Clockwork Stalker: The Dirty Heroes Collection

by Silverwood, Cari

  “You’ll wait,” Sherlock said, and in the same moment his words came out, he shoved his cock into my pussy, driving me into the footstool as if planting me there. His fingers manipulated my exceptionally needy nub until, despite the stranger, I ascended, climax blossoming, my arms and legs shaking, my fingers gripping the chains.

  That ultimate ascension…

  Sobbing… with the impacts.

  Being fucked across the floor as the footstool slid, then he pulled it back into place, the wrist and ankle chains taut.

  Wanting…

  Back arching…

  He slammed into me in short, floor-scraping thrusts, and I came, the orgasm roaring in, choking, shuddering, clawing at the floor with toes and fingers, mouth agape, hearing the stranger who held my head, his thumb hooking over my teeth and tongue, as he laughed and kept on laughing.

  Another tumult of thrusts, and the man I trusted climaxed also, groaning as he gripped my hip flesh. He bruised me with those fingers, jabbing deeper, coming some more, pulsating inside me.

  Taken, controlled…it was a beautiful dirty fetish for me. I knew this now. I groaned as he held me in place. Tied, screwed, made to come, and Him still inside me. God.

  I shuddered, clenched on him. I think I came a little too, I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Now?” asked the stranger, who held my head.

  Panting and wrung out, my limbs fatigued and trembling from all the struggling I’d done, I listened only.

  “What?” My man released me, dragging from inside. “I meant… to take her ass.”

  “I can do that,” the stranger said, chuckling again. “Rest. You can have her there when you get a hard cock again. This is a pretty damn good entry fee. I like your insouciant style, Arthur. Downstairs, we have even more fun.” He let go of me, and I heard him walk with deliberate steps, as he talked. “You’ll soon find out. We can take her down there, fuck her again. There are eight of us.”

  “Wait. No! You will wait!”

  There was a scuffle and raised voices. I’d never heard Sherlock yell like that

  Chill screamed in. Ice. The world shuddered to a stop and clarified, crackled with tension. I might be in danger, here, fastened down and at anyone’s mercy.

  I was begging in my mind, relentlessly, by the time I felt someone free my hands and feet, remove the clamps and the thing from my rear, then scoop me up.

  “It’s me. You’re okay. We’re leaving.”

  Sherlock carried me down the single step, and I figured out where we were going by the sounds, not being courageous enough to disturb this flight.

  There was an urgency to this. Would someone stop us? Shoot us?

  I felt him stoop and gather things, then he put me down onto a couch—one very like the one we’d used so I guessed we were there again. I raised my hand to remove the blindfold but found the knot at the back too firm to unpick, and the thorough wrapping made removal difficult.

  I’d been only partway successful, when Sherlock picked me up again in his arms. His steps were fast, hurried, and I heard him mutter to himself as he walked.

  “Stupid. That was stupid. She trusted you. I’m a fool. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

  This was not him, not my calm, collected man.

  The other voices in the room lessened, and a door shut them off completely as it closed.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re leaving. Give us our coats, call us a cab.”

  Sherlock levered off the blindfold, stared at me for a second, before whipping my coat around me and helping me button it. He was dressed but shambolically, and the dishevelment of both of us—my nudity especially—it was concealed by our coats.

  The cab arrived within a minute, after the man outside whistled for one.

  I was so confused and tired, so ready to collapse, that being ushered into the cab door seemed the largest relief—as if I had again escaped the tentacles of a kraken.

  He cuddled me into him, though silent.

  No matter what I whispered, Sherlock was silent.

  “I did see the man who entered the club before us…” Nothing. “I’m sure he’s from parliament. The First Lord of the Admiralty, possibly? Isn’t that someone important? I saw him in the newspaper once.” Still no response came from Sherlock, so I too lapsed in quietness.

  The cab rumbled onward. When we reached Baker Street, Sherlock still had not said a word.

  “Here, sir!” came the driver’s voice from the speaker tube running to his upper compartment.

