Slowly, a sense of reality returned. They were in the final stages of dressing in silence when Darcy suddenly blurted, “Shit! I forgot the condom.”

Elizabeth pulled open the door and walked into the now deserted kitchen. The back door was locked, and the restaurant in the front was pitch black, the only light coming from the pantry.

She steadied herself against the kitchen table. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning! He had been fucking her senseless for almost an hour. She was angry with herself for allowing him to make love to her without protection. He seemed to make her forget herself completely. She was supposed to hate him. “Luckily for you, I’m on the pill,” she said tightly.

“There’s still no excuse for me. But you’re so hot that you make me forget everything.” Darcy wrapped his arms around her from the back, kissing her neck tenderly.

She shivered and tried to turn away from him. “No need for flattery. I know you find me a ‘plain Jane’ who isn’t worth a minute of your time.”

“Shit! You overhead that?” He let go of her and raked his fingers through his hair in embarrassment. “I wasn’t myself, that night I met you. I hadn’t even looked at you properly when I said those words. But I was hooked on you before the night out.”

She turned, craning her neck to look him in the eye. “But I hate you.”

“Hate me? I thought you liked me.”

“Arrogant, conceited man! Why would I like you?” She scowled up at him. “Richard told me you deliberately delayed shooting the episode about Longbourn because you wanted to separate Charles from the woman with the ‘objectionable family.’”

“Fucking gossiping Richard! I’m going to strangle him, next time I see him.”

“Do you deny separating Charles from Jane? She was heartbroken for months!”

“Richard got it all wrong!”

“But he talked about somebody being ‘like a horny rabbit, wanting to fuck the woman senseless, every time he sees her.’ And he said ‘her mother and younger sisters were too much trouble, so he chose to delay shooting for nearly five months.’”

Darcy was furious with Richard. “I didn’t use those vulgar words. And I wasn’t talking about Charles and Jane. I was talking about you and me.”

Elizabeth stared. “Shit! You’ve had the hots for me for that long?”

“I can prove it. I have condoms in my wallet.” Darcy pulled out his wallet and slammed the condoms in different colours on the kitchen table one after another. “They are there to remind me that I have lusted after you for all these months. And I’ll use all of them with you, all night long, if I can get my hands on you again, one day.”

Elizabeth eyes widened on seeing the number of condoms he pulled out. His hands were braced on either side of the kitchen table, trapping her there. He was breathing hard, his six pack rising and falling rapidly.

He looked magnificent when he was angry.

“So…you didn’t find me plain? And you didn’t scheme to separate Charles and Jane?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head with vigour.

“Then what are you waiting for?” She wrapped her hands around his neck and tried to pull his head down for a kiss. “The condoms are waiting.”

Darcy raised his hands and stopped her. “Actually, I have a different position in mind for each different-coloured condom.” He then turned her around and pushed her to lie on the kitchen table, face down. He lowered his head and kissed her earlobes, neck and naked back, trailing hot, wet kisses over her body.

Elizabeth shivered. She felt chilled as the front of her body pressed against the cold stainless kitchen table. But she felt hot as his lips were scorching her back. Blood rioted in her body again.

Without further foreplay, he unbuttoned her jeans and bared her creamy bottom to his assault. He shoved his trousers down, pulled on the blue condom, joined her on the table and drove into her from behind with one mighty thrust.

Holding her hips, he thrust into her like mad. His arousal was hot and hard, slamming into her core, deeper and deeper. Elizabeth screamed and wriggled her bottom to meet him, thrust by thrust. Primed as they already were, their mating was rough, hot and fast, and they quickly reached a simultaneous climax.

Not long afterwards, they retired to Darcy’s hotel to test out other positions and discuss strategy for how he could best handle her family. Both skipped work for the day, blissfully unaware of the firestorm of publicity that hit Longbourn when the restaurant’s sous-chef, Lydia, reported to the police that a thief in the night had raided her kitchen, stealing two dozen oysters and leaving behind an unused silver condom on the kitchen table.

Darcy And Wickham Swap Partners

What if Mr. Darcy participated in another reality show?

