Chapter Twelve #2
“Nothing.” But his voice was strained, and his eyes, those grey eyes she had learned to read, held something that looked almost like pain. “I just… I need a moment.”
He rolled onto his back beside her, staring at the canopy above, his chest rising and falling with uneven breaths.
Eliza propped herself on one elbow and studied his profile. “William. Talk to me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say what you’re thinking.”
A long pause. Then, so quietly she almost missed it: “I’m thinking that I don’t want this to end.”
Her heart seized. “Then don’t let it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
He turned his head to look at her, and the expression on his face, raw, unguarded, terrified, made her breath catch.
“Because I don’t know if I can be what you need,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m capable of permanence. Of trust. Of all the things a wife deserves from a husband.”
Wife.
He had said wife. Had implied, however obliquely, that he was thinking about marriage, about her, as his wife.
“Let me decide what I need,” she whispered. “Let me take the risk.”
“If I let you take the risk, and I fail…” His voice cracked. “If I destroy you, Eliza, I will never forgive myself.”
“And if you push me away out of fear? If you end this because you’re afraid of what might happen, rather than letting us discover what could be?”
He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.
“I don’t know how to do this. I have never…” He stopped, started again. “There has never been anyone I wanted to do this with. Not before you.”
She leaned down and kissed him. Softly. Tenderly. Pouring everything she could not say into the press of her lips against his.
“Then we shall learn together,” she murmured against his mouth. “Both of us. Finding our way as we go. Is that not what everyone does?”
His hand came up to cup her face, and she saw something in his eyes that made her heart soar, a crack in the armour, a glimpse of the man beneath.
“You make me wish to believe,” he said. “In things I have long told myself were impossible. In futures I have never permitted myself to imagine.”
“Then believe.” She kissed him again, deeper this time. “If only for today. Believe it with me.”
Something broke in his expression. Resistance giving way to longing. Fear dissolving into desperate hope.
He pulled her on top of him, positioning her body over his, his hands settling at her hips with possessive urgency.
“I want…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I want more of you than I ought. I want to feel you. Really feel you. Not just my hands, not just my mouth. I want to be inside you, Eliza. I want to claim you completely.”
Her breath caught. This was what they had been avoiding. The one line he had sworn not to cross. The preservation of her technical innocence, her ability to marry well when…
“Yes,” she whispered, before fear could catch up with desire. “Yes, William. I want that too.”
“Are you certain?” His grip on her hips tightened. “Because once we do this—”
“I am certain.” She leaned down, pressing her forehead to his. “I have been certain since the garden at Henderson’s ball. Since before that, probably. Since you brought me ferns instead of roses and looked at me like I was the only real thing in a room full of performances.”
His laugh was shaky, broken. “You remember the ferns.”
“I remember everything.”
He pushed her back onto the mattress and followed her down, his weight settling between her thighs with unmistakable intent. For a moment, he only looked at her, as though committing the sight to memory, before lowering his mouth to hers in a slow, claiming kiss that stole her breath.
He kissed his way downward, unhurried and deliberate.
Her lips. Her jaw. The delicate hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse fluttered wildly beneath his mouth.
She gasped when his teeth grazed her skin, when his tongue traced the rapid beat there as though savouring the proof of what he did to her.
Lower still he went, his mouth lingering at the swell of her breasts, reverent and possessive all at once.
He kissed the soft flesh between them, then curved his hands around her, thumbs brushing where she was already aching.
When his mouth closed over her, she cried out, fingers tangling in his hair as he suckled deeply, tasting her, worshipping her.
His arousal was impossible to miss now. She felt the hard length of him pressing insistently against her thigh, against her belly, hot and unyielding, a constant reminder of what was coming.
He dragged his mouth down her body, leaving gooseflesh in his wake, until her breaths had turned ragged and pleading. When he finally positioned himself between her legs, she felt the brush of him at her entrance and shuddered.
He paused then, lifting his gaze to hers. His fingers laced through hers, grounding her, holding her steady. Slowly, carefully, he began to press forward.
The stretch made her wince, her body resisting the intrusion, and at once he leaned down to kiss her, murmuring soft reassurances against her lips, his thumb stroking her cheek.
He did not rush her. He waited, easing himself in inch by inch until the discomfort dulled and something deeper took its place.
When he finally settled fully inside her, the sensation stole the air from her lungs. Full. Aching. Overwhelming.
He began to move, slow and controlled, watching her face as though nothing else in the world existed. Each thrust was measured, intimate, his body rocking into hers while his eyes never left her own.
Then he withdrew suddenly, leaving her gasping at the emptiness.
Before she could protest, he pulled her upright, guiding her into his lap.
His mouth claimed hers again, this time fierce and desperate, as his hands positioned her hips.
She felt him at her entrance once more, harder than before, and the knowledge of what he was about to do sent a thrill straight through her.
“Slowly,” he murmured against her mouth. “Tell me if it hurts.”
“I trust you,” she whispered, kissing along his jaw, his throat, the place where his pulse thundered beneath her lips.
She lowered herself onto him.
The sensation was indescribable. The stretch. The fullness. The way her body had to yield, had to open, accommodating him inch by inch until she was fully seated, trembling with the effort of it. Her hands clutched his shoulders as his slid along her back, steadying her, soothing her.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “Just like that.”
Love.
The word lodged itself somewhere deep inside her.
She began to move.
At first, it was awkward, uncertain, but his hands guided her hips, teaching her the rhythm, helping her rise and sink onto him. Each movement grew surer, bolder, until pleasure eclipsed everything else. She watched his face tighten with need, watched him struggle for control.
“Eliza,” he groaned.
The sensation built relentlessly, the slide of him inside her, the friction, the mounting pressure that left her gasping. When she begged him for more, he understood instantly. His hand slipped between them, fingers finding her most sensitive place and stroking in time with her movements.
The combination shattered her.
She cried out as pleasure tore through her, her body clenching around him in uncontrollable waves. He followed with a broken sound, burying his face against her throat as release claimed him, spilling into her with devastating intimacy.
Afterwards, they collapsed together, limbs tangled, skin slick with sweat, hearts still racing. He held her close, as though reluctant to let even an inch of space return between them.
Eliza’s body was still trembling with aftershocks. Her mind was blank, wiped clean by sensation, capable of nothing but the awareness of William beside her, inside her, still, though softening now, his arms wrapped around her as though he would never let go.
“I love you,” she whispered.
The words escaped before she could stop them, before fear could intervene, before doubt could silence her.
He went very still.
For a long, terrible moment, he said nothing. The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything unspoken.
Then his arms tightened around her, almost painfully, and she felt his lips press against her hair.
“Eliza,” he breathed. Just her name. Nothing more.
But his grip on her was desperate. And when she finally pulled back to look at him, his grey eyes were bright with something that looked very much like tears.
He did not say it back.
But the way he held her, like she was everything, like losing her would kill him, spoke louder than any words.
He loves me, she thought, with a certainty that defied all evidence to the contrary. He loves me, and he’s afraid, and I just need to give him time.
She curled into his warmth and let herself believe.
It was the most dangerous thing she had ever done.