Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Shall I bring up luncheon, sir?" Mrs. Carroll's voice carried through the door, carefully neutral.
"No." Darcy's voice held remarkable steadiness for a man currently spreading Elizabeth's thighs wider to watch his essence drip from her. "Send dinner when it's ready."
"Very good, sir."
Footsteps retreated. Darcy withdrew his fingers slowly, making Elizabeth whimper at the loss. He turned her onto her back, and she slid boneless from the bed onto her knees, needing to touch him as desperately as he'd needed to touch her.
His member jutted from his open breeches, still hard, wet with his release, glistening with their combined fluids. Elizabeth wrapped her fingers around him, marveling at the heat, the weight of him in her palm. Above her, Darcy's breath caught, his hands tangling in her loosened hair.
"Taste yourself," he growled.
Leaning forward, Elizabeth let her tongue glide along him, learning the taste of their joining—brine and warmth and something indefinably theirs. She heard Darcy's restraint fracture, felt his fingers curl into her hair, caught in that space between guidance and desperation.
"Christ," he managed through a locked jaw. "Your mouth—"
She welcomed him deeper, her curious fingers mapping the pronounced swell of his knot, still engorged and burning from his release.
The feel of it—textured and alive beneath her palm—enthralled her.
His body betrayed him with a forward thrust before he wrestled back control, the sound in his chest more animal than man.
"Careful," he cautioned, his register dropping into territory she'd never heard. He stilled her with his grip, visibly warring with himself. "You don't know what you're playing with."
Except she understood perfectly. The evidence lived in his quaking muscles, in the untamed thing rising behind his eyes. Her unpracticed mouth had reduced this commanding alpha to this. Elizabeth increased the suction, claimed more of him, and bore witness to his dissolution.
Every pretense of civility fractured. His grip turned commanding, directing her movements while profanities tumbled free—language she'd never suspected the proper Mr. Darcy possessed.
"Perfect little omega mouth," he ground out. "Taking me so fucking well—"
The chamber filled with sounds no lady should make—small, strangled noises when she attempted too much, the wet glide of her tongue mapping unfamiliar territory, those helpless, stifled cries that hummed through her whenever his fingers twisted deeper into her hair.
She withdrew once to catch her breath, moisture still linking them, but his hand brought her back before her lungs could fill—her reddened, glistening mouth proving more temptation than his control could withstand.
These noises escaping her would have brought burning shame mere hours before. They merely fed the growing wildness in his eyes.
His knot pressed against her lips, too large to take, and Elizabeth whimpered her frustration. She wanted all of him, wanted to swallow him down until nothing separated them. Her tongue traced the swollen ridge, learning its shape while Darcy's entire body went rigid above her.
"Enough." He pulled her up roughly, crushing his mouth to hers.
She tasted herself on his tongue as he'd tasted himself on hers—their flavors mingling until she couldn't distinguish where one ended and the other began.
His hands worked at her stays, cursing when the laces tangled.
Something ripped—definitely hers this time—and cool air kissed her heated skin.
"Bed," he commanded, though he was already lifting her, carrying her the three steps necessary. The torn remnants of her wedding dress pooled forgotten on the floor. He stripped his own clothing with violent efficiency, buttons scattering across the carpet.
Skin. His against hers. Nothing between them.
Elizabeth bit back a sob—relief, recognition, rightness all tangled together.
He lowered himself onto her and the world narrowed to this: his weight driving her deep into the blankets, his mouth at her throat, the careful graze of teeth where her blood beat wildest, testing, tasting, claiming without breaking skin.
"Now?" she breathed, tilting her head to bare more skin. "Will you mark me now?"
His answering growl vibrated through her bones.
A whine tore from her when he only rubbed his lips against her throat. "What must I do to have it?"
"Everything." He pulled back to study her face, his eyes black with want but sharp with control. "You must beg prettily. Tell me exactly what you need."
Elizabeth's breath caught. Even now, even naked beneath him with her thighs still wet from their joining, he would make her work for it. Make her earn it.
"Please," she began, but he shook his head.
"Specific, Mrs. Darcy. I would hear my wife speak plainly."
