The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty (7 page)

I narrowed in on a waiter in the corner of the room, who was carefully pouring drinks. As he hoisted his tray into the air and moved into the fray and bustle of the crowd, I brushed past his station, swiping the decanter of gin off of the butler’s buffet. Then I ducked between two thick curtains by a window nearby, relishing the cool air seeping through the glass. The window was deeply inset into the wall, enough that I could step easily behind the curtains without feeling too claustrophobic. I wasn’t completely hidden, but I was mostly obscured from and I had gin, so that was good enough for now.

I took a swig straight from the decanter, savoring the botanical burn as it traveled down my throat, and then the decanter was lifted from my fingers.

“I’ve found the blushing bride, I see,” Silas said.

I turned. “You’re here,” I whispered, joy clawing up my chest like pain. “You came.”

He took his own drink from the decanter and then set it gently on the waist-high windowsill. “Yes. I came.”

I licked my lips—a unconscious response to his nearness, his maleness, as he took a step closer to me. His clean Silas smell came over me, soap and citrus and gin, and his eyes dropped down to my mouth as I bit my lower lip.

“Where’s Hugh?” Silas asked.

“He’s off dancing. With—” I waved a hand, the gin suddenly making the world brighter and fuzzier. “—With Mercy.”

Silas blanched a little at Mercy’s name, a blanch of guilt and regret, but he quickly recovered. “Good. I want you to myself right now.”

I glanced around. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Somebody might see.”

“Mary Margaret, I would love it if someone saw.” Something in his tone made me look back to him as heat flooded between my legs. His voice was a low growl when he said, “I want them to see me take what’s mine.”

Oh, God. It was
this
Silas, and I was helpless against this Silas, numb or not numb. My newfound pseudo-peace as an automaton resigned to her fate slowly filtered away, replaced by a liquid warmth pouring into my core.

“But Hugh,” I protested weakly as Silas walked behind me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and tugged me deeper into the recess formed by the heavy, pleated curtains. “The contract.”

“They don’t matter any more,” he said sternly. “What matters is you giving me what I want.” One arm wrapped around my waist as his long fingers wound in my hair and yanked my head back. “What’s your safe word?”

I took a deep breath, almost unable to cope with the feeling of his body behind me, crushing up against my dress. Of his hands in my hair. Of his words at my ear.

If you acknowledge this, if you whisper your safe word, then you’re agreeing to submit to him…you’re agreeing to this.

I knew that if I kept up my protests, however weak they may be, that Silas wouldn’t cross the line. What had happened in The Hedgehog that night had been inspired by my confession, by my pain, and I knew he wouldn’t abet me in breaching my contract again.

But.

If I acknowledged my safe word, it was a very clear signal that I was willing to let him take me. It was also a concession that all the power rested with me. I alone would be responsible for stopping us before things went too far; it would be me who had to decide when to stop, not Silas’s sense of gentlemanly conduct.

I shouldn’t say anything. I should walk away. As tipsy as I was, as weary and tired as I was, I still knew the consequences of breaching my contract would be too disastrous to endure. If Hugh caught me—not an unlikely scenario, given that Silas and I were barely hidden in this obscenely crowded ballroom—then I could lose all rights to my company. And I couldn’t bear that. Not after I’d fought so hard and sacrificed so much.

But then Silas pressed me closer, his fingers moving from my hair to my neck, and I shivered, thrills skating across my skin. There was something so dangerous and primal about Silas’s fascination with my neck, as if he couldn’t help but test his strength against me, as if the feeling of my pulse beneath his fingers was the most potent aphrodisiac in the world.

“I asked you a question,” he growled in my ear.

I had to make a choice. Did I trust Silas? Did I want him? Did I love him enough to give him myself right now, so publicly, so dangerously? Or did I do what I’d done for the last year, and put the company first?

Always the company.

Fuck the company.

The thought came from nowhere, but it came as clear as a church bell through the cool morning air.

Fuck the company.

Hadn’t it taken enough? Hadn’t I given it everything—my time, my happiness, my future—and even still, it wasn’t secure? I would marry Hugh, but I only had a tentative verbal agreement that I would get to remain in charge of the company; if Hugh wanted, he could dismantle the company at a moment’s notice. Legally, as his wife, my life’s work would belong to him and I would have no recourse. Was that what Aiden O’Flaherty really would have wanted for his daughter?

No.

I chose Silas. I chose my future. Perhaps it was the gin or the warm press of his body or the feeling of his fingers just barely denting the skin of my throat, but everything in me rebelled against the bleak future I’d built for myself and clamored for something different. For the man I loved.

“Clare,” I said finally.

Clare.

So many meanings for such a small word. For her, it meant home and her mother and a future she could only dream of. And for me, it meant
Molly
. It meant her body under mine, my palm stinging against her ass, her blue eyes wide and dark as her body shuddered with a climax that I’d given her.

With my hand cupped around her throat, I
felt
her speak her next words more than I heard them.

