The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty (7 page)

“You asked him if you could marry me?” I asked.

“Well, if the board would support my suit for you, yes.”

“And this was after you had Mercy Atworth fucking you with her mouth. You still thought you would try to marry me.” My voice was flat, and I didn’t care. Let him think I was completely unaffected by him. Let him remain oblivious to the turbulent waves of heartache and lust he stirred in me.

“Yes.”

“Goddammit,” I swore. “Why? Why can’t you just leave me alone? Isn’t life bad enough without you coming back here and breaking my heart all over again—”

I broke off, suddenly realizing that I’d inadvertently revealed too much, and there was no hope that Silas had missed my slip, because he was now pacing steadily toward me, a dark cast to his face.

“What did you say?” he asked, his long legs covering the distance between us. I felt like a gazelle slowly being circled by a lion.

He thought he could intimidate me? Fuck him. “You heard what I said,” I said defiantly.

Something between a growl and a hiss rumbled up from his chest.

“Say your safe word, Molly,” he said, coming closer. “Tell me to stop.”

God, that face, with that chiseled jaw and those carved cheekbones and the firm, masculine lips that were currently pressed together in determination.

“What are you going to do?” I dared. “Fuck me until I say yes to marrying you? There’s not a chance in hell, especially after you and Mercy—”

“
Say. Your. Safe. Word
.” His voice was almost menacing, almost mean, and Lord help me, I felt my response to that dampening my thighs.

“No,” I said haughtily. “I won’t.”

He was on me then, his arms like steel bars around my back, pressing me close to him. I was forced to lift my face to see his; he glowered down at me, his eyes like the heart of a flame, hot and blue and deadly. The last time he’d looked at me like this, like he wanted to eat me alive, had been last year…

“Say it,” he demanded. “Make me stop.”

Was it stubbornness or lust that made me dig in my heels? I wasn’t sure. But I could feel his erection grinding into my corseted stomach, feel the possessive way his hands roamed across my back, until he dug his fingers into my hair and forced my head back even farther. My pulse pounded everywhere—my exposed throat, my wrists, my empty, wet cunt.

It pounded for him.

“I’m not saying it,” I said. “You can’t make me.”

“Oh, is that the game?” he growled. “I have to make you?”

He bent his head down and nipped at my throat, and my whole body sang. Sang with righteous fury and pent-up resentment, maybe, but it sang nonetheless, singing for him and him alone. The nip turned fierce—a real bite—and I hissed, raising my hands to shove him away even as my center clenched with want.

He caught my hands before I could push him, and then his mouth was on mine, searing and marking and angry. Why he was angry with me, I didn’t know, except that maybe we were always destined to be angry with one another. And then his mouth parted my own with insistent, needy force and his tongue slid against mine, licking and fluttering and plundering my mouth.

My knees seemed unable to hold my weight, and without breaking our kiss, he reached down and hooked his arm behind my legs and I was swept up into his arms. He carried me to a nearby bench and sat down, and for a moment, I felt the twin tugs of desire and disappointment. The kiss was deep and urgent and I never wanted it to end…but I couldn’t have
this
with Silas. This greenery and blue sky and this pleasant bench in the cooling shade—this was what lovers did and we were not lovers. We were…something else, maybe. But not that.

Then he pulled away and in the space of an instant, I caught his blue eyes, as dark and inscrutable as the midnight sky. And then I was summarily flipped over onto my stomach on his lap, my forearms braced on the bench and my feet hanging off the other end.

“Silas,” I protested, struggling, and he pressed a firm hand on the small of my back as the other worked to lift up my skirts. I realized what he was doing a second too late; his palm cracked against my ass with a noise that rang through the maze.

“No!” I shrieked. “Let me go!”

His hand on my back held me tightly in place. “You know what you have to say, Molly. Say it. Say it, and I’ll stop.”

I froze. Saying it was admitting defeat, and I hated defeat. I liked to win—I
loved
to win, and if Silas thought he could spank the safe word out of me, he was dead wrong. Besides, there was the way that my ass felt after the slap—warm and glowing—and the way my breathing sped up as he shifted under me and the way that my nipples tightened as his fingertips ran lightly over my thighs.

But.

But.

I wasn’t used to being spanked. Hell, I wasn’t used to being dominated at all, had never let a man run my body this way, not since Mr. Cunningham had bought my virginity from me for five hundred thousand pounds when I was fourteen.

You’d never let a man since Cunningham…until Silas last year.

