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His face is all but buried in her shoulder, his eyes closed, and all he can really concentrate on is the wonderful feeling of her well-manicured nails drawing back and forth over his back. Her hand is careful, but now and then she'll press down on a knot of muscle or draw her nail over a piece of sensitive skin, and it's just wonderful.
“Irene,” Sherlock murmurs, his voice low and resonant against the hollow of her right collarbone, and she hums in return, dragging her nails over his shoulder. He's never really been interested in sex before Irene, but there's something about her that pulls him forwards, and she truly is quite intoxicating. “You smell tremendous.”
She does. There's a barest ghost of some subtle perfume, but Sherlock mostly smells the lavender of her soap and her shampoo – Sherlock has a very sensitive nose, and Irene's scent is not, as many are, an assault on the sense, but an understated delight.
“I think that's the fourth compliment you've given me this evening, my darling,” Irene replies, tone smooth, “Do be careful. I might think it's Christmas.”
“I've not given you four.”
“You have.”
“I've given you three.” Sherlock insists, cataloguing them in his mind.
The first had been with Irene coming down the stairs and into the restaurant, and he'd stared at her, just for a few moments, noting the way the dress had hugged her sides and complemented the string of gems around her neck: he'd whispered, as he'd leaned down to kiss her cheek, “You look beautiful,” and he'd meant it. He doesn't really see beauty, not all the time, but he does in Irene.
And then, Irene when she'd pinned him against the wall of his bedroom, one deceptively dainty hand wrapped tightly around his throat as her fingers had made quick work of his shirt buttons, and when she'd finally released him he'd said in a hoarse, breathless voice, “You are good at that,” and he'd meant that too. Sherlock likes it when she chokes him – and truly, how could he not, when she does it so well?
Thirdly, just now.
“Ah ah. Four.”
“Wh-”
“The third compliment, Sherlock,” Irene murmurs against his hair, and her hand reaches down to cup the beaten-red skin of his arse, pressing down on the flesh so that it twinges with remembered agony and new pain, and he lets out a soft hiss of pleasure-pain. “Was when you laid back on the bed and, before I even told you too, you spread your legs so widely one might think you were ready to be a centerfold.”
“What's a centerfold?”
“Prettiest, most naked model in the centre page of a glossy porn magazine.”
“Oh,” Sherlock murmurs. Pleased with the explanation, he grins against her neck, and then draws his mouth over the skin, kissing the skin there – he doesn't bite, and nor does he suck a mark there, though she has given her permission. He likes her skin how it is, mostly unmarred. “Mycroft used to say I could be a model, if I wanted.”
“What a strange thing for one's brother to say,” Irene says, tone appraising rather than uncertain despite the words coming from her mouth.
“He's a strange man,” Sherlock agrees. “Correct, though.”
“Vain,” Irene purrs, and he laughs against her shoulder, leaning back slightly to look at her face. She'd wiped away the lipstick once she'd smudged it leaving a dozen kissed marks up the length of Sherlock's thighs and hips, and now her lips are pretty but plain – the rest of her make-up, as one might expect, is quite carefully in place.
“Well, you don't help,” Sherlock complains in a light tone. Irene frowns, pressing her lips together, and she glances down at him.
“Don't I?”
“No, not at all,” Sherlock replies. “It does give me something of a boost in esteem when you take so many photographs of me.” Irene laughs, and she tangles her fingers in Sherlock's hair, giving him something wonderful to lean into.
“Oh, all these sins, Sherlock,” Irene murmurs, tone full of a threatening affection. “Pride, wrath, sloth… And lust, of course. What do you think we should do about those?”
“Perhaps I might make them up to you,” Sherlock says lightly, and he draws away from her hand, leaning over to deliver a kiss to the inside of her knee before slowly, slowly, kissing a little higher, and then a little higher--
“Mmm,” Irene hums, amused. “That sounds like just the ticket.”
Sherlock looks up at her from between her thighs, and they share a significant look – short, yes, but nonetheless significant. He doesn't love her, or at least, he doesn't think so; at the very least, he doesn't love her like John loves Mary, and he's not sure he'd want to if he could.
But he certainly likes her, and he knows it's mutual.