Текст книги "The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty"

Автор книги: Sierra Simone

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

The summer sun framed the Baron’s mansion in hues of sugar pink and deep orange, and music and laughter spilled out of every open window and door. The air already smelled like Molly, like something sweet and spiced all at once, like cloves and champagne. It smelled the way she tasted whenever I kissed her.

Or maybe I was losing my mind. After my interlude with Mercy yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about Molly in precisely the ways I had forbidden myself all those months ago. The silkiness of her inner thighs. The light, girlish trill of her laugh. The exacting, almost savage, way she went over the daily ledgers, pen in hand, striking out figures and numbers like a vengeful goddess of commerce.

I shook my head, scattering thoughts of her away from my mind like leaves before the wind. I’d visited the Baron for luncheon today, and he had mentioned the party and that he thought Molly might attend. I made my plan: I would go, make my business proposition and leave. No emotions, no touching. I would talk to her like I would talk to any other business acquaintance, and that would be the end of it.

Or so I thought. Because once I saw her, whirling in a cyclone of red curls and blue silk, cradled in Hugh’s arms—damned Hugh—all of my careful, emotionless plans vanished.

There were three things I promised myself this morning when I woke up.

One, that I would find a way to defeat the board’s ridiculous demands.

Two, that I would fuck someone tonight at the Baron’s party, and fuck them hard enough to forget the awful mess my carefully ordered life had become.

And three, number three, that today was the day I would finally fall out of love with Silas Cecil-Coke. Silas, the callous, unforgivable prick who’d cozened me into caring about him.

Fucking jackass.

But today, like every other day since Silas had fled the country, number three wasn’t going to happen. And number one wasn’t going to happen.

So I’d be damned if I was going to give up on number two. The night was still young.

The Baron—properly known as Castor, Lord Gravendon—had thrown a large party tonight for no particular reason that I could discern, other than that he enjoyed throwing them and that he was bored. And even though I had more or less avoided the Baron’s house since the fateful evening I’d discovered Silas buried to the hilt in Mercy Atworth, tonight I’d decided to make an appearance. After months of tense negotiating with the board, and weeks of would-be suitors flooding my parlor, all I wanted was a night of music and dancing and orgasms.

Was that so much for a girl to ask?

“You are pensive tonight,” Hugh remarked, placing a flute of champagne in my gloved hand. “Is anything the matter?”

Other than the fact that I must either lose my company or be sold into a loveless marriage?

It wasn’t my habit to lie, but Hugh had been one of my closest companions recently, and it was his polite attentions and willingness to listen to me rail against the board that had gotten me through these last few months. So I didn’t want to ruin his night with my bitterness.

“Only the usual,” I said, a bit dismissively, and took a short drink to hide my face.

A gloved finger came up and stroked my upper arm—bare in the sleeveless silk dress I wore. “We could go upstairs. I could help you relax.”

I turned to look at him—handsome, blond, and healthy in the sort of way that rich men look healthy, which is to say suntanned and muscular from travel and hunting. He’d come to London a few weeks before the board had laid down their edict and had been with me the entire time since. He was good-looking and loyal, and I came every time we had sex—what better traits could a man possess?

So why didn’t I want him tonight?

“Maybe later,” I evaded. “I’d like to dance some more.”

He hid his disappointment well. “Of course.”

I didn’t actually want to dance. I wanted to hold a man down and use his cock to drive away all the fears and worries of the day. I just didn’t know if I wanted Hugh to be that man, for whatever reason.

But once the band began playing a lively waltz, I felt like I needed to shore up my excuse. I set my glass down and put my hand on Hugh’s arm. “Shall we?”

He bowed and we drifted onto the floor, where he placed his hands awkwardly on my waist and shoulders. Though he was sure on a horse, he was not a very practiced dancer, and I could tell the activity bored him.

“Molly,” he said as we began turning in unison with the other dancers. “Have you given any thought to our conversation yesterday?”

Ah.

Yes.

I remember now.

This is the reason I don’t want to take him to bed tonight.

“I have,” I said carefully, keeping my eyes on the other dancers. The Baron was across the room, surveying the crowd, and I wished more than anything that I was next to him and not here talking with Hugh about the one thing I hated talking about.

“And?” Hugh prompted.

“And,” I sighed, “I’m still thinking about it.”

“What is there to think about?” His voice was friendly, but the words chafed me nonetheless.

