Chapter Fifteen
Rose looked up at her husband and tried to remember that ‘husband’ was perhaps not the best descriptor.
Husband for a time. A borrowed man. A temporary spouse.
The handsome man seated opposite her before the fire lifted his hands, pretending to surrender to her superior chess skills—specifically, her superior strip chess skills.
“But you know, I am good at other things.”
“Why don’t you let me show you?”
He should not have been allowed to say such things. A man as handsome as that, with that little clothing currently on his body, should not have been allowed to say such suggestive things.
Rose squirmed on the hearthrug. She was probably reading far too much into such a statement. He didn’t mean, he couldn’t mean anything sensual.
Even if that was precisely where her mind went.
Still, she had to match him with the same energy, didn’t she? Carefully fluttering her eyelashes in as coquettish and non-serious a manner as possible, Rose said lightly, “Be careful not to tease me. I might misunderstand you.”
For some reason, Samuel had clearly not expected her to return with such a statement. His eyes flashed with desire, just for a moment, and it was gone.
Or had she just dreamed the expression in her desperate hope for another one of his scalding kisses?
Rose tried not to inhale sharply as Samuel tilted his head in a teasing way that made her core melt.
“I doubt you misunderstand me,” her husband said, his voice promising all sorts of decadent things she absolutely knew he would never deliver on. He gestured at his half-clothed body. “Not when you have me here, in such a compromising state as this.”
Saints preserve her…
He was teasing. A jest only, Rose knew, and the sort that she would have made if she were the one half-naked before a clothed individual. After all, he was attempting to distract her from the game.
The game she was winning.
Instead of replying, Rose leaned forward—making sure her breasts were almost tipping out of her corset—and took the man’s bishop.
Samuel swore under his breath. “I’m trying to seduce you, woman!”
That was only part of the tease, Rose knew. She could not, would not take it at face value. “I think it’s time that those trousers came off.”
“Rose!”
“You agreed to the rules!” Rose shot back, trying desperately not to think about what could possibly be underneath his trousers.
The man surely wore undergarments…did he not? Oh, she knew there were some gentlemen in Italy who, in the summer months, eschewed any additional layers…but Samuel was an English gentleman. In England. In the middle of winter.
Surely, if she made the man take off his trousers, there would be something to protect his modesty?
Rose rather hoped there was not.
Sighing theatrically as only she could appreciate, Samuel rose to his feet as his fingers moved to the buttons of his trousers. “This is a foolish game.”
“Only because you’re losing,” Rose said, her mouth dry as her eyes refused to leave his fumbling fingers.
Was he truly going to—was he actually—
Samuel allowed his trousers to drop without looking away.
Rose exhaled slowly.
Well, he was wearing undergarments. She would have been disappointed by the long lines of cotton fabric that entirely encased his loins and thighs, except…
Except for the fact that the fabric, while opaque, did absolutely nothing to hide the obvious attraction the man clearly felt for her.
Dear God.
Rose was no expert in the matter—she had usually permitted her opponents to pay a forfeit before actually losing their trousers, and it had only come to that twice in her life—earning her a good secondary income and preventing her from seeing the unpleasant nether regions of her fellow actors.
But… Well, was that part of him not…larger than most?
“You are offended.”
Rose started. “Not offended.”
Was she incapable of even speaking in full sentences?
Samuel was still standing, gazing down at her with plainly no embarrassment that his rock-hard member was outlined clearly beneath his undergarments. She knew she should look away, knew she should at least attempt to preserve his modesty…but well. The man did not appear to mind.
Rose swallowed as her gaze followed the trail of wiry hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his undergarments. What did that skin feel like? What did it taste like?
And why, for goodness’s sake, could she not look away?
“I told you before that I was good at other things,” Samuel said quietly, lowering himself onto the hearthrug and lounging—actually lounging. “Aren’t you curious to know what they are?”
Her mouth was dry and her pulse was thumping in her ears, and Rose was almost certain she did not need to ask to know.
The man was liquid desire. More, he was liquid sensuality, and he was directing it all at her.
They had an agreement. An annulment meant they must never lie together as husband and wife. Rose had not thought much of it at the time, the idea of enjoying amorous congress with a man she’d barely known hardly appealing.
