“I wonder if whatever I’m frightened happens to us once we give in to that… I’m wondering if it’s not nearly as frightening as I’m making it out.”
He set his spoon down. “Give in to what?”
“Oh, you wish us to be married before we do that, do you not?”
He flushed, reaching up to rub the side of his neck. “Lord, Elizabeth, really? Here? Now?”
I reached across the table and took his hand. “What if I promise to be yours, forever, even if we somehow find some way to see Friday? Would that be enough, or would you like a piece of paper, signed with witnesses, a rector, all of that?”
He interlaced our fingers. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he looked at our hands, looked at the way our fingers were entwined. When he spoke, his voice was very deep. “In fact, I have been thinking that there is very little chance of my holding back for much longer.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
elizabeth
In the wake of it, I was shaking.
My thighs were shaking, and my body was sheened in just a hint of sweat as he lay against me,withinme.
It was wordless now, though there had been words earlier.
I had thought, perhaps, it wouldn’t happen at all, because of all the words, the way they seemed to come out awkwardly, the way the gravity of what we were doing seemed to weigh heavily on the anticipation of the act.
We were in the second floor of an inn not far from the sea. There were windows all around two of the walls, and through them, we could see the horizon, see a hint of the sea, far off there, reflecting back the lights of the city.
The talk went on and on.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” he said.
“I have heard that there could be pain,” I said, a bit concerned. “I have heard there is something that gets torn. Can you not be gentle about it?”
“No, of course,” he said. “I am only saying, we don’t have to, Elizabeth.”
“You don’t wish to,” I said.
“I wish to,” he said, adamant. “I think you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“We have neither of us done it!” I exclaimed. Then I became worried, concerned. “You were not lying to me about that?”
“Obviously not,” he said. “No, I’ve never done it, but I have… I have been parts of conversations, bawdy conversations in the company of other men, and I have seen books, filthy sorts of books that—”
“They have books about it?” I interrupted, electrified and also a bit horrified.
“Let’s just agree I know more about this than you,” he said. “I want you to be quite assured that you wish it.”
“What if we were married?” I said. “If it were our wedding night, you would not be giving me some way out of it.”
“Certainly I would!” he cried. “I do not wish to hurt you, Lizzy.”
But when it happened, there wasn’t any pain.
When it happened, that part of my body was slick and swollen and ever so sensitive, for he had done magically lovely things with his fingers that had brought me to ecstatic and bursting heights of wondrousness.
(Though he had needed some coaxing and direction from me to know quite the right spot and the right pressure and the right pattern. “There?” he had whispered. And, “Guide me, Lizzy, I wish only to please you.” And, “I could touch you this way for hours.”)
When it happened, I had felt as if my body had been ever so relaxed, as if all my muscles had gone liquid within me, and that I was simply open and loose and fluid, gasping and pleasured, lost to the sensation he had wrought in me.
Then, after that flood of pleasure, he prodded me, sliding deeper and deeper, and my body made room, accommodatinghis intrusion, seeminglymadeto be intruded upon in that way, made to take him, to hold him, tosurroundhim.
