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“The lining on the sheer corset matches your skin tone and makes it look like you are practically naked from the waist up!” Rose shrieked.
She had a point. The dress may push everything too far. If I dressed like that, it would anger Mother, who was using me to pay off her blackmail.
It would also anger Mr. Manchild, who wanted me under his thumb.
If this wedding happened, and I became his wife, he’d be entitled to force me to dress a certain way. I’d have to behave in a manner befitting the wife of one of the most powerful men in the city.
But I’m not his wife yet.
I regarded myself in the mirror. Who did I want to be?
I had a brief window of remaining a single woman.
Did I want to use it? What was the worst he could do?
Punish me again with another body-wracking orgasm? I was still buzzing from the high his last touch had given me, and a part of me deep down wanted more.
Maybe he needed to be shown I wasn’t a woman he could order around.
That I was a person… or maybe I wanted to push him and see how far he would go to punish me.
My sister was still staring at my reflection in the mirror, as if my choice of dress was outrageous. As if choosing this dress was the same as wearing nothing but body paint.
“And?” I asked, making up my mind as I moved to my jewelry box to pick out the perfect necklace.
I wanted something bold, something daring that would draw the eye straight to my cleavage. I moved aside the innocent white pearls and the ladylike diamonds. There had to be something stronger, something with color that would complement my emerald-green dress.
“And the skirt! The slit is so high on one side that it’s practically half of a miniskirt. You are too tall for that dress! One wrong move and everyone will know what color underwear you are wearing.” Rose paced around my room, her hands fluttering around her as she talked.
It was how she always got when something unexpected happened, and my fighting back was out of character.
If I didn’t push back a bit now, I would never get the chance to again.
Rose would get on board with the plan as soon as she calmed herself. In the meantime, it was a little amusing watching her work herself up.
“You’re right,” I said with a deep breath. “The last thing I want is for Page Six to be commenting on the color of my underwear.”
Rose sat back down on my bed with a sigh. “Good, so you won’t wear that dress.”
“No, I won’t be wearing any underwear,” I said with a smile. Sometimes working her up and watching her go was just fun.
“Amelia.” Rose gripped the pearls at her throat. “What will Mother say?”
Her face turned red in shock and embarrassment.
This was the girl who blushed with secondhand embarrassment reading young adult novels. Rose rebelled against Mother, too, of course, but in different ways. She did unladylike things like running and wearing yoga pants on her way to a yoga studio.
Soon she would find her voice, I was sure, and she would discover something big enough to go head-to-head with our parents over, but she hadn’t yet.
“She lost the right to say anything after she let that man ruin my wedding and then sold me off to him.” I applied a thick liquid cat eye to my eyelids and a pencil liner in blackest black to my waterline. I wanted my eyes to look intense, bold, and confident. The green of my eyes matched my dress, and tonight I was proving a point—that I was not a little house pet who would obey.
Mr. Manchild was going to learn that I couldn’t be broken. I was a person, not a possession.
A woman, not his pet.
He did something to me.
The other night, he awakened something in me, and I had no intention of silencing it.
