Chapter Seventeen #2
Wickham had not undressed her. That wasn’t necessary, she didn’t think.
“Just lift my skirts.” She kissed him. She squeezed him.
“Now, here, quickly, do you not want this?” She pulled, gentle, and inwardly thought she was literally leading him by the prick, a phrase she thought she’d heard onstage in a play once and not really quite understood, but this seemed to be exactly what it was, and he came along with her.
She kept hold of him, and she backed up, and he stumbled along, and then they had tumbled backwards onto the bed.
They were kissing.
He was still protesting, kissing her forehead, kissing her jaw. “This is not the way I wish it between us, not the first time, Lizzy. You cannot be so eager.”
“I am,” she insisted, and her voice was breathy, and she was eager, though not from the same desire as he felt.
She struggled to move her own skirts. She was not wearing drawers.
She only did when she was having her bleeding, so she had foregone them since finding she was with child.
She wriggled around under him, trying to move the both of them into the right place.
“Are you?” he groaned. “Are you truly?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
And he took over, arranging them easily, pushing her skirts aside, parting her thighs, reaching between them to seize himself there. He moved himself against her.
She tensed.
His mouth was against hers as he breached her.
She did not breathe.
It felt… fine. It felt fine. It did not hurt. It was not even uncomfortable. She could quite do this. She let out a noisy, relieved breath.
He seemed to take this as a sound of pleasure, and he thrust all the way home, filling her entirely.
Now, it felt exactly as it had when she had awoken under Mr. Wickham. Weight against her, the hugeness of him splitting her, stretching her open, all the way in, taking up room, invading her.
Mr. Darcy’s breath was tattered. He was still kissing her.
She put her hands up to clutch his shoulders, to hold on, to endure this, because she had done this herself.
And then it wasn’t the same, not at all, not really, because she felt herself surrender, and something changed, again, like that shift when the babe had quickened, and she felt a certain rightness about this, something that seemed ancient and rhythmic.
What had he said earlier, about being drawn to her, like the pull of the earth to the sun?
This was like that. She opened to him, he fit in her, and they were connected.
What had been done to her before had been done on her, and she had not been a participant, and this was entirely different.
He gasped against her. “Lizzy,” he breathed. “You feel wondrous.”
She let out some noise. She could not say what the noise was. It sounded like it had been wrung from the very depths of her, and perhaps it had been.
For so long, perhaps since Mr. Wickham had done what he did, she had felt entirely separate from absolutely everyone, and now, the babe moving in her, Mr. Darcy here, lodged deep in her, joined to her.
She felt attached. Coupled. Tied to him.
His eyes opened in slits and their gazes locked, and he moved against her, and she felt her breath begin to go in and out in the same rhythm as his.
Her body seemed to know just how to move to accommodate his movement.
She gripped his shoulders and she felt shot full of something powerful and strange and sweet, an aching kind of sweetness.
“I shan’t last,” he breathed.
She put her lips against his.
His tongue stroked hers, sending jolts of that aching sweetness splintering through her.
She cried out.
He grunted. His thrusts faltered, sped up and then slowed and then he slammed into her, all the way in, deeper than before, piercing her, and he shuddered against her, and then he stopped his movement entirely, and a wave of sensation seemed to cut through her.
She tightened her thighs around him, sealing them together.
He shuddered again, kissing her again—deep, deep kisses.
She wrapped her arms around him too, pulling him in tight.
He sighed.
She sighed.
His eyes were closed. “Well, you can’t have enjoyed that.”
Enjoyed? “I feel transformed,” she murmured, shutting her eyes, too, smiling. “Stay there. I want us connected forever.”
He let out an affected noise, his mouth seeking hers. “We shall be.”
And then it sort of went on for a bit. He wasn’t moving, but his body was warm and good inside her, and his mouth was hot and wet, and she still felt tied to him, part of him, or him part of her, or both of them intertwined in such a way as to feel as if they had become part of each other.
They simply kissed. And kissed. And kissed.
Until he yawned and she let out a little laugh and he was rueful. “I shall crush you if I fall asleep inside you, Lizzy. I must…” He tried to extricate himself.
“No,” she moaned. “No, I want to be crushed, then. Stay right there.”
“I should stay awake and bring you,” he said, with another yawn. “I have had a climax and you have not.”
“You have ridden to Newcastle and back and you are exhausted.” She was affectionate, running her fingers through the back of his hair. “You should rest.”
He rolled off of her.
She let out a cry of disapproval at his pulling free of her. She really had meant it. She wanted him there forever. Of course, that was ludicrous. They could not stay that way.
He gathered her into his arms, pulling her tightly against him. “Just a few moments of sleep, perhaps,” he said with another yawn.
She burrowed into his chest. She was awake for a while, simply breathing in the scent of him, which smelled like home, she thought, like safety, like everything good in the world, and then she was drifting, and then, she slept too.