Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth 4)

He said nothing, but gestured to her robe. He watched her slip loose the knot from the satin belt.

“Have it your way,” she said, as she shrugged the robe open just enough to tempt him into getting on with it.

“I’d like… I’d like you to enjoy it, too.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Darling, don’t you worry about me. I’ll enjoy it just fine. You’ll no doubt thrill me. But you’re the one who paid for it. Let’s just worry about your pleasure.”

He liked to hear the tempered thread of sarcasm in her voice. She cloaked it well with a breathy tone, and others might have missed it, but he had been listening for it.

Carefully, slowly, one at a time, he placed four small gold coins on the washstand beside her. It was ten times what Silas Latherton, downstairs, charged for his women’s company, and probably thirty times what he gave her for each man. She watched the coins as he withdrew his hand, as if counting them to herself to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. It was a great deal of money.

She gave him a questioning look.

He liked the twitch of confusion in her eyes. Women like this weren’t often confused by money, but she was young, and probably never had a man bestow such largess on her before. He liked it that it impressed her. He knew that few things would.

“I’d like you to enjoy yourself. I’m willing to pay to see you enjoying yourself.”

“Darling, for that much, you’ll remember my screams until you’re an old man.”

Of that, he was sure.

She smiled her best smile, and slipped off the robe. Gazing at him with her big, sky-blue eyes, she blindly hung the robe on a peg in the back of the door.

She stroked his chest and then circled her arms around his waist. Gently but deliberately, she squashed her firm breasts against him.

“So what is it you want, darling? Some nice claw marks down your back to make your young lady jealous?”

“No,” he said. “No, I just want to see you enjoying it. You’re so fair of face and figure. I think that if you’re paid well enough, you’ll enjoy your part, that’s all. I want to know that you’re enjoying yourself.”

She eyed the coins and then smiled up at him. “Oh, I will, darling. I promise. I’m a very talented whore.”

“That was what I was hoping.”

“I want you to be so pleased with my charms that you will want to return to my bed.”

“You seem to be reading my mind.”

“My name is Rose,” she whispered in her breathy voice.

“A name as beautiful as you are.” And as unoriginal.

“And yours? What should I call you when you call on me regularly, as I’m already aching for you to do?”

“I like the name you’ve already given me. I like the sound of it on your lips.”

She licked her lips for him. “Glad to meet you, darling.”

He slipped a finger under the waist of her panties.

“Can I have these?”

She ran her fingers down his belly, performing a moan at the feel of him.

“It’s the end of a long day. These aren’t exactly… clean. I have some clean ones in my trunk. For what you’ve paid, you can have as many of them as you wish. Darling, you can have them all, if you wish.”

“These will do fine. I only need these.”

She smirked up at him. “I see. Like that, is it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you take them off me,” she teased. “Take your prize.”

“I’d like to watch you do it.”

Without hesitation, she slipped them down her legs as dramatically as she could. She pressed herself up against him again and, looking into his eyes, stroked his cheek with her panties. She smiled wickedly and then pushed them into his hand.

“Here you go. Just for you, darling. Just the way you like them—with the scent of Rose.”

He worked them in his fingers, feeling the warmth of her still in them. She stretched up to kiss him. If he hadn’t known better, known what she was, he might have thought she wanted him more than anything else in life. But he would please her.

“What do you want me to do for you?” she whispered. “Name it, and it’s yours—and I don’t make that offer to my other men. But I want you so badly. Anything. Just tell me.”

He could smell the sweat of the other men on her. He could smell the stink of their lust on her.

“Let’s just see how things work out, shall we, Rose?”

“Anything you say, darling.” She smiled dreamily. “Anything.”

She winked at him as she swept the four gold coins from the washstand. She swayed provocatively as she went to the small trunk. She squatted down before it. He had been wondering if she would squat, or bend at the waist. He was satisfied at the detail, at the remnant of a demure past.

As she pushed the coins under some of her clothes in the chest, he saw atop her things a small pillow decorated with a dash of red. Such a detail intrigued him. It seemed out of place.

“What’s that?” he asked, knowing that the money had earned her indulgence.

She held it up for him to see. It was small pillow, an item of decoration, a frivolity. It had a red rose embroidered on it.

“I made it, when I was younger. I stuffed it with cedar shaving, so it would smell nice.” She glided her fingers lovingly over the rose. “My namesake—a rose. For Rosa. My father named me. He was from Nicobarese. Rosa means ‘rose’ in his language. He always called me his little Rosa, and said that I grew in the garden of his heart.”

The detail astonished him. He was thrilled to know something so intimate about her. He felt as if he already possessed her. The pleasure of knowing such a small, seemingly insignificant thing pounded through his veins.

As he watched her replace the little packet of her past into her trunk, he wondered at her father, wondered if he knew where she was, or if perhaps he had sent her away in revulsion, his rose wilted in his heart. He imagined an angry scene. He wondered at her mother—if her mother understood her choice in life, or cried at a daughter lost.

Now he, too, was playing a part in who she was, in her life.

“May I call you Rosa?” he asked, as she closed the lid of her trunk. “It’s such a lovely name.”

She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes watched his fingers working her underpants into a tight ball.

She returned to him, smiling as she came. “You’re my special man, now. I’ve never told another man my true name. It would give me pleasure to hear my given name on your lips.”

His heart pounded, and he swayed on his feet with his need. “Thank you, Rosa,” he whispered, and he truly meant it. “I want so much to please you.”

“Your hands are trembling.”

They always did, until he started. Then, they were rock steady. Once he started, he would be steady. It was just the anticipation.

“I’m sorry.”

A throaty, lusty laugh came from deep in her throat. “Don’t be. It excites me that you would be nervous.”

He wasn’t nervous, not in the least, but he was excited.

Her hands found that he was. “I want to taste you.” She licked his ear. “I have no one else tonight. We have all the time we want to enjoy this.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “That’s why I wanted to be last.”

“Yes,” she teased, “I want it to last, too. Can you make it last, darling?”

“I can, and I will,” he promised. “A long time.”

She let out a purr of satisfaction at his promise, and turned in his arms, pressing her bottom against him. She arched her back and rocked her head against his chest as she moaned again. He kept the smirk from his face as he looked down into her sky-blue eyes.

Yes, she was a talented whore.

He slid his hand down her lower spine, counting her vertebrae, fingering the spaces between them. She moaned urgently at his touch.

Because of the way she swa

yed her bottom, he missed the spot he wanted.

She staggered.

The second time he slammed the knife into her lower back, he hit the right spot, between the vertebrae, severing her spinal cord.