Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth did not forget.
The day was warm and long, charged with the tension of two people who knew what the evening held.
They spent the daylight hours pretending otherwise, though the pretence fooled neither of them.
When she passed him a fig at breakfast, his hand brushed hers.
The touch was far from accidental. Her body vividly recalled the feeling of his fingers the night before.
She was as practical about her desire as she was about everything else.
She had felt it, examined it, and concluded that it was genuine, reciprocated, and permanent.
This conclusion freed her from any obligation to agonise over it.
The outcome was always going to be this: Darcy's hands, Darcy's mouth, and a decision she made with her eyes wide open.
The decision was not complicated. She wanted him.
She had wanted him since the rainstorm—possibly since the raft, and probably since the beach after the shipwreck, when he had laughed and she had seen a man she wished to know.
The feeling had grown from mere curiosity into the particular physical need that his fingers had answered the night before.
But the answering had not satisfied the need; it had sharpened it.
She now knew what his hands could do. The knowledge made her desire keener, and far more urgent.
She had made her choice. The phrasing in her own mind was indelicate, yet wholly accurate.
She did not attempt to soften it, for softening was a habit of the world she had left behind.
On this island, she was learning to think plainly about plain facts.
She wanted this man, and she was going to have him.
The act would compromise her in every way that mattered in England, and in no way that mattered here.
They swam in the afternoon.
The cove was warm, the water clear to the sand below.
They swam together as they had since the pretence of taking turns had collapsed.
Elizabeth wore her chemise, and Darcy his trousers.
The wet garments clung to them, concealing very little.
Today, the lack of concealment carried a new weight.
They both knew exactly what lay beneath the fabric, and that knowledge wholly changed the quality of their observation.
She watched him surface from a dive, water streaming from his hair and shoulders.
Her gaze was neither covert nor apologetic.
He watched her float on her back, her chemise transparent in the water, the shape of her body clearly visible through the wet linen.
His gaze was direct and unreserved. They circled each other in the shallows, close but not touching.
The clear, warm water was by no means a sufficient barrier.
Their circling was the day's long prelude condensed into movement.
She came out of the water first and sat on the sand at the cove's edge. Her chemise dried in the sun. Darcy sat beside her. Neither of them spoke, but the silence was heavily freighted with anticipation.
The sun dried them, the salt tightening on their skin.
His hand found hers on the sand, his fingers lacing through hers.
The gesture felt absurdly innocent after the night before, yet it was not innocent at all.
The touch of his hand was a thread connected to every other touch.
It pulled at her patiently, insistently, as it had been pulling all day.
Evening came slowly. The light shifted from gold to amber to a deep, warm red, turning the sea the colour of wine and the stones the colour of honey.
Elizabeth built the fire, and Darcy brought fish.
They ate quickly. The food was a functional necessity rather than a pleasure; the delay was becoming its own kind of unbearable tension.
The fire settled to coals. The air was warm enough that the fire was needed only for light. The low, orange glow made the tower's lower room feel smaller and infinitely more private than it did by day.
Elizabeth looked at him across the fire, and he met her gaze. They had been exchanging such looks all day. The silent communication admitted no uncertainty.
She stood and crossed the space between them. She stopped in front of him where he sat against the wall. When he looked up at her, his face was unguarded in a way she had never seen. His formal composure had been deliberately set aside.
“I want you,” she said. “I am telling you plainly because I do not wish there to be any ambiguity. I want this, and I am choosing it freely. If you are going to ask me if I am certain, the answer is yes. It has been yes since this morning. I would rather you did not waste time asking.”
He stood, slowly unfolding his body from the wall. When he was fully upright, they were closer than they had been since the kiss. His face above hers was steady, grave, and undeniably hungry.
“I was going to ask,” he said.
“I know.”
“Not because I doubted you. Because the asking matters to me.”
She understood.
“Then ask,” she said.
“Are you certain?”
“I am certain.”
He kissed her, his hands framing her face and jaw as they had the first time.
The pace was slower now, the initial urgency banked into something deliberate and deep.
She kissed him back, pushing his shirt open with her hands.
She pressed her palms flat against his bare, warm skin, feeling the muscles tighten beneath her touch.
She pulled his shirt over his head. He lifted his arms to help, and then the fabric was gone. He was bare to the waist. She put both hands flat on his chest, touching him with the same deliberate, focused attention he had shown her the night before.
His breathing changed, becoming shorter and shallower.
He undressed her slowly. He lifted the dress over her head first—a garment so worn and weakened by salt that it came away easily.
The fine chemise beneath was the final layer.
He paused with his hands on the hem and looked at her.
The look was a silent question, and she answered it by lifting her arms.
He drew the chemise off. She stood naked in the firelight. His eyes moved over her with an attention that went beyond assessment; he was memorising her. The deliberate noting of her body in the warm light was visible on his face: her breasts, her waist, and the curve of her hips.
She felt no shyness. Any lingering modesty had been burned away by two weeks of sun, sea, and the particular confidence that came from surviving.
Her body had carried her through a shipwreck and sustained her on this island.
It was strong, brown, and wholly alive, and she would not apologise for any part of it.
“Lie with me,” she said.
