Chapter 38
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 37
Once he does, he loses some of his hesitation again, traces his claws over her, first infuriatingly gentle once more, but now she can coax him with her hands on his to push harder, finds herself growling with animalistic pleasure, gaze fixed on the blood droplets starting to adorn her pale skin, then moaning as he licks them up and kisses her, the taste of her own blood in her mouth tingling against her tongue and her drac’s sense of being naughty. This, this is how it should feel, this is what all the hushed voices and her mother were talking about, how wonderful intimacy could be. This, she doesn’t worry about, yes, please, more!
Finally he seems to get the message as she wraps her legs around his hips, gets him to hold onto her hips with his claws as he thrusts, while she arches up, breathless now, distracted with pleasure only to shudder again when he pants “Mine. All mine!” Yes, please! She feels so secure all of a sudden, he wants her, she’s good for him, this must be right, all of it, if that’s how he feels this is what she wants, this is what all her possessiveness must be about, this must be love! So she more growls than answers: “Yours! I love you! Do what you want with me.”
That must have been the right thing to tell him, he finally, finally gives her what she asked for, leaning down, not slowing his thrusts, not taking his claws from her hips and places his snout against her neck while she scrambles to pull the collar out of the way, offering him her neck, shuddering and whimpering with anticipation. Her drac is howling loud in her mind, yes, yes, yes, a lover’s bite!
When he finally breaks her skin, sinks his teeth into her, she gasps, is just about to scream but again, his hand is over her mouth. She doesn’t mind, presses her face against him, hungry for every touch, legs tight around him, body shuddering violently. Her own hands rake her claws, not nails, across his back ceaselessly, wanting to feel everything, wanting to drown herself in her lover, his scent deep in her nostrils, his claws and teeth inside her flesh, yes, please, deeper, she wants to feel close, closer!
But he still doesn’t bite her properly, doesn’t really bite down, instead seems to focus on how he moves his hips. She whimpers against his hand, tries to speak, and, once he lets her, she begs him to hurt her, please.
Again, there’s that moment of hesitation before he lowers his head to put bites on her breasts, shallow, careful ones.
Part of her wants to protest, wants to beg more, but his hand is on her mouth yet again, and it’s enough, he falters on holding back with his thrusts, too, her skin is sensitive, she wants more, but her body reacts together with her drac, howling with abandon at every drop of blood drawn, at every wound given and healing over again, feels itself draw closer and closer to the surface with the blood lost, with the barrier between what is dracial and what is learned human mask vanishing. With an overwhelming sense of unity and peace, Darcy feels her body go stiff a moment before she comes violently. Harsh enough to clench down on Gregory maybe painfully, but he doesn’t stop and finally comes himself.
Her mind feels like molasses and really, why should she bother to think? Although, he had to quip in a mumble that now he knows how to cheer her up. She counters that she’s happily engaged to be married, why would she ever be glum? Wonder returning to his eyes, he begins to fawn at her again, she’s long used to it, but dismisses his worry that she is out of his league with telling him he’s her demon prince. And before he manages to ruin this with saying something stupid, he just goes back to kissing her, until he can’t stop himself from quipping after all that they ruined the sofa.
Noticing the blood-soaked mess she’s lying on, Darcy just giggles and runs her fingers over her body, traces where his claws had left marks. They are long healed, but the remaining dark red makes her shudder. The blood means so much to her and the pain, now she really shudders, oh, the pain and the indescribable sense of freedom, of release, of being alive and one with her drac is the most wonderful experience she’s ever had.
Gregory’s eyes flick to her mouth, and Darcy notices that her fangs are out. No wonder with how much she healed. But her thoughts get interrupted as Gregory pulls himself away and leaves for the bathroom. He laughs as she squeals, unprepared for the aftermath of what they just did. He tells her to get used to it, that’s just normal. Then he swaggers back, sits down next to her, puts her head on one of his thighs and keeps grinning while she feels too relaxed to really be flustered. Well, up to the point where he tells her she must be hungry and he’d really like her to drink from the part of him in front of her face.
She does blush but well, he had his face between her legs earlier and yes, she doesn’t feel very inhibited at all right now, and if that’s how she could be good for him then she supposes why not. Hearing that, he’s eager to give her guidance on how to do this. If she was any less astounded at the situation, she’d wonder how he knows this in such detail, but as is she tries her best to follow his teachings and feels accomplished when he clearly starts to react to her attempts.
As he holds her head a bit more forcefully she does tell him though, touched that he’s trying to maybe do something from the books, that no, she likes the pain, not the being forced, she likes getting reactions out of him, she’d like to focus on what she’s doing. That has him grin and relax back, well, if she’s not complaining then he can just let her at it and leave it to her.
She does like to be able to clearly give him pleasure, she really does. The scent would be overpowering enough as is, but she can taste his blood through his skin and more than once her fangs get in the way of what she’s doing. This is too much, and he wanted her to anyway, and she knows how he reacts to her bites, so she gives in to the need, gets rewarded with more than blood but she doesn’t care, she was good for him, she could give him an orgasm, she feels accomplished and far too hungry anyway to mind.
It takes him a bit to recover, but then he pulls her close, holds her tight, kisses her and thanks her. Why does he seem so insecure all of a sudden? He holds on to her so much that she pets him gently, starts to reassure him that she loves him, she’s not leaving. If he needs that then well, they’ve already been bending so many rules, so she allows him to sleep in her bed for the night, getting her a happy grin with glinting eyes from him as he carries her over to the bed, telling her he can’t express how much he loves her.
