Chapter Fourteen #2
“Firstly, you will not be beating me,” Rose said smoothly, unleashing her queen and already promising to do a great amount of damage. “Secondly, there are different variants of chess that can be played that…up the stakes, as it were.”
Oh. Samuel was almost disappointed. The Rose he had grown to know over the last few weeks—well, she cared about money, but it was not the only thing that she cared about. To reduce their flirtation to a gamble for money was at the very least…uninspired.
Not like Rose at all.
“Oh, I’ve got some coins somewhere,” Samuel said, more than a little disheartened.
Evidently, that was not the answer she had been hoping for. He had grown to spot the signs: the little furrow between her brows, the way she purposefully did not allow her shoulders to droop.
Perhaps it was the life she had lived as an actress that made Rose rigidly control her body. Perhaps it was this mysterious break with her family, a story Samuel wished to hear much more about but would never ask.
Whatever it was, the woman never let go, not truly. She was always in control, if not of the situation, then herself.
That was something Samuel wanted to change. One day.
“No, I wasn’t thinking of playing for money,” Rose said distantly. “It’s your turn.”
Samuel moved a bishop at random. “You weren’t? How would you make it interesting, then?”
His wife carefully took his bishop with her queen, holding the piece between two fingers before her face and turning it around and around.
Samuel swallowed. That simple movement was not supposed to be erotic. It wasn’t. And yet…
“Well, the way we would make it interesting in Rome,” Rose said, her voice still a tad distant, though with a sharpness in her eyes that suggested she was paying very close attention to each word she uttered, “was to play strip chess.”
A great deal of things all happened at once.
Firstly, all the breath in Samuel’s body was exhaled without his authorization.
Secondly, his hand slipped around the wineglass stem that he had about to lift to his lips.
Thirdly, thoughts of Rose in very little cascaded through Samuel’s mind.
Fourthly, Rose laughed.
“You are a prude, Samuel,” she teased.
“‘P-P-Prude’?” he repeated, sounding unsettlingly like his mother. “No, no, not at all, not a prude, not a prude, just a…”
Precisely what he was, Samuel could not tell. His pulse was hammering, his mouth was dry, and he was swiftly wondering just how many other men Rose had played strip chess with.
The thought was unpleasant, bile in his chest mingling with the soaring hope that he could beat her.
Oh, dear God, if he could take pieces from her and watch Rose carefully remove layer after layer…
“You are game, then?” Rose asked delicately, the bishop in her hand still twirling distractedly near her mouth.
Samuel swallowed hard.
Well, he was hardly going to say no to such a desperately interesting proposition. The trouble was his attention was not going to be focused on the game before him, but on the multiple games that Rose had previously played. With other men.
The biting jealousy overtaking him was not so much a surprise, as a disappointment. He had no reason to be jealous. No reason at all.
Except…
Except Rose was his. She had become his without Samuel really noticing, and now all he wanted was to keep her for himself for the rest of time. Agreement or not, year and a day deadline or not, he wanted to keep her.
A life without Rose… A life, moreover, without Rose after knowing just how wonderful a life with Rose was—no, that could never be borne.
“Samuel?”
And that could only mean one thing, he realized with a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the half bottle of wine they had consumed since settling down here on the hearthrug by the roaring fire to play chess.
He was in love with his wife.
Damnation!
“Samuel?” Rose repeated, her smile slightly fading.
Well, there’s no good time to admit to your hired wife that you’ve contravened the one rule that’s going to prevent disaster, Samuel thought wryly. He may as well play strip chess in the meantime. While he came up with a plan to make the woman fall in love with him in return.
“Strip chess,” he said slowly. “I presume the rules are simple?”
“Oh, they have to be, for the people who usually play it are very stupid men,” teased his buxom wife, firelight flickering over her face and bathing her in a golden glow. “Yes, the rules are simple. For each piece that is taken, the loser must remove an item of clothing. Winner’s choice which.”
It seemed simple enough. Samuel cast a careful glance over the woman before him.
So, what was she wearing? A gown, but that surely was in two parts; she would not permit him to remove it all in one go. Under that, a chemise. Under that, another damned layer. Under that…
It would probably take a good streak of playing—or luck—to get her down to her bare skin.
Samuel swallowed as his head swam.
“You are game, then?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied without much thought. “Shall… Shall we start the game over?”
“Are you absolutely certain that you wish to play?” Rose was either teasing or remarkably concerned about his welfare, for she looked truly troubled. “I am good at chess, you know.”
She was, but Samuel was confident now. He had played two games with the woman, he knew her stratega, her approaches.
