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Jane wakes with the memory of a hard brush against her lips, a press at her collarbone, and she takes in a long breath that smells of burning candle, but her candle is long cold and the room itself is quiet as a tomb. She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep, tries to let herself sink into the welcoming arms of Morpheus, but she finds herself striking an invisible threshold she cannot pass.
Though she has never been prone to nervousness, she supposes all soon-to-be brides feel this, this awareness of some terrible, wonderful new fate, barely yet realized. She touches her collarbone and jerks her hand away immediately; the skin feels tender, almost bruised.
She wraps a thin blanket over her shoulders and creeps out of her room, swiftly plaiting her hair. The scent of flame is stale; her heart, swift as a bird's wing in her breast, pulses hard until she places the back of her hand against Edw—no, no, Mr. Rochester, Mr. Rochester for a few more days—until she places the back of her hand against his door and finds it cool to the touch, until she strains and hears nothing, no telltale crackle of flame from behind his door.
She has been too happy to take much note of anything else. Still, she can't help but imagine Grace Poole's breath on the back of her neck, and when she swiftly turns, it's to face a dim, empty corridor. Her legs, bare under her shift, are growing cool; her toes are already cold from the stone floor. Her bed beckons.
But she turns instead. The otherworldly calm of the house, the metallic taste in the back of her throat, the sudden desire for the comfort of fire overwhelm her. Her head is swimming. When she slides silently into the library a roaring fire is there, waiting, as though called into existence by her sheer desire. She walks toward it even after her skin is tingling from the awareness of his— of Edward's presence in the room. He's sprawled lazily in his usual armchair, one foot on the ottoman, and when she turns, palms behind her back and toward the fire, the reflection is dancing in his dark eyes.
"My dear Miss Eyre," he says, and that one foot arcs back and forth, once. "What could possibly draw you from your bed at such an hour—ah, yes! The witching hour. Of course."
Mrs. Fairfax says she can never tell what he's thinking. Jane is starting to think that she has him, that the string he describes as stretched between them vibrates in sympathy with their thoughts. Now, though, she sees his gaze sink and rise again, and instinctively crosses her arms over her chest, without quite knowing why.
No man has ever looked at her in such a way before. Given the number of men she has met, once she was in her majority, it's hardly surprising; she can count on one finger the number of men whose gazes rose above the hem of her dress.
But this is no eager, questioning gaze. She sees a touch of the sardonic in it, but that vanishes when his gaze falls on her crossed arms.
"Nothing that a glass of warm milk won't cure." Her voice is amazingly steady.
"You mean a hot toddy."
Between them they navigate the kitchen, the pantry, hushing their whispers to keep from waking any of the staff. Then he hands her a mug, the production of which he is ludicrously proud, and she takes it tentatively.
Edward sighs. "It's medicinal. Surely you did not pick up a puritan slant at Brocklehurst's prison-school."
Jane puts the mug down on the rough table. "I have never indulged, sir."
"Taste it." He picks up the mug and hands it to her again, and she has to admit, the warmth is welcome on her cool fingers. "It will hardly overwhelm your faculties, if that worries you."
The first sip is warm, burning down her throat, with a hint of sweet, and she feels it all the way down to her toes. Soon she feels it in her flushed cheeks.
"And now, my darling," he says, taking her arm, "it really is time you went back to bed."
For the weeks since his proposal, she has been finding every excuse to keep her distance from him, and every kiss they have shared was stolen, by him. She should be more indignant about it (although sometimes, she must admit, while in the schoolroom her mind wanders, and she imagines the expression that might come over his face if she, for once, cupped her hand behind his neck and drew his face to hers, if she was the one to press gently parted lips to his) but she can't bring herself to be, and Mrs. Fairfax's warning rings too often in her ears. She is so little acquainted with men. It's fear as much as a desire for propriety that make her keep her distance.
She finishes the mug and feels the unpleasant prickle of sweat at the neck of her gown, a tacky awareness of his skin against hers, the insides of their wrists touching. The burn of the liquor feels like it's left her throat raw but a pleasant buzz in her belly more than makes up for it.
"I have never seen anything so beautiful in moonlight."
They have reached her bedroom's door. Normally she would find some tart rejoinder immediately on the tip of her tongue, a way to parry and stall, but she is speechless instead, like the rough, naive girl she keeps trying not to be.
By the time Edward's face has bent to hers, her fingers are tangled in his hair, her slender body arched, and she gasps a little when he backs her into her door. His hands fumble at the small of her back, a thin layer of fabric away from bare flesh, and when he wrestles the door open she puts the mug down on the first surface she finds with a definite clatter, tipping her face up to his again.
Maybe she wouldn't be doing this right now, without this swirl of bittersweet lingering in her throat. Most definitely she shouldn't be doing this right now. If she pulled back and shot him a chaste smile and shoved him out of her room, against his protests, oh, the deliciously frustrated look she would earn, oh the terrible power of this sway.
