37. Crossing the Threshold #2
She crossed the room toward him, her bare feet silent on the carpet, acutely aware of the way the firelight played through her gown with every step, rendering her more visible with each stride, offering him more of herself as the distance between them diminished.
His eyes never left her—fixed on her with an intensity that should have frightened her but instead made her bold, made her brave, made her understand at last that she held a power she had never known she possessed.
When she stopped before him—close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough to breathe the sandalwood that clung to his skin, close enough to see the slight tremor in the hands that rose toward her and hovered in the air between them as though he did not dare to close the final distance—she understood at last why he had never pressed, never presumed, never claimed what the law said was already his.
He was waiting for her to choose him. He had always been waiting, and now she had come.
“This is my answer,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire. “To every question you have asked and all the ones you have been too careful to speak.”
His hand found her hair—finally, finally—threading through the loose waves with infinite gentleness, his fingers trembling against her scalp as though he could not quite believe she was permitting him to touch her.
He drew her closer, his other hand settling at her waist where the heat of his palm burned through the thin fabric and set her skin alight, and his eyes never left hers, those dark expressive eyes that held so much—wonder and desire and a love so vast it seemed impossible that one man could contain it.
She raised her hands to the open collar of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips, the rapid flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat.
He drew a sharp breath as she found the first button and worked it free, his eyes darkening, his jaw tightening with the effort of restraint.
The second button yielded, and then the third, and with each one she revealed more of him—the planes of his chest, warm skin over lean muscle, the dark hair that narrowed toward his stomach, and the pounding of his heart that she could feel now beneath her palm.
He made a sound low in his throat—not quite a word, not quite a groan—when her fingers brushed bare flesh, and his hand tightened in her hair, tilting her face up toward his.
She saw the question in his eyes, the last vestige of restraint, the need to know that this was truly what she wanted before he let go of the control that had held him in check for so long.
“Yes,” she breathed, rising onto her toes, pressing her lips to the warm skin of his chest just above his thundering heart. “I am yours. Always.”
The sound he made then was nothing like restraint.
His arms came around her, pulling her against him so tightly she could feel every line of his body through the gossamer of her nightgown—the hard planes of his chest, the lean strength of his arms, and the unmistakable evidence of his passion pressed against her belly.
His mouth found her hair, her temple, the curve of her ear, trailing fire wherever it touched, and she gasped against his skin as sensation cascaded through her in waves she had never imagined, never dreamed, never known her body capable of feeling.
His hands moved down her back, spanning her waist, sliding over the curve of her hips with a possessiveness that should have alarmed her and instead made her melt against him, wanting more, needing more, pressing closer as though she could dissolve into him entirely.
The thin fabric of her nightgown was nothing between them now—she could feel the heat of his skin as though they were already bare, could feel every tremor that ran through him as his careful control finally, irrevocably shattered.
He kissed her with the desperate hunger of a starving man who had finally been offered sustenance.
His mouth claimed hers with a ferocity that stole her breath and replaced it with fire, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opened for him, tasting him, drowning in him, her fingers clutching at his shoulders as her knees threatened to give way beneath the onslaught of sensation.
They were moving—she did not know when they had started, only that they were moving—his hands in her hair and at her waist and everywhere at once, guiding her backward until her shoulders met the heavy curtains of his bed and she understood, dimly, through the haze of desire, where this was leading, what she had always wanted and needed since the first moment she had looked into his eyes and seen her future reflected there.
He lifted his head, breathing hard, his forehead pressed against hers, his eyes searching her face in the flickering light with an expression of such tender ferocity that her heart clenched in her chest.
She answered him without words, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw, drawing his mouth back down to hers.
He reached past her toward the candle on the nightstand, pinching it, enfolding them in soft velvet—a benediction, and the beginning of all they had awaited.
And in that pulsing darkness, Elizabeth Bennet Darcy came home, and her heart—her whole heart, holding nothing back—was full.