My whole face burned with heat, but I knew I wouldn’t tell him to stop. I roll my hips against Morrie’s hand, begging for more, pushing him deeper inside me. He gazed down at me, his eyes hooded, his mouth crooked with his signature smirk. He knew exactly what he was doing, and fuck me if I didn’t love it.
He pressed his thumb against my throbbing clit, curling his finger inside me to stroke a spot that left me gasping. Morrie drummed his finger against my clit, and a tremble started in my body.
Behind us, I was dimly aware of a sharp intake of breath.Sherlock.
I buried my face in Morrie’s chest as the orgasm swept through my body and my brain trickled out my ears. Morrie flashed me his spoiled prince look – he loved that he could undo me with just his touch.
But I knew how to undo him, too. I reached up to wrap my arms around him, bringing his head in close, pressing his lips to mine. But instead of a kiss, I spoke what he refused to acknowledge.
“Morrie, tell me what’s going on. Why are the two of you naked in here?”
Morrie leaned back, studying my face in that way of his that felt like he was gazing into my soul. “If you want to ask something, gorgeous, just come out with it.”
“That’s not what—”
“You think I’m going back to him.” The ragged edge of his voice twisted a knife through my heart.
“No. Not at all. I just…” I could feel Sherlock’s seething hatred of me burning from across the room. “You never resolved things with Heathcliff after your kiss, and now you’re locked in a wooden shack with your ex. Things are going to get intense. And I walk in here and you’re both practically naked and—”
My protests dissolved into a moan of need as Morrie wriggled his hips, grinding his cock against my hip. “You feel that?” he whispered, his voice choked with need.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“That’s hard foryou, gorgeous. Only you. Maybe once it was hard for some other gents, but that’s in the past. Do you trust me?”
When Morrie asked me that, he didn’t want some brushed off answer. He demanded me to examine myself and give him the brutal truth. If there was something between us, I had to own up to it. I glanced into Morrie’s eyes, and I let my mind drift to everything that had happened between us since he burst into my life and stole my breakfast and my heart. Morrie reading erotic poetry in that smooth voice of his while he touched me until I turned to mush in his hands. Morrie cradling Quoth in his arms when he thought we’d lost him. The wicked grin that tugged at his mouth every time he had a brilliant scheme. Morrie standing on the balcony at Baddesley Hall, for the first time cracking his dark heart open and revealing the vulnerable man beneath. Morrie and Heathcliff locked in that loin-melting kiss…
“I do. I trust you.” I said the words, and I meant them. “I’m jealous of Sherlock because I fuckingmiss you, and because I’m scared we won’t catch whoever framed you, and I’ll never see you again.”
“Then do what you do best.” Morrie leaned back and pulled me into a sitting position. His eyes blazed. “Put that beautiful brain of yours to work and get me out of here.”
“I’m trying. We’ve got some suspects, but sinceSherlockrefuses to work with us—” I glared across the room at the naked man in the chair, “—I don’t know what you guys have uncovered.”
“We don’t need her help,” Sherlock sounded petulant.
“The fact that I’m still stuck in this hellhole with you rather suggests that we do.” Morrie’s arms tightened around my body, and a little sliver of fear shot through me. “Besides, even you have sometimes found that others see what you have not seen. Their mistake, if you’re to be believed, is that they cannot reason from what they see.”
Sherlock frowned. “I admit, Dr. Watson’s inferior intellect did sometimes provide a useful canvas for my own deductions. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
I folded my arms. “If that’s the way you feel, you and your stimulating superior intellect can go first.”
“Very well.” Sherlock steepled his fingers together. It was such a typical Morrie gesture that it made my chest tighten. I did not like the idea that any part of Morrie’s personality came from this guy. “My process was simple. I compiled a list of Moriarty’s enemies in the criminal underworld he inhabits, and have worked tirelessly to eliminate each and every single one from suspicion. There are only three that could have been in the vicinity of the forest during the time of the murder, and only one whose particulars fit the clues left behind. All that remains is to track down this fiend, Aidan McFarlane, and bring him to justice, and that is where I have currently drawn a blank.”
“This is the same fellow you showed us before. What makes you so certain it was him?”
“As you know, I purchase my shoes from an exclusive London designer,” said Morrie. “A month before Kate’s body was found, Aidan made an appointment with that same designer. Considering Aidan usually wears combat boots, and his sales receipt reveals he commissioned a pair of brogues, we can conclude he used these fiendish shoes to frame me.”
I shook my head. “But how did this guy get the shoes into our house? I’ve never seen him before, and you’d have remembered if he came anywhere near the shop. Yet, the police found them in the pile at the front door, and Jo matched dirt on the soles to Barsetshire Fells. And how did he get hold of your letter opener? And does he have knowledge of poisonous mushrooms, because that’s whatactuallykilled Kate.”
Sherlock’s head jerked up. “What is this? How did you obtain this information?”
“I spoke to Jo. The forensics on Kate’s body were odd. It turns out, the knife wound wasn’t what killed her. She was already dead, from poisonous mushrooms. She’d also lost a lot of blood, possibly extracted from a puncture wound Jo found on her body, along with severe bruising from the murderer dragging her body through the forest from somewhere else.”
Sherlock tapped his chin, another Morrie gesture that made me want to tear his arms off. “That would explain the disturbances in the dirt around the crime scene.”
“It’s also possible that McFarlane disposed of his brogues after the murder, and the pair the SOCOs found was one of mine. The dirt on the shoes Jo analyzed could have been from when I came to meet Kate at Wild Oats last year.” Morrie said. “But nothing about Kate’s death fits with what I’d expect from McFarlane. Poison mushrooms? Stabbing her post-mortem? It’s all too odd, too messy, almost as if he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I don’t think McFarlane is the killer. We’ve been working a different angle – I’m not sure this is about Morrie, so much as it is about Kate and why she tried to fake her own death.” I rattled off what we’d discovered so far, about Kate’s financial situation and her gross boss and Tara the cosplaying glitter queen. “I don’t believe her husband Dave is responsible, but he does have a financial motive. Tara wanted Kate out of the way so she could be top of the cosplay circuit. She even threatened Kate on camera. Grant Hosking sounds like an all-round terrible person, so it could be him. And then there’s Sam, our Wild Oats instructor. I don’t believe he did it, either, but he might have unwittingly supplied the killer with the knowledge to poison with spores. Plus, he had reason to hate Kate for ruining his business. Although I don’t see what killing her would achieve apart from nailing the lid on the coffin of Wild Oats.”