His hand is at her waist.
It's not as though she hasn't sensed his hand lingering at the small of her back as he leads her through the press of a shop, but there's something so immediate about the warmth of his flesh so close to hers. She shivers at the shock of it, that sympathetic vibration distilled and magnified a thousand times.
Her door is closed. They're alone in the blue stillness of her room and every path his fingers trail over her skin seems to burn, to bewilder her. His mouth finds the point of her jaw, the tender flesh behind her ear. She trembles and grabs his elbow for balance and he lets out his breath in a pleased gush, warm and damp against her neck.
"Jane. My sweet little Jane."
She almost manages to scrape together the will to push him away. Then she does, and her fingertips tap against his elbow, and he pulls back a little.
Then his mouth quirks in a smile. "All very improper," he says, his dark eyes sparkling at her, those strong features she has grown to love so well cast into half-shadow. "I do suppose that Lowood never offered you such temptations as this."
Jane shakes her head, tugging the braid free without quite knowing why. "N—never," she says, clearing her throat halfway through. Her gaze doesn't know where to rest. It is drawn to his throat, to his adam's apple, the stubble on his cheek, the loose thread at the shoulder of his dressing-gown. "It is very late."
"It is very late. And we are both very tired." He glances over at her bed and Jane isn't quite sure why her heart leaps so, against her ribs. "And it would never do, for Mrs. Fairfax to see me leaving your room at so late an hour."
"And the morning would be infinitely preferable." She feels like she has solid ground beneath her again, that she isn't merely reacting to him. "You have the patience of— of Adele. Sir."
He raises one thick brow. "And, just like that frivolous little ward of mine, I know of one particular petit cadeau I would much like to... unwrap."
"Such pretty words might work on the decadent spoiled ladies you know, but I, sir, am just Jane Eyre."
For a moment a paroxysm of emotion crosses his face, darkening his features, and his gaze is no longer on her but somewhere without, somewhere deeper within. "My incorruptible," he murmurs, one arm reflexively tightening around her waist. "No matter how beautifully I beg, eh, Jane? You would still remain, harder than stone, because water can even wear down stone, but oh, not you."
She steps back, still within the circle of his arms, her clear green-eyed gaze drifting over his brooding face. "Edward—"
He smiles and there's still some trace of that self-mockery, making her uneasy. "I know you do not think me handsome, but maybe you do feel some spark, toward me—"
"You know that I—"
His hands skim up her sides and she swallows, hard, fighting to keep her eyes open, fighting to keep herself from swaying bonelessly into his arms. The backs of his hands barely skim the sides of her breasts, through the thin fabric of her shift, and a wave of prickly heat washes over her, building wherever his fingers touch her.
"We— this is—"
"And what," his voice has that light teasing tone to it, the one that drives her mad, "exactly does prim-and-proper governess Jane Eyre know of the mysteries of the marital bed?"
"That they." She is supposed to shove his hands away and provoke, cajole, or physically push him out of her room. All those "should"s are becoming more and more difficult to remember. "That they are marital for a reason, and we are not."
"We love each other, Jane." His fingers touch her shoulder blades through her shift and she bites back a moan, her breasts tingling, already sensitive in anticipation of his touch. "You do love me."
"How could you feel even the slightest doubt." Her knees are trying to go weak. She senses that grasping his arm, drawing him closer to her would only end in disaster, so instead she grabs her bed's footboard. He follows and she ends up with the backs of her legs against the mattress and the closer he is to her, the slower her thoughts travel. Instead she feels like pure sensation, dangerously heady after the drink.
"Do you have the smallest, slightest curiosity in that slender little frame, for what that night might hold for you?"
She does, in fact, manage to tip her head up, her chin up, but he's too close, and with the slightest whimper she closes her eyes. His first kiss is slow and light, and she threads her fingers in his hair and he grasps her, pulling her up against him until there is no air between them at all, no decorous distance. He is very broad and firm and masculine, with her eyes closed especially. His dressing gown is smooth under her fingers and warmed from his body and she's tilting and somehow her knees are apart and she's on the bed with Edward kneeling over her, his mouth still on hers.
Then he breaks away and she's shaking, in the grip of something she can't name, her heart impossibly loud in her ears.
"Do you trust me?"
What she realizes, in that series of unbelievable seconds after she responds with a single slow nod, is that she has no other choice than to trust him. Oh, there's the impossible complication of their relationship, of the fact that he is her employer and she his employee, the fact that he is old enough to be her father and Adele might in fact be his child and he has ventured before into this hazy territory of carnal delight with an ease she could never hope to share. The fact is that, try as she did, as hard, as intently, she can't stop loving him. That love makes her feel powerless, but in a way she's never before felt. Before, every person of authority in her life had little to no concern for her feelings, desires, or dreams; he actually cares, though, he wants to shower her with an infinity of ridiculous baubles and show her off as his own, and that small voice, quiet and ever more quietly insistent that she should call a stop to this right now, isn't enough. She craves the adoration of his gaze and, even more, even more damningly, she is sensitive, almost wanton with desire for his touch, for the knowledge of what it is like to feel physical love.
