Chapter Twelve
AS SOON AS THE WORDS LEFT HER MOUTH, HARRIET REGRETTED THEM.
Her entire body felt prickly and hot, her skin too small.
Her chemise, which already was too small, felt even tighter.
Her father had always been disappointed with her curiosity, had told her it wouldn’t serve her, that it would get her in trouble. He’d been right, apparently.
Compared to her heat, Alexander seemed frozen in place—likely from shame. No doubt ladies were not meant to ask such things. Harriet flinched, a remnant of living so long with her father. She scrambled to apologize, to smooth things over.
“I beg your pardon! I shouldn’t have—I’m—Oh, I’m—” She buried her face in her hands. It was useless.
Alexander reached out to lower her arms, and Harriet realized just how wrong she’d been.
He wasn’t cold at all.
“Harriet,” he whispered, his voice low and deep.
How many levels of blushing were possible? Harriet felt sure she’d experienced every single one of them. She kept her eyes trained on the coverlet; if she met his gaze, the inn would ignite.
“Harriet,” he repeated, his thumb stroking up her arm seductively. No wonder the man didn’t care about words as she did. If he could achieve this much with his hands, he had no need for a mouth.
His touch traveled up to her shoulder, then he traced his fingers across her collarbone. A bone she’d never felt anything for previously. If you’d asked yesterday, Harriet would have been virtually certain seduction shouldn’t have anything to do with clavicles.
“Is this it?” Harriet asked, her eyes meeting his, the flammability of the inn be damned. She heard herself practically panting. It would have been quite embarrassing if she weren’t so desperate. She had no capacity for shame; she needed more. More … something. “Is this how women touch themselves?”
The question seemed to snap Alexander back to himself. He pulled his hand away and rubbed his eyes. “I feel certain you’re trying to kill me,” he groaned.
Harriet crawled out from beneath the covers and sat up on her knees to force him to meet her gaze. The chill of the room was now welcome against her hot skin.
“Will you teach me? If you know—and it seems likely you do—will you teach me?”
“Harriet,” he repeated, although this time it sounded like a warning.
“Yes, my lord?” Harriet replied, feeling suddenly quite mischievous. Alexander let out another deep groan.
Despite his displays of annoyance, she knew he wasn’t like her father; he wouldn’t strike her for being brazen or curious. He wouldn’t hurt her at all. So she pressed.
“It’s only fair, wouldn’t you concede? If you are to have a mistress, who I suspect helps you with those …
peaks … that I should get to have them as well?
” Alexander’s hands fisted in the sheets, which made Harriet grin.
If there was one thing she was good at, it was talking someone into seeing her way of things.
And she was getting close. “Come now, you wouldn’t want a wife who had no outlets for such things, would you?
Surely that way lies danger? A wife who might go asking someone else for … assistance?”
Alexander’s eyes snapped to hers, flashing with something that made Harriet’s heart skip or race or … do something which hearts weren’t meant to do. Tonight was an education in how little she knew of anatomy.
“Harriet, you’ve survived until now without having this particular experience. I think you should be quite well without it.” When she opened her mouth to argue, Alexander cut her off. “Alternatively, you can ask your sister when we arrive back in London; I’m certain she’s informed on this topic.”
“I couldn’t possibly ask my sister! Firstly, what if she doesn’t …
do it? I don’t, after all, so we must assume some women don’t.
Secondly, what should she think of my husband, unable to satisfy me?
That’s a rumor she’d be only too glad to spread around, I’m sure.
” Alexander didn’t look convinced by either of these arguments, and so Harriet played her last card.
“Please? Please teach me to touch myself?” She drew in a breath and looked right into his obsidian eyes. “Please, Alexander?”
He only took a moment before giving her a simple nod. “Lie back,” he instructed. Alexander’s voice was direct and even. He wasn’t being playful or charming. Harriet’s insides thrilled; her entire body was molten. She somehow still managed to do as he bid, sliding back under the covers.
“To begin with, simply touch yourself wherever feels good.”
Harriet frowned. This wasn’t inspired instruction, she felt. Before she could open her mouth to voice said complaint, he cut her off.
“Don’t question me. If you want my help, follow my orders.”
“I didn’t realize they were orders,” she teased, giddy at his commanding tone.
