Chapter.3.
795 Words
His lips were on her neck before she could form a thought.
Sherlock gasped, her hand flattening on his chest to push, but she didn’t. Her body betrayed her heart, leaning into him like it had been craving this moment for years.
“Garrett…” she whispered.
But his name came out like a plea, not a protest.
His hands slid around her waist, fingers splaying over her lower back like he was trying to memorize her shape.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured, his voice rough against her skin. “And I will.”
She closed her eyes.
She couldn’t.
She didn’t want to.
Their mouths met, and this time, it was hot. A desperate kind of hunger that had simmered beneath years of denial. Garrett's kiss was all contradictory…tender and rough, hesitant and needy, like he couldn’t decide if this was his salvation or destruction.
And right there where she stood kissing him, Sherlock didn't care. Didn't care if suddenly Edward, her husband would appear in a minute and catch her. She just surrendered to the kiss, like it shouldn't end.
Sherlock’s dress slipped from her shoulders, forgotten.
Her fingers tangled in his shirt, pulling at buttons with shaking hands, revealing the man beneath the billionaire…the scars on his chest, the warmth of his skin, the truth in every heartbeat.
She breathed in his scent, woodsy and clean, felt his breath stutter as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to a gallery mat like she weighed nothing.
Every touch was poetry, written in flesh and longing.
Every kiss, an apology for the years he pretended not to feel.
And when he finally entered her, it wasn’t just s*x.
It was everything.
A release.
A surrender.
A promise neither of them could say out loud.
Garrett moved with care, with reverence, like she was breakable. Sherlock held onto him with everything in her, legs wrapped around his waist, hands pressed to his back, gasping his name in a rhythm that matched the aching thump of her heart.
He kissed her between breaths, on her shoulder, her cheek, her temple—tender places he had once avoided, now desperate to taste.
“I wanted this,” he murmured. “Every day you walked through my door… I wanted this.”
Tears slid down her cheeks, mixing with sweat and breath and need. “Then why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you ask me to stay?”
He didn’t answer.
Because they both knew why.
He was still haunted by ghosts. Still bound to a woman he lost, one Sherlock didn’t know was her sister… yet. Still punishing himself for a death he couldn’t undo.
But none of it mattered in that moment.
Not the marriage she wore like a noose.
Not the career she sacrificed her heart for.
All that mattered was now.
Him.
Her.
The pieces of them that finally, finally touched.
When it was over, Garrett held her tight. Her head rested on his chest, listening to the rapid thud of his heartbeat. He was still catching his breath, still buried deep inside her.
And Sherlock, for a flickering second, let herself believe maybe…just maybe…this was her new beginning.
But then she felt it.
That familiar stillness in him.
The silence that always followed whenever he let himself feel too much.
She looked up.
His jaw was clenched. His gaze unfocused.
Regret already curled around him like a ghost.
No.
Not this time.
She sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around herself. “Don’t you dare look at me like that, Garrett.”
His eyes snapped to hers.
“You don’t get to make love to me,” she whispered, voice thick, “then disappear into your guilt. Not again.”
“I’m not…”
“Yes, you are.” She sniffed, wiping a tear from her cheek. “You said I was enough. But you’re still trying to convince yourself I’m not worth the risk.”
Garrett reached for her, but she stepped off the bed before he could touch her again.
“Sherlock, I..”
“Don’t,” she cut him off. “Don’t ruin this moment by pretending it didn’t happen.”
She pulled on her dress, one sleeve still hanging off her shoulder, hair tousled and damp from sweat.
Garrett stood too. “Where are you going?”
She looked at him for a long time. “Home.”
“But…”
“No buts,” she said softly. “Because if you ask me to stay, I will. And I can’t keep doing this to myself.”
And with that,
she walked away.
Not because she didn’t love him.
But because for once just once she needed to see if he’d follow.
- Writer