It’s alright, he doesn’t have to tell her, he claimed her, he said she’s his, so she will be.
~~~~
Arthur only needs one look at Gregory the next morning, and- he knows that swagger, he knows that grin. And he really really doesn’t want to know any more about it, in fact, he’d prefer if he didn’t know even that much. Darcy was acting perfectly normal at breakfast, which… well, Arthur has no idea whether that’s normal under these circumstances. Or whether that means he’s drawing the wrong conclusions from Gregory’s behaviour. He must be, right? Darcy’s… well, Darcy’s aware of social conventions, and how dangerous it could be to break them. So she wouldn’t agree to anything… well. Anything that Arthur is very pointedly not thinking about, and doesn’t want to know about.
He’d like to ignore the entire thing completely, but he is involved in the wedding planning, and so… There is no way he’s going to ask Darcy, just the thought has him blush and squirm at how awkward that would be, and how inappropriate, and just… hell no!
So instead he chases after Gregory to catch him alone and asks him in the most circumspect way he can think of: Is the wedding dress still white?
And he doesn’t give Gregory more time than to confirm that yes, it is, before he shamelessly flees rather than risk Gregory deciding to tease him about it. He knows that his discomfort is only encouraging him.
And of course Gregory would stop if Arthur really freaked out, but… but he’d just rather not deal with even that much.
~~~~
Darcy finds herself in her study with Lucy later in the afternoon, and she is grateful for her help with the barony work, really, she is. But Lucy also smirks and gives Darcy a knowing look, even if she doesn’t say anything more than asking if she had fun. That’s too much already, yes, of course Darcy did, that’s how it’s supposed to be, right, but, why does she feel so embarrassed? Why doesn’t she want anybody to know? Why does it… feel wrong now? She’s so embarrassed that she wants the world to just go away, she can’t deal with this! And suddenly, in a sense, it does: Everything is bright scent and touch. Like when she is a rat, but more intense, as if she is touching more, as if she has whiskers all over instead of just at her nose. But beyond herself, the world hardly exists. Whatever happened, she feels weirdly comfortable and safe like this, and the air currents are bringing the scent of corridor from one side, one more like outside from the other. That must be the windows, Darcy thinks, and moves towards the corridor scent. Behind her, Lucy exclaims: a fog form?! How impressive that Darcy is able to manifest that power!
Unfortunately, Gregory chooses just this moment to return from his patrol of Whitby for evil doers and criminals, and, of course, came looking for her. Probably to see whether she was finished with the day’s work yet. He always is so concerned that she works too much, so confused that she is so adamant that it is her duty.
Darcy can hear his cry, hear him rushing around the room and calling for her, and Lucy’s voice, calming him down, telling him how, look, Darcy is over there.
Darcy has made it into the corridor, only to ‘run’ into her papa. He jumps, a wave of fear in his scent assaulting her senses, and Lucy rushes past her at full vampire speed to calm him down, too. Even though she doesn’t really want to, that makes Darcy force herself to return to her human form, feeling horrible that she made her papa afraid for a moment there now. Noticing that she clearly isn’t in any mood for company, Lucy offers that she and Jack can see to the paperwork, how about Darcy takes a nice long walk, maybe talk to her night friends?
Darcy very much would like that, thanks her parents and walks off… but she can’t get away from Gregory, who still is perfectly unaware where the problem is. Not that she can explain it, but she is so confused that she starts crying, she is so embarrassed at her mother clearly knowing and Arthur probably knowing and she doesn’t know how to deal with it. He hugs her, tells her it’s fine, he doesn’t care if they bent the rules.
His words don’t actually change anything but well, he’s the man, she supposes she just doesn’t know better, he must be right, so she nods and agrees to calm down. Hearing that, he nods, seems relieved, then tells her that he’ll have to leave for a few days. So he brings her back to her parents, then takes off. She looks after him for a long time before digging herself deeply into her work. At least that is going well, her mother’s help makes figuring out how to be a baroness so much easier, and Harker has sent word that he could acquire the house she requested, while her papa sees to it that the wood from a rocking chair from Gregory’s youth finds its way to the same jeweller as her finger bone did earlier. It’s one of the few memories of his childhood he’s told her about- how one time, when playing with the rocking chair in the good salon, he swung on it so hard that he went flying into the china cabinet. He laughed when he told her how mad his mother was about the broken plates, how he wasn’t supposed to be in that room in the first place. Darcy doesn’t understand why he thinks that’s funny, but it seems such a fond memory for him, so she tracked down that rocking chair. She hopes he’ll like it.
All that doesn’t help with how awkward and shy Darcy feels around Arthur. She’s long noticed how uncomfortable the entire topic of intimacy makes him, she doesn’t want him to judge her, to think she’s being gross and horrible for having done what she did.
When their conversation brushes up against it, he confirms that he doesn’t want to know or have to deal with any reminders of the entire thing, so they agree to never talk about it again and move on. That doesn’t answer any of her worries what he thinks of her, but if he wants to keep her at arm’s length, of course she will respect that.
~~~~
Lucy has had it by the evening of the next day, both at Darcy’s clear discomfort and at how Jackie reacts to it, how unsure he is about how to make it better, too. She invites her daughter on a long bat flight together, uses her superior speed to force Darcy to go all out, and her longer experience to fly manoeuvres Darcy has no chance to accomplish. Darcy hits both the castle walls and the ground several times, only to giggle wildly and race back up to her. By the time she can let Jackie tuck Darcy into bed, Lucy is smiling at Darcy happily chattering away about the flight.