The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty (8 page)

“Good girl. You want to come, don’t you?”

She nodded frantically.

“Yeah? You like it when I make you come?”

Another nod. More squirming.

“I thought so.” I gripped her neck tighter. “Stay.
Still
.”

She finally stopped trying to grind against me, but she had to squeeze her eyes shut in concentration, and the sight of it was so adorable that I dropped a kiss on each closed eyelid. “My good girl,” I whispered. “Now I want you to listen to me. You feel my cock inside you? You feel how hard it is for you?”

“Yes,” she murmured, eyes still closed. “I feel it.”

“It’s stretching your little cunt now. It’s so deep inside of you that I can feel your womb. And all of it—that womb, that cunt—it belongs to me now, you understand? It belongs to me, and if I want to spread you wide and fuck you in front of everyone you know, I get to.”

“Yes,” she said, the word almost a moan. “You get to.”

And then her eyes fluttered open. “Oh, please, Silas,” she begged, and she’d gone from that petulant impatience to something more stripped and more primal. “Please make me come.”

Behind us, the band struck up a new song, a popular song, and I could hear the normal ballroom chatter ripple with approval and delight. The noises seemed to blend together—the glasses clinking and the shoes thudding on the floor and the voices sharing gossip and news and advice; all of it was occasionally punctuated with a laugh or a clink that was a little too close, which made it all the more thrilling. Any moment we could be discovered, and
fuck
if a part of me didn’t want that to happen.

“What would you do if someone heard you say those words?” I said harshly. My hand closed tighter around her neck. “If someone walked around this corner now and looked into the curtains? If they saw you with your legs spread wide for me?”

She made an incoherent noise. I smiled viciously at her. “You would let them watch, wouldn’t you? You’d let them watch, because that’s how much you need my cock. That’s how much you need me. You’d let some stranger watch you getting fucked like a whore and you wouldn’t care, so long as I made that pussy come for me. Isn’t that right?”

“God, yes,” she moaned, and it was loud enough that I glanced around behind me to see if we’d been overheard. We hadn’t, at least not that I could see.

I returned my attention to her, to the way her breathing had grown labored against the squeeze of my fingers on her throat. I took care to make sure she could still breathe easily enough, but I wanted her to feel that edge of fear, that edge of uncertainty. Molly O’Flaherty had never let fear get the better of her. She’d never let fear take residence inside her mind.

Unless she was with me.

I should feel terrible about that.
But I didn’t. Not with that flush staining her cheeks and chest, not with the way her fingers grasped at my jacket. It occurred to me that I’d never fucked like this—only with words, only with a hand squeezing and releasing and squeezing again on her neck. With my cock sunk to the hilt, but unmoving, a rigid bar in the soft heat of her body.

“I can do anything I want with you, can’t I?” I asked her. “I can fuck you in the middle of a crowded ballroom. I can bend you over and fuck your ass until you come and cry at the same time. I can share your cunt with Castor or Julian.”

Her eyes went wide at that—but not just with shock. With
lust
. I’d said it merely to be dirty, merely to drive her closer to the edge, but once I spoke the words, I felt my own response to the idea, a hot knife of arousal deep in my groin, a sharp desire that made my balls tighten. God, to see her under Castor’s massive muscular frame or pinned under Julian’s lean body—it was a thought that would make most men furious, but for some reason, it made me wild with desire. It made me savage with the need to drive into her, to fuck her blind. I
wanted
to see her with my friends, I
wanted
to be the one to be able to share her.

My thighs trembled with the restraint it took to stay still. “You’ve gone quiet, Mary Margaret. Is it because you want to be shared? Is it because you want me to spread your legs and offer you to other men?”

Her mouth parted, lips berry pink and plump, and oh God, now the memories were crashing in, memories of her lips wrapped tightly around Julian’s cock, of all those long nights in Europe where Julian and I each took our turn with her, making her come over and over and over again, until we all fell asleep in a pile of tangled limbs. Of the time Castor had given in to his lust and curiosity one night during supper, and Molly had—only for that one night—allowed him to dominate her right there on his dinner table. He’d laid her out and tied her down and fucked her until she screamed with an orgasm so powerful it shook the table.

Why doesn’t that make you jealous?
I asked myself. But it didn’t make me jealous.

It only made me harder.

“Maybe I should pull out of you right now and go find Castor or Julian, hmm? Bring them back here to fuck you. I’ll bring Ivy too, and maybe I’ll make you watch while I sink my cock into her. Make you watch as I test her cunt to see if it’s as tight and wet as yours.”

Wrong words. Sinful words. Awful words.

But Molly’s eyes had fluttered closed again and her breathing was so fast, so rapid now, and that flush was so deep and so hot in her skin, and she whispered, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Her hands were fisted in my jacket, and she couldn’t help the squirming, the wriggling, the need for friction.