  Helped out by Sherlock, with the cabbie paid, we went up the stairs. His hand rested in the small of my back. This was too late an hour for Mrs. Hudson, and our journey up those stairs was in silence apart from our feet. So much silence. I had my red shoes on by then, though I could not recall them being put on my feet.

  The door locked behind us, Sherlock stood, head in his hands for a few awful seconds, before he raised his head and looked at me.

  “Again. I’m sorry. I betrayed your trust. I was a monster.” His voice broke on the last word. “Please, get cleaned up, Miss Moriarty. I need to think.”

  That crack in his voice scared me.

  The wash basin was a lonely place. London was quiet except for some distant shouts and the clop of horses and chug of engines.

  What had happened back there? I thought I knew a part of it, but not all. Something had hurt him, and that something had been because he’d almost hurt me.

  Which only made this even more of a personal injury. I was so confused. I looked out the sides of my eyes, trying to judge how badly this affected him.

  If anything, calling me Miss Moriarty again was the most terrible blow of all.

  Besides, if anyone was the monster, it was I.

  If he’d shared me without asking me, would that have hurt me? Yes, horribly, but I would have recovered, I think, depending on how he acted afterward.

  But he hadn’t shared me. He’d stopped them, or that was how I interpreted the arguing they’d done. And so it was all on me.

  Because I was as guilty. I’d loved it all, up until that last bare, raw second.

  He hadn’t betrayed me, in my mind, he’d saved me.

  Slowly, I approached him where he sat with his head bowed, in his favorite armchair.

  “What do I have to do to fix this? This wasn’t your fault.”

  “Oh? It was the Curse? Is that my excuse?” He heaved in a breath then exhaled as if his chest were broken. “I need you to finish the machine, Willa. Make the filter so I can be rid of this. Get it done before tomorrow ends. Please.”

  The pain in his eyes, it lanced straight to my heart.

  I realized I dreaded doing what he asked for. The man I thought I loved, he was the new man, not the one before this so-called Curse came into him. If I filtered out all the malignant energy, who would remain?

  In the hope that touch would comfort him, or kneeling by the chair, I set out, carefully, one step, two. “I don’t understand. It was sex, and for the most part I heartily consented—”

  “For the most part,” he spat out, then laughed, his voice and the glitter in his eyes brittle. “You do not know what happened. I didn’t just almost share you…”

  “No?” I faltered in my walk.

  “That Robert, whose name is almost certainly false, he offered me entry to a secret club. Exactly what Mycroft wants. I would’ve seen them all, could no doubt have identified most. I might have seen what they get up to, in that basement, wherever it is. I don’t think it was actually beneath the club… else Mycroft would’ve found it…”

  I waited, afraid to hear more, but needing to.

  “Where I had you that first day, on the table at the bordello, I’m sure women have been sacrificed there for the same cult. Killed. A knife to the heart.”

  I blinked. “How?”

  “I just know. There are clues. I don’t know what they accomplished, but Robert promised an orgy among eight members, in a basement, with you the victim.” He ran b
oth hands over his head, from front to back. “I almost did that! You trust me when the curse turned me into a man who almost went through with that? I am a monster!”

  I flinched backward, almost tipped over the wash basin jug.

  “Fix the damn filter! One day is all you have!” He slammed his fist on the table beside him and a teacup leaped into the air and smashed on the floor, pieces skidding toward me. The handle ended up beside my toe.

  I stooped to pick it up, looked at Sherlock. “Of course. I will, sir.”

  “Good. I should not have come here. I will arrange another cab, and we will go to your lodgings at the Iron Oak where all your equipment waits… and your clothes.”

  “Oh.” I looked down. I was naked, having shed the coat to get washed up. It had barely seemed to matter, though now I shivered, suddenly cold.

  I’d wanted a World’s Fair entry and my money returned, but now I wanted something entirely different, and it was slipping away from me. I picked up the coat and shrugged it on, watching Sherlock as he went to the door to go hail another cab.

