The Decoy Wife - Part 6
May. 7th, 2017 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darnedchildSummary: Sherlock needs a decoy wife for a case; and Molly is more willing to help than she wants to admit. It might have something to do with his chosen disguise.
Rating: M
A/N - I don't even know.
The Decoy Wife
Part Six
They were five minutes late to the morning session.
Molly tried to slip into the room as unobtrusively as possible. Unfortunately, the instructor had been patiently waiting for them to begin so the other guests had nothing better to do than gossip amongst themselves about the Hoopers. Molly slid into one of the empty seats set up in a half circle facing the front of the room and fervently prayed that the dirt stains on the knees of her jeans weren’t as glaringly obvious as she feared they were.
Sherlock strolled into the room with a smug grin, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He’d barely made any effort to sort out the mussed mess she had made of his hair, merely smoothing it back once or twice with his hands. He took the seat next to Molly and lazily waved his hand at the man leaning against a book and pamphlet laden table at the front of the room, as if to silently tell him to get on with it.
Oddly, the instructor wasn’t either of their hosts, it was the young man who had escorted them back to their guestroom after Simon had discovered them in the staff area the night before. What was his name?
“Now that we’re all here,” he began, arching a brow at Molly and Sherlock. “I’m Robbie, erm, Robert, and this is an introduction to . . . uh-“ He glanced down at a several sheets of paper sitting on the table next to his hip. “Introduction to the love languages.”
Marcy from the bus leaned toward Molly and whispered, “I love this class. It’s so useful. Jonathan’s main language is Acts of Service, but I’m more of a Physical Touch person.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Molly replied as if she had a clue what the other woman was talking about. Marcy beamed.
Robert cleared his throat and launched into the session topic. “So, basically there are these five big ways to tell your partner you love them without actually saying you love them. Well, I mean, you do say it to each other, probably; but sometimes hearing the words doesn’t do it for you. Wait, that’s not-“ He stopped and picked up one of the sheets of paper.
Sherlock stretched his legs out and tapped the toe of his shoe against her ankle to attract her attention. “He’s unfamiliar with the material,” he whispered low enough that no one else overheard him. “Keeps referring to his notes, won’t make eye contact with his audience.”
“So?”
“So, if he doesn’t normally teach this session, who did?” Sherlock looked at her for a long moment, waiting for Molly to catch up to his train of thought.
Her eyes widened. “Oohh, you think it was Anna?”
“I think it’s highly likely.” He crossed his arms and watched Robert stumble his way through the session.
“It’s not all about great big romantic gestures, okay?” Robert through his arms out to emphasize his words. “You have to recognize the little things, and really listen to what they mean. That cup of tea your husband brings you after a long day at work when you just want to sit down and relax. When she orders your favourite take-away for supper without you even having to ask. Back rubs when you’re tired. Drawing you a bath or leaving you an unexpected gift, just because. Little compliments about how much you make her laugh or how nice she looks. Taking a walk together, and holding hands. Letting you decide what to watch on the telly for the night, even when you know they think ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is absolute rubbish.”
A few of the others laughed at that.
Molly found herself really listening to what he was saying. How often had Sherlock shown up at her door with a bag of fish and chips, or she’d found something interesting in one of the donated cadavers and made sure to send him a text to let him know? How many nights had they spent on a sofa, her reading a book and him in his mind palace, just enjoying being in the other’s presence without needing to say a word? What did that mean?
It gave her something to think about.
Robert ended the session by handing out copies of a book on the “Love Languages” and several worksheets that the couples were supposed to work on together.
As they stood up to file out with the others, Sherlock pulled her to the side. “Go on up to our room, I want to talk to Robert for a bit; see if he can tell me anything useful. I’ll meet you before lunch.”
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
They shared a table with two other couples (thankfully not the ones from the hot tub the night before) at lunch, so it wasn’t until they were back up in their rooms changing for the afternoon hike that they finally had a chance to talk about what, if anything, he’d learned from Robert.
“I was right,” Sherlock began as he pulled a jumper over his head.
“Of course you were,” Molly replied. She’d been enjoying watching him change out of his button down into an ugly jumper that would have made John Watson proud. If she didn’t know better, she might have suspected that Sherlock had actually stolen it from John’s closet. “What about?”
“It was Robbie’s first time teaching the material.” He disappeared into the loo to deal with his ruffled hair.
She followed and leaned against the doorframe. “Robbie?”
“He hates being called Robert, but Simon insists.”
Considering she wasn’t particularly fond of Margaret and chose to go by Molly, she couldn’t really quibble. “Did Robbie say why he’d suddenly decided to take up marriage counselling?”
“He was reluctant to discuss any of the behind the scenes workings at Happy Heart at first, especially while we were still in the meeting room. I ended up convincing him that I was dying for a smoke, and since you were trying to get me to quit, I hadn’t brought any with me. You know, the usual clichéd male bonding moment out behind the house, talking about our significant others and their unreasonable demands.”
Molly narrowed her eyes and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Uh huh.”
He gave up on smoothing his hair and turned toward her. “I said it was a cliché. What is more important is that it worked. A bit ago, the woman who normally handled the class quit without notice in the middle of the week. She was there for breakfast, but her room was cleared out by that evening. Robbie didn’t see her leave, but Simon told the rest of the staff she’d received a phone call regarding a family emergency and chose to terminate her contract immediately.”
“I’m assuming there was no phone call?” The more she heard about Simon, the more her initial dislike of the man seemed to be justified.
“None from her family, at any rate.” Sherlock gestured for her to move out of the doorway. “Another employee ran the session last week, but hated it. Robbie admitted he volunteered to take over once he found out it paid an extra fifty a month.”
“Did he say anything about the man Anna had been seeing?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, annoyingly enough.”
Sherlock picked up her jacket and tossed it to her. “Let’s get this hike over with.”
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
Molly was not in the best of shape, by any means; but she did enjoy the occasional stroll through the park during a lunch break, or the walk to the grocer from her house. She suspected several of the other guests barely managed that much. Several times Sherlock and their guide had had to help one of the other wives across a tricky bit of terrain or down a moderately steep hill. Molly suspected at least one of the women was much more interested in feeling Sherlock up than she was in communing with nature with her husband.
She could tell Sherlock was at the end of his patience by the time they trudged back to the Villa. There was almost two hours of “free” time before the next session on communication and honesty. The couples were encouraged to make use of the pool, the billiards table, the games room, or any of the other Villa amenities. Molly suspected she and Sherlock would be spending that time sneaking about the building as if they were staring in an old “Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries” episode.
She was not wrong.
Nearly all the guest rooms on the first floor were occupied, and Sherlock had no interest in investigating the one that wasn’t. He assured her that the likelihood of Anna being hidden away in the single empty room was non-existent. “I can tell you’re concerned, but I assure you she’s not chained up in the wardrobe. Or anywhere else in the building. Now, it’s just a matter of deducing where she’s gone. If I don’t find anything useful by tomorrow, this entire trip will have been for nothing.”
Molly tried not to take that personally. She knew he meant the case and not the changes in their relationship, but it was still so new . . .
