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up and down my spine. He lifted his head.
    "I assure you, I most definitely had intended that," he breathed, his face flushed and his eyes sparkling. "With your permission, there is something I want from you, and I should like it to last a very long time."
    Taking this for an ill-timed although entirely justified gibe at my lack of stamina, I felt myself flush and made to pull away from him in embarrassment. He caught my arm.
    "You misunderstand me," his face displayed his annoyance with himself, mingled with a look of what, on another man, I should have called desperation. "There is a particular act that I have desired from you, I might almost say that I have obsessed over it for many months now, and if it should happen that I have only this memory to draw from then it must be this. If you would oblige me then I would venture to suggest that it will be more pleasurable for you if the immediate sense of urgency is gone and you are more at leisure to enjoy the physical sensations."
    He was still being far too articulate for a man whose erection I could feel against my hip through several layers of clothing.
    "Holmes, I will gladly do anything you ask of me," I said softly, unbuttoning his shirt and laying him bare from the base of his throat to the base of his stomach. "But why are you speaking as though you will have only this encounter to remember?"
    He shrugged elegantly, managing to communicate airy uncertainty while not incidentally removing his dressing-gown and shirt.
    "One never knows," he mused casually. "A sudden change of heart or circumstances, a sense of guilt or disgust for perverse desires..."
    Loosening his trousers, I interrupted him firmly.
    "Please stop speaking this instant. I do not know which of your former lovers seduced you and then had an immediate change of heart, but he was clearly either an unfeeling villain or a madman. Please grant me the bare minimum of courtesy by allowing that I am neither."
    However I was no longer certain that he was listening to me, as he had taken over the task of undressing himself and soon stood before me completely naked.
    "I wish for you to bugger me," he declared bluntly, a wild light in his eyes. "It is something I have wanted for a very long time and, not being a selfish sort of fellow, I daresay that you also will derive some enjoyment from the act."
    "Good God," I breathed, drawing him to me for a gentle kiss and allowing my hands to roam over his flawless form. I had seen him undressed before now, but this was the first occasion where I did not have to deliberately turn my gaze away for fear he would see the latent desire behind my regard. It was also the first occasion where I was permitted not just to look, but to actually touch all that smooth, pale skin and I clasped him to me greedily, trying to caress every part of him simultaneously.
    All too soon he broke away.
    "Is that a yes?" he demanded.
    I cupped his buttocks in my hands, enjoying his inability to prevent his slight shiver and the way his eyelids fluttered.
    "It is a whole-hearted and unreserved yes, a thousand times yes," I vowed. "But, dearest, I am afraid that you will need to give me a few minutes. Despite my earlier haste, I am not actually an adolescent."
    The endearment had brought a small smile to one corner of his mouth that I found quite ridiculously enchanting.
    "As long as you wish," he said fervently, before efficiently stripping me of the rest of my clothes and pulling me down onto his bed.
    A long interval followed, of sensual, drugging kisses, a slow exploration of each others' bodies, and discoveries. I found that Holmes's hair was as soft as I had always hoped it would be, and that if disarranged while damp it had a tendency to curl slightly at the ends. I found that he did not like his ears being touched overmuch, but that he had extraordinarily sensitive nipples for a man. It had never been an area of particular interest for me, but when I gently applied suction to the small points