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 eyesheld 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 breastswerethe 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.”
There was no way he hadn’t heard her. Even if blood was rushing in his ears as it was in hers, they were the only two people in the quiet room. There wasn’t even a fire crackling. The noise from below had died out a little while ago. He’d heard her. Yet still, he asked, “Pardon?”
“Show me. If you know how to do it—and I believe you do—show me.”
He waited one more moment, breathing heavily. Harriet was just about to retreat under the coverlet in shame, convinced he wasn’t going to, when he gathered her right hand in his own. He guided her back under her chemise, between her legs, and used her middle finger—perhaps that was the key!—in between her slick folds. She felt her body jolt at the contact. He shuddered next to her. She had the distinct desire to close her legs tightly around his hand and rub them together.
Something was most certainly happening.
“Here,” he instructed. His voice was low as he positioned her hand and rubbed his own finger on top of hers in a steady rhythm. “Like this.” He slowly withdrew his hand and let her try on her own.
The feeling was … sin. It was galvanic. She bit her lip hard to keep another desperate sound from coming out. He might enjoy making sounds, but Harriet felt mortified by them.
She could feel his intense stare on her as she tried to concentrate on the task. As she continued, however, the desperation she’d felt only moments ago dissipated. And with it, her boldness. She slowedher ministrations and risked a glance back at Alexander, whose pupils had overtaken nearly all of his eyes.
“I’m not … It’s not …” She wasn’t certain how to explain that this wasn’t going anywhere.
“You have to experiment. Find out what feels best foryou. It’s not the same for everyone,” he explained. Despite his even delivery, something about him seemed tense. Harriet didn’t have the time or the patience to try forty different ways to touch herself. She wanted reliefnow.
“Then how do you know what to do for the women you’re with?” she asked, in frustration. “Or do you usually not touch their … quims?”
“I’ve touched every quim I’ve gotten the chance to.” That ought not to have given Harriet the idea it did.
“Well, all right then. What’s one more?” She gestured down at herself, praying he would not humiliate her.
His lips twisted as if he were about to decline; instead, he muttered something that sounded like “Oh, hell” and moved over her, grabbing her hands and pinning them above her head even as his mouth crashed against hers.
It was nothing like their not-proper kiss in the carriage. It was desperate and punishing. As if he were trying to prove something. He swept his tongue over Harriet’s lips, and she heard herself moan again. She didn’t have time to feel ashamed of the sound before his tongue sailed over her own, tasting her, having her, demandingsomething of her. And while his mouth kept hers occupied, one of his hands left hers and snaked down the side of her chemise, brushing against her breast and ribs, then grasped her hip as if he was claiming her.
