Longbourn to London (34 page)

Elizabeth felt it against her thigh, and asked huskily, “
This
soon?”

“It has been eight years, you know. You should consider yourself a lucky woman, Elizabeth Darcy.”

“Perhaps when I have had time to become a true proficient, I shall.”

“Practice,” he said solemnly, and returned his attention to her breasts.

After several moments, Darcy changed position and tucked his mouth next to her ear. “Lizzy…now I have had you, I cannot resist. We may never leave this bed.” He applied his swelling erection to her point of pleasure. “Does this please you?”

Elizabeth nodded, sighing as a frisson passed through her.

“Then I shall not stop until you reach your ecstasy again. Lizzy…tell me when.”

She did not need to tell him. One of her hands clasped his hair, her back arched.

Darcy entered her at precisely the right moment, slowly, feeling the stickiness of various fluids previously combined, but still revelling in the tight warmth admitting him. His hand slid to her derriere as her legs tightened their grip. “I am going to roll us onto our sides, so I can suckle while we are joined.” His voice was low and insistent.

The very notion of it caused her to explode with the anticipation of pleasure. She grew tighter inside and her toes curled and flexed on his back. His intimate words, whispered in her ear, made her delirious. She was crying insensible words with syllables of his name, unheeding the loudness of her utterances. The prickly sensation was ignored, easily overwhelmed by the ample demonstration of his desire. That he could take such pleasure from her was its own gratification.

Pushing with one leg, he rolled her onto her side. He did not need to ask her to arch her back to reach her nearest breast, since she was quaking with waves of longing. He captured a nipple and she gasped at the tender connection. “Fitzwilliam…mmm.”

Gently he began pulsing within her, carefully pushing as deeply as possible. Her response to the combined connection indicated how he could prolong her rapture. Her hands were everywhere, his hair, his arms, his chest, until one hand grasped his buttock, impelling him deeper.

“Fitzwilliam…the other…” she moaned, and he knew the tension was rising in the breast untasted. Sensing his own mounting urgency, he gave several buried thrusts before quickly latching his mouth to her other breast.

They sighed together, suddenly out of rhythm but uncaring, unseeing, only feeling and hearing each other. Again, his seed was spilled as he growled her name. This time, after his spasms subsided, he grew soft quickly and pulled away.

She was still writhing and, without opening her eyes, murmured, “Oh my.” Elizabeth slid her leg from under him and pulled his head down to rest on her chest as her breathing calmed.

This is a miraculous thing. That the pain of the act could be overset by such stirring sensations is a wonder indeed
. She leaned her cheek against the top of his head. “I was wrong in what I thought before.
This
is what happiness feels like.”

Darcy smiled; she could feel the action curve his cheek against her. She said, “I love you,” and he said, “I adore you,” at the same moment.

Chapter 21

Wonderment

“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes…”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado about Nothing

Fitzwilliam Darcy dozed, his awareness rising to occasional wakefulness, reassuring him that yes, his head was resting on the chest of his beloved Elizabeth, and they were in bed together as husband and wife. His arm and leg were her only coverings. Her hands fiddled with his hair, stroked his cheek, or lay companionably on the arm crossing her waist. Darcy was drowsy and sated, and feeling no end of relief that, despite his abominable loss of control, she remained generous and forgiving. Even now, when she might still be in pain, or at least uncomfortable, it was Elizabeth who offered the solace of a warm shoulder. He had never felt such peace.

Darcy floated into a dream.
He was with her in this room on the settee. She wore her wedding gown and gloves but then her clothing melted away. He was kneeling, looking up at her as she sat, her hair spilling around her breasts. She stroked his hair and looked at him with her laughing, loving smile. He bent his head, her bare legs parted, and he settled a kiss on her slightly pouting belly, just above her triangle of dark curly hair. “Silly man,” she chuckled, “I am your wife, Fitzwilliam. You may do with me what you will.”

***

Elizabeth did not nap, her mind instead scampering amongst new experiences, examining the many sensations of the day, and adjusting to being naked with a
very
naked man. She was amazed at her previous naiveté, appreciating all the more Darcy’s patience. Had anyone told her a year ago she would find the deepest love—the desire she had spoken of only to Jane—with the proud and brooding, aloof and disdainful Fitzwilliam Darcy, she would have laughed them out of the county.

Darcy’s face appeared before her. She remembered his wounded aspect as he handed her his letter in the grove at Rosings Park.
Had I only known my folly then... How near a thing that this day might never have dawned.

She shook her head to scatter the vision. All she could do was wonder at the several small miracles that kept him first in her thoughts and, finally, in her heart. In her effort to remember the past only as it gave her pleasure, she would forget his thoughtless dismissal at the Meryton assembly, his blistering retorts as she spurned him at Hunsford, and his initial coldness in the carriage earlier.

Now she comprehended him much better. He only appeared unkind or forbidding when he was expending every effort to maintain self-control. Now that this final barrier to absolute intimacy had been forever breached, he need never appear that way to her again. That in their present circumstances he would prove to be gentle, teasing, and irresistibly playful was wholly unexpected.

Elizabeth knew Darcy had fallen asleep, but the room was growing cold.
I should stoke the fire,
and I am sticky between my legs
. She kissed his forehead but he did not stir. She slowly tried to ease herself from under him, but when she lifted his arm from her waist, he opened his eyes.

His vision dissolved from the dream and focused on the breast in his line of sight. “Elizabeth?” he murmured, resettling the arm she was trying to move to cup her breast in his warm hand. He felt her cool, pliant skin and lifted his head to look at her face. “Are you cold?”

