The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty

by Sierra Simone

  “I should have taken you out of that park and back to your bed, and then I should have spent hours with my face between your legs, fucking you with my mouth until you couldn’t speak or think or even breathe, and then I should have asked you to marry me. Not because of your company or because I wanted a family, but because I wanted you. Because I wanted to spend every night of the rest of my life with you underneath me, every day counting the freckles on your stomach when we woke up.”

  She was crying in earnest now, her face crumpled and her voice thick. “But why?” she asked. “Why did you love me?”

  I moved my hand from her back to her delicate jaw, taking it in my fingers and tilting her face to mine.

  I stared directly down into her eyes as I talked, feeling the words burning everywhere—my heart and my mind and my stomach. “Why do I love you, you mean. I love you right now, still…and more than ever. And it’s because you provoke me, because you provoke everyone. Because you’re strong and because you need someone you can be frail with…because you’re the smartest woman I know and sometimes also the stupidest, because you’re honest and determined and sometimes manipulative. Because I want to see Ireland with you, because I want to see everywhere with you, and I want you to read me novels in the evening with your adorable Irish lilt, and I want you to let me hold you when it’s all too much. Because I’ve known you for ten years, and it feels so desperately like no time at all, and I need more.”

  I finally stopped talking, my own breathing coming fast now, my own tears close at hand. I felt suddenly naked, raw, like my skin had been flayed from my body, my rib cage cracked open and my beating heart exposed for all to see.

  Molly’s dancing slowed until we both stood stock still, our hands clasped and her eyes pinned to mine, and despite the tears, her eyes had grown unreadable, hard-shelled like jewels.

  “Say something,” I begged. “Please. Anything at all—tell me I’m an ass for saying this, a prick for still chasing after you when you’re engaged, a monster to beg for forgiveness. Tell me to get ready for the hot irons. I don’t care, just please speak.”

  The other dancers moved awkwardly around us, and in the corner of my eye, I could see Hugh finally pushing his way toward us, his patience exhausted or his dignity overridden by his irritation, one of the two.

  Molly took a deep shuddering breath and then straightened her shoulders. “Yes, Silas, you are an ass. And a prick. And a monster. And you are something worse than all of those things put together.”

  My voice was hoarse. “Which is?”

  “Too fucking late.”

  Who could sleep after that?

  Not me.

  I’d left Silas on the ballroom floor, looking wrecked, those eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, like a puppy who’d been kicked and didn’t know why. But those eyes, bloodshot and glossy and still that evocative China blue—those eyes knew everything, understood everything.

  I’d left the Baron’s, fending off Hugh with a continuation of the headache excuse and came straight home to collapse on my bed in a puddle of silk and tears. I had no way to process any of the things Silas had said…not the apology, not his explanation of what had happened that night between him and Mercy…

  I rolled over onto my side, blinking sightlessly at the small white fireplace across the room. I’d completely forgotten that Gideon had kissed me that night. It had been so casual, such a common occurrence in my life, that at the time, it had taken me a moment to realize why I was unhappy with it. It had taken me a moment to realize that I’d grown accustomed, in the space of only a few hours, to having only Silas’s lips on mine, and I didn’t want anybody else’s, and so I’d politely pushed Gideon away. And Gideon had been more than a gentleman about it. But if I had been Silas, watching from the margin…yes. I could understand. The shock and the fear and the desperate need to prove that it didn’t matter, because if it did matter, then everything had to change.

  And neither of us was ready for that last year.

  You deserve to watch me branded with hot iron, and I would do it gladly, if only to spend that much more time with you.

  I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest, the ball gown scrunching and bunching around my legs, and I knew I should call in my maid to help me undress. I knew I should simply go to sleep, because I had chosen my path, and what did it matter that the man I wanted had laid his heart bare to me tonight? That he had given me the messy totality of him, his failings and his fears, along with all of his reckless, foolhardy pledges of atonement and his fervent adorations? Every part of it was real and raw and just so gutting to witness because there was no veneer, no shield—and Silas had always been a man of veneer. A man of smiles and politeness and charm, where you sensed that unknowable thoughts flickered in the blue depths of his eyes, but knew you could never learn them.

