Page 58 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

His lips twisted wryly. “You’re worried you won’t like the marriage bed; no doubt you’ve heard horror stories, and, being ignorant of the act, you’re here to conduct some sort of scientific assessment of our physical compatibility before we take our vows.”

Just as she’d recovered, this second observation had precisely the same effect upon her.

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 indicatesthat 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.”