Chapter 9 #3
He kissed a path down her body, pausing at her breasts until her nipples tightened beneath his tongue and the ache between her thighs became impossible to ignore.
She gripped his hair when he drew one peak into his mouth.
The pull earned a low sound from him, a vibration against her skin that sent another rush of heat through her.
"Again," he said.
She pulled harder. His teeth grazed her, not enough to hurt, enough to make her arch.
His hand slipped along her inner thigh. She opened for him before he asked.
Recognition darkened his eyes. The look took her back to the moonlit room at Rosings, to the sounds his fingers had coaxed from her there.
Tonight there was no Charlotte beyond a connecting door, no need for silence, no danger of leaving desire unfinished.
The first stroke of his fingers made her gasp. The next found the place that had undone her before. He watched her while he touched her, learning each response: the turn of his hand that made her hips lift, the pressure that turned her breath ragged, the slow retreat that made her drag him back.
"You said this was to be real," he murmured. "Don't hide from me."
"Then don't make me wait."
His mouth curved against her breast. He moved lower.
At the first touch of his tongue, Elizabeth lost the sentence forming in her mind.
She clutched the sheet as his mouth worked between her thighs with the same patience he had offered everywhere else.
Pleasure gathered too quickly for pride to contain.
She gave him his name again, not quietly, and his answering groan carried through her.
The release took her without warning. Her body tightened, then broke into waves beneath his mouth. He held her hips and stayed with her until the last tremor passed and she lay open, dazed, every objection burned down to breath.
He drew back long enough to remove the rest of his clothes, then rose over her. His hair had fallen across his forehead; his control was gone. The hunger in his face should have frightened her. Instead, she reached between them and closed her hand around the rigid heat of him.
Darcy swore under his breath.
"You may stop me," she said.
"That's not within my power."
She stroked him once, fascinated by the fracture in his expression. He caught her wrist and kissed her palm, then settled between her thighs.
"Elizabeth." His forehead pressed to hers. "There may be pain."
"I know." She traced the taut line of his jaw, felt the muscle jump beneath her fingertips. "Come to me."
He entered her slowly. The stretch became a sharp resistance that made her fingers bite into his shoulders. He stopped at once.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened eyes she had not realised she had shut. Concern warred with need in his face.
"Do you want me to withdraw?"
She tested the ache, then moved her hips beneath him. Pain softened into a fuller pressure.
"No. Slowly."
He obeyed. When he was fully inside her, he held still, trembling with the effort. Elizabeth drew him down and kissed him. Only when she moved again did he begin, each measured stroke easing the discomfort and feeding a new heat beneath it.
Soon measured was not enough. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him deeper.
His control failed by degrees: a broken breath against her neck, a harder thrust, her name spoken like an oath.
The bedstead struck the wall in an uneven rhythm.
Elizabeth met him without modesty, asking for what she wanted with her hands and hips when words deserted her.
Pleasure rose again, slower and heavier than before. He slipped a hand between them and found the place his mouth had left tender.
"With me," he said.
She wanted to tell him that she belonged to no command. Then his fingers moved, his body drove deep, and the answer became a cry. The second climax clenched around him. Darcy thrust once more and went rigid above her, her name breaking in his throat as he spent himself inside her.
For a time neither moved. His weight held her to the mattress, not as a prison but as proof that he too had been rendered helpless. At last he shifted to spare her and gathered her against him. His hand travelled once along her back, almost tentative.
"Are you hurt?"
"A little."
He froze.
"Don't look as though I've accused you of murder. I was warned it might be so."
"I should have been gentler."
"You were. Until I asked you not to be."
He searched her face, and whatever he found there let him breathe again.
Later, she lay in the tangled sheets and listened to his breathing slow. His arm was around her waist. His face rested against her hair. She could feel his heart against her back, beating hard.
"This was real," he said. His voice was rough. Wrecked. "Whatever else you doubt — whatever calculation you attribute to me — this was real."
She lay still. His arm tightened in sleep, an involuntary clutch, like even unconscious he was holding something he feared might escape.
Elizabeth counted the shadows on the ceiling until wakefulness finally released her.