She caught the nightdress at her waist, and he heard her sharp indrawn breath as he inserted his hands beneath it to caress the tempting curves of her hips. She had allowed him more latitude than he had expected, but not yet as much as he hoped. “Elizabeth,” he murmured in her ear, “I want to see all of you.” At her moment of hesitation, he added, “I told you I would be no gentleman—I want far too much of you to settle for what a gentleman takes from his wife.” He let his hand slide down toward the juncture of her thighs, deliberately tempting her. “And before we are done, you will want more of me than a lady expects from her husband. Oh, yes, you will want more.”
Elizabeth struggled to catch her breath against the sensations he was creating in her, not just with his touch, but with his voice. She knew that her native modesty was losing the battle against the lure of the forbidden, subverted by the pleasure of his touch. In sudden decision, she released the fabric, and the last barrier fell to the floor.
She felt his lips on her neck once more, and his hands crept down to her thighs. “Very nice,” he breathed. “Unfortunately, you know what they say about feeding tigers—it only makes them hungrier, and I am… very hungry.”
“Shall I stop feeding you, then?” she asked with a smile, to prove she was still capable of speech.
“Do not even suggest it, my love. I enjoy being hungry in such a good cause.” He slid his hand between her legs, bringing it slowly up to rest over her most secret places.
Elizabeth shuddered at the burst of sensation which ran through her. She would not have imagined she could feel so much, and the feeling did not stop, but grew as she pressed herself against his hand. “Oh, William,” she sighed.
He rubbed his hand back and forth, thrilling in the pleasure he was giving her. He could not quite believe he truly had her in his arms in this state, and that she did not seem disturbed by it. “Come to bed, my love, and I will show you even more,” he said.
His words seemed to bring back some of her modesty, for she stilled and coloured slightly, embarrassed by her uncovered state, especially since he was still clad. She turned in his arms and pressed her hands against his shirt, in part hiding herself against him. “Not until you remove this,” she said, her eyes daring him.
A new light appeared in his eyes, and a pleased smile crossed his face. “As you wish, my dearest,” he said, bending his head to taste her lips evocatively before complying with her request.
Elizabeth hardly knew what to do with the sight before her, since it went beyond her imagination. She ran her hands lightly up the defined muscles of his chest, then pressed her body against his, aroused by the feeling of his skin rubbing her breasts as she swayed towards him. She closed her eyes to savour the experience and turned her mouth up to his.
He caught it in a kiss of deep passion, exploring the confines of her mouth as he stroked her back, pulling her tightly to him. Her conduct was feeding the fire within him until it blazed with almost unbearable heat, and he wanted her with a fierceness that surprised even him. Without breaking contact with her lips, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He lay down beside her, skimming his hand over her breast until he was satisfied with the look of desire in her eyes, then he drew her nipple into his mouth, gently teasing it until she writhed against him. He slid his hand once more down to the juncture of her legs, feeling her arch to meet him.
He had been waiting for this moment. He lifted his head, watching her until she opened her eyes, and with his gaze fixed on her, he finally slipped his fingers into her folds to discover her place of pleasure. Her expression of surprise and arousal was all he had hoped it would be. He showed her a new level of excitement, stroking her in tiny circles until her low moans became more frequent and higher, her head moving from side to side with the fierce pleasure rushing through her. With a satisfied look, he bent his head to her breast again, and added the tantalization of his mouth to the activity of his fingers until he felt her reach her crest. The sound of her soft cries satisfied his deep urge to take her pleasure, and he prolonged the moment as long as he could. When her tremors finally ceased, he kissed her gently.
“William,” she breathed in astonishment.
His voice was self-satisfied. “As I said, before I was done, you would want more than a lady receives from her husband.”
She smiled at him archly. “I cannot say, since it seems to be my fate that I shall never know what a gentleman gives to his wife.”
“Is that a complaint, my love?” he asked lazily, letting his fingers begin to move against her again.
Her eyes widened. “Not at all,” she said, a bit breathlessly, as his touch revived her earlier pleasures.
He enjoyed watching her rising passion for a few minutes, then paused to strip himself of his remaining attire. With the sensation of finally finding the place always meant for him, he situated himself atop her, his legs parting hers.
Elizabeth, perhaps more startled by his appearance than she cared to indicate, pulled his head down to hers for a kiss. As she did, his hips began to undulate against her, his arousal stimulating her as his fingers had done earlier. It gave her exquisite pleasure, and without a thought she spread her legs wider to permit greater contact. She arched against him, gasping, and her movement clearly fired his desire even higher, for he returned to her mouth demandingly, as if he required even greater dominion of her. As their mouths intertwined, he pulled his hips back and slowly but without hesitation entered her, pushing his way past her last barrier to take final possession of her.
