It did, but it didn’t. “It is only that I have never had anything else.”
“I know,” he said, reaching down to brush her hair away from her face. “I’m sorry for that, too. It’s not at all fair, really. She was very bitter about that herself, you see. That was why she must make up for all that time she’d been faithful to her late husband by having ever so many young, strapping lads pleasuring her. If you wish it, Lizzy, after I die, you may have your own little harem of men. I am certain you could have a number of men worshiping you.”
Elizabeth let out a cry of protest. “That’s not at all what I wish!”
“Have I ruined it?” he said. “I am sorry. I can promise never to speak of her again.”
“No, no,” she said. “No, I don’t wish you to feel you cannot say things to me.”
“Well, I do not wish to hurt you. I wish to make you happy and pleased, and anything you dislike, I leave it without a second thought.”
She reached up and touched his face. “I believe you, but that is not what I wish from you, Fitz. This is what I mean. You are too eager and too willing to do so much for me, and I think you will come to resent me in time. I cannot possibly be worth it.”
“Lizzy,” he said, his mouth curving into a smile, “I think not. What I think is that there have been too few people willing to do the bare minimum for you, and now that I am here, and that I care for you, that I would put you first, you feel it as if it cannot be safe for someone to do that. But this is what it is to be in love. It’s not about worth, you see. That would be about what I got out of it. Love isn’t about keeping score, it’s about… well, love.”
And this made her throat tight and tears spring to her eyes. “You are too good to me, though, Fitz, you truly are.”
“Not even close to being too good,” he countered. “No, I wish I had been better. No, I…” He kissed her.
She clung to him, moving her lips against his, gasping. “Now,” she breathed. “Now, inside me again, now.”
He groaned, breaking their kiss. “No, no, you will have a climax before that, my love. I will not be so selfish again. The question is whether you can bear my mouth there or if you will associate it badly forever, I suppose.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Well, I think I might be able to bear it.”
He laughed.
“I mean, if you do that for me, though, does it mean I should do it for you?”
He raised his eyebrows. He cleared his throat. “I believe I have told you the rules. You think of your pleasure, and I think of your pleasure, and my pleasure is guaranteed, so there is no need to worry over it. I would only wish you to do that if it gave you pleasure, you see.”
She smiled.Hmm. She wanted to put her hand on him again, she found, but he was kissing his way down her body to put his mouth on her again, and she could think of nothing but how lovely it was.
He gasped into her, tongue against the most sensitive parts of her, telling her how much he liked the taste of her here, and there was something that made her believe it, and she rolled her hips against his mouth until he finally latched onto her, sucking her into his mouth the way he had done before, and she went still and could do nothing except make ever-louder little noises. She felt as if her pleasure was like storm winds in an autumn forest, whipping through her, a gale force that threatened to tear each leaf from each branch, and as they finally released, all at once, it was a whirlwind of falling leaves, as her pinnacle twitched its way through her.
And only then was he inside her again, and her body was so very sensitive and pleased, and he felt large and lovely in her, as if he was everywhere, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him as they moved together, as they joined, as they became one again.
Afterwards, they slept.
When she woke with his mouth on herthere, sometime later, she felt as if she were encased in a bright bubble of sheer goodness, one that went on and on and floated upwards, towards light and warmth and everything sweet and wondrous.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MR. DARCY SPENTfar too much of the next three weeks in her bedchamber, not that he minded it.
They spoke of moving her into the main house, and they both decided there was no reason not to do it. And then they got distracted, often by kissing, sometimes by other things. She had grown rather fond of unbuttoning his trousers and going after him there, in fact.
Once she did put her mouth on him, and he hadn’t perhaps enjoyed it as much as he could have because of the anxiety of what should be done. He must warn her. He must not spill in her mouth. That was impossible. Wretched. She was going to be hiswife. She was his shining and perfect Elizabeth, and she did not swallow his—
Except she did.
She had said that he was too good to her, but it was very clearly the other way around, and he would not hear it said otherwise.
He sometimes spent long periods of time putting his mouth to her skin. He liked to kiss the protrusion of her belly, sometimes for what felt like hours. He would alternate between kissing her between her thighs and kissing in circles round her belly button, sometimes, he would have a hand between her legs while he kissed her belly, sometimes the other way round, andshe had ceased to ask questions about it, and she did not seem to mind it, and he didn’t explain it to her, but he had to admit, somewhere in the recesses of his brain, that it aroused him.
All the elements of it aroused him.
Her being with child lit him up. The little swell of her there made her seem fecund and radiant and ever so very attractive. The idea that she was with child made him feel a strange sort of warmth in his belly, something that would travel south and go right to the root of him. He did not know why. He only knew that it was so. That a woman with child, thatthiswoman with child, was desirable to him.