“I cannot reach the bedclothes, and it was my thought to stir the fire and stoke it.”

“Mmm,” he lowered his head to its former place, petting her breast. “You may stir my fire and I shall stir yours,
again
.”

She smiled. “I do feel a need to clean myself, excessively prideful husband, even though we may likely make more untidiness later.”

Elizabeth was surprised when Darcy startled and sat up. “Of course! I have been negligent. Let me tend you.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, moved to the closest washstand, and dabbed a piece of towelling in the basin.

“No! Oh no, Fitzwilliam, I should wash myself…” She drew upright onto her knees.
We are intimate now but this is too much…
The length of his broad back, narrowing to a muscular waist, and the seamless transition from flat lower back to firm vulnerable buttocks stopped her mid-sentence. He was as perfectly chiselled as any statue in her father’s art books. There were trails of scratches on his back, some dark from bleeding. “And I should wash
your
back. Do you scar easily?”

Darcy laughed as he squeezed excess water from the cloth. “Scars I shall wear with pride. If you think you have seen me self-satisfied, wait until my fencing master notices. I must practice a knowing smirk to meet any comments.”

Elizabeth shook her head and sat back on her haunches. “I should have guessed as much. You will not need much practice.”

Darcy turned to her, still laughing. His eyes fell to the carnage on the bedclothes, and he stood stock-still, stunned.

“My god, Lizzy! Have your courses come, too?” It was the only explanation he could contrive for such a scene. He looked at her aghast.
What is keeping her from fainting from loss of blood? She appears so rosy and alive!

She looked down at the sheeting, then back to him, and started to laugh. “Did someone steal in here and slaughter a piglet while we were distracted?”

Darcy’s stare deepened to shock. “Elizabeth, how can you jest? Are you not in great pain? Did I do this to you?”

“Fitzwilliam, calm yourself. Who else did it? Silly man. Did you not know I might bleed?”

He sputtered, “Yes, I knew you might, a little, but I thought a rivulet, not the Thames!”

“I suspect I bled both times. It is nothing. We shall clean it up and clean ourselves, and that will be that. Now hand me the towel.”

“No, you come here.”

They met each other’s narrowed eyes for a long moment.

Darcy went to the bed. “Lizzy, please. I do insist. Then, if my back is as bad as you say, you may tend to me. We shall remove the sheets and Mrs. Chawton will burn them in the morning. We can take ourselves to the other bedroom for the rest of the night.”

Neither moved until Darcy smiled.

Elizabeth heard her aunt’s voice,
“Let him!”
and she could not resist his dimples. “I never should have revealed to you the power of your smile. Please take note, Mr. Darcy: I am becoming a compliant wife.” She walked on her knees to the edge of the bed, skirting the evidence of a thoroughly consummated marriage. She returned to mirth from annoyance.

“About damn time…” he muttered, his dimples deepening in a vain attempt to stop smiling.

Elizabeth chuckled.

Darcy knelt before her and wiped gently at the streaks of blood on her thighs. Then, to her utter mortification, he took up a candlestick and told her to sit at the edge of the bed and spread her legs. He intended to be meticulous.

“Oh, surely not,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Please, sir, no. I can do it.”

“I know you can do it; you have been cleaning yourself for years. Now you have me to attend to you.” He looked up, waiting. Finally, he said, “Elizabeth, now it is you who are being silly. Sit.”

She did so, grousing the entire time. “Please give me the towel. This is most improper. Mr. Darcy, you assume too much. I should clean myself. You had better not.”

As she continued her litany of ineffectual protests, he gently spread her legs—she was strong, but he had more leverage—and lit her nether parts in the candlelight. He folded, wet, and refolded the towel several times to remove all traces of their humours.

She admitted only to herself that his tender attention was soothing.

“There…” He leaned back on his heels but did not move the candle. He gazed fixedly at her womanly parts. He was caught, quite immobilised, between his desire to kiss her on her sensitive places and tearing himself away.

Sensing his desire, Elizabeth whispered, “Do not, Fitzwilliam, please do not.”
Oh no… I see it in his eyes. Someday he will ask me to make the dream I had come true…or he might not even ask!

He looked at her as if he had forgotten that she was attached to the devastatingly desirable sight before him. He said nothing, but stood as she scooted back onto the bed.
You must walk before you run, Darcy
.
When she is ready, you will know
.

He heard her take a deep, relieved breath, saying in a rather more plucky voice, “Is there another clean towel there? It is your turn.”

She approached the washstand as he sat on the bed. He knew her intent was to wash his back, but he had noticed streaks of her blood on his thighs, and decided not to turn around, at least not immediately
. How thorough will she be? This ought to be interesting.

She turned, her eyes immediately falling to his lap—she could not help it, or avoid it. His thighs wanted a wash but there it was, fairly tumescent, his male part. “Ah…” She straightened as if to proceed in an officious manner. “There is the creature who hath wrought such havoc.” She dabbed at him timidly, avoiding the culprit.

Darcy could not help smiling.
Yes, her courage always does rise in the face of intimidation.
Something of his was rising, too.

“Would you like my advice, Mrs. Darcy? Or better, my guidance?”

“Mr. Darcy, I would say yes, but must you leer at my hands? It smacks of ingratitude. It is in no way humble or becoming to you, and after all, I am the more injured party.” Her eyes flickered to his face.
I have never seen him more handsome.

“I do not mean to laugh at your discomfort, Lizzy, but you will need to get to know ‘the creature’ one way or another. It certainly wishes to know you.”