Page 54 of Penned By Mr Darcy
“I am allowed!” she protested. “They are my family. I love them – you hold no such endearments.”
“I do for you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
“No, you do not! Mr Darcy, you are mistaken!"
“When you were at Netherfield, I looked for you in every room. I made hopeless excuses that I may pass time in your company. I lingered each time I passed your sister’s door in case you had need of me. I wanted you so desperately I could think of nothing else. I have never felt like this, never in all of my life. I fear I will go mad with it. It is illogical, it is…It is…”
He kissed her again. He moaned against her lips as her hands threaded through his hair. He had never kissed a woman before, for he had lain with so few and kissing had always seen a far greater intimacy than anything else. He knew, one way or another, Elizabeth Bennet would be the only woman he kissed in all of his life.
He tore his mouth away from hers, peppering desperate kisses along her jaw, her neck, anywhere he could reach. His hands roamed too, tracing up the silhouette of her body. She sighed breathlessly, a music he would savour forever, her fingers still knotted in his hair.
“Oh,” she sighed, her body arching against his as he took her earlobe between his teeth. “What are you doing to me, sir? I have forgotten myself.”
“I love you,” he whispered into her ear. “I do not care if you feel nothing for me. If you hate me when we part, then let me believe you loved me for a moment.”
“You do not love me,” she whispered back. “You cannot.”
“Do not tell me what I feel,” he said, tearing himself away from her and staring at her. “It is absurd enough to my own ears, but you must believe me. You must.”
“Absurd because you cannot stand me! Perhaps you have been overtaken by lust, Mr Darcy, for I know I feel quite dizzy with it myself. I have told myself I hate you, and each word I read both confirmed what I suspected of you and somehow…somehow…”
“And what of you? You read my closest thoughts for your own entertainment. Tell me, Elizabeth, did you laugh at me? Did you share it around with your sisters? Let’s all laugh at Mr Darcy, who can seldom speak to a woman yet possesses the most detailed fantasies? Tell me, was it amusing?”
“I have read no fantasies.”
“What?”
“These fantasies you speak of…I do not understand. I didn’t see anything like that in the diary itself, only the discarded page.”
“Have you read the whole thing?”
“No. I must confess I wished to read it in the daylight, which was why I was taking it out with me. Something about reading by candlelight was too intimate.”
“Too intimate?” he laughed hollowly. “You hold my mind in your hands and now you fear its intimacy? I do not think such a thing is possible, Miss Elizabeth.”
“I know it sounds silly. And I know I was wrong! I have never once protested my innocence or said that I was right in what I did. You are quite right to be angry at me! You can hate me for the rest of your days; I certainly think it would do you more good than the love you claim to feel for me.”
“You presume to tell me what I feel,” he said, voice low and tight. “You did not read carefully enough, Elizabeth. Since you know me so well - would you care to hear the fantasies that have kept me sleepless and half-mad with longing?”
She froze.
He stepped closer - not touching, not yet - but the nearness was deliberate. Calculated. He stood just behind her, so close that the warmth of her body pulled at him like gravity. If she leaned back even a little, she would find what his willpower strained to hide.
Still, he held himself still. Barely.
He dipped his head, his breath stirring the loose curls near her ear.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured. “Tell me that you hate me. That you have no desire to know what terrible, sinful things I have thought of you.”
She said nothing.
“Tell me.”
“I…” her words ceased, her breath fast. “I want to know.”
