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The UK's Most Wanted was sitting in her living room. Literally. He'd been on telly the night before, a short bit sandwiched between some celebrity's embarrassing photos and an in depth report on the pie-judging scandal that had been brewing within the Islington WI.
James Moriarty, wanted by Scotland Yard. Extremely dangerous.
She had known about Moriarty for weeks now. After their showdown at the pool, Sherlock had … explained, with his usual amount of tact. Maybe it was bad that seeing her Jim's face on the TV screen – they'd used his Barts ID photo for lack of a better one, she supposed – had given her more of a shock than coming home to the man himself lounging on her loveseat.
This man wasn't her Jim. Clad in a suit sharp enough to rival any of Sherlock's, one ankle propped on the opposite knee, casually stroking a purring Toby who'd set up on his lap, this Jim was every inch the Bond-style villain. Miles away from the dorky, shy Jim-from-IT who'd introduced himself on her blog and couldn't drink the canteen coffee without making a face.
(He'd been ever so smug when the canteen's coffee maker suffered an 'accident', come to think of it...)
Eyes fixed steadily on him, Molly hung up her purse, shrugged off her jacket, and toed off her shoes. Just like any day when she got home from work. But she was painfully aware that she was moving in cautious, deliberate motions, like a prey animal – something tiny and tasty – who'd sighted an alpha predator.
Almost on the heels of that thought, Molly scoffed. If Jim wanted to kill her, he'd had a thousand opportunities. And anyway, she didn't think she could stop him if that was his intention, so there really was no point in worrying about it.
Squaring her shoulders, she nodded towards her cat, "Toby really likes you, doesn't he?"
Jim's smirk widened into a vicious sort of grin. "Not going to scream, then?" he drawled. "Call the police? Call Sherlock?" He drew out the name with all the glee of a little boy pronouncing a rude word.
His accent was different. Molly tilted her head and studied him, wondering if she could see anything of the Jim she'd so briefly dated in this version.
"Sherlock prefers to text," she said.
"Ah." Jim clicked his tongue against his teeth, the sound loud in the abnormally still room. "That's why he never called."
"Right," Molly said shortly. "Nothing to do with the fact he thought you were hitting on him."
Well, so what if she was still bitter? Their entire relationship might have been a ploy to get Sherlock's attention, but Jim's little move with his phone number had still been tacky. She'd half a mind to tell him as much.
Sniffing haughtily, Molly headed for the kitchen.
"Where are you going?" Jim snapped. Sharp, short, but brittle at the backend, which bled off some of the implied threat.
"I need tea," Molly said, rubbing her shoulder as she ambled past him. "It's been a day."
Jim scratched Toby under his chin, eyes like black bullets following her.
Flicking on the kettle, Molly opened the cabinet to fetch two mugs. "Why are you here?"
"I came to see this fine fellow," Jim said. The cat's purrs intensified a notch. "I missed him."
Molly blinked one, two, three times. The kettle clicked off.
"You missed my cat," Molly repeated flatly.
Instead of answering, he picked Toby up and set him on the floor, oddly gently, more in line with Jim-from-IT than Dear-Jim-the-Consulting-Criminal.
"Actually," he said as he stood, brushing down his suit, which did absolutely nothing to dislodge the cat hair, "he's my cat."
All of Molly's prey-in-the-sight-of-a-predator instinct evaporated in an instant as her latent Mummy genes kicked in. "You are not taking my cat!" she shouted, fumbling through the nearest drawer for a weapon and coming up with a balloon whisk. "You stay away from him!"
"Now, now," Jim said soothingly, holding up his hands. "I'm not going to hurt him." He plucked his phone from his pocket and sauntered around the counter as he thumbed through the menus. Stopping a few feet from her, Jim's eyes flicked briefly towards the whisk Molly was clutching with both hands and brandishing menacingly, before he flipped the phone around and held it out.
The whisk fell from Molly's suddenly nerveless fingers, clattering loudly on the floor. She ignored it when Jim swept out his foot and kicked it away.
On the phone screen was a picture of what could only be a young Toby. The kitten was a bit floofier around the face, but the eyes and the markings were instantly recognizable. Molly's hands reached out automatically, and Jim passed over the phone. Fumbling, she swiped through the photos.
Baby Toby pouncing on a toy. Baby Toby asleep in a bowl of dry food. Baby Toby wearing a tiny crown and fur trimmed red cloak. Some dead guy lying in a pool of blood.
Molly made a face and swiped backwards. Then, a second later, swiped forward again and tilted her head as she studied the head wound in the photo.
"How did you even…?" Molly shook her head, "No, never mind I don't-"
"Xbox."
Frowning, Molly looked back at the photo, zooming in. "Ooooh," she said after a minute. "Wait. Why?"
Jim shrugged. "I'm a sore loser."
A chill raced up Molly's spine. She licked her lips, then licked them again when Jim's pupils dilated in response. "Right. Never playing Mario Kart with you, then."