  Except I could learn them, I had learned them, because he had given them to me, along with his heart.

  And I wanted to give him everything of mine in return. I’d told him it was too fucking late for a happy ending for us, and it was. But maybe it wasn’t too late for something else.

  It doesn’t matter, Molly, a sensible part of me thought. Go to sleep.

  Instead I slid off the bed and took a lamp off my end table. Padding downstairs, I went to my office, the soft rustling of my skirt unnaturally loud in the empty house. I went to my desk, where I found Hugh’s contract. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for:

  Infidelity, which shall be defined as the following acts…

  I glanced up at the clock. A little before midnight. It would take me at least thirty minutes to get back to Gravendon Manor, and possibly another thirty to find the other thing I would need to do this…oh my God, was I really thinking about doing this?

  I glanced down at the contract, at my hand with its diamond glittering in the lamplight.

  Yes. Fuck it all, I was doing this.

  After drinking what felt like a gallon of gin, I went to bed before midnight, which was practically unheard of for me, but I was exhausted. Not necessarily my body, but my mind—my thoughts were a grayscape of rejection and defeat, and I couldn’t even pretend to feel otherwise. I excused myself to Castor, Julian, and Ivy and then went up to my room, where I shucked my clothes and toppled face first onto the bed, waiting to die. I would just lay here and refuse to eat and drink, and then I would die, and at least that would be better than knowing what it looked like to have Molly O’Flaherty walking away from me after I’d offered up everything.

  Yes, that was the plan. I would consign myself to death, and then everyone would feel terrible—especially Molly—and she would weep at my graveside, and then somewhere, from Hell or Heaven, wherever I ended up, I would at least have that satisfaction. Castor would shake his head sternly and Ivy and Julian would name their next child after me, and poets would write lyric odes to my steadfast dedication to love.

  All this decided upon, I promptly fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I had that heavy, groggy disorientation that comes with having slept either too much or too little. I was unable to tell if I’d been asleep for days or only for a few minutes, although the lamplight I was currently squinting against indicated it was still nighttime. I started to roll over to shutter the lamp, only to find myself impeded in some way that my sleep-fogged mind didn’t comprehend. The impediment turned out to be silk ropes, binding my wrists and ankles and securing them to the posts of the bedstead.

  “They’re tied pretty well. In case you were thinking of struggling,” a voice observed.

  I blinked once, hard, to clear my vision. “Castor?” What the fuck?

  The Baron just smiled. He was sitting in an armchair by my bed, a book open on his lap. I glanced around—soft lamps, silk ropes, me still stark naked from when I’d undressed earlier. Was he planning what I thought he was planning? I’d been with a couple of men before, but never in the, uh, receptive capacity, and I wasn’t sure that tonight was the night I wanted to
rectify that.

  “Relax, Silas. I’m only here to be a witness.”

  My brow furrowed. “A witness to what?”

  He nodded towards the door, which had just clicked open, revealing a slender young woman in her middle twenties, a woman I recognized from a few of the parties at the Baron’s but whose name I didn’t know. She was as naked as I was, small-waisted and small-breasted. More arresting to me than her nudity was her dark red hair, unbound and tumbling down her back. If you had only seen Molly a handful of times, it would be easy to confuse the two, although this woman had brown eyes and no freckles and a very timid expression you’d never see on Molly’s face.

  But that didn’t matter right now, because the only thing that mattered was that this woman was naked and walking towards me, and that I was naked and tied to a bed, and no fucking way could I stomach the idea of sex with a stranger right now. I yanked on the ties again, this time in earnest, growing more panicked as the Baron’s words proved true and the ropes refused to give.

  “Castor, untie me,” I pleaded.

