Clockwork Stalker: The Dirty Heroes Collection

by Silverwood, Cari

  “My mother died when I was a baby. My father was born here, like me, but went to Russia to work after his brother got him into trouble. He was teaching the Czar’s army about siege engineering when he died. It was an accident. Or so I was told.” She still wasn’t certain.

  “Go on.” Sherlock stroked her hair, kissed her neck.

  “So I went with him to Russia but married a British officer stationed there. We went to India. He died there.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She knew he wasn’t. It was a platitude, but since he now had both her breasts cradled in his hands she didn’t mind, being too busy assimilating having a man doing that while he talked into her hair, while he squeezed her with his thighs. Besides, Frederick had been a poor husband, and he was years dead.

  Her hand crept downward, slipped between her thighs. There ached more than her breasts and she sighed as her fingers slid and triggered a pleasant frisson.

  “Did I say to touch yourself?” His hands squashed her breasts in what might be a threat.

  Amend that to probably is.

  “No,” Willa squeaked, eyes wide, withdrawing her hand much faster than she’d placed it.

  “Keep going. The machine?”

  “In Russia,” she began again. “…I experimented with some new ideas, what they called miracle electrical devices, and some theories I had. Father helped. We made a machine that measured strange energies and found they were best detected in places where men seemed to have gone mad. We discovered that by accident.” There’d been rapes and abductions by well-placed, well-respected men. “My father died before I could finish the research. There was a priest who seduced and kept captive most of the women in his congregation. People accused him of poisoning the holy water.”

  “My god.”

  For once she’d stunned him, and she tried to turn but he straightened her head.

  “Look forward only, miss. Continue. What you’ve said only strengthens my belief in the effects of this malignant energy. Something is amiss with our century. With Europe. With my London even. I saw a chart about malignant energy measurements on the airship, on your desk.”

  “Yes.” This was not really a surprise. She’d known it was him, but it reminded her that he’d observed her there, asleep. “I used my machine on the airship before the turbulence on landing damaged it. There was a large emanation of ME.”

  “A suspicious coincidence.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Go on.”

  “I travelled Europe after father died, measuring the emanations, from battlefields to murders, to heinous crimes. Most of the time I found nothing. I decided to try an adventure, to seek an encounter with evil. I paid a large sum to be a passenger on a kraken-hunting, icebreaker ship called Troll, and to be allowed to do research and take measurements. They let me board.”

  Willa closed her eyes, remembering the day she’d set out on Troll to the northern seas.

  “We went north to the killing ground, where many ships had been dragged below by the kraken. They had cannon, sharpshooters, steel armored sides, and electric-powered harpoons.”

  A formidable ship, but it had not been enough.

  Those giant tentacular arms, the giant beak, the monstrous cilia thronging its beaked mouth as it erupted from the sea and loomed above the ship, shadowing the sun with its bulk. The tossed black waves and the spray of its phlegm.

  “It dragged thirteen men into the deep to feast on them. There was blood in the boiling sea. Bones and severed limbs spat up on deck before it swam away. It left a gaping hole in the side, corpses, and many injured.”

  The kraken had been magnificent as well as fearsome. They’d barely made it back to port, and she’d been left with a leg injury from where a splinter from the ship had struck her.

  “You went to the Arctic on a ship? To test this machine?” He jabbed a finger at the suitcase where the machine sat, wrapped in a blanket to cushion it.

  “Of course. It seemed the best step to experiment further. I’d tried every—”

  “And Watson says I disconnect from reality when on a case. Jesus. Continue.” Sherlock wrenched her into the present with a nibble on her neck.

  She let her head fall back into his lap, where she’d previously felt a hint of the hardness of an erection prodding through his trousers. Tempting to turn and mouth him but… she did not. Despite the darkness of that memory, being bedded was what she needed. Especially with how hot he’d made her.

  “And nothing happened. My machine functioned, and yet nothing was measured. There was no malignant energy. If it detects evil energies—”

  “Ahh, but it doesn’t do that, quite obviously.” A hushed, joyous tone filled his voice, and she could tell he wasn’t directing words at her anymore. He was thinking of clues.

