“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.
I hated myself a little.
Well, not a little. A lot. I hated myself a lot. And the steel fortitude it took to go back into the bustle of the party and smile and shake hands was indescribable. I simpered and smiled, all with tears burning my eyes and Silas’s seed still damp between my legs, all with this leaden ball of self-hatred and confusion hanging from my heart, and somehow, barely, I managed to keep my voice even and my face clear for the rest of the night.
Even as I felt waves of panic about marrying Silas.
Even as my body still tingled and buzzed with the memory of his touch.
It was so stupid—really, just idiotic—that this panic would come, so unexpectedly and so inconveniently, when for the last month, I’d known in my heart that Silas was the one man I could be happy marrying. That Silas was the one man I wanted to be with.
But surely he understood? That this whole idea of marrying for my company had been thrust upon me without my consent? That I hadn’t necessarily been ready for it before it became the economically expedient thing for me to do?
If only he would give me time to think about it and explain. Because it wasn’t that I didn’t love him—I loved him so intensely that it frightened me. It was more that I wanted to make sure that when we moved forward together, we did it on my terms—on even footing, as it were. Not while I was still reeling from this horrible situation and all of the horrible demands it’d tried to place on me.
That was fair, right? To want an engagement to come from a place of serenity and joy? And not simply dazed relief?
The party went late, the music and drinks and colloquy lasting until the clock struck four, and then finally, the last of our guests filtered sleepily out of the rented hall, leaving Hugh and me alone. He turned to me, offering his elbow to escort me down to our carriage, and for a moment, I saw him as he was when we’d first met, seven or eight years ago. Hopeful and arrogant and a little lost—the kind of handsome man who’d been able to drift along the river of society without any effort. I think maybe I’d seen something endearing in that privileged innocence, that cloistered experience. Maybe I’d seen myself as I wanted to be—untouched by cynicism and violence. Carefree and careless. Because, while I’d maybe appeared carefree to an outsider, it was a constant, conscious, and exhausting act. But Hugh—his easiness was real and unfeigned, and maybe like Polidori’s vampire, I imagined I could somehow siphon that from him and infuse my own life with that kind of blithe insouciance.
Of course, I knew better now. And I knew that Hugh lacked certain qualities that his untroubled comportment couldn’t make up for. He wasn’t witty or charming, like Silas, or magnetic and secretly dominant, like Silas, or tender and perceptive…like Silas.
He wasn’t Silas, and he never would be, and the fact that I had ever imagined that a marriage to Hugh would be anything less than torture was supremely laughable now.
The words poured out easily. I put my hand over Hugh’s and looked him in the eye. “I’m ending our engagement.”
Hugh’s surprised laugh echoed through the empty ballroom, a laugh that said good joke, Molly, so hilarious. Irritation flamed at that, but I pushed it down, along with the urge to feel the crack of my hand against his cheek.
“I’m serious, Hugh.”
His laughter died. “Dearest, what can you possibly mean? You know that you—”
“—Have to marry you to keep my company intact?” I finished for him. “Maybe. Maybe this is the end of O’Flaherty Shipping. But I realized tonight that there’s nothing worth the price of my happiness. That my father wouldn’t want this for me, even to save the company he built. I’m sorry, Hugh, but I’m walking away from our agreement.”
His brown eyes blinked—confused and a little desperate as things began to sink in. “Molly, you cannot be serious. We just hosted almost every worthy member of London society for our engagement ball, and you want to tell me that you’ve changed your mind? It’s too late!”
I removed my arm from his, taking a step back. “Legally and practically, no, Hugh. It’s not too late. I’m sorry that this will be socially embarrassing for you, but really, can it be more embarrassing than your own cousin standing trial for seducing a girl barely past p
ubescence?”
He gaped at me.
“Face it. Without Cunningham’s money and without my company, you’re essentially finished. And with two scandals under your belt in less than a month, well, good luck finding a wealthy bride willing to marry you. I liked you once, and you know, I still believe that you do sincerely like me, in your own way. But that’s not enough to make up for a loveless union. Especially the kind of union that you wanted with me, where I would have been trapped and isolated, without any recourse.”
“No,” he rushed in to say. “It doesn’t have to be that way. We can edit those contracts, Molly. We can fix things.”
It was almost sweet that he thought that would be enough to lure me into staying. I patted his shoulder. “Goodbye, Hugh. My solicitors will be in touch.”
I fought the urge to go to Silas right away. Rather, I went home and bathed, slipping into bed as the sun began blooming pink and orange on the horizon. I tried not to think about what I’d just done—alienating Silas and breaking things off with Hugh. I tried not to think about whether or not I would have this house in a year, whether or not I’d be able to afford my servants and my carriage and to feed myself.
I simply closed my eyes and remembered the precise shade of blue Silas’s eyes were when he came inside of me, when he’d muttered Jesus, as if I were the holiest thing next to God that he could think of.
He would understand once I explained it all to him properly. He would understand how deeply I needed him, and how deeply I needed his patience. I knew he would.
When I woke several hours later, I felt groggy and shameful somehow, as if sleeping late were a sin. The afternoon sunlight spilled into the room, and there was a warm cup of tea beside me—evidence that breakfast had been brought in and then taken back, and probably the same with lunch, and now it was past time for both.
The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty Page 8