All of Elizabeth’s senses were on very high alert as she rested there, willing her galloping heart to slow, and her frantic breathing to ease somewhat. Her body felt aflame, as if she were the very embodiment of living fire, and it only seemed to worsen when Mr. Darcy, Master Darcy she corrected her thoughts, put his hands on her shoulders.
“Shhh,” he soothed, and his hands stroked up her neck, into the curls of her bound and pinned hair. She felt the scrape of one delicate, pearl-topped wire pin, as he pulled it from her hair. She shivered as Mr. Darcy removed another one such pin, then another. He used his fingers gently to turn her head, slowly letting out her artfully curled and positioned hair. The long strands, brown the color of rich saddle leather, unfurled over her shoulders and the bare skin of her décolletage. She shivered at the whisper-soft touch of his fingers along her neck.
A moan erupted from her lungs as he began rubbing his thumbs into the sensitive, tense spots right under and behind her ears. The feeling of it was a great sense of relaxing, as if all of her muscles had been cut. Her skin turned into a map of gooseflesh as his hands, warm, soothing, moved down her neck and then to her shoulders.
“Be easy,” he murmured, and he brushed away the hair from one shoulder. She opened her eyes and caught him, winding the strands around his hand, staring at her hair in wonder. He let her hair slip through his fingers and he smiled, a look of pleasure on his face. “So soft,” he said, and then bent to her. She inhaled sharply as his mouth found her shoulder, the edge of her dress just barely clinging to it. His fingers curled underneath the neckline of the dress, and pulled. It fell away from her shoulder, and he kissed the exposed flesh. “As beautiful as I could have imagined,” he said.
“I am brown, from the sun, and from long walks in it, and freckled, like the egg of a common hen,” Elizabeth countered, feeling her cheeks burning at his praise. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow, then bent to kiss one soft brown mark, then another.
“It is not the pale snow that excites me,” he said, and she gasped when his tongue flicked out, over her skin. “It is the flush of life, the fire inside of you, that excites me. You will tell me of these long walks, of the way the sun runs over your flesh and warms you, and I will bask in that very shared warmth.” He continued to lay kisses down over her skin, until she was shivering from each one, a hectic twitching in her muscles each time his lips made contact to her shoulder, to her neck, and then lower.
“Mr. Darcy!” she forgot herself and the manner he wished to be addressed as he slipped her dress from one breast, the lack of corseting or appropriate underpinnings allowing him to find her nipple taut and wanting.
“So very, very, beautiful,” he said, running his thumb along the tightened, pink bud. She was flushed with want, her whole body throbbing as he did so, but she could hardly find it within herself to admit that she so very much wanted him this way. She should not. A good woman, a proper maiden, did not think of such things until she was married, and here she was, wanton and debauched after no more than a half an hour in his private chambers!
She flung an arm across her eyes and pressed her lips together, determined to silence the noises of passion that wished to emerge from her. She would not! She would not give in to her body’s demands- for even if she was making a trollop of herself, an absolute tart, she would not enjoy it.
“Elizabeth,” Mr. Darcy’s voice was as smooth as poured cream and it made her belly give a delicate little tremble.
“Yes, Sir?” she asked, not removing her arm from her eyes to look at him.
“Elizabeth, are you… distressed?” His hand came up gently to pull her arm away from her face. She blinked at him, tears clinging to her lashes.
“Nossir," she mumbled, a complete untruth. He smiled, gently, kindly.
“Elizabeth.” He shifted further onto the chaise, and she felt herself pulled into his arms, her head finding a comforting spot on his shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was fine linen, and it was so very very soft on her bared skin. She shifted, trying to be accompanied with the feeling of it. For his part, Mr. Darcy seemed to notice her discomfort and he soothed her with a stroke of his palm over the top of her head. “Elizabeth,” he said, his and coming to cup the side of her face, and gently tilted her to look at him. “Do not lie to me, Elizabeth, not now, not ever, not for any reason.” There was such intensity in his expression that she bit her lip and then nodded slowly. “Good girl,” he offered her the praise and she felt inexplicably pleased by this reaction, and hoping at the same time that she would illicit it from him yet again. “Now tell me, are you distressed?”
