Chapter 9
NINE
Darcy stood before her, bare save for the flush blooming across his chest and the heat in his eyes. The crop still dangled from her fingers like a sceptre, and he was trembling from anticipation, not cold. His hand hesitated, then closed around himself.
She said nothing. And so, with eyes locked on hers, he began to stroke. Slowly. Reverently. As though he were praying with every movement.
He had never done this for anyone’s eyes but his own.
And now she watched, head tilted, eyes sharp and glittering with wicked delight, as if she were studying a thoroughbred she meant to ride into war.
Her gaze traced the lines of his body, lingered on the flutter of his stomach, the flex of his thighs.
His breath hitched. His hand sped up.
The sight of him flushed, panting, muscles taut with restraint, stirred something dark and delicious inside her. A coil of heat tightened low in her belly. Her thighs pressed together reflexively, desperate for friction. Her breath came short and sharp.
And yet, she didn’t move. She watched the way his chest rose and fell, the flex of his abdomen, the slick, steady rhythm of his hand. And God help her, she was soaked just from the sight of him. Her nipples hardened, aching beneath her dress. She bit her lip to keep from moaning aloud.
This wasn’t just arousal, it was power. And tenderness. And a craving so old it felt like part of her soul.
When she swatted his wrist with the crop, not harshly, just enough to make him freeze. His whole body jerked.
“Not so hasty, " she murmured, circling him slowly. “You will not spill without me saying so.”
Darcy let out a strangled sound, half shame, half pleasure. His free hand curled into a fist. He wanted to hide. He wanted to fall to his knees. He wanted her to never stop looking at him like that.
She moved behind him, the crop dragging along the ridge of his spine, up into his curls. He shivered at the touch, groaned softly.
“Such a specimen you are, Fitzwilliam… Perfect. Like a statue in some ruined temple.”
He groaned under her praise, trembling as her fingers slid through his hair.
“Lie down,” she whispered.
He obeyed, lowering himself into the moss and dappled light.
She straddled him, her dress rising, her body radiating heat.
“May I touch you?” he asked, breathless. “Elizabeth…”
“You may touch my breasts,” she said, barely containing her smile.
His hands flew to her chest, reverent, hungry. His mouth followed. Her hips moved in slow, sinuous circles against him, her pleasure building, but she would not let him have it yet.
She slid down his body with a wicked giggle, ignoring his whimper of protest. Her fingers skimmed over his thighs, tracing the trail from navel to cock. She took him in her hand. He looked down at her, utterly undone.
“I have always wanted to do this,” she murmured, tongue circling his belly button.
Then she licked him, just the tip.
He nearly came apart. “You… you cannot…”
“I cannot what, Mr Darcy?” she purred.
He groaned. “You cannot take ‘the bit’.”
“Do you wish to dictate what I may or may not do, Mr Darcy?”
“No, ma’am.” The words broke from him like prayer.
She took him in her mouth.
He cried out, clutching the grass.
She stopped just before it was over and stood. She hovered above him, skirts hitched up, thighs trembling, not from hesitation, but anticipation. His eyes met hers, wide and ardent. She could see it, his want, his willingness, the ache to please her. She felt it like lightning in her veins.
“Yes, Darcy, you may pleasure me now. And do not break before me.”
Darcy moaned into her, muffled and raw. His hands flew to her thighs, gripping with desperate reverence. But she set the pace rocking her hips forward, grinding against his mouth with slow, punishing intensity.
Elizabeth’s head tipped back, her fingers digging into his chest. She wasn’t coy or delicate; she rode his face with the wild precision of a woman reclaiming something stolen.
Each stroke of his tongue sent shockwaves through her spine. Each flick, each groan against her sent her higher. She leaned forward, bracing her hands against his body angling herself just right.
“God… yes, right there,” she gasped. “Do not stop.”
He couldn’t speak, but he obeyed, mouth working, tongue relentless.
She moved faster now, using him, losing herself. Every thrust of her hips was a demand. Every cry from her lips was triumph. He had made her wait. He had teased her, worshipped her from afar and now she would take every ounce of that desire and devour it.
He growled against her, the vibration sending her into a shudder. His fingers pressed deeper into her flesh, his desperation now equal to hers.
And when she finally shattered, writhing, trembling, crying out his name, it wasn’t just release but a claiming. It was power and the kind of pleasure that made the earth stop turning.
She collapsed forward, trembling, her forehead resting against his stomach.
