46. Darcy
Darcy
It was an amused question, but my answer was wrenched deep from my heart, layered with emotions about being hers and finally feeling like we were together.
“I’m happy around you. I feel light and young, and I don’t know…” I dipped my head bashfully. “I want to tell you things.”
“I love that you feel you can tell me things you don’t say to anyone else.” She kissed me with a tenderness that pulled at my heart.
I blinked, hesitating whether I should discuss my conversation with Seb and the turmoil of emotions I’d felt when we’d spoken—rage, bitterness, deep sorrow. Would the confession totally ruin the mood?
I shifted and rubbed my temples. “I didn’t tell you in the car. Seemingly unrelated, we heard this morning that an anonymous donor gave a huge amount to the clubhouse. It means we’re all set. But it’s…bittersweet.”
Lizzy squeezed my hand. Had she guessed?
“That is such good news. But…you think it’s Seb?”
My heart was heavy, yet I’d known I had to put my pride aside and accept the donation for the sake of the kids. “Yes, I do.”
I sighed.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked anxiously, likely reading the uncertainty on my face. “We haven’t talked at all about you and Seb.”
“We don’t need to talk about this now,” I said. “I’ve got a beautiful woman in her bedroom, and we have all night.”
“We’ve got all the time in the world, Darcy. Tell me about how it went.”
I wanted to bare myself to her after all. She’d seen and heard all the ugliness I had to show.
“Do you know what I realized after talking to Seb?” I asked.
“What did you realize?” She put her lips to my forehead.
“Yes, I’d missed him—the old Seb, our friendship.
Terribly. He’d changed, or maybe he hadn’t, but still…
But when I talked to Seb, I should have felt something about…
her. Sophia. But I didn’t. I had no visceral reaction to the thought of them together.
Not even a twinge. I was simply glad I hadn’t married her.
It turns out I didn’t know her at all, and we were so ill-suited.
Clearly, I wasn’t good for her either, and she realized that before me.
Of course, that doesn’t take away from the pain of the wedding day or the humiliation, but now that that’s all behind me, I realized I was most hurt about him.
Sebastian meant more to me than she did.
I realized for sure I’d never been in love with her, because for the first time in my life, I knew what love was.
” I took her face in my hands and gazed into her eyes.
My heart hammered into my throat. “Because I’d met you. ”
“Oh, Darcy.” Her eyes filled, and she kissed me tenderly.
“I feel free because of you. I am free. Free to be us. Finally, you are mine.”
“I am yours.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “And you are mine.”
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Yes, we belonged to each other. We kissed passionately, with relief, showing ourselves, every turn of her mouth increasing my feelings for her. I inhaled her sweet scent, fresh but with a certain secret musk that was only for me.
Finally, she lifted her mouth from mine.
Standing beside the bed, facing each other in the dusk darkening her windows, she took off my clothes carefully, tantalizingly slowly, not ripping them off this time.
But while she delicately pushed up my shirt, she trailed her fingers along my skin, through the hair on my chest, touching my nipples.
She charted downward, pushed off my sweatpants, then brushed her fingers along the trail of hair that disappeared into my pants, over the seams of my boxers.
She took off my boxers, but those same fingers brushed and taunted.
I was naked, and it was my turn now. I tortured her by doing the same, tracing her skin and teasing her until she rocked with pleasure, arching and coiling against me.
“Okay,” I said, setting my legs apart and bracing myself. “I’m ready for you to jump up on me this time.”
With a small chuckle, she leaped up and wrapped her legs around me. Tight.
Pressing her heels into my back, she skated her hands all over me, running her fingers through my hair, pressing the curves of her body up against me as though we didn’t have all night after all.
I moaned with need for her, willing to show every emotion with her without embarrassment, because I knew it would only bring me closer to her.
I felt so myself with Lizzy; every small movement was better with her because she’d accepted me as I was.
Even in our short time together, because we’d been through so much.
She kissed me passionately, twirling her tongue around mine, devouring me.
As though this were a race and I was competing with her, I turned my head to get better access to her mouth.
Surrendering at first with a moan, she stroked her hand down my stomach in turn, as if to distract me.
But nothing could distract me from wanting to make her feel good.
I felt like the person I wanted to be with her, the most myself with her, like I had another way to see the world.
Why was everything better with her? I felt loved by her, chosen by her. If someone as wonderful as Lizzy had chosen me, then I must be okay. And she made me want to be a better man.
Overwhelmed, I stroked featherlight touches along the softness of her inner thighs, loving how sensitive she was, how expressive. She tried to press into my fingers, but I nipped at her ear.
“Wait until you feel my tongue on you,” I said.
She moaned. “Yes, do it.”
I would do anything for Lizzy. Learn to cook for her so she could keep on writing, drive her to every meeting, hear her read her new pages aloud from the end of the sofa, be there when she hit a roadblock with her writing again.
I wanted to help her get used to staying at Pemberley, having her think of my home as hers too.
Do anything I could to fix any of her family dramas in the future.
I traveled down her body to find where I could inflame her the most. Kneeling, I settled in between her legs, and she gasped.