  Without him, no matter how inward-looking a man he was, how difficult he was to get to know, I would be far more alone than before and this wasn’t simply a lack of friends. I’d been alone many times. I was…

  Bereft? My mind offered up.

  Yes, that.

  Already I felt as if I were in mourning.

  19

  Turned On

  We’d both known there was little left to be done to create the ME filter, yet I managed to make it take almost all night and all day. I’d slept for a few hours and woken at dawn.

  Sherlock didn’t chastise me for taking too long. I believe he was too mired in his misery. Perhaps when you see yourself as perfect all your life, one small error becomes everything?

  Though he had almost had me sacrificed to a murderous cult, if his conclusions were correct. Somehow, all that had come to matter to me was that he had not followed through.

  But he hadn’t stayed with me at my room, had left soon after dawn. I think he feared temptation.

  So here I was, alone at the Iron Oak and unsure if I should return to him.

  Did I have the answer in my hands?

  The hat was done, finished. I rotated it, checking the results.

  I’d stitched the mesh of metal inside the deerstalker hat so very neatly, and I was no seamstress. The worm of wire that ran to a battery was curled into the bottom hem, and the circular battery could be plugged in quite easily, tucked into a pocket in the hat, though it would not last for more than a few hours at full drainage. The dial controlling the power was fastened beneath the right ear flap.

  I guessed he would have spare batteries made, if he wished to go outside for long. Indoors, this could be plugged into the main power board… with a slight risk of electrocution if there was a surge.

  I sighed and dusted some stray threads off the tartan cloth. It might be best if I dissuaded him from doing that.

  Really, I was afraid of so much more than him electrocuting himself. This would work, but what could he become once it was on his head?

  I called a cab and went to Baker Street. Sherlock opened the door, and around his eyes were dark smudges of exhaustion. He wore no tie, no shoes: all in all, he was extraordinarily unkempt.

  “You’re finished, Miss Moriarty?” He ushered me in, and I advanced to the middle of his living room. The door was shut and locked.

  Behind me, I heard him walk closer, his feet making precise, quiet padding noises.

  “Yes.” When I turned, he was a yard away, and he held out his hand. “I should instruct you.”

  “Give it to me. I think I know how to turn a dial. There is a zero and a one hundred on the dial. Yes, I watched you inscribe those.”

  With reluctance, I offered the hat to him. He took it and then did as I had—revolved it, as if looking for flaws.

  “I would try it in increments. Ten at first.”

  “So that I can be only partially cursed? No, thank you.”

  As he went to the window, he looked a man on a date with destiny, and the ebbing dusk light cast long shadows behind him, like morbid tentacles.

  Which was all the fault of my imagination. This would not hurt him physically, but I sensed that my own self, my destiny, and who he might become, was in some sort of terrible balance.

  “What if the world needs you as you were, cursed or partly cursed? It altered you.”

  “What?”

  “You were a different man, or different from who I’d been told you were. I think… better, a better man.”

  “Better! I was a monster. One hundred percent a monster!” He raised the hat, positioned it above his scalp but not quite touching.

  “You were my lover.” I felt tears well. “The majority of you, I loved. Ninety-nine percent, if we must talk figures.”

  “No one could like me as I was at that club, last night.” Firmly, he seated the hat, then reached beneath and uncurled the dial cord, and he turned the dial fully.

  Stomach heavy, fists clenched at my sides, I watched as he jerked, stiffened. My heart thudded wildly.

  “Ah-hah! It is working!” He put his fist to his forehead and pressed it there. I could see the whiteness in his fingers. “It. Is. Working.”

  What did that mean though? He looked like a man in pain, and if malignant energy truly had affected him, he’d worn the effects for weeks. Stopping so suddenly must have consequences.

  Then he turned to me, slowly, and he said, in a stone-dry voice, “You may go. On the way out, on the street outside, see that you tell the hobo on the street corner to come up. I mean the man with the tatty brown hat with a small, red duck embroidered on the rim. That is Dr. Watson. Your room is paid for, for one more week.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out.