“Aren’t you going to say your word?” he crooned in my ear. “Are you really going to let a man you hate lay you over his lap and spank you?”

I told myself that the shudder my body gave at his words was a shudder of anger and not a shudder of lust. I looked over my shoulder at him. “It doesn’t matter how hard you spank me, Silas. You won’t win.”

Smack.

I cried out as his hand landed on my bare flesh.

Smack.

Smack.

Smack.

Three blows in quick succession, and I was so unused to pain, so unused to being held down. My whole body was squirming now, my face rubbing against my wrists as I fought for the air that had been driven out of my lungs by the pain.

His hand returned to my ass, not to strike, but to rub and caress and soothe. Stupidly, I found myself sighing into his touch, even raising my hips and trying to buck into his hand.

“Greedy girl,” he murmured, his fingers dancing past the small crevice that led to my cunt. I whimpered, bucking my hips again. The hand on my back pressed harder and he laughed a low laugh. “Greed becomes you, Mary Margaret.”

And then he trailed his hand down to my knee, where he nudged it to the edge of his lap, spreading my thighs and exposing my pussy.

I gasped.

Warm summer air blew over the wet, swollen flesh, teasing and gentle, and I somehow felt more wanton than I’d ever felt. How? In a closed garden with no other people around, with a man who’d seen my cunt a hundred times before? How, when I’d been naked before scores of people, in packed ballrooms and in heated, languorous orgies? How did Silas make me feel with a few spanks and a summer breeze like I was the naughtiest—and also the sexiest—woman to ever walk this earth?

Silas groaned above me. “Fuck, you’re so wet, Molly. Please. Say your safe word. If you don’t—”

Smack.

I moaned. The pain flamed along my skin for half a second—half an unbearable second—and then dissipated, leaving to resettle deep in my core. I moaned louder as a finger teased about my wet folds.

“It starts with a
c
, doesn’t it, Mary?” he asked quietly. “The word?”

The finger moved lower, glancing across my clit, and I inhaled sharply. And then it went back up and, without warning, pressed hard against the pucker there. Resistance and discomfort and the memory of those times
before
—when he’d fucked my ass so hard that I couldn’t breathe, when I’d climaxed so long and so hard that I forgot my own name—it was muscle memory that drove my hips up against that thumb and nothing more.

It slid partway inside, and he murmured, “Did you miss this, Mary Margaret?”

“Don’t call me that,” I ground out, his pressing thumb short-circuiting my thoughts.

“Why not? It’s your real name, is it not?”

“Because not even my family used my real name. No one calls me that!”

Smack.

“I call you what I feel like calling you, are we clear on that?” he asked sternly. “You are mine to call what I want.”

“No. I’m. Not,” I managed.

“Maybe not. So use your safe word to prove it,” he goaded. “Use it and I’ll stop spanking you. I’ll even take my thumb out of your ass.”

My hips were now wriggling of their own accord, my ass begging for more punishment, my pussy begging for more pleasure. My nipples pressed hard and tight against my corset.

I didn’t want to say my safe word. I wanted him to fuck me.

There. I admitted it to myself.

“I won’t say it,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way.”

How dare she say that I had broken her heart again? How dare she finally,
finally
, admit that I affected her, that she cared about me, and then act like it was nothing?

No. It was not nothing.

It was a not-nothing that tore my heart out of my chest and then brought it back to life, it was something that gave me anguished pain and even more anguished hope all at once. If I’d broken her heart again, that meant that she still loved me, which meant that there was a chance I could salvage all this. A chance I could fix everything.

Quickly, without giving her a chance to realize what was happening, I hooked an arm around her waist and picked her up as I stood, her hips on my shoulder and her head hanging down my back and her adorable feet—tiny and encased in expensive white leather—kicking madly in front. I would be lying if I said that this didn’t make my already insistent erection even more insistent.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Put me down!”

“You know what to say, love,” I told her as I carried her toward the maze exit. “You know how to get me to stop.”

She fell silent. Predictably.

I grinned, glad she couldn’t see it, since it would make her even angrier, but I couldn’t help myself. She was so fucking competitive—to the point that she would endure the unendurable from me simply so that I wouldn’t win.

Frankly, I didn’t want to win. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to shower her face with kisses and apologies and promises, and I wanted her to accept my proposal and let me be her husband. I would be perfectly happy if I never heard the word Clare again, especially not in that strangled, dead voice she’d used at Mercy’s house.

