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maîtresse des maîtresses, / Ô toi, tous mes plaisirs ! ô toi, tous mes devoirs !
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses, / O you, all my pleasures! O you, all my duties!
— Le Balcon, Charles Baudelaire (1857)
The lamp on the nightstand flickered low, casting golden ribbons across their tangled sheets. The book of poetry lay open between them, pages the colour of tea, spine soft with wear. Jack had brought it home from a second-hand stall, grinning like a thief. Baudelaire, he'd said. For when your body's not near enough to mine, and I need poetry to survive.
Now, with Rose curled beside him, her head resting lightly on his bare shoulder, Jack lifted the book again, his voice honey-smooth and slow.
"Je baiserai ta gorge délicieuse,
Et sur ton ventre lisse, aux câlins attrayant,
Je baiserai ton sein magnifique et joyeux…"
(I will kiss your delicious throat,
And on your smooth, inviting belly,
I will kiss your beautiful, joyous breast…)
He murmured it more than read it, a whisper against the hush of the room, his breath stirring the fine red hairs at her temple. She shivered. God, the way French sounded on his tongue — rough, hungry, reverent — it made her ache in places she didn't have words for.
The book still in one hand, he traced her lower lip with his other thumb. "The way he writes about women, like they're heaven and sin all wrapped up together. Dangerous. Holy." Rose turned to look at him then. "He wrote about women like you,"
She smiles coyly and demands "Read me another,"
"Yes, Miss." He obeys, fingering through the pages, the slightly earthy scent of old paper filling the air. He eventually settles on another, pulling her closer.
"Quand, les deux yeux fermés, en un soir chaud d'automne,
Je respire l'odeur de ton sein chaleureux,
Et au loin, j'aperçois des rivages paisibles qui s'ouvrent devant moi."
(When my eyes are closed, on a warm autumn evening,
I breathe in the scent of your warm body,
and I see distant, happy shores open before me.)
Jack's lips quirked, that faint, wicked smile she knew meant trouble. Rose's cheeks warmed instantly. Not from modesty, but from knowing. From the way his voice dipped into reverence, thick with want. Her lips curved faintly, shy but delighted, as his hand found her thigh. Barely a touch, but too much to ignore.
"Écarte un peu tes jambes, mon amour," he read, voice dropping into that velvet murmur. He didn't look at the page, though, his eyes stayed on her. Spread your legs a little, my love. Rose's breath caught. She couldn't tell anymore if the words were Baudelaire's or Jack's. It hardly mattered.
"Show me where it says such a thing!" she laughs defiantly, grabbing for the book, but Jack raises his arm, out of her reach. Turning his head into her neck and pacifying her with kisses, continuing his recital.
"Là… je goûterai ta peau, douce comme le miel… je suivrai ta chaleur jusqu'à ce que tu frémisses…" There… I will taste your skin, sweet as honey… I will follow your warmth until you tremble…
She gasped softly. The words felt like his hand beneath her chemise, slow but sure. Her cheeks flushed deeper, goose pimples dotting her bare arms. She could hear the faint, tremulous smile in his tone — the one that always made her hips shift toward him, aching, wanting to pull him down over her wantonly, greedily, and never let him leave.
He brushed his knuckles over her hip. "See what I mean? Dangerous. Holy."
"Feels like the way I love you." Rose let her lashes lower, half-shy, half-reckless. "Do you have to read the rest..." she muttered, "or could you just… show me?"
Jack closed the book without breaking her gaze. "Sweetheart," he whispered softly, his breath heavy against her neck. "Entre tes cuisses, mon amour… laisse-moi te goûter..." Between your thighs, my love… let me taste you...
…
Against the impossibly soft flesh of her navel, his kisses continued. Open mouthed, greedy, devout.
"Mon Dieu… tu es faite pour moi, Rose. Ta peau… ton corps… ta petite chatte en sucre…"
"Jack…" she giggled breathlessly, secretly delighted at his worship, her cheeks flushing pink as the nickname sent a hot ache between her legs.
"Tu me rends fou, Rose." Came his voice, trailing downwards, You drive me crazy, Rose, gravelly with need. "Je veux vivre ici, entre tes cuisses…" I want to live here, between your thighs.
She let out a gentle moan, breathless from his words, her fingers tangling in his hair, the texture of coarse silk. She could feel his breath on her inner thighs now, the tip of his nose nuzzling against her flesh, coaxing her open. White hot bliss rushed through her body as his mouth – teasingly, tentatively, finally - reached her.
...
The sheets were tangled around them, Rose's bare thigh draped over Jack's hip as he lay half on top of her, his skin hot and damp against hers. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, her hair a wild tumble around them both. The room still hummed with the aftershocks of what they'd done.
Rose lay curled against Jack's chest, her leg draped over his hips, her fingertips tracing lazy circles over the curve of his shoulder.
She smiled, a shy, giddy warmth blooming in her chest. "Dis-le encore, Jack." she whispered. Say it again.
