Maybe you should of made it a hard limit. I did and cheeze!!!! am I glad about that.
Joking aside: It really depends whether he wants you to hold back during sex/while being teased or whether you're talking about denial for a prolonged time, like days or weeks.
The breathing thing works for me too, although I'm still quite a failure at holding back. The denial thingy we don't do. After all, orgasms are meant to be had.
There's also a whole website called orgasmdenial.com.