“I hadn’t finished. Women generally find sexual congress pleasurable unless their male partner is clumsy,ignorant or utterly selfish. I’m guessing your husband was the latter.”
Her cheeks were on fire. She pressed her cold hands against them to try to cool the heat, but it was in vain.
What was she to say to such a thing? Never in her life had anyone spoken to her in such a way, so frankly, so openly about matters that should remain behind closed doors—closedmaritaldoors—not in a summerhouse in a shared garden with a man she’d only known for a relatively short time.
His voice deepened. “You have a dislike of ‘um’ because your experiences with your husband made it more like ‘erk.’ But with me, I promise you, it would be quite different. Marry me and I will turn ‘um’ into ‘yum.’ ” His eyes danced.
She stared at him, torn between laughter and tears. “This is not a subject for joking.”
“Indeed it is not—except that I fear you have yet to discover that sexual congress can be fun and lighthearted, as well as extraordinary and intense and moving and... earth-shattering.” He waited a moment, then added, “Anyway, think it over.”
Think it over?She couldn’t think at all. His words had stirred up such turmoil in her brain, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
The rain was slowing. “I—I must go. Lucy and I are planning to go... er, out.” She had no idea. There were no plans.
“By all means, run away,” he said with an infuriatingly understanding smile. “But think about what I said. The ‘um’ you’ve experienced is not the ‘um’ you deserve. We’ll resume this conversation another day.”
“No! That we will not!” She opened the door and looked out. The rain had slowed, and it was only a short distance to her house, but she would still get very wet.
A warm hand closed around her arm and a deep voicesaid, “No need for you to get any wetter. I’ll go. I’ll send Tweed back with an umbrella.”
She turned to thank him, and he bent and kissed her, his mouth firm and warm. “Just think about what I said.” He kissed her again, swift and possessive, and it seared her to the bone. Then he stepped out into the rain.
Alice plonked bonelessly onto a bamboo chair and stared unseeing through the open door into the rain-washed garden. She put a shaking hand to her mouth. Her lips tingled. She could still taste him. Her whole body was... a tangle of sensations.
So that was what a kiss—a proper kiss from a man—felt like.
No wonder the poets rhapsodized so. She’d never quite understood it before.
The raw intimacy of it. His tongue inside her mouth... It should have been unpleasant, but instead it was... exciting. Addictive. She could still taste it, the sharp, dark taste of a man—of this man. The unleashed coil of wanting it—him—swirled deep within her.
Rocking gently, she wrapped her arms around her body. It was an ache, a need, but for what?
She might not know about kissing, but she understood what that masculine hardness pressing against her meant. And yet it hadn’t repelled her.
It was as if his kisses had somehow melted something inside her. She’d never felt such tenderness, such an affinity with another person. It left her aching, yearning.
And deeply confused.
Sharp, damp air from the open door cooled her cheeks. The rain was easing.
He’d shocked her, had trampled over her delicate sensibilities and blasted her assumptions about men and women wide open.
Women generally find sexual congress pleasurableunless their male partner is clumsy, ignorant or utterly selfish.
Could that possibly be true?Pleasurable?She couldn’t imagine it.
I’m guessing your husband was the latter.
She had no difficulty believing that. Thaddeus had been selfish in all things. He took what he wanted with no care for anyone else.
She thought about what her mother had told her the night before her wedding. Mama had not found sexual congress in the least pleasurable.The marriage bed is something women must endure with as much grace as possible. The activity is deeply distasteful to any lady, but remember, once you have conceived a child, it will cease. The child will be your reward.
Alice had never been rewarded with a child. And the unpleasantness had gone on for years.
But Lord Tarrant claimed most women found pleasure in the act.
Alice could not imagine how. But Papa was a vicar and a rigidly moral man, and Mama had always been quite prudish. It was likely that both he and Mama had come to their marriage bed as virgins.
