Mary Simonsen - Mr. Darcy’s Bite

Darcy signaled his displeasure with her sulking by leaving as soon as Lady Helen’s maid stepped out of the Granyard carriage. Usually, he would brush against her side or lick her muzzle before leaving, but she would receive no such attention from him this daybreak.

Despite the snow, Darcy made excellent time in reaching the cave where he would begin his transformation from lupine to human form. Because so much of the geology of the Peak District was porous limestone, the whole area was pockmarked with caves and caverns, and it was because of these natural shelters that there were still Darcys on the property.

During the Civil War, the Darcys, who had remained loyal to Charles I, had fled the manor house when Cromwell’s men descended upon the estate looking for royalists. After the Restoration of the monarchy, the family returned to Derbyshire to find the house a ruin, and a new Pemberley, built in the Palladian style, rose from the ashes. But with the war and their narrow escape a recent memory, a tunnel was dug leading to this cave, and after further alteration, it was connected to a stairway and a room accessible only from the study. Once Darcy reached the cave, he knew he was safe.

As he waited for his transformation to be completed, all thoughts were of Elizabeth. He pictured her in her bedchamber sleeping on his side of the bed while hugging a pillow and dreaming of those moments when they lay in each other’s arms. When they were finally reunited, perhaps he could convince her to keep to their room for the remainder of the day.

As he lay on a sheepskin cloth, he could feel the start of the last and most uncomfortable part of his return to human form. It was where his buttocks flattened so that his legs could lengthen. Once he was bipedal, he would have to spend several minutes stretching the muscles in his legs and lower back as daybreak was much harder on the body than nightfall was. But the greater challenge was to readjust his mind so that he was thinking like a human and not a predator.

After putting on his shirt and breeches and running a comb through his hair, he ate mint and rinsed his mouth, and then made his way to the study. As he looked at his pocket watch, he thought, just one more hour, a mere sixty minutes, and he would be with his bride.

As soon as Darcy slid open the panel, he knew Elizabeth was in the room. As eager as he was to see her, he did not want this. Because his mind was still in a state of transition, he would remain in the secret room until the mental phase of the transformation had been completed. But he made the mistake of stepping into the room to look at his wife, and in doing so, awakened her. She immediately stood up and started to come to him, but he held out his hand to keep her from getting any closer.

“Elizabeth, I want you to go back to your room and wait for me there.” He could hear the gruffness in his voice, but there was nothing he could do about that; the vocal chords were one of the last things to change. But his statement only caused her to step closer to him.

“I must insist that you leave. I am not yet fit company.” But her scent reached him and he could make out her form beneath her nightgown, and he felt his manhood growing. “Go now. Quickly. I could hurt you,” he warned. But she stood rooted to the spot, and so he stepped forward and grabbed her by the arm. “You do not want this.” With his member throbbing, he was now in agony, and he knelt down on the floor, pulling her with him. After shoving her on her back, he pushed her nightgown over her hips and knelt over her while he opened his breeches and then entered her immediately, and he had never felt more like a beast than he did at that moment.

Darcy was sure he was hurting his wife, but instead of whimpers, he heard soft moans and felt her pelvis thrust against his. Her movements sent a charge through his body, and he went from agony to ecstasy in a moment, and as he lifted his chest off of hers, he felt the full force of his release. Now, completely spent, he collapsed on top of her. Ashamed at his performance, he tried to withdraw, but he felt her tightening around his member, holding him inside her. “Please, don’t go yet,” she whispered and ran her hands up and down his back, and only when she felt his muscles completely relax did she unwrap her legs and free him.

Darcy rolled off of her and stared at the ceiling, refusing to look at her, and after seeing the tears in his eyes, she kissed him and told him how much she loved him.

“But I hurt you,” he said, the tears spilling over onto his cheeks.

“No, you did not hurt me. I swear to you that you did not.”

“You should not have come, Elizabeth,” he said, choking on his words. “I understand why you did, but you should have waited for me in your room as I asked you to do.”

