11. What Rose Wants
WHAT ROSE WANTS
Rose could hardly believe her good fortune.
Had Nell been right? Could saving The Domus truly be this simple?
It ought not to have been. Men did not simply hand women their weaknesses. Not unless they wanted something in exchange. Not unless they believed they could not possibly lose.
But Lord Reginald was looking at her as though he meant what he said. As though he meant to do precisely what she asked.
A slow, dangerous satisfaction moved through her.
Because what she truly wanted was for him to want her.
Enough that, when he promised her anything, he meant it.
And Rose was an expert at making a man want.
Not by refusing him. Refusal was too simple. Too crude.
The true art was in giving a man enough sweetness to haunt him. To make the pleasure so intense, so consuming, that he would offer anything in order to have her again.
And again.
Not marriage, of course.
Rose was not a fool. Aristocratic gentlemen did not marry courtesans. Not even gentlemen who had vanished to sea long enough to forget the usual rules of their world.
But they would offer other things.
Anything to keep a woman smiling at them. Favors. Promises. Money…
“I want you…” Rose licked her lips and watched his eyes drop to her mouth.
The bodice of her gown seemed suddenly tighter than it had been a moment before. The air in the receiving room had thickened. Warmed.
She stepped even closer.
“I want you to undress me.”
His gaze came back to hers. For one brief second, it narrowed. “I said I wanted to bring you pleasure,” he said. The roughness in his voice trailed a shiver down her spine.
“Then undress me.”
“Miss Darling.”
“Rose.” She corrected him.
“Rose.” His jaw flexed.
She turned slowly, so that her back was to him. Not quite in his arms.
“The first pleasure,” she said, “is being wanted.”
When he said nothing, Rose looked over her shoulder.
His eyes were on the line of hooks running down the back of her gown.
“Look at me,” she whispered. “Want me.”
His breath changed.
Only a little, but she was close enough to hear it.
How was her own heart racing so fast?
Closing her eyes for a moment, Rose forced her own breaths to slow.
This was a strategy. A means of saving The Domus.
But when his fingers touched the first hook, she went utterly still.
She wanted him. She could take some pleasure, of course.
She intended to. But contrary to what he believed, this was not about her.
She needed to keep her wits about her. She could not let the ache already building low in her body carry her away.
The first hook slipped free.
Then the next.
His silence told her more than words ever could. He was trying very hard, she knew, to remain in command of himself.
The gown loosened by degrees and Rose lowered her lashes.
Claret silk gave way at her back, parting to reveal her stays worn over a short shift. The chemise—French—was short, ending at her hips, and indecently light. Almost nothing.
It could pass through a ring, Madame Fournier had said when she delivered it, though Rose had never cared whether that was true.
What mattered was the effect.
Her chemise was nearly transparent, cut low across her breasts and ending just below her hips. Narrow lace edged the neckline, with pale ribbon threaded through it.
Over it, she wore short stays of ivory silk, lightly boned and fastened at the front with pink cords.
They lifted her breasts indecently high beneath the sheer fabric, making the chemise seem less like an undergarment than an invitation.
A lady would not have worn such things.
Rose was not a lady.
The final hook came loose and for one suspended moment, the gown clung to her hips.
Rose wiggled her hips and it slipped, whispering down her body to pool at her feet.
Perfect.
She stood before him like a work of art, silk stockings drawn above her knees and held there by embroidered garters.
Turning slowly, Rose knew what he saw.
The candlelight made the lawn almost transparent. The pink of her nipples showed through the fine fabric, and as his gaze dropped, they tightened helplessly.
She had meant to use that.
She had not expected to feel it.
Lord Reginald’s eyes darkened. His lips parted, then closed again. One hand curled at his side, fingers flexing, as though he had to remind himself not to reach for her.
Of course, he wanted her.
It showed in the hard set of his jaw. In the heat that climbed up his neck and along his cheekbones. In the way his gaze moved over her body.
Lower still, Rose saw the hard line of his arousal behind his trousers, and felt a sharp, wicked rush of triumph.
But also… A pull.
The first part of passion, she had told him, was being wanted.
She had not lied.
To stand before him like this, to feel his hunger held back by nothing more than his own will, made her skin grow hot and hungry. Her breasts felt heavy. Her pulse beat in places she had no business noticing.
“Rose.”
Her name sounded almost feral in his mouth now. Tight.
Rough.
She stepped out of the fallen silk and left it on the floor between them.
“Yes,” she said softly, “Look at me.”
Reginald’s throat felt thicker than it had a moment earlier.
He had seen women before. Women in garments meant to seduce. Women with bare shoulders, bare ankles, bare breasts. Women with nothing on at all.
But never like this.
Rose.
“You…” He swallowed. “Beautiful. Though I suppose you know that.”
Her eyes held his. “A woman never tires of hearing that.”
No. Of course she did not. Still, the words felt like the poorest offering he could make.
She stood before him, shoulders back, one knee bent slightly. Her gown at her feet, her dark hair pinned up as neatly as if she were still fully dressed.
“You said you wished to give me pleasure,” she said. “It will please me to know what you think when you look at me.”
Reginald closed his eyes for just a second.
Such thoughts were not fit to be spoken aloud.
Thoughts of touching her. Of putting his mouth where the fine lawn clung to the hard points of her breasts. Of dragging the little ribbon loose with his teeth. Of finding out whether her skin tasted as sweet as it looked.
Of lowering her to the carpet.
Of forgetting, entirely, of the bargain he’d made with himself.
Her breasts rose above the loosened edge of her stays, full and pale, twin roses that tightened beneath his stare.
Her waist was small enough for his hands to span.
The fine lawn of her chemise fell from beneath the stays in a thin, almost weightless veil, doing little to hide the curve of her hips or the shadowed promise between her thighs.
His body answered with humiliating force.
“Tell me, my lord,” she demanded again. “Please.”
Her command made him harder.
Reginald shook his head once, as though he could clear it.
“I want to see your skin,” he said at last, the words rough. “I want the stays gone.”
Rose lifted her hands to the laces in front. Her fingers, he noticed, trembled ever so slightly as she loosened the gap.
A tug. A shift. The undergarment parted, and then fell to the floor beside her gown.
Reginald stopped breathing.
She was still covered, barely. By the ridiculous chemise, silk stockings, her garters.
His trousers became suddenly, painfully tight, and the blood in his veins had turned to fire.
Every disciplined part of him collapsed under the assault of wanting her.
He should have protested.
This was not meant to be about what he wanted.
And yet she had caught him in some delicate web, making him believe that his wanting was what would please her.
How could he think of a single argument when his hands ached to touch the places his eyes had already claimed? When the room seemed smaller now, warmer, every inch of air between them charged with the single brutal fact of her body and his need for it?
Rose took one step closer.
“Do you still wish to please me?”