“I have wanted this for so long.” His voice barely rose above a whisper, and he did not trust it with greater volume. “Not just your body, though God knows I have dreamed of that too. But you. All of you. As my partner, my equal, my love.”
Her eyes filled but he did not turn away.
“Everything I have wanted the last eight years since I met you in the Meryton assembly is here, in this room. You are here.”
Elizabeth stepped closer, closing the small distance until her nightgown brushed the front of his shirt. Her head tipped back to hold his gaze.
“Then show me, Fitzwilliam. Show me how much you love me.”
He cupped her face in both hands and kissed her.
Slowly at first. Her mouth was soft beneath his, her breath shaky, her lips parting the instant his own settled against them. She tasted of the wine from the wedding breakfast and the cherry ice she had shared with Anne, and beneath both of those tastes, of Elizabeth.
She rose onto her toes to meet him. Her hands slid up his chest and found his shoulders, then the nape of his neck, then his hair. When her fingers threaded through it and tightened, a low sound escaped him.
The kiss deepened.
Their tongues met. Her mouth opened to him and she gave a helpless sound against his lips that he felt in his spine. He drew her closer. His arm went around her waist and gathered her against him, the length of her body meeting his through the two thin layers of linen. She felt what she was doing to him and she did not flinch. Instead, she pressed closer.
He dragged his mouth from hers to breathe.
“Elizabeth—”
“Yes.”
The word was not an answer. It was a permission.
He lowered his hands to the ties at the front of her nightgown. The ribbon at her collarbone came loose with the faintest tug, and he worked the small bow below it withfingers not quite steady. The fabric parted over her chest, slid from one shoulder, then the other. He drew it down her arms slowly. It pooled at her feet in a white drift on the rug.
He stepped back to see her.
Candlelight painted her in gold and shadow. He saw her small, rounded breasts with the nipples already tight and flushed, the gentle curve of her waist, the slope of her hips, the dark triangle at the apex of her thighs.
“You are perfect,” he breathed.
Her cheeks flushed a darker rose, but she did not reach to cover herself. Instead, she lifted her hands to the hem of his shirt and tugged it upward. He helped her. The linen came off over his head and was dropped somewhere to the floor. Her palms settled flat against his bare chest, and he felt the small tremor in them, and forgave himself entirely for the answering tremor in his own body.
Her fingers traced the line of his collarbone, the curve of his shoulder, and the dark hair across his chest. Then they moved downward, following that line to the waistband of his breeches, and when her knuckles brushed the hard ridge straining against the fabric, he drew a sharp breath through his teeth.
“Elizabeth.”
“Show me. All of it.”
He lifted her into his arms.
She gave a small, surprised laugh. The sound was so unexpected in its brightness that he laughed too, briefly, against her hair. He carried her to the bed and laid her down on the cool sheets as though she were made of a material he could shatter. He discarded the last of his clothing intwo quick, unceremonious movements and joined her on the linens.
For a long time, he simply kissed her.
He kissed her mouth, her jaw, and the soft skin below her ear, the place he had watched for months and not been permitted to touch. He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat, the line of her collarbone, and further. He drew one peaked nipple into his mouth and heard her breath catch on a sound that was half a gasp and half his own name. He drew slowly on the tight bud, then harder. Her back bowed off the linen and her fingers found his hair again.
His hand travelled lower, over her ribs, over the flat of her stomach. He caressed the inside of one thigh, and the other, his touch slow, his mouth still at her breast. When his fingers reached the warm, slick centre of her, he found her already ready for him, and the sound he made into her skin was very nearly undone.
His touch was patient. He had learned her body long ago and meant to repeat the knowledge now as her husband. Slow circles at the sensitive peak. Then two fingers, curling, the movement he had first discovered from her shivering response and had since catalogued like a scholar. Her hips rose against his hand.
“Fitzwilliam... please... “
He moved lower.