Page 84 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
She reached the top and she tipped out into the bright blue sky on the other side of the wall as her body stuttered and quivered against his body. And she jerked away from his finger, the sensation too much.
“Oh, finished?” he breathed.
“Y-yes,” she gasped.
His mouth was against her temple, against her cheekbone. He kissed her, whispering more praise against her skin.
She was afraid to open her eyes. She was ashamed that she’d given in like that. Why did this man do this to her? Why did she go to pieces near him?
“I want you,” he murmured. “I know it’s wrong. I know I should wait.” His finger moved from her body to undo the falls of his trousers. “I shall stop. Say the word. I mean it.”
She opened her eyes, swallowing.
“It’s dreadful,” he said. “In a carriage. Divesting you of your virtue in a carriage, anticipating our vows. It’sdreadful.”
She didn’t say anything at all.
And then he was free and thick and warm and firm. It didn’t seem to take any doing at all to fit him into her, as if their bodies simply wanted to be joined and did it of their own volition, as if he slipped into the slick center of her and her body urged him all the way home.
She had heard it would hurt; itdidn’t. She mewled at the sensation.
His head fell back against the carriage wall, and he shut his eyes and he groaned. He took hold of her hips, his thumbs digging into her flesh. “You are perfection, Elizabeth,” he managed.
They were kissing again.
“Perfect,” he panted into her mouth. “Perfect, you feelperfect.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life as he began to move inside her. Every movement was so deep and so intense and so very, very much, and she couldn’t stop herself from making noises, and they were so loud that he put his hand over her mouth, and she kissed his fingers, breathless, trying to form words. “A-apologies. I cannot seem to help—”
“No, no,” he said in a labored voice, “it’s all right. I want you to, it’s only—”
“They will hear us,” she moaned.
“When we do this properly, in a bed, you will scream if you like,” he gasped, kissing her jaw.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I want…”
He kissed her neck. “We are going to have averyhappy marriage.”
SHE HALF-DOZED INhis arms in the wake of it, and he brushed the stray hairs that had come free from her bun out of her face and kissed her all over—her eyebrow and her cheek and the tip of her nose and her chin.
She burrowed into him. He was large and solid and warm. He felt like safety. He felt like everything in the world, everything that she’d ever been missing or knew she’d needed. Here, in the circle of his arms, she felt complete.
Some part of her knew she’d done a very wicked thing, and she expected she would eventually start chastising herself for it, but for now, she was sleepy and sated and wrapped up in him, and she didn’t care.
“I’ve never seen a woman do that,” he said, his voice very, very quiet, so quiet she wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or if he thought she was asleep and he was talking to himself.
She shifted against him, moving her face so that she could try to blink up at the shadowy features that made him up in the darkness.
He shifted, too. “Oh. You are awake.”
So, perhaps that hadn’t been meant for her. “Do what?” she said anyway, because she wondered if that meant he’d never bedded a woman. Certainly, that couldn’t be true. He was eight and twenty, and that was too old to have never done it. Of course, she felt wistful, almost wishing he hadn’t said it. It was one thing to know there had been others before her. It was another to hear him speak of it.
He laughed, an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, Christ. I don’t know what possessed me to say anything at all.”
Silence.
Then she said, perhaps a bit caustically, unable to help herself. “But you did say something.”
