Chapter Twenty-One #3
As soon as his heart returned to a more normal cadence, he lifted his head to look at Harriet, expecting to find her disgusted or perhaps embarrassed. One did not spill one’s seed into one’s wife’s hands. At least Alexander didn’t think one did.
Instead, he found her beaming with pride.
“That was extremely edifying,” she said, tittering with excitement, as Alexander reached to his discarded breeches for a handkerchief so she could clean herself.
She nodded her thanks and wiped her hands.
He’d already lain back on the blanket, quite incapable of moving for at least the next seventy-two hours.
“You look pleased with yourself,” he teased a few minutes later, his finger drawing lazy circles on her exposed hip. They were lying on their sides, facing one another, her dress still half hiked up.
“Of course I am. Tonight we discovered the cure to your carriage sickness.”
Alexander let out a loud, deep laugh, one that at first delighted Harriet, and then with its endurance befuddled her. She hadn’t thought the joke quite that humorous.
One look at her face, and Alexander turned sheepish, which only made him more handsome, unfortunately.
“I fear I must confess something to you,” he said, swallowing thickly. Harriet watched his Adam’s apple, a sight which almost distracted from his forthcoming admission. With her newfound comfort around him, she reached out to trace a line down his throat.
“I am … That is, I don’t … Perhaps you might remove your hand from my neck when I tell you this?” She smiled, confident enough now to know he was teasing her rather than critiquing her.
“We’ll see” was all she answered, trailing her hand to his collarbone, his throat still within reach.
“I don’t get sick in carriages,” he blurted. It happened so fast that she barely registered the words until she replayed them in her mind. Even then, the sentence made no sense. She dropped her hand and sat up, as if that would help ease her confusion.
“You …” Her eyebrows drew together. She felt her head cocking like a dog. “You don’t? But I thought—But you rode out.” He sat up then too, still looking guilty.
“It was only that … well, I simply couldn’t stand to be in a carriage with you”—as Harriet’s jaw dropped in offense, he hurried to finish the sentence—“in that dress any longer.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“That dress you were wearing—the white one?”
“Oh yes, I’m familiar with it. I thought you liked it! You made me a dozen copies of it!”
“Liked it? I couldn’t possibly be a more ardent supporter of that dress.
They should erect monuments to the modiste who came up with that neckline.
It was driving me mad.” Alexander leaned in then and nipped lightly on her shoulder, making her squeal with delight, though the smile that lingered afterward was much more about his confession.
“So you had to ride out because …?” Harriet asked, laughing, as he bit and licked a path up her neck. “I just want to make sure I completely understand.”
“Because I was worried for my poor prick if I didn’t, you little devil.
You needn’t tease this out of me, I’ll happily detail precisely what I considered doing to you in that carriage that required me to leave.
” Harriet gasped as he moved his hand back between her legs again and his mouth returned to her neck.
With his mouth pressed just under her ear, he let out a groan of frustration and said in a near-whisper, “God, I wish I could fuck you.”
“You do?”
He laughed at her. “Harriet, of bloody course I do.”
Harriet remained still for a moment, thinking. And then, eyes trained up at the ceiling, she squeaked out, “You could …”
Alexander moved his lips up to hers and gathered her in his arms, kissing her desperately and hungrily. As if he were asking for something or perhaps atoning for something. He pulled back and smoothed a hand over her hair.
“I can’t now, but that is …” He kissed her forehead instead of finishing his sentence. “Besides, the first time for women is sometimes rather painful. I’m having too nice of a time here to do that.”
Something rather prickly sat in Harriet’s chest, and she wasn’t sure she liked the feeling.
She couldn’t tell if she was sorry to not have had sex, or embarrassed to have offered and been turned down, or if the feeling was because of the care he was taking of her.
His affections weren’t hers alone, or hers forever, which made the moment rather bittersweet. “You can’t?”
“Men, we can’t … go … again right away. We need to, er, recover a bit.”
“But women can?”
“Yes. Quite unfair.”
“I do think women were owed at least one advantage over men.”
“I can think of many, many advantages of women over men,” he teased, kissing his way across the top of one breast to the other.
“I meant one we could enjoy ourselves.”
“Ohhh,” Alexander replied, pretending to have been enlightened by her.
“So … how many times can a woman … reach her peak?” Harriet asked, biting her lip. Alexander responded precisely how Harriet hoped he would.
“Shall we find out?”