He froze at the foot of the stairs that lead up to the attic space. Sherlock turned toward her and reached out to lift her chin so he could look into her eyes. “You know I wasn’t talking about us, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
He looked as if he didn’t quite believe her. “You are also aware that this-“ He gestured back and forth between them. “-would have happened eventually, regardless? Perhaps not as quickly and with such immediate . . . enthusiasm.”
She had to smile at that.
“But it was going to happen, make no mistake. I had already decided that if you didn’t accompany me on this case, I would have asked you to dinner after I returned. Not that I was expecting things to move quite so fast this weekend. I was hoping for a chance to talk about the possibility of us as, well, an us; I wasn’t planning to try to lure you into my bed or anything of the sort.” He rushed through the last bit, as if he were worried she was going to think the worst.
“So, you expect me to believe that bit was just a happy coincidence, then?” Molly asked.
Sherlock’s eyes darted around the small hallway, before coming back to rest on her face. “Yes?”
She grinned. “Fair enough. For future reference, I would be delighted if you wished to attempt to lure me into your bed at any point in the future.”
He leaned down and pressed a hard kiss to her lips. “Good to know. Now, we’ve got an attic to look through before someone realizes we aren’t in our room, shagging like rabbits.”
Sherlock hurried up to the door at the top of the stairs, then bent to do something to the doorknob while Molly kept an eye on the hall. Once he had the door open, he gestured for her to follow as he disappeared into the attic.
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
The last class of the evening would have been a huge waste of time if she’d actually wanted advice on how to improve her marriage, as far as Molly was concerned. After dinner, the men went one direction and the women the other. Molly had the great misfortune to spend an hour and a half listening to Michelle and the other women share tips on “keeping the spark alive”. Most of those tips seemed to consist of buying expensive lingerie with gravity defying architectural wonders built into the bra cups, sexual acts that could potentially end with the sort of injuries one would fib to a doctor about, not feeling guilty about imagining that your spouse is actually your favourite movie star while you’re getting hot and heavy if that’s what it takes to get you to the finish (everyone does it, after all), and spending days at the spa to tighten pours and rejuvenate the skin so that you look as young as you feel.
A spa day did sound nice, she thought, but not a weekly necessity as Michelle seemed to be suggesting.
Eventually they heard the door across the hall open and the murmur of masculine voices that signalled the other session had broken up. Michelle took a few more minutes to wrap up, and then she sent the women off with a husky “Remember what we talked about, and have an interesting night” and a wink.
A wink!
Thankfully, Sherlock was waiting for her as soon as Molly hurried through the door. She took one look at his face and knew his session had been just as crap as hers.
“Useless?” she whispered as they made their way up the stairs to their room.
“Utter garbage,” Sherlock replied. “You?”
“Same.”
He grimaced as he unlocked the door to their room. He raised his hand in a half wave and nodded toward one of the other couples as they walked past; then Sherlock urged Molly into the room and quickly shut the door behind them. “Thank God we only have to sit through one more session tomorrow.”
Molly couldn’t agree more.
She had barely pulled her hair tie loose and began to run her fingers through her hair to detangle it when Sherlock came up behind her. He put his hands on her hips and playfully yanked her back against his chest. She could feel the beginning of an erection nudging against her backside as he left a short trail of tickling kisses down her neck.
She pulled free with a laughing “Sherlock”, and let him back her toward the bed until the it hit the back of her knees. He wrapped his hands around her waist and tossed her onto the mattress, just hard enough to make her bounce. Molly giggled as he crawled onto the bed. When he leaned over to kiss her, she put her hands on his chest and held him at bay. “Don’t you want to sneak out and look for more evidence?”
“I do.” Sherlock assured her. “I need to get into Michelle and Simon’s offices. If Anna left on her own, there should be a forwarding address in her employment file for tax purposes at the very least. But it will be hours before we can do that. In the meantime . . .” He lowered his head to nibble at her throat.
Molly’s laughter morphed into a drawn-out whimper as he grazed his teeth against her skin. “I’ve created a monster!”
“Not created, unleashed.” He lifted his head to look down at her, all puppy dog eyes and pouting lips. “I’ve already set an alarm. We’ve got an hour and forty-five minutes to kill, minimum, before we can even think of getting back to work. Assuming you don’t have an objection to spending that time here, together, alone?”
She pretended to considered it for all of half a second. “Can’t think of a single one.”
Molly shoved with her hands and he obediently rolled onto his back. “Before anything else happens, that jumper really has to go.”
Sherlock looked down at the garish mass of wool he’d been wearing since their afternoon hike. “Fair enough.” He sat up and pulled it over his head, then leaned over the side of the bed to remove his shoes.
Molly kicked off her trainers and stood next to the bed so she could deal with her socks and trousers. She looked up to find him watching her. There was a momentary softness in his expression, then it was replaced with a heat that made her shiver with its intensity.
She hesitated for a few seconds, then closed her eyes and pulled her blouse over her head and tossed it on the floor at her feet, her bra immediately followed. Her eyes remained closed as she stood there, waiting for him to say or do something—anything.
“Oh, Molly. You are a work of art. Beautiful.” There is a reverence in his voice that makes her cautiously look at him. He kept his eyes on hers for several beats of her heart. “Thank you.”
She stood there, frozen in place, as he came around the bed to her side. “Thank you for trusting me not to hurt you again.”
Molly held her breath as he lowered his gaze. He covered her breasts with his large hands, and she couldn’t hold back a rough moan as her nipples hardened against his palms. The sound seemed to inflame him. He lowered his head to hers and kissed her as if his life depended on it. Sherlock dropped his hands to her waist and pulled her hard against his bare chest. She only had his muffled “bed” against her lips as a warning before she found herself flat on her back on the duvet.
Her giggles died on her lips when he slowly and very deliberately reached down to unsnap the fly of his jeans. He kept his eyes on her face as he lowered his zip and pushed the jeans and his pants down his thighs. Molly bit her lower lip at the sight of his cock, already beginning to grow firm and eager.
She started to ease her own knickers down her hips, and Sherlock shook his head. “Don’t. Let me.”
He stepped out of the last of his clothes and gestured for her to scoot toward the centre of the bed. The second her head settled against a pillow, he was leaning over her. Both of his hands pressed into the mattress next to her shoulders; she could see the muscles in his arms flex as he held his weight off of her, allowing only the barest of contact between his chest and the very tips of her breasts.
Slowly—slow enough that Molly’s lungs began to burn as she held her breath in anticipation—Sherlock lowered his head until he could touch his lips to hers. She tried to pull him in closer, but he resisted with a brief shake of his head. He moved down her body, taking his time to kiss and lick and nip.
When he dipped his tongue into her navel, Molly sighed. When he curled his fingers into the sides of her knickers and pulled them down her legs, she shivered. When he nudged her thighs farther apart with his shoulders and looked up at her with a mischievous grin, she gasped. And when he began to flick his tongue against her clit, Molly cried out his name and arched off the bed.
Some small part of her recognized that he was using the things she’d shown him the night before—how and where she preferred to be touched—and that he was experimenting to find toe-curling ways to improve upon them. Good God in heaven, did he know how to experiment.
