“Great God,” he muttered beneath his breath and shifted before he took a seat on the settee across from her and crossed his legs. “Well, er…he wants to take the woman, you see. Have you…have you ever seen animals rut in the country?”
“I…yes,” she said. “That is how it is with…with…” She dropped her voice. “Fucking?”
Once again he sucked in a breath. “Yes. Without the cock being hard, standing at attention, it would be difficult to put…it…inside. And I suppose the way a male chicken stands up straight and races around, certain and wild, is a bit similar.” He cleared his throat. “Do you understand?”
“Not entirely, but I’ll take your word for it.” She clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap. “And what do you call a woman’s…parts?”
“There are a great many words for that,” he said, leaning forward. “Her dumb glutton.”
“Oh.” She pulled a face. “That isn’t very nice.”
“I agree. Not my favorite.” He smiled slightly, but it was growing more wicked by the moment. “Her hat.”
“What?” She shook her head. “Now you’re just teasing me.”
“I’m not!” he insisted. “They call it that because it is frequently felt.”
Her mouth dropped open at the pun. “Sebastian!”
“I didn’t create the term, nor the reason, my dear.”
“It isn’t fair. So a man gets a cock and a woman gets such odd terms?”
“Well, there are better ones. Her cunt, for example. Her pussy. Those are my preferred terms for such things.”
There was something in the way he said those words that gave them more weight, more sensuality than the sillier names. She found herself shifting in her chair and the tingles between her legs increased when she did. She reached up to cover her hot cheeks with her cool hands. “It seems that most of the words are about…about…copulation.”
He tilted his head as if to consider that. “I suppose that’s true. As long as there has been language, there have been words to describe fucking.”
“Why do you think that is?” she asked, trying to meet his eyes as if this was all normal instead of so odd and heated and strange a conversation.
“It is our basest instinct,” he said without hesitation. “Our deepest pleasure that we try to pretend away in ‘good’ company. And yet it occupies our art, our language…and our dreams. Even if you don’t admit it.”
She dropped her gaze that he would bring her thoughts back around to her inappropriate dreams. “I suppose I have, from time to time, had an improper thought about a gentleman.”
There was so long a silence that she forced herself to look at him. She found him staring at her intently. “Who?” he asked softly.
But before she could answer, he pushed to his feet and then turned away. “The afternoon grows late, I fear,” he said. “And I think I’ve scandalized you enough for one day. I should go.”
She blinked at the sudden formality to his tone and the way he moved stiffly when he walked across the room toward the door to the chamber. “I see. Of course, I wouldn’t want to keep you,” she said, making herself follow as a good hostess would. “Thank you for your help today. It was most educational.”
“Excellent, I’m pleased to be of service.”
He signaled to Adams for his horse to be brought and then turned to her. He was smiling, but there was something false about it. She’d never seen that kind of expression on his face, at least not when it came to her. She didn’t like it.
“I hope you don’t…don’t judge me for asking,” she said.
“No,” he insisted. “Of course not. We’ll see each other soon. Good day, Marianne.”
And then he was gone, out her door and onto the stoop where he began to walk toward her small stable as if he couldn’t wait for his animal to be brought. She shut the door slowly, confusion flooding her. But also a sense of excitement. Sebastian had opened her thoughts into a wide world she’d never been allowed to consider before in her sheltered life. So whatever happened next, at least she had been able to take a glimpse at that forbidden place of desire and sin.
Perhaps, if she continued down Claudia’s path, she might even get a little more.
Sebastian mounted his horse and urged him forward, hastening to get himself out of Marianne’s view as swiftly as possible.
What had he been thinking? It was one thing to playfully educate Marianne about the intricacies of inappropriate slang, but he’d gone further than he ever should. Not only had he only spoken to her about words that represented, as she had put it, copulation, but he had leaned into her. He’d drawn her out. Flirted the way he would with a woman he was actually pursuing.
And he’d seen her with different eyes because of it. When her lips had formed those filthy words, he had been physically affected. Even forced to block an erection from her view. Worse, he’d watched those lips and wondered what they would feel like pressed to his. What they would look like parted as she arched her back beneath a man.