  My loyal ally these many years, the man Julian and I saw as a mentor, shook his head.

  “You are not my friend anymore,” I said, my voice tight as I tried to kick at the leg ties.

  The Baron let out a loud laugh. “It’s for the best, Silas, I promise.”

  The woman approached the bed and stood at the side, looking at me almost shyly. This gave me hope. If she was shy, then she might be nervous. If she was nervous, then maybe I could talk her into turning her pert little ass around and leaving the room. Leaving my bereaved heart and my soulless body alone. “Look,” I told her. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but it’s not true. I mean, it was true, but it’s not true right now. Or any more. I don’t want to have sex with you—I’m sure you’re a very nice person and you are very pretty, but I only want one person right now, and you’re not her. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  She cocked her head to the side, and then someone stepped out from behind the screen in the corner of the room.

  Molly.

  “Silas, I’m flattered,” she said with a small smile.

  I sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Molly.”

  She moved over to the bed, on the opposite side of her would-be doppelgänger, and everything about her was designed to send tendrils of heat through me. Jolting my heart awake and—more embarrassingly given my utter and complete nakedness—jolting my dick awake. She wore a dressing gown the same golden color of her dress earlier tonight, her furled nipples tight and hard under the thin silk. Her thick hair tangled and waved around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in a mass of glorious copper. Somehow, the mere suggestion of her naked form under that silk did far more for me than the overtly naked girl perched just on the other side of the bed.

  “Come here,” I said, before I could stop myself. Before I could think about the painful way we parted, before I could think about her vengeful fiancé and his ridiculous contract. Before I could think about the other people in the room. I just wanted her close. I wanted her touching me, her cinnamon smell surrounding me, her hair tickling my face and chest.

  She didn’t climb onto the bed with me, but instead raised her hand and ran her fingers from my wrist down to my chest, where she splayed her hand against my pectoral muscle. The warm pressure of her touch sent more blood to my groin, and now my desire was completely and utterly apparent.

  But I didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck about anybody else in this room. I kept my gaze on my Molly.

  “Come here,” I repeated.

  She bit her lip. “I want to,” she whispered.

  “But,” Castor interjected, standing from his chair, “we have a slightly unusual arrangement tonight.”

  Molly nodded and her face cleared, as if the Baron’s voice had reminded her of something crucial. “What you said to me tonight…” She glanced up at Castor and the woman, and then back down to me, her expression uncomfortable. Molly didn’t like emotions and even less liked feeling them in front of other people. “I reacted poorly. And I want you to know what it meant to me, all the things you said…all the things you made me feel.”

  “And this is how you wanted to show me?” I couldn’t help it—despite everything, I grinned. I mean, I was willing to forget all the heartache of tonight, if it ended where it looked like it was going to end. But then I remembered. “But what about Hugh? And the contract?”

  She sighed. “Exactly.” Her fingers trailed down my chest to the ridges on my stomach, back and forth, back and forth, until she reached my navel. I hissed and my erection bobbed to full strength. But her hand went no farther. “I can’t show you the way I want to show you. But I looked at the contract, and there is a way around it.” She moved her hand from my stomach and I exhaled with disappointment. But then her hand was caressing my cheek and I turned into her touch.

  “Castor is acting as a legal witness, because Hugh wouldn’t dare to contradict the word of another peer in court,” Molly continued. “And Viola is going to help us.”

  “Help with what—shit.” A hot mouth closed over my cock, small and wet, and all I could see was that red hair moving over my pelvis. I tried to squirm away, and when that didn’t work, I tried to buck away, groaning in frustration and something worse.

  “Shh,” Molly said, and she pressed her fingers against my lips. I stilled, but I didn’t shush.

  “Molly, please don’t do this to me,” I beseeched her. “I fucking love you. I don’t want anyone else. Please don’t—dammit.” Viola had reached between my legs and was now gently toying with my balls. I was doing everything I could not to enjoy it, not to feel it; I thought the coldest, driest, dullest thoughts I could think of. I thought of Molly’s face when she’d walked in on Mercy and me, I thought of hearing her say Clare.

