She moaned into his mouth, and he held her hips and pressed her against him, luxuriated in the feel of her warm body.
Elizabeth’s fingers slipped to the front of his cravat, and she started to work her fingers into the knot, trying to undo it. She pressed a kiss against his neck, and the feel of her lips was entirely perfect.
He took hold of her arms, knowing that he could not simply let her do this for him. “I… I do not want to use you. For you to treat this as your duty.” His voice was ragged. “Not unless you wish to be with me, to choose me — not if you are merely acquiescing, because it is your duty. If you do not… desire me yourself.”
Her face was achingly beautiful. She was perfectly curved, luminous. Her eyes so bright; her skin glowed. “I want you.”
“Not… not — is that what you truly think? I do not want to take from you something you are unwilling to give. I need to know, I must know that it is not gratitude for what I did to help Bingley… Or even for my coming to see your aunt and uncle. It was my duty. I did not do it—”
She put a finger over his lips.
She kissed him again, softly.
“I never thought I would have a cause to say this, but, Mr. Darcy, sometimes you talk too much.”
That barrier in his mind that he was desperately clinging to, to let him control his own behavior, disappeared.
He kissed her, his lips clinging long to hers. He feltmorethan ever before. He had never felt like this before, not evenwhen he had been with her.
Before he had believed he had a right to her, and that he had somehow earned her by paying the awful cost of making a bad marriage.
Now, he simply loved her. He simply wanted to hold her, to touch her, to have his arms around her, to feel her lips on his neck, her bosom pressed against his chest, to hold her so tight that it was as though they truly ceased to be two different beings and melded into one.
He wanted her to be happy.
They kissed and pressed against each other, Darcy’s hands moved of their own volition as he pulled at the ties of her dress, loosening them, letting him feel the silken skin of her upper back.
“We might miss dinner.” She laughed.
“I don’t care.” Darcy was filled with a fey spirit. He nuzzled her neck, and her chest, feeling her respond, pressing herself against him, holding his hair, stroking his cheeks, stroking his neck and down his arms.
“But what if Georgiana misses us — she was so eager for dinner — oh — that she went to dress — oh, yes touch me like that, again.”
Darcy followed his wife’s command, and she moaned again. He pressed her onto the sofa as he pulled her dress off, and then the shift, the bedroom being one door too far away.
“We’ll make a scandal,” — she was laughing, yet holding him tightly against her body — “appearing late for dinner. What will the servants think?”
“The servants ought to mind their own business.”
Elizabeth laughed as she worked to undo all the buttons of his shirt.
Her laugh filled him further with desire. He was filled with her, her smell, the feel of her body, and the love of her voice.It was different to lie with her like this, in the afternoon sun, and not in their bedroom.
He needed her. He loved her.
Later, when they finished, and had finished once more, they lay together in bed, barely able to see each other in the moonlight. The servants must be thinking something, and Georgiana as well, but Darcy could not care. He laid his head on Elizabeth’s chest, and just listened to the sound of her heartbeat.
His mouth was dry. He suddenly found it terribly difficult to say what he wanted to say. And he wished he could look at her as he did.
Pulling himself up, Darcy looked towards her eyes. In the darkness, he could not see her well enough to perceive the light that was always there, just the vague outlines of her face.
Elizabeth stroked his cheek, the fingers playing over the shadow of stubble that had grown during the course of the day.
“My words cannot express how dearly I admire and love you.”
“Oh,” she replied.
Her hand continued to stroke his face. Yet she was silent for a long minute.
