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It turns out, Lizzie Bennet is so diabolically smart that she’s already figured out the truth on her own.
He tries to apologize—he swears up and down that he didn’t do it to pressure her or buy her affection, but she keeps coming closer and closer, and the gleam in her eye is both thrilling and terrifying. And then her hand is on his cheek and he says too much—but he must have said something right because instead of running away, she hauls him down by the stethoscope and kisses him.
It’s simultaneously the best and worst outcome that could have come out of this. She’s doing it out of gratitude, he knows. There’s no way her knowledge of his actions isn’t influencing her opinion of him a little bit. But the moment her lips touch his, he knows that this is it—she is it for him. And he’s just selfish enough that there’s no way he can resist savoring this.
“Just so we can put this matter to rest,” she says when they resurface, her voice shaking slightly as her hands unclench from around his stethoscope, “I did not do that out of gratitude. In fact, I’d been wanting to do that for weeks before any of this went down.”
And it hits him.
It really is that simple. Lizzie knows about the donation and his attempts to cover it up, but she’s wanted him since before the whole Wickham debacle, and she still wants him now. Why shouldn’t they go for it, if they’re both on the same page?
She doesn’t let go of his hand. As soon as the front door closes behind them, she’s kissing him again, and they’re stumbling together through her apartment, into her bedroom.
He runs his hands all over her, cradling her head, threading his fingers through her impossibly soft hair, under her jacket, splaying his palms across her back, trying to cover as much surface area as he can because—fuck—there’s no way this is real. He’s dead, or about to die, and his near-death brain is hallucinating this impossible scenario where everything he has ever wanted is coming true moments before it’s all supposed to go to black.
She’s shucking her jacket, and his stethoscope, and yanking his scrub top out of his pants and over his head, and then her hands are all over him, hungrily mapping the plains and contours of his bare chest. He barely has the presence of mind to shut the door behind them before she’s back in his arms and his hands are full of Lizzie—Lizzie wanting him, Lizzie kissing him, Lizzie tugging off her own shirt and pulling on his wrists, bringing his palms up to cup over her bra.
Then her fingertips curl under the top of his waistband, tugging him forward. He catches himself with his hands, narrowly avoiding knocking her over, finds himself pressing her between him and her bedroom door. She sighs as he traces a trail of kisses along her jaw and sucks on her neck. She mewls as he nibbles on her earlobe and whispers that she’s so beautiful. She clutches at his back and moans as he swipes his thumbs across her nipples through her bra, and the sound shoots through him, straight down into his groin, tearing an answering groan from his own throat.
She pulls him back to her lips, hiking her legs up to wrap around his waist as he slides his hands down to grab her ass, hoisting her up higher, tighter against the door—
“Mmph, what the—”
She breaks the kiss and grabs blindly at something that crinkles on the door behind her.
He blinks, slowly lowering her down to her feet, trying to clear away the literal stars in his vision until he can peer down at the crumpled note in her hand.
Hey crazy kids- I left a box of condoms in your nightstand, just in case. Enjoy! xoxo -Lyds
Then Lizzie looks up at him, chest heaving, red blooming across her cheeks. He wonders how far down it spreads when she blushes, whether it reaches her the tops of her breasts or even farther down into her bra, wonders how it’s possible for one woman to reduce him to putty in her hands so thoroughly just by blushing.
He doesn’t dare drop his gaze past her face—not when they’ve already gotten so badly carried away that their minds are just now catching up—so he takes in her flushed cheeks, her kiss-swollen lips, the green irises scarcely visible around her dilated pupils, the uncertainty that overtakes her features the longer they stare at each other like deer in headlights.
He tries to apologize for overstepping.
It’s okay, he’s fine with waiting, he’s content with not going any further if she’s not comfortable with this. If she wants to wait—
“I don’t.”
She pushes him into her desk chair and straddles his lap. His hands automatically fly to her waist, and she cups his face in her palms, tipping his head back and kissing him deeply.
Okay, kissing he can do. He’s having a little trouble keeping up with what just transpired in the last ten seconds—probably because all of his blood has left his head, and is in his head—but he can kiss Lizzie all day, no problem.