He knew how she led with the queen and did little with her rooks.
Her pawns were all over the place, and as for her knights—well.
He had taken both in the last game within five minutes of the first piece moving.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said aloud, silently doubting it. “But I believe I have little to fear.”
Rose’s beautiful face smiled. “Then we shall reset the board and commence strip chess.”
Lull her into a false sense of security, Samuel told himself silently as the bishop that had previously been blessed with the ministrations of his wife’s fingers was replaced on the board.
It was that simple. Let the woman think that she will flatten me, and she will start to make mistakes. Leverage them.
Take off her clothes.
Samuel’s lips curled into a broad grin. “Ladies first.”
“It’s white goes first, you dolt,” Rose said companionably, leaning forward and moving a pawn. A different pawn than last time. “Good luck.”
“‘Luck’?” He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I don’t need luck.”
Five seconds later, she took his first pawn.
“Now, I think I would like you to remove your jacket,” his wife said, tapping a finger to her lips as she perused him. “Yes, off with it, please.”
Samuel chuckled as he removed it. “A lucky start.”
“You’ll need all the luck you can get, my lad,” Rose warned, a glint in her eye that should have warned him far more than it did. “Shall we continue?”
His pawn forward. Her knight to the left. His bishop forward. Her queen forward. His bishop to the right. Her queen—
“What’s your queen doing there?” Samuel looked down in horror as Rose plucked another of his pawns from the board.
“You weren’t paying attention,” she pointed out, evidently trying and failing not to laugh. “You’ve got to consider the entire board at all times.”
“Yes, yes,” he muttered with a laugh. “What will it be, then?”
Rose’s gaze raked over him, and Samuel tried not to notice how a trail of heat followed in its wake across his skin. “Your cravat.”
Well, it could have been worse, he thought as he removed the inoffensive strip of material. And he was still mostly dressed, after all.
A minute later, his shirt was on the hearthrug.
“I told you that I was good at chess!” Rose protested as Samuel gave her a scalding mock glare.
“You did,” he admitted, trying not to revel in the way her admiring eyes were taking in the planes of his chest. “But I am determined to beat you.”
Five minutes after that, both of his boots were off.
“And I still call it cheating, the fact that I had to take both of your knights to get both your boots off,” Rose said as she sipped at her wine. “The cheek!”
“The cheek is that you managed to completely distract me with that foray with your rook,” Samuel returned, half-laughing, half-astonished he had not yet managed to take a single one of his wife’s pieces from the board. The damned woman was still fully dressed. “You never play your rooks!”
A sparkle of disobedience gleamed in Rose’s eyes. “Ah, but who’s to say that I wasn’t lulling you into a false sense of security before this game?”
He had to laugh at that, and their mingled laughter filled the drawing room, and a part of Samuel whispered, Yes, this every day for the rest of my life, please. Please don’t leave me.
It was only a whisper, however. After all, how could he say such things?
He had promised Rose one thing: financial freedom. She would claim it after having served as his wife for a year and a day, and she would be gone.
Gone. Forever.
That line of thinking was surely why within three moves, Rose was taking his queen from the board.
“My queen!”
“If you had wanted to keep her, you should have protected her better,” said the minx dispassionately as she placed his queen down with the pile of other white pieces that had said goodbye to the board. “Now, what shall you take off next?”
Samuel swallowed. There was not a great deal for him to take off, in truth.
His socks of course—perhaps he would be able to argue that she would have to win two of his pieces to take both of them.
That had been the case with the boots, after all.
There was his pocket watch; that was still attached to his trousers.
There were his trousers themselves, and his underclothing…
And that was it.
The gleam in Rose’s eye told him that she had thought just the same. Her laughter was teasing and he could not help but join in.
“You rascal,” he teased. “You knew you’d beat me.”
“I told you numerous times, I am good at chess,” Rose returned, stifling laughter with her fist flitting over her mouth. “You cannot say that I did not warn you.”
There were warnings going off in the back of Samuel’s mind but he was ignoring them, the giddiness of the game and the sheer proximity of such a beautiful woman and the wine and the evening they had spent together combining to remove any sense.
“Well, you are good at chess,” Samuel admitted, lifting his hands in a brief gesture of mock surrender. “But you know, I am good at other things.”
Rose lifted an inquiring eyebrow. “Oh, you are?”
This was a mistake. This was foolish. This was something he would look back on and regret.
But dear God, while he was doing it… What euphoria.
Samuel cocked his head in a flirtatious manner. “I am, indeed. Why don’t you let me show you?”