Heat flooded her cheeks—not from shame but from the way he said wife, like it was another word for mine. She squirmed beneath him, trying to find friction, but he held himself just out of reach.
"I need your teeth," she managed. "In my throat. Your mark where everyone can see."
"Better." He lowered his head, lips brushing where he would bite, but not yet, not yet. "And?"
"Your knot," she whispered, then louder when his stillness demanded it. "I need your knot locked inside me when you do it. Need to be full of you, claimed completely—"
He thrust into her mid-sentence, swallowing her cry with his mouth. This coupling was different from the first—slower, deeper, his hips rolling in a rhythm designed to drive her toward madness. Each stroke dragged against places inside her that made her vision white out at the edges.
"When I bite you here"—she realized his hand was on her throat when his thumb pressed against her—"you become mine in ways that transcend law or church. Your body will recognize no other alpha. Your heats will call only to me."
"Yes," she gasped.
"You'll carry my scent in your skin always. Other alphas will smell me on you from across a ballroom." He nipped at her lips. "They will know you are thoroughly claimed, thoroughly fucked, thoroughly mine."
The crude word should have shocked her. Instead, it made her hips roll desperately against him.
"Is that what you want?" His voice dropped to that commanding register that made her insides clench. "To walk into London society reeking of my spend? To have every alpha know I've had you on your back, on your knees, taking everything I give?"
Elizabeth's nails raked down his shoulders. "Yes—heavens, yes—"
"They'll know the way you drip for me." Each word came punctuated by a harder thrust. "The way your body cries out for mine alone. That I've spoiled you for any other's hands."
The first press of his swelling knot made her entrance flutter. Greedy, her body was so greedy for it, clenching to take him deeper—but panic bloomed sudden and bright beneath her desire.
"Please," the word broke from her on a sob, fingers tangling in his hair to hold him close, as though she could bodily prevent his retreat. "Please don't—don't leave me empty again. I couldn't survive—"
"Never." The word came out guttural, his hand cradling her face even as his hips snapped forward. "Look at me, Elizabeth. Look at me."
She forced her eyes open, meeting his gaze through tears she hadn't realized were falling.
"I'm going to knot you." His thumb brushed away her tears even as his knot swelled larger. "I'm going to lock myself so deep inside you that you'll feel me for days. And then I'm going to bite this pretty throat until everyone in London knows exactly who you belong to."
A broken whimper escaped her. "Promise me—"
"Feel me," he commanded, pressing deeper, his knot stretching her entrance. "Feel how my body refuses to leave yours."
She felt the truth of it in her bones—that inevitable fullness her body received like salvation itself.
This time brought no abandonment, no cruel denial.
This time he moved inexorably forward, his stare locked on her expression with primal intensity as his knot swelled past the tight clutch of her entrance.
"That's it," he growled. "Take it. Take what you've been begging for since Netherfield."
The stretch burned exquisitely as his knot pushed past her entrance, locking them together. Elizabeth's back arched off the bed, a broken cry escaping her throat—part pleasure, part relief so profound it felt like coming home.
"Now," Darcy commanded, his control finally, finally shattering. "Now you're mine."
His teeth sank into her throat just as his knot swelled fully inside her.
The dual sensation—pain blazing into pleasure, fullness beyond bearing, and the profound rightness of finally, finally being claimed—sent Elizabeth tumbling over the edge with a scream that surely reached the servants' quarters.
The claiming bite held firm, his teeth working deeper as her body's response tightened around where they joined.
His hips rolled in tiny, desperate movements—all his knot would allow—and each shift dragged against places inside her that made stars burst behind her eyelids.
Such pain should have broken her—but it flowed through her blood as blessing, as rightness, as coming home.
His tongue traced tender paths across the wounds he made, and Elizabeth discovered knowledge buried in her very marrow, a truth that predated conscious thought, that existed before reason had a name.
Elizabeth's fingers found the back of his neck, holding him to her throat. "Don't stop—"
His teeth sank deeper, and Elizabeth came apart once more, her inner muscles gripping him with such force that his groan vibrated against her throat.
The rhythmic throb of his release filled her, his knot expanding beyond what seemed possible as he spent himself, and that fullness sent her tumbling through another climax that had her weeping against his shoulder.