“I’m clean, by the way,” she breathes.
“Huh?” he says stupidly.
“I last got tested two years ago, when I got a needlestick injury on my surgery clerkship. I haven’t been with anyone since college—it was just a casual fling to blow off steam—I was applying to medical schools my senior year, and I was stressed, and he was just a friend—”
“Lizzie, it’s okay.” He kisses her to stop her rambling. “You don’t owe me your entire history. I was clean, too, the last time I got tested. After my last breakup. And I haven’t been with anyone since college either. Before my sophomore year…”
Shit, has it really been ten years? Would he have gone another ten years without looking at a woman twice if he hadn’t met Lizzie?
“I’m on the pill,” she adds. “I had really bad cramps in high school, and they put me on it because I once had to be hospitalized for heavy bleeding—a little TMI, I know—”
“Lizzie, I’m a doctor. We’re both literally doctors.”
“Then you should know what I’m getting at.”
“Maybe I should.” He grunts as she grinds her hips down against the tent in his pants. “But tell me anyway? I’m having trouble concentrating here.”
“I mean—” (another grind) “—if we’re not interested in giving meddling baby sisters the satisfaction, then we don’t need to take Lydia up on her offer.”
Oh. Right. The condoms.
“Lizzie.” He puts his hands on her hips to keep her still. “You don’t have to—I mean—yes, but only if you’re comfortable with that.”
“I am.”
He summons the last of his willpower as she kisses him again. He has to stop her one last time.
“Lizzie, I can’t do casual. Not with you. I don’t want this to be a…a one-time thing.”
She slowly and deliberately unhooks her bra and lets it fall away.
When he finally remembers to breathe and dares to look her in the eye again, she says, “Good. Neither do I.”
And then she pulls away, moving completely off his lap. He doesn’t even have time to mourn the loss before she’s tugging insistently on his wrists and guiding his hands to the waistband of her leggings. He swallows (why does his mouth feel so dry?), as he helps her pull them down, followed by her panties, and then she kicks off her shoes and moves to straddle him again.
“Are you absolutely sure?” he whispers, desperately trying to ignore the heat he can feel emanating from where they’re separated by only two thin layers of his clothing. “Please, Lizzie, tell me that you’re real, that this isn’t a dream—”
She surges forward, and he groans at the softness of her bare chest against his. Recapturing his lips with a renewed sense of urgency, she takes his hand and guides it down between her legs. For a second, it occurs to him that it’s probably a good thing she’s taking the lead on this because he’s still processing the fact that Lizzie Bennet is completely naked in his lap and wants to be there.
And then he feels her warmth and her wetness on his fingertips and his mind goes entirely blank.
She huffs impatiently and gets up on her knees, arching into him, fingers tugging at his hair, burying his face in between her breasts, so he takes a hardened nipple into his mouth as he inserts one, then two fingers inside her. He pumps them in and out once, twice, then curls them, drawing from her a startled cry.
“Do that again,” she urges, clenching experimentally around his fingers.
So he does, working out exactly where to touch to make her sigh, where to press with his thumb to make her cry out, again and again. She shrieks when he bites down on a nipple, just hard enough to pinch, then gasps when he soothes the area with his tongue, then moans when he gives it several teasing flicks of his tongue in rapid succession.
He can tell she’s close from the way she’s rocking her hips in time with the pace of his fingers, grinding her clit against the heel of his hand. Don’t stop, she gasps, don’t you dare slow down.
He quickens his pace even more, curling his fingers again and again against that spot inside her that has her sobbing with abandon, her entire body tensing, her hips bucking uncontrollably, coating his entire palm with her arousal.
If he could see her—and he can’t because his face is still buried in her chest where he can practically feel her heart threatening to burst through her ribcage—he has no doubt the sight would be the most erotic thing he’s ever seen in his life. Her fingernails scrape across his scalp, setting his every nerve ending ablaze, while she begs him, in broken fragments and barely intelligible phrases, faster, harder—whatever you do—ungh—don’t stop.
He sucks, hard, on her nipple and scrapes it with his teeth before biting down again, and then she wails his name, falling apart in his arms. He releases her breast, whispering nonsensical endearments in her ear as she rides out her orgasm. Then she collapses against him, limp and quivering from the aftershocks, and he slowly withdraws his fingers.