She flinched in a brief moment of pain, trying to incorporate this new experience as he began to move gently within her. It was only a brief interval before she could feel a new kind of pleasure growing within her at his actions, and she opened her eyes to find him looking at her questioningly.
“Am I hurting you, best beloved?” he asked with concern.
She shook her head. “Only for a short time,” she said with a distracted smile.
This last reassurance was all he needed, and he thrust himself deep within her, letting instinct take over. Feeling the consummate joy of being fully accepted at last by the woman he had loved for so long, he found a rhythm which seemed to draw the greatest response from her. He felt her wrap her legs around him, pulling him deeper within her, and her moans of pleasure only fired his desire yet further. As he moved within her, he let the supreme delight of her body around him wash over him and build to ever greater heights until he released himself in a pinnacle of superb pleasure.
Sated, he collapsed in her arms, marvelling at the softness of her body beneath him and the gentle touch of her hands on his back. He felt a deep contentment, a sense of finally coming home, and took his ease in the comfort of loving and being loved. Soon, though, a cognizance of Elizabeth’s situation entered him, and he moved off her to lie beside her, his hand moving as if by instinct to cup her breast tenderly.
He kissed her gently, and was relieved to see her smile at him. “I hope I did not hurt you, my love,” he said.
She shook her head, still too far caught up in the intense emotion of the moment to speak. The mild ache she felt did not compare to the power of the closeness she felt to him, and the freedom that had come from both seeing him in total abandon and her discovery and sharing of her own pleasure. She nestled closer to him, kissing his shoulder.
With slightly greater uneasiness, he said, “Are you disturbed by this, by what has passed between us? I hope you will feel you can tell me.”
She looked up into the shadows of his face. “Oh, no. No. I am perfectly well, and content to be here with you,” she said, hoping to reassure him.
“Then I am happy,” he said, but there was a look in his eye which made her doubt his words. She waited to see if he would say more, but in his silence she read more concern than ease.
She reached up to trace the line his hair made as it fell against his face. “
Is something troubling you?” she asked simply, not wanting to lose the precious sense of intimacy with him she felt.
His mouth moved in a mirthless smile. “I am caught,” he said, “in the bitter dilemma of being quite ashamed of myself for taking advantage of you, and at the same time, wanting nothing more than to do so again as soon as possible. As I told you earlier, I am not reconciled with the part of myself that is so selfish as to think only of my own desires.”
She nibbled his neck playfully. “Well, you may believe what you like, but it certainly seemed to me that you were doing a great deal of thinking about me.”
“You give me too much credit,” he said seriously. “I take pleasure from your pleasure; it is far from selfless of me.”
She bit her lip, her contentment fading away. “I am sorry if you regret what happened,” she said, feeling the beginning of a deep mortification building within her.
Her troubled tone did not pass by unnoticed by Darcy, and he kissed her earnestly. “Oh, my best beloved, that is exactly my problem: I do not regret it, but I think that I ought to, and I do not know how you can forgive me my selfishness.”
She forced herself to relax, not as simple a matter as she would have wished, once she had begun to feel uncomfortable in her exposedness. “You are the only one here worried about this, my dear,” she said. “I have learned a great deal in this last year, not the least of which is the price of being condemned as shameful, and what it is to have nothing left to lose. I know what it is to have my name fall into ill repute, and what it means to feel that censure, and to take it onto myself; and I will not feel ashamed any longer for loving you, or for acting on the natural consequences of that love. We are betrothed and soon to be married, and it is no one’s business but our own how we celebrate that fact, just as it is no one’s business but our own whether or not we behave as they think a lady and a gentleman ought in the privacy of our own rooms.” Her voice had become fierce by the time she finished.
He took this in quietly, then raised an eyebrow. “I had not realized I was marrying a tigress,” he said mildly.
“The more fool you,” she retorted in delight at his changed mien. “I had assumed that was why you were marrying me.”
He smiled at her arch look, and kissed her thoroughly. “I am marrying you, if you must know, because I finally realized under your tutelage that what was important was not rank, or privilege, or reputation, but only the knowledge of loving and being loved. I cannot tell you what an education it was for me when I first went to your uncle’s house in London, and saw, in a place I would have once never deigned to enter, a kind of warmth and affection throughout that I lacked and wanted dearly; and I realized how much better it would have been for Georgiana if, instead of growing up with my rigid ideas of what was right and proper, she had spent those years with your aunt and uncle and knowing what it was to be loved and accepted for what she was.”
Elizabeth traced her finger along his cheek, moved by his words. “I do love you, William.”
“That means the world to me, my dearest.” He ran his fingers through her hair, thinking of how often he had imagined this scene, but he could never have guessed at the contentment he felt, holding her in his arms so intimately.
She became still as a thought entered her mind unbidden. “William,” said Elizabeth with sudden suspicion, “when were you at my uncle’s house?”
