Perhaps the day would come that Sadji would get exactly what she wanted: the chance to teach Sherlock Holmes something he knew nothing of. That, of course, was a rare opportunity, some might call it an honor, others ‘a curse’ but he knew nothing of the future, despite always being a step ahead and priding himself in that. He only knew of what was happening now, what he could sense, what he could tactilely feel, the feelings he was experiencing internally, physically, intimately and that heady, ultra-clarifying rush between terror, a revelation and imminent and very real danger. But strangely, there was nowhere else he would rather be. There was no urgency or fleeting desire for another location or time to inhabit and that fact also frightened him. Was he so far gone as to accept this woman’s physical advances, her mockery, the nagging feeling that he’d been bested in more ways than he could properly account for so he shouldn’t even try to recover from it? Or was it this woman’s advances that made him feel this way in the first place, that made him throw in the towel?
What was he scared of, the fact she could tear him limb from limb or the fact that she wore her power and her desires on her sleeve, when he kept his desires so deeply repressed, they might’ve well have existed in an alternate reality? The fact that this… non-human reveled in human pleasure far more than he, a mere man, a mortal did? His stubbornness to prove Mycroft wrong when he’d calculated Sherlock was frightened by sex reared its head and he forced himself to stare at her to combat the proof. Somewhere in his heart, that barb had landed to the sticking point particularly hard and for the life of him, he didn’t know why. Examples of his brother simply being an ill-mannered bastard despite all of the grooming he received at the hands of the government were obvious and quite easy to list concisely. However, something about that, of all things, had actually went on to bother him through the case regarding The Woman and apparently since. He’d just never been tested again in such a way until now.
But this wasn’t the same. Irene was a dominatrix, it was about power. This, too, contained elements of power and their wills, their pride circling each other like wolves over a dead stag, but it wasn’t a ploy on Sadji’s part. It wasn’t a gimmick. He’d deduced that this was purely, absolutely her. It no longer had the sportsmanship of a game. It had taken a considerable turn from the light banter the wager had started with.
He knew it. Sherlock knew Sadji was playing with him, toying with him, drawing this out, making him squirm for her own pleasure but it hardly tampered with the efficacy of it. While he detested being anyone’s ‘plaything’ he took a sharp inhale in when he realized that if Sadji wasn’t planning to do away with him here, he’d come back. Sure as the sun rose and the earth turned, he would be back… for some reason.
When she asked him why he commented on what he knew to be true, he stayed mute and simply narrowed his eyes slightly, trying to regain control of his pulse, take the reigns of his racing mind and slow it, accept what he’d seen. Then he felt he’d lost control again. He couldn’t acknowledge this acceptance but couldn’t fight it. Either acknowledgment left him feeling panicky and weak. So he dropped the subject of acceptance and just let it be. Let things be between them right now, her… being what she was and him being who he was. “So what else can you do?” he asked her, his face unchanged but intrigue and even a hint of snark in his tone.
Sherlock remained cool like that until she put her hands on his narrow waist and suddenly, he wasn’t taking deep breaths anymore that filled his diaphragm, he was taking shallower breaths that started and ended in his chest… so she wouldn’t feel him breathing against her. It was almost as if he was trying to match her inhumanity, prove that he too wasn’t altogether human either. But the difference was he still needed to breathe. She hadn’t taken a breath this whole time.