Chapter 14 #2
She’d reached for him in the dark, eager, curious, only to feel him carefully lift her nightgown to her waist. Nothing more. A fumbling touch between her legs—dry, clinical—and then pressure. Sharp, tearing pressure that made her gasp.
“Hush,” he’d murmured. “It’s always difficult the first time. Be brave my love.”
The mechanics of the act, performed in respectful silence. His breathing. The creak of the bed. A pat on her shoulder when he finished.
“Sleep well, my dear,” he’d murmured, already retreating to his own chamber.
She’d lain there, nightgown twisted around her hips, wondering if that was all. If the novels had lied. If her married sister’s blushes and knowing looks were simply embarrassment over this awkward, fumbling business.
For months, it hurt. He never thought to ready her, never knew he should. Always in darkness. Always clothed. Always brief. It improved eventually, she’d been the one to guide him, to promise they had all the time in the world to learn each other.
“My wanton little wife,” he’d whispered, delighted by her eagerness.
It had been sweet, passionate, even. He’d loved her responsiveness, called her his wild Irish rose when she wrapped her legs around him.
But it had been… straightforward. Pleasant.
The pleasure of youth and newness, of fitting together well enough.
She’d thought that was all there was to it, that poets exaggerated for effect.
It was only years later, when the literature advised that “female completion might aid conception,” she realised something had been missing all along.
Thomas learned to bring her to peak as one might learn to tune a pianoforte: not tender, but practical, as though her body were an instrument to be coaxed into function.
Once his mistress started to increase, all attempts to touch her with purpose ceased.
Except in her own head. In the dark, with eyes closed, she had sometimes conjured another man, Darcy—his voice, his gaze, his impossible intensity carrying her over the edge. It had been a private treachery.
She pressed a hand to her belly. This child had been conceived in blazing light, in mutual hunger, with Darcy’s eyes locked on hers as he moved inside her.
But what then? What happened when the blaze guttered, when she failed to return the love he poured so freely upon her?
What poison might fester in his heart—resentment, contempt, cruelty?
He was nothing like Thomas, she reminded herself.
But even Thomas had been nothing like Thomas, once.
A soft knock at the connecting door interrupted her contemplation. “Come in,” she called, not bothering to reach for a wrapper. There seemed little point in modesty now.
The door opened with barely a whisper. She didn’t turn immediately, but she felt him enter, His presence always did that to her. A subtle pressure, a pull that made her pulse quicken.
When she did face him, she found him leaning casually against the closed door, the firelight catching the sharp planes of his face and casting shadows beneath his eyes.
Coat gone, cravat discarded, shirt open at the throat to reveal the strong column of his neck.
There was no trace of nerves, no hesitant, reverent groom, only Darcy. Her husband.
He took her in with a slow, deliberate sweep of his gaze, and the corner of his mouth quirked.
“Well,” he said, voice low and warm, “this feels familiar.”
She arched a brow. “Standing half-dressed across a room from you? It is practically a custom at this point.”
He crossed the room in a few unhurried steps, stopping just within reach. The scent of his skin, sandalwood and something darker, filled her senses. His hand rose to trace a finger down the line of her collarbone, pausing at the curve of her breast, now visibly fuller beneath the soft cotton.
“I feel so blessed…” he whispered, sliding the nightgown off her shoulders to expose her. Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, trying to hide the shame she felt about her pregnant body.
He closed the distance between them, his lips descended on hers with urgency but also tenderness and joy.
Her arms circled around his waist as she pressed the length of her body against his warmth.
A soft hum escaped her lips, her hands shifting to pull his shirt out of his breeches with scorching passion.
He pulled away to look into her eyes, the desire there reminded him of their first frenzied encounter in her apothecary. The desire mixed with something else.
“Elizabeth,” he embraced her firmly, “why are you angry?” His hand pressed her cheek against his chest, fingers gently caressing her hair.
“Because I am standing here bare, and you are not,” she said petulantly, but the break in her voice let him know she was not talking just about their state of undress.
“You know that is not the truth…”
She wriggled out of his arms with a huff and made for the bed where she covered herself with the counterpane all the way to her chin. Darcy stood where she left him, the firelight playing across his features.