“They are now, you impertinent little chit.” Alexander straightened his posture, seeming to take his role seriously, which made Harriet want to laugh even more. “Touch your arm as I was before,” he instructed. “Easy … lighter. That’s it. All right.”
Harriet swallowed, not wanting to admit she wasn’t feeling much.
“Where did it feel best when I touched you?” Evidently, any ounce of embarrassment he had earlier was gone.
“Ummm …” Harriet trailed her hand up to her collarbone. “Here, I think …” She knew.
“All right. From there you might want to travel lower.”
“Lower?” Harriet still felt confused about this whole process. It was like when Frances attempted to explain the rules of a game to her but didn’t tell her the aim. She huffed out a breath. “Can you please just tell me what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“I’m trying, aren’t I?”
“Well, I’m not certain I’m going to reach any kind of ‘crisis’ from my collarbone, as nice as this feels.”
Alexander tossed his hands up in frustration.
“You’re the most impatient—! Look, you need to touch your quim.
That’s where the spot is if you’re a woman.
I was attempting—foolishly, apparently—to get you into the right mindset for what comes next!
If you want to start in between your legs, by all means!
” He spread his hands wide as if inviting her to dance.
“My quim?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. I suppose that makes sense, if for men it’s their …”
“Cock?”
Harriet nodded and a rare silence stretched between them. Her hands had stilled on her chest, and she wasn’t certain what she ought to do next. Alexander studied her from his side of the bed; since she’d insisted on this, she felt she must forge on.
She reached down under the coverlet and up the skirt of her shift.
She traced her hands along herself, unsure precisely what she was meant to be doing.
When they arrived at her quim, she trailed her fingers up and down her seam as she’d done with her clavicle.
While it felt nice enough, she couldn’t say it was blissful.
“I’m—I’m not sure I’m doing this correctly,” she said, wincing in embarrassment. She chanced a glance at Alexander, whose eyes held in them an emotion she’d never seen before. He was staring so intently at her that her hand stilled.
He cleared his throat. “It’s different for everyone, but there are a few places on a woman that rather reliably feel good.
” At her silence, he continued, “I was trying to direct you there earlier, but for many women their breasts feel nice to touch.” As he said this, his gaze dipped to her chest, and she felt an unfamiliar throb between her legs.
Maybe breasts were the key. She took her left hand and placed it on her breast over the chemise, running her hand along herself, in plain sight of Alexander.
The look it elicited from him inflamed her more than any touch of her own had.
He spoke again, his voice somehow even deeper than before. “You don’t have to just be gentle. You can do all sorts of things. Pinch, grab, rub. Whatever feels nice.”
Harriet felt certain she should have died from this conversation. Perhaps she had. Perhaps she’d died on the dance floor, and everything afterward was the afterlife.
Feeling desperate, she pinched one nipple lightly. Christ. Before she could stop herself, she let out a loud moan. Both her hands fled their stations and clapped over her mouth in horror.
“No, that’s good. That’s a sign it’s working.”
“You didn’t do that! Last night, you didn’t make a sound!” she protested, the heat suffusing her body now with embarrassment as well as arousal.
“I’ve had lots of practice at keeping silent while I do that.
I assure you, I make sounds when I can.” The thought of him moaning sent something surging through her.
Something that caused her hands to report back to their positions.
Her left hand played with her breast again—pleasing, but ultimately not enough.
Her right hand, however, was the problem. She tried to be a little bolder, taking a cue from what he’d instructed about her breasts. But … nothing. She might as well have been touching her knee. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do … down there,” she groused after a minute of fumbling.
“I don’t—I don’t know how to explain,” he said, looking a little stricken. “There’s, well, there’s a nub of pleasure down there, and when you touch that—you should feel quite good. I can’t see what you’re doing, so I can’t be sure, but that’s how it’s worked with every woman I’ve been with.”
Harriet didn’t want to think of the women he’d been with before. “A nub?”
“A button, a—I don’t know! You’re the wordsmith! It’s at the top of your cunt, but not inside. I don’t know how to explain it, I just know how to do it!” He sounded exasperated.
Harriet decided right then that she was already far too deep into the experience to back out now. She shoved the covers off herself and kicked them to the end of the bed. Alexander got very still again.
“Show me.”