  Irritated, because this was her memory and he’d left her aching, she twisted and swung onto her knees to face him. Then she laid hands on his trousers to undo his fly, gripping his cock through the cloth as she went to undo that first button.

  “Stop!”

  “What?” Head tilted, she peered up at him, then at his trouser fly, then up again. A little gleeful, that question, and deliberately so. She had a sudden need to bait him… and bite him.

  How the intensity of his stare amplified. It was glorious and scary, though she thought Sherlock would not truly hurt her. He’d told her this himself.

  “Yes. Sir?”

  “You’ve forgotten so quickly?” The magnitude of menace ratchetted upward by a power of ten. “What a little harlot you are.”

  Willa shrank. She withdrew her hands, heart-struck by his words, near to palpitations, and in awe. How? Why? It was partly her, she acknowledged. She wanted this terrible and cruel part of him. Yearned for it.

  “Willa?”

  “Sorry.” She lowered herself to sit with her legs bent double and kneel down.

  “Impertinent, yes? Shameless?”

  She swallowed, hypnotized. “Yes. Both.” And she nodded just to be sure he knew she was sorry.

  Whatever was coming would be good and bad all rolled into one, and she shivered.

  “Did I say to touch me?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Don’t do it again.” He rose to his feet. “What do you say?”

  “No, sir? And sorry.” She’d hurriedly added the apology at the cocking of his eyebrow.

  “Hmmm. To that corner, face it, kneeling, and wait for me with your bottom out.” As she turned to go, to stand, he ground out, “Crawl.”

  Struck again by the tug and push of knowing this was abnormal, weird, and wrong, and yet wanting to obey, she gnawed her thumbnail for a count of two, before deciding she didn’t wish to find out what Sherlock would do to her if truly angry.

  She dropped and began to crawl, but not before she saw him show his teeth as he adjusted his very erect member inside his pants. There was a fire in his eyes, and he watched her rear. Even Frederick had admired that bountiful part of her.

  The man wanted her as much as she did him.

  If cursed, he was bound by it, in thrall to it, as much as it seemed she was to him. That wicked priest, the other men, if Sherlock had the same affliction, where would it lead him?

  It meant he was not in utter control. That was a weakness. Though she couldn’t see how it helped her. He wanted her to cure his problem, and the airship measurements did say something might be wrong with him. She didn’t know what the ME energy really was or how it worked on people.

  If she succeeded in figuring out all of that, what then?

  Would this cruelly fascinating Sherlock go away?

  She crawled to the corner and kneeled up, facing it, waiting.

  Somewhere in this room, a clock ticked loudly. How long had it been?

  “Sir?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes?” He sounded disinterested, as if he was sitting again or staring at a painting.

  “Mrs. Hudson and supper?”

  “Yes. You will wait. Un
til I say not to.”

  Damn him. She didn’t want to be seen like this. What if she simply—

  “Leave, if you wish. You know the consequences. Stay and I may cane you, or spank you, or something else. I think I might like bruises on you. Your choice.”

  Oh she did know the consequences. Although he’d rather removed all doubt of what she would choose to do, there and then. Something about being over his lap and spanked did butterfly, shivery, delicious things to her stomach, and elsewhere. All the nice places, in fact. The female part between her legs, her cunt as he like to call it, it had squeezed out wetness.

  The shame.

  Willa exhaled, slowly, and trembled, because that shame, and the cruelty of making her wait naked in a corner like some naughty miscreant, and him making bruises on her, punishing her… it aroused her, quite definitely.

  Just as Frederick had told her, she was wickedly bad. But then again was bad so terrible?

  Maybe? Was it more normal for men to be like this? This was the decade of rebellious women, the war had unleashed them, and yet doubts assailed her.

  That doubt was what stopped her telling Sherlock what his sternness and threats of discipline were doing to her.