I let her move against me as I continued. “I want to see Julian and Castor inside of you at the same time. And I want to fuck Ivy while I watch. And then, when they’re done using you, I will wrap my hand in Ivy’s hair—” I slid the hand from her waist up into her gorgeous mass of curls to prove my point “—and drag her over to your cunt and make her lick you until you can’t speak any more.”

“
Jesus Christ
,” she managed, and I could tell we were there, that our fantasy had taken us there, and I finally clamped down against her airway as hard as I dared, keeping a mental clock in my mind to make sure she stayed safe. Everything about her was open, needy—her cunt and her parted mouth and her widened blue eyes—and everything about me was hard and tense and rigid.

“And then after they’ve all had you, after they’ve come in you, then I’ll get you. And you’ll be so sensitive and swollen and as tight as a virgin, and I’ll fuck you for hours, as a punishment and a reward. Look down, Molly. Look at you grinding against my cock like a needy whore. I bet you can’t wait to have all of us using you, filling you with our seed.”

The first wave was more like a ripple, a small tug, and I brutishly thrust up into it even though I was already sunk all the way in, stabbing myself into her climax as I finally let go of her neck. Air sucked into her lungs, and her orgasm doubled and tripled and quadrupled all in the few seconds it took for her to call my name.

“
Fuck
, Silas!” She writhed and gasped, and I kept pressing into her, needing to feel every twitch and flutter and clench, needing my whole dick to feel every second of this orgasm, this first
I-choose-you
orgasm. I forced myself to stay completely still as she quivered around me, clenching my jaw with the effort of restraint as her narrow channel gripped and slid against me.

She ground against me through it all, wrapping her legs around my waist to lock us close together, the pink bud of her clit rubbing shamelessly against me.

God, I loved it. I loved
her
. And I had to start moving right the fuck now.

As the last of her climax fluttered away, leaving Molly panting and slumped against the glass behind her, I widened my legs and started driving into her pussy in earnest, loving the image of my thick cock pulling out to the tip and then ramming back in. She was so wet, so deliciously wet, but swollen, and the coupling of the lubrication and the resistance was almost too much to bear. I didn’t go fast so much as I went hard, rocking her back with every thrust and making her squeak with mingled pleasure and discomfort.

With a growl, I moved her feet back to where they had been—braced against the sides of the window—so that she was wide open for me. Yes, that was good, I liked that. I liked my hands around her tiny waist, I liked her cunt open and ready, I liked the noise of the party guests and the thrill of the public event behind me.

“So fucking wet,” I grunted. My balls slapped against her ass with each thrust. “So fucking wet for me.”

Her flush deepened and I knew she’d come again—if I could last that long. Which was a matter for debate, at this point. “Rub your clit,” I ordered her. “Rub it hard and fast. I want you to make me come when you do.”

“Yes, Silas,” she whispered, her hand already snaking down to to find her swollen nub. I watched her slender fingers work herself, and she watched me watching her, and then she fell over the edge once more, her head falling back as she tried to hold in her cry. That’s all I needed—the long arch of her throat as her head dropped back, the wet clench of her orgasm—and then I was following her over the cliff into oblivion.

The climax started deep in my body, a jagged thing sawing at the base of my spine, sawing deep into my balls and cock, and it hurt it felt so good, my whole body shrinking to one point—my cock—and then exploding outwards as I shot jet after hot jet of cum deep into her body. I held her tighter and thrust harder as that happened, wanting to fill her up with as much of me as I could. To mark her and claim her and fucking own her.

I pulsed and pulsed for what felt like hours, fucking through the climax like a man possessed, until finally the light returned to my vision and the sensation of anything beyond my orgasm began to come back. Molly’s hands in my hair. The sticky warmth we’d made between us. The music still trilling in the background.

I sucked in a breath. “Jesus.”

Molly gave me an exhausted, sated smile—free of all sarcasm and impatience and calculation. A smile I remembered well from those idyllic three days we’d spent together. “I know.” She reached for my hand. “I know.”

I slid out of her, already missing the messily perfect connection, and then squatted down again without bothering to tuck myself back inside my pants. I had to see this first, this image that I’d fantasized about for so long.

“Stay as you are,” I said firmly, giving her pussy a small spank to make sure she heard me. Her thighs quivered, but she kept them spread for me.

Using my thumbs, I parted her folds; I reached for her hand and then directed her fingers to her entrance, guiding them to push inside. Slowly, deliberately, she gave me the show I wanted, the show that was getting me hard again, already. She moved her slick fingers in and out, pushing my cum farther up into herself. My dick gave a jolt as I thought about the implications of this kind of ownership, as I thought about her belly growing heavy with my child.

