Sherlock remained in his chair for quite some time, as the chips on the coffee table grew cold and the room darkened around him. He berated himself for getting caught up in the moment, for allowing his emotions to overwhelm him. He was a little confused, though. He wasn't sure why Molly had been frightened off when she realised he desired her. In fact, he had been quite overwhelmed by the depth of his feelings as well. It was something with which he was completely unfamiliar, this feeling of wanting to be with her physically. He'd never before felt so out of his element, slave to his body's primitive needs, and the idea was rather unsettling. He supposed it was too soon to expect Molly to be ready for another sexual relationship, having just come out of her last one. It was strange, the way she had acted as if she had never been with a man, though. It wasn't as if he was planning to seduce her. God only knew these feelings were so new that he didn't know what to do with them either.

He reflected further. Perhaps she was afraid that he didn't know his own mind and was just wishing to explore this new aspect with her, and that once he had finished experimenting with her, he would leave her. That had to be it, he reasoned to himself. She just didn't want to be hurt again. He blew out a breath and stood, taking the uneaten chips to the rubbish bin, no longer feeling in the slightest hungry. He had more important things to do than eat. He needed to have a plan. He was going to have to woo Molly Hooper.

The following day, Sherlock went out and bought a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates. Wasn't that the sort of thing a person did when trying to woo a woman? He sincerely hoped so.

He checked with the hospital to find out when Molly's shift ended, and he left his flat in order to arrive at the hospital just before she was due to finish. He hid in a small alcove, the way he had done years earlier, before presenting himself to her for the first time upon his return to London.

He watched as she walked straight to her locker and opened the door to put away her lab coat and pick up her handbag as she always did. This time, instead of standing so that she could see an image of his face in the mirror, he held the flowers there instead. He heard her little gasp of surprise as she undoubtedly saw them and the sound of the locker door closing, then he lowered the flowers to look at her.

"Sherlock! What are you doing here?" she questioned. Her tone of voice held anxiety and was it - fear?

He looked at her face, noticing the shadows under her eyes and the tight set to her lips. She looked as if she had not slept the night before. She stood uncertainly as if ready to flee again.

He held up the flowers to her and the box of chocolates in his other hand, but she just looked at them and crossed her arms in front of herself defensively.

He drew in a deep breath. "Molly, I am sorry. Forgive me." Unconsciously he repeated the same words he had used at the Christmas party.

She looked down then, biting her lip and he saw a stray tear making its way down her face. "I'm sorry too, Sherlock. Things were moving too fast. We went from being good friends, to casual acquaintances, to a budding relationship and then all of a sudden I felt trapped. I'm not ready for a sexual relationship with you." She lifted her eyes to his, and he could see her hands were trembling in front of her as she had unfolded her arms to instead twist her fingers together nervously.

"Molly, I didn't mean…I wasn't planning to…" Desperately, he searched for the right words. "You have to know, I wasn't planning on seducing you. God knows, I've never even been with a woman. I didn't even know I was capable of feeling what you make me feel."

She exhaled slowly, dropping her arms to her sides. "I think we need to have a talk. There are some things you need to know about me too." Her voice sounded resigned and he wondered what he could've possibly missed, in regard to her.

He lowered the roses and chocolates slowly to his sides and searched her face. "Whatever it is, I want to work at this, Molly. I don't want to lose you this way. Is there somewhere we can go to talk?"

"I think…I think you should come to my place. There's something I want to show you." Now she looked nervous and he wondered again what she had been hiding from him.

"All right then," he agreed calmly, although his stomach felt as if it were in knots. He gave her a searching look. "Do you want to do this now?"

Her hair was in a side braid, and she reached with one hand to twirl the end of it, then nodded. "Yes."

He gave her a lopsided grin. "Will you at least take the flowers from me so I don't look like a complete idiot going back downstairs with them?" He held the roses towards her once again.

This time she took them with a smile of her own and a quick glance at his other hand. "Are those Ferrero Rochér chocolates?"

He held out his other hand and offered them to her. "Indeed they are. They're yours, if you want them."

She took the proffered chocolates and gave him a wider smile this time. "Actually, they're one of my favourite kinds of chocolate. I love hazelnut chocolate."

Molly likes hazelnut chocolate. Sherlock filed the information into his mind palace 'Molly likes/dislikes' room.

He would have liked to walk with his arm around her shoulders, but instead he allowed her to precede him and they left the hospital together.

Sherlock hailed a taxi and soon they were on their way to Molly's flat. They sat in rather awkward silence for the ride, and Sherlock noticed that Molly was chewing on her lip again, apparently nervous.