Darcy, breathless, kissed her inner thigh with something that felt like evensong.
He pulled her skirts back, stared at the flushed skin of her thighs, then whimpered when Elizabeth slid a little lower his body like warm silk, still panting, still high on her release.
Her hands caressed his trembling thighs, her lips trailing kisses across sweat-slicked skin, tasting the salt of his surrender.
She felt him beneath her, hard as iron, twitching with pent-up need, his whole body coiled tight like a bowstring.
“Did you think I was done with you, Mr Darcy?”
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled moan mixed with giddy giggle.
“No,” she murmured, voice like velvet sin. “Now it is your turn.”
Her hand wrapped around him firm, devout. He gasped, eyes slamming shut. She mimicked the rhythm he’d used on himself earlier, just a touch firmer, just a breath slower. She remembered the look in his eyes when she watched him, shame and pleasure wrestling and now, she was in control.
She craned her head forward and licked the head, slow and deliberate. He arched off the mossy earth, groaning like a man coming undone.
“Elizabeth… I am…” his arms clutching onto her thighs, her weight keeping him in place.
She didn’t stop. Her hand kept stroking, twisting, coaxing. Her mouth teased and licked, the tip of her tongue flicking over the slit, the underside. She reveled in the taste of him, in the smell of sweat and sex and the wild outdoors.
He dared to open his eyes, just as she flicked her tongue over that spot that made his hips jerk.
The sight of her sex still quivering, the outer lips swollen, the hair wet and mussed, oozing the nectar of her own pleasure…
It was too much. And when her hand moved in a tighter rhythm, sliding from base to tip, matching the exact pattern he’d once used in shameful solitude, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Elizabeth!” he cried out, his voice raw.
His entire body convulsed as he spilled white-hot, endless. Her name tore from his lips again and again as she stroked him through it, watching him fall apart just for her.
Spent, he collapsed fully, limbs useless, chest heaving.
Elizabeth stirred. Her breathing had begun to slow, her mind catching up with her body, shame creeping in like a cold breeze. The thrill of control had cooled, replaced by that familiar flutter of regret. What had she done?
She blinked rapidly, moved off him, covered herself with her skirt, shaking out the creases as if she could smooth away the evidence of what had just occurred. The practical woman returned, the mask slipping on, the walls going up.
Darcy watched her, propped on one elbow, still naked, still dazed. His heart began to hammer, not from lust this time, but panic. Was she retreating? Regretting? Had this meant nothing to her, just an old fantasy scratched into bark and moss?
“Do not leave me yet,” he said softly, his voice stripped of pride or pretense. Just him. “Let me hold you.”
She froze.
The riding crop still dangled from her hand. Slowly, she let it fall to the ground.
She turned, eyes unreadable, and then she let herself fall, because it felt easier than leaving. Her head came to rest on his bare chest, her palm pressing lightly to the space just above his heart. He wrapped his arms around her with gentle desperation, folding her close, tangling their legs.
They lay beneath the canopy of silver birch, the sky fractured by swaying leaves. The only sounds were the hum of summer, the faraway call of a lark, and their slow breathing in rhythm again.
She didn’t speak. Neither did he.
But everything between them shifted.
* * *
They walked back to the house slowly, the silence between them warm, taut, saturated with everything they had not said.
Their shoulders brushed once. Then again.
Darcy’s fingers twitched, as if debating whether he dared reach for her hand again. He did not. She didn’t offer it.
The house loomed ahead, its windows glowing in the late afternoon sun. Familiar. Immutable.
And then a sound of wheels crunching gravel. Hooves. The shrill squeal of a child laughing.
A carriage.
Darcy stopped walking. Elizabeth followed his gaze. Fitzwilliam’s crest glinted on the door. The footman leapt down, already moving toward the steps.
Too early. They weren’t due until tomorrow.
The door swung open. A girl tumbled out, red-cheeked, dark-haired, grinning. Another girl followed, her curls bouncing, her bonnet askew. A woman’s voice called after them.
“Brigadier Fitzwilliam,” the footman said, bowing low as a tall man stepped down from the carriage.
He looked older. Greyer at the temples. But Elizabeth knew him at once.
He did not know her, not yet. He glanced her way, distracted by the commotion. Then did a double take.
“Miss Bennet?” he said, astonished. “Good God. Is that you?”
Elizabeth felt the blood rush to her face. She was still flushed from the walk, the sun or something else. She curtsied, spine straight. “Brigadier Fitzwilliam. How lovely to see you again.”