It didn’t take long for Sherlock to have her on the edge of release. He lifted his head just long enough to urge her over, “You are so beautiful like this. Spread open for me. Writhing on my fingers. Straining against my mouth. I know you’re close, I can feel you trembling. It won’t take much, will it? Let go, Molly. Come for me.”
He lowered his head and sucked her clit, and Molly fell. Her entire body tensed and clenched. She barely registered Sherlock’s murmurs against her inner thigh, “That’s it, Molly. My sweet, beautiful Molly.”
When she came fully back to herself, her hands were buried in his curls and his head was resting on her stomach. Her legs slid off his shoulders to boneless fall at his side.
“Good?” he asked, as if there was any doubt.
“Mmmhmm,” Molly hummed, not quite up to using fully formed words just yet.
She tugged on his shoulders, urging him upwards so she could kiss him. The taste of her was on his lips and tongue, a musky flavour she had no objection to. One at a time, his hands came up to sink into her hair and cup her face, leaving the majority of his weight supported by his elbows on either side of her. Her knees bent so she could cradle him between her legs. The feel of him, skin to skin from breast to groin, was glorious.
His erection was hard and instant; and as she drew his lower lip between her teeth, she felt him start to rock his hips into her mound. Molly knew it was a bad idea, they’d agreed not to have penetrative sex until they could get their hands on a condom, but he felt so bloody good. She shifted to let him settle deeper into the vee of her legs. He groaned into her mouth, not so much rocking as grinding his erection against her.
“Oh God,” Sherlock rasped against her throat. “I can feel how wet you are, how wet I made you.” He continued to move, his cock so temptingly close to her entrance, stimulating her with every roll of his hips.
Somehow, impossibly, she could feel tension beginning to build deep inside once more. Multiple orgasms weren’t a rarity for her, but they were almost never this close together. Then again, she’d never had Sherlock growling filthy things in her ear while he rutted against her.
“Can you come again?” he asked just before he nipped at the sensitive flesh along the side of her throat.
Molly threw back her head with a sharp gasp. “Yeah.” She eased a hand between their bodies and started to rub small circles around her clit, nothing too direct as she was still a little sensitive from earlier.
His movements slowed as he pushed himself up on his hands. She realized he was watching her touch herself, seemingly fascinated. Molly bit her lip as he continued to rock against her, gentler now. Her fingers brushed against his cock as she dipped them lower to find the evidence of her arousal. Rather than returning to her clit, she strained to grasp his erection and wrap her wet fingers around his length.
Sherlock’s arms trembled under the strain of holding himself still above her. When he lifted his head to look at her, his pupils were fully dilated with desire. “I want you, Molly. So much.” His voice was husky and deep, and it seemed to reverberate deep in her core. “Want to be inside you.”
The need to have him was almost overwhelming. She pulled him down to her and pressed an urgent kiss to his lips. “I want that, too. As soon as we get back home, we can stop at the first chemist we see and get-“
“Or we could put each other out of our misery now.” Sherlock slipped his hand under his pillow. She was about to remind him that they had agreed to wait when he held a square foil wrapper up for her to see.
Molly snatched the condom out of his hand and examined the packet. “Where on Earth did you get this?”
His shoulders slumped, and she got the impression that her question wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for. Sherlock dropped to the side and rolled over onto his back. He cleared his throat and failed miserably at trying not to look like a guilty child who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “When I talked to Robby after the morning session. After I bummed a smoke, I also mentioned that I hadn’t really expected the retreat to work out as well as it was and . . .”
Molly turned onto her side to face him. “And what?”
“And that I was kicking myself for not bothering to bring any protection. After witnessing that kiss in the hall last night, he seemed to understand what I was getting at.”
“He just gave you a condom?” She looked at the packet again and double checked the expiration date.
“No.” Sherlock waited until Molly’s full attention was back on him. “Three condoms. And he sold them to me for twenty quid, which seemed a bit like extortion but I wasn’t really in the mood to quibble at that point.”
“Really?” Molly grinned and leaned over Sherlock. “A little desperate, were you?”
“A lot desperate.” Sherlock snaked an arm around her back so that he could cup the back of her head and bury his fingers in her hair. “Still am.”
She let her gaze follow the line of his body down his chest to his groin and the erection that clearly validated his claim. Her hand followed the same path, lightly scratching her nails against his skin. His abs tightened under her teasing touch as he sucked in a harsh breath.
Just as the flat of her palm grazed his cock Sherlock grabbed her wrist and growled a warning, “Condom, Molly.”
She couldn’t help the blush that stained her cheeks as she tore open the foil packet and carefully rolled the condom down his length.
He held out his hands for her to grasp and urged her to straddle him. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”
Molly giggled as she settled over him. “You make it sound like it’s been weeks rather than a day, Sherlock.”
He gripped her hips to help her find her balance, then looked up at her with an expression she couldn’t quite name. “Longer. I’ve wanted this, wanted you, for months.”
She froze above him and he groaned. “Molly. Don’t toy with me, I don’t have the control for it. Not this time.”
How could she resist the desperate plea in his voice? She reached down to hold his cock, then slowly lowered herself onto his length bit by bit. It had been so long since she’d been with a man, and Sherlock was well endowed (something she had speculated on more than once, based on his height and the size of his hands and feet); she found herself grateful that he had taken the time to ensure she was fully aroused.
It was difficult not to move once he was fully seated, the urge to ride him was there; but she knew a moment to let herself adjust was necessary. Sherlock seemed to understand. Other than the dig of his fingertips into the flesh of her hips, he remained still beneath her. After a few seconds, she nodded.
“Now?” he asked, his voice was rough and low.
Molly nodded. “Now.”
“Thank God” was the only warning she had before Sherlock took charge.
She revelled in the gruelling pace he set, the thrust and retreat of his cock, the bruising grip of the hands around her waist. She fell forward and braced one hand on the headboard, the other next to his shoulder. Sherlock’s harsh grunts, Molly’s stream of “Yes, fuck yes!” and other barely coherent praise for man beneath her, and the rhythmic creak of the bed filled the room.
“Come for me, Molly. Whatever you need, take it.”
She groaned at the need in his voice. Molly held on to the headboard with one hand and licked the fingers of the other before reaching down to where they were joined. It took a few seconds to find the perfect counterpoint to their coupling; but once she did, it only took a few circular brushes against her clit for her to climax for the second time that night.
She fought to keep her eyes open so that she could watch Sherlock’s face as his own orgasm overtook him. He threw his head back against the pillow, sweat dampened curls plastered to his forehead, teeth bared as if he were in pain. His hips surged upward one last time, and Molly trembled as an aftershock rippled through her body.
Sherlock ran his hands up her back to grasp her shoulders. He pulled her down to his chest and blindly sought her mouth. The kiss started out wild, all teeth and tongues; then it eased into languid brushes of lips and breaths.
Once their heartrates slowed, Molly carefully rolled to the side and Sherlock got up to dispose of the used condom in the loo. He hesitated in the bathroom doorway on the way back, and she realized he was unsure of how to proceed now that the urgent need to have sex had abated. She smiled and held out her arms.