“There’s a lot to think about,” I snapped. “This is my company, Hugh, and the rest of my life. Just because the board is forcing me to marry doesn’t mean that I will wed just anyone.”

We spun and stopped in time with the music, now side by side, and Hugh’s mouth was at my ear. “But I am hardly just anyone, am I?”

That, I had to concede. After all, if I had to marry, wouldn’t it be better to marry a friend? Someone I knew and didn’t mind sharing my body with? Hugh had money and connections, and adding those to the company would be a fantastic business maneuver. It was certainly better than marrying one of the mustachioed sops that kept calling on me at all hours of the day.

So why was I holding back?

“Is it Julian?” Hugh asked.

I glanced to him, confused for a moment. “Julian…Julian Markham?”

“What other Julian is there?” he asked impatiently.

“What does he have to do with anything?”

Hugh’s face pulled close to mine, so close that I could see the light from the chandeliers catching on his golden eyelashes. “Is he the reason you don’t want to marry me? Are you still in love with him?”

A year ago—what felt like a lifetime ago—I might have said yes. I might have thought about those long Amsterdam nights, those shady Vienna days—weeks and months going from Paris to Rome to Brussels and everywhere in between, Julian and me and our friends. I might have thought of Julian’s brooding features or the short growls he made as he came.

But the word love, the poetic, almost Biblical weight of it, revealed those faraway feelings for what they were—a schoolgirl’s obsession, though I had admittedly carried it long past my schoolgirl years.

I knew the truth, even if I tried to forget it: what I had felt in three days with Silas was infinitely more than I had felt in ten years with Julian.

“No, Hugh,” I said, meaning to sound dismissive, but instead sounding tired. “It’s not Julian.”

“Then who?” he demanded.

When had Hugh gotten so goddamned pushy? He’d only just made his sort-of proposal yesterday, and he had been the one to encourage me to take my time deciding, since there were still a few months left to the board’s deadline. Why did he feel the need to rush this all of a sudden?

I opened my mouth to deliver a sharp retort—a rebuke, really, because nobody talked to Molly O’Flaherty like that, least of all a potential husband—and then the dancers whirled, me along with them. The dance floor cleared into a pattern of even, straight rows, the kind of rows that meant you could look all the way across the ballroom and see the spectators standing at the edges.

See anybody standing at the edges.

Like, say, somebody tall, with dark hair and a dimpled smile. Somebody with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, both the shoulders and the waist hugged indecently well by a black tuxedo.

Blue eyes flicked to mine.

“Our babies would have blue eyes.”

A lone finger ran up the plane of my stomach, past my breasts, past my throat. Rested near my cheekbone.

“You think I want babies?”

That irresistible grin. “With me, you do.”

My satin heel caught against Hugh’s foot and I stumbled. “Fuck,” I swore under my breath, and then for good measure, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“What?” Hugh asked, helping me steady myself.

“Silas is here.”

Hugh’s shoulders grew stiff and his eyes narrowed. “Where?”

“At the far end of the ballroom.” I could no longer see Silas, but my heart thumped as if he were right next to me, as if he were touching me…tasting me. Every nerve ending, every pulse point lit on fire at the mere idea of his proximity, and oh God, I could hear his laugh now, that fucking contagious laugh. I knew how he would look laughing too, his eyebrows lifted slightly as if he were taken surprise at his own happiness, his teeth white and flashing, his dimples so deep and lickable.

“I have to go,” I said abruptly and pulled away from Hugh. Thankfully, he didn’t fight me, and we exited the dance floor. I was shaking with adrenaline and rage and—Mother Mary help me, lust.

Overpowering, flaming, burning, scorching lust.

Stop. Think.

But I couldn’t. I was too furious and too aroused, and the two sensations were so intertwined that I couldn’t begin to peel them apart. Because how dare he fucking come here, to England, how dare he show his face in this house again, the very house where he’d broken my heart? And how dare he look so delicious and tempting in his tailored tuxedo, laughing as if he hadn’t a care in the world? I wanted to scratch his back until it bled, I wanted to slap his face until my hand stung, I wanted him to pin my arms behind my back and bend me over and—

No.

Molly O’Flaherty didn’t let men bend her over. She didn’t let men fuck her—she fucked them, she rode them until she came and then she was done. And certainly she didn’t let Silas do either of those things. Not any more.

