Bennet, Pride Before the Fall (Love Austen 3)

Another song started, and they continued swaying, every breath filling Bennet’s nose with Darcy. Bennet’s heart thundered between them.

“Can I ask . . .?” Darcy trailed off, thumb tapping his hip, tightening fingers imprinting.

“You can ask anything.”

Dark eyes steadied on his. “When did things start changing for you? You were so insistent that we’d never work.”

Bennet winced, and locked his hands behind Darcy’s neck. “I wish I could take it back. Every time I read your email, I wish there was a way of crawling back into the past and doing it all over.”

“You read it more than once?”

His flush was close to consuming him. “A couple of times. A few. Okay, a lot.”

Darcy’s voice grew husky. “Confession?”

“Anything to take some of the embarrassment off me.”

“The picture you sent me, of you and Lyon at the cliffs? I look at it too. All the time. And before that, that snap of your stunned expression at the supermarket.”

Bennet laughed, delighted. Giddy.

A smile curved Darcy’s lips. “Now back to explaining when things changed for you.”

“After the email. And . . . before that.”

Darcy looked quizzically at him.

“Once I understood things better I went back through all our interactions and I . . . appreciated them differently. I read every word, every look again and they gave me, well, butterflies.” Darcy buried his face in Bennet’s neck and sighed, eliciting a ticklish, squirmy laugh.

When he pulled back, Bennet couldn’t stop looking at Darcy’s lips. He wanted to feel them pressed against his own. He spoke softly, “What about you?”

“It came on gradually. Then one day, I looked at your picture and I just knew, with clarity, I was in the middle of something that might break my heart.”

A breath rippled out of him. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t think . . . You didn’t like me the first few times.”

“You stunned me from the first time our eyes met. Your vibrancy, your colors, your smile, your vitality. But you scared me too. When I agreed there was a certain danger being around you . . .”

Bennet pressed his forehead to Darcy’s shoulder. The danger of spinning out of control, of endlessly chasing after gravity, of regretting every lost second you didn’t see it, of ever-mounting hope. . . . He lifted his head and whispered, “You meant the danger of falling for me.”

“I don’t know what I was afraid of.” Tenderness swelled between them, and Darcy swallowed. “Finding you in my bedroom . . . I started hoping there might be a chance for us, then. But it was only last night, watching you sing to me that I—”

“Oh, God. I can’t believe how obvious I was. I think everyone in there saw hearts in my eyes.” Bennet groaned. “I was serenading you!”

Darcy laughed. “I appreciated the clear signal. I wanted to whisk you off that stage and have this talk right then, but Lyon texted me. When he told me what Caroline had done . . .” His expression sharpened. “I needed to organize immediately. Seeing you at the bar looking at me, waiting for me . . . I had to rip myself out of there before I kissed you.”

“You probably could have kissed me.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Well, there was still the chance I’d read you incorrectly. And I’m fairly sure if you’d let me . . .”

Bennet clutched Darcy tightly. “I would have let you.”

“I wouldn’t have stopped.” Darcy dipped, cheek brushing Bennet’s, words hot in his ear. “It’s also why I shouldn’t kiss you now.”

Shivers made his breath uneven. “I’ve waited long enough so far. I suppose I can hold out a little longer.”

Laughing, Darcy twirled them again.

The sky was slowly darkening as the party ended. Sunset stretched across the horizon, a warm peach reflecting off the greenhouse.

The Ask Austen crew left to crash at Darcy’s farmhouse, and Lyon tagged along. Not too surprising after Bennet had squirreled Lyon behind a tree and told him, with stops and starts and smiles he couldn’t contain, that he and Darcy were together.

“What? No way, Bennet. No one in the universe could ever have seen that coming!”

Bennet had snorted at that, and Lyon had smirked and taken off to the farm.

As the cleanup carried on around him, Bennet leaned against wrought-iron and glass, tipped his head up and sighed.

Darcy emerged from inside the greenhouse, where he’d watered the grape cuttings as he’d promised Lyon. At some point Darcy had taken off his rainbow flag, too warm for it, and his shirt had opened another button, revealing a glimpse of chest hair.

Sweat dampened his curls, and one stuck to his brow.

“I left the watering can in there.” The distance between them shrank.

Darcy mirrored Bennet, resting against the glass, the length of their arms pressed together. He glanced to the handful of people moving in and out of the tree line. He took Bennet’s hand in his and Bennet felt the tension in it. “I . . .”