I wasn’t welcome in the dining room.
I honestly didn’t care where or where not these men believed I belonged, but I didn’t see the Baron’s massive shoulders or dark hair, and so I decided to go out to the foyer and out the front door, pushing past the irritated footman, who clearly also resented my presence (and my refusal to use the kitchen door in back.)
“This is no place for a lady,” said a soft voice behind me.
I spun around, anger hot in my mouth, and then stopped.
And stepped back.
Silas stood in front of me, his blue eyes twinkling, his roguish grin hooked up to one side. Despite the rainy afternoon, he’d stepped out without an overcoat and he was already in evening clothes, a perfectly fitting black coat and pants with white gloves and a tall black hat, which he doffed now as he bowed to me.
I just stared.
“What is it, Mary Margaret? Is it so strange to see a gentleman at a gentleman’s club?”
“This isn’t your club,” I sputtered. “And besides, you are—”
“I’m no gentleman, yes, yes, I know. But what about Julian and Castor? Are you ready to hurl such insults at them?”
And sure enough, Julian and Castor were rounding the corner now, Castor striding forward confidently while Julian adjusted his gloves. Even though I saw Castor earlier today and Julian yesterday, the sight of my three closest friends in the world made my throat squeeze tight and my eyelids burn hot and wet with unexpected tears.
They must have sensed this, because a moment later, I was in a cage of strong arms and chests. And I didn’t care about how improper it must look for the four of us to be embracing in the middle of the street…in broad daylight much less. I only cared about how, in that moment, I knew that people loved me and cared about me. I knew that no matter how I felt, I was never truly alone.
“We’re here. And we’re going to help,” someone said in my ear. Silas. I remembered other things he’d whispered in my ear, things he’d whispered just last night, and I shivered.
That’s my good Molly.
“You’re here for me?” I asked, my face still pressed into someone’s coat. Julian’s maybe.
“Of course,” Julian said in his graveled voice. “Castor told us about what that wretched man was planning to do, and knowing that he was also the one making you miserable with your company’s future…well, we are all grateful for the chance to put an end to him.”
I pulled back and gazed at them, and I was so glad they were here, and I was also so grateful that they’d come here as they did, to support me without a trace of pity or pride. They weren’t acting as if I were a damsel in distress—because truthfully, today wasn’t about me. It was about Birgit.
A fact which was underscored by Julian muttering something about stopping Cunningham before he could hurt another girl, and the way he said it—and the way the other men reacted—made it painfully clear to me that they didn’t know about my own history with Cunningham. There was no awkwardness, no shuffling feet or dodged gazes. I’d hidden my secret well.
Too well.
Suddenly, I was bursting with the need to tell them, to unload the burden I’d carried since I was fourteen. I wanted them to know exactly how terrible he was, how hurtful, but when I opened my mouth and looked up to their warm, compassionate faces, I couldn’t. I couldn’t say the words.
“We are meeting Mr. van der Sant for dinner,” Julian said, oblivious to my aborted attempt at confession. “And that’s when we will bring him upstairs. The girl knows what she needs to say?”
I nodded. “Yes, we’ve spoken. She knows what to do.”
Silas was staring hard at me, and I realized that while Castor and Julian hadn’t noticed my small hesitation after the hug, Silas did. I flushed, both with shame and the pressure of his gaze, which was hot and heavy and stirring.
Stop it, I chastised myself. You left him alone this morning. You were the one who walked away. You can’t have him now.
But I wanted him. I always forgot how powerfully his presence affected me, his tall frame and his lean body and his dimpled grin. I forgot how much my body could remember, how it could feel every kiss and every caress…
I ground my teeth together and willed my desire under control.
“We should go,” the Baron said, consulting his pocket watch. “Molly, we will see you in a couple hours.”
“You gentlemen go in,” Silas said. “I’m going to make sure Molly gets up to her room without any issue.”
Julian and Castor made their goodbyes and then trotted up the steps to the front door of the club, disappearing into its gloomy depths. Silas turned back to me, his cerulean eyes appraising.
“We should go in the back,” he said quietly, and I agreed. He knew that we couldn’t be seen intimately together, not by influential club members and certainly not in Cunningham’s own club. Not while my contract with his cousin Hugh was still in place.
I let Silas guide me, trying to control my breathing as his hand firmly grasped my elbow—a gesture that reminded me of the way he’d touched me last night, of his hand wrapped around my jaw as he had ejaculated on my face. I followed him as meekly as a lamb. As I never followed anyone, ever. Not even my own father, who’d dragged me to Liverpool kicking and screaming the entire way.
This was what Silas did to me now. He melted me, molded me, and it made me happier and more content than I’d ever been.
But what did that say about me? Was I not truly the fierce and independent warrior I’d always imagined myself to be? Was I something more domesticated? Something weaker?
It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. You will never be with him again.
Except the way he led me now, so assertively around the back of the building and through the kitchen entrance, as if he were leading me to a bed and not just a bedroom…well, my cunt responded exactly as my head couldn’t. With undisguised want. With complete and utter acceptance and surrender.