My feet moved where my mind could not—away from Silas. I pushed angrily through the crowd, finally emerging onto the wide steps leading down to the Baron’s garden, gulping the still-warm night air as if it were gin—which was something I desperately needed right now.

“Molly?” Hugh asked. “Would you like to leave?”

I braced my hands on the railing, looking out over the wide expanse of the Baron’s estate, low green grass studded with bursts of flowers and capped by a large hedge maze at the end. “No,” I said firmly. I didn’t bother pretending I was upset about something else; there wasn’t a fashionable soul in London who didn’t know what had happened between Silas and me last year, and that included my would-be suitors. “I was here first. I am not leaving because of him.”

“Well, you shouldn’t talk to him,” Hugh advised. “Let’s just avoid him for the rest of the night. And I can find out from the Baron how long he plans on staying in London.”

I hadn’t even thought that far ahead—that he must be staying here in London, that all of my regular haunts might be extra haunted.

And now he was making me feel like I needed to hide in my own city—damn him!

My anger crystallized into something hard and cool. “Thank you, Hugh,” I said calmly. “I so appreciate your thoughtfulness.”

He gave me a small smile, the kind that could easily be called smug.

I laid a hand on his forearm. “Do you mind getting me another drink? The dancing overheated me.”

“Of course.” He leaned in and kissed my cheek, a gesture that felt oddly proprietary. I clenched my teeth together but made no reaction until he walked away, and then I gave the flagstones one hard stomp under my dress, like a little girl throwing a tantrum.

I didn’t want to be kissed, I didn’t want to be coddled, I didn’t want to marry Hugh and I didn’t want Silas to be here. I stomped my foot one last time, shook my shoulders to rid myself of the rest of my anger, and then stepped back into the ballroom, my face schooled into a placid mask.

I would find Silas. I would tell him to leave. And that would be the end of it. The end of my thrumming pulse and the end of the balled need in the pit of my stomach.

The night had grown late enough that some of the more unique elements of the Baron’s parties were beginning to show. Skin uncovered, hair unbound. Dancing turning to kissing, kissing to fondling. I used to thrive in the midst of this, I used to be the princess of this scene, but now it merely irritated me. All these people basking in their frivolity, their escapism, and me stuck with my powerless, joyless future.

I pushed past them all until I reached the end of the ballroom, where I’d last seen Silas. I couldn’t find him, and for a moment, I thought perhaps he’d left, and my heart soared at the same time as it split apart and withered.

“—Provence is always beautiful, although not as beautiful as you, darling.”

I froze. And turned.

And right behind me, surrounded by a group of young tittering women that I didn’t know, was Silas.

From this vantage, I could see the way his dinner jacket stretched across his wide shoulders. The way it tapered into his lean hips, hips that had once dug into my thighs, hips that I had bitten and licked and tickled. I could see where the smooth skin of his neck met the dark brown of his hair. I could see the angle of his cheek as he turned to survey the dance floor. His cheek was dusted ever so faintly with stubble, which was unusual for him, and unfortunate for me, because it only highlighted those high cheekbones and the square-carved symmetry of his jaw.

I swallowed. It didn’t matter how square his jaw was or how delicious that neck would taste against my tongue. He was not welcome here.

I strode forward and touched his shoulder, opening my mouth to speak the words, but then he spun and his eyes were so goddamn blue. His eyebrows lifted as if he were about to grin that beautiful, terrible grin, and instead of speaking, I raised my hand and hit him across the face as hard as I could.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Molly slapped me. I deserved it, for one, and for another, the look we’d exchanged on the ballroom floor earlier had not boded well for our reunion. Not because she’d looked angry when our eyes met, but because she’d looked hurt.

What was surprising about the slap, however, was my reaction. I’d never been a man who’d liked things rough. I liked things pleasant and fun and easy. But in those three days I’d spent with Molly last year, something had happened. I had been fiercer and rougher with her than I had been with anyone ever before. And she—she had let me do things I would have never thought Molly O’Flaherty capable of letting be done to her.

And so when her palm sent fire stinging across my cheek, my dick thickened and my stomach tightened and something like a growl came out of my chest. And before I knew it, I was hauling her away from the crowd, my fingers wrapped around her wrist, the soles of her dancing shoes hissing against the polished wood as I pulled and she fought.

“Let go,” she snarled, and since we had reached my destination—a small curtained nook near the foyer—I obeyed.

She crammed herself into the corner, silk bunching around her legs, and I yanked the curtains shut.