“William,” she sighs.
Her eyes are dazed and unfocused when she puts her hands on his shoulders and shakily pushes herself off of him. He watches wordlessly as she leans away, fetching a tissue from the box on her desk, then turns back to him and sets about wiping his hand clean.
“Would…” He swallows. “Would you like me to give you a minute to get dressed?”
She gives him a look that clearly says, Seriously? Then they’re kissing again, and her hand slips down between them to palm him through his pants, and he remembers that he’s still hard, and aching, and very much ready for her.
He breaks away long enough to mumble, “Sorry. I’m an idiot.”
She just laughs against his lips and wraps her legs around his waist when he stands up and carries her over to her bed.
He sets her down as she eagerly undoes the drawstring of his scrub pants, and his mind conjures up an image of Lizzie unwrapping him as her (belated) birthday present. Despite what they’ve just done, and what they’re literally about to do, he scolds himself to get his mind out of the gutter. This is Lizzie. He should be showing her just how much he loves her with every kiss and every touch. She deserves better than to be treated as the passive, agency-less object of his dirtiest fantasies.
Lizzie isn’t in the mood for chaste kisses and gentle caresses, though. She grasps the waistband of his boxer-briefs, her eyes widening ever so slightly when she finally yanks them down, taking him into her hands and drawing out a low moan.
His eyelids flutter in bliss as she continues to explore. He rewards her efforts with a string of curses and oaths—until he recalls himself and reaches for her hands to still them. It would not do for this to end so quickly. He cannot, will not, disappoint her like that.
When she raises her eyes to meet his again, he feels the breath go out of him at the vulnerability and trust in their depths.
“I want you,” she whispers, anticipating his question, her hands coming up to cup his face. “I will say that as many times as it takes for you to believe it. I want you, William.”
It’s too much. If she keeps saying things like that, his heart might just burst from the overwhelming tidal wave of emotion her words have threatened to unleash, and he’ll wind up doing something idiotic like blurt out a marriage proposal.
So instead, he crushes his lips to hers and kicks off his shoes, stepping out of the pool of fabric around his ankles to join her on the bed. The mattress dips under his weight as he situates himself between her legs, and both groan simultaneously as he slips inside her.
There are no words to describe what he’s feeling. Yes, the physical aspect of it is incredible because he’s never done this without a condom on before, but despite having known Lizzie for the past ten months and fantasized about her—about them, like this—in the darkness and privacy of his bedroom for nearly as long, he’s still unprepared for the depth and intensity of the feelings that are once again on the tip of his tongue, on the verge of pouring forth.
Beneath him, Lizzie brushes away the hair that’s fallen into his eyes and sucks gently on his lower lip. He hears himself let out a strangled sound when she clenches around him, and his hand unconsciously clamps down on her thigh.
“S-sorry,” she murmurs, shifting a little to adjust to the new sensation. “I just…need a second.”
He tries to hold still, for her sake, distracting himself by pressing kisses to her forehead, her eyelids, the spot on her neck, just beneath her jaw, where he can feel her pulse fluttering beneath his lips.
When she starts to rock her hips back, his snap forward involuntarily, and then he’s filling her completely and she’s digging her fingernails into his shoulders and begging him to do that again. So he obeys, pulling out nearly all the way and then thrusting in again, all of him at once, and she’s crying out in pleasure, and then it all becomes a bit of a blur after that.
The bedframe squeaks in time with their movements, punctuated by her cries and his grunts. He thinks he hears her moaning something in broken syllables but can’t be sure over the dull roar of blood in his ears. He feels her fingernails scraping down his back, senses them scrabbling for purchase at the sheets beneath them, and then she’s tensing her whole body again, sobbing out his name (muffled by his own lips) as she climaxes a second time.
He feels her come apart beneath him, around him, and almost follows her over the edge—if not for the sudden and sobering stab of guilt that halts his thrusts: guilt for rushing her into bed before they’ve even gone on one date, before they’ve had the conversation about what they even are now, before a whole half hour has even elapsed since their first kiss.
