Free Lessons From a Scarlet Lady by Emma Wildes

“Very good, if you must know.”
    “I don’t need to know anything about the intimacies of your marriage, Colt, but you brought the subject up.”
    “I realize that.” The Duke of Rolthven definitely sounded out of sorts. “Sorry,” he added in a more conciliatory tone. “It’s one thing to discuss women in a general way, but my wife is something different.”
    Robert didn’t have a comment for that one. There was no precedent in his life for talking about a wife, so how could he know?
    “It’s private.”
    “I would imagine.” Colton was a private person in general, so the conversation was getting more intriguing by the moment.
    Colton stared fixedly at a copse of trees as if it was the most fascinating thing on earth. “Oh hell, well, all right. She . . . well, she did something she’s never done before.”
    Oh, that helped. Robert murmured, “Order tea afterwards? Sing a song as she undressed? Dance across the window ledge stark naked? Invite her maid to join you? You are going to have to be blunter. Subtlety is for females as they sit and sip sherry and exchange gossip. I can’t read your mind.”
    “Fine, fine,” Colton growled. “Brianna took me in her mouth. What’s more, she did a damn good job of it too.”
    Though his first thought was that the incident made his brother a lucky man indeed, Robert refrained from mentioning it. With caution, he asked, “And you object to what happened?”
    “Good God, of course not.” But Colton’s laugh was short, and his blue eyes held a troubled look. “I just wonder where she got the idea.”
    “Not from you?”
    “No, not from me. She’s a lady. I wouldn’t ever ask her to do such a thing.”
    The light dawned. Sitting at ease in his saddle, Robert fought back a laugh. “You do realize you are fretting over something most men would be toasting and celebrating. Sex is a normal and instinctive process. Brianna has married friends. Maybe there is a husband among them who isn’t so polite. Women talk amongst themselves. It is one of their favorite pastimes.”
    “Not about what happens behind the closed doors of their bedrooms, surely.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s not a delicate subject.”
    A certain part of Robert wondered in cynical amusement if growing up in the shadow of impending ducal responsibilities sapped so much of a man’s attention that he lost focus on the real world. “Colt, think about it. Women are fascinated by romance. By nature they are much more absorbed in the subject than we are. No, I don’t think they talk constantly about the mechanics of what happens, but why should they? The act itself is pretty universal. One part into another part. It feels damned good for both parties if done right, and though there are some variations, the basic principles are all the same. Men focus on things like the size of a pair of breasts or how willing or skillful the partner, but women like something else entirely. Tender words, the drift of your fingers through their hair, a poetic phrase about a sunrise when entwined in bed at dawn. None of that is indelicate.”
    “Which supports my point,” Colton said acerbically. “Who would suggest to her I might like such wanton behavior?”
    “I thought you just admitted that you did like it.”
    “That’s beside the point, Robbie.”
    It was his very point, but Robert let it go. Instead he patiently explained, “Even if they look at the sexual relationship differently than we do, it seems natural to me that one of her acquaintances might mention how riveted a man becomes when a beautiful woman sucks his cock. Not the way we would talk about it, of course, but in the more delicate way women converse about such things. I imagine them discussing what pleases us. While we tend to think about what we like, women are much more selfless. We insist on it.”
    His older brother shot him a disgruntled look. “Which side are you on, anyway?”
    Robert was male through and through, but he did