Because his guess was closer to the truth than she could bear.
“Well,” she breathed. “Well, I—I’m not ignorant of the act, you see. I’ve read several anatomical texts and have done multitudinous research.”
“Multitudinous, you say?”
There he went, echoing her again. “My research indicates that females do—might—enjoy the act of congress. If it’s performed correctly. Under the right variables, I mean.”
He stepped on to the dais, crowding her backward toward the bed. “My research has indicated that as well,” he murmured.
“What research?” She took one look at his self-satisfied smirk and frowned. “Oh.” Alexandra couldn’t tell if it relieved her or bothered her that he’d pleasured a woman before. Some stomach-curling amalgamation of both.
It was probably a good thing. He seemed as though he knew what to do.
He leaned in, reminding her of the substantial width and breadth of him. Their proximity to the bed forced her to inhale a deep, calming breath.
She could do this.
His nearness both overwhelmed and enthralled her. Here stood a dangerous man, an untamed creature, made more so by his wounds and his size and the ever-present wary tension in his wide shoulders.
He surveyed the world with disdain. With distaste. She’d noted it at the ball as she’d watched him on his platform, looking down at those below him like a king.
Like a god.
But when he gazed at her, as he did now, a warmth ignited in his eyes, turning them from winter skies to summer heat. The hard brackets beside his mouth softened.
And that dimple. It was almost unfair. She couldn’t help but be charmed by it.
“It is getting more difficult to wait patiently,” he rumbled, clasping his arms behind him.
“For?”
“For my seduction, of course.” He smiled before her notepad on the sapphire coverlet snagged his attention.
Alexandra leaped for it before he could reach it, hugging the pad to her chest.
“Something you should learn about me as a husband.” He chuckled, interest sparking in his gaze. “If I know I’m not meant to see something, it makes me all the more determined to do so.”
Alexandra cleared nerves from her throat. If he’d sailed the Amazon and hacked through the Himalayas, she could likewise be brave.
She could do this.
Peeling the notebook from her chest, she looked down at the neat writing, taking comfort in a well-researched list. “Before I—we start. I have some conditions.”
His dimple deepened until she couldn’t look anymore. “Sexual conditions?”
That word. It made it more difficult to breathe. “Yes.”
“Very well.” He sat on the bed, indolently reclining on his hands. The very picture of patience and leisure. The lines of strength in his long body stood out, even when contained in his clothing. She could trace the cords of his shoulders and arms, the distinct lines of his thighs beneath his black trousers. A lion at rest. “Let’s hear these conditions.”
“Oh, um…” Alexandra stalled. In truth, she hadn’t expected him to capitulate so quickly. She took the pencil from the clip and tapped it next to the first line. “It is reasonable to kiss me, but not with your tongue.”
His scars, she noted, made his face more expressive. They moved with the muscle beneath his jaw, or when his eyes crinkled with bemusement as they did now. “Am I allowed to inquire as to why not?”
“Of course.” That only seemed reasonable. She itched at her scalp with the pencil, as she searched for an explanation. She hadn’t thought to expound. His mind was an inquiring one, it was one of the things that drew her to him. “I’m … not prepared for that intimacy,” she said simply, hoping vague would do. “Not yet.”
He stroked his beard in a thoughtful gesture. “You’re prepared for me to make love to you, but not for a kiss with my tongue?”
“Precisely,” she lied. She was prepared for none of it, but could only endure so much. “That’s the whole of it. And, whilst we are on the subject of tongues, I’d also like to avoid cunnilingus.”
He shot up straight. No longer a lion at rest, but at attention. “What?”
“Cunnilingus,” she repeated carefully, consulting her notes. “It’s an oral sex act performed on a female’s genital—”
“I know what it bloody is,” he blustered. “I’m trying to figure out why in God’s name you wouldn’t want me to.”
She blinked at him, frantically composing a reason that made any sort of sense. Judging from the rather graphic explanation of the act, she’d assumed any man would be rather relieved not to perform it. The female sex organ seemed to be a confusing and complicated structure for pleasure. From what she could tell, most men were likely to find the entrance, use that for its intended purpose, and then be done with the whole business.
“I just don’t.” She knew her reasons were all incredibly ambiguous, but in her present state. Alone. With a man. And a bed. About to do what she was about to do … well, her brain refused to perform the proper functions.
Thank Jupiter she’d written everything down.
Agitated, she stepped down from the dais, putting space between them, and made an investigation of a lovely velvet chair near the fireplace. Though she couldn’t look at him for a moment, she could feel his eyes tracking her every move. “In fact, if you could refrain from licking me anywhere, I’d be obliged.”
“As a gentleman, it’s my duty to be obliging, though I’d like you to note my hearty objection on your list.”
Alexandra looked at him askance.
Where she’d expected to find ire in his reply, something else threatened.
Laughter.
However, when she searched him for any sign of mocking, she found his features disturbingly enigmatic.
He stood, as though sensing she wasn’t, quite yet, as ready for the bed as she’d claimed.
“I’ll keep my tongue inside my own mouth.” He gave a bereaved sigh. “Though you needn’t return the favor.”
At the implication in his eyes, her mouth, made dry as the Sahara by nerves, flooded with moisture. She’d read about such things, but it never had occurred to her until this moment that she might taste him.
That he’d want her to. That kisses need not be contained to the mouth.
Did he want that? Did he expect that as part of the seduction?
Her mouth on him. Her tongue on his skin?
Did she want to?
“Your other conditions?” He stepped off the dais, stalking closer.
To avoid watching the graceful way his body moved—and because doing so had strangely stolen every other thought from her head—she consulted her notes, finding her spot. “I’d prefer … that we take our … that we disrobe.”
“That would be my preference also.” He was closer, disturbingly so, and she couldn’t manage to stop staring at her white-creased fingers as they gripped her pad with an almost violent desperation.
“Good. Good. We agree on that.” She made an affirmative mark next to the note. “Then, perhaps we could face each other? I am aware of other positions but I must insist—”