He slid into the bed next to her and put an arm around her, silently encouraging her to cuddle against his side. She had always suspected that Sherlock would be a cuddler once he trusted someone enough to let them get physically (and emotionally) close.
It took her a moment to work up the courage to ask the question that insisted on circling around her mind now that she wasn’t overwhelmed by hormones. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
To his credit, he didn’t try to play coy and pretend he had no idea what she was talking about. She wanted to know why he hadn’t told her he was interested in her prior to their weekend at Happy Hearts. “Not my area, remember? I was terrified I was going to ruin our friendship if I screwed up.”
“I would think if you were ever going to ruin things between us, it would have happened ages ago. You’re kind of an arse.” She nuzzled her head against his shoulder in reassurance.
“And yet, you . . . like me.” They both knew he almost used a completely different word entirely.
“Yep. I . . . like you.” She deliberately echoed him. “And you?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, yes. I like you, too.” He tightened the arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “A lot. More than I probably should, considering what I do and how often I put the people I care about in danger. But I do, Molly. I like you. More than like. I just-I’m not sure I’m ready to . . .”
She nodded. “I don’t think I am, either. Not quite. And that’s okay. As you said last night, we don’t need declarations of love and marriage proposals right now.”
She felt his chin come to rest on the crown of her head. “Are you sure?”
“Very.”
They held each other for several minutes. Molly had just started to grow drowsy when Sherlock’s fingers began to drift up and down her arm. She lifted her head in time to see his lips form a playful smirk. “We’ve still got an hour before we can sneak downstairs.”
Suddenly her body was wide awake, the earlier drowsiness vanished like smoke in the wind. “What do you have in mind?”
He slid a hand under his pillow and pulled out another foil packet. “It would be a shame to waste that twenty quid.”
இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—
Their second time together was slower, gentler, but no less passionate.
She had expected him to become completely focused on the case once they left their room; and he did, to a certain extent. As they crept through the ground floor, taking care not to be seen, he would occasionally put his hand on the small of her back or reach out to brush his fingers against hers—almost, but not quite holding her hand—as if to reassure himself that she was still there.
Michelle’s office gave up nothing useful. While Molly dug through the file cabinets for anything that interesting, Sherlock logged into Michelle’s computer (Molly didn’t even bother asking how he deduced the password). The address on Anna’s payroll file matched the one her brother had provided for their parents.
Sherlock even pulled up the Retreat’s financial records, which were up-to-date and neatly organized. “Too neatly,” he sneered. “Someone has combed through all this with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything looks perfect on paper, which clearly means it’s fake.”
“Do you think Anna discovered something fishy going on with the money and they got rid of her?” Molly hoped it wasn’t anything as sinister as that.
He considered it for a moment. “Possible, but not probable.” He shut the computer down and gestured for her to finish up. “Let’s see what Simon’s hiding.”
Simon’s office was slightly more interesting. His file cabinets were full of promotional materials, including several different versions of the Happy Hearts brochure that Sherlock had shown her the day he’d first asked her to pretend to be an accountant’s wife. One of them had a front-page blurb about a famous award winning author/marriage counsellor leading some of the sessions. Another had photos of the Villa that looked . . . off. They had clearly been retouched to make the building look less aged and lived in. The captions touted “recently renovated” and “newly updated features”.
She was about to call Sherlock over to look at them but he was intently involved in whatever he’d found on Simon’s computer. Molly grabbed one of each of the brochures and stuffed them into her pocket.
“What is it?”
Sherlock didn’t even glance up from the laptop screen. “Our Simon has been a naughty boy. Or should I say Michelle and Simon have both been naughty.” He turned the laptop so that she could see what he’d been looking at.
It appeared to be an accounting program, but it was far more complicated than the one she used to keep track of her bank balance. “What have they done?”
“This one has the same figures as the one on Michelle’s computer.” He minimized it and pointed to another one. “This one shows numerous withdrawals and balance transfers that don’t appear on the first. Extravagant dinners. Lease payments for that sports car outside. Funds that had been allocated for building updates in Michelle’s accounts have been diverted to cover a second mortgage payment. According to the second account, they’re barely staying in the black thanks to an influx of income from an investment firm.” He frowned and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “None of that, however, tells me what happened to Anna.”
They finished searching Simon’s office without finding anything else of note. Molly remembered from their walk that morning that the curtains had been tightly drawn in the room next to the office. “It can’t hurt to look in there. I mean, we’ve tried everywhere else.”
Two minutes later, Sherlock had picked the lock and they were standing in a large storage room.
The area closest to the door was a jumble of poorly stacked boxes labelled “Tax Forms” and “Payroll”. The farther back they went, the neater the stacks became as if someone had taken the time to put them away with care rather than just tossed them in the first available spot. The two windows were blocked by boxes and covered with thick curtains that looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The light from the sputtering florescent bulb barely touched the deep shadows along the walls, the ones that hid who knew what kind of vermin or spiders behind the rows of boxes.
Sherlock knelt to examine a spot on the floor. To her it looked exactly like every other bit of the floor; but he must have found something interesting because his sharp gaze flew up to the stack of boxes before him and he smirked.
“Someone has been back her fairly recently, and they’ve gone to a bit of effort to hide something. You can see where they’ve moved these boxes out of the way, then shoved them back.”
She couldn’t see anything of the sort, but he was on a roll and she wasn’t about to interrupt him while he was deducing.
He pulled at the boxes until he was able to squeeze past them. Sherlock emerged seconds later with a very large duffel in his hands and a triumphant grin on his face. They both dropped to their knees beside the bag as he unzipped it.
Inside were clothes—a lot of clothes—all wadded up and shoved into the bag without a care for creases or wrinkles. He handed her a small makeup bag as he continued to dig through the rest of the contents of the duffel.
“Nothing unusual here.” Molly held the items up as she named them. “Foundation, coverup, moisturizer, neutral lipstick, birth control-“
Sherlock snatched the packet of pills out of her hand and examined it. “Why would she voluntarily leave her birth control behind? Obvious answer would be that she didn’t. So who packed and hid the bag?”
“You think this is Anna’s stuff, then?”
“Yes.” He dropped the pills and the makeup bag into the duffel, then yanked the zipper closed. “Come on. I need to think.”
Luck was on their side as they made it up to their room without being spotted with the duffel in tow.
Sherlock dumped the large bag onto to the chairs near the fireplace, then returned to her. “Go ahead and go to bed, Molly. I’m going to be up for a while yet.”
As much as she wanted to stay up and try to help, she knew that not distracting Sherlock while he was working was probably the best thing she could do for Anna at the moment.
She tilted her face up to him, hoping for a brief kiss goodnight; but he had another idea entirely. Sherlock pulled her close and gave her a long, tender kiss that left her breathless before he settled into the empty chair and lost himself in his mind palace.
Molly remembered the brochure’s she’d pilfered from Simon’s office while she was changing for bed. She left them on the table near Sherlock’s chair, then turned off all but one of the lights and crawled into bed.
Sometime later, the bed dipped as Sherlock slid under the sheets behind her. She opened her eyes to a dark room and rolled toward his warmth. “Did you figure it out?” she sleepily asked.