So why did I feel compelled to push her? Why did I need to spank her, to force her, to debase her? I’d never needed to do that to a woman. That was Julian’s style, not mine; I was the easygoing one, the happy one. But when I saw Molly, when I was with her, something else took over. This disturbing need to have her cries filling the air, her ass glowing pink, her wrists gathered in my hand. Was it because I knew that Molly wouldn’t let just any man top her? And that turned dominating her into some kind of prize?

Or was it because, somehow, I knew that she needed it? More than me, even?

We exited the maze, and I carried her to a long stretch of lawn, laying her on the springy grass and kneeling between her legs. Birds trilled around us, butterflies flapped, and in the distance, a fountain trickled a sleepy August trickle. It was the kind of day made for fucking in the grass.

Her head twisted up. “We’re too close to the house, someone will see—”

My hand clapped over her mouth, my skin slightly darker and rougher than hers, my fingers pressing into the soft skin of her cheek.

Oh, I liked the way that looked. I liked it very much.

“You let me worry about that. Or say your safe word. But if you’re not going to say your safe word, then you’d best say nothing at all.”

I let my hand fall from her mouth as I rucked up her skirt.

“And why is that?” she asked, her eyes glowing a furious blue. “I’ll talk when I damn well please, and just because I haven’t said my safe word doesn’t mean I won’t say anything else…” Her voice trailed off as the skirts reached her waist, baring her wet, swollen pussy to me.

I took a finger and rubbed her clit—once, twice, three times. Her eyes fluttered closed.

I pulled my finger away and she groaned. “I think you’ll play by my rules,” I said, “if you want to come.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, eyes still closed.

Smack.

This time I slapped the inside of her thigh, the fiery red imprints of my fingers appearing almost instantly on her milky white skin. She drew in a sharp breath through her teeth but didn’t cry out, letting her legs fall open as I returned my attention to her clit.

“I decide what’s fair right now, do you hear me?” I slapped her other thigh, and then—just once and only a little hard—I slapped her pussy, my dick surging as I did it.

God, when did I turn so diabolical?

Her back arched and she did cry out this time, and I wished I could bottle that cry and then uncork it on lonely nights. I slapped her pussy again and then immediately sealed my mouth over hers, swallowing the breath she gasped out, swallowing the soft shriek she gave.

She moaned underneath me, her legs wrapping around my waist and pulling me down so that my hips settled between her legs. Her heels dug into my back and her hands were everywhere, and now she was trying to flip us over, so that I would be on the bottom and she on top, a position we’d fucked in so many times that I’d lost count. But I wasn’t having that today, and so I reached up and found her throat with one hand, wrapping my fingers around her neck. I gave a light, experimental squeeze.

She stilled, her lips parted slightly.

I reached down with my other hand and found her cunt, slick and ready for me. “You get so wet when I wrap my fingers around your throat,” I whispered as I slowly unbuttoned my trousers. “You want me to fuck you like this, doll? You want to come with my hand on your neck?”

She stared right into my eyes. And nodded.

I took in a breath, the full force of the moment hitting me all at once—my hand strong and rough around her throat, her bared legs and bared pussy, her asking for me to screw her while I nearly choked her…

Fuck me. If I had thought that having Molly O’Flaherty riding me was the most alluring thing I’d ever seen, I now knew better.
This
was the most alluring, the most tempting, to the point where I was worried about coming before I even finished pulling myself out of my pants.

Finally, my trousers were undone, and I fisted my erection, giving it a few mindless pumps while I stared down into Molly’s face. She had features like a china doll, delicate and pale and feminine. And the dusting of freckles across her nose and the pink blush in her cheeks made her look like the girl I’d met ten years ago in Europe, brash and bossy and carefree.

She wasn’t carefree now—I could see the worry lines in her forehead, the exhaustion in her eyes. I vowed to myself that I would make her forget, just for a few moments, everything except us, everything except joy and pleasure and what it felt like to be loved.

“Silas,” she murmured, squirming underneath me. “Please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely, Mary Margaret…”

I brushed the flared tip of my cock against her, loving the way she shivered as I did, loving how hot her flesh was, how wet. I leaned over to get a better angle, shifting some of my weight onto the hand around her throat. The skin there was thin and smooth, and underneath, I could feel the tiny, butterfly-like beats of her pulse. Her life, her entire life, was under my hand. For the first time, I really understood how much stronger I was than her, how much bigger. Even if she tried to fight me off, even if she wanted me to stop, I could hold her down and do whatever I liked, use her however I wanted.