She deserves so, so much more than a short-lived, spur-of-the-moment romp in the sheets that only came into being because he’d somehow reverted into a horny teenager with no impulse control. She may have returned his feelings before the whole Wickham business went down—she’s even choosing to be with him despite knowing what he did—but the last thing he wants is for her to think he did it all just to get into her pants.
A gentle hand on his cheek brings him back from his reverie. He opens his eyes and presses his forehead to hers.
“I’m sorry I rushed things,” he says hoarsely. “I’m not going to last much longer, and I wanted this to be good for you—”
“I mean, you don’t hear me complaining.” She tightens her legs around his hips, urging him to move.
“But you deserve—”
She cuts him off with a heated kiss. “The only thing I’m sorry about is that you haven’t come yet. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been thinking for weeks now about all the ways I’d like for you to have me. And we can’t really do any of that—” another snap of her hips against his “—if we’re still in the middle of the first time.”
“I didn’t plan for it, when I came to see you, to go this way,” he insists between her feverish kisses, his thrusts growing faster and more erratic.
“Yeah, your plan was to pine away from a distance and never speak to me again,” she pulls away long enough to retort, kissing him again and again until he gives up on trying to protest.
She pulls him closer, combing her fingers soothingly across his scalp when he lets out a final, unrestrained moan. He grasps her hips, his fingers digging bruisingly into her flesh as the unspeakably intense pleasure concentrated where they’re joined reaches its breaking point, shooting in an instant throughout his entire body like a burst dam, spilling over, out of him, into her. He’s dimly aware that it—she—feels significantly warmer and wetter in there, and then he’s shaking, drained dry, and collapsing in a boneless heap on top of her.
He has no idea how long they lie there, her heart pounding in sync with his, her thumbs tracing tenderly across his cheeks, which are surprisingly wet with tears.
She protests when he finally manages to regain control of his limbs, attempting to push himself up off her. She doesn’t care, likes it, even, when he’s lying on her and it feels like she’s completely enveloped in him. But he’s crushing her, so he rolls over a little, and she relents, scooting over to make room for him in the bed beside her—and letting out a squeak of surprise at the trickle of warm white liquid that runs down her thigh when they separate.
He immediately gets up and fetches another tissue from her desk to help her clean up. The sight of it, of the visible, tangible proof of what they’d just done, has his heart racing again. He’d put that there—she’d let him put that inside her—and his traitorous mind kicks into overdrive with thoughts of marriage, of children, of forever with her.
Lizzie becomes surprisingly docile and very, very affectionate after sex, he learns, as she tugs the covers over them both and peppers his face with kisses. He wonders how long is long enough for the post-coital euphoria to wear off before it’s generally considered acceptable to say “I love you.”
“Come here,” he says instead, running his palm up her thigh and pulling it to drape over him.
“You’re so tense,” she whispers back, her fingertips drawing tiny circles into his shoulders. She pulls away abruptly and props herself up on an elbow. “William Darcy, what have you been doing to yourself? Your entire shoulder is full of knots.”
He blinks, wanting nothing more than to just hold her and bask in the afterglow. But Lizzie Bennet, D.O., is not to be gainsaid, and now she’s urging him to sit up and face away from her, as she gets to work fixing apparently decades of stress and tension that he’s been ignoring and carrying in his trapezius muscles.
He sighs. “You are amazing.” His breath hitches as she applies deep but gentle pressure to another tender spot.
He expects her to quip that he should tell her something she doesn’t already know, or how her patients say that all the time too. Instead, her fingers still, and her arms come down to wrap around his waist. “I thought I’d lost my chance with you,” he hears her confess into his shoulder blade after a prolonged pause. “I’ve missed you so much, Will.”
He starts to apologize for the pain and confusion of the past month, for making her ever doubt his feelings for her, but his words are cut off in a strangled yelp as she reaches down and takes him into her hand.
“Wha—what are you doing?” he manages to get out as she runs a fingertip gently up the length of his semi-hard shaft before her other hand wraps firmly around the base.
“You’ve done enough apologizing in the last few months,” she replies as her fingers ever so slightly graze the tip. “I think it’s my turn to make amends. For making you wait this long.”