He locks the door and her breath speeds up when he turns back to her. His dressing gown slides off, and he tosses it across her chair. He approaches her the way she imagines a predator approaches prey, and that ease she's always felt around him melts into an escalating panicked awareness that she is far, far out of her depth.
"Inside you," he murmurs, "even you, my delicate bride-to-be, is a barrier, and once I pass that barrier, I have taken your virtue, your maidenhead, your purity, your chastity. But I will not, not tonight. I promise."
She nods. A sudden desire to see his face clearly, to read every clue in his expression that she can, makes her rise with a sudden frantic energy, and she lights the candle by her bed. The shadows flicker up on his face, dancing in the light, and he looks almost evil.
But he is not. She has known him and other than that painful deception with Blanche Ingram, he is a good man. She knows he is a good man.
a good man would not suggest such a thing, says that very, very tiny voice.
When he leans down again she rises to meet him, slides her arms around him, parts her lips obediently for the press of his. He buries his hands in her hair and she moans with the bliss of it, the intimacy of such a touch. Her heart will surely beat out of her chest, should this sweet agony last much longer, but at least she will die happy. Then he trails one hand down, fingers brushing in the lightest stroke over her breast, and when she whimpers in brazen encouragement he chuckles against her mouth.
"There?"
She actually cries out at the pleasure she feels, when he cups her breast through her shift. She shivers and ducks her head in, planting kisses down his neck, her tongue slipping out for the slightest taste of his skin as he cups the other and caresses them both, his fingers drawing to points at the tips of her breasts.
She arches, gasping, thunderstruck, when his fingertips just barely glance over her nipples. "Damnation, Jane," he growls, and then he's scrabbling at the hem of her shift and he yanks it up impatiently, sliding it up over her hips, pulling it over her head, leaving her entirely, shockingly naked.
She wants to cover herself, and when she just begins to move to do so, he holds her hands down, and she's exposed to his hungry gaze. From her pitifully puzzled-together knowledge of this act, this line he promises he will not cross, she has the vaguest notion that they should be in full darkness, under the covers, that the act should be quick and silent, whatever it may be. But in most ways Mr. Rochester is not the typical man, and Jane, biting her lip, catches the fabric shielding him from her eyes in one fist, giving a little tug.
"So very bold, are we," he laughs, and gets to his feet. "My delicate English rose."
Once he, too, is naked, he is scrutinizing her just as nervously as she is him, she sees; they watch each other's faces for hints of disappointment or disdain. But he seems utterly taken with her and she, curious as always, for the barest instant wishes for her sketchpad and charcoal, to immortalize this. Instead she slowly traces every line and curve of his naked form with her gaze, impressing them in her memory, to keep for an image she knows her hand will never be able to reproduce. She knows that between her thighs is a void, and she sees its counterpart between his, like a slender member she finds entirely alien from her own form. That most male part of him is flushed red, curving up against his body.
This.
Her gaze rises to his. "Edward," she breathes. "But we will not."
"We will not," he agrees, and yet he lingers at the bedside, as the air, the air touches her everywhere his gaze did.
Then she lets herself lie down again and his fingers start with a soft brush against her cheek and immediately she draws up, in, shivering.
"My skittish little Jane," he says softly. "Calm down."
But she can't, and soon she discovers that his every touch is meant to inflame her further. He traces tightening spirals around her breasts, brushes her nipples, then caresses, then fondles, and then he catches them between forefinger and thumb and she writhes on the bed, her mouth falling open as she arches up into his touch, waiting for him to admonish her to lie still, relieved when he doesn't. He plants a soft kiss on her collarbone, his breath warm on her skin, and covers her breast with one large warm hand as his other hand trails down, slowly, and he cups it between her thighs and she lets out an almost shocked gasp.
"If you make another such noise," he begins, his voice muffled against her skin, but he doesn't finish the thought. She moves restlessly under him, flushed with a desire she cannot yet name, and puts her hand on his bare knee, then picks up the hand cupping her breast and brings it to her mouth, kisses his palm, and his thumb brushes her lips. She sucks it into her mouth and he lets out a little shuddering sigh, and he pushes down between her thighs with the heel of his hand and she feels something, some thin web of nerves drawing tight there.
"I..." He has to clear his throat and start over. "I want to teach you to please me, for you to teach me to please you in return."
She kisses his thumb. "Does this please you?"
"Something... something very much like it would."