How had he managed to forget himself enough to have mentioned he had been there? He had not wanted her to know, but he would not dissemble to her, especially not now. “It was when your sister disappeared,” he said with a sigh. “I knew Wickham’s companions of old, and was able to offer your father some assistance in locating her.”
She looked at him searchingly. “Why has this never been mentioned to me, by either you, or my father, or my uncle for that matter? Why the secrecy?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I asked your father, and your aunt and uncle, not to tell anyone of my role in the matter. I did not want you to feel any obligation to me.”
“You are too kind,” she said with a laugh, then, at his serious look, said suspiciously, “What is it, William? What are you not telling me?”
He looked away. “I felt a responsibility; I had failed to expose Wickham for what he was out of my own unwillingness to lay open my actions to the world.”
“Must I ask my father?” she asked archly at his obvious evasion.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “You know me too well, my love. Very well, if you must know, I went with your father to retrieve your sister; and, having greater experience in dealing with Wickham, negotiated the bargain with him—I am assuming you do know their marriage did not take place without money changing hands. And I returned for their wedding, to make sure he kept his word, because Wickham knows to be afraid of me, and he does not fear your father.”
“I still fail to see why you would keep this a secret from me,” she said, with a good suspicion as to what he was leaving out of the story. “Unless, perhaps, you had some financial role in this you are conveniently forgetting to mention.”
He looked so much like a child caught in misbehaviour that she could not help but laugh. He replied with as much dignity as he could manage, “As I said, I felt some responsibility for the matter.”
She shrugged teasingly. “If that is to be your story,” she said.
He smiled and kissed her neck softly. “Very well, minx; I did not like to see you so unhappy.”
She paused for thought, or as much thought as she could manage with his lips trailing along her collarbone. “But then you left,” she pointed out.
Gathering her into his arms, he said, “Pray do not remind me of that time; it was as dark a one as I have known. I thought you loved Covington, and I wanted you to be happy; that seemed to require your sister’s marriage and my departure, so that is what I arranged for. I was selfish enough to come to see you that last time, knowing I should stay away, simply because I could not bear for my last sight of you to be in tears in his arms.”
“Oh, William,” she said softly, tears rising to her eyes as she recalled the moment, “and I was crying because I wanted you to comfort me, not him, and it could not be.”
“Is that what it was?” he asked reflectively. “I wish I had known, though perhaps it is just as well I did not; I would have been all too tempted to do something foolish.” In an attempt to remind himself all this was in the past, he allowed himself to caress the curves of her body. He still could not credit how very generous and free she had been with him; he counted himself extremely fortunate to have found a woman who could match him in that regard.
She smiled mischievously. “Yes—you were never at your best when he was present.” She could see by the look on his face, though, that this was still a bitter memory and not a teasing matter, and she hastened to amend herself. “Even so, you were the one I wanted—and how angry that made me!”
He looked at her seriously, trying to still the part of himself which was still ferociously jealous that another man had ever had a claim on her. “You did not want to love me?”
She laughed. “No, I most certainly did not! You completely disrupted the calm path of my life.”
His hand strayed along her flanks, intimately reacquainting him with her shape. “You could have made it so much simpler by accepting me last April.”
“You could have made it simpler by not waiting nearly half a year to follow up on your letter!” retorted Elizabeth good-humouredly, finding it impossible to ignore the effect his explorations were having on her.
He cupped his hand around her breast, rubbing his thumb across her nipple. He had an intense urge to take her again, but he knew it was for the wrong reasons; he wanted their lovemaking to be characterized by passion and laughter, not to come out of jealousy and a need to stake his claim to her once more. Still, the liberties he was taking soothed him to some extent in r
eassuring him that she was his.
Although distinctly aroused by his fondling, Elizabeth was discovering that, outside of the heat of the moment, these intimacies came as more of a shock, and she realized just how far they had altered their relationship that night. Impulsively, she hugged him close and said, “Oh, William, what a difficult course we have taken! I wish I had known last April what I know now, and not had to learn so much in the hardest possible manner.”
He heard the confusion in her voice, and it brought out his protective instincts. He moved his hand to her hair and began stroking it gently. “I wish neither of us had suffered the way we did, but I know for my part there were lessons in it I needed to learn. Before I met you, I had the good fortune never to lack for anything I wanted, and it had never occurred to me that I could. Even after you refused me, I kept in the back of my mind the idea that if you knew the truth, it would be within my ability to change your mind, should I decide to try. It was not until I went to Vienna that I finally acknowledged that you were what I wanted more than anything in life, and I never would have you. I cannot tell you what that took, but it was important for me to realize I could not have whatever I wanted merely for the wanting of it.”
“But you ended up winning me in any case,” she pointed out with a smile.
“Yes, but only after I admitted to myself I could not,” he replied. A thought crossed his mind of something he had long wished to know, but never felt able to ask before. “When was it that you decided to break off your engagement?”
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