"Step six. Succinate is oxidized by a molecule of FAD (Flavin adenine dinucleotide). The FAD removes two hydrogen atoms from the succinate and forces a double bond to form between the two carbon atoms, thus creating fumarate. Step 7. An enzyme adds water to the fumarate molecule to form malate. The malate is created by adding one hydrogen atom to a carbon atom and then adding a hydroxyl group to a carbon next to a terminal carbonyl group. In the final step, the malate molecule is oxidized by a NAD molecule. The carbon that carried the hydroxyl group is now converted into a carbonyl group. The end product isoxaloacetate which can then combine with acetyl-coenzyme A and begins the Krebs cycle all over again."
Molly was gone for three hours, and had been back for two hours, but Sherlock was still bound to his bed. She sat at the end of the bed, wearing a pretty sundress, hair still up, joyfully eating an enormous bowl of vanilla ice cream and blackberry cobbler while he explained the Krebs cycle. Before the Krebs cycle, it had been a detailed explanation of anaerobic respiration. Before that, acetal hydrolosis, enolate formation and myriad other organic chemical reactions. Of course these were mostly things she knew by heart, but she reacted to him talking about anything to do with science the way other women would respond to dirty talk.
He was bored and incredibly thirsty.
"Calvin cycle," she said as she licked the last remnants of ice cream from her spoon.
"Molly, I'll gladly continue but will you please get me a glass of water and maybe considering untying me? I fail to see how this is making anything up to me."
She responded with as hard smack on his thigh with her spoon. Then she left the room.
"Fuck," he sighed. Who knew how long she would be gone.
He focused on breathing. One hundred and five breaths later, she came back with a glass of water in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. She set both down on the bedside table and began unlocking his restraints. She rubbed his hands and ankles and helped him sit up. Every muscle in his body protested and he couldn't stop his arms and legs from shaking. She held the glass of water while he drank and took it away before he could drink enough to upset his stomach. She drank deeply from her own glass and reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up.
"What are you doing?"
"Take your shirt off."
"Really? Now? You're doing this now?"
"No, that's on hold for a few days."
She worked his shirt over his head and squeezed in behind him, her back against the headboard and her legs around him.
"Oh shit," she said and stretched over to rummage in her night stand. She found a small tube of lotion and settled in behind him again.
"You'll have to excuse the girly smell," she said, warming a bit of it in her hands. When she began working his muscles, he laughed.
"What's funny?"
"You," he said. "You're like a parent with Munchausen's by proxy, making me hurt and then making it all better."
She stopped and he tensed, but she soon resumed. He had never been touched in this way, so he didn't know if her technique was proper or even any good, but it did feel wonderful.
"People with Munchausen's need an audience, you know. I've uncovered more than one case of it over the years. Suspected it a few times more, but it's hard to prove."
"And you actually care?"
"Children are defenseless."
"Your brother wasn't."
"He wasn't your average child, was he?"
She continued to work the knots out of his shoulders and back, working her way down and up, using her fingers, palms and knuckles. When she leaned in close, he could feel her breath on his skin, which caused the hair on his arms to stand on end. Finally, she slid out from behind him and had him lean back against the headboard, bolstered by several pillows. She handed him the glass of water and finished her wine.
"Bottoms off," she said.
He was glad he'd finished the water, because he might have spit it out in shock.
"Excuse me?"
"Take your bottoms off. Pants, too."
"What are you going to do?"
"I told you I would make it up to you."
He sighed and lifted his hips, pushing his pyjama bottoms and pants down. She helped pull them the rest of the way off, then sat back on her heels, looking at him as though she'd never seen him naked before.
The knot in his stomach was not just a result of nerves.
He was partially erect already (he'd attributed it to the physiological effects of the massage) and she took him in hand. She started moving his foreskin back and forth over the head of his cock, very slowly, just using her thumb and index finger. He closed his eyes and inhaled. This was something he did on those occasions when he had to give into his body's demands, but he'd never had anyone else touch him this way, and it was entirely different. He was completely hard in her hand with just a few strokes. She ran her hand down the entire length a few times, then back up to the tip, which she brushed lightly with her thumb. He raised his hips reflexively and exhaled with a soft moan.
