Rose

Her laughter attracts my attention from the other side of the room and I turn around. She notices my stare and winks, eyes glittering with some heady rush, lips curved upwards with a hint of mischief.

She takes my breath away.

Her dress slips, revealing one shoulder, and I resist the urge to touch that ivory skin. She is sin and temptation wrapped in golden silk, and for a second she looks like a goddess. Her hair, black and glossy, tumbles down her back in waves and bounces with her every move, drawing attention to her curves.

Her name is Rose and she is a courtesan. Her business is the temptation of men and women, temptation with her flesh, and she is no stranger to the trade. She is so experienced, they say, that she is her own woman, and her clients are of her own choice. As she weaves through the crowd towards me and smiles, I suspect that tonight I am the prey, and she the hunter.

She walks with the air of a woman aware of her charms, the silk of her dress clinging to her body, coaxing images of nakedness to the imagination. As she walks she turns heads and I laugh as men almost knock themselves over trying to catch a glimpse.

At least, until she walks up to me, and catches my eye, and I understand why every other man in the room is watching her. It is her eyes. Eyes the colour of the honey and amber and gold, and when she looked at me, it almost seemed like she could look right through me, right through the core of the person I was. Her eyes promised heaven and hell and everything in between.

Then I notice her lips, full, red and lush, and she licked them deliberately with her tongue in a decidedly suggestive motion. She leans over and presses her body against mine, standing on her tip-toes to whisper in my ear and I feel all the blood rushing to my body.

She passes me and I catch a faint whiff of perfume. Heady, sensual and exotic. I am light-headed and aroused, and I follow her as she instructed me to. As she walked, her dress parts to allow minute glimpses of her leg and images of her nakedness dance tantalisingly through my head. My thoughts turn to the pleasures of the flesh, of hers and mine, entwined, of sweat and pleasure and pain, of her gentle moans and primal screams.

She leads me to a secluded room and bids me to draw the curtain. As I turned around, she dropped the silk to the floor, and I am reminded of the image of Venus rising from the waves,

Her name is Rose, and she is a courtesan, a temptress and pure sin. She is one night of magic.