Maybe Silas could sense this, because he didn’t let go of me as we walked into the room that the Baron had arranged for us tonight. Instead he closed the door and backed me against the wall, slowly, like a predator cornering its prey.
And then his hands were on either side of me, caging me in, trapping me. My chin tilted up, not in defiance, but in a primally submissive move to expose my throat. He let out a long hissing breath. “You left me,” he accused.
“You knew I would,” I whispered.
His expression shifted into something harder. “Yes. I did know. That didn’t make it any easier to wake up to an empty bed.”
“Silas, I can’t—”
“Goddammit, Molly!” His hands slammed against the wall next to me, making me jump. But it wasn’t anger coursing through him, it was frustration, and I felt the same frustration, I felt it so much.
“It can’t be any other way.”
He leaned in, his blue eyes searching mine. “Not even if tonight takes care of Cunningham?”
I blinked. “Is that why you’re here? Because you thought this would end his power over the board?”
“Yes,” Silas said bluntly. “And because you needed to lure van der Sant here, and Julian and I were the best way to do that.”
I didn’t understand. “Why?”
Silas took a breath, as if wrestling with whether or not he wanted to explain something to me.
This hesitation stoked a fire in me. “Hurry the fuck up, Silas.”
This goaded him as I knew it would, and his eyes flashed. “Because, as of today, Julian and I are shareholders in van der Sant’s company.”
There was a kind of white noise in my mind as I tried to process this, a noise like wind and water and wheels on a smooth road. “You invested in his company?”
Silas nodded.
“But...how? Why?”
And now Silas stepped back, the authority and anger gone, replaced by something gentler, more urbane. He was retreating into his shell, a shell of charm and smiles that had kept him
safe for years. “It’s a long story,” he hedged, taking off his hat and running the brim through his fingers.
“Is it a long story that has something to do with me?” I asked, and even I could hear how dangerous my voice had gotten.
He hesitated.
“Silas,” I said in a low voice. “Be honest with me.”
“I’d never be anything but honest with you,” he said. “But I can’t tell you the truth right now.”
“So I’m right,” I said flatly. “Because it can’t be coincidence that you and Julian have decided to do business with the one company that is about to partner with mine.”
“We want to help,” Silas pleaded, stepping toward me again, but I dodged him.
“Don’t you see how terrible that is?” I said, crimson anger filling me, swirling against the inside of my mind like wine in a glass. “Every time somebody tries to help, I start to have hope. And every time that hope is crushed, it’s just a little bit worse. It’s just a little bit harder. And I can’t take it any more—the hope or the failure. I can only handle the certainty, no matter how grim it is.”
Silas stopped, his eyes closing for a moment. “That was exactly what Julian and I wanted to avoid.” He opened his eyes, and I saw that battle again in their depths, that struggle. There was something more he wasn’t telling me.
The crimson anger turned black.
“I am so sick of being treated like I can’t handle anything!” I cried.
Silas, understandably, looked at a loss. “But you just said you couldn’t handle—”
“Never mind what I said! Here’s what I want: I want you to treat me as you’ve always treated me—as an equal. And I want you to leave me alone. Stop interfering and stop trying to rescue me. I don’t need either one.”
“This is not about us trying to rescue you. Jesus fuck, Molly, stop being so goddamned combative for one minute.” Silas paced over to the mantle and back again, his long strides eating up the space in the room. He was so leonine, so masculine and animal all at once—loping and tall and powerful. I bit my lip against the sudden drop in my stomach as he turned and I could see the outline of his semi-hard cock against his trousers. Arguing with me was arousing him, and God, that thought would be enough to warm at least a thousand of the innumerable cold nights that awaited me after my wedding.
To hide my discomfiture, I lowered myself into the yellow velvet chair by the window. Outside, London settled into an early autumn evening, cool and cloudy, the street already clogged with hansom cabs and horses.
“We are trying to help because you are our friend. Because we care about you. I know your pride refuses to hear this, but at some point in your life, you will have to accept help when it is freely offered. Help that comes unattached to any sort of economic or emotional exchange, help that just is.”
“That’s called charity,” I told him sourly.
“And so what if it is? Are you so willing to hold on to this principle of independence that you won’t even consider something that could be beneficial to you and this company you care so much about? Is your pride worth that much?”
That wounded my pride—being called prideful. “I’ve sacrificed everything for this company,” I said. “Including my pride. Including my dignity and my self-worth—”
I broke off without meaning to, my throat suddenly too tight to speak, shame crawling over my skin like a swarm of insects.
He was over to me in an instant, dropping to his knees in front of me, his hat tumbling to the floor as he reached for me. His hands found mine, and I didn’t resist as he laced our fingers together. He still wore his gloves, and I looked down to study the contrast of my freckled wrists against the white leather.
“Tell me,” Silas said, ducking his head so I had to meet his eyes. They burned blue in the dim light, and I never wanted to look away. Except that shame that prickled and skittered over my skin…
“I saw it in your face outside,” he continued, his voice soft. “There’s something you haven’t told us—haven’t told me.”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I said. That was a truth that was easier to force out. The truth about the truth. “Except Birgit.”
