandling her, making her do this in spite of her protests, it surpassed anything and everything he’d ever done.
He placed his hand over her nape and held her face down over the leather of the seat to his left. With his other hand he gathered the skirt of her red dress above her waist. What a perfect match of rumpled red dress and red hair.
At the sight of her drawers, which weren’t at all French or lacy, he tsked.
Clockwork Stalker: The Dirty Heroes Collection Page 5