Far Gone
XXXVII
She unbuttoned her gown herself.
Darcy sat back, his hands resting on his own lap as she gave him the pleasure of watching her fingers slowly easing the hidden, tiny bone buttons through the holes.
One at a time, they gave way, top to bottom, and he stared at each bend and turn of the cloth, each ravishing new glimpse of her shift beneath, as though his next breath depended on it.
She was smiling, watching his face. Her shoulders were back, letting the gown fall open over her breasts without shame.
Her colour was high, and occasionally, she caught her lower lip bashfully between her teeth, and her breathing trembled faintly.
If she had been instructed, she could not have chosen a more seductive manner to disrobe before him.
He was salivating. Good Lord, he was melting, his posture eroding and his eyes burning because he refused to blink, lest he miss a single instant.
When she reached the end of the buttons on her bodice, she paused, glanced down at the split where the skirt gathered at her waist and wrapped to one side.
He hooked his finger in the band at her waist, and she rested one hand over his, guiding it to the button that would begin unwrapping the skirt. He worked at it several seconds, but this button was tighter, set at a different angle, and he was some seconds in finding the right way to release it.
“Here,” she whispered, reaching in to help him, but he pushed her hand away.
“I am in no hurry,” he replied against her lips. “Are you?”
“I am probably the less patient of the two of us,” she murmured, then sighed into his mouth as one of his hands reached inside the bodice to caress her breast.
“Not probably. An undisputed fact. You will simply have to endure, because I am a sick man, after all, and I cannot keep pace with you at the best of times.” His thumb found the peak of her nipple through her shift, and her body went slack under his hand.
Her head lolled slightly, and her breaths deepened.
He had the first button of the skirt now, and was working his way down to the second, the third.
These came more readily, and the gown was unfurling off her body like a rose waking to the dawn.
Elizabeth pushed him backwards slightly with a kiss, then withdrew to tug her arms from the merino sleeves.
He helped her, and then pushed the remainder off her shoulders.
She glanced down, then purposely filled her lungs with air, lifting her rib cage, and glanced shyly up at him through her lashes.
“Fitzwilliam, that fever must have got to you worse than I thought. I fear you might have amnesia.”
He pressed the heel of one hand to her breast, then cupped his fingers around it. She fit so perfectly — soft, round, and pliant, generous enough to spill between his fingers, but tight and high enough that he had but to lightly gather her flesh to bring it all to his mouth.
“What do you mean, amnesia?” he asked as his lips fell to tracing the nape of her neck, down to her shoulder.
She arched under his lips and gasped when he closed his mouth and softly scratched the half-grown stubble of his chin over her tender flesh. “You act as if you have never seen me before. I know very well you have seen far more than —”
“Every time I see you is new,” he murmured against her collarbone. “I could look at you every day for twenty years and still be struck dumb by the touch of your skin, the line of your back, your scent. I find I am rather foolish about it, and I will thank you to let me make a fool of myself.”
She chuckled and pushed him back. “You can be far more foolish without all this fabric in the way.” She lifted her hips and pulled her legs through the rest of the skirt, then tossed the gown on the floor.
“Oh, yes, that helps.” He was on her throat with his mouth again, so the bubble of her laugh sent warm shivers through his lips. She took his hands and tugged them behind her to set them on the buttons of her shift.
With these buttons, he was less patient. They gave way swiftly, and in a moment, he was pulling it free and flinging it across the room so he could drink in all the glories of her form. “Elizabeth,” he whispered as his eyes filled with her.
He wanted to slow down, to give her half the pleasure she meant to give him, so he forced his breathing to steady, to go even and deeper.
He curled his fingers, then softly tracked the line of her hips, her waist, the lower curve of her left breast with the backs of his knuckles.
A swirl of lightness passed through his head, and he paused for a moment to let his vision clear.
“Are you well?”
He looked up to meet her eyes. “Perhaps if I laid down.”
Her smile widened, and a mischievous spark lit her eyes. “How convenient.” She lay back on the pillow and pulled him after her.