He pulled her against his chest and pressed a quick kiss to her hair. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Part 1 / Part 7
Rating: M
A/N - I don't even know.
The Decoy Wife
Part Six
They were five minutes late to the morning session.
Molly tried to slip into the room as unobtrusively as possible. Unfortunately, the instructor had been patiently waiting for them to begin so the other guests had nothing better to do than gossip amongst themselves about the Hoopers. Molly slid into one of the empty seats set up in a half circle facing the front of the room and fervently prayed that the dirt stains on the knees of her jeans weren’t as glaringly obvious as she feared they were.
Sherlock strolled into the room with a smug grin, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He’d barely made any effort to sort out the mussed mess she had made of his hair, merely smoothing it back once or twice with his hands. He took the seat next to Molly and lazily waved his hand at the man leaning against a book and pamphlet laden table at the front of the room, as if to silently tell him to get on with it.
Oddly, the instructor wasn’t either of their hosts, it was the young man who had escorted them back to their guestroom after Simon had discovered them in the staff area the night before. What was his name?
“Now that we’re all here,” he began, arching a brow at Molly and Sherlock. “I’m Robbie, erm, Robert, and this is an introduction to . . . uh-“ He glanced down at a several sheets of paper sitting on the table next to his hip. “Introduction to the love languages.”
Marcy from the bus leaned toward Molly and whispered, “I love this class. It’s so useful. Jonathan’s main language is Acts of Service, but I’m more of a Physical Touch person.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Molly replied as if she had a clue what the other woman was talking about. Marcy beamed.
Robert cleared his throat and launched into the session topic. “So, basically there are these five big ways to tell your partner you love them without actually saying you love them. Well, I mean, you do say it to each other, probably; but sometimes hearing the words doesn’t do it for you. Wait, that’s not-“ He stopped and picked up one of the sheets of paper.
Sherlock stretched his legs out and tapped the toe of his shoe against her ankle to attract her attention. “He’s unfamiliar with the material,” he whispered low enough that no one else overheard him. “Keeps referring to his notes, won’t make eye contact with his audience.”
“So?”
“So, if he doesn’t normally teach this session, who did?” Sherlock looked at her for a long moment, waiting for Molly to catch up to his train of thought.
Her eyes widened. “Oohh, you think it was Anna?”
“I think it’s highly likely.” He crossed his arms and watched Robert stumble his way through the session.
“It’s not all about great big romantic gestures, okay?” Robert through his arms out to emphasize his words. “You have to recognize the little things, and really listen to what they mean. That cup of tea your husband brings you after a long day at work when you just want to sit down and relax. When she orders your favourite take-away for supper without you even having to ask. Back rubs when you’re tired. Drawing you a bath or leaving you an unexpected gift, just because. Little compliments about how much you make her laugh or how nice she looks. Taking a walk together, and holding hands. Letting you decide what to watch on the telly for the night, even when you know they think ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is absolute rubbish.”
A few of the others laughed at that.
Molly found herself really listening to what he was saying. How often had Sherlock shown up at her door with a bag of fish and chips, or she’d found something interesting in one of the donated cadavers and made sure to send him a text to let him know? How many nights had they spent on a sofa, her reading a book and him in his mind palace, just enjoying being in the other’s presence without needing to say a word? What did that mean?
It gave her something to think about.
Robert ended the session by handing out copies of a book on the “Love Languages” and several worksheets that the couples were supposed to work on together.
As they stood up to file out with the others, Sherlock pulled her to the side. “Go on up to our room, I want to talk to Robert for a bit; see if he can tell me anything useful. I’ll meet you before lunch.”
They shared a table with two other couples (thankfully not the ones from the hot tub the night before) at lunch, so it wasn’t until they were back up in their rooms changing for the afternoon hike that they finally had a chance to talk about what, if anything, he’d learned from Robert.
“I was right,” Sherlock began as he pulled a jumper over his head.
“Of course you were,” Molly replied. She’d been enjoying watching him change out of his button down into an ugly jumper that would have made John Watson proud. If she didn’t know better, she might have suspected that Sherlock had actually stolen it from John’s closet. “What about?”
“It was Robbie’s first time teaching the material.” He disappeared into the loo to deal with his ruffled hair.
She followed and leaned against the doorframe. “Robbie?”
“He hates being called Robert, but Simon insists.”
Considering she wasn’t particularly fond of Margaret and chose to go by Molly, she couldn’t really quibble. “Did Robbie say why he’d suddenly decided to take up marriage counselling?”
“He was reluctant to discuss any of the behind the scenes workings at Happy Heart at first, especially while we were still in the meeting room. I ended up convincing him that I was dying for a smoke, and since you were trying to get me to quit, I hadn’t brought any with me. You know, the usual clichéd male bonding moment out behind the house, talking about our significant others and their unreasonable demands.”
Molly narrowed her eyes and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Uh huh.”
He gave up on smoothing his hair and turned toward her. “I said it was a cliché. What is more important is that it worked. A bit ago, the woman who normally handled the class quit without notice in the middle of the week. She was there for breakfast, but her room was cleared out by that evening. Robbie didn’t see her leave, but Simon told the rest of the staff she’d received a phone call regarding a family emergency and chose to terminate her contract immediately.”
“I’m assuming there was no phone call?” The more she heard about Simon, the more her initial dislike of the man seemed to be justified.
“None from her family, at any rate.” Sherlock gestured for her to move out of the doorway. “Another employee ran the session last week, but hated it. Robbie admitted he volunteered to take over once he found out it paid an extra fifty a month.”
“Did he say anything about the man Anna had been seeing?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, annoyingly enough.”
Sherlock picked up her jacket and tossed it to her. “Let’s get this hike over with.”
Molly was not in the best of shape, by any means; but she did enjoy the occasional stroll through the park during a lunch break, or the walk to the grocer from her house. She suspected several of the other guests barely managed that much. Several times Sherlock and their guide had had to help one of the other wives across a tricky bit of terrain or down a moderately steep hill. Molly suspected at least one of the women was much more interested in feeling Sherlock up than she was in communing with nature with her husband.
She could tell Sherlock was at the end of his patience by the time they trudged back to the Villa. There was almost two hours of “free” time before the next session on communication and honesty. The couples were encouraged to make use of the pool, the billiards table, the games room, or any of the other Villa amenities. Molly suspected she and Sherlock would be spending that time sneaking about the building as if they were staring in an old “Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries” episode.
She was not wrong.
Nearly all the guest rooms on the first floor were occupied, and Sherlock had no interest in investigating the one that wasn’t. He assured her that the likelihood of Anna being hidden away in the single empty room was non-existent. “I can tell you’re concerned, but I assure you she’s not chained up in the wardrobe. Or anywhere else in the building. Now, it’s just a matter of deducing where she’s gone. If I don’t find anything useful by tomorrow, this entire trip will have been for nothing.”
Molly tried not to take that personally. She knew he meant the case and not the changes in their relationship, but it was still so new . . .