"No?" Jim said, edging closer. "Think you'd win, do you?"
Molly didn't dignify that with a response, just lifted a saucy eyebrow at him.
For one long, stretched-out moment, Jim shifted his chin to the side, tilting his head as he flicked that razor sharp gaze of his over every inch of her. The tip of his tongue slipped out, sliding lazily along his lower lip. "Do you reeeeally?" he said, as if she'd answered.
She didn't see him pounce; he moved that fast. The next thing she knew, the phone in her hands was clattering on the floor, and she'd been flipped so she faced the counter, Jim pressing heavily against her back to keep her in place.
Molly shifted, testing how well he had her pinned. Good and properly, of course. She could barely move. Oh God, she was in trouble, wasn't she?
Jim's hand closed over hers, flattening it on the counter before she could move more than a centimeter towards the knife block. "If we're going to play those kind of games, Molly-bell," he purred into her ear, "we need to agree on a few things first."
"Just take the stupid fucking cat, okay?" she said, voice shrill with fear and That Other Thing she was absolutely not thinking about. It was mostly fear. Yes. Probably.
(Not really.)
"Now, dearest…" Jim's mouth brushed the lobe of her ear. Had his voice always reverberated in her bones like that?
The edge of the counter was pressing painfully into her belly, everything below her waist was on fire even her toes and her knees had lost all functioning and oh God she was in so much trouble.
"Is that any way to talk about our son?"
There was a long, pregnant pause.
"What the fuck? Are you talking about?" Molly gasped out, fighting to get the words through the tightness in her throat that was definitely not arousal. Because she definitely did not enjoy being pinned against her counter by the UK's Most Wanted. Nope. No way. She was, in fact, terrified.
(She was, in fact, a really awful liar.)
"You didn't really think you just happened to pick a shelter that just happened to have a cat I raised from a kitten, did you?" Jim said, nuzzling into the hollow behind her ear. "You do know what the Holmes boys say about coincidence…" His hands trailed the length of her arms, over her shoulder, brushing down her sides and against the swell of her breasts.
"St-stop!"
Jim stopped the instant the frantic exclamation left her lips, lifting his hands off of her body. He didn't, however, remove his body from her body, a move Molly didn't think to protest.
All of her insides had liquefied and pooled between her legs, soaking her knickers. The apex of her thighs throbbed in counterpoint to her pattering heart. Molly gasped raggedly, desperate to draw in air. While behind her, Jim breathed evenly, perfectly collected, except the bulge pressed against her bum told a different story.
"H-how could you have possibly arranged that?" she stuttered in a desperate bid to gain some control over a situation that was rapidly spinning the opposite direction. "I didn't even plan to go to the shelter that day."
Sherlock had said that Jim Moriarty was as smart as him, but he couldn't read minds. Could he?
"Well, I wasn't reading your mind," Jim said, walking his fingers up her bicep. He leaned back in, breath ghosting over her neck. Molly inhaled sharply and felt him smile in response. "I was having you followed. Obviously."
Except it wasn't really obvious, at least not to Molly. She didn't think he'd noticed her until she'd been stupid enough to write Sherlock's name in her blog. "Why?"
Jim's fingers faltered. "Why indeed?" he said, half to himself. A moment later, he recovered, trailing his mouth just a hair's breadth from her skin, from her shoulder to her jaw. He sniffed loudly, a low sound escaping his throat as he caught the faint hint of decomp that always clung to her after an autopsy.
"Molly, Molly, Molly… I knew you'd pick Junior as soon as you saw him. Not much risk there. He was always going to be the best option."
She stiffened. "His name his Toby."
Jim stiffened. "Actually, it's Jim Ju-"
"To-by," Molly pronounced through gritted teeth. "He lives in my house. I pick his name."
Jim growled, hips jerking against her. Molly made a sound, not quite a whimper and a far cry from a protest.
On the floor, Jim's phone started to play 'Stayin' Alive'.
There was a beat while Jim's hands gripped her shoulders, almost hard enough to hurt. Then he tore himself away, swept the phone up off the floor and shouted into it, "What?"
Molly sagged, shaking uncontrollably, not daring to turn around, much less try and bolt.
"Fine," Jim said after a moment. Now, Molly did roll around to face him, still supporting most of her weight against the cabinets. Jim tilted his head at her, eyes sweeping from head to toe. "Business before pleasure, I'm afraid," he drawled. "To be continued."
Molly met his gaze squarely when it returned to her face. She didn't mean to say … well anything, really. Provoking Dear Jim was a profoundly stupid prospect.
But the word slipped out of her mouth anyway, half flung at him like a challenge, "When?"
He hissed in a breath, touching his tongue to his upper lip. "Verrrry soon, Molly-my-bell."
One step, then two, and he was close enough that his heat washed over her. But he didn't let his body touch hers, not even the barest brush of his jacket against her jumper.
"In the meantime," Jim swept his face up to hers, stopping just short of taking her mouth with his, "take care of our boy."