I’d kept my letter requesting our meeting purposefully vague, mentioning only that I had a lucrative business proposal for him. I’d done it because I wanted to see his face and hear his voice when I mentioned Molly. I wanted to know how he felt about her. Contemptuous? Jealous? Completely neutral?
I leaned forward, smiling as widely as I could. I wasn’t unaware of the effect I had on men as well as women. Beyond the sexual, I’d always found that people responded much better to friendly charm than to brooding threats. (Which was the reason I’d always had more friends than Julian Markham.)
“Mr. Cunningham, I’ve heard that you and your company are looking for a man to marry Molly O’Flaherty. I would like to be that man, and I want to discuss terms with you to see how we can make that happen.”
Mr. Cunningham blinked for a minute, and in that minute, I saw everything I expected to see—scorn and avarice and a glint of lust. “Well, Mr. Cecil-Coke, I’m sorry to say that you are too late. The board has already approved of a suitor.”
“I heard. The Viscount Beaumont.”
His blond eyebrows lifted. “You know that? Where did you hear that?”
“Mutual friends,” I said vaguely. Until our lunch was finished and he inevitably hunted down any and all information about me, I didn’t want him to know how close I was to Molly, since I suspected that would work against me at the moment. Let him just think I was a wealthy, run-of-the-mill suitor chasing after an inheritance.
He made an indeterminate noise. “Mutual friends, you say.”
“What did the viscount offer you?” I asked. “If it’s money, I have plenty. If it’s connections, I have plenty of those, too. Just name your price—and then any extra you would like to keep for yourself beyond that—and it’s yours.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so eager to wed Miss O’Flaherty? Maybe you don’t spend much time in London, but her…ah, spotted…reputation is quite well known among certain circles here.”
“My own reputation is quite spotted, Mr. Cunningham,” I replied, not bothering to tell him that Molly and I had earned most of those spots together. “I’m not threatened by not having a virgin bride.”
Mr. Cunningham actually shuddered. “I can’t imagine. I made a physician ensure my wife was a virgin before we were married.”
I was beginning to hate this man—and I hated very few people on this earth. But that kind of ignorance was so goddamn infuriating…
“And so I presume that you were also a virgin on your wedding night?” I said easily, giving him a smile as my eyes conveyed exactly the amount of dislike I had for him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed. “It is a man’s natural inclination to—”
I interrupted him. “Mr. Cunningham, about my offer—please. What will it take? Tell me your price.”
I didn’t have fathomless funds, but between myself, Thomas and Julian—and possibly even the Baron—there wasn’t a number that I was afraid of this man naming. And yes, there was the small issue of Molly hating me more than ever after Mercy’s house, but now that I knew I loved her, how could I stand idly by and watch her corralled into marriage with Hugh?
I had to act.
Mr. Cunningham wasted no time cutting into the steak the waiter set before him, and I could see him savoring both the meat and the words he was about to say.
“There is no price, Mr. Cecil-Coke, no amount of money that you could pay me or the board to change our minds. We are very, very set on the viscount marrying Miss O’Flaherty.”
I nearly choked on the bite I’d just taken, hiding my surprise with a drink of wine. “Really?” I said evenly, after I’d swallowed and regained control of my thoughts. “No price at all? You must like this viscount very much.”
A slyness slipped over his features. “We do, Mr. Cecil-Coke.”
I didn’t answer him, partly because I was still shocked he hadn’t responded to my bribery. But also partly because a new suspicion was igniting, one I couldn’t quite articulate, but one that spoke of a connection between Hugh and this man.
“And why is it that you like him so much?” I pressed. “I must know.”
“He is simply the right fit for the company.”
“And I suppose it doesn’t matter who is the right fit for Miss O’Flaherty?”
Mr. Cunningham scoffed. “This has never been about individual needs, Mr. Cecil-Coke. This has been about the company, and what is necessary to keep it profitable in the long term. And the answer is not to have a woman dictating decisions simply because she owns a majority of the shares. She needs to be bridled.”
I planned on being the only man to put a bit between her teeth, and even then, it would only happen in the bedroom and with her begging for it. “And what decisions is she making that are so detrimental to O’Flaherty Shipping Lines? If you don’t mind me asking.”