  “We are done as partners. You may go.”

  “You promised, so much…” I was near to weeping but refused to show it.

  “I sent to Mycroft while you worked. I cannot get you the World’s Fair entry, but he will expedite the return of your money. Oh, and the man who stole it was Ramsey Foxx, a friend of your father. Do not go near him again. He’s dangerous. Good day.”

  I stayed a few seconds longer, rooted in place, sure I could see more than a calm man before me. The thief was Ramsey Foxx? That fact was bad enough, but it was overshadowed by what was before me.

  Sherlock had a tick in one cheek muscle, beneath his eye, and I’d never seen that before. That was all. It was enough.

  “I don’t want those. I don’t want money! I want to be with you. Have you considered, sir, that you might function best with some malignant energy in your system?”

  “No.” He showed his teeth after he said that, then grated out through them, “No. I have not, and I will not agree with you. Go!”

  I left, noting even as I closed the door how feverishly he was tugging at the buttons below his throat, as if they choked him.

  I found Dr. Watson, though I felt dazed, lost, cast onto yet another unknown sea.

  “He would like you to go up there, now.”

  Dr. Watson, a lean man who was hunched over and probably pretending illness, straightened. He slid aside the eye patch on his left eye. Though he’d been startled, he nodded.

  “Thank you, Miss Moriarty. Yes, I know who you are. I have been watching him. Can you tell me when he figured out who I am?”

  “I don’t know. He’s an obtuse man, as you know.”

  “Yes.” He picked up a cloth sack. “He told me to watch him. He said he’d figure this out, and I trusted he would. On the airship, the day we found you, he had an urge to dispose of me in a terminal way. I readily agreed to parachute out but this…” He indicated the street. “It has been hell.”

  The man thought it hell to pretend to be poor and homeless? I shelved my annoyance.

  “I see.” I frowned, torn by what facts to tell him. “He’s not who he was, I think. Or he wasn’t to me.” I swallow
ed, wondering if I was saying too much to this stranger. “We were lovers. I think he will need you more than ever. This may be hard on him.”

  Dr. Watson dragged off his hat, revealing lank, unwashed, dark hair. Then he gave an embarrassed shrug. “I said I’ve been watching. I did notice uhhh the relationship. Thanks for saying, Miss. I will take care with him. I am a doctor.”

  “I knew that.” Then I left him to it.

  Sherlock had dismissed me in the most abrupt way. My doing, though this time I decided not to blame myself. I returned to the Iron Oak, took an envelope offered me by the desk receptionist as I went by, wondering if it was some Bank of England apology, for it had a fancy stamp. I opened my door with that giant key, closed the door, then I paused mid-floor.

  What was I doing? What was I doing with the rest of my life?

  He’d ruined me. Not my reputation, though I suppose he’d done that too, for even Watson knew, and Sherlock had disparaged the man’s investigative abilities several times.

  Not that, no.

  My face began to wobble from the tension.

  I sat down, abruptly, overcome, unwilling to move another inch.

  I needed to cry, and I had no reason to.

  My money was being returned. My lodgings here were paid. I could still apply to the World’s Fair by myself, really. Even if I failed, I had achieved so much with him, with Sherlock.

  Him.

  That last thought made the first tears leak, and I ended up in a puddle on the floor, sobbing. A half an hour later, I hauled myself to the bed and sobbed into my pillow for even longer.

  It wasn’t fair! He’d shown me who I was, what my desires encompassed then had thrown me aside like damn trash.

  “Not fair!” I screamed to the room, beating my pillow.

  I was acting like a child over a man I did not even love. Like an idiot. If love even existed, which it clearly did not.

  And through all that, I still worried over how he was taking this, the conceited asshole.

  I hated him.

  I hated him so much I wished a kraken would swallow him whole.

  That wish stropped me like a cricket bat to the gut.