Page 19 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
She moaned into his mouth.
He kissed her jaw.
She gasped.
And then—finally—he latched onto the pulse of her, that jumping little vein beneath her skin full of the intoxicating liquid that tasted of honey and cinnamon. He drank.
She moaned again, a long and low moan.
He clutched her to him. He might have driven his pelvis into her, into the rounded backside he’d pulled into his lap. He might have let his hands explore her. He might have touched her waist and her hips and her thighs and then cupped her bosom.
And he drank and drank and drank until she was gasping and limp against him and he knew he must stop if he didn’t wish to cause her actual harm.
But he didn’t let her go.
No, he kept her in his lap and kissed her and touched her, and she sighed and looked at him with half-lidded eyes of adoration, and he was a besotted fool.
How was he to manage giving her up?
How was he to leave her behind?
ELIZABETH AND JANEwere put to bed before sunrise again, and Elizabeth was very tired, so she fell directly to sleep,dreaming of the evening she’d spent in a man’s lap with his hands and mouth all over her, with his teeth in her skin.
She was becoming, by degrees, more agreeable toward that man.
He was a vampire and he wanted to drink her and she could not trust him, but it felt so good, oh, so very good, and she was lost, she thought as she drifted off.
She awoke with a start to pain.
“Shh, no need for that,” said a voice next to her, a female voice. “Just stay resting there, poppet, it’s all right.”
The pain was in her neck. The voice belonged to Caroline Bingley. The vampiress was feeding on Elizabeth.
Elizabeth moaned, trying to struggle, because she was tired and weak and Mr. Darcy had taken quite a bit of her blood earlier in the evening, and it hurt to have Caroline taking even more, hurt badly.
When Mr. Darcy fed upon her, it was nothing but pleasure, but this wasn’t like that.
Her struggles were easily subdued by Caroline, however, and Elizabeth felt herself slipping away, a dark chasm opening up and swallowing her whole.
She would have thrashed, but suddenly her limbs were too heavy to move. And the pain she’d felt, it was gone too, replaced only by heavy darkness, like a weight that pulled her down, down, down.
She wanted to fight; it was too difficult.
And then there was nothing but endless black nothingness.
CHAPTER SIX
ONE MORE NIGHT, Darcy had determined, but they’d put them to bed without charming either of them, without giving them a mental directive to wake in the morning and leave, without arranging for a carriage to take them back home.
It wouldn’t do, and he knew it.
He must make the decision now, whilst he was still flush with having had his fill of her blood, whilst he was not craving her the way he would be tomorrow evening.
He was already in her room when he realized this was foolish, because he could not actually charm her himself. What did he think to do, convince her to leave by argument? Furthermore, going into her bedchamber alone, it was a recipe for disaster.
He would have walked right back out, except…
She was not alone.