“But I wanted to see your scar.”

Darcy rolled on his side and looked at her. “What?”

“Your scar. From when you were bitten.”

“But you have seen it a number of times now,” he said confused.

“No, I haven’t. I always look straight ahead—never down.”

Darcy nodded his head in understanding at what she was trying to do, and he started to laugh. “Well, then I must have been with someone else on the night of December 24th because that lady definitely looked at me.”

“All right. I confess. I did look at you—in all your majesty,” she said, smiling. Darcy, overwhelmed by the power of her love, pulled her onto his chest and held her against his heart.

After pouring himself a whisky, Darcy went and sat next to Elizabeth on the sofa. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

“No,” she answered, as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I have everything I want right here.”

“You must promise me never to…” Before he could finish, she was shaking her head. “Elizabeth, you are my wife and have taken a vow of obedience to your husband.” Lizzy kept shaking her head. “Why?” he asked in an exasperated voice.

“Although I must accept that I cannot be with you when you are a wolf, I refuse to be kept from you when you are not.”

“You do not understand the process.”

“Oh, I do. You explained it all to me. Your mind is slower to transform than your body, but if you think about it, I believe my being here accelerated that process. When we started to make love, you were more wolf than man. By the time we had finished, you were more man than wolf.”

“You call that lovemaking? I was brutal to you.”

Lizzy assured him with her smile that he had not been a brute, and he could tell from her scent and the light in her eyes that she was telling the truth. After standing up, he took her hand and walked with her to the fur rug in front of the fireplace.

“You look lovely,” he said as he helped her out of her robe, and he whispered, “I love you” as she stepped out of her nightgown. He knelt down on the rug, gently pulling her to the floor, and after tasting and touching every inch of her, he entered her, and in her mind, he was fully human.

After making love, Lizzy and Darcy fell into a deep sleep, and it was only a dying fire and a chilly room that awakened the exhausted pair. There was also the matter of a not quite eighteen-year-old Georgiana. Since she did not know they were in the study, she must be wondering why the newlyweds were still abed at noon, especially since she was teased unmercifully by her brother about her habit of sleeping so late into the day. So instead of crawling into a warm bed, both scooted up the backstairs, got dressed, and joined Georgiana in the sitting room, finding her dressed for another day of playing in the snow.

Darcy needed little encouragement, and both returned to their rooms to change into something more appropriate for an outing. Georgiana was eager to show her brother the snowman they had created the previous day, but when they stepped out onto the portico, they could see that their creation was now a mound of snow with Darcy’s top hat embedded in the pile.

After studying the blob before him, Darcy offered his opinion: “Except for that perfectly good top hat, I must say that I am unimpressed with your efforts.”

Georgiana sputtered an explanation for the use of what she thought was an old top hat. She was about to point out the obvious, that yesterday’s warm temperatures had caused the snowman to melt, when Lizzy hit him in the back with a snowball. Thus began a blizzard of white missiles flying through the air, with no quarter given by either sex. Victory was declared when Darcy dropped to his knees and covered his head with his hands, indicating defeat.

After they stopped laughing, all agreed that they needed to go into the woods and make another snowman, one that would not fall victim to the rays of the sun. Darcy retrieved the hat and after dusting it off said, “Obviously, that fellow did not appreciate the quality or cost of this hat, so we shall give it to the new snowman, who will, hopefully, take better care of it.”

With David and Goliath at their master’s heels, they marched off to the woods, and while Lizzy and Georgiana gathered branches, twigs, and rocks for the arms and face, Darcy worked alone in crafting, in his opinion, the perfect snowman, and to show that he was not displeased with his wife and sister for using his apparel to clothe their frozen creation, he took the scarf from around his neck and placed it on the snowman.

When the ladies suggested that he join them in making snow angels, he declined. Although he had been willing to have a snowball fight and to build a snowman, he had to draw the line somewhere. He held firm until the ladies knocked him down.