The way she wrapped her hands around him seemed like a positive, but when she said his name he still expected that she was most likely about to protest, perhaps to tell him to slow down or perhaps to change her mind entirely. So her kiss when he pulled back surprised him. He inhaled sharply and sidled slightly closer to her, so that there was barely any space at all between them now. She kissed me, he thought dizzily. He had been imagining this night in a dozen different iterations over the past few days, but not even his most optimistic variants had included this possibility. He moved one hand from her waist down around the curve of her backside, to the top of her leg, and it seemed perfectly natural to pull it up over his own. It was almost absurd how easy it was to have gotten themselves here; this was why no one wanted to let men and women be alone together for even a few minutes.

When the kiss ended Ford gave a breathless chuckle. "You're pretty good at that."

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Set by Lady!

She thought she could lose herself in this, actually. Kissing him apparently felt as good as kissing normally did, and she had decided that before he had hitched up her leg against him and brought them closer. That was enough to stop all her thoughts at once.

In spite of his reaction in the moment, the fear still crept back in after, that kissing him had been a mistake – that there would be some reproof or distaste on his part, that she had been too forward. Unladylike.

So his affirmation was another burst of pleasure for her, just as much a thrill as anything else. She smiled at him more genuinely as she glanced up. “You think so?” Jemima echoed, tone light enough to be teasing but her eyes alight, relieved and delighted that she had seemingly done something right. She was rarely good at anything; this confidence frothing up in her chest was new. They were doing okay, weren’t they? Even then – the worry sounded at the back of her mind that of course now she had given him the wrong impression, raised his expectations too far. So she tried to keep that airy joking tone on the surface or at least to sound slightly coy, although her heart was beating out of her chest, “I hope I’m – not too bad at the rest.” (There was a little too much truthfulness for it to be a joke. She had no useful practice here: it would be much easier if she had some idea where they were supposed to go from here.)

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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He had only seen her properly smile a handful of times now, but he was already immensely fond of it — particularly the effect it gave her eyes. Seeing the edges of her eyes crinkle when she smiled led him to think of planting soft kisses there, one on each side — but this was competing with the desire he had to kiss her everywhere. Everything about her body was new to him, and now that he had the reassurances that she wanted him to do this — not just that she thought they probably ought to, but actually seemed to be enjoying when he touched or kissed her — he wanted to explore every bit of it. And she had brought up the rest, too, so it seemed most fitting to keep moving in that direction.

"Oh, no, you couldn't be," he returned easily. He ran his fingertips along the edge of her thigh once more and then somewhat reluctantly moved it off of his leg. He didn't want to put any space between them, but sooner or later he had to get fully undressed, and he assumed pausing to do it would only feel more disruptive the longer he waited. He took a step away and pulled his undershirt off, tossing it to the floor as he headed towards the bed. "Even if you were, somehow... no one's going to know except us. And we've got a whole week to ourselves to practice," he joked, shooting a smile back over his shoulder at her. He slipped his underwear off as he climbed onto the bed, sitting on his knees atop the comforter, and gestured for her to join him.

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   Jemima Greengrass

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Set by Lady!

He was proving rather good at alleviating her worries. She would not have expected this of him, after the coatroom incident – he had caused more misery for her that night – but since then he had also been very persuasive in making her feel better about things. There was – just something about him, the way he said things. It felt natural to trust him. He was easy to believe.

And he was right. This was entirely between them now, and she was charmed by his conspiratorial tone. “Yes,” Jemima echoed with a laugh, somewhat distracted from what she was saying by appreciatively drinking in the sight of him without his shirt. (Also encouraging.) She followed Ford to the bed with a new spark of enthusiasm, and folded her hands into the sides of her nightdress as she clambered on to sit with him, trying to decide whether she ought to take it off now, to undress fully as he had. “Yes, I suppose we...”

She had known what to expect of him shirtless – there were countless tasteful depictions of that, bare-chested heroes in statues and paintings and the like – and she had known that men looked different to women between their legs, but she hadn’t quite been prepared for that. Jemima’s gaze had drifted over his chest again and downwards, but had accidentally gotten caught there on that very foreign – um, appendage. She did her best not to seem as though she was looking; instead she tried hastily to drag her gaze back up to his face and look placid, excited, entirely unperturbed – but she felt a flush at the back of her neck again, and suddenly hot. This all felt very illicit again. There were odd knots in her stomach. It looked a little like a flobberworm. “... we do.”