  Plus, many other reasons. What if he changed if she told him? She didn’t want to disturb the equilibrium. He wanted to punish her, so if she wanted the punishment, or enjoyed it… he might find her less appealing? Anything might ensue.

  He might become distant and never touch her again.

  If this was all she ever had, it would be more than she’d had in the past. She had an inkling he’d barely begun to toy with her. At the thought of that promising future, she trembled.

  He was coming. The boot steps drew near. A moment later, he went to one knee and grabbed her leg just below her cunt.

  She actually moaned as an odd mix of pain and pleasure ran into her flesh. More wetness leaked below. She murmured some choice swear words as a dribble of moisture dripped onto her inner thigh.

  “I believe you dripped on my hand, Miss Willa.”

  Oh dear. She choked as his grip tightened to the point of excruciating. Her gasping sped up.

  “You’re not to reach orgasm at what I may do today, miss. You’ve not earned it, and I do believe you liked the last one.”

  She hadn’t? She couldn’t even remember what she’d done wrong because he worked a finger up inside her, then a second and was thrusting them in and out.

  She nearly collapsed.

  “Hold the wall. Hands on it, flat.”

  As he kept working those fingers in and out, her hands slid, but she whimpered and placed them high again.

  “That’s it. Good, Miss Willa. You like this don’t you?”

  She gasped and nodded once, then arched and cried out, far too loudly, as he thrust into her and left them there, high. Mrs. Hudson might hear her. She bit down on her other cries, turned her head and sobbed a low moan into her arm.

  “Good. You may earn a reward, the ultimate one, if you behave.” He withdrew his fingers and she felt the suction as they left her.

  Several times he spanked her ass, then squeezed it, or drew a nail down her skin. Shivering, she stayed put, held back the pleasure, wondering if she’d orgasm if he repeated the thrusting invasion.

  “Turn around.”

  She turned, ashamed of the sweat on her brow and the cool wetness on her thighs where his fingers had swiped. His boots were before her, and she pretended to find them remarkable.

  “Open your mouth and look up.”

  Oh. Dear. She raised her head and found him looking down. They locked eyes.

  “Now you may unbutton me, take out my cock and put your mouth to it.”

  Asking him to put it inside her below instead, or lying on her back and begging, would likely not turn out well. All her aching turned into a compelling throb that threatened to overcome her, but she did as told to—unbuttoned him and took it out, or rather let it free, for he was hard enough that it pushed through the open fly and sprang out to nearly bump her nose.

  Frederick had liked this—being licked and mouthed. Unimpressed by his lovemaking, she’d rarely obliged. Tentatively she pushed her tongue along beneath the length and head of this hard and very pink member before letting the first half an inch into her mouth. She eyed him as she swirled her tongue.

  Unsure what he wanted, she hummed a desperate word or two, only to be answered by a growl.

  He grabbed either side of her head, and thrust himself slowly inside her mouth, pushing over her tongue, filling her, making her choke and bubble until he withdrew.

  The man took charge. Soon she was kneeling up against the corner, her back on the wall, with him confidently using her mouth as a place to enter. Any attempt to slow him was met by a firm no, or a growl, or a show of teeth. Which reminded her of an animal guarding food.

  A thrill ran through his cock where it pressed at her tongue. Sherlock shuddered and stared at her, and she looked at him, mouth occupied, sure she’d produced so much wetness her thighs were drenched. Her cunt was ready to beg him all by itself and Willa squirmed, trying to whimper a query past his dick.

  He withdrew, sucking it from her and stood a second with it waving, glistening before her face, the veins distended, him panting.

  “Turn.” With a hand on her neck, he prompted her. Quickly she turned and stuck her bottom in the air, hands to the floor, finding rug. He smacked her rear, twice, hard. The slaps echoed.

  After years of abstinence, of prim and proper, the shift to this from that was mind rending. She waggled her ass, begging for him to enter her, then a second later remembered her logic.

  Acting as if she were reluctant seemed to spur him on.