  “Clare,” I said hopefully. “Clare?”

  “Nice try,” she said and then she shoved her fingers in my mouth. Shit. That was hot.

  “Just listen for a minute,” she said seriously, or at least as seriously as one can say something when one is shoving one’s fingers down someone’s throat. “I want to fuck you. I can’t. I want to suck you. I can’t. I can’t touch your cock, and a man definitely cannot touch any part of me ‘with intent to bring to satisfaction.’ But the contract says nothing about witnessing you perform sexual acts with someone else. It says nothing about me touching myself while you watch. And so here’s what’s going to happen tonight. You are going to do as I say, you are going to take what I want to give you and take it when I want to give it to you.”

  “It’s adorable when you get bossy,” I told her when her fingers slid out of my mouth to stroke my stomach. But adorable or not, I didn’t like this. Or I didn’t want to like it. “Molly, we don’t need someone else to do this. We can still share something without touching, we don’t need someone to be your proxy, and shit shit shit.” Viola had just sucked one of my balls into her mouth. My arms strained against the ties while I struggled to regain focus, all while Molly looked down at the scene happening around my groin with frank lust and undisguised longing, which was not helping. “I don’t want to hurt you again,” I managed, after a minute. “I don’t want you ever to doubt that you are the only one I want.”

  It was a ridiculous statement to say when a woman was actively tonguing every crease and seam of my balls, but I meant it. My eyes met with Molly’s, and I tried to pour every ounce of feeling and truth into my gaze. “Please,” I told her. “Don’t make me do this, when all I want to do is spend the rest of my life making everything else I’ve done up to you.”

  Molly sat on the bed, facing me, her robe pulling slightly to the side as she did, exposing her freckled collarbone at the same moment Viola’s tongue darted someplace unusual and amazing. I groaned.

  Molly made a little purring noise at the sound of my groan, looking over her shoulder to see what Viola was doing. She looked back at me with a smile. “Silas, don’t you see? This is com
pletely different than what happened with Mercy. I’m here with you.”

  She leaned forward, putting her hand on the side of my cheek, her hair tickling my chest and face the way I had fantasized about earlier. “You and me, it’s not the exclusivity we need. It’s the connection. As long as we’re doing something together, it’s still about us. It’s still for us. As long as we’re together, we are sharing something. And I want to share this with you tonight.”

  “But we can do other things…”

  Molly was already shaking her head, standing up and unbelting her robe. “I don’t want other things. I want this. I want it messy. I want it memorable.”

  Castor cleared his throat from the other side of the bed. (I’d completely forgotten he was there.) “I will make sure there are no legal ramifications. Molly assures you that there will be no negative emotional ramifications. If I were in your position, Silas, I would stop protesting and enjoy what these two women want to give you.” He arched an eyebrow at me and then sat back down. He didn’t pick up his book, however, merely leaned back and braced his head against his fingers, as if waiting for the show to begin.

  I turned my gaze back to Molly, and she bent over my face again, only the barest sliver of space between our mouths, her breath warm against my lips. I tried to rise up to kiss her, but she pulled away, laughing. I watched as she reached up and guided one ivory shoulder out of her robe and then the other, holding the fabric to her chest for a moment, until she let it slide from her arms and drop to the floor.

  I caught my breath, my already stone-hard cock now painfully stiff. I hadn’t seen Molly naked since last year, and the sight was arresting. Her pert breasts heaved with each breath, the planes of her body slender and smooth and sprinkled liberally with freckles. I watched the muscles move under her taut stomach as she came back to the bed, and then my attention was stolen by the way her tits swung as she crawled next me. I wasn’t sure what I expected her to do then, but it wasn’t lay beside me, resting her head on my chest, as if we were about to snuggle ourselves to sleep.