I saw the moment understanding kindled in his eyes. The moment he absorbed the only reason I would tell Birgit my secret when I hadn’t told anyone else. The moment that his concern fused together with incandescent rage.
“When.” His affect was downward, making it not a question at all, making it an edict instead. I would tell him, that tone of voice said, and I would tell him now.
And somehow, his change of demeanor unstuck my throat. I couldn’t tell my grinning, happy Silas, but I could tell this stern, powerful man who’d spanked me, who’d fingered me in a ballroom, who’d come all over my face while growling harsh, depraved things to me. And somehow, the very idea that this domineering, almost cruel version of Silas, might think less of me because of what I’d done with Cunningham was ridiculous. I don’t know why I felt that way, just that something about the way he looked at me now—like he could see beyond my flesh and bone to the soul buried deeply within—told me that he saw me as something untainted and lovely. Something that was his.
“When I was fourteen,” I answered after a minute. “Not long after my fourteenth birthday.”
“Did he…” Silas’s jaw worked as he attempted to restrain his anger. “…Did he force you?”
I shook my head, my eyes hot with tears as I started from the beginning of the story. Not with tears of shame, but with tears of relief. I was finally, finally telling him about the burden I’d carried for a decade and a half. And as I told him, he held himself completely still, completely controlled, even though I could feel the tremor in his hands as he clutched mine harder and harder. As if to reassure himself—and me—that we were here together and I was safe and the things I was describing to him now were securely in the past.
After I finished, Silas took a minute. “I’ll kill him,” he said eventually, and the words were completely cold and completely calm.
I shivered.
“You can’t,” I said. “Can’t you see that I’ve thought endlessly about this? There’s no way to punish him for what he did. What he still does to me. He’s too powerful and my own reputation is too…murky…for me to be a reliable witness. All we can do is protect Birgit.” I took a deep breath and said out loud that darkest thought that haunted me. “It’s too late for me. He’s won. He’s defeated me, and he’s ruined me. I can’t purify myself, I can’t fix what he’s sullied. I’m tainted now.”
Silas pressed his lips together, the deep frown forbiddingly handsome on his face. “No,” he said. “I won’t hear any more words like that from you.” And then he tugged off a glove with his teeth, exposing his bare hand, which now slipped under my skirts.
“Silas,” I breathed, still unsteady from my confession. “We can’t…”
“I can’t touch you with intent to bring pleasure,” he interrupted. “This is not a touch to bring about pleasure. This is to remind you whom you belong to. Feel free to use your safe word.”
I should. I should use it because we couldn’t do this, but then his hand skated over my knee, following my stocking until it ended at the middle of my thigh. And then his fingers were brushing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, sliding up and toward my center…
My legs fell open of their own accord. Even though I knew I shouldn’t allow this, even though I knew Julian or the Baron or—God forbid—Martjin van der Sant could walk into this room at any moment…
“Whom do you belong to, Mary Margaret?” Silas asked.
Now his fingers were there, right there, the rough pads seeking out my entrance, and then he shoved two of them harshly inside. He was right, it wasn’t about pleasure, it was about possession, except the very nature of such a possessive act was inducing something very, very close to pleasure inside me. My legs widened as far as my skirt would allow, and I was now at the very edge of the chair, shamelessly rocking again
st his hand. Viola had gotten me off last night, but this is what I’d really wanted. Silas. His flesh, his fingers, his fury, as he jabbed his fingers in and out. It hurt so good, my toes curling from the sharp discomfort twined with intense pleasure.
“I said, whom do you belong to?” His voice was hoarse now, and I knew without looking that he was hard.
Just that thought made my mouth water. “You,” I confessed. “I belong to you.”
“Precisely so, Mary Margaret. And my Molly doesn’t get to talk about herself like that. My Molly knows that she’s not tainted, she knows that only that monster is to blame. My Molly knows that she belongs wholly and entirely to my love and that she’s worthy of every single second of it, and not despite of what happened. Because it’s part of your history and part of you, and I love every single part of you, wounded or otherwise.”
He’d lied, because now his thumb was rubbing hard against my clit, and he was going to make me come, even though it was forbidden and wrong and dangerous, he was still going to make me come.
“I want you to feel it all right now. All the shame and all the fear and all the hate, and I want you to let it all go. Give it to me, give yourself to me, and I will carry it all for you. For the rest of eternity or even just for a few minutes. Give it to me.”
Fire licked everywhere, at the soles of my feet and the insides of my palms and up my neck, but most of all at my core, which burned and flamed at his rough, demanding touch. He shifted, so that he had one foot planted on the floor, while the other knee stayed planted where it was, and his new stance exposed exactly how hard he was, how ready, and I could even see the wet spot on his trousers where he’d started leaking precum. I wished he would say fuck the contract and pull his cock out and shove it inside me. I wished he would throw me down and rut into me, press my face into the floor and fuck me until I forgot everything but him, him and his gigantic, perfect dick.
The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty Page 3