Perversely, that realization made me even more intent on loving her, on protecting her. The rest of the world saw Molly as strong and capable, but I knew that deep down, she needed to be taken care of and cherished and worshipped and petted—not left alone to suffer and endure. She needed someone she could let down her guard with, someone who could help her find peace and calm in the middle of her chaotic world.

I wanted to be that someone, even if for only for a few moments.

My cock pressed against her entrance, her flesh parting as I pushed, until the head of my dick was buried. I braced my weight on my other hand and let up on the pressure on her throat, and then slowly slid in farther, hissing out a low breath as she took me in.

“So tight,” I groaned quietly. “So fucking tight.”

And then I slid in the rest of the way, buried to the root. I paused. Not because I wanted to draw out the moment for effect or because I wanted to give her time to adjust, but because I wanted to savor it. Savor her. I hadn’t been inside her for so many months.

“You feel perfect,” I told her. “You feel so fucking perfect. Your pussy was made for me, you know that? It was made for me to fuck.” I pulled out and thrust back in, and her back arched off the ground again. “Doesn’t that feel good? Doesn’t that feel so good?”

“So good,” she echoed, her hips wriggling in an effort to rub her clit against me. “So…
oh
.” I changed my angle and buried myself deeper, making sure that the base of my cock ground against her as I did.

“You like that?” I asked, leaning down so that my mouth was at her ear. I continued to thrust and grind, deep and hard and slow, the way women like it, pressing on her throat just enough that she was reminded of my hand there, of my strength and power over her. “You like it when I fuck you like this? How about when I fuck your ass? Do you remember how hard you’d come then?”

She nodded, her eyes closing, a flush creeping up her neck. She was getting close. And as much as I wanted to go over the edge with her, I wanted to watch her. I wanted to watch her come undone under my body, I wanted to watch her unravel and fall apart and drop her steely-strong mask, just for me. Only for me.

I pushed in and pressed down and squeezed, grinding and rubbing, and her mouth was open in a breathless moan and her eyes were pinned to mine, and then I released my grip on her throat. Her climax took her, seized her, tossing her about like a rag doll as the convulsions wracked through her. I could tell that she couldn’t breathe, hadn’t been able to catch her breath after I let go and her orgasm snatched her up, and so I watched her carefully as she finally came down, gulping in deep, desperate breaths.

“Oh my God,” she finally wheezed. “Oh my God, that was so good. That was…” She reached up and pressed a palm against my cheek. Her gaze was open and vulnerable. “Only you,” she finished, in a voice that was somehow both less and more than a whisper. “Only you make me feel like this.”

“I know,” I growled. “Because you’re mine.”

Something in her expression shuttered, and I frowned, but she wrapped her hands around my neck and pulled me close. “Come inside me, Silas,” she murmured. “I want to feel it.”

So I obeyed, my arms sliding around her back to cradle her as I thrust into her, burying my face into her neck and smelling the sweet, cinnamon smell of her skin. She was so beautiful and so perfect and I wanted to be like this forever, smelling her and feeling that tight silk grip around my cock forever. I wanted her to be my wife.

She said my name again, and that, along with the thought of her as my wife, did me in. It sent heat curling down my spine and into my cock, tightening and tensing until I was rutting mindlessly, groaning as it finally crashed over me, through me. I pulsed long jets of cum deep into her, so deep that that I could feel my hips digging into her inner thighs and my balls pressed against her ass. I dropped my head beside hers, my forehead resting on the grass, loving the feel of her body so slender and soft under mine, wishing I could keep her gathered in my arms forever.

After a minute or two, I withdrew and raised up onto my knees to look at her. Tousled red hair and rumpled silk skirts and her cunt still open to me. I used my thumb to open her to my gaze, wanting to beat my chest like a fucking caveman when I saw the glistening traces of my semen.

I bent forward and kissed her clit, gently and reverently, and then I layered worshipful kisses on the insides of her thighs, above the lines of her stockings.

“Marry me,” I said in between kisses. “Have my children. Be mine.”

She sighed, her body twitching with a suppressed giggle when I reached the back of her knee. I showed her no mercy then, nibbling and licking through the thin silk of her stockings, and fending off her arms as she sat up and tried to push me away from the ticklish skin. I tackled her back down, transferring all those nibbles and licks to her ear and her jaw and her lips, until her giggles turned into quiet moans, happy sounding inhales of surprise whenever I found a particularly sensitive spot.

“What do you say?” I asked, pausing my work to look down at her. “To marrying me?”

“Silas…” she said, trailing off. “We can’t. Besides…”