“How dare you—” she started, and then I strode forward and sealed my mouth over hers, swallowing her words along with the sigh that followed, a sigh that was anger and pain and surrender all in one.

Her mouth tasted like champagne and cinnamon, her lips were soft—softer than I remembered—but warm. When I parted them, her tongue was a slide of silk and heat, a sensation that went straight to my cock. It throbbed for that tongue, for that hot mouth. It wanted to violate her…again and again and again.

Molly’s face tilted up to mine, exposing her throat, and I don’t know how my hand found it, just that it did. And my hand caressed the smooth white column of her neck before I cupped her nape to keep her face tight to my own.

She pulled back, gasping, her breaths forcing her tits against her corset. I was so fucking hard right then, I swore I could feel every beat of my pulse in my dick.

“Don’t touch me,” she managed, trying to catch her breath. Her pupils were wide black pools and her lips were swollen. I dropped my hand from her neck.

I had no idea why I had dragged her off like a caveman or why I’d felt the need to brand her with such a possessive kiss. It had come from some dark place inside of me that I was unfamiliar with, despite the fact I’d seen it last year when I’d been with Molly. It had laid dormant since, but now that I was with her again, now that I had those pert, small breasts in front of me and all that scarlet, silken hair, and that adorable smattering of freckles across her nose—it flared back to life, roaring.

Take her, it urged. Use her.

Love her.

I shook it off. Donned the charming Silas mask everyone knew and loved. “Darling, I am so sorry. I simply couldn’t help myself; you are such a rare vision tonight.” I grinned at her, reaching out to run my thumb along her lower lip, but she swatted me away.

“Don’t call me darling,” she spat. “And don’t pull that playboy shit on me. We both know better.”

The dark thing reared its head again. “We do know better, don’t we? How many times did you let me come in your ass, Mary Margaret O’Flaherty? And how many times on your face? How many times did you let me spank you until you were begging for more? Begging for me to ram my—”

“Stop,” she said, her voice shaking. Her jaw was set, but her eyes glittered, unshed tears turning the bright blue eyes into dark sapphires. “Just stop.”

I looked at her—really looked at her. At the delicate swoop of her nose and the fine china of her skin under her freckles. At the dark smudges under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well in months, and at the angular dip of her collarbone. At the frail curve of her shoulders.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said quietly, and the dark thing in me was pacing and angry. Not at her, but at myself. I felt the unaccountable urge to find some food and make her eat it in front of me. She’s your responsibility, the dark thing said. She is the woman you love, the woman you should be serving. The woman you should be doing everything in your power to care for.

I pushed the voice down, down and away from my mind. “Molly,” I tried again. “I’m so sorry. May we start over?”

She cleared her throat, not meeting my eyes. “I think you should leave.”

“Leave the Baron’s?”

She took a breath and then lifted her gaze, firm and still wet with tears. “No. Leave London.”

Something jagged sliced through my chest. Jagged and cold.

“We ended badly,” she continued, “but I see now that it was for the best. You and me—what we had—it wasn’t real. It was only three days, and Silas, we know better than to believe in love. Whatever we said to each other, whatever we promised each other, it was delirium brought on by good sex and nothing more. And you did us both a favor by dispelling that delirium as quickly as possible.”

The cold, jagged slice went deeper. “Dispelling it by fucking Mercy, you mean,” I said hollowly.

She hesitated, her throat bobbing ever so slightly, a tiny tremor in her chin. “Yes,” she said after a minute. “By fucking Mercy.”

We stared at each other again.

“Molly—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t. Just—whatever you were here to prove, you’ve proven it, okay? And I wish that I could rage at you, I wish that I could rain hellfire on your head, but I can’t. Not tonight. You’ve won, Silas. Now take pity on me and leave. I have too much going on in my life to expend the effort it would take to hate you.”

I felt completely sliced in two now, bleeding and severed. I had done this, I had earned this apathetic defeated tone, with my own weakness and cowardice last year. But tonight wasn’t supposed to be about last year. It was supposed to be about a fresh start, a straightforward agreement.

Just say what you came here to say, you idiot. “Molly,” I said, as contritely and also as charmingly as I could. “I came here to help you. Not to fight you.”

She lifted an eyebrow. She didn’t believe me, which was fair, I supposed, given our history.

I went on. “Julian told me about the board and their decision to make you marry.”

