Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The day after the kiss, Darcy discovered that kissing Elizabeth Bennet did not, as he had privately hoped, diminish his awareness of her. It magnified it. Every sense he possessed had been sharpened overnight, to a degree that was, practically speaking, disabling.
Her hand, passing him a fig at breakfast: the brush of her fingers against his palm. He felt it in his teeth.
Her shoulder, bumping his as they walked to the spring: accidental, possibly. He was not able to treat it as accidental.
Her mouth, shaping words he did not hear because he was looking at her mouth and remembering the precise pressure of it against his, the taste of salt and warmth, the sound she had made against his lips when he kissed her throat.
He was in trouble. The trouble was not new; it had been developing since Hertfordshire and intensifying on the island.
With the kiss, it had reached a critical stage.
He refused to describe it as such, for doing so would require admitting the extent of its hold.
The depth of his feeling was embarrassing for a man of his education and self-discipline.
Yet that self-discipline had availed him nothing since the moment she had accused him of fear, and been right.
Touches accumulated through the day. His steadying hand on her back when they climbed the hill.
Her fingers on his arm when she pointed at a bird.
His hand taking hers to help her over a rocky stretch of path, the hold lasting three steps longer than the terrain required, neither of them pulling away.
Her hand on his side, checking his wound, tracing the scar through his shirt with an attention that was far from clinical.
His breath stuttered under her touch. Her eyes lifted to his, asking a silent question that remained unanswered.
They did not kiss again. Their restraint was a deliberate choice. They were two people who had crossed a line and were now carefully considering what came next. The suspense of this mutual consideration was driving him comprehensively out of his mind.
Evening fell over the fire. Warm air came through the archway, carrying the scent of the sea and dry herbs.
Elizabeth was sitting on her pallet with her back against the wall, her legs extended, her feet bare.
She had abandoned her ruined shoes three days ago.
Her feet were brown and calloused. She flexed her toes in the firelight with unselfconscious ease.
Her complete disregard for convention was, Darcy was forced to acknowledge, devastating.
He sat across the fire. The distance between them was the usual four feet, but the distance was now a lie. It was a polite fiction maintained by two people who had kissed in the dark the night before, and were now pretending the act had not entirely altered their relationship.
“You are staring,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You do not deny it.”
“I have given up denying it. The denial was unconvincing and the effort was considerable. I am reserving my strength for more productive endeavours.”
“Such as staring.”
“Such as staring.”
Her mouth curved. She looked at the fire, then back at him. Her gaze was steady, direct, and completely unguarded. She was no longer hiding her desire, and neither was he. The plainness of it in her eyes was something he could not withstand.
She stood and crossed the four feet between them. She sat beside him, her back against the same wall. Her shoulder pressed against his; the contact was deliberate and unhurried. She did not look at him, but at the fire.
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“I am here,” she said. “I am choosing to be here. If you have objections, this would be the time.”
“I have no objections.”
“Good.”
She turned her face to his. The firelight caught the flecks of gold in her eyes that he had never been near enough to see. It was a privilege the island had granted, and one England would never have permitted.
He kissed her. This time, it was slow. There was no argument behind it, no sudden breaking of a seal. His mouth was careful and deliberate on hers, learning the shape of her lips and the way she tilted her head to the left. Her breath came faster when he deepened the kiss.
Her hands came to his chest. She pressed her palms flat against him, the heat of her skin radiating through his thin linen shirt. She spread her fingers directly over his rapid, uncomposed heartbeat. She felt it, and she smiled against his mouth.
“Your heart,” she said.
“Is making a fool of me. Yes.”
“I was not going to say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking that it is reassuring. You are very controlled, Mr Darcy. Fitzwilliam. It is reassuring to discover that something in you is not.”
He put his hand in her hair. It was a proper touch this time—not the desperate clutch of the night before, but a slow, deliberate slide.