He would not lie over her body yet. Instead, he lay on his side, her arm slipped round his torso as he leaned on one elbow and gazed at her.
He had not admired her properly in Vitoria, and now he meant to do her justice.
His fingertips trailed over her skin, and he watched the goose flesh prickle in his wake.
The hard muscles of her shoulders, taut from walking and riding and sickness, and keeping herself upright when others would have crumpled.
The ridge of her collarbone, the place where the short ends nearly met at the hollow of her throat.
The nearest nipple, with its faint freckles around the dark ring of it, and the farther nipple, how it hardened when he leaned over and took it into his mouth.
Her hand found his shoulder as she gasped his name, and he rolled his tongue round the puckered flesh until her nails sank into him. “Are you trying to drive me mad?” she rasped.
He pulled back just enough to kiss a line up the centre of her chest, down the dip of her throat, and then leave a soft token on her lips. “Is it working?”
She nodded shakily, her eyes dilated. “You had better carry on with it before I overpower you and take you to the floor myself. I am fairly certain I could right now.”
He chuckled and let his hand stray to her waist. The sharp dip of it, the high rise of her hip.
Too thin — she was still too thin, and so was he, but they wore it like a badge of honour, a thing survived together.
When he got her home to England, he would see to it that her figure softened again as it should. But for now…
His lips had skimmed down over her breast again and come to her stomach, the small dip of her navel.
His hands framed that place, and he stared.
It was the first time he had considered, had let himself imagine what they two might have created together.
A child… his, and hers, their bodies united in another life.
Could it really be true, that she might —
Her hand came to rest on the back of his neck, then her fingers spread and raked over his scalp, and coherent thought left him.
“You are meant to be conserving your strength,” she said. “But at this rate, you will have none left for later.”
“I am spending my strength exactly as I please.” He flicked his tongue over her navel, his hands braced on her hips. “I have been told I am a ruinous husband. I mean to earn the name.”
He worshipped her by inches. He kissed the small hard points of her breasts again until she arched into his mouth; he ran his palm down the length of her, hip and thigh and the soft inside of her knee, learning her again, or learning her properly for the first time, because at Vitoria he had been drunk and frantic and had not been given leave to do this — to simply touch her, and watch what his touching did.
He found the places that made her breath stagger, and he kissed each one until her moans and gasps told him to move on.
Then, his hand slipped lower, his fingers gently combing through the curls between her legs and coaxing her to relax, to permit him to touch without flinching. The muscles of her thighs rippled, then eased as he raised mouth to hers again. “Breathe, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “Let me love you.”
That phrase made her mouth stop moving under his. He lifted enough to look into her eyes, and there was confusion there. “I… I had not thought to… that this was —”
“You did not know I was in love with you?”
She swallowed, then slowly shook her head. “I knew you were mad. I did not know you were that far gone.”
He laughed and captured her mouth again, and she sank backwards, one hand digging into his shoulders and the other still clawing at his hair. And her thighs fell open under his fingers.
He let his fingertips graze the outside of her, catching and swirling in the sweet honey of her, until her breaths deepened and her head tossed back into the pillow, her eyelids fluttering luxuriously. “Oh, Fitzwilliam,” she sighed.
He dipped a little deeper then, and found the place that made her whole body go taut.
She sucked in a gasp, and her hand fisted in the sheet.
He moved slowly, finding the delicate petals and caressing the ridges and defining them, drawing them out until he could feel every line of her, pulsing and waiting on him to worship her completely.
He touched a second finger to her and swirled them gently.
She groaned and trembled, her mouth now open on a silent cry that would not come, broken by huffs and little whimpers that almost sounded like his name.
He brought her along slowly, watching her face the entire time, because he wanted to give her as much as he had in him to give before whatever was in him gave out — and he could feel already that it would.
She was flushed, her eyes half shut, her hips moving against his hand. “Fitzwilliam, you must stop! I cannot —”
“Let go, Elizabeth.” He kissed the words into the hollow of her hip. “Just let go.”