“You gave up your business for the benefit of our child. I married a woman whom I love deeply but whose heart seems to be untouched, for the benefit of our child.” By the time he finished that stark statement he stood naked, the light from the fire flickering golden on his skin.
She said nothing. The fire crackled and hissed. Shadows danced on the ceiling.
Darcy sighed, the fight draining from his shoulders. He crossed the room, his bare feet silent on the carpet, he stopped beside the bed, and leaned down. His hand brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek, his touch feather-light.
She stiffened beneath his touch, and for one brittle second the room teetered on the edge of some vast, unspoken gulf.
And then she smirked.
That maddening, defensive little smirk, the one she wore like armour when she felt cornered, the one she used to make him feel small.
For God’s sake.
This. This was what she wanted. The only thing she’d ever admitted to wanting from him. The thought struck, hot and final as something in him snapped.
Without a word, Darcy seized the counterpane and yanked it off her, the fabric hissing against skin and linen. Elizabeth jerked, eyes flashing, but before she could speak, before defiance could even form on her lips, he was there.
A hand in her hair.
His voice, low and dark and trembling with restrained fury:
“I am your husband, Elizabeth… and I intend to treat you as you deserve.”
The words hung in the air, thick and charged and terrifyingly certain.
She expected to be afraid.
Expected to bristle, to lash out.
But what spilled from her lips instead was a soft, treacherous sound, a gasp, a moan, something deep and shamefully pleased.
Darcy felt it.
He saw the arch of her hips, he heard the tremor in her breath.
That was all he needed.
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her to the edge of the bed.
“Open your mouth.”
It was a low and dark command blistering with promise.
He half-expected a remark, some cutting little jibe about his monstrous appetites, his scandalous tastes.
But she didn’t speak.
She looked up at him, heat and something dangerously close to submission flickering in her eyes, and then she obeyed.
Lips parted.
Breath shallow.
Christ.
He slid his cock past those burning lips, slow and thick, groaning as she took him in.
No teasing this time. No coy flick of tongue, no smug little glance.
Just quiet, open-mouthed hunger as he moved back and forth with delight at the obscene sight of her.
His hands drifted down, tracing the line of her throat, the curve of her breast, the rise of her belly. When he slipped between her thighs, he found her ready.
For him.
The sound that tore from his throat wasn’t a word. It was a half growl, half prayer.
“Liar,” he hissed, his fingers slick with proof of her need.
“You wanted this. You have always wanted this.”
And she moaned around him, desperate, drowning, lost.
He didn’t give her time to think.
Didn’t offer her a choice she would only twist into more doubts.
Darcy climbed onto the bed behind her, pressing her back against his chest, his palm flat over the curve of her belly as he spooned her close.
The fire threw restless light over the sheets, catching on skin and tangled hair.
His mouth was at her ear, his breath hot against her neck.
“Stay just like this.”
One hand slid to her breast, claiming it, thumb teasing the tight peak until she writhed. The other hand traced down, fingertips skimming over soft, slick flesh, finding her soaked and wanting.
“By Lord, Elizabeth,” he groaned, lips on her shoulder.
“You are drenched. Do you even know how badly you want this?”
A whimper. A shudder. No words.
He didn’t need them.
He slid inside her in one long, claiming thrust, the angle from behind deep and unrelenting but mindful of the swell of her belly. Her gasp was sharp, half-strangled, her body arching into him.
He set a ruthless rhythm, one arm pinning her tight, the other moving between her legs, circling her slick, swollen flesh with merciless precision.
Every motion meant to undo her. To remind her who she belonged to now.
His teeth grazed the curve of her neck, the tender skin behind her ear.
He felt it the moment she started to hold her breath.
The tension coiled in her, the desperate tremble, the way her hips fought between retreat and surrender.
Always fighting it. Always trying to stay in control.
Not tonight.
His lips brushed her ear, his voice rough and seeped in sin.
“Do not hold back.”
A kiss to her neck.
“Let go, now.”
That was it. The dam broke.
She bucked against him with a cry, raw and helpless, the sound shocking even to her own ears, her body seizing so violently around him that he slipped free, wet and hard and aching.
But he didn’t let her go.
His arm clamped tighter around her, his mouth on her neck, his hand still circling that swollen, throbbing nub with slow, devastating care.
“Hmm,” he breathed.