Page 98 of Homeless

Her hand found his shoulder as she gasped his name, and he rolled his tongue round the puckered flesh until her nails sank into him. “Are you trying to drive me mad?” she rasped.

He pulled back just enough to kiss a line up the centre of her chest, down the dip of her throat, and then leave a soft token on her lips. “Is it working?”

She nodded shakily, her eyes dilated. “You had better carry on with it before I overpower you and take you to the floor myself. I am fairly certain I could right now.”

He chuckled and let his hand stray to her waist. The sharp dip of it, the high rise of her hip. Too thin — she was still too thin, and so was he, but they wore it like a badge of honour, a thing survived together. When he got her home to England, he would see to it that her figure softened again as it should. But for now…

His lips had skimmed down over her breast again and come to her stomach, the small dip of her navel. His hands framed that place, and he stared. It was the first time he had considered, had let himself imagine what they two might have created together. A child… his, and hers, their bodies united in another life. Could it really be true, that she might —

Her hand came to rest on the back of his neck, then her fingers spread and raked over his scalp, and coherent thought left him.

“You are meant to be conserving your strength,” she said. “But at this rate, you will have none left for later.”

“I am spending my strength exactly as I please.” He flicked his tongue over her navel, his hands braced on her hips. “I have been told I am a ruinous husband. I mean to earn the name.”

He worshipped her by inches. He kissed the small hard points of her breasts again until she arched into his mouth; he ran his palm down the length of her, hip and thigh and the soft inside of her knee, learning her again, or learning her properly for the first time, because at Vitoria he had been drunk and frantic and had not been given leave to do this — to simply touch her, and watch what his touching did. He found the places that made her breath stagger, and he kissed each one until her moans and gasps told him to move on.

Then, his hand slipped lower, his fingers gently combing through the curls between her legs and coaxing her to relax, to permit him to touch without flinching. The muscles of her thighs rippled, then eased as he raised mouth to hers again. “Breathe, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “Let me love you.”

That phrase made her mouth stop moving under his. He lifted enough to look into her eyes, and there was confusion there. “I… I had not thought to… that this was —”

“You did not know I was in love with you?”

She swallowed, then slowly shook her head. “I knew you were mad. I did not know you were that far gone.”

He laughed and captured her mouth again, and she sank backwards, one hand digging into his shoulders and the other still clawing at his hair. And her thighs fell open under his fingers.

He let his fingertips graze the outside of her, catching and swirling in the sweet honey of her, until her breaths deepened and her head tossed back into the pillow, her eyelids fluttering luxuriously. “Oh, Fitzwilliam,” she sighed.

He dipped a little deeper then, and found the place that made her whole body go taut. She sucked in a gasp, and her hand fisted in the sheet. He moved slowly, finding the delicate petals and caressing the ridges and defining them, drawing them out until he could feel every line of her, pulsing and waiting on him to worship her completely.

He touched a second finger to her and swirled them gently. She groaned and trembled, her mouth now open on a silent cry that would not come, broken by huffs and little whimpers that almost sounded like his name. He brought her along slowly, watching her face the entire time, because he wanted to give her as much as he had in him to give before whatever was in him gave out — and he could feel already that it would.

She was flushed, her eyes half shut, her hips moving against his hand. “Fitzwilliam, you must stop! I cannot —”

“Let go, Elizabeth.” He kissed the words into the hollow of her hip. “Just let go.”

Her head tossed on the pillow, and a cry broke forth, shaken and uneven, and sounding like an agony for the first few seconds, and then piercing upward into a shriek of astonishment and wonder. An instant later, she was snatching at his hand, begging him to stop, please stop, I cannot bear it…

He let her capture his hand, then took hers to his mouth to kiss it.

Her body went slack then, her eyes opened lazily, and she was panting to catch her breath. “You, sir,” she said between pants, “have made quite the fool of me.”

“And it was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. Would you like to even the score?”

She smiled, still heaving, and reached for him.

He came into her slowly. There was no haste left in him to fight — only the sweet, bewildering, inviting heat of her, her legs rising to wrap him, her heels at the backs of his thighs. Her eyes were open and fixed on his from a hand's breadth away as though she meant to watch the whole of it happen in his face. Her nails traced fire up his spine and spread flat over the root of his back and lower, and he shuddered and moved in her, slow, deep, and careful.

For a moment, it was perfect, it was everything, his blood ringing with it, her name coming in bursts from his lungs as he sank into her, rose up, sank again. She was kissing and nipping at his chest, his throat, anything her mouth could reach, and fire licked his body, threatening to consume him long before she could finish him off. A slow tingle was crawling out from the centre of his universe, the place where his body met hers, growing into a flush and a glow, and —

And the room tilted.

It swung, gently and horribly, and the light scattered at the edges of his vision. His arms, braced on either side of her, shook, and the strength ran out of them like water out of a cracked jug.

He stopped, quaking and trying not to buckle. He was braced over her, shaking, heaving, his head gone light and singing, the fever not wholly out of him yet and choosing this of all moments to remind him of it.

“I — forgive me —” His arms would not hold him. “Elizabeth, I cannot — I am —”