His fingers threaded through the salt-stiffened waves, finding the warmth of her scalp underneath.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head back into his hand.
The gesture was so instinctive and unguarded that it struck him with more force than the kiss itself.
He kissed her jaw, right at the hinge where the bone met her ear.
He kissed down the line of her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat, where her pulse beat fast and visible.
Her skin tasted of salt, warmth, and faintly of rosemary.
The taste was particular and unrepeatable.
He memorised it with an urgency he could not account for.
She breathed his name — full-voiced: Fitzwilliam. It carried the full weight of the intimacy they had established the night before. This second use of his given name carried something the first had not: explicit permission.
His mouth moved lower to her collarbone, sharp under the thin skin. Her dress had slipped off one shoulder. Her hand came to the back of his head, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him there. The hold was a clear directive, and he followed it.
The neckline of her dress had been loose since the second week, the fabric stretched and weakened by salt.
It slipped further under his mouth. The skin below her collarbone was paler than her face and neck, untouched by the sun.
The paleness was intensely intimate. His mouth traced it with a reverence his rational mind would have forbidden.
She pulled the dress down.
The gesture was small, deliberate, and it changed everything. Her hand rested on the fabric at her shoulder, drawing it down and away. She bared her breast to the firelight, and to him. She kept her eyes open, her gaze fixed on his face, watching him see her.
His breath caught. She was beautiful. The word was inadequate, but it was all he possessed.
Her breast was small and round in the firelight.
Her face above it remained calm and watchful.
She was neither shy nor ashamed; she performed none of the coy emotions he had been taught to expect from a woman in such a moment.
She was showing him her body with the same unabashed directness she had shown him her mind.
That sheer directness was the most intoxicating thing he had ever witnessed.
“You can touch me,” she said. “I would like you to touch me.”
He touched her. The hand that had been in her hair moved to her breast. The first contact was gentle and exploratory, his palm resting against her soft weight. His thumb brushed her nipple, and it hardened under his touch. Her breath hitched, a soft sound he knew he would never forget.
He lowered his mouth to her, his lips closing around the peak. She made a low, surprised, wholly ungoverned sound. Her hand tightened in his hair and her back arched, pressing herself into his mouth.
He kissed one breast, then the other. She held his head, breathing in short, sharp pulls, and said his name twice. Each time it was less composed and more fractured. Her breaking composure was the finest gift he had ever received.
Her hand moved down, from his hair to his neck, and then to his chest. Her fingers worked the open collar of his shirt, spreading the fabric.
She pressed her palm flat against his bare chest. The touch of her hand on his skin was a shock that went through him like a physical blow, undoing his remaining restraint.
She pushed his shirt open further, using both hands to spread the linen and expose his chest to the firelight. Her fingers found the scar on his side, the long line where the shipwreck had torn him. She traced it tenderly. The touch evoked an ache that had nothing to do with the physical wound.
“Does it pain you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You are lying.”
“It does not pain me when you touch it. It pains me at other times. When you touch it, it is something else entirely.”
She traced the scar again, from his ribs to his hip. Her fingers continued past the scar to his taut stomach, and then lower, to the line where his trousers began. Her hand rested there, at the edge of his waistband. The pause was a deliberate question.
His physical desire was obvious. He had been aroused since she had first bared her shoulder. She was close enough to see it, and her hand at his waistline proved that she had. Her flushed, direct gaze offered no polite pretences.
Her hand moved lower, over the fabric of his trousers.
She pressed her palm against him, finding his shape through the linen.
His breath left him in a sudden rush. His hips moved against her hand involuntarily.
He had always prided himself on his physical control, but she had undone it entirely with a single press of her palm.
“Elizabeth.” His voice was rough. He did not recognise it.
“Yes.”
“You do not have to.”
“I know I do not have to. I want to.” Her hand pressed again. Her fingers explored his shape through the fabric with a thorough, unhurried deliberation that nearly unmade him. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I do not want you to stop. That is the problem.”