But she knew him now, and everything she knew about Samuel told her that he was a good man. A man who deserved the very best in the world.
Perhaps he could make do with her.
“You… We have an agreement,” Rose said, her voice hoarse. “You said it was crucial that we did not…that we never…”
Words failed her, something unusual and most disconcerting. She could always rely on her words, or in a pinch, on the words of a playwright she had memorized. There was always a monologue, or some witty repartee, or a clever insult that she could utilize if her own mind failed her.
But even her memory was failing her now.
Samuel examined her closely. “True, we did have an agreement. But I’ve come to think, Rose, that… Well, that bending the rules ever so slightly—just while we are married… Well, it would hardly be the worst thing in the world.”
Rose leaned forward and picked up her king, desperate for her fingers to have something to do.
This was madness. Madness!
If she permitted what he suggested, they would be unable to seek an annulment. They would stay married, forever. Did the man know what he was insinuating?
“And besides,” Samuel added, his voice low, a thrum through her body, “anything we share does not need to be communicated to others. It’ll be our secret.”
Her hopes dropped a few inches within her. Of course. Rose had been foolish to think he cared for her in any meaningful way; the man was filled with lust and had no immediate outlet save for herself. That was all.
That was all it ever could be.
“And I…” For some reason, Samuel swallowed and seemed to shrink in on himself a bit. Most unaccountable. “I like you, Rose.”
He liked her?
In times past, Rose would have sniffed at such a meager declaration of—well, it wasn’t even love, was it? Where was the passion? The undying desire? The desperation, the wild statements that if he could not have her, he would die?
Rose looked deeply into Samuel’s eyes and saw something more.
Respect. Admiration. Affection.
The very ideas startled her, jolting her so strongly that she almost dropped her king.
No man had ever… They had desired her, to be sure, but no man had ever respected her.
No man had dwelled in her company long enough to know her to admire her.
No, they had laughed with Juliet, or Hermia, or Helena. Sometimes even Lady Macbeth. Not her.
And as for affection…
Rose swallowed. “You like me?”
“I know it does not sound like much,” Samuel said in a low voice, his attention burning into her. “But there are few people I have a genuine regard for, and you… We fit, don’t you see? We work. This is working. And you are so beautiful.”
The lust Rose had expected to hear was absent. Not that his tone had no particular timbre to it. It did…but it was not lust.
Desire. Need. Yearning.
It was not love. But it was most certainly not lust.
And what did she have to lose? The marriage would be over in eleven months, give or take, Rose reminded herself feverishly as she twirled her king round and around her fingers.
The world may not believe in an annulment, anyway, regardless of whether they actually succumbed to this temptation or not.
And she had already lost her heart.
Why not allow herself to be seduced by a man who actually adored her this time? To a man whom she would always respect, always appreciate, always know to be a good man?
Rose inhaled deeply. “You are asking to bed me.”
Perhaps she should not have put it quite so crude a fashion. Samuel winced. “I thought more along the lines of seduction, but yes.”
“You might not be very good at it,” she said quietly, placing her king back on the board with fingers that were definitely not shaking. She made sure of it. “It would be a shame, indeed, to break our agreement if you have no clue how to please a woman.”
The challenge was laid down, and she could never have imagined how eagerly it would be taken up.
Samuel leaned forward, his eyes bright. “Let me show you, then. A little pleasure all for you, before I ask you to remove a single item of clothing.”
Her breathing was quicker now. Rose had not noticed when it had happened, but her lungs were tight and her thighs were—
A little pleasure. All for her.
Keeping hold of his stare with her own, Rose slowly leaned forward, inch by inch…and tipped over her king.
Samuel needed no further invitation. With a growl that vibrated through her whole body, making promises she hoped to God he could keep, Samuel scattered the chess board as he lunged forward and pushed Rose’s shoulders back.
She shrieked, the movement so swift that she tipped backward onto the hearthrug. “Samuel!”
“Be quiet,” he warned, leaning over her with his wide shoulders and incredibly attractive chest. “That is, if you can.”
It was an intriguing statement, one which would have sounded trite in another’s mouth.
Rose tried not to look at the mouth in question as she propped herself up on her elbows. “Samuel—”