Oh, God. It was this Silas, and I was helpless against this Silas, numb or not numb. My newfound pseudo-peace as an automaton resigned to her fate slowly filtered away, replaced by a liquid warmth pouring into my core.
“But Hugh,” I protested weakly as Silas walked behind me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and tugged me deeper into the recess formed by the heavy, pleated curtains. “The contract.”
“They don’t matter any more,” he said sternly. “What matters is you giving me what I want.” One arm wrapped around my waist as his long fingers wound in my hair and yanked my head back. “What’s your safe word?”
I took a deep breath, almost unable to cope with the feeling of his body behind me, crushing up against my dress. Of his hands in my hair. Of his words at my ear.
If you acknowledge this, if you whisper your safe word, then you’re agreeing to submit to him…you’re agreeing to this.
I knew that if I kept up my protests, however weak they may be, that Silas wouldn’t cross the line. What had happened in The Hedgehog that night had been inspired by my confession, by my pain, and I knew he wouldn’t abet me in breaching my contract again.
But.
If I acknowledged my safe word, it was a very clear signal that I was willing to let him take me. It was also a concession that all the power rested with me. I alone would be responsible for stopping us before things went too far; it would be me who had to decide when to stop, not Silas’s sense of gentlemanly conduct.
I shouldn’t say anything. I should walk away. As tipsy as I was, as weary and tired as I was, I still knew the consequences of breaching my contract would be too disastrous to endure. If Hugh caught me—not an unlikely scenario, given that Silas and I were barely hidden in this obscenely crowded ballroom—then I could lose all rights to my company. And I couldn’t bear that. Not after I’d fought so hard and sacrificed so much.
But then Silas pressed me closer, his fingers moving from my hair to my neck, and I shivered, thrills skating across my skin. There was something so dangerous and primal about Silas’s fascination with my neck, as if he couldn’t help but test his strength against me, as if the feeling of my pulse beneath his fingers was the most potent aphrodisiac in the world.
“I asked you a question,” he growled in my ear.
I had to make a choice. Did I trust Silas? Did I want him? Did I love him enough to give him myself right now, so publicly, so dangerously? Or did I do what I’d done for the last year, and put the company first?
Always the company.
Fuck the company.
The thought came from nowhere, but it came as clear as a church bell through the cool morning air.
Fuck the company.
Hadn’t it taken enough? Hadn’t I given it everything—my time, my happiness, my future—and even still, it wasn’t secure? I would marry Hugh, but I only had a tentative verbal agreement that I would get to remain in charge of the company; if Hugh wanted, he could dismantle the company at a moment’s notice. Legally, as his wife, my life’s work would belong to him and I would have no recourse. Was that what Aiden O’Flaherty really would have wanted for his daughter?
No.
I chose Silas. I chose my future. Perhaps it was the gin or the warm press of his body or the feeling of his fingers just barely denting the skin of my throat, but everything in me rebelled against the bleak future I’d built for myself and clamored for something different. For the man I loved.
“Clare,” I said finally.
Clare.
So many meanings for such a small word. For her, it meant home and her mother and a future she could only dream of. And for me, it meant Molly. It meant her body under mine, my palm stinging against her ass, her blue eyes wide and dark as her body shuddered with a climax that I’d given her.
With my hand cupped around her throat, I felt her speak her next words more than I heard them.
“What did you say, Mary Margaret?” I murmured.
“You,” she repeated, louder this time. I loosened my grip so that she could turn in my arms and face me. “I choose you.”
My pulse sped up and my heart crashed against my ribs. Be cautious. Be sure. After what Molly had been through, I had to let her make this decision on her own. I wouldn’t push her, although I wanted to. I wanted to guide her, to coax her, to force her to admit that she wanted me and only me and that nothing was worth letting us go.
But I wouldn’t. Because I loved her, because I respected her, because I knew why her company was important to her. If she’d been any different, any less driven and fiercely independent, then she wouldn’t have been my Molly.
She slid her hands up my stomach, resting them flat on my chest, and I felt her touch reverberate everywhere along my body. “I don’t want to marry Hugh,” she said. “I don’t want to spend another moment apart from you, and maybe it’s the gin talking, but damn the consequences. Damn the company. If that’s the price I have to pay to be your Molly, then I’ll pay it gladly.” Her eyes searched mine, sapphire in the low light of the ballroom. “I love you. I think, in a way, I always have. The night we met in Paris, do you remember?”
Julian and I had brought her to our hotel room and fucked her together, him coming in her mouth and me coming inside of her. I definitely remembered.
“We fell asleep together,” she continued. “You