He froze at the foot of the stairs that lead up to the attic space. Sherlock turned toward her and reached out to lift her chin so he could look into her eyes. “You know I wasn’t talking about us, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
He looked as if he didn’t quite believe her. “You are also aware that this-“ He gestured back and forth between them. “-would have happened eventually, regardless? Perhaps not as quickly and with such immediate . . . enthusiasm.”
She had to smile at that.
“But it was going to happen, make no mistake. I had already decided that if you didn’t accompany me on this case, I would have asked you to dinner after I returned. Not that I was expecting things to move quite so fast this weekend. I was hoping for a chance to talk about the possibility of us as, well, an us; I wasn’t planning to try to lure you into my bed or anything of the sort.” He rushed through the last bit, as if he were worried she was going to think the worst.
“So, you expect me to believe that bit was just a happy coincidence, then?” Molly asked.
Sherlock’s eyes darted around the small hallway, before coming back to rest on her face. “Yes?”
She grinned. “Fair enough. For future reference, I would be delighted if you wished to attempt to lure me into your bed at any point in the future.”
He leaned down and pressed a hard kiss to her lips. “Good to know. Now, we’ve got an attic to look through before someone realizes we aren’t in our room, shagging like rabbits.”
Sherlock hurried up to the door at the top of the stairs, then bent to do something to the doorknob while Molly kept an eye on the hall. Once he had the door open, he gestured for her to follow as he disappeared into the attic.
The last class of the evening would have been a huge waste of time if she’d actually wanted advice on how to improve her marriage, as far as Molly was concerned. After dinner, the men went one direction and the women the other. Molly had the great misfortune to spend an hour and a half listening to Michelle and the other women share tips on “keeping the spark alive”. Most of those tips seemed to consist of buying expensive lingerie with gravity defying architectural wonders built into the bra cups, sexual acts that could potentially end with the sort of injuries one would fib to a doctor about, not feeling guilty about imagining that your spouse is actually your favourite movie star while you’re getting hot and heavy if that’s what it takes to get you to the finish (everyone does it, after all), and spending days at the spa to tighten pours and rejuvenate the skin so that you look as young as you feel.
A spa day did sound nice, she thought, but not a weekly necessity as Michelle seemed to be suggesting.
Eventually they heard the door across the hall open and the murmur of masculine voices that signalled the other session had broken up. Michelle took a few more minutes to wrap up, and then she sent the women off with a husky “Remember what we talked about, and have an interesting night” and a wink.
A wink!
Thankfully, Sherlock was waiting for her as soon as Molly hurried through the door. She took one look at his face and knew his session had been just as crap as hers.
“Useless?” she whispered as they made their way up the stairs to their room.
“Utter garbage,” Sherlock replied. “You?”
“Same.”
He grimaced as he unlocked the door to their room. He raised his hand in a half wave and nodded toward one of the other couples as they walked past; then Sherlock urged Molly into the room and quickly shut the door behind them. “Thank God we only have to sit through one more session tomorrow.”
Molly couldn’t agree more.
She had barely pulled her hair tie loose and began to run her fingers through her hair to detangle it when Sherlock came up behind her. He put his hands on her hips and playfully yanked her back against his chest. She could feel the beginning of an erection nudging against her backside as he left a short trail of tickling kisses down her neck.
She pulled free with a laughing “Sherlock”, and let him back her toward the bed until the it hit the back of her knees. He wrapped his hands around her waist and tossed her onto the mattress, just hard enough to make her bounce. Molly giggled as he crawled onto the bed. When he leaned over to kiss her, she put her hands on his chest and held him at bay. “Don’t you want to sneak out and look for more evidence?”
“I do.” Sherlock assured her. “I need to get into Michelle and Simon’s offices. If Anna left on her own, there should be a forwarding address in her employment file for tax purposes at the very least. But it will be hours before we can do that. In the meantime . . .” He lowered his head to nibble at her throat.
Molly’s laughter morphed into a drawn-out whimper as he grazed his teeth against her skin. “I’ve created a monster!”
“Not created, unleashed.” He lifted his head to look down at her, all puppy dog eyes and pouting lips. “I’ve already set an alarm. We’ve got an hour and forty-five minutes to kill, minimum, before we can even think of getting back to work. Assuming you don’t have an objection to spending that time here, together, alone?”
She pretended to considered it for all of half a second. “Can’t think of a single one.”
Molly shoved with her hands and he obediently rolled onto his back. “Before anything else happens, that jumper really has to go.”
Sherlock looked down at the garish mass of wool he’d been wearing since their afternoon hike. “Fair enough.” He sat up and pulled it over his head, then leaned over the side of the bed to remove his shoes.
Molly kicked off her trainers and stood next to the bed so she could deal with her socks and trousers. She looked up to find him watching her. There was a momentary softness in his expression, then it was replaced with a heat that made her shiver with its intensity.
She hesitated for a few seconds, then closed her eyes and pulled her blouse over her head and tossed it on the floor at her feet, her bra immediately followed. Her eyes remained closed as she stood there, waiting for him to say or do something—anything.
“Oh, Molly. You are a work of art. Beautiful.” There is a reverence in his voice that makes her cautiously look at him. He kept his eyes on hers for several beats of her heart. “Thank you.”
She stood there, frozen in place, as he came around the bed to her side. “Thank you for trusting me not to hurt you again.”
Molly held her breath as he lowered his gaze. He covered her breasts with his large hands, and she couldn’t hold back a rough moan as her nipples hardened against his palms. The sound seemed to inflame him. He lowered his head to hers and kissed her as if his life depended on it. Sherlock dropped his hands to her waist and pulled her hard against his bare chest. She only had his muffled “bed” against her lips as a warning before she found herself flat on her back on the duvet.
Her giggles died on her lips when he slowly and very deliberately reached down to unsnap the fly of his jeans. He kept his eyes on her face as he lowered his zip and pushed the jeans and his pants down his thighs. Molly bit her lower lip at the sight of his cock, already beginning to grow firm and eager.
She started to ease her own knickers down her hips, and Sherlock shook his head. “Don’t. Let me.”
He stepped out of the last of his clothes and gestured for her to scoot toward the centre of the bed. The second her head settled against a pillow, he was leaning over her. Both of his hands pressed into the mattress next to her shoulders; she could see the muscles in his arms flex as he held his weight off of her, allowing only the barest of contact between his chest and the very tips of her breasts.
Slowly—slow enough that Molly’s lungs began to burn as she held her breath in anticipation—Sherlock lowered his head until he could touch his lips to hers. She tried to pull him in closer, but he resisted with a brief shake of his head. He moved down her body, taking his time to kiss and lick and nip.
When he dipped his tongue into her navel, Molly sighed. When he curled his fingers into the sides of her knickers and pulled them down her legs, she shivered. When he nudged her thighs farther apart with his shoulders and looked up at her with a mischievous grin, she gasped. And when he began to flick his tongue against her clit, Molly cried out his name and arched off the bed.
Some small part of her recognized that he was using the things she’d shown him the night before—how and where she preferred to be touched—and that he was experimenting to find toe-curling ways to improve upon them. Good God in heaven, did he know how to experiment.