“Not distressed, Sir just… I am… I am overcome,” she said with a shiver of her shoulders. His embrace around her tightened and he pulled her closer into his chest.
“Do wish I should stop?” he asked gently, almost tenderly. The immediate response to his words were visceral, as her entire body felt panicked at that very thought. Her throat froze, and she felt her tongue might never move again.
Moments stretched out between them and then she was finally able to find the confidence to speak.
“No, you may continue, Sir,” she whispered. His fingers slipped under her chin and he lifted her head fully.
“Elizabeth, promise me that you do not wish that we cease this game. Promise me.”
“No, I promise you. I am well. Just… it is not what I had expected.” She managed a small smile, which he returned with a brief nod. She felt the sternness going back into his muscles, as he had become assured that she was well enough for him to continue. She wondered, then, for all of their formal agreement, and his general countenance and insistence that she call him ‘sir’, that perhaps she had more autonomy in this arrangement than she had previously thought she might.
He pushed away from her and pulled roughly at the neckline of her gown. The delicate fabric gave way, squeezing down her shoulders and pinning her arms to her sides. She bit back the gasp she would have normally voiced and instead let herself just go with it, and let him do to her what he wished to.
Another tug and her breasts were exposed to the slowly warming air of his chambers. Heavy, thick velvet curtains blocked out the light from his windows, and a large fire burnt in the far wall. Closer still to the chaise was a brazier that gave off heat and soothed her. She let her eyes flutter shut as Mr. Darcy made a low, pleased noise, and wrapped his large hands around her small breasts.
“You are a delicacy that would grace my bed each night for the rest of my life,” he murmured, and then she felt his breath upon her breast, between the fingers that stroked her flesh. She trembled at his words, and at his touch. Did he still… feel for her as he had done, all those years ago? Was he still in lo-
All thoughts scattered as his tongue laved over the tight peak of one breast, and heat flooded her body from her belly. Oh! Such comforting and enticing pleasure she had never thought she might experience. Mr. Darcy moaned against her breast, one arm sliding around her waist to sit in the small of her back, arching her for him and pressing her breast even closer still.
She chanced to open her eyes and saw the top of his head, neatly combed locks, so at odds with the way his tongue lashed her skin and brought her onto a heightened ledge of arousal. Arousal! For that must be the feeling that was storming in her belly, the deep, gnawing need that grew with each passing moment. Her entire body was excited, coming to the knife’s edge of pleasure and balancing upon it with no regard to how it might strain her normally reserved countenance.
He pulled her ever closer, his hip pressing into the side of her thigh through her skirts, and she thought she might explode from the burning need that was inside of her. Truly, it was a maddening feeling, especially as she had no notion of where it might lead to. She was stumbling blindly down a pathway to some unknown destination, with Mr. Darcy tugging her along with a hand about her wrist.
“My Elizabeth,” he murmured when he released her nippled with a wanton pop of his lips. The tip of her breast was tight, the skin crinkled and damp from his tongue’s lashings. She shivered as it cooled in the air, and became tighter even still.
Mr. Darcy lifted his face to survey her own expression with an exacting manner, and he smiled, pleased perhaps, at what he saw. Her breath caught in her throat as his hand fisted in her skirts, pushing the fabric up her legs until she was exposed to him, both top, and bottom, with her middle still swathed in cloth.
