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He groaned.

They were kissing again.

The rest of the undressing was mostly wordless. It happened in little increments—his cravat gone, then his jacket and waistcoat, her stays even looser, his chest bared to her, and all of the sinews and angles of him there for her to feast her gaze on.

Only once did he say anything, mouth on her shoulder, hand delving down over her belly button. “You did say you would marry me, didn’t you?”

She laughed. He was still harping on that? She didn’t want to hear such things. Marriage, tomorrow, all of it—those things belonged to the real world, and she was floating in dreamy absinthe clouds. So, she just said, “Yes, yes, of course.”

“My wife,” he breathed into her skin.

She shivered.

His lips hovered close to hers. “Call me husband?”

“Husband,” she breathed back.

Very soon after that they were not wearing anything at all.

His male part was enormous and large and swollen. She had seen male members before, but only on infants. When she was an adolescent, she would often be at Lucas Lodge and the youngest Lucas needed diaper changing, and there were not servants to see to such things, so Charlotte would do it and Elizabeth had assisted on numerous occasions. So, she knew what they looked like, except a grown man’s was very different.

He noticed her staring at him, at his reddened tip and the way it curved up to kiss the dark hair growing on his stomach. “Do you wish to touch me? You may touch me, too, Elizabeth.”

“Touch you there?” she said in a small, tiny voice.

He gave her a smile, bashful, boyish. “It’s all right. If you want to.”

She touched him.

A series of moans leaked out of his lips.

He was a rod of hot granite encased in thin satin. She liked touching him there. She liked being bare and untethered and free here in this unreal world.

He kissed her firmly, gasping. The look he gave her was full of awe, as if he couldn’t believe this was happening. “You’re a goddess,” he pronounced, voice scratchy.

She liked that, too.

CHAPTER NINE

ELIZABETH MOVED SLOWLYand silently into the darkened room. She carefully lit up a candle and went over to the small bed where Willie lay.

She let Mr. Darcy look.

He did, drinking in the sight of the sleeping little boy, who was lying on his side, fists jutted up against his chin, curled up and small.

Mr. Darcy’s lower lip trembled.

She looked away, embarrassed at that. It wasn’t done, showing that sort of emotion. When she looked back at him, he was wiping at his cheek, wiping away a tear.

She took him by the arm and led him away. This room was not Lady Catherine’s old room, but it did have a connected sitting room. She led him in there and set the candle down on a table between two couches. She sat down.

He sat down opposite her, hanging his head.

“Perhaps I should not have kept him from you,” she said softly. “I suppose I didn’t realize you would feel… but of course you would.”

He lifted his head and shrugged at her. “He’s all I think of, I’m afraid.”

All he thought of?