He held the flowers for her as she unlocked her flat and they went inside. Before doing anything else, Molly walked to the kitchen sink and withdrew a vase from beneath it, filling it with water and then placing the roses inside it. She then set the roses onto her kitchen table.

Sherlock stood watching her at her task until she asked him to sit, which he did, leaning with his elbows on the table and his hands steepled as if in concentration. Molly looked over at him. "Thank you for the flowers," she said warmly and he smiled.

"You're welcome, Molly. I'm glad you like them. Iv'e never bought flowers for a woman before, but it seemed like the type of thing a romantic suitor would do."

She blushed slightly. "Are you a romantic suitor then?"

"I would like to be, if you will allow it," he told her honestly.

She let out a deep breath. "Before you make any concrete decisions on whether this is what you really want, I need to get something," she told him and walked to her bedroom.

Sherlock waited for her to return, which she did a couple minutes later. She was holding something in her hand. She walked to him and set the object onto the table in front of him, as he dropped his hands and gazed at it in bewilderment. It looked to be a sterling silver wedding band.

He looked from the ring to her face questioningly "What's going on, Molly? Have you been secretly married all this time and been hiding the fact?" Even as he said the words he knew that didn't make sense, but he didn't know what else it could mean.

Molly let out a short huff of laughter. "It's not a wedding ring, Sherlock. It's a purity ring." She looked at him expectantly.

Sherlock ran his hands through his hair and looked down at the ring again, picking it up and examining it. "What exactly is a purity ring?" He looked back at Molly who had pulled a chair closer to him and seated herself upon it.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she looked directly into Sherlock's eyes. "A purity ring symbolises that you wish to abstain from sex until you are married."

Sherlock blinked in surprise, touching the smooth metal of the ring. He raised a brow at her. "And this is your ring?"

She nodded. "Yes, my dad gave it to me as a gift for my sixteenth birthday. I was brought up in the church, and my parents knew that it was something I wanted to do, to follow the Bible's teaching on it." She looked down for a moment, as if remembering the day she had been given the ring, then looked back up at Sherlock. "I wore the ring for a year or two. I'm ashamed to say, I eventually put it away because people didn't seem to understand the symbolism of it, or they looked down on me."

He stared at her. "Why would people look down on you for having a different moral standard than they did?"

She shrugged helplessly. "People can be cruel. These days most people go from sexual partner to partner without thinking of the consequences or even caring about them. If a girl gets pregnant, she simply has an abortion if she doesn't feel ready to be a mother. A lot of people don't understand why anyone would want to be married before they shared their body with someone else."

Sherlock nodded his understanding. Even in his uni days, his roommates had frequently had different sex partners, and talked about their sexual exploits. Closer to home, he knew that John and Mary had obviously been intimate before they were married, seeing as Mary was pregnant already on the wedding day, and even before Mary, John spent nights with previous girlfriends as well as occasionally bringing one back to the flat. Even Janine had wanted more than he had been prepared to give her. Then Sherlock suddenly remembered Molly's words to him a month before John's stag night, when she had said she and Tom were having quite a lot of sex, whatever that meant.

He set the ring onto the table, then gave her a questioning look. "What about your former fiancé? I recall you telling me quite clearly that you and he were having quite a lot of sex."

Molly's face flamed with embarrassment and she dropped her gaze to look at the ring that now lay between them. She swallowed. "I…well, I might have exaggerated a bit on that front." Her hand reached out to take the ring but he put his own hand over hers, and she looked back up at him.

"Do you mean to say that you were never intimate with Tom, in fact, that you've never been intimate with anyone?" He heard the disbelief in his own voice. This was certainly not something he had been expecting.

She looked back at him. "It's true, Sherlock. That's why I had to leave yesterday. I was afraid of you, and of myself. Keeping to my values wasn't a problem when I was with Tom. Like I told you, I loved him, but it was a comfortable feeling, not this overwhelming-," she hesitated, closing her eyes briefly then opening them again, "passion that I feel for you. When I'm around you I feel the way my body responds to you, and I'm afraid that if I'm around you too much I won't want to wait to be married." She gave him a pained smile. "I was kind of hoping that you would be the one to make sure things didn't get out of hand between us, and yesterday..." her voice trailed off and he finished for her.

"And yesterday, you discovered that my body reacts to yours physically as well. I'm sorry Molly, I wasn't expecting that to happen either." He gazed into her eyes and laid a hand over hers. "If it makes you feel any better, this, what we have between us, it's not a fling for me. You are the only woman I've ever wanted to give myself to completely, and I know that is because I'm in love with you. I want to be with you Molly, I want it all." He couldn't stop the note of passion that crept into his voice. "I know it's too early to be talking about marriage when we've barely kissed, but that is the endgame for me. I don't want to lose you – ever. And I want you to know that I am committed to you."

