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Elizabeth had never been one to pay much heed to giggling gossip, as Lydia had, or to store up old wives' tales in righteous, agitated horror like Mary. Still less had she been inclined to listen to her mother's sly innuendo while they prepared her trousseau, a rattle of words punctuated with significant nods of the head, winks of the eye, and allusions to the marital bed which awaited her. She had not thought herself ignorant, however; not with Charlotte's plain speech to steel her for the worst, and her Aunt Gardiner's kind words to make her hope for the best.
But she hadn't thought it would be like this.
His touch that first night is gentle, slow. They sit on the edge of the great, formal bed which is now theirs, bodies side by side and leaning into one another. His fingertips trace the particular slant of her eyebrows, the curve of her cheek, the line of her neck, while he kisses her with all the fierceness which Elizabeth had known, somewhat vaguely, that he was keeping banked low throughout their engagement. Fitzwilliam's restraint now is of a somewhat different sort, prompted by an unconscious desire to make endless that which previously he had fought not to let himself want; when he pulls back a little, he nips gently at her lower lip, startling her and making her smile.
"Elizabeth," he says a little hoarsely, one hand slipping down to toy with a stray curl of her brown hair, "If you do not wish it yet, we can stop here, there are other—"
She shakes her head, denying his objections as best she knows how—reaching out to cup his face in her hand, thrilling at the way he pushes unconsciously into her touch. His pupils are blown wide and dark, visible even in the flickering light cast from fire and candle-flame, and Elizabeth wonders all over again at the changes which each of them seem capable of creating in the other. "I wish it," she says, "Fitzwilliam, I want to," leaning in to kiss him, to take his hand in hers and guide it to the place where her breast curves beneath the fine fabric of her night-gown; she smiles as she licks tentatively at his mouth, rejoicing in the boldness of her actions just as she had every time she'd defied propriety and Jane's words of caution, flung her arms wide and raced down unsteady ground.
He shudders against her, and Elizabeth thinks of that time she had first seen him here, in the grounds of their home, dripping wet from the pool and holding himself into that unnatural stillness, that learned containment which she has seen him break over and over for her sake; and for her sake, he can do it once more. "My love," she says against his mouth, "show me," and draws him down with her to lie on the fine linen coverlet. His body on top of hers is an unfamiliar weight, a strength she has not yet tested with hers, but it is not uncomfortable; he kisses her mouth and her eyelids, makes her laugh when, in a fit of levity still unexpected from him, he kisses the tip of her nose, and her smile broadens wide enough to match what she feels for him when he spreads the fingers of one hand wide against her belly. She would swear that she can feel the heat of each individual fingertip through the fabric.
"Dearest," Fitzwilliam says as he helps her pull the night-gown up and over her head; "Loveliest," he says when he settles back against her, a sudden, new shock of warm skin against her own. "Elizabeth," he gasps later, dark head bowed, when he is moving inside her so slowly; and there is pain, yes, as Charlotte had warned her there would be, and there is a gentle reassurance to his touch—his kisses pressed against her breasts, her collarbone; his fingertips stroking patterns against her sides, her hips—as her Aunt Gardiner had reassured her would be. But there is more to it, so much more: a pleasure that sparks at his touch, making her breath come quicker; a joy she gains from touching him in return that she had not thought there could be. She holds him to her with both hands, palms spread wide and full of smooth skin and warm affection; when he stiffens against her and cries out her name, she arches her back and laughs aloud.