“What did you say, Mary Margaret?” I murmured.

“You,” she repeated, louder this time. I loosened my grip so that she could turn in my arms and face me. “I choose you.”

My pulse sped up and my heart crashed against my ribs.
Be cautious. Be sure.
After what Molly had been through, I had to let her make this decision on her own. I wouldn’t push her, although I wanted to. I wanted to guide her, to coax her, to force her to admit that she wanted me and only me and that nothing was worth letting us go.

But I wouldn’t. Because I loved her, because I respected her, because I knew why her company was important to her. If she’d been any different, any less driven and fiercely independent, then she wouldn’t have been my Molly.

She slid her hands up my stomach, resting them flat on my chest, and I felt her touch reverberate everywhere along my body. “I don’t want to marry Hugh,” she said. “I don’t want to spend another moment apart from you, and maybe it’s the gin talking, but damn the consequences. Damn the company. If that’s the price I have to pay to be your Molly, then I’ll pay it gladly.” Her eyes searched mine, sapphire in the low light of the ballroom. “I love you. I think, in a way, I always have. The night we met in Paris, do you remember?”

Julian and I had brought her to our hotel room and fucked her together, him coming in her mouth and me coming inside of her. I
definitely
remembered.

“We fell asleep together,” she continued. “You and me, snuggled close while Julian slept on the other side of the bed. It was the first time I’d ever slept with a lover—man or woman. Some part of me must have known, even then, that I was meant to be with you.”

My grip on her tightened again, and I leaned in to kiss her. “I love you,” I said against her lips. “I love your mind and your cunt and that smile that hardly anyone ever gets to see.” She moved her lips to mine, but I pulled back ever so slightly. “I want to hear you say it again. Say that you choose me. Say it.”

“I choose you.” It was a breath, just whispered syllables against my mouth, but those syllables meant everything. Having this, her choice, her apparent willingness to walk away from everything simply to be with me, wasn’t something I expected. And it wasn’t something I would have consciously wanted. But now I knew it was something I
needed
, confirmation that her yearning for me was as great as mine was for her.

And the best part was yet to come. I pulled back. “Molly, I need to tell you something. And I know you’re going to be furious with me, but I just hope that when I explain why I did it, you’ll eventually forgive me.”

She tensed in my arms.

“Julian and I didn’t just invest in van der Sant’s company. We invested in yours too.”

“What?”

I kept going, before she could hoist her defenses any higher. “We knew there was a possibility even after you married Hugh that something could go awry with O’Flaherty Shipping, and we didn’t want you to be without allies inside the company. Together, Julian and I acquired about twenty percent of the shares.”

Still tense and suspicious, I saw her retreat into her mind to run through the calculations. “So between the three of us, we have almost forty percent of the shares,” she said slowly. “Still less than half, but not an insignificant number.”

I found her face with my hands, forcing her away from her mental ledger and back to me. “It won’t be easy if the other shareholders leave, Molly. But you could still salvage the company.”

She worried her lip between her teeth. “Maybe.
If
van der Sant still agrees to partner with my company. And that’s a big ‘if,’ given what Cunningham did.”

“Or we can sell everything and move to an Irish cottage by the sea. I will do whatever you want, Mary Margaret: if you want to leave and start fresh or stay here and fight. I will be by your side.”

Her blue eyes seemed to melt, less sapphires now and more evening sky. “I know you would.”

“So you’re not angry with me? For trying to ‘rescue’ you?”

She gave me a rueful smile. “Not this time. But don’t make it a habit.”

Relief rushed through me. Still holding on to her face, I demanded, “Say it one more time.”

“I choose you.”

I choose you.

My dick was still half-hard from our gin-flavored kisses, and now it was thickening again. For her. I angled her head to expose her neck, biting hard at the delicate skin there, moving down to her collarbone and shoulder, marking her with my teeth in the same bruising way she’d marked my heart.

“Mine,” I half-muttered, half-growled as I bit the tops of her breasts, which were pushed into firm swells by her corset. “Mine.”

“Yes,” she breathed, her fingers twining in my hair, and with a rumble deep inside my chest, I spun her around so that her back was to the window and I pushed her against it, lifting her onto the deep windowsill.

With no preamble, I started rucking up her skirt, and when I glanced up at her face, her sweet little mouth was parted into an O and her eyes had started to fall shut.

“People might see us,” I said, pushing back the layers of silk that separated us.

“I know,” she said raggedly, because my hands had just found the soft skin above her stockings.

“I hope they do see us.” My voice was savage. “I hope they see me fucking you. I hope they see as you come around my cock. Because then there can be no mistake. Molly O’Flaherty belongs to
me
. Only me.”

