Page 126 of Faceless

The frank appreciation in her face did more to him than any touch of her hand had done yet that morning. “I had not thought to display myself for your inspection.”

“You should have. It would have shortened the morning.”

He laughed, and then she reached for him, and the laughing went into the kissing, and the kissing into something else, and he could not stay where he was. He was dimly aware of his trousers hanging open at the front, of himself plainly out of them and against her thigh as he leaned over her on the desk, of his own indecorum and the fact that he could not be brought to care about it.

His boots were the other consideration. They were entirely in the way, and they were going to have to come off. That meant sitting down on something to deal with them, which meant taking his mouth away from hers, and he had reached the point at which taking his mouth away from hers had become a thing he was not prepared to do.

He decided. He gathered her up off the desk in both arms with the trousers half down his thighs and the boots still on his feet, and he carried her — with considerable awkwardness, the trousers bunching at his knees and the boot-tops bumping at each stride — the four steps to the bed, and he laid her down on it.

She was laughing when he carried her, and when he set her down, she registered the state of him standing over her, and her hand went up over her mouth. “How did you manage that without falling?”

He slid towards her on the bed and pressed a kiss to her stomach. “I was very determined.”

“That has never been a problem before. No… Fitzwilliam Darcy, you tease, you! You were not even wearing your boots these last two months. Were you?”

“I had my banyan slippers,” he said a little defensively. “Rather convenient footwear for a gentleman at his leisure.”

“You mean a gentleman hoping for something more than just supper with his wife.”

“Well, after being caught once unprepared, I decided that tall boots were really not quite the thing for an evening supper. It is not as if I were trying to impress you with the polish on the leather.”

She lost it then, properly, with her hand still over her mouth and her eyes shining at him. He propped his chin on her stomach and watched, with his trousers bunched at his knees and his boots on his feet and his wife laughing helplessly underneath him in the morning light, and he found that he could not be offended by any of it because he had never seen her laugh like that before — not at him, not at his expense, but with him at his own expense, freely.

She caught his face in her hands and held it for a moment. “Two months of hopeful walking around in banyan slippers, all while protesting that I was the one seducing you!”

“You were. I was only trying to take… precautions. A man could fall and split his crown in the dark, if his trousers fall round his knees this way.”

She laughed again, twisting her fingers through his hair. “You absurd, particular, careful man.”

He could not answer that. She reached for him, and he came down to her, and the laughing went into the kissing again. The heat of her skin against the length of him in the light was something he had not been prepared for. He had had her this way in the dark a dozen times and never with his eyes on her face.

He drew back and looked at her, tracing his fingertips from her jaw, down to the hollow of her throat, then circling one breast before dipping lightly to her navel and travelling up again.

She was toying with the hair curling over his ears. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I am looking at you.”

“You may continue. I do not object.”

He bent and kissed her again, slowly this time, with all the time he had ever wanted to take and none of the dark between them. He kissed her mouth and then the line of her jaw and then the place under her ear he had been wanting all morning, and she made the soft sound he had been wanting to hear in the daylight.

“Elizabeth.” His voice had gone unsteady. “May I —”

He could not finish the sentence. He found he did not know how to ask for it. He had imagined this in the dark on more nights than he could account for and had never said it aloud, and saying it aloud in the morning light to her face was a separate undertaking entirely.

“May you what?”

“I should like…” He stopped. He drew breath and tried again. “I have never seen you. I have never been permitted to look at you. I should like, if you will allow me, to —”

She understood him before he finished. The colour came up her throat in the crawling sort of heat he had been learning all morning, and her eyes went wider, and her hand at his shoulder tightened briefly.

“Ah… That is… I had not expected…”

“You need not. If you would rather not. I only —”

“I —” She stopped. She drew breath. “I am not certain I shall know how to — be looked at.”

“Then I shall not. Forget I asked.”