Her chest is pressed against his back, but he feels her pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck.
“Just let me do this for you, and enjoy it,” she whispers into his ear.
There’s nothing he can do to reciprocate; she’s kneeling on the bed behind him, the only parts of her visible to him are the hands that are stroking him back to hardness. So he obeys, leaning back against her and closing his eyes.
Then he feels her hands release him, feels her weight shifting away from him on the mattress. He opens his eyes to find her kneeling on the floor between his legs, her green eyes gleaming with purpose.
“Li-Lizzie,” he stammers, “you don’t need to—I don’t expect…”
She waits for him to look her directly in the eye before she presses an open-mouthed kiss to the swollen head, sucking gently on the tip and lapping at the underside with her tongue.
He’s pictured them doing this very act countless times on countless nights, hunched over alone on the edge of his bed, dripping with desire and burning with an all-consuming want for her, imagining her hot little hands doing unspeakably intimate things to him, imagining himself twitching uncontrollably in her mouth as the flat of her tongue works relentlessly at the sensitive spot on the underside where head meets shaft, until he spills into his own hand.
But never in his fantasies has he imagined that when it finally happened, he would tangle his fingers in her hair, not to pull her deeper down around him, but to tear himself away.
“If you keep doing that,” he rasps, “I’m not going to last.”
She smirks. “That’s kind of the point.”
“I want it to be good for you, too,” he insists, tugging on her hands until she relents and releases him. “And I don’t want you to think you owe it to me, or that I did anything expecting some kind of reward from you.”
“Has it occurred to you that I might want you as badly as you want me? In case it wasn’t clear enough, Will, I’m not exactly in the habit of jumping into bed with just anybody out of gratitude. I don’t know how else I can convince you.”
“I don’t want to degrade you,” he says weakly, gesturing at where she’s still kneeling on the floor beneath him. “I don’t want to do anything that could risk this—us—again. You’re too important to me.”
Her eyes soften at that, and she lets him tug her to her feet, into his lap.
As they exchange kiss after kiss, he wonders whether she’ll be able to hear it if he thinks I love, I love, I love you hard enough.
She rakes her teeth across his lip before pulling back. “Just so we’re on the same page, I think you’re insanely hot, and I’d like to keep you around for a long time, too. And I am definitely looking forward to a repeat performance. Now that we’ve gotten the awkward first time out of the way—” she rises on her knees, her hand snaking between them to grasp him, then sinks down “—I want you to show me all the ways you’ve been wanting to fuck me. And don’t hold back.”
Afterwards, he savors her drowsy kisses and reaches behind her to draw the (horribly wrinkled and disarrayed) covers back over them, marveling at how perfectly they fit together. He’s still processing all that has just transpired—that he just had sex with Lizzie Bennet. Twice. That the proof is in the slick heat and wetness between his legs, in the adoration in her expression as she gazes up at him that he’s pretty sure mirrors his own. That he’s even more impossibly in love with her than he already was, and she’s confirmed that she feels even a little of the same way about him, and now he’s lying naked in her bed, still not quite soft inside her, and she wants him there.
A thought occurs to him. He nudges her hip gently. “Aren’t you supposed to, uh, go to the bathroom…after? To prevent UTIs, I mean?”
She hums noncommittally. “No evidence of harm, but limited efficacy in controlled studies,” is her sleepily murmured response. “The actual New England Journal of Medicine paper is behind a paywall, but I can link you the DynaMed article.”
“Seriously?”
“You can probably take it to the hospital library staff. They’ll work their magic and get you access to the full paper.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he laughs softly, pressing a kiss to her nose. “But I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good, because I don’t want to get up.” A yawn interrupts. “Too, mmm, comfy.”
Her breathing eventually slows and evens out.
He shouldn’t go to sleep in his contacts—he’s seen enough horrific corneal infections in the emergency department from patients who learned the hard way. But he’s already been awake for 12 hours of a physically and emotionally draining ED shift, and now he’s so blissfully exhausted after two orgasms, and Lizzie is warm and soft and comfortably snuggled against him, and he’s never been more absolutely certain that he is exactly where he’s meant to be…