“You are ever so beautiful, so delicate, and so ready for the passions that I shall pull from you…” Mr. Darcy said, the tone of his voice changing and darkening. Elizabeth felt a frantic flutter in her belly as he reached between her thighs, petting at the exposed flesh of her womanhood. “There is nothing as beautiful as you. Nothing I have ever set sight on,” he said with such raw honesty that she felt a flush cross her face. His emotions were right there, in front of her, written in every line on his face and she felt more acutely embarrassed by the outward display of his passions than of the fact his fingers-
Oh his fingers. She had never quite felt a touch so delicate upon her that would ravage her so completely. His deft movements parted the petals of her womanly apex, and she found herself crying out as a spark of pleasure morphed into an inferno that consumed her.
“Sir-“ she said urgently as she lay back, breathing huffing out of her lungs. Her toes wanted to curl, her knees demanding they bend and part, giving him further room to work. She obeyed her body as surely as if Mr. Darcy himself gave her commands. Her feet slipped over the soft smooth fabric of the chaise, and Mr. Darcy made a pleased noise, looking up at her. His hair fell in his eyes, and a devilish smile crossed his lips, the likes of which she never had seen upon him nor had ever imagined before. “Sir-“ she said again, a tensing feeling growing between her thighs as he gently petted at her flesh.
“I shall bring you to your full, Pet,” he said with another one of those terrible, teasing smiles, his thumb stroking along her. “A woman is much like a flower, in that she has a tiny bud within, that when touched, when stroked, can bring about an immense reaction… immense pleasure…”
Those words seemed so very filthy falling from his tongue and she held her breath. She watched as his thumb descended upon the glistening flesh between her legs and then shuddered when it nuzzled up against something. Warmth exploded through her body.
“Oh-“ she said, the word more sigh than anything else. He did it again, and her eyes slid shut against as she was overcome. The feelings were swamping her, as he continued to touch her, his eyes staring at her, unblinking.
“Does it make you breathless, Elizabeth?” he asked softly, and she felt her face turning pink. “Do you feel as if you are the tether, winding tighter, succumbing to your needs, realizing for the first time that you are entirely mine, mine to do with what I-“
His words faded away as pleasure coursed through her entire being, and she was consumed by the fire of it. She could to nothing but cry out, her body acting beyond her will. It arched, and she vaguely was aware that he was murmuring soft praise for her as her toes dug into the thick pile of the velvet, and she came undone because of his ministrations and his words.
Finally, finally, the world came to a stop, and she lay there, eyes closed, fingers trembling, the twisting ache inside her having subsided, the need quenched.
She felt the soft press of smooth crystal against her lips and her eyes opened.
“Drink,” Mr. Darcy said, a quiet sort of smile on his face. He was holding a cut crystal goblet to her lips, filled with a dark, red wine. She sipped, slowly, the fruity notes dancing across her tongue and wetting her palate. When she seem satiated, he pulled the goblet away and set it down on a low claw-footed table. He sat down next to her on the side of the chaise and gently rearranged her skirts.
“I have called for a bath to be drawn for you, and a fresh gown, not one of my own choosing,” he said simply, as if they had not shared the most intimate moment of her life just minutes before. In fact, his face was almost shuttered to her; the unfettered desire she’d seen there in his eyes was gone.
“Mr. Darcy-“ she began to say, but whatever thought she wished to voice to him disappeared as he frowned at her.
“You will bathe, dress, and then join me for my evening meal,” he said, getting to his feet once her modesty had been recovered and the dress she wore fell down to her ankles, as well covered her chest one more.
A new ache, one she had never felt before, grew just under her breast-bone as he walked a few paces from her. He paused, and her heart leaped. She sat up, gripping the edge of the chaise.
“You are beautiful,” he said, his voice so low that she could barely hear it. “I am only reminded how very little I deserve to have you, and that the only way you would consent to be with me was as my paid concubine.” He turned slightly, his head towards her but his eyes steadfastly looking towards the floor. “It cuts a man low, knowing that he might never have the one thing he desires, despite all the money he possesses.
She exhaled as if someone had sat on her chest, and before she could put word to the curious, twisting, painful feeling in the pit of her belly, Mr. Darcy exited the room.