My mind had no idea what was going on, but the moment her hands slid against the inside of my thighs, my cock leapt to happy attention, already half-hard just from her proximity alone. My body responded automatically in other ways—my legs spread to grant her better access and I trailed one finger down her neck. Goosebumps erupted across her skin.
“I want your burdens,” she said. “I want to help you carry the weight of them. I want to…” her eyes blazed in the dark. “I want to surrender to you. I want you to exorcise your grief on me, I want you to use me to feel better. I want you to fuck me while you’re angry, while you’re furious and hurt.”
“Even if I’m furious at you?”
“Especially then,” she confirmed in a husky voice that went straight to my dick.
She laid her head against my thigh, looking up at me. “I was wrong. In London. I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do, except stop everything from moving forward until I could figure out my own feelings. But when I got here, I realized that I didn’t need to figure anything else out but this: I love you. I want to be owned by you. As a woman and as a wife.”
Hope unfurled itself inside me, waving gentle tendrils of joy. But my voice remained distant and calm as I said, “You want me to own you?”
“Yes. And use me. Please.” She lowered her gaze. “I’m submitting to you right now. Not because you’ve tricked me into it or forced me into it, but because this is how I want our lives to be. I want to be yours. Please say yes.”
This was the first time she’d ever willingly and intentionally submitted to me, and the act was so incredibly erotic and also so poignantly sweet that I warred between kissing her and shoving the first ring I could find on her finger or wrapping my hand in her hair and fucking her mouth until I came all over those freckled cheeks and that insolent mouth.
I settled for something in between, because even though I wanted to do both of those things, I was also tired of being heartbroken over Molly O’Flaherty. I had to know she meant what she was saying.
“So you want me?” I asked her, a little sternly.
She nodded, eyes still down. Meek and demure. I liked this side of her, although I still wanted her fire and temper too. I would have both, I decided.
“Then you have to prove it.”
“Prove it?” she echoed, nervousness and excitement both evident in her tone.
“Stand up.”
With a questioning look at me, she obeyed. I stood as well and walked behind her, finding the buttons of her dress and slowly working them open.
“I never want you to change who you are outside in the world,” I told her as the back of her dress fell open and I slid it off her shoulders. “I love you and respect you as that woman. But right here, right now, you are nothing more than my plaything, you understand?” The petticoats unlaced, I yanked the dress and the petticoats savagely down to the ground, tossing them to the side once she’d timidly stepped out of them.
Now her corset, and she shivered as I pulled impatiently at the stays. “No thoughts,” I said in her ear as I worked. “No doubts. No fears or worries. Your only responsibility right now is to please me and to remember your safe word if things get to be too much. Understood?”
I saw her shoulders straighten as she nodded, as if an invisible weight had been lifted. I loved that seeming contradiction between submission and freedom. And I knew that’s what she needed, even if she couldn’t articulate it.
A place to be safe and cared for. A place to be unconditionally worshipped. A place to be her nakedest, rawest self.
Corset and chemise divested, she stood in only her stockings and heeled boots. “Bend over and brace your hands on the arms of the chair.”
With only the barest hesitation, she did as I asked.
“Worried someone will see you?” I asked as I unfastened my pants. I didn’t bother to undress myself any further, simply freeing my cock and fisting it as Molly bent at the waist and spread her legs.
Shit. If there was a more gorgeous sight than a redhead bent over and presenting her pussy for me, then I didn’t know what it was.
“I’m not worried,” came her voice. “If you want me to be seen, then I will be. If you don’t want me to be seen, then you’ll make sure it doesn’t happen. I trust you.”
Those words dug into me in the best sort of way, and I closed my eyes, pressing the flat of my palm against her spine. “Good,” I rasped. “It’s good that you trust me.”
Opening my eyes, I let go of my erection to cup her cunt. It was hot. So hot, and…
“So wet,” I managed, my erection now a thing of needy, insistent stone. I was so hard it hurt, so hard for her and that tight cunt, and it had been so long. And it was her fault that it had been so long. Angry lust, bitter arousal, took hold of me. “Have you been wet all this time, Molly?”
“Since you took my hand in the courtyard. Please, Silas.” She pressed back into my hand, seeking friction. “God, please touch me.”
My hand cracked against one smooth ass cheek. “That’s not how this works, buttercup. I use you, not the other way around. I’m so fucking angry with you right now, and I’m going to punish you until I’m satisfied you’ve learned your lesson.”
I could tell by the way she shuddered and her cunt grew hotter and more swollen that this idea aroused her immensely. Of course, we both knew, deep down, that my growling orders and dark assertions were coupled with the certain knowledge that I would make sure she had just as much pleasure (if not more) than me. That was the topsy-turvy beauty of dominance and submission, something Castor and Julian had tried to explain to me several times but I’d never really understood.
