Time stretched out between them.
“He wasn’t my brother or something,” he said in a choked voice. “If he had been my brother, we couldn’t have gotten married.” Because it was illegal to marry your brother’s wife.
“But do you even want me?” she said. “A woman like me, after all, who has been wanton and free with other men, who was not chaste before she married your cousin—”
“That wasn’t your fault,” he said, cutting that off.
“I’m not talking about Mr. Wickham,” she muttered.
“But that was part of why Richard was able to get you to agree,” said Darcy, and he would have no more argument about it, even though he had felt, since the beginning, that one of the reasons he was attracted to this woman was that she did not follow the rules. She was free in a way he found utterly alluring. He was bound and tied to responsibility, but she was untethered and alive and enchanting.
“Yes, but you’d want a wife who was untouched,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But we should not be speaking of—he isdead.”
She was quiet.
“I suppose I thought I wanted that,” he said softly. “In fact, I have been… I am not untouched, I suppose, but I have never donethatwith a woman.”
She looked at him.
He looked at her and then away. “I’ve had too much to drink.”
“So, then, what have you done?” she said.
“There are other ways to pleasure a man,” he said.
“Like with one’s hand,” she said.
“Let’s leave this.”
“Not that, then.” She leaned closer. “One’s mouth.”
He was blushing, but it was dark. Maybe she couldn’t tell.
She was laughing.
He laughed too.
“It’s funny,” she said, “because I remember thinking how abominably disgusting it was, the whole of it, and then Richard put his mouth on me there, and I…” She settled back on the couch, thoughtful. “I think I could do that, yes, if I was—”
“Stop it.” He was still laughing. “You don’t ask that of a wife.”
“I’m not your wife,” she said.
He shifted abruptly on the couch because he’d just become immediately and violently aroused, out of absolutely nowhere. He coughed.
She set her drink down. “We are trapped together in a room, Fitz. We have to dosomething.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, absolutely no. I don’t want… no. I shan’t be like the other men in your life who have used you for their pleasure without giving you anything in return, and besides, there is a reason I have been saving this experience, and it is because I want to have it, for the first time, on my wedding night.”
“Well,” she said, “to be fair, you are saving thetherepart of it for your wedding night. You have had wedding nights with a number of strumpet’s mouths.” She giggled.
“Two,” he said tightly.
“Oh,” she said, taking a drink. “Then we’re even, aren’t we? Two for you, two for me.”
“I don’t think Wickham should count. You didn’t wish to do it, and barely anything happened anyway,” he said. “Why are you offering to do this? This is mad.”