She sighed, making a yes…and? gesture with her hand.

“And I came back from France because I want to help you.”

“Silas,” she said, “you can’t help. No one can. I’ve seen every solicitor in London and there’s nothing to be done. Their decision is in no way illegal. They have every right to sell their shares if they so choose, and even though using that to force me into marriage feels like blackmail, legally, it is not.”

“I wasn’t talking about solicitors, Mary Margaret,” I said softly. “I was talking about me. Me and you. I came here to marry you.”

Her mouth fell open into a small O, and the glimpse of her pearl-white teeth and pink tongue reminded me how stiff my erection still was, how much my skin still burned to touch hers.

“You want to marry me?” she asked disbelievingly. “Why?”

Because I love you.

Because I can’t stop thinking about you.

Because I’ve found heaven, and it’s you and your perfect mouth and your perfect pussy.

“Because I have a proposition for you,” I said, still friendly, still smiling, still all business. “I can marry you, so you can satisfy the board’s demands, and then I will never, ever interfere in your running of the company or allow the board to use me to coerce you in any way—even if we have to playact at me taking charge, I never will interfere. And then you give me what I want. A transaction. No emotions, no entanglements, simply an exchange.”

“Exchange? Exchange for what?” Her tone was still doubtful, still incredulous. I knew that what I was about to say next would not repair that in any way.

I gave her the most dimpled and handsome smile I could muster.

“For a child.”

Her skin went even paler than normal, chalk-white against the sandy ecru of her freckles. “A baby,” she said, her voice devoid of any affect or feeling. “A…child.”

“A human baby. Yes.”

She blinked. Stared at me. Like she’d never heard of babies before.

“You want a baby,” she said, her face slowly changing from flatly pale to flushed and suspicious. “You want to marry me so that…what? So that we have children together?”

“Yes.”

She spun on her heel, realized she was facing a wall and then spun back. “Have you gone mad?”

“It’s been a while since I checked, buttercup.”

She didn’t even crack a smile at my response. She stepped forward, her cheeks flaming scarlet. “Are you joking, then? Is this some sort of elaborate prank?”

“My offer is as serious as sin, Molly. I’m not insane and I’m not joking.”

She came closer, so close I could smell her again, spices and the clean, flowery smell of her hair. “Then how dare you,” she seethed. “How dare you come here after what you did and presume to think that I could ever—ever—entertain the idea of being bound to you. How dare you think that I would debase myself enough to marry you? To carry your fucking child?”

Her volume had risen with her color, and I was certain people on the other side of the curtain could hear her. She was magnificent right now, her hands balled into fists in her skirt, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, her slender frame visibly shaking with anger.

I hadn’t expected her to hit me and I hadn’t expected my very physical (and deeply wrong) response to her striking me—but this? This bone-rattling, blood-boiling rage?

This I had expected.

“I know we have a history—” I started.

“A history?” she shrieked. “A history? Is that what you call it? You told me you cared about me, Silas, you told me that you wanted me and me alone and that you were done being with other women. You saw me crying! I told you…” She faltered and trailed off, her gaze breaking away from mine, her thin arms wrapping themselves around her body. “I told you I loved you.”

She didn’t have to say any more. We both knew what had happened next.

“I won’t try to defend myself,” I said quietly. “I don’t have any reasons or excuses except that I’m a loathsome troll.” And that I was scared to death of the way that you made me feel.

Of the way you still make me feel.

“But I don’t think we should let this bad blood keep us from a mutually beneficial arrangement. You need a husband to appease the board, and I can be that husband, just for appearances’ sake. We won’t have to live as man and wife, and I won’t ever involve myself in your business. It will be like we aren’t even married, and then the board will have lost that particular bit of leverage over you.”

“We won’t have to live as man and wife…except you want a baby,” Molly pointed out. Irritation and hurt still laced her words. “So you’ll get to marry me and fuck me…and I am supposed to be grateful for it? For your charity?”

God, when she put it that way, it did sound terrible. “This isn’t charity, darling, this is a mutually beneficial business arrangement. You need a husband. I want a family.”

“And why do you want a family so badly, anyway?” she demanded, arms still crossed and eyebrow raised.

I didn’t have a ready answer to that, not because I couldn’t name all the reasons why I wanted one, but because it just seemed so…apparent. So obvious.

Who didn’t want a family?

Molly. That’s who.

