and me, snuggled close while Julian slept on the other side of the bed. It was the first time I’d ever slept with a lover—man or woman. Some part of me must have known, even then, that I was meant to be with you.”
My grip on her tightened again, and I leaned in to kiss her. “I love you,” I said against her lips. “I love your mind and your cunt and that smile that hardly anyone ever gets to see.” She moved her lips to mine, but I pulled back ever so slightly. “I want to hear you say it again. Say that you choose me. Say it.”
“I choose you.” It was a breath, just whispered syllables against my mouth, but those syllables meant everything. Having this, her choice, her apparent willingness to walk away from everything simply to be with me, wasn’t something I expected. And it wasn’t something I would have consciously wanted. But now I knew it was something I needed, confirmation that her yearning for me was as great as mine was for her.
And the best part was yet to come. I pulled back. “Molly, I need to tell you something. And I know you’re going to be furious with me, but I just hope that when I explain why I did it, you’ll eventually forgive me.”
She tensed in my arms.
“Julian and I didn’t just invest in van der Sant’s company. We invested in yours too.”
“What?”
I kept going, before she could hoist her defenses any higher. “We knew there was a possibility even after you married Hugh that something could go awry with O’Flaherty Shipping, and we didn’t want you to be without allies inside the company. Together, Julian and I acquired about twenty percent of the shares.”
Still tense and suspicious, I saw her retreat into her mind to run through the calculations. “So between the three of us, we have almost forty percent of the shares,” she said slowly. “Still less than half, but not an insignificant number.”
I found her face with my hands, forcing her away from her mental ledger and back to me. “It won’t be easy if the other shareholders leave, Molly. But you could still salvage the company.”
She worried her lip between her teeth. “Maybe. If van der Sant still agrees to partner with my company. And that’s a big ‘if,’ given what Cunningham did.”
“Or we can sell everything and move to an Irish cottage by the sea. I will do whatever you want, Mary Margaret: if you want to leave and start fresh or stay here and fight. I will be by your side.”
Her blue eyes seemed to melt, less sapphires now and more evening sky. “I know you would.”
“So you’re not angry with me? For trying to ‘rescue’ you?”
She gave me a rueful smile. “Not this time. But don’t make it a habit.”
Relief rushed through me. Still holding on to her face, I demanded, “Say it one more time.”
“I choose you.”
I choose you.
My dick was still half-hard from our gin-flavored kisses, and now it was thickening again. For her. I angled her head to expose her neck, biting hard at the delicate skin there, moving down to her collarbone and shoulder, marking her with my teeth in the same bruising way she’d marked my heart.
“Mine,” I half-muttered, half-growled as I bit the tops of her breasts, which were pushed into firm swells by her corset. “Mine.”
“Yes,” she breathed, her fingers twining in my hair, and with a rumble deep inside my chest, I spun her around so that her back was to the window and I pushed her against it, lifting her onto the deep windowsill.
With no preamble, I started rucking up her skirt, and when I glanced up at her face, her sweet little mouth was parted into an O and her eyes had started to fall shut.
“People might see us,” I said, pushing back the layers of silk that separated us.
“I know,” she said raggedly, because my hands had just found the soft skin above her stockings.
“I hope they do see us.” My voice was savage. “I hope they see me fucking you. I hope they see as you come around my cock. Because then there can be no mistake. Molly O’Flaherty belongs to me. Only me.”
She nodded eagerly, a flush creeping up her chest, and I brushed against the wet, hot entrance between her legs. I’d meant what I said: I honestly didn’t care that this window was only half hidden. That if a partygoer somehow wandered to this seemingly abandoned corner, they would see the soon-to-be bride getting fucked by someone who wasn’t her fiancé. I didn’t care that this wasn’t the Baron’s, that most of these guests were part of London high society and were uninitiated into the libertine life Molly and I had led up until now. I didn’t care that they might be shocked. And while I did care about Molly’s reputation, I cared more about having her. Claiming her. Sealing our new understanding with a branding, scorching fuck.
“Spread your legs,” I ordered. “Spread them wide.”
I loved the way she shivered and exhaled when I used that voice, that voice that came so naturally around her. I loved the way she so quickly complied, my fierce fighting Molly, as if there was not a single part of her that could resist obeying me, even though in the other parts of her life, she obeyed no one.
I rubbed myself through my pants as I watched her—her low, silk heels braced against the sill, her white stockings clinging to her delicious legs, ending at the middle of her sweetly freckled thighs. And those perfect thighs opened to that even more perfect cunt, the legs and the cunt both framed by the spill of ruby red silk around her waist.
I squatted for a moment, bringing my face down to the level of her sex, and I leaned in for one taste—just one—licking from the soft place just above her ass all the way up to her clit. And then, unable to resist, I ran the tip of my tongue around the inner folds of her pussy, teasing it in and out of her as she squirmed. I wanted to consume her, drink her and eat her, breathe her and absorb her, and I promised myself soon—maybe even our wedding night, this stupidly romantic and hopeful part of me suggested—I would spend hours with my face between her legs doing just that.
