Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Time stretched between them like pulled taffy. Darcy's features transformed—the polite surprise melting into something sharper, more primal. He breathed in once through his nose, a deliberate inhale, and went absolutely still.
"Elizabeth." Her name came out cracked, weathered by some internal struggle.
His fingers pressed harder into her arms. "Get back to your room.
Now." The command should have sent her running, would have, if he'd actually let go.
Elizabeth's mind fumbled for words when it struck—his scent, absent one heartbeat and overwhelming the next. Alpha. His essence filling her lungs.
Nothing else had been right all evening, but this—this was everything correct in the world.
Complete. Vital. She tilted forward, helpless against the pull, filling herself with him.
Darcy's breath hitched sharply. He moved her backward, hands falling away as if she'd become molten.
"No. Elizabeth, go. You have to go now." The last words barely held together, fracturing with urgency.
"I can't—the smell—I don't understand—"
Elizabeth's thoughts scattered before she could catch them, language abandoning her when she needed it most. Everything her body did, everything it wanted, defied twenty years of understanding herself.
Her tongue refused to form proper sentences and meanwhile Darcy's expression shifted, understanding breaking across his features like dawn over a battlefield.
"You're presenting. You're an omega."
She rejected it with a sharp shake of her head. "I'm a beta. Always have been."
"No—Christ, Elizabeth—" He cut himself off, jaw working as he fought for control.
His hands tightened on her arms, then released as if burned.
"I can smell—you're in heat. You're presenting.
" He took a step back, then another, but she followed, drawn by something she didn't understand.
"Get away from me. Now. Go back to your room before—"
The urgency in his words cut short as Elizabeth's knees gave way.
He caught her—no choice in it, she was already falling—and the contact ripped gasps from them both.
His arms around her answered some fundamental question her body had been screaming.
This. Yes. The only correct thing in hours of wrongness.
She pressed closer, seeking more of that perfect rightness, while he stood frozen.
"Let go." The command came out destroyed. "Elizabeth, you have to let go."
But she couldn't. His arms around her answered every wrong thing about the evening, made sense of the chaos. Necessary—that's what his embrace felt like. The missing piece that made everything align.
"Please—what is happening—Darcy, please—"
"Damn it." His control shattered for just a moment, his face dropping to her hair, breathing her in with a shudder that ran through his entire frame. Then he wrenched himself back, features twisted in something close to agony. "You don't understand what you're—if someone found us—"
He cut himself off—suddenly she was in his arms, her feet leaving the ground entirely. "Christ. Christ, what am I—" The words came out fractured as he strode down the corridor.
A door, his door—she knew from how his dark chocolate and autumn leaves grew dense enough to taste. He shouldered through, kicked it shut, and dropped her like she was on fire. The distance he put between them happened so fast she nearly fell again.
"Fuck." The profanity escaped before he could catch it. He stood with his back pressed to the door, chest heaving, staring at her like she was both salvation and damnation. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
He looked around his own bedchamber as if seeing it for the first time. Horror dawned across his features.
"I just—I brought you to my—" He dragged both hands through his hair, destroying whatever order it had possessed. "This is worse. This is so much worse. Your scent is going to be everywhere. In my rooms. God help me, what have I done?"
Her body moved without permission, drawn toward him by invisible threads that pulled at every nerve. Elizabeth had prided herself on independence, on clear thinking, yet here she stood—swaying like a drunk toward Fitzwilliam Darcy. He was the answer to a question she hadn't known to ask.
"Please," she heard herself whisper, horrified at the naked need in her own voice.
He stumbled backward, couldn't as he was already at the door, and his hands flew up between them. "Don't. Elizabeth, you don't know what you're asking." His words came out strangled, each one seemingly dragged from him. "You're not in your right mind."
Lies. She'd never felt more certain of anything—though what that anything was remained frustratingly beyond reach. "Make it stop." The plea tore from her throat, pride be damned. "Whatever this is. Please make it stop."
She watched him swallow hard, his carefully constructed walls crumbling as he stared at her with something between hunger and horror.
She watched something fundamental fracture behind his eyes—that iron indifference finally, finally breaking.
"Forgive me," he breathed, already moving.
His hands found her face between one heartbeat and the next, fingertips against her temples, thumbs brushing her cheekbones with reverent desperation. The first touch of his mouth to hers felt like coming home after being lost for years.
Elizabeth heard herself make a sound—relief, recognition, raw need—and fell into him completely.
Every careful wall she'd built since Hunsford crumbled at the press of his lips, the heat of his palms against her skin.
Her body knew his instantly, fundamentally, singing yes yes yes as she rose on her toes to meet him.
He groaned into her mouth—a broken, beautiful sound that she felt in her bones.
The kiss broke with violent suddenness. Darcy tore himself away, stumbling backward until his shoulders hit the door with a dull thud. "Forgive me. Christ, forgive me. I should not have—that was unpardonable—"
But already the brief relief was fading, that moment of rightness slipping through her fingers like water.