I gestured to the curtain, where a chink in the fabric revealed a whirling tableau of dancing, drinking and sex. “Is this really all you want your life to be? Meaningless fucking and too much wine? You don’t ever think about your future—about settling down and being content? You don’t ever want to experience the kind of pure, unconditional love that comes with a family?”

She didn’t respond. But she was listening. I could see it in the alert way she followed my movements, the way her lips pressed together at my words.

I decided it was time to be even more honest. I had been thinking about this arrangement for a solid week now, and I had grown used to its unusual proportions and conditions. But I also appreciated that this was a lot for her to take in at once.

I stepped closer to her, expecting her to step back. But she didn’t; she stayed where she was, even when I got so close that I could feel my shoes brushing against her skirt.

“I look at Thomas and at Charlotte, I see the life they have, and I want that, Molly. I don’t want to be the playboy any more. I don’t want to fuck forgettable women and drink too much and let my years pass me by. I’m thirty-five, and I’m too old to ignore how empty I feel. I want more.”

The pulse jumped in her throat as her eyes flicked to mine. There was something there, something in those blue depths that reached out to me. A sympathy or an empathy or something—she knew how I felt. And maybe she felt the same way.

“And I know now,” I continued quietly, “that I don’t deserve to have the love of a woman. Not like Julian and Thomas have with their women. But maybe, just maybe, I can be a good father. Maybe I can have the rest, even if I can’t have the marital bliss.”

Her eyes closed for a moment, her dark red lashes resting against her cheek, and God, I wanted to touch her again. I wanted her to tell me that I was wrong, that I did deserve to have the love of a woman and that I could somehow work to deserve hers again.

I wanted it more than anything.

But instead, she opened her eyes and shook her head. “No, Silas. I will not be your womb for hire.”

Disappointment crashed heavy and cold into my stomach. I bit my lip and her gaze followed the motion. I was still hard, and the only thing I wanted more than her saying yes to my unconventional proposal was her saying yes to me lifting her skirts and devouring her pussy until she couldn’t stand anymore.

I didn’t pressure women into anything—proposals, sex, dancing, card games, anything—mostly because I’d never had to, but also because that wasn’t me. I liked being easygoing. I liked avoiding conflict. I had told myself on the way here that if she said no, I would simply have to bear it up and leave. That I would honor her wishes.

But now that I was here, staring at the long arch of her throat and the blood-colored hair running over one shoulder, at those blue eyes so sad and strong and tired, I couldn’t give up on her. I couldn’t let her go that easily. Even if I didn’t love her anymore, I had to face the fact that I wanted her. I had to face all the crass, caveman-like images wanting her conjured. I wanted her to be my mate, and the idea of another man claiming her instead made me see crimson splotches of rage.

I had to face it: no matter how wrong it was, I couldn’t give up on marrying her. Not yet.

“Am I allowed to try to change your mind?” I said, leaning in so that my lips were near her ear.

She shivered, goose bumps prickling along her shoulders and arms, and I smiled grimly to myself. She wanted me still. After everything.

“Answer me, darling. Am I allowed to persuade you to marry me?”

My lips were at the shell of her ear now, and I nipped at her earlobe, drawing my teeth along the soft skin there before replacing them with my tongue.

She let out a half sigh, half moan.

“Maybe,” she breathed, as I let my mouth wander down her neck, licking and savoring and sucking, her skin sweet and clean with the slightest hint of salt. It tasted better than I remembered, which made me think about the other things I had tasted and wanted to taste again. “Maybe,” she repeated and then gave a little gasp as I gently bit her throat.

Good.

“Give me a safe word, Molly.”

“W-what?” she stammered, and I loved that my mouth on her skin made her incoherent. Maybe I had a shot at winning her hand after all.

“Give me a safe word. A signal. And when you use it, I will stop, no questions asked.”

“We’re not having sex tonight,” she said, but she didn’t sound very sure of herself, and her addition of the word tonight… I noted that and continued kissing her neck, working my way over to the other side and kissing up to her jaw.

“It isn’t for sex. It’s for pursuit.”

She pulled back a little, her eyes narrowing as she tried to parse my meaning.

My hand found her skirts and I began pulling on the silk, lifting it up to her waist. “If I court you, if I try to marry you, I am going to use every dirty, filthy trick I know. If I try to win your hand, I am not going to play fair.” Skirts up, petticoats raised, I dropped my other hand to run up the outside of her thigh. And then the inside.