It didn’t take long for Sherlock to have her on the edge of release. He lifted his head just long enough to urge her over, “You are so beautiful like this. Spread open for me. Writhing on my fingers. Straining against my mouth. I know you’re close, I can feel you trembling. It won’t take much, will it? Let go, Molly. Come for me.”
He lowered his head and sucked her clit, and Molly fell. Her entire body tensed and clenched. She barely registered Sherlock’s murmurs against her inner thigh, “That’s it, Molly. My sweet, beautiful Molly.”
When she came fully back to herself, her hands were buried in his curls and his head was resting on her stomach. Her legs slid off his shoulders to boneless fall at his side.
“Good?” he asked, as if there was any doubt.
“Mmmhmm,” Molly hummed, not quite up to using fully formed words just yet.
She tugged on his shoulders, urging him upwards so she could kiss him. The taste of her was on his lips and tongue, a musky flavour she had no objection to. One at a time, his hands came up to sink into her hair and cup her face, leaving the majority of his weight supported by his elbows on either side of her. Her knees bent so she could cradle him between her legs. The feel of him, skin to skin from breast to groin, was glorious.
His erection was hard and instant; and as she drew his lower lip between her teeth, she felt him start to rock his hips into her mound. Molly knew it was a bad idea, they’d agreed not to have penetrative sex until they could get their hands on a condom, but he felt so bloody good. She shifted to let him settle deeper into the vee of her legs. He groaned into her mouth, not so much rocking as grinding his erection against her.
“Oh God,” Sherlock rasped against her throat. “I can feel how wet you are, how wet I made you.” He continued to move, his cock so temptingly close to her entrance, stimulating her with every roll of his hips.
Somehow, impossibly, she could feel tension beginning to build deep inside once more. Multiple orgasms weren’t a rarity for her, but they were almost never this close together. Then again, she’d never had Sherlock growling filthy things in her ear while he rutted against her.
“Can you come again?” he asked just before he nipped at the sensitive flesh along the side of her throat.
Molly threw back her head with a sharp gasp. “Yeah.” She eased a hand between their bodies and started to rub small circles around her clit, nothing too direct as she was still a little sensitive from earlier.
His movements slowed as he pushed himself up on his hands. She realized he was watching her touch herself, seemingly fascinated. Molly bit her lip as he continued to rock against her, gentler now. Her fingers brushed against his cock as she dipped them lower to find the evidence of her arousal. Rather than returning to her clit, she strained to grasp his erection and wrap her wet fingers around his length.
Sherlock’s arms trembled under the strain of holding himself still above her. When he lifted his head to look at her, his pupils were fully dilated with desire. “I want you, Molly. So much.” His voice was husky and deep, and it seemed to reverberate deep in her core. “Want to be inside you.”
The need to have him was almost overwhelming. She pulled him down to her and pressed an urgent kiss to his lips. “I want that, too. As soon as we get back home, we can stop at the first chemist we see and get-“
“Or we could put each other out of our misery now.” Sherlock slipped his hand under his pillow. She was about to remind him that they had agreed to wait when he held a square foil wrapper up for her to see.
Molly snatched the condom out of his hand and examined the packet. “Where on Earth did you get this?”
His shoulders slumped, and she got the impression that her question wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for. Sherlock dropped to the side and rolled over onto his back. He cleared his throat and failed miserably at trying not to look like a guilty child who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “When I talked to Robby after the morning session. After I bummed a smoke, I also mentioned that I hadn’t really expected the retreat to work out as well as it was and . . .”
Molly turned onto her side to face him. “And what?”
“And that I was kicking myself for not bothering to bring any protection. After witnessing that kiss in the hall last night, he seemed to understand what I was getting at.”
“He just gave you a condom?” She looked at the packet again and double checked the expiration date.
“No.” Sherlock waited until Molly’s full attention was back on him. “Three condoms. And he sold them to me for twenty quid, which seemed a bit like extortion but I wasn’t really in the mood to quibble at that point.”
“Really?” Molly grinned and leaned over Sherlock. “A little desperate, were you?”
“A lot desperate.” Sherlock snaked an arm around her back so that he could cup the back of her head and bury his fingers in her hair. “Still am.”
She let her gaze follow the line of his body down his chest to his groin and the erection that clearly validated his claim. Her hand followed the same path, lightly scratching her nails against his skin. His abs tightened under her teasing touch as he sucked in a harsh breath.
Just as the flat of her palm grazed his cock Sherlock grabbed her wrist and growled a warning, “Condom, Molly.”
She couldn’t help the blush that stained her cheeks as she tore open the foil packet and carefully rolled the condom down his length.
He held out his hands for her to grasp and urged her to straddle him. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”
Molly giggled as she settled over him. “You make it sound like it’s been weeks rather than a day, Sherlock.”
He gripped her hips to help her find her balance, then looked up at her with an expression she couldn’t quite name. “Longer. I’ve wanted this, wanted you, for months.”
She froze above him and he groaned. “Molly. Don’t toy with me, I don’t have the control for it. Not this time.”
How could she resist the desperate plea in his voice? She reached down to hold his cock, then slowly lowered herself onto his length bit by bit. It had been so long since she’d been with a man, and Sherlock was well endowed (something she had speculated on more than once, based on his height and the size of his hands and feet); she found herself grateful that he had taken the time to ensure she was fully aroused.
It was difficult not to move once he was fully seated, the urge to ride him was there; but she knew a moment to let herself adjust was necessary. Sherlock seemed to understand. Other than the dig of his fingertips into the flesh of her hips, he remained still beneath her. After a few seconds, she nodded.
“Now?” he asked, his voice was rough and low.
Molly nodded. “Now.”
“Thank God” was the only warning she had before Sherlock took charge.
She revelled in the gruelling pace he set, the thrust and retreat of his cock, the bruising grip of the hands around her waist. She fell forward and braced one hand on the headboard, the other next to his shoulder. Sherlock’s harsh grunts, Molly’s stream of “Yes, fuck yes!” and other barely coherent praise for man beneath her, and the rhythmic creak of the bed filled the room.
“Come for me, Molly. Whatever you need, take it.”
She groaned at the need in his voice. Molly held on to the headboard with one hand and licked the fingers of the other before reaching down to where they were joined. It took a few seconds to find the perfect counterpoint to their coupling; but once she did, it only took a few circular brushes against her clit for her to climax for the second time that night.
She fought to keep her eyes open so that she could watch Sherlock’s face as his own orgasm overtook him. He threw his head back against the pillow, sweat dampened curls plastered to his forehead, teeth bared as if he were in pain. His hips surged upward one last time, and Molly trembled as an aftershock rippled through her body.
Sherlock ran his hands up her back to grasp her shoulders. He pulled her down to his chest and blindly sought her mouth. The kiss started out wild, all teeth and tongues; then it eased into languid brushes of lips and breaths.
Once their heartrates slowed, Molly carefully rolled to the side and Sherlock got up to dispose of the used condom in the loo. He hesitated in the bathroom doorway on the way back, and she realized he was unsure of how to proceed now that the urgent need to have sex had abated. She smiled and held out her arms.
He slid into the bed next to her and put an arm around her, silently encouraging her to cuddle against his side. She had always suspected that Sherlock would be a cuddler once he trusted someone enough to let them get physically (and emotionally) close.