Is there anything better than this?
Than fucking this perfect woman, than having her choose me? Than having this future where I can imagine children?

I groaned as she lifted her fingers to her mouth to suck our mingled juices off of them. “
Fuck
, Molly. You’re going to kill me.”

“Not if you don’t fuck me to death first.”

I buried my face in her neck, inhaling her cinnamon scent before pulling away. “Don’t tempt me, buttercup.”

Silas cleaned us both as best as he could with his handkerchief, and then we rearranged our clothes. I peeked out from behind the curtain, expecting maybe an enraged Hugh or a prurient spy or two, but there was no one. The guests still danced and dined and drank to celebrate a wedding that wouldn’t happen.

The wedding won’t happen!

That was incredible and wonderful to think. I’d decided to throw it all away when I saw Silas tonight, tall and dashing, his blue eyes sparkling with love and mischief and intelligence. But then he’d told me about what he and Julian had done, and while part of me did truly resist the notion of being rescued, the practical Molly was already adding together stakes and shares and ships and warehouses, dividing and multiplying and cataloging the infinite number of contingencies that must be planned for.

I was so incredibly grateful, and I turned to tell him that when I realized he wasn’t in the curtained alcove with me any more. Prodding at my hair with tentative fingertips to make sure it wasn’t too disheveled, I walked out of the alcove, searching for Silas.

“My Molly.”

I turned, and there he was, holding a glass of cold water. I took it eagerly, heat flaring in my sensitive core as I noticed how hungrily he watched me as I drank. How hungrily he watched my throat as I swallowed.

“Are you going to tell Hugh now?” Silas asked. “Or wait until after the party?”

“I—” I wasn’t sure. I had raced ahead to what this all meant for O’Flaherty Shipping and had embraced that delicious, fantastical idea of loving Silas freely, but I hadn’t yet thought pragmatically about breaking off my engagement. Or indeed, even entering into a new one with Silas.

A new engagement. Another sudden marriage. Are you really ready for that?

The thoughts thudded into me like anchors dropping into the sea—heavy and dragging and nearly impossible to reel back in once they’d been cast out. I loved Silas, I wanted to be with him, I knew these things…so then why was the idea of chaining myself to another man so terrifying? Why, when it was the man I wanted to be chained to, the man I’d been willing to abandon my company for just half an hour ago?

But it was terrifying. So terrifying that I had to turn away from him, masking my discomfiture by taking another drink of water.

“You don’t have to tell him tonight,” Silas said gently, circling around me so we faced each other once again. I kept my eyes past his shoulder, watching the dancers twirl in a carefree waltz. “But the sooner you tell him, the sooner we can announce our own engagement.”

Another drink. Another moment staring at the dancers.

“Molly?” Silas prompted, his voice worried. He ducked down to meet my eyes. “Is everything okay? Are you—” horror flooded his features “—I didn’t hurt you just now, did I? I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do?”

I sighed. “Of course not. I have a safe word, don’t I? You trust me to say it when something is too much and I’ll trust you to stop when I say it. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” he said, his eyes still trained on mine. “But then what is it? You seem…distant…all of a sudden.”

“It’s just…”
Don’t say it, Molly. Whatever you’re feeling is just the temporary natural reaction to all of these sudden changes, and saying it will only hurt him pointlessly.

But there he was with those blue eyes so sweet and that face so hopeful and loving and open, and I didn’t want to start this new phase of our lives with a lie designed to spare his feelings while suppressing my own. I wanted honesty and openness, and most of all, I wanted to know that he would still love me even when I was being complicated and difficult.

“Do we have to get engaged so soon?” I asked finally, the words coming out in a rush. “I mean, it will take time for the word to spread about Hugh and me, and the damage to our reputations if we have a rushed engagement…”

Silas frowned, his eyebrows pulling together in the most adorable way. “I care about your reputation, Molly, but in the past, our circle…We don’t care about reputations.”

“We do if it will harm the company.”

“Molly, is there anything that can harm the company’s reputation more than what Cunningham has done?”

I scrambled for another excuse, another reason to delay the engagement, but I couldn’t find anything. Because there was nothing, other than my strange, sudden panic that I was casting myself back into the fire after Silas’s financial maneuvering had offered me a way out.

The light had dimmed in Silas’s eyes and his eyebrows un-furrowed. “You don’t want to marry me,” he said flatly. “Is that what it is?”

“No!” I responded quickly. “I do! I do want to be with you. It’s just—you and Julian have made it so I don’t
have
to marry anyone. Is it so terrible just to enjoy that fact for a while? That I can choose someone of my own free will, at whatever time I want?”

Silas licked his lips, an unconscious habit he had while he thought. My body came alive at the sight of that tongue and the memories it evoked, but I forced my constant need for Silas aside.

“Please,” I begged him. “I love you. But I want some time before I resign myself to marriage again.”