She shifted a fraction on the bed, restless, her heart beating harder still. She wished she had asked Delilah what to do tonight; her mother had not been helpful at all. (Her parents had genuinely presumed she had already been this audacious in a coatroom at a ball? Jemima couldn’t fathom it.) All that about her husband planting his seed in her and why one couldn’t do that before they married did not translate very well to this. Where was he going to put that? She hoped rather fervently that he knew.

And if not – there was always practice. This was fine.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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He'd been feeling fine about this until she drifted off mid-sentence. It wasn't difficult to follow her gaze and guess what had gotten her sidetracked. She was blushing again and now Ford was, too, though he wasn't sure how else he was meant to have handled this. He had to take his clothes off at some point — that bit of clothing in particular. Her reaction was confirmation, he supposed, that she had never done this bit before, because Ford had seen cocks before and knew his was nothing especially remarkable, for better or for worse. That — might not make her feel any less awkward about it, he decided, even if he could manage to express it without shriveling up with embarrassment, which seemed unlikely.

He'd intended to pull her into his lap and keep kissing her, but much as he wanted to try and pick up the momentum they'd built before it entirely stalled out he suspected she might find that position... distracting.

"Let's just —" he started, intending to mean continue, but he couldn't find a way to say it that didn't sound either weirdly formal or stilted. He languished for a moment. This had all been easier when she was kissing him. He reached to cup her face and pressed his lips to hers again and hoped it would put this little interaction firmly behind them.

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   Jemima Greengrass

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Set by Lady!

Oh no. Jemima could already tell that she was ruining things – but at least she could close her eyes when he kissed her, and therefore stop looking. Her kissing was somewhat distracted, though. She opened her mouth under his, trying harder to focus (– or was she supposed to put that in her mouth? She wasn’t sure if that made any sense, but she could not fathom where else it might fit inside her –), because she really didn’t want this all to go south when it had (briefly!) been going so well.

Well, things were evidently going south sooner or later in one sense, but...

But – resolutely not thinking about it now, not looking down – Jemima pressed a little nearer, and even ran a hand along his bare arm with no difficulty at all. When she paused to catch her breath and pulled back from him slightly, she bunched up the bottom of her nightdress into her hands, sliding the fabric partially up her thighs questioningly. “Should I –?” She had been far too embarrassed to think of taking it off when she’d gotten changed before, but now that he was naked she almost thought it might help divide her embarrassment between them. She could hardly be wholly mortified about her own body when she was far more conscious of his.

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Even the kiss couldn't quite save it, and Ford was beginning to wonder with some alarm whether he would have to actually talk about it. There was a chance that talking through whatever was on her mind might put her more at ease, but there was also the chance that it might only make things worse. He wouldn't know which until after he'd tried it, and a prerequisite for trying was that he had to figure out which words to use. Probably none of the slang words he knew were appropriate things to say to one's wife, but penis seemed formal and clinical. If they were talking about this in the abstract before they'd actually started he perhaps could have spoken metaphorically, but it seemed ridiculous to pull out some kind of flowery language when the naked truth of the matter was quite literally on display between them.

It had not occurred to him to ask Cash whether or not he had to explain sex to his wife, and now he cursed himself for the oversight, because he was wholly out of his depth. But thinking of the conversation with Cash reminded him of something Cash had said, which was maybe another way out of this. Women had sensitive breasts, he'd said — maybe if Ford did something with those he could distract her again?

This thought came just before she asked if she ought to take off her nightgown. "Yes," he responded immediately, with relief. He didn't need it off for the act itself, but it would make — whatever he was supposed to do with her breasts easier, he imagined, if he could see them.

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Set by Lady!

There was no hesitation in his answer, so – Jemima didn’t leave herself room to hesitate either, just pulled off the nightdress over her head with all the confidence she could stir up in herself before it fled again. She didn’t know if she had managed to make the motion alluring and sensual and elegant, or just clumsy, but she dropped the nightgown away from them, committed to this now.