“Thanks for tuning in to Celebrity Dancing Shoes. Welcome to everybody in the studio and the millions of viewers at home! I’m Charles Bingley and this is my co-host, that elegant but annoying sister of mine, Caroline Bingley.” Charles flashed a big grin at the camera, earning a smack on the arm from Caroline.

“Hello everybody! Just ignore Charles. He has grown up to be quite silly. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the format of our highly successful show as it enters into its fifth season. We take celebrities who have had no formal dance training and pair them up with professional dancers. Over the course of ten weeks, the celebrity has to learn ballroom, Latin and several other forms of dance. Each week, during our live broadcast, one couple is voted off, based on a combination of the scores they received from the judges and the votes they received from the viewing audience. If the scores are tied for two couples, the one with more audience votes wins.”

“Tonight is our final competition of the season. In Week Eight, there were only two couples left. Our first gentleman is William Darcy, a very good friend of mine. The world-famous artificial-heart inventor pairs up with waltz champion Ann de Bourgh. The money raised from your votes for him goes to the Heart Foundation.” Caroline said, “And George Wickham, our home-grown Bollywood heartthrob, unfortunately pairs up with British rumba champion Eliza Bennet.”

“Why ‘unfortunately’?” Charles asked. “Elizabeth is beautiful, talented and hot!”

“Which is unfortunate for all of our female viewers at home,” Caroline explained, “since Miss Eliza has put her hands all over George’s body for so many weeks. The viewers, I’m sure, would like to trade places with her. And George’s charity is ‘No More Bullies.’”

“Darcy has a lot of female fans out there, too,” Charles stated, rallying for his friend. “Although the judges have said that he learned and executed the techniques of every dance very well, they do agree that he has been too uptight, not showing any emotion when he dances with Ann. As a result, he hasn’t been receiving very good scores from the judges. Week after week, I’ve expected him to be voted off, but my handsome friend must have thousands of female fans voting for him, because he’s still here tonight in the final.”

“As for George and Miss Eliza, they have been leading every week,” Caroline noted with a dazzling smile for the camera. “His dancing techniques are not as precise as Darcy’s, but George is more entertaining and charming on the dance floor, and he matches well with Miss Eliza.”

Charles held up a cautioning finger. “But our ‘devil’ judge, Frederick Wentworth, said on Week Seven that he sensed that George’s ‘sincerity’ might well be fake, and he believed that there was tension between the partners. And he gave them a very low score of five.”

“That sent the gossip magazines and talk shows into a frenzy,” Caroline added smugly. “Everyone heard, at the beginning of the series, that Bollywood George seemed to be very taken with Miss Eliza. He has been seen visiting her home in Meryton, taking her to nightclubs and, in fact, leaving her place on a few early mornings in ‘not so tidy’ attire. In fact, I recall a headline from a gossip magazine during Week Five that claimed that Miss Eliza was caught buying a home pregnancy test kit. It read, ‘Small-Town Hoofer Preggers by Bollywood Bad Boy!’”

“Caroline, I’m sure that was pure gossip!”

“Was it?” Caroline held up a colorful tabloid magazine.

“Here’s a headline from Week Seven, when Miss Eliza was said to have come out of a local clinic with tears in her eyes. ‘Dumped Dancer Seeks Abortion.’”

Outraged by Caroline’s deviations from the script, Charles deftly changed the subject. “Then both couples should thank our producer, Jimmy Forester, who has introduced a fateturning twist. We announced two weeks ago that the remaining couples would switch partners for the final two weeks of the competition. Darcy is now paired up with Elizabeth, and Ann with George. Let’s roll the camera and see our new couples in training.”

In the first film clip, a hot and flushed Elizabeth, who had apparently just finished a training session, was interviewed by Caroline. The latter was dressed impeccably in an orange princess dress accentuated with a multicolour silk scarf and a two-storey hairdo.

“How lucky, Miss Eliza! You got to pair up with William and even stay as a guest at Pemberley, his impressive country estate, for two weeks. How did a small-town girl like you fare? I image his ballroom is bigger than your entire house. I hope you didn’t get lost in the corridors.”

“There are a lot of lovely trees, flowers, birds and small animals on the grounds here. I love being able to lose myself in Nature when I finish a day’s training.”