They went to the pallet. The sailcloth and dried grass was insufficient as a mattress, but sufficient as a bed. She lay down, and he knelt beside her. He was still wearing his trousers. “Those as well,” she said. He removed them, and then he was naked beside her. She looked at him directly.
His arousal was evident. She had felt his shape and heat through the fabric the night before, but seeing him was wholly different. Her gaze was direct and unhesitating. She refused to look away; doing so would have been a concession to a modesty she no longer felt.
He lay beside her, placing his hand on her hip and his mouth over hers. The kiss was slow and thorough. His hand moved from her hip to her breast, his thumb circling the peak, before trailing down her stomach. She parted her thighs for him, quite done with waiting.
His fingers found her slick and ready. She gasped against his mouth.
His fingers moved with the confident knowledge they had gained the night before.
That confidence drew a loud, unrestrained sound from her throat.
There was no reason to hold back on an island where the only audience was the man causing her pleasure.
“Now,” she said. “Fitzwilliam. Now.”
He moved over her, taking his weight on his arms and settling his hips between her thighs. His body hovered over hers; his face was close, his breath warm on her mouth. She felt him press against her, and her body answered the silent question by tilting her hips upward.
He entered her slowly. It was a firm, insistent pressure. As he pushed inside her, the sensation of fullness and the sharp, bright sting made her catch her breath.
He stopped immediately. His arms were trembling and his jaw was tight. He held himself quite still, refusing to move until she told him to.
“Elizabeth.”
“I am well. Move.”
He moved again. He began with a slow, careful rhythm, his body learning hers. The initial discomfort gave way to friction, and then to a pleasure that built in escalating waves. She held his shoulders tightly. Her fingers dug into his skin; she was not gentle, and he did not ask her to be.
They found their rhythm. The cadence settled into something mutual and deeply instinctive — she had expected awkwardness, and found instead that she knew. Her body rose to meet his without instruction, her legs wrapping around him, her heels pressing into the small of his back.
He groaned—a low, rough sound against her neck. The formal, meticulous Fitzwilliam Darcy would never have made such a sound in any other circumstance. It undid her.
“Harder,” she said. The direct demand in her own mouth surprised her. It surprised him too; she felt it in the momentary stutter of his rhythm. Then he complied, his hips driving deeper and faster. The powerful thrusts sent a shock through her that tightened every muscle in her body.
The pleasure built in intense, breathless surges. His mouth was on her neck, and his hand moved between them, his thumb finding the sensitive peak he had discovered the night before. The combination was overwhelming. She heard herself cry out his name in a fractured gasp.
She came apart. The release was a powerful wave that began where his thumb pressed and spread outward through her hips and thighs.
She clenched around him in a hard, involuntary spasm, her body seizing with a pleasure that obliterated all rational thought.
She cried out loudly, the uncontrolled sound echoing in the stone tower.
He followed her immediately. His remaining control cracked on a final, deep thrust. His hips stilled, and his forehead dropped to her shoulder. His body shuddered violently against hers as he spilled into her, releasing a heavy groan that she felt reverberate against her own ribs.
Silence returned to the tower, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the unchanged rhythm of the sea beyond the archway. Through the gap in the roof, the stars shone bright and indifferent.
They lay tangled on the pallet. His head rested on her chest, his breathing slowly steadying against her skin.
She tangled her hand in his hair, her fingers moving through the damp strands in a gesture that was idle, possessive, and wholly new.
His arm lay heavy and warm across her waist. He was a man who had finally let go of every rigid structure that held him upright, resting wholly upon someone else.
Her body was tender, and sore in a particular, unfamiliar way. She knew she would feel it more keenly on the morrow, but she did not regret it. The soreness was physical evidence that she had chosen this path, and that her choice was correct.
“I did not know,” she said.
He raised his head. His firelit face was close to hers. The formal composure that had been his defining feature was gone altogether. It was replaced by something raw, open, and much younger than the severe man she had danced with at Netherfield.
“What did you not know?”
“Any of it. What it would feel like. That I was capable of this. That you were.” She traced his jaw with her finger, feeling the rough stubble that had grown over the past two weeks.
“I feel awake. I said that last night, and it is still true. I feel as though I have been living at half measure, and suddenly I am wholly alive.”
“I feel,” he began, then stopped. It was a characteristic pause—the hesitation of a man whose deep feelings outpaced his vocabulary. “I feel as though I have been carrying a heavy weight for a very long time. I have finally set it down, and I cannot even remember what it was.”
She kissed his forehead. The tender, domestic gesture belonged to a relationship that had not existed an hour ago. Yet it existed now, and it was as real as the stone beneath her back and the sound of the sea outside.
“The stars are out,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The roof is still leaking.”
“Yes.”
“We should fix it with stones.”
He laughed against her chest, his body shaking with the warm, close sound.
She held him while he laughed. The embrace was a new thing—a depth of affection she had not known she was capable of.
Such holding required great trust, and trust required risk.
She had risked everything tonight, and the reward was far greater than she could have imagined.
The fire burned low, and the stars turned overhead. The island held them, and the sea held the island. They had crossed every line, and they were not sorry.
For the first time, they were home.