Jealousy only made my dick harder. “Shit,” I hissed as she ran a palm over my length.
“And didn’t you fuck women in France?” Mercy asked. “What’s so different now?”
Because I’ve seen Molly again.
Because I’ve told her I want to marry her.
Because no matter how many women I fucked in France, I could never forget that Molly was the one I really wanted.
But the words had trouble making their way to my mouth. Because she was stroking and squeezing me, and it felt so goddamn good, and maybe, if I was a little honest, I wanted revenge in some way. I wanted to erase the image of Molly and Hugh together with the image of me coming in Mercy’s mouth.
She unbuttoned my trousers, and I raised my hips to work them down far enough to free my cock, and then there it was, veined and rigid, framed against Mercy’s beautiful face and luscious lips, and then all of a sudden, they were on me, around me, and my cock was in a bed of wet, hot suction.
My balls drew up, my body ready to release the intense ache I’d been carrying since I impaled Molly’s cunt on my fingers last night, but my heart was pounding in my chest—not the pleasant thud of impending climax, but the sickening thud of wrong wrong wrong.
I didn’t want this silky brunette between my thighs. I wanted my redhead, freckles and temper and voracious sexual appetite and all. And I didn’t want impersonal release. I wanted to soar with Molly, I wanted her blue eyes locked on mine as I came. I wanted to fall asleep wrapped around her slender body, and I wanted to wake up before she did so that I could pamper her with tea and breakfast.
I did love Molly.
And I didn’t want anybody else.
Oh my God. I didn’t want anybody else.
It was so obvious, so blatantly apparent, and yet I had missed it. I had blamed my unhappiness on a variety of reasons, blamed the lackluster sex on the women and my boredom, and all along repeated my mantra: I don’t love Molly O’Flaherty. But who crosses the Channel and tries to marry someone they don’t love?
“Mercