Chapter Eighteen #4
She waited a moment, watching him, likely expecting him to take charge as he usually did.
When he didn’t, she knelt between his legs and reached for the buttons of his shirt, his cravat already scandalously absent.
Before she could undo a third button, he asked, almost distractedly, “How do you make yourself come?”
Giuliana sat back on her heels and waited until he met her eyes. There was flirtation in them, which oddly felt unwelcome. She was misinterpreting his purpose for being there this evening. Or perhaps he was.
“Would you like me to show you?” she replied, coyly.
No man in their right mind would refuse such a demonstration. But Alexander had not been in his right mind for weeks.
“I don’t want a display. I mean, of course I do, in a sense. Anyone would. Only that isn’t my aim. I hope you won’t take offense. I just … I wondered how you actually do it.” Alexander’s mind felt frantic and muddled.
“Ah, you’re not able to make the lady reach her peak? Is that it?”
“No!” Alexander responded too quickly and too loudly. Giuliana’s laugh dripped out again.
“You sound certain.”
“I am,” Alexander gritted out. “Forget I asked.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to forget for the rest of my days. Unfortunately, you’ve piqued my curiosity. What is it you’re really after? You’ve seen me touch myself many times, Alexander.”
“Yes, but is that the way you do it alone? Or is it more for viewing pleasure?”
Giuliana stood, realizing the evening was not going to turn sexual. At least not in deed. She draped her sheer dressing gown over her shoulders again and sat across from Alexander on the sofa.
“Alexander. It will be so much easier for us both if you ask me what you actually want to ask me.”
“I don’t want to speak out of turn—”
“Yes, one always strives to avoid that with their mistress,” Giuliana replied sardonically.
He rolled his eyes and continued. Somehow, her teasing returned him to himself. His confident, assured self. Not the boyish, stilted wreck he’d arrived as.
“I have a companion who cannot make herself come alone.” He studiously ignored Giuliana’s raised eyebrow.
“She is perfectly capable of it with my assistance,” he bit out.
Giuliana smiled and he continued. “I wondered, as it were, if there were other techniques she could employ that I might not know of, as a mere spectator and occasional lieutenant in the process.”
There. He’d done it.
Giuliana’s eyes sparked with glee, which was always either dangerous or expensive for him.
She clasped her hands together, fingers intertwined, and sat back in her armchair, one part Duke of Wellington, one part Aphrodite.
“I’m assuming, although I normally try to avoid doing so, that your exposure to the act has only involved women lying on their backs.
For ‘viewing pleasure,’ as you so aptly put it? ”
“Yes,” Alexander answered, clearly trying to puzzle out the corollary to her assumption.
“Don’t misunderstand me, there are plenty of women who can come that way. But a great deal of women need to actually be on their stomachs. Or sitting. Or riding.”
“Riding?”
“Well, rubbing. Against something. Perhaps their hand, sure, but a pillow does the job remarkably well for some. A cushion. A lover’s leg.
The arm of a settee can feel quite marvelous,” she said, gesturing to where his own arm rested.
He reflexively withdrew his arm and crossed it over himself.
Giuliana smirked and continued, spurred on by knowing more than he did about a sexual topic.
“I’ve had a woman ride me before, Giuliana. I’m not green.” She shot him an arch look to quiet him.
“Truly, it’s about the hips. Tell your ‘companion’ to try facing down on the bed. Or to try out some furniture. Let her guide the movements with her body rather than with her hand on herself.”
Alexander, full of knowledge and images that would make sitting on a settee in the near future rather difficult, stood and inclined his head toward Giuliana. “Thank you, you’ve been incredibly helpful.”
“Of course. Give my best to Lady Alexander in her endeavor.” Giuliana winked at him.
“Ours is a marriage in name only. We have no plans to consummate the nuptials.” He cleared his throat, unsure why he was explaining himself. And what point he was trying to make.
“My mistake. Pass my regards on to your mysterious companion then.” She was still smiling as if she didn’t believe him, which irked him to no end.
When had he ceased to have control of conversations with women?
Or control of himself? Had they all always seen through him?
Had they merely been allowing him to play at being charming?
His mind swam with these existentially threatening questions the entire ride home.
They ruined the good mood he’d achieved upon collecting useful information for Harriet.
He stalked back up to his room, undressed in a state nearing anger, and then crawled back into his bed as if he were upset with the bed itself.
Then he lay there again, tossing and turning, his station quite the same as it had been hours before.
Only with new positions to imagine Harriet in.