I lifted my lips from her. “Tell me what you like most,” I said.
I pressed the flat of my tongue against her while I gripped her soft hips. No answer from her except for murmurs and sighs. I licked her and sucked and swiped up and down with my tongue. My fingers joined in, stroking her thighs, softly, gently.
“Lizzy?” I asked, pausing.
“I like it all, keep going,” she said desperately, scratching hard along my scalp and pulling at my hair.
My veins throbbed with the frantic path of her fingernails. I kept going until she squirmed and panted, her fingernails now slicing hard into my shoulder.
“Oh God. Yes, Darcy, yes!” She pulled and scratched and arched and gasped and moaned. Then, drained, she dropped down onto my shoulders.
Capturing her between my arms, I hauled her onto the bed, but she escaped my embrace and climbed over me this time, her hair falling over her shoulders.
“My turn to have my way with you,” she said with a wicked grin.
“Have at it,” I said, excited as hell, backing up to the headboard. “Use me. Do with me what you will.”
She reached into her bedside drawer, pulled out a condom, and tore the foil with her teeth. She put it on me slowly, with care, as though it were a precise art form.
“God, you have to do that all the time from now,” I said, propped on my elbows.
I was wound up by the sight of her long, slim fingers focused totally on me, sending ragged currents of desire through my torso.
Hopefully sometime in the near future, we wouldn’t need to use them anymore.
The thought of that, committing to each other like that, being with her bare, wound me up even further.
Her knees on either side of my hips, she lowered herself onto me. She sucked in a breath. I jolted, then moaned with pleasure as she lowered farther, farther…gripping my shoulders.
She gasped. “Oh, that feels so good.”
“So good,” I echoed.
I held her hips and pushed my own hips against her, moaning with satisfaction as she worked me harder and faster, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. I circled with my thumb where she needed it, until her thighs were vise-like around me and trembling in a thrill of arousal.
“Oh God, Darcy, what is this?” Her parted mouth and wild eyes sent me into a whirl of sensations. She gasped and folded over me, her breasts brushing against my chest, her hair tickling my skin in a sort of agonizing tease.
But I needed more.
I rolled her over until I was on top and tried to take my time, slow and almost lazy, until the sight and sounds of her writhing beneath me fired me up. I drove into her with a new frenzy. The bed sank and rose with every movement, every inch of skin between us sweaty and slick.
“Darcy, I’m close.” She cried out and sank her teeth into my shoulder, scraping her fingernails hard down my back as shudders racked her body.
Hearing her moans in my ear, the reverberations of her around me, I felt every inch of her skin against my chest accelerated my pulse into a rush of tension.
The excruciating feeling built and built.
Then, deep inside me, a spiraling explosion released, making me moan out loud and long.
The feeling slowed to a juddering, then a ripple, then a satiated, exhausted bliss.
We lay like that, me on top of her, unmoving, stunned, breathing, for a long time.
What had happened between us was thrilling, but I loved being like this with her now, our limbs wrapped around each other, stars brightening the outside sky, the scratch of the trees on the windowpane.
It was us, the exciting beginning, and yet it felt like everything in my life had led me here to this woman—a circuitous path, but now it all made sense.
Reluctantly, I climbed off her and disappeared into her bathroom to clean up. I hurried back and settled next to her.
“Come here,” I said. “You’re too far away.” I pulled her close and slid a leg over her.
Although I was drained for now, I knew there would be a second time, reaching for each other, our hands and mouths not quite believing we were already in bed together.
Lying with my arms around her, I sifted through every complicated emotion I’d felt in the last weeks. Before I’d thought I had to keep my hopes of happiness, past disappointments, and sadness bundled away. Behind a locked door. The key tossed in the lake.
Then came Lizzy, and all those feelings I’d thought I’d locked away spilled out, messy and incoherent.
But those honest, locked-away feelings, wanting love, wanting to love, didn’t seem messy anymore.
Not here in the darkness in her tiny bedroom, in her tiny house in the fields surrounded by the forest. The night was silent except for the dogs snuffling from the other room, and I felt wrapped wholly in this…
What was it? This contentment, swathed soft and cottony in this room.
I didn’t want to be anywhere else but here.
“I want to ask you something.” I wrapped myself around her even more tightly.
“Mm-hm?” she murmured sleepily.
I kissed her neck. “What about I live with you here?” I had a moment of panic that she might reject the wild idea. “If you invite me?” I added.
“Live here with me?” she said, now wider awake, but as if she didn’t quite believe me. “But your business is two hours away in London, and Pemberley is three hours north.”
I thought back to what Tim had told me. That he would travel many hours to see Tabitha for one hour. He said I would know when I’d found my person, but I already had. I thought about how much he was going to gloat when I admitted he was right.
“I can’t be apart from you, and you are worth traveling the distance,” I said. “Is it walking distance to the train?”
She chuckled sleepily. “Sprinting distance, if I know you’re coming home.”
“Perfect. I’ll bet the dogs will love that path. And I love you.” I curled into her. “So, like I said. Perfect.”