Jack grinned, tilting her chin up so he could kiss her. "Je suis fou de toi, Rose." I'm crazy about you, Rose.
"Dis-moi que tu m'aimes," Rose whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible over the sound of their tangled breaths. Tell me you love me.
"Je t'aime, mon amour… plus que ma vie." I love you, my love. More than my life.
She shivered, her fingers fisting in his hair, pressing him closer. "Encore," she breathed. "Dite-moi." Again. Tell me.
"Je t'aime," he groaned, burying his face against her skin, like it was a prayer, a confession, a vow. "Je suis tellement amoureuse de toi" I love you. I'm so in love with you.
She gave a breathless laugh, her fingers threading through his hair as she withstood a flurry of kisses, showered across her face, basking in the radiance of being worshipped by him.
"Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime," came his voice against her flesh.
Her cheeks flushed pink and she tucked her face against his neck, biting back a bashful giggle. "Jack, mon cœur… arrête… tu vas me tuer …" she whispered. Jack. my heart… stop… you're going to kill me...
...
The hush after the world falls away, the warm lamp glow over their rumpled bed, the flowers from Molly's recent visit drooping sweetly in a chipped jar on the nightstand. Jack, all sprawled out on his back, looking like temptation himself, hair still damp from his evening wash, one arm behind his head and the other draped across her belly, while Rose — sweet, soft Rose — curls into his side with a book balanced on his chest. It's just the hush of their room, the soft creak of the bed springs under their tangled limbs, the city's noise a distant hum beyond the window.
Rose runs her finger down the page, her voice low and sweet as she reads. A poetry collection she found at the Greenwich street market, cover so discoloured and frayed she could barely make out the name.
She stumbles over the longer words sometimes, and he loves that too — the way she'll pause, squint at the print, then look up at him with those big, stubborn eyes.
"That one there?" he drawls, grin lazy, thumb tracing circles on her bare hip where the blanket slips low. "Means beautiful. Means you."
She laughs, cheeks pink, whacks his chest gently with the book. "It does not, you liar. Listen." She tries again, her voice trembling when his fingers wander lower, just enough to make her lose her place. "This is by a woman," she says, checking the title. Her French is careful, elegant — finishing-school precise — but her voice is low, intimate. She reads slowly, letting the weight of each word settle.
J'ai voulu ton âme ardente et ton corps alangui
J'ai voulu tes désirs et ta mélancolie…
"I wanted your burning soul," she says, softly, almost conversationally, "and your languid body. Your wanting." Her fingers found his, lacing through them softly. "Your sadness too."
The last line speaks to the unspoken depth they carry between them, the demons of the deep she watches him fight in silence. When he wakes in the night, breath rapid, skin clammy, gasping, haunted by the cold, by the sound of water, by the screams in the darkness, by the friends he couldn't save. The part of him shaped by survival. He moves a little slower now, more deliberate in the way he does things, as if some part of him is always listening — for groaning steel or rushing water. He doesn't laugh quite as easily, though when he does, it's still that same warm, golden sound that wraps around her like sunlight. There's a quietness in him she never saw before. The stillness of pragmatism, of contemplation. And even so - irrevocably, irreversibly - she wants it all.
He doesn't speak. Just lets her fingers thread through his, the weight of her love settling quietly against his darkest thoughts; against his guilt and his fears and all that threatened to come between them that night. And when he leans down to kiss her, it's with that same solemn gentleness she's come to recognise: the kind of carefulness forged from grief, love, survival, gratitude.
...
Sometimes, when she's too sleepy to keep reading - voice thick, eyelids drooping - he tells her stories he carries in his bones, stories from Chippewa Falls: the time he and his cousins tried to steal eggs from a neighbour's henhouse for breakfast, his father teaching him how to use an axe and split logs right down the middle, a childhood spent in apple trees and cornfields. He tells her about nights sketching under gaslight in Montmartre; how the sky looked when he slept under it alone, before he ever found her. How roses and stars were beautiful then but held no meaning. How nothing did, not really. His voice low and rough, curling around her like another blanket. Sometimes he tells the same story twice, but she never minds. When they drift, the book slips to the floor with a soft thud. She shifts closer, thigh draped over his, her hand smoothing down his belly like she can anchor herself to the steady rise and fall of him.
"Tell me another," she whispers into his throat, voice small and dreamy.
"Aren't you tired of me yet?" he murmurs, mouth curved against her hair.
She huffs a sleepy giggle — that sound that makes his chest swell so full it almost hurts. "Never."
So he does. He tells her how the sea looked so bright that morning, just before he kissed her goodbye, almost benign. Not quite in apology, but perhaps in acquiescence. How he'll take her to Paris one day, and Florence, and how he'll draw her on every scrap of paper he can find, in every pose he can talk her into, until there's nothing - no part left of her he hasn't memorised. And how, after everything, the horizon is still open to them; not as something to recklessly chase, but like something that waits.