And then it wasn’t the same, not at all, not really, because she felt herself surrender, and something changed, again, like that shift when the babe had quickened, and she felt a certainrightnessabout this, something that seemed ancient and rhythmic. What had he said earlier, about being drawn to her, like the pull of the earth to the sun?
This was like that. She opened to him, he fit in her, and they were connected.
What had been done to her before had been done on her, and she had not been a participant, and this wasentirelydifferent.
He gasped against her. “Lizzy,” he breathed. “You feel wondrous.”
She let out some noise. She could not say what the noise was. It sounded like it had been wrung from the very depths of her, and perhaps it had been.
For so long, perhaps since Mr. Wickham had done what he did, she had felt entirely separate from absolutely everyone, and now, the babe moving in her, Mr. Darcy here, lodged deep in her, joined to her.
She felt attached. Coupled. Tied to him.
His eyes opened in slits and their gazes locked, and he moved against her, and she felt her breath begin to go in and out in the same rhythm as his. Her body seemed to know just how to move to accommodate his movement. She gripped his shoulders and she felt shot full of something powerful and strange and sweet, an aching kind of sweetness.
“I shan’t last,” he breathed.
She put her lips against his.
His tongue stroked hers, sending jolts of that aching sweetness splintering through her.
She cried out.
He grunted. His thrusts faltered, sped up and then slowed and then he slammed into her, all the way in, deeper than before, piercing her, and he shuddered against her, and then he stopped his movement entirely, and a wave of sensation seemed to cut through her. She tightened her thighs around him, sealing them together.
He shuddered again, kissing her again—deep, deep kisses.
She wrapped her arms around him too, pulling him in tight.
He sighed.
She sighed.
His eyes were closed. “Well, you can’t have enjoyed that.”
Enjoyed? “I feel transformed,” she murmured, shutting her eyes, too, smiling. “Stay there. I want us connected forever.”
He let out an affected noise, his mouth seeking hers. “We shall be.”
And then it sort of went on for a bit. He wasn’t moving, but his body was warm and good inside her, and his mouth was hot and wet, and she still felt tied to him, part of him, or him part of her, or both of them intertwined in such a way as to feel as if they had become part of each other. They simply kissed. And kissed. And kissed.
Until he yawned and she let out a little laugh and he was rueful. “I shall crush you if I fall asleep inside you, Lizzy. I must…” He tried to extricate himself.
“No,” she moaned. “No, I want to be crushed, then. Stay right there.”
“I should stay awake and bring you,” he said, with another yawn. “I have had a climax and you have not.”
“You have ridden to Newcastle and back and you are exhausted.” She was affectionate, running her fingers through the back of his hair. “You should rest.”
He rolled off of her.
She let out a cry of disapproval at his pulling free of her. She really had meant it. She wanted him there forever. Of course, that was ludicrous. They could not stay that way.
He gathered her into his arms, pulling her tightly against him. “Just a few moments of sleep, perhaps,” he said with another yawn.
She burrowed into his chest. She was awake for a while, simply breathing in the scent of him, which smelled like home, she thought, like safety, like everything good in the world, and then she was drifting, and then, she slept too.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
