Page 99 of Homeless

The mortification of it was very nearly worse than the dizziness, that he should have her under him, wanting, her whole body still reaching for more of him, and that his own decimated frame should fail him here, now, of all the places to fail. “I am sorry. Give me… a moment…”

He rolled off her before he fell on her, and lay on his back with his chest heaving and the ceiling turning slow circles above him, cursing his own weakness. It was unfair… monstrously unfair, and wrong, and…

Then her hand was on him.

On his chest, over his banging heart, the way it had lain a hundred times in the fever. She seemed to be counting his pulse, measuring it, and then she rolled up to press her face against his heartbeat. He caught her hair, letting his hand tangle there as he tried to stop the room from spinning. “I wish I could… Good God, I wish —”

She pressed a kiss to his chest, and then her hand moved, drifting down until he stood up against her, faltering but willing still. He closed his eyes and tried to lift his head, but her mouth came to his jaw, his throat, warm and delicious, and she murmured against his skin, “Be still. I will not have you swooning before I have had my fill of you. Let me.”

He thought to protest. Then, he thought better of it.

She came up over him, taking his hands with her and placing them on her hips. She rolled forward, arching, then settling, finding her place. He felt her reach for him, felt her take command of him and draw him slowly into herself. She eased down with a care for his weakness that seemed to serve some secret, wicked pleasure of her own. When he opened his eyes, she was looking down at him with an expression he had no defence against at all — a leering, delighted, impossibly pleased tilt of her mouth.

“There. You need not do anything but comply. Which you have probably never done in your life, but you might try, just this once.”

He laughed, but the laugh died in his throat and became a growl as she rocked her hips to press him deeper into her. “At… your service… Mrs… Darcy,” he managed.

Her hands moved to his chest and clutched him, digging into the muscles and pushing his torso down. It undid him, that — not only the sensation of her, though that was very nearly past bearing, seated over him, moving in slow deliberate rolls that sent the fire up through him in waves — but the raw honesty in it. The intimacy that needed no prelude, no explanation. She knew his body. She had learned it in the worst way a person could learn another, at the very floor of his life, when he had lain helpless and fouled and shaking. She had cleaned him and cooled him and held him, and not once let him see her flinch. He had been so ashamed of it, every mortifying hour of it — that she should have to tend him so, that she should see him reduced to a thing that could not manage its own body.

And now, the very hands that had done those humiliating offices were on him like this, moving him toward pleasure with a sureness no untried bride could ever have had. Vitoria had taught her passion. Burgos had given her the rest of him, body and soul.

She seemed to be glorying in his touch, in her power over him. The slow certain glide of her, the way he could feel the muscles deep inside her plying him with every movement, her hands spread on his chest, her hair fallen forward around her flushed and grinning face, the small sounds she made as she took her own pleasure from him in her generous, sensual rhythm — it was enough, it was more than enough. It was gathering in him faster than his spent body had any right to allow.

“Elizabeth!” It was warning and plea and worship all at once. He would have cried out again, but she took his mouth with a kiss that captured the whole of his breath.

He got one hand into her hair and the other arm around her shoulders and pulled her down the last inch. A wave of mercy and elation took him as her mouth found his — not the violent shattering of Vitoria but something deeper and quieter and more complete, snaking up through his whole weakened, grateful frame and breaking against her. He held her against his heart and kissed her through it, and felt her smile against his mouth, pleased with herself, pleased with him, having pulled the very life back up out of a man who a week ago could not lift his own head.

He came back to himself slowly, his breath ragged, his arm still locked around her, her weight settled warm along his chest and her face tucked into his throat.

“I believe,” he managed when he could speak, “you may tell Padre Ignacio his diagnosis was in error.”

He felt her laugh against his neck. “I shall let him keep his dignity and say nothing at all.”

“Generous.”

“I am feeling generous.” She lifted her head. Her face was soft and undone and still faintly wicked. “You are not to do that again anytime soon. The exertion. I mean it. I did not nurse you back from the grave to have you swoon in my arms like a maiden.”

“I did not swoon.”

“You very nearly swooned.”

“I paused,” he said, with what dignity he had left, which was none, “to admire the view.”

She laughed and dropped her head back to his chest, and he lay holding her, emptied out and mended and more at peace than he could remember being in the whole of his adult life, and did not let go of her.

XXXVIII

Priorities

She woke with his hand on her breast and his body curled round her back. She had decided that it was no mere chance, this pattern of waking. It seemed to be the way he slept whenever he was well enough to reach for her — as though even senseless, he meant to keep her from getting away in the night.

She smiled and did not open her eyes. The heavy heat of his arm across her, the slow tide of his breathing at her nape, the weight of his hand cupped over her as if he had fallen asleep in the middle of holding her and simply never let go. A week ago, she had lain awake counting his breaths in terror. Now, they came deep and even against her hair, sounding as strong and gentle as they ever had. She lay inside the circle of him and let herself, for once, do nothing but feel how good it was.

She still could not make the words make sense in her mind.

“You did not know I was in love with you?”

It had not come like a declaration wrung out of a man trying to claim her body for his own pleasure, but as though it were a thing long settled. Like he thought she already knew, had persuaded himself she must understand, and found it amusing that she would tease him by pretending not to.