  Heaven forbid if she made it too easy and he grew bored. So she sprang partly upright, twisting away though still on her knees, and she tried to escape.

  His response was immediate, wordless, and forceful.

  He wrenched her down again, using a hand clenched in the flesh at her hip and with the other fist winding tighter in her hair.

  Whimpering with pain, and a frightfully wanton need to have him in her, she resumed the previous position on knees and forearms, pressed her head to the floor, only to arch instinctively at the first probe of his cock at cunt.

  It made her shut down, grab handfuls of rug and gasp, when he drove in to the very hilt, to where his balls were squeezed as tight against her skin as he was squeezed inside.

  He shoved into her again and again, her sliding on the rug while he grunted and made animalistic noises as he butted against her. Strange, the sounds men made, only she was doing the same.

  Then suddenly, he stopped while buried fully. Fingers sank into her and stayed there, clawed. Her new whimpers were ignored. His cock twitched but otherwise he did not move.

  11

  Boundless Cruelty

  Sherlock tensed, locking away the thought that’d come to him as he reamed Miss Willa.

  Her feeble attempt to evade him had come to naught but had stirred some monstrous entity buried in his mind—a thing that raised massive fists and cock.

  Thing had spawned ideas. The hammer in the drawer, the string there too.

  The thought of making certain she could not leave when he was about to spurt his come, to fill her. Tie the string about the nipples of those tits, wind it tight, tie it down, nail the ends of the string to the timber.

  It would be a sight to fuck her with her nipples trapped and pulled taut. Drag her back, make her quiver, beg for release.

  He swallowed, shook his head, shook away the temptation, and made words come forth not come, even as he ached. His cock was likely packed with dynamite.

  “You are,” he grated, “so damnable slippery, Miss Willa. As greased as a roast suckling pig. Do I have you spitted and basted?” He bit her, worried at her neck. Shoved himself into her in small jabs, as if he meant to stay there forever. He ground at her. “Beg me.”

  “You cannot stop now!” She squirmed again
st him, curved herself as if to force him into motion.

  “Beg me to end this. Shall I rut you like a stag? Stab you with my weapon? Give me some Shakespeare so I can spear you.”

  “I don’t know Shakespeare. Please?” She panted under him, the walls of her spasming in. Her needs were as desperate as his, her voice hoarse. “Spear me. Leave my lips bruised, my thighs sticky. My—” He began to fuck her again, jarring her hips forward, sending ripples through her ample derrière. Her voice trailed off. “Please. Please…”

  He pistoned into her, machinelike, harder, deeper, smacking in, until she collapsed and cried out, flattened to the floor, splayed. With a grunting rasp of breath and a thrust, he emptied into her. Holding her down still, hand on her back, he gathered himself. He watched her writhe.

  As he pulled from within, the juices of her spilled.

  He sat up and peeled off the condom. “The Iron Oak Hotel will have a room for you and your luggage. Get dressed. The wash basin and a cloth are to the right. We’ll eat then leave. Ten minutes, and Mrs. Hudson will arrive.”

  “Oh.” She turned her head and eyed him through the red spirals of hair draping her eye.

  He knew he was being brusque, but the terrible idea he’d had, it bothered him. He would get her away from his clutches, or at least keep her at the Iron Oak, and he would think on this.

  Now he knew for sure that he suffered a curse or something else that propagated evil in his mind. What might he do to her? He drew his hand down her spine to the small of her back, marveling at her softness.

  What might he do?

  At least now he knew for sure how dirty and wicked this woman was. She seemed to like to taunt him, to pretend she was an innocent, but he had gained her measure. And he did indeed like pulling her back into her rightful place—under him.

  Quite possibly, however, turning her nipples into anchoring points might have spooked her.

  “Ha!” He spanked one cheek. “Up! Miss Willa! We have work to do.”

  She turned over while he was still kneeling there, and the sight of this female doing that was startling. He’d had no true bed partner, ever. Carefully, he took each of her hands and pinned them to either side of her head, then he took a languid minute to study this goddess form.