Page 77 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

She pulled at the buttons of his breeches. He let her. She pushed them down over his hips, and then she had him in her hand again. He was hot and hard, and she heard his breath break.

"Elizabeth."

"I know," she said. "Now. Please."

He moved over her, braced on his forearms, and looked down into her face. His gaze in the firelight was dark and fiery and very steady. "It may hurt," he said. "The first time. If it does, tell me, and I will stop."

"Do not stop."

"Tell me anyway." He pressed into her slowly.

It did hurt, a little, a sharp stretch that made her catch her breath.

He went utterly still at once. "Elizabeth?"

"It is..." She stopped. She would not say nothing. Not to him. "It hurts. A little. Wait."

He waited. He held perfectly still above her, shaking with it. His arms trembled on either side of her head. She could feel what it cost him in every rigid line of his body. He kissed her temple, and her eyelids, and the corner of her mouth.

She lay under him and breathed. He was inside her. Her husband was inside her, and she could feel his heart pounding against her breasts.

This is what all of it was for, she thought. The fire, and the lane, and the library. This.

The hurt was already going. In its place came a deep, slow fullness she had no name for. It spread out from where they were joined, warm and heavy, until she felt it in her fingertips.

She lifted her hips to him, very slightly.

He groaned. It came from deep in his chest, low and helpless. She had never heard a sound so raw from him, not in all those nights in the library. "Elizabeth," he said hoarsely. "Again. Do that again."

She did it again. He shut his eyes.

Then he began to move.

He was slow. He drew almost all the way out of her, and then pressed back in, long and deep and unhurried. Each stroke dragged against some place inside her that made her gasp. Each one went a little deeper than the last. She had not known her body could feel so much at once.

She ran her hands down his back. His skin was hot and damp under her palms, and his muscles shifted with every movement. She felt the old burn on his ribs, smooth under her fingers. She felt him shudder when she touched it.

"Look at me," he said.

She opened her eyes. She had not known they were closed.

His face was above hers in the firelight. It was not the face from the assembly. It was not still, or guarded, or proud. Every feeling he had was in it, naked, for her to see. She had never seen him so open to anyone.

"I need you," he said. "God help me. I need you."

Her throat closed. She could not answer. She pulled his mouth down to hers instead and kissed him, and lifted her hips to meet his next stroke.

That undid his control.

He was not slow after that. He drove into her harder, faster, with a rough sound in his throat at every stroke. The bed creaked beneath them. She wrapped her legs round his waist and held on. She met him every time. She heard herself making high, broken sounds she had never made before.

The heat built and built in her. It gathered low in her belly and spread through her blood until she was burning with it. She dug her fingers into his back. She said his name, and then she could not say anything.

He shifted his weight onto one arm. His other hand slid down between them, to where they were joined. His healed fingers found her, slick and swollen, and circled once.

It was enough.

Her release broke over her with a force that bowed her back off the bed. It went on and on, wave after wave, pulsing around him. She cried out without caring who heard. She clung to him and shook, and felt him watching her face through every moment of it.