Chapter Text
The messages get shorter and more desperate, and the most recent one is wordless: a blurry shot of Johnny’s sweaty nape, fist tight in the blond curls she is pulling to expose it. Sherlock runs the last block and up the stairs. Inside, she triple-bolts the door and shoves a stopper under it, checks to make sure the windows are latched, and throws off her coat, following the needy sounds into her bedroom.
Johnny is, helpfully, naked, apart from the knickers still wound about her ankle. She’s on all fours, rubbing her face and tits into the mattress, but she twists her neck to look at Sherlock. God, look at her—desperate—the sweat glistening on her flank and at her collarbone, her mouth red, as pleased to see Sherlock as if Sherlock were the gazelle and she the lion.
Sherlock slips off her Oxfords. On any other day she'd prolong the agony: perch on the desk, legs parted, make Johnny crawl. But she's waited too long for that. Johnny's hit 39 degrees. The starburst has disappeared against her shoulder and the thin scars against her neck, and her lips and eyes are dark. And Sherlock isn't superhuman. Already she feels dizzy, hungry. Sherlock kneels on the bed in shirtsleeves and trousers, brackets Johnny's knees with her own, leans down to lick sweat off her spine. She reaches up to pinch and twist a nipple and, when Johnny bucks, sinks teeth into the soft expanse between shoulder and neck, drawing blood and curses.