They both turned when one of the library doors opened and Darcy entered. He stopped short at the sight of them both and gave a proper bow. Elizabeth watched his eager expression slide back into a calmerlook of the gracious host. “Ladies. I came to see if Miss Bennet has had a letter from the Bingleys.”
Elizabeth suspected he had come here to kiss her senseless, and admired how quickly he shifted his behaviour for public view. “I had a letter from Jane yesterday. She wrote about the extreme badness of the roads and tempestuous weather along the way.”
Darcy made a thoughtful sound. “The roads are normally choked with dust in summer.”
“She writes that all was ankle-deep in mud, but they are safely arrived now.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
After a stretch of silence where she and Darcy looked on each other intently, Hester gathered the skirt of her riding habit with great purpose.
“I ought to find the others so we can make the most of this dry day.” Hester scarcely kept from smiling, and gave her an emphatic, private look before she left.
The door shut, and Darcy gave a small smile. “Now that the topics of weather and our friends have been addressed...”
He said not another word. What his lips concealed, his intent gaze betrayed as he came near, put both hands around her hips to pull her against him, and walked her backward until she hit a bookcase. The shelves pressed into her back, and Elizabeth stared at Darcy’s lips, feeling his warm breath with every exhale. He was more confident than he had been last night, and it made her heart beat fast.
Darcy brought his hands to rest against the bookcase on either side of her head, keeping his hips pressed against hers. He brushed his lips across her neck before slowly moving them up. When he flicked his tongue over the sensitive skin behind her ear before biting softly, her body trembled.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He did, more passionately than she anticipated, and when her tongue swept against his, a raw sound escaped his throat. Elizabeth kept her hands at his waist, holding back from unfastening every button on his trousers until she knew how far he wanted to take this encounter.
Meanwhile, Darcy kissed her with a feverish desire that made her grateful the furniture was supporting her. He rocked his hips against hers whilst tasting every corner of her mouth, nipping at her bottom lip, before moving to her throat, and then to tug her earlobe between his teeth. All of the tentativeness he had shown last night was now replaced by a confident urgency.
She shuddered in pleasure, and then Darcy took her mouth again, their tongues swirling together until she pulled away long enough to ask, “Sleep with me again tonight?”
He made a sound of approval before kissing her again even harder. She ran one finger down his chest, enjoying the way he panted against her lips. She went to unfasten his trouser buttons, but Darcy grasped both of her hands and firmly lifted them both above her head, holding her wrists against the bookcase in one of his hands. She gave an eager gasp of surprise, and Darcy looked into her eyes.
He must have been encouraged by what he saw because after he kissed her again, his free hand wandered over her breasts with touches and pressures that made her moan. He stroked his thumb across them, and Elizabeth wished he would press his mouth to them, sucking and biting them as he had last night. When she gripped the shelf above her to arch her back, pressing herself harder against his hand, he let go of her wrists.
Darcy was breathing heavily. “I was run away with...” He blinked a few times and looked from side to side. “We might be interrupted here in the library.”
He was resting his weight comfortably against her, still trapping her happily against the bookcase. She felt the certainty that he wanted her, and it lessened her disappointment at stopping. “Maybe we won’t be.”
He brought his hands to the shelf on either side of her head again and exhaled, giving her a longing look. “If we were seen, every servant would know by the end of the day,” he said, frustration clear in his tone, “and none of them would respect either of us—you for seducing the master or me for taking advantage of a single woman.”
Elizabeth tucked her hands beneath his coat and linked themaround him. “Maybe your family would catch us rather than a servant, and they would keep the secret?”
He pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Most assuredly. Georgiana would run from the room and never look me in the eye again, let alone speak.”
“And what would your cousin do?”
“If he feared you were unwilling, he would throw me through that window.” He gestured with his chin and smiled.
She tugged her hands to make him lean into her harder as she pressed her hips against him. “Oh, it would be plain that I am willing.”
“Then Fitzwilliam would probably wait in the corridor to congratulate me after, and use it to embarrass me for the rest of my life.”
She had been about to kiss him, but she laughed, and he did too. Elizabeth rested her head against his shoulder as he wrapped her in an embrace, pressing a kiss to her temple before stepping away from the bookcase.
“He told me, in fact,” Darcy said as he led her to a sofa, “to come in here to offer myself to you.”
“Hester suspected that you had come for that purpose. We shall have to tell everyone their hints are no longer needed.”
She settled next to him, and he raised an arm to put around her shoulder to tuck her into his side as though they had sat this way together a hundred times before. “I wrote to your father, and if you have your own letter ready to post, then it ought not to be put off.”
Elizabeth leant into him with a sigh. “I shall leave Pemberley soon.”