She nodded eagerly, a flush creeping up her chest, and I brushed against the wet, hot entrance between her legs. I’d meant what I said: I honestly didn’t care that this window was only half hidden. That if a partygoer somehow wandered to this seemingly abandoned corner, they would see the soon-to-be bride getting fucked by someone who wasn’t her fiancé. I didn’t care that this wasn’t the Baron’s, that most of these guests were part of London high society and were uninitiated into the libertine life Molly and I had led up until now. I didn’t care that they might be shocked. And while I did care about Molly’s reputation, I cared more about having her. Claiming her. Sealing our new understanding with a branding, scorching fuck.

“Spread your legs,” I ordered. “Spread them wide.”

I loved the way she shivered and exhaled when I used that voice, that voice that came so naturally around her. I loved the way she so quickly complied, my fierce fighting Molly, as if there was not a single part of her that could resist obeying me, even though in the other parts of her life, she obeyed no one.

I rubbed myself through my pants as I watched her—her low, silk heels braced against the sill, her white stockings clinging to her delicious legs, ending at the middle of her sweetly freckled thighs. And those perfect thighs opened to that even more perfect cunt, the legs and the cunt both framed by the spill of ruby red silk around her waist.

I squatted for a moment, bringing my face down to the level of her sex, and I leaned in for one taste—just one—licking from the soft place just above her ass all the way up to her clit. And then, unable to resist, I ran the tip of my tongue around the inner folds of her pussy, teasing it in and out of her as she squirmed. I wanted to consume her, drink her and eat her, breathe her and absorb her, and I promised myself soon—
maybe even our wedding night
, this stupidly romantic and hopeful part of me suggested—I would spend hours with my face between her legs doing just that.

“So good,” I told her, standing and reaching for the buttons of my pants. I didn’t bother to wipe her taste off my lips—I wanted it there, and I wanted
her
to taste it when I kissed her. I wanted that feeling of her tasting herself as I pushed inside of her, as if I were returning her own pleasure to her, returning her desire back with something added, a circle of completion coupled with something more.

A
spiral
, I realized as my cock fell free from my pants and I leaned in for a kiss. It wasn’t a circle at all, because the moment we came back to where we started, I wanted her more. I
loved
her more. And so there wasn’t completion, not really, not while we still had breath in our bodies. It was more like we brought each other higher or further, like each fuck and each kiss and each shared look was another twist of the screw that was slowly and painfully and wonderfully affixing our hearts to one another’s.

“Silas,” she said, her pupils dilated but one eyebrow arching up in impatience. Aroused but scornful: that was pretty much the essence of Molly O’Flaherty. “Please,” she added after a minute, although her tone still suggested that she was about to take matters into her own hands (as it were.) “Please fuck me.”

Well, what gentleman can say
no
to a lady?

Especially when she asks so politely?

I wrapped my fingers around the base of my cock, my other hand sliding around the corseted curve of her waist, and she was so wet, so ready, that I didn’t bother to guide myself properly to her pussy. Instead, I just shoved my hips forward as I yanked her into me, reaching up to clap my hand over her mouth right as she was about to cry out.

I felt that muffled cry against my palm, and fuck if I didn’t just want to do everything I could to feel it again. With one hand still on her waist and the other over her mouth, I moved closer, pushing deeper inside, shoving through that tight wet heat until I was buried.

And then I didn’t move.

“Look,” I told her roughly. “Look at you. Look at where you are. Look at what you’re letting me do to you.”

My good girl obeyed, glancing through the crack in the curtains behind us and then turning that gaze down to where we were joined, her stare turning hot and needy as she took in the way my hips pressed into her thighs, the way her clit pressed into the hard muscle above my dick. And suddenly I knew that I could make her come just like this, without moving, without any of those finger tricks or tongue tricks I’d become so famous in certain circles for. Just by filling her, just by making her breathe and squirm around my dick, by making her
feel
the hard thickness that wanted only her pussy and no one else’s. And of course, whispering in her ear about all the filthy things I wanted to do to her while I had my hand over her mouth.

“I’m going to fuck your ass next,” I told her. “I’m going to bury my cock so deep inside your ass that you’ll forget your own name. You’ll forget anything other than my dick.”

Her breathing hitched, her pussy clenching around me. I smiled wickedly.

“You’re so ready for me to fuck you, buttercup. Why is that? You like being fucked where anyone can see you? Or are you just so desperate for me that you’ll fuck me no matter where we are?”

I pulled out slowly and watched as I did, loving the way my dick came out wet and glistening. I knew she could feel every inch of the slide, the drag of my helmeted tip as it ran along her channel. And she watched the entire process greedily, hungrily, whimpering with relief against my hand when I oh-so-slowly pushed back inside her cunt.

She tried to grind closer, to buck her hips into me, but I slid my hand from her mouth to her neck and she froze. Her eyes flashed with fear, with lust, with something deeper and more profound than both, and I drank it in as I also drank in the feeling of her pussy tight around me, the feeling of her still trying to grind into me in small movements that she hoped I wouldn’t notice.

But I did notice.

“You better stay fucking still and fucking quiet,” I told her, and she opened her mouth to speak—in anger or in fear, I didn’t know—and then I finished my threat, “or I won’t let you come.”

She shut her mouth.