His blood roared. The room contracted to the space around the chessboard, to the sound of her voice, to the impossible words she had just spoken. His body responded instantly, heat pooling low in his belly, his breeches growing uncomfortably tight.
“You cannot say that.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw. “Not here. Not in my chamber. Not when you know the fire between us.”
“I know.”
“Then what do you want, Elizabeth? Do you want to leave?”
“No.” She kept looking at him. “I want to explore.”
He could barely breathe. “Explore what?”
“You.” She said it simply, as though it were obvious. “I have never seen a man, and I likely never will. But I have dreams of you, Mr Darcy. I wake in the night with the memory of your hands, your mouth, and I want—” She stopped and took a long breath. “I want to see. I want to feel.I want to know.”
He was going to die. He was going to combust on this chair, reduced to ash by the calm, devastating honesty of Elizabeth Bennet requesting permission to explore his body.
“You can do as you wish with me.” The words came from somewhere deeper than thought. “Ask what you wish. I will concede to everything, and everything will stop the moment you say so. Elizabeth. I swear it.”
They sat perfectly still, composed, as though discussing the weather. As though the air were not thick with want, as though his heart were not beating like a drum, as though she had not just unmade him with a few words.
She stood.
“Can I see your bedchamber?”
He rose and crossed to the connecting door, turned the handle, and pushed it open. He did not trust himself to speak. He simply stepped aside and let her pass.
The bedchamber was darker than the drawing room, only a few candles burning, the curtains half-drawn around the massive four-poster bed. She paused at the threshold, taking in the space. The heavy furniture, the green damask, the white linen. The evidence of his life, his solitude, his sleepless nights.
She turned to face him.
“Undress.”
His hands moved to his waistcoat before he could think. He unfastened the buttons, one by one, and shrugged it off. He unwound his cravat, the linen sliding free, exposing his throat. He pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall.
He stood before her bare-chested, breathing hard, his hands at his sides. The candlelight played across his skin,the planes of his chest, the dark hair that trailed down his stomach. His breeches remained, because he had not been given permission to remove them, but the fabric concealed nothing. The evidence of his arousal strained against the fall, unmistakable.
Elizabeth’s breath caught. Her eyes moved over him slowly, cataloguing, learning. She stepped closer.
“May I?”
“Anything.”
Her hand lifted and her fingers touched his chest, light and tentative, tracing the line of his collarbone. He held himself rigid, every muscle locked against the urge to reach for her. She explored the breadth of his shoulders, the curve of his chest, the flat plane of his stomach where the muscles tightened involuntarily under her touch.
Her fingers trailed lower. They followed the dark hair downward, hesitating at the waistband of his breeches. She looked up at him with a question in her eyes.
“Yes.” The word was barely a rasp.
She touched him through the fabric.
A sound tore from his throat, low and guttural, closer to a growl than anything human. His hands clenched at his sides. She had barely made contact, the lightest pressure through the layers of linen and wool, and he was coming apart.
Her hand stilled. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” He forced the word through gritted teeth. “But it is... uncomfortable. Especially when I cannot—” He drew a ragged breath. “When I cannot do anythingabout it.”
“What can be done?” Her voice was curious, practical, devastatingly calm. “Without ruining me?”
He should not answer. He should step back, create distance, preserve whatever remained of his honour. Instead, he reached down and took her hand in his. He guided it to the fall of his breeches, pressing her palm flat against the hard length of him.