"Don't fight it, Sherlock. It'll be easier if you just let yourself go."
"Just get on with it."
"Darling, this is for your benefit. I mean, I do enjoy it but it's really all about you. I only have one rule. You may feel the need to touch my head, and that's fine. You can even pull my hair if you want. But do not, under any circumstances, exert any pressure on my head. Do you understand?"
He opened his eyes. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dark and through the haze of hormones rushing through his body she looked maddeningly beautiful. He simultaneously wished that she would stop what she was doing with her hand, and hoped feverishly that she would never stop.
"Understood," he said. "But I need you to do one thing."
"What's that?"
"Take down your hair."
A smug smile played across her lips before she set her face into more stern lines. "You didn't say please."
"I believe you said that this was all about me. Take down your hair."
She took the elastic out and let her hair fall around her shoulders, relinquishing that tiny bit of power to him. He wasn't so naïve about sex that he didn't understand that no matter how submissive this act could be on the surface, she was in complete control.
She leaned forward and placed both of her hands on his abdomen. Fingers splayed, she ran her hands up to his chest. She followed with her mouth, working back down his body. (How had he never thought about how exquisite it would be to feel hair trailing along his skin?)
When she reached his cock again, she gathered her hair so that it hung over her right shoulder. She placed one hand around the base, lowered her head, and after raising her eyes to give him one last scorching look, put her mouth on him.
Of the many things that Sherlock Holmes had denied himself in pursuit of a hyper-focused mind, this was the one he had heard talked about the most, from his school days to the present. He'd always scoffed at the way other men made such a big deal about it, and he wondered why women bothered with it at all.
That was before this woman who wasn't Molly Hooper wrapped her lips around his prick and sent every rational thought from his mind as surely as if she'd dropped a bomb there. She sucked softly on the head at first, and just as he thought he might be able to get ahold on himself, she swirled her tongue around it, between the tip and the part of his foreskin that wasn't completely retracted, and he unraveled. He buried his left hand in her hair while his right held onto the duvet in a death grip.
She took as much of him in as she could a few times, but mostly she concentrated on the first few inches, using her hands on the rest of his shaft and his bollocks. Every once in a while she would look up at him, never missing a beat.
He, on the other hand, thrust his hips erratically at every new sensation. This didn't go on long. Within minutes he felt the tightening in his stomach, his balls, his entire body.
"Molly, I'm almost—I'm going to-"
He expected her to pull away and finish him off by hand, but she squeezed his thigh reassuringly and kept going and then for a blissful few seconds his mind was blank and his body was nothing but bursts of pleasure and he couldn't really see but he could feel her taking it in and swallowing it all. Then one word exploded across his consciousness. Succubus. And he started to laugh at the absurdity and when he put his hand to his face it came back wet with tears.
As he lay gasping, she sat up and wiped her mouth. Her lips were swollen and red. He had a mad desire to kiss her so that he could taste himself on her. To gain back some of what she'd taken from him.
She settled in beside him. His skin was so sensitive that light touches were painful, but she seemed to understand this and threw one arm around him, exerting a constant pressure that was almost comforting.
He felt drowsy immediately (release of norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, nitric oxide and prolactin combined with changes in blood pressure due to arousal and release and thank God his brain seemed to be firing on at least half its cylinders again) and as he slipped into sleep he marked this particular side effect as another fantastic reason to avoid sexual encounters.
He woke up with a start, the light in the room suggesting he'd only slept a couple of hours. He was alone, still nude, but covered in light blanket. He pulled his pyjama bottoms back on and went downstairs, his legs shaky from the hours in bed.
Molly wasn't in the sitting room, but the noise and smells coming from the direction of the kitchen indicated her location.
He went to his chair and stopped in surprise. There was a violin case leaning against it, and a folded music stand and a sheaf of staff paper in the seat.
