Page 48 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
“I never loved Caroline.”
“You had something with her.”
“Aye, we shared each other’s bed, drank each other’s blood, but it wasn’t love. It was a fascination I had and it passed rather quickly.”
She felt alarmed by this. “Did you think it love at the time?”
“Lizzy, what I feel for you is twenty times as intense as anything I felt for Caroline,” he said.
“But if I am not your sirensong, will you still feel it? If we are not bonded, will you still feel it?”
“I take it you don’t wish me to turn you, after all? Not even if it would mean that we were equals, then, both vampires.”
“We wouldn’t be equals. You’d be my maker, and I’d be your fledgling.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But if you wish to see London two hundred years from now, you let me know.”
“You’d do it, then?”
“I have told you, Lizzy, I would do anything for you.”
Her lips parted. “Do you wish to turn me?”
“I am frightened of the consequences,” he said. “I have never done it before. But I think of your growing old and dying and…” He looked away. “It is foolish. We have known each other a very brief time. I well know that feelings, even strong feelings, can change, sometimes abruptly. I know it, and yet…” He looked back at her. “I must not give in to my every whim and wish when it comes to you, Lizzy. I must be careful with you. You are precious to me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MR. DARCY KEPTher from his bed and from being locked up with him for the daylight for some time after that. He did not drink from her, and he barely touched her, keeping it only to kissing and drinking in the delight of her cinnamon and honey scent, even though he was aware he had not seen her uncovered, had not touched her bare skin, had definitely not buried himself inside her, between her spread thighs.
He wanted all of these things with a kind of frenzy that terrified him, and this was why he held her at arms’ length for so long.
The conversation about turning her seemed to have subdued her in some odd way.
They spoke of it again and again, always with her bringing up more and more consequences to it.
If he turned her, she would have to drink blood, she said, and he agreed, yes, it was that way. She said he would have to watch her drink from others, and it would mean he saw her differently. He agreed to that, too.
Did he like the fact she was sweet and soft and never vicious? Likely.
Did he like her warmth and her humanness? Quite definitely.
One night, she brought up the fact that if she was turned, she would not be able to see her family in the same way. “Maybe for a few years, I could go and visit—but only at night, of course—but after a while, it would be noticeable that I am not aging, I should think, and it would need to cease.”
Yes, he told her, yes.
Another night, she said that if she was turned, she could not have children.
“You could not,” he said quietly.
“Of course, I already have married you,” she said. “And this means I cannot bear the children of the man I love anyway.”
He felt something lurch inside himself at the thought of her bearing his children.
She felt it in the bond.
And then they were kissing.
The kisses turned breathless and frantic, and she was soon in his arms, writhing against him and whispering that they had been married for weeks now, that he must take her virtue at some point, that they could not carry on this way, not forever.
