The Adventure at Baskerville Hall & Other Cases

him engaged in a similar act with a certain portion of my anatomy, as he had no doubt intended. His lips met mine again in a soft interplay of tongues and breath as his hand closed around me again.
    I would like to say that this continued for some time before we leisurely moved on to other activities, as befits an experienced man of the world, but in truth it was only a matter of minutes before I became uncomfortably aware of two things. One was that I had been too weary and heartsick to attend to my physical needs over the past two weeks, and the second was a recollection that Sherlock Holmes was usually very talented at whatever he turned his deft hand to, and this was proving to be no exception. I was very conscious that I was in imminent danger of embarrassing myself. My grip shifted to his wrist.
    "Wait," I choked out.
    His hand stopped moving but his fingers continued to twist around the very tip of me in a way that was excruciatingly pleasurable, giving me conflicting urges to push up into his hand and shrink away against the wall to regain some distance and self-control.
    "Why?" he queried, sounding damnably cool and polite, and reinforcing my desperate wish to somehow calm myself. I took a deep breath.
    "Because," I gritted out, "I am rather close just now, and if you wish for this to last longer than– ah God–"
    His slick grip had tightened around me once more and, try as I might to claw at his wrist and hinder his movement, the man has sinews of steel. Consequently I am embarrassed to note that in the next instant, or so it seemed, I was spending myself into his hand and soaking my underclothes. I clenched my jaw against the pleasure that wracked me and twisted my face away, sick with shame and anger at my traitorous body for displaying all the self-restraint of an adolescent in his first passionate encounter. Gradually, I became conscious that Holmes had buried his face against the side of my head, murmuring things into my hair that I could not make out but rather hoped that I would be given another opportunity to, if my appalling lack of self-control had not entirely discouraged him from any further carnal activities with me. Clearing my throat, I tried to salvage what I could.
    "I am most terribly sorry, my dear fellow. I had not quite intended that–"
    His fingers over my mouth cut me off. His other hand was still caressing me gently as I softened, and I was trying desperately to control the final tremors of pleasure running 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