“You can’t find that gratifying?” It came out as a question.
He let out a tattered sort of laugh. “I think Ido, though, and I can’t say why, so let us not examine it overmuch, perhaps?” He pressed his mouth wetly into her temple. His voice was gravelly. “I want to look at you. I want to look at you entirely, all of you, without…” He had a handful of her nightdress. “May I?”
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I said you could stop me, did I not?” He let go of her clothing and backed away. “Do you wish me to stop?”
Now, she felt cold and bereft, without his closeness and heat. She was starved for his touch, for his yearning, for his kindness, for anything good.
She was not pure, in the end. Nothing mattered.
It had been such a long time since anyone had wished to please her, and she did not wish to stop him, not truly. She did not have any real desire for whatever it was he wished to do to her, whatever it was that Mr. Wickham had done to her, which she sort of remembered, at least what she had been awake for.
Mr. Darcy had one of those male parts in his trousers, and he would wish to insert it into her and work it in and out and she didn’t know about that, but maybe if she could get him to be sort of gentle about it.
“I think that is answer enough,” he murmured. “I am sorry. I should be ashamed of myself, waking a woman in the midst of the night when she is this far gone with child and asking her if I can tumble her when what I imagine she chiefly wants is sleep.”But there was warmth here as he chided himself, no real sense of any disappointment with her denial, and this was relieving.
“No, it is not that, exactly.” She closed the distance between them again. She slid her hand up to touch his neck, and she smiled up at him. “I am… I don’t know. Can you be gentle about it, I suppose? Can you be careful with me?”
He furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure I like what this is saying about whoever it is who put you in this position, Miss Bennet.”
“You could call me Lizzy,” she said.
“Lizzy,” he repeated, smiling at her. He captured her lips again.
She sighed against his mouth.
The kiss deepened, and she melted into his chest, her other hand going round his neck, clutching him. His hands splayed out over her back. Weren’t his hands ever so large? She liked being kissed by him. She liked being close to him. She did not wish him to leave.
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “You must call me Fitz, then,” he said. He kissed her jaw. “At least when we are alone in this manner.”
It seemed an entirely incongruous sort of name for him, far too short and playful for a man such as Mr. Darcy, and then she wondered if there were some playful side of him, hidden away, and if he was about to show it to her, and the thought of that made something tighten within her.
“You’ve distracted me,” he said. “How many times did it take this man to get you with child and he was never gentle and never used his tongue—”
“Once,” she said. “Only once, but I don’t wish to speak of it or him or any of that.”
He furrowed his brow. “If this man did something wretched to you, Lizzy—”
“Oh, please, leave that be!” she cried. She could just imagine telling him it was Mr. Wickham’s babe. Would he caress the curve of her in that way of his, huskily telling her it did gratify him, if he knew that? She did not think so.
He looked at her solemnly for some time. “All right,” he said eventually. “I do not need to know, I suppose.” He cleared his throat. “But I should take my leave of you, really. Perhaps I shall come to see you tomorrow, if that would please you.”
“I don’t wish you to leave,” she said, taking a handful of his cravat, pulling him right up against her. She did not know if she could bear being all alone and cold in her bed after the warmth of his arms, of his mouth, of his voice calling her Lizzy.
He smiled at her. “Do you not?” his voice was deep again, knowing.
“No,” she said, breathless, and offered her mouth to him for more kisses.
He obliged her. He kissed her senseless, and she grew bold and took his hand and put it right back on her belly and he left it there and kissed her deeply and thoroughly.
His hand wandered, finding the edges of her belly and then going lower, scandalously lower, making her gasp as he had a handful of her between her thighs, through her nightdress, and that felt… oh, his hand was so big and so warm and there was a marvelous amount of pressureeverywhere, and she let out little moans as he began to move his palm against her in circles.
“You like that, then?” he murmured in her ear, quite satisfied with himself. “I suppose he did not dothis.”
“Nothing at all like that,” she said.
“I wonder what else he didn’t do,” he said. “May I try something?”