And then then she pulled away, choking a bit, and he murmured, “That’s enough, then.”
“No,” she said, and went back at him, taking him back into her mouth again.
“Lizzy, this is…” He grunted, because she was moving against him now, up and down, just over the tip of him, but it whited out everything except the pleasure of it, and he could hardly think. “This is beneath you.”
“Is it.” She spat him out. “Or is this exactly the sort of woman I am. What did Wickham call me? You remember? A very eager little hussy?”
“Stop that,” he gasped but his prick jerked when she said it, and she descended onto him again, and silenced herself, and it felt… oh, Lord, it feltverygood. “That’s not why I want you, you know. It’s not because of that, because you seem the sort of woman who’d do things, adventurous things, things that get her skirts dirty and make her face flushed and that are unchaperoned and not strictly proper and… and it’s not that I think if I had you, you might teach me how to give in to it all, might show me how… what did you say to me?” He was panting. “You once asked me if I did things because they felt good, Lizzy, and I… this…” His breath was even more labored. “This feels quite good.”
“This is filthy,” she said, around him.
“Quite filthy,” he agreed. “Appalling. But you look…” He surveyed her. Her eyes were shut and her mouth was stretched and she was concentrating on what she was doing, and she looked lewd and rather exactly like some kind of eager hussy, and he said something else, which made his bollocks tighten. “You look beautiful with the tip of me in your mouth.”
She descended on him again, taking him very deep.
He cried out. “You— you had best— I am too close and you won’t wish it in you.”
But she only seemed to press even deeper and he fought it, tried to fight, anyway, but lost and then it was all racing through him like a team of wild oxen, the pleasure having its way with him in a way he could not stop, as it crested and spurted and—
She swallowed him and then planted a very prim kiss on the tip of him. “There,” she said, and sat up.
He wheezed, trying to get his breath, trying to…
She found his drink from the end table on his side of the couch and drank it.
He suddenly realized that he had never kissed her, never once, that she had somehow done this absolutely mad and improper and filthy and utterly wondrous thing and that he had not kissed her. He reached for her, intending to remedy this, but she reached up and put a finger against his lips. “Not now. Not yet.” She took his glass and got off the couch.
He sputtered.
She waved in his direction carelessly. “Put yourself back together.”
“What about you?” he said, looking down at himself. He was softening and glistening and that was because she’d had her mouth on him, and he shuddered again. “What about your pleasure?”
“One thing, just this, Fitz, one thing. A thing just for you, just for your pleasure, not some sacrifice you make for me, not some long-suffering ordeal that you endure to help me. Just one thing. It does not balance anything between us, not exactly, but—”
“It isn’t that way with us at all,” he protested, and now he was doing up the falls of his trousers. “Lizzy, you deserve—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I feelglad, Fitz.” Her voice was thin. “Let us not speak of what I deserve.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I SUPPOSE YOUmust have done that to Richard,” Mr. Darcy was saying.
It had been quiet for some time. Quiet and a little strained, and Elizabeth had been drinking his drink and thinking that she knew why Richard had said the thing about her tasting like strawberries, when she knew she had not. Of course, Mr. Darcy tasted like black-strap molasses and safety and salt. And it was nice, having done that, quite nice to have him that way, to master him, to feel all of his concentration going to that one spot, the sensitive part of him that she had suckled and stroked with her lips and tongue, stimulated and teased, and then been rewarded with that somehow very welcome gush of his loss of control, and it had been good on her tongue. She had liked it.
“No,” she said. “No, he did it to me, but I never did that to him. Only you.”
Neither of them said anything about that, but she could feel it settle into the air in a way that they both liked. It meant some part of her had been claimed by him, and they wished this, they both wished this, and she didn’t think it should matter, and maybe, deep down, it didn’t matter, not really, but it was still… they both liked it.
It was quiet for a long time after that, until he finally said, in a low and guttural voice, “I might be glad, too.”
She collapsed back on the couch next to him, and she put a hand to his chest. “You don’t have to say that for me. You don’t have to pretend to be worse than you are to make me feel better—”
“We are both very horrid, are we not?” he said. “We have only known of his death for hours, and we are already…”
“I did that,” she said. “We must blame me. You said that you would—”
Someone was trying the doorknob.
