“Elizabeth, you do know how much I love you, don’t you?”
“Bunches and bunches,” she whispered. “As much as I love you.”
She leaned up and kissed him. “Now let’s go to your room, and we can show each other.”
They fell into the cool linen sheets, their naked skin heated by the sun and their hearts enflamed by those first shy glimpses. Elizabeth watched him, saw the whole of him, and blushed. Darcy beheld her, his eyes caressing all of her, and gave her a wistful, expectant smile.
He held her close and whispered of his love. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lying together, they kissed softly, gentle hands exploring tender places not yet familiar. His thumb brushed the side of her breast, and he palmed it gently before lowering his mouth and kissing its center. He smiled as the peak hardened. Elizabeth writhed underneath him; her fingers raked through his damp hair as he pulled the nipple intohis mouth. After a few minutes, she urged his lips up to hers. Their moans mingled in the summer breeze drifting through the windows, and their kisses grew more urgent.
He groaned, pulling away and freeing himself from her seductive, overwhelming touch. He kissed his way down her flat tummy until he arrived at the hipbone that had so transfixed him earlier this summer. He nibbled on that soft, protruding ridge before resting his cheek there to gaze over the beauty that lay before him. “You are so lovely,” he murmured.
She met his eyes and smiled. “My sweet man.”
They’d teased and kissed and touched and tickled until passion flared so brightly that mouths and hands were no longer enough. Now, afterward, she leaned toward him, her lips kissing his jaw and trailing down his neck to his shoulder. Gently, she pushed him onto his stomach. Her lips followed fingertips as they lightly danced over the scars there. The scars trailed over his left shoulder and down over his upper back. He had one on his hip as well. The marks were faded, not angry as they must have been when he was just a teenager.Faded with the memories and the story he can barely tell.She ran a fingertip between two of the six-inch long scars, and he moaned.Ah, there’s the feeling. The in-between spaces.
She moved closer and let her lips touch the spots. Darcy gasped her name as she wrapped herself around him, hands and lips busily absorbed in the marks of his past.
He buried his face in the pillow and winced. “Elizabeth. Please, stop.” He rolled over and pulled her into his arms. She rested her head on his chest and listened to his rapidly beating heart.
“Did I hurt you? Are they sensitive?” She couldn’t see his face, and his reaction concerned her.Tell me.Tell me everything, again.But she didn’t want to ruin this moment.
“No, not at all. I just…” He sighed. “You are so wonderful, Elizabeth.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, marveling at the rich chocolate tresses.
She lifted her head and leaned up to kiss him. “I love you too.”
He didn’t say anything, but a dreamy smile lit his face.
She ran her finger down his cheek and watched him blush. “You’re sweet and handsome and kind and chivalrous. You’re overly educatedand incredibly rich and highly desired.” He grimaced and began to protest. “But you’re with me. You wanted me. Why? When?”
Darcy sighed. He gazed into Elizabeth’s sparkling eyes and tried to find the words to explain the attraction he’d felt so long ago. “I can’t remember not wanting you. I found you interesting at that football game. You intrigued me when we drove to Netherfield. You fascinated and amused me talking about cartoons and sofa cushions. I can’t begin to understand it, let alone explain it.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Elizabeth murmured. “You were like some incredibly catchy pop song that got stuck in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, but I didn’twantto think about you.”
Darcy laughed. “I was an earworm? Seriously?”
“You wormed your way inside me,” she said sweetly. “It was annoying and obsessive.”
His fingers lazily forged a path from freckle to freckle on her shoulder. “You have the most marvelous way of putting things.”
“When did you know that you loved me?” Suddenly shy, she could not meet his eyes. “That you were in love with me?”
He smiled a slow, earnest smile. “I can’t fix on the exact moment. I was fascinated and wary. Then the fascination, the attraction, deepened, and it was fueled by lust. And then,” he said simply, “and then it was love.”
She looked at him. “Can you be more specific?”
“You’re such a writer, looking to sketch my character.” Glancing up at the ceiling, he laughed quietly. “I…it was rather like a murmuration of swallows. You know, how they swoop in the air, and you can’t tell which bird made the first movement; it just takes shape. This beautiful thing grew and took shape in the great, vast, blank expanse of my soul.”
Tears blurred her eyes. Elizabeth trembled. Oh, she was in deep. He’d mapped her heart and staked his claim. And she was lost to any but him.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Love and lust might have beckoned them to bed, but a need for fuel drew them out of it. Elizabeth nodded knowingly when Darcy admitted he hadn’t eaten anything before they’d left the city, and she whispered, “Me either.” They headed to the kitchen, made their selections, and carried a tray laden with summer salads, fruits, cheeses, and breads to the deck. They ate slowly and talked quietly, often content to simply catch the other’s eye and smile. It proved difficult to use a fork when one’s hand needed to caress another’s knee or a mouth simply had to kiss an ear. They were hopeless.
Elizabeth thrilled the lord of Pemberley with three little words and a tiny black bikini. He, in turn, won her heart again and again with small acts of devotion. One of the most endearing happened after lunch when he took her to the playroom and opened up a closet full of croquet mallets, badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, baseball gloves, and one brand-new soccer ball.