“
Resign yourself to marriage
?” he repeated incredulously. “Do you even hear yourself? You sound absurd. Marriage between two people that love each other isn’t meant to be indentured servitude or slavery. It’s supposed to be joyful and fulfilling.”

“And I know it would be that with you,” I reassured. “It’s just that I will be ending one engagement tonight, and I am not ready to plunge into another. Not without some time for reflection. I mean, we have all the time in the world, Silas. We love each other. There’s no need to rush into marriage.”

He didn’t answer right away, but then he took a step closer to me, his hand cupping the back of my elbow. It was a gesture that looked polite and seemly from a distance, but that felt possessive and stern and intimate up close. “Do you remember my demand when I asked you to marry me last month?”

I remembered. The Baron’s party. The small private corner we’d found. My pussy riding Silas’s fingers after he coaxed a world-shattering climax out of me.

“You asked me for a baby,” I said.

“And I meant it. Molly, I want a family. I want a family
with you
. I want your belly full of my children. And I want it as soon as possible. Yes, that sounds possessive and boorish, and I can’t explain it in a way that isn’t so aggressively male, but I love you so much and I can’t imagine having a family that you’re not a part of.”

His words melted me, tugged at me, made me angry with myself for this inexcusable and unanticipated ambivalence. And he was right to want to start a family soon; I was thirty years old and having children was something that shouldn’t be waited on at my age. But I couldn’t just wish this reluctance away. It came from a place that wasn’t rational or logical. It came from a place of deep fear.

“Just give me a day,” I said. “One day. To end things with Hugh and to think. It’s all too much right now.”

Silas wasn’t the type to storm off. He wasn’t the type to fight. He was the type to smile and joke and embrace, until the conflict melted away in the face of his sheer resolve to fill his sphere with affection and light.

But there were no smiles or embraces for me right now. Instead, he took my hand and kissed it, and said, “Then I shall see you tomorrow night,” in a cold voice that betrayed how hurt he was.

And then he was gone.

How had I gone from one of the most intense orgasms I’d ever had to abandoning Molly on the ballroom floor? She’d looked so lost and so confused, and yet so determined, and I loved her so much, but I was also furious with her. Hurt by her.

After all we’d been through, after all I’d done for her, after all her noble words about sacrificing everything to be with me—she was scared of actually marrying me? Part of me knew it must be her independence dictating this fear, her need for autonomy and freedom, but what if it was actually because I’d been too rough with her during sex? Or too demanding with my desire for a family?

Or—and I knew this thought came from a dark, ridiculous place, but I couldn’t ignore it—what if it was because she loved me less now? That she didn’t have to marry Hugh to save her company? Maybe I had been the attractive forbidden option, but now that I was no longer forbidden and that she was free of any obligation to marry, she’d realized she didn’t want me?

In a terrible mood—made more terrible by the fact that such moods were usually alien to me—I stomped out of my carriage and stomped into my townhouse, throwing my jacket and hat onto the floor, slamming doors, and growling at any servant that came near me. How could they understand? How could they possibly help?

No. Only gin could help me now.

I went into the parlor and poured myself a stiff glass, and right as I was about to take my first, much-needed, drink, a banging sounded at the door.

Molly.

At this hour, it could only be Molly. To apologize, to rail at me, I suddenly didn’t care. I needed to see her. I needed answers and reassurance and the smell and feel of her against me. I suddenly needed to know that she still loved me. No, more than that. I needed to know that she loved me as much as I loved her. Because I couldn’t bear the lonely reality of being the one who cared the most.

I couldn’t.

But when I flung open the door, it wasn’t Molly I saw but a solemn-looking young man—illuminated in the dim gaslights along the street—extending a small envelope. It took my tired, emotional mind several seconds to process the scene, but once I did, I knew it would stay with me forever: the anonymous delivery boy, the London fog swirling behind him, the innocuous-looking envelope that would change my life.

“Thank you,” I said, fishing a coin from somewhere to tip him. I took the envelope and closed the door.

It was strange to get a telegram so late, and somehow I knew, though I couldn’t explain how, that it portended bad news. It was the lateness of the hour or the solemnity of the delivery boy or maybe even the heavy fog outside, that fog that crept up from the river at night, as if to remind us glitzy, happy Londoners that sterner, ancient powers still held sway over our lives.

Or maybe it was the origin of the message smudgily printed on the back in hasty ink.

Vaison-la-Romaine.

The closest town to Thomas and Charlotte’s villa in Provence. The closest telegraph station to the house that held, aside from Molly and Julian and Castor, the dearest people in the world to me.

I tore open the envelope right there by the door, my hands shaking and my heart thumping with dread, and when I read the contents inside, I sank down to the floor, where I buried my face in my hands and cried.