Molly lifted her free hand to brush away a tear. "So you're not cross with me for running away from you yesterday?"

He chuckled. Suddenly he felt happier than he had felt in a long time. "Well, I did waste a perfectly decent portion of chips I had bought for our dinner, so next time you're buying."

Molly's lips twitched in amusement at that. "Fair enough."

He looked into her fathomless eyes. "Molly, may I ask what your endgame is with me?"

Her other hand came over his. "I love you Sherlock. I don't want to ever lose you either."

He smiled at her. "Then I think we're on the same page. Why don't you put that ring back on now? I promise you, one day I'm going to replace it with a gold one."

The smile she gave him made him catch his breath. "Will you do the honours?" she asked him softly, picking up the ring in her right hand and offering it to him, while extending her left hand towards him.

Sherlock took the ring and placed it on her ring finger, and even as he did so, he felt a surge of emotion flood through him. He suddenly realised he couldn't wait to replace it with a wedding band that would pronounce to all that she was his and he was hers.

After he placed the ring on her finger, he stood and pulled Molly up. The kiss they exchanged this time was sweet and reverent, a kiss that held a promise of things to come.

Over the next month, he learned everything he could about Molly's beliefs. She was passionate about them, and he was willing to listen to her, because he loved her. It didn't take long until she showed him by her simple faith in what she believed, the truth there was to be found in God and His creation and the love He had shown to the world by sending His Son as a sacrifice for man's sin.

And when Molly read the following verses to him, Sherlock believed.

Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

A few days after that, Molly was at Baker Street. They spent most evenings together and alternated between addresses.

They were sitting on the sofa and Molly's left hand was in Sherlock's right hand when he suddenly said, fingering the band on her finger, "Molly, I think it's time to take off that ring."

She looked at him a little apprehensively. Things had been getting rather passionate between them at times, and he had found himself on occasion caressing her breasts through her blouse, despite himself and his honourable intentions. From the little noises she made when he did so, he knew she was similarly affected by her desire for him, but he continued to keep an iron grip on those desires, not allowing them to overwhelm him. She bit her lip and asked hesitantly, "Why?"

His eyes widened at her tone and he rushed to reassure her, "I'm not planning to seduce you, sweetheart. I just want to replace the ring with something else if you're ready for it."

Keeping hold of her hand, he dug in his trouser pocket with his other one and extracted the diamond engagement ring he had purchased a few days earlier. It was time express the words he had been longing to say and hoped she had been longing to hear as well.

"Molly, as you know, I'm not a young teenager with time on my hands to be a long-term boyfriend to you. I know what I want, and what I want is this, to be with you for the rest of our lives and love you in the way you deserve. Will you exchange your current ring for this ring of promise? Will you marry me, Molly?"

Tears sprang to her eyes and her lips trembled as she responded. "It's all I've ever wanted, Sherlock, to be yours and to love you in the way you deserve as well. You know that my answer is yes."

She smiled through her tears and he gently pulled off the purity ring and replaced it with the engagement ring that showed his commitment to her. And then he kissed his new fiancée, as his own tears of joy mingled with hers.

And on their wedding day, two months later, it was a celebration not only of their love, but of the new life Sherlock had received when he committed himself to the Lord.

That night, as they consummated their love for the first time, Sherlock knew he was the most blessed of all men, with not only a God who loved him, but a wife who also loved him. Both offered a love that was undeserved, and yet it was freely given, and all he had needed to do was accept it.

Sherlock held his bride in his arms, feeling the softness of Molly's skin beneath his hands, and her body sweetly curled against his own. He kissed her hair. "I love you Molly, always," he whispered. His heart swelled with the love and adoration he felt for her.

She gave a sigh of contentment and pulled her body even closer to his. She lifted her face and he turned his head so they could kiss, and their lips clung together for several seconds, before she responded with, "And forever, my love."

Author's note: Yep, the purity ring makes another appearance. Yes, I know, I am ridiculously romantic when it comes to writing for these two. I just can't help it. The more happy endings and weddings I can give them, the better :)

If you are an unmarried Christian who wishes to remain pure for their wedding night, you should not feel ashamed. Yes, you may experience embarrassment and teasing by others, but stand firm for what you believe. I hope that my stories can be an encouragement to you. People should be respectful of what others believe, even if they do not adhere to the same values.

If you enjoyed this, you know how to feed my creativity.