He draws her into his arms, both of them sitting up, facing each other, and he pulls her so she is straddling his thigh, her knees spread wide. His breath has clearly sped up, and when she cups his face, caressing his cheek, he takes her hand and slowly, slowly leads it down his chest, to that hot firm part of him. His other hand is still cupped between her thighs and when she slowly, cautiously rubs the tip of a knuckle up and down his shaft, he curves a finger and it slides up between her legs and she shudders, her hips rising, and their mouths crash together.
Usually she is intoxicated by his kisses. Now, though, the feel of his lips on hers is secondary to what his fingers are doing between her thighs. She has no idea what he finds there, or why it feels like the most terrible joy she's ever felt, or why he leans into her touch when she strokes him with gentle fingertips, exploring with her hands without the interference of her eyes. When she falters in her stuttering rhythm he leads her hand in a regular, even stroke, and she gasps into his mouth as she bears down hard against his hand and his doubled thigh.
It feels too good to be anything less than a mortal sin. She feels a prickle of conscience but even that isn't enough to dissuade her from the sheer gorgeous pleasure of what his fingers are doing inside her. They feel too far back, somehow, but he's making small encouraging noises and then she stands up on her knees, gasping, tilting her head back, and his mouth closes over her nipple and he suckles, hard.
"Oh, oh, Edward," she cries out, her hips shivering. His finger—by now it has to be fingers—the sensation is of firm thickness, moving in and out of her, and she copies that same rhythm with her strokes over his sex. They are making love to each other with fingers and mouths and he finds her other breast and she buries her hand in his hair, urging him on.
Mrs. Fairfax would faint dead on the stone floor if she saw this. Jane fleetingly remembers, with a little flush, how Mrs. Fairfax had said she knew so little of men. Oh, how she knows him now.
He pulls back, leaving her nipples wet and cooling in the night air. "Oh yes, love," he sighs, almost strained, "you are so tight but your sex is so slick and ready for mine..."
The thought of him—there, somehow—fills her with vague, panicked confusion, and his promise seems a flimsy thing, now. He thrusts his fingers up inside her and she feels almost raw, but she never, never wants him to stop, even if he does find that mysterious maidenhead. She swings her knee on the other side of his hips so she's straddling his waist and when he slides his fingers out of her, he slicks them over the edges of her sex and she lets out a slow pleased sigh, still tracing him with her fingers.
"Just..."
He angles her and leans back and she looks down at him, eyes wide in shock. She's on top of him, knees spread and hair loose and his hand on the small of her back, and then he guides her down a little further and she can feel the firm ridge of his sex against the slick indentation of her own. He parts those slick lips so that she's rubbing wet inner skin against his erection and she grinds against him in long hard strokes, up and down his cock, up and down, the tip of it still against his belly. She rubs the join of her thighs against his shaft and then slides forward too far, and feels the head of his cock, feels how right it is when the head of his cock slides against her sex.
When she opens her eyes her hair is tumbled down around him, and he cups her breasts, his dark-eyed gaze full of unaccustomed wonder to see her so close to riding him. Some unspeakable tension is coiling thick in her belly and when he plucks at her nipples she feels it peak a little higher.
Then he grasps her hips, holding her in place, and she rolls against his touch in protest, and he tips his chin back, mouth open. "Jane," he forces out, "stay. Please."
She watches with her wide-eyed questioning gaze as he pushes his hips up a little, and then he grasps his cock, still wet from contact with her inner flesh. He curls his fist around it and pumps it, quickly, over and over, his breath coming in stuttering gasps, and she has just barely begun to feel that this is not something she should be watching, when he gives a little shudder and—his seed. She sees his seed. So what he just did was a sin, and what they were doing, what she wants to do again, that is a sin—
She shakes her head, still on her knees, fascinated by what has just happened. In a few days this will not be a sin. That interruption, and oh, his sex, which seems too long and too thick to actually fit partially, much less fully, inside her—he will spend his seed in her womb. While the thought of it fills her with dread, a small but growing part of her desires it, almost wants it now, doesn't want to wait.
He meets her gaze and gives her a small, nearly apologetic smile. "I kept my promise."
She nods. "So that—that pressure I feel, in me. I have no—release." She nods, coloring, at his sex, visibly spent.
His smile broadens. "I do not know," he admits. "Maybe, maybe not. But we have until the sun comes up to find out."
She immediately falls onto her back, catching his wrist and pulling him with her, leading his hand back between her thighs. "Why do I have the unmistakable impression that we're playing with fire."
For a second, in her mind's eye, she sees him in his bed, framed in flames, entirely unaware. When she gazes up at him she catches that clouded expression just passing.
"We are," he replies, and she arches when he immediately slides two slick fingers up between her thighs, her nails scratching against the sheets. "I don't think we'll ever stop."