The heat returned with vengeance, crawling beneath her skin, setting every nerve ablaze.
Her wrapper had come loose—when had that happened?
—and the cool air against her throat didn't alleviate the heat, only prickled her skin because it wasn't Darcy.
Elizabeth didn't think. Couldn't think. Her body moved of its own accord, crossing the space between them in three unsteady steps. She reached for him, arms winding around his neck, pulling herself up against him. Her mouth sought his with desperation.
"Please." The word came out broken against his jaw when he turned his face away. "Darcy, please. I need—I don't know what I need but it's you. Please."
Her fingers tangled in his shirt, pulling at the fabric, trying to eliminate any distance between them. She pressed closer, closer, her body knowing what her mind couldn't grasp. The shame of begging barely registered against the overwhelming wrongness of not touching him.
His hands caught her wrists—gentle but inexorable—holding her away even as she strained forward. The denial ripped a sound from her throat that she'd never made before, raw and wounded.
"Elizabeth, stop. Listen to me."
The command in his voice cut through the haze, that particular alpha tone that reached past the chaos in her mind and demanded obedience.
She stilled, though her body shook like a leaf in a storm.
Another whimper escaped—she couldn't help it, couldn't stop the pleading noise that rose from her chest.
"I can help you." His voice had gone rough, each word seeming to cost him. His thumbs brushed over her pulse points where he held her wrists, and even that small touch sent sparks through her. "I can ease this. But you must trust me. Can you do that?"
Elizabeth nodded frantically, words beyond her.
Yes. Anything. Whatever would make this terrible need stop, whatever would bring back that perfect rightness she'd felt in his arms. She'd argue later, think later, be mortified later.
Now there was only the burning and the certainty that he could fix it.
His hands released her wrists only to frame her face again, tilting it up to study her with an intensity that should have frightened her.
Dark chocolate and autumn filled her lungs with each shallow breath.
His pupils had blown wide, leaving only a rim of dark brown, and she could see him fighting for control with every heartbeat.
"This isn't—" He stopped, jaw working. Started again.
"Elizabeth, you don't understand what's happening to your body.
You're presenting as an omega. Late, which is why it's so severe.
Your body is preparing for—" Another stop.
She watched him struggle with words, this man who always knew what to say. "You're in heat. Your first heat."
The words should have meant something. Should have sparked proper horror, denial, something beyond the singular focus on getting closer to him. But her mind couldn't hold the thought, not when he was so close and yet not close enough.
"I'm going to help you," he said, and his voice had gone so gentle it made her chest ache with something beyond the physical torment. "But Elizabeth— what I'm about to do—you must know I would never, if there were any other way—"
She pulled against his hold, seeking his mouth again, and he made a sound that might have been her name or might have been a prayer.
"You need to tell me if you want me to stop. Do you understand?"
Elizabeth tried to form the word—yes—but it emerged as a desperate whimper that made him flinch.
She trusted him. Had trusted him since reading his letter at Hunsford, since learning what he'd done for Lydia, tracking Wickham through London's underbelly and paying four thousand pounds to save her family.
The man who'd done that would never harm her.
But words had abandoned her entirely, leaving only the frantic nod of her head.
Darcy's hands guided her toward the bed, each touch careful despite the tension radiating from him in waves.
The mattress met the backs of her knees and she sat, obedient to his gentle pressure.
Then he did something unexpected—he knelt before her, bringing himself to her eye level.
The position sparked anxiety, creating distance when every cell in her body screamed for closeness.
He must have seen her distress because he offered his wrist, bringing it near her face.
Elizabeth didn't think—she pressed her cheek against the pulse point, rubbing like a cat seeking comfort.
His scent flooded her senses from this proximity, that dark chocolate and autumn combination making her dizzy with need.
"You smell so good." The words escaped without permission, raw and honest.
Darcy's eyes closed briefly, his features twisting with something that looked like pain. When he spoke, his voice had gone carefully clinical, as if reciting from a medical text.
"That's the heat. Your omega instincts responding to an alpha's scent."
His hands moved to her wrapper, but Elizabeth didn't wait. She tore at the fabric herself, fingers clumsy with urgency. Everything felt too hot, too tight, too much. She needed it off, needed his hands on her burning skin, needed something she couldn't name but knew only he could provide.
Darcy helped despite his obvious struggle for control, his breathing gone ragged as he eased the wrapper from her shoulders. The thin nightgown beneath offered little coverage—practically translucent in the firelight from the grate. She watched his throat work as he swallowed hard.
"You should rethink this. We shouldn't—"The words came out rough, torn from somewhere deep.
But Elizabeth was already grabbing his shirt, fisting the fine linen to pull him closer. The distance between them felt like agony.
"Don't stop." Pride had burned away completely, leaving only desperate need. "Please don't stop."
She'd beg if she must. She didn't care anymore.
"Lie back."