She tucked a curl behind her ear to brush it out of her face again, and sat back on her heels to face him again, biting her lip a little but no longer aware of his body – she was too busy holding her breath and watching his face for some indication of what he made of hers.

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As she pulled the nightdress off Ford wondered whether or not he was the first person to see her in this state, entirely laid bare. He was fairly confident she hadn't slept with a man before, but he'd had plenty of sex without ever touching a woman's breast before, so he didn't necessarily want to jump to conclusions (someone had gotten her half-undressed in the coat room before he'd arrived; something had caused her to tell everyone she was engaged in January). But it didn't matter, he supposed, because it was the first time he was seeing her and she looked evidently anxious about it; she was biting her lip, which was an easy tell. (Was it a positive sign that he already felt as though he could read her face, at least to some extent? But perhaps she was just easy to read).

He found himself mirroring her, biting his own lower lip as he turned his eyes down to her body. Her breasts looked bigger than he would have expected after only seeing her clothed before. (He guessed he was meant to touch them or kiss them? It didn't seem there would be much else one could do with breasts). The way her body curved in at her waistline was pleasing, and he reached out to fit his hand along it without pausing to think. This was good, he decided — things had been better when he was doing things without thinking about them.

"Lay back," he suggested. "Let me kiss you." He'd been kissing her, of course, but he didn't mean just her mouth this time around. He pushed gently on her side, guiding her down. He moved one leg between hers to better position himself and leaned in to put his lips against her shoulder, her collarbone, and then, tentatively, down to the top of one breast.

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Set by Lady!

Now that there was precisely no fabric between them, even his hand on her waist felt more potent than any physical contact had before. She lay back as he had suggested, and for a moment she felt that the soft solidness of the bed under her made her less exposed – but then his lips were trailing over her body and she had never felt so tender to the touch. “Oh,” she breathed, but not in protest: it felt nice, it felt good. Certainly Jack had – fondled her breasts through her dress before, when they were kissing and all tangled up together, but this was that sensation on a new and entirely different scale.

Jemima had never felt less in control of her body than now, with his mouth and his hands and his legs hot against her skin, her heart pounding; she angled her head back, arching her neck and her body more into his without meaning to. She liked this, she thought, but she felt a little bad just – laying there and wanting more, when it seemed he was putting in all the effort. But too late: her lips had formed the plea without any permission from her mind. “You can – keep going. Please.”

The only lingering hesitation was – not about him, but once again that she really might end up being memorably and mortifyingly bad at this. But it would be worse if she didn’t do anything, she decided; so, choosing action over thought, she curled her arms up around him again to keep him closer, her fingers digging gently into his back and her legs pressed flush against him. There was an odd feeling inside, swooping knots in her gut that had gone lower than ever, a warmth right down to some core of her and even between her legs (– and if she somehow wet herself now, in the middle of this, she would simply have to throw herself off the Sanditon pier and pray she didn’t come back a ghost).

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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He may have been ambivalent about her breasts before, but he never would be again. Her reaction to his hands and mouth on her had made this easily the most erotically charged moment they'd shared so far. His heartrate climbed as she arched towards him, as he felt her fingers against his back. It seemed ridiculous now that he had previously been worried he wouldn't be able to get through this and keep his focus on her; it seemed impossible to think of anything else when her leg moved against his.

Ford moved one hand down, along her waist and over her hip and to the space beneath her legs — then hastily pulled it back, with a quick intake of breath. It was wet and he had not expected that — but was too conscious of his own inexperience here and too anxious about derailing the momentum once again to say anything about it. Was this normal? If it had been unexpected on her end she would have said or done something when it happened, and she hadn't. (Was this even a thing that had happened or was it just the consistent state of affairs? He could not believe that women just walked around all day wet between their legs — surely that would create a lot of excess laundry?) Ford had grown up with sisters and knew that at certain times of month women bled, but surely if that was the case she would have warned him of it at some point prior to undressing? Unless it was — somehow — not a blocking condition for intercourse?

He still had her breast in his mouth which had thankfully relieved him of the impulse to say something stupid. This must have been normal, he decided — or at least, the potential harm in assuming that it was seemed less severe than the potential embarrassment of assuming it wasn't and being wrong — so he tentatively moved his hand back, paying close attention to her reaction.

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Set by Lady!