He dabbed at his mustache and upper lip with a napkin. “She’s soft-hearted, like a woman. She pays the dockworkers too much and the investors too little. She gives the workers Sundays and holidays off—she even gives them a break for lunch! When I think of the money that could be saved if we merely dropped our wages to what our competitors pay…” He shook his head. “It’s appalling. But when she marries, the shares will legally belong to her husband. And then we will be able to move forward without all the…” he waved a hand around the table “…interference.”
“I see.” And I did see. This man was reprehensible. And the board was equally so, if they all thought like him. I felt a spike of pride for Molly, who had battled Mr. Cunningham and his friends in order to run the company the way she wanted. Who had run her company generously and ethically. All those years we’d spent lolling around Europe, petting and playing with each other, she’d also been contending with this board. She’d been single-handedly wrangling control of her company, and I’d never had any idea.
“And so you believe the Viscount Beaumont will be of service to you, then? More than I could be? Because I would certainly help you in your goals as much as possible.”
I thought I sold the lie rather well, but Mr. Cunningham simply shook his head and sipped the last of his wine. “We’ve already found our man, and there’s no changing our minds at this point. And with that being said, I’m not sure there is much more to discuss,” he informed me as he stood. He tossed his napkin onto his half eaten steak. “Thank you for lunch.”
I inclined my head but didn’t stand. I wasn’t sure I would be able to restrain the urge to bury my thumbs in his eye sockets if I did. “It was my pleasure,” I said instead. “It was most enlightening.”
It had been four days since I went to Mercy Atworth’s house and found her sucking Silas. Four days and I was still furious.
And the worst thing? I wasn’t even furious with Silas. I was furious with myself.
I walked through the Baron’s hedge maze more or less aimlessly, cataloging all the ways I’d been stupid in my life. And most of them involved Silas.
Did you really think he had changed? Did you really think he meant all those things he said, those sincere-sounding things, and meant them so much that he would forget about any woman other than you?
But the problem was that I hadn’t realized that I did think those things until it was too late. I had thought myself so blasé, so indifferent, and then I saw Silas with Mercy and discovered that all along I’d been harboring the hope that something had changed. That maybe he’d arrived here in London just in time to whisk me away from this nightmare.
Oh, how wrong I’d been.
And then he had the nerve to tell me that he loved me!
A little scream of frustration tore from my throat, and I kicked at the hedges with every ounce of strength I could muster, which only resulted in getting my skirt and my new white boot tangled in the tiny, twisting branches.
“Fuck!” I yelled, tearing at the fabric. “Fuck!”
“That’s a good way to ruin a dress,” a voice said from behind me, and everything in my
stomach and chest collided into a dense ball of iron, and then sunk to my feet, where it threatened to explode.
I wanted to whirl around and scream at him, or reach out and hit him. But then he was kneeling in front of me, his long fingers skillfully unhooking my skirt from its hedge prison.
“What are you doing here?” I challenged.
“Looking for you,” he replied honestly, glancing up at me with those crystalline blue eyes before looking back down to my dress. His palm moved up from my ankle to my calf to support my foot while he extricated the boot. And even through my stockings, I felt the heat of his skin like a brand. Something deep within me tightened and twisted. It was something like lust, but a much, much deeper itch than lust.
Hating my traitorous body’s reaction, I abruptly withdrew my leg from his hold. “I thought if I gave you my safe word, you would stop pursuing me,” I muttered, more to myself than to him, but he must have heard, because he finished unhooking my skirt and stood up, his expression guarded.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “But I had to see you one more time. I had to talk to you.”
“What could there possibly be to talk about?” I asked, keeping my voice cold to hide the heat that flamed in my deep in my stomach.
“I saw Mr. Cunningham,” he said, and that hateful name was like a bucket of ice water on my desire. I hugged myself and backed up a few steps.
Silas didn’t chase me, his features uncharacteristically serious. “We talked about marriage. And Hugh. And he rejected my suit entirely.”
“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 fe
lt 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.
The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty Page 6