It took her a moment to work up the courage to ask the question that insisted on circling around her mind now that she wasn’t overwhelmed by hormones. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
To his credit, he didn’t try to play coy and pretend he had no idea what she was talking about. She wanted to know why he hadn’t told her he was interested in her prior to their weekend at Happy Hearts. “Not my area, remember? I was terrified I was going to ruin our friendship if I screwed up.”
“I would think if you were ever going to ruin things between us, it would have happened ages ago. You’re kind of an arse.” She nuzzled her head against his shoulder in reassurance.
“And yet, you . . . like me.” They both knew he almost used a completely different word entirely.
“Yep. I . . . like you.” She deliberately echoed him. “And you?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, yes. I like you, too.” He tightened the arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “A lot. More than I probably should, considering what I do and how often I put the people I care about in danger. But I do, Molly. I like you. More than like. I just-I’m not sure I’m ready to . . .”
She nodded. “I don’t think I am, either. Not quite. And that’s okay. As you said last night, we don’t need declarations of love and marriage proposals right now.”
She felt his chin come to rest on the crown of her head. “Are you sure?”
“Very.”
They held each other for several minutes. Molly had just started to grow drowsy when Sherlock’s fingers began to drift up and down her arm. She lifted her head in time to see his lips form a playful smirk. “We’ve still got an hour before we can sneak downstairs.”
Suddenly her body was wide awake, the earlier drowsiness vanished like smoke in the wind. “What do you have in mind?”
He slid a hand under his pillow and pulled out another foil packet. “It would be a shame to waste that twenty quid.”
Their second time together was slower, gentler, but no less passionate.
She had expected him to become completely focused on the case once they left their room; and he did, to a certain extent. As they crept through the ground floor, taking care not to be seen, he would occasionally put his hand on the small of her back or reach out to brush his fingers against hers—almost, but not quite holding her hand—as if to reassure himself that she was still there.
Michelle’s office gave up nothing useful. While Molly dug through the file cabinets for anything that interesting, Sherlock logged into Michelle’s computer (Molly didn’t even bother asking how he deduced the password). The address on Anna’s payroll file matched the one her brother had provided for their parents.
Sherlock even pulled up the Retreat’s financial records, which were up-to-date and neatly organized. “Too neatly,” he sneered. “Someone has combed through all this with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything looks perfect on paper, which clearly means it’s fake.”
“Do you think Anna discovered something fishy going on with the money and they got rid of her?” Molly hoped it wasn’t anything as sinister as that.
He considered it for a moment. “Possible, but not probable.” He shut the computer down and gestured for her to finish up. “Let’s see what Simon’s hiding.”
Simon’s office was slightly more interesting. His file cabinets were full of promotional materials, including several different versions of the Happy Hearts brochure that Sherlock had shown her the day he’d first asked her to pretend to be an accountant’s wife. One of them had a front-page blurb about a famous award winning author/marriage counsellor leading some of the sessions. Another had photos of the Villa that looked . . . off. They had clearly been retouched to make the building look less aged and lived in. The captions touted “recently renovated” and “newly updated features”.
She was about to call Sherlock over to look at them but he was intently involved in whatever he’d found on Simon’s computer. Molly grabbed one of each of the brochures and stuffed them into her pocket.
“What is it?”
Sherlock didn’t even glance up from the laptop screen. “Our Simon has been a naughty boy. Or should I say Michelle and Simon have both been naughty.” He turned the laptop so that she could see what he’d been looking at.
It appeared to be an accounting program, but it was far more complicated than the one she used to keep track of her bank balance. “What have they done?”
“This one has the same figures as the one on Michelle’s computer.” He minimized it and pointed to another one. “This one shows numerous withdrawals and balance transfers that don’t appear on the first. Extravagant dinners. Lease payments for that sports car outside. Funds that had been allocated for building updates in Michelle’s accounts have been diverted to cover a second mortgage payment. According to the second account, they’re barely staying in the black thanks to an influx of income from an investment firm.” He frowned and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “None of that, however, tells me what happened to Anna.”
They finished searching Simon’s office without finding anything else of note. Molly remembered from their walk that morning that the curtains had been tightly drawn in the room next to the office. “It can’t hurt to look in there. I mean, we’ve tried everywhere else.”
Two minutes later, Sherlock had picked the lock and they were standing in a large storage room.
The area closest to the door was a jumble of poorly stacked boxes labelled “Tax Forms” and “Payroll”. The farther back they went, the neater the stacks became as if someone had taken the time to put them away with care rather than just tossed them in the first available spot. The two windows were blocked by boxes and covered with thick curtains that looked as if they hadn’t been opened in years. The light from the sputtering florescent bulb barely touched the deep shadows along the walls, the ones that hid who knew what kind of vermin or spiders behind the rows of boxes.
Sherlock knelt to examine a spot on the floor. To her it looked exactly like every other bit of the floor; but he must have found something interesting because his sharp gaze flew up to the stack of boxes before him and he smirked.
“Someone has been back her fairly recently, and they’ve gone to a bit of effort to hide something. You can see where they’ve moved these boxes out of the way, then shoved them back.”
She couldn’t see anything of the sort, but he was on a roll and she wasn’t about to interrupt him while he was deducing.
He pulled at the boxes until he was able to squeeze past them. Sherlock emerged seconds later with a very large duffel in his hands and a triumphant grin on his face. They both dropped to their knees beside the bag as he unzipped it.
Inside were clothes—a lot of clothes—all wadded up and shoved into the bag without a care for creases or wrinkles. He handed her a small makeup bag as he continued to dig through the rest of the contents of the duffel.
“Nothing unusual here.” Molly held the items up as she named them. “Foundation, coverup, moisturizer, neutral lipstick, birth control-“
Sherlock snatched the packet of pills out of her hand and examined it. “Why would she voluntarily leave her birth control behind? Obvious answer would be that she didn’t. So who packed and hid the bag?”
“You think this is Anna’s stuff, then?”
“Yes.” He dropped the pills and the makeup bag into the duffel, then yanked the zipper closed. “Come on. I need to think.”
Luck was on their side as they made it up to their room without being spotted with the duffel in tow.
Sherlock dumped the large bag onto to the chairs near the fireplace, then returned to her. “Go ahead and go to bed, Molly. I’m going to be up for a while yet.”
As much as she wanted to stay up and try to help, she knew that not distracting Sherlock while he was working was probably the best thing she could do for Anna at the moment.
She tilted her face up to him, hoping for a brief kiss goodnight; but he had another idea entirely. Sherlock pulled her close and gave her a long, tender kiss that left her breathless before he settled into the empty chair and lost himself in his mind palace.
Molly remembered the brochure’s she’d pilfered from Simon’s office while she was changing for bed. She left them on the table near Sherlock’s chair, then turned off all but one of the lights and crawled into bed.
Sometime later, the bed dipped as Sherlock slid under the sheets behind her. She opened her eyes to a dark room and rolled toward his warmth. “Did you figure it out?” she sleepily asked.
He pulled her against his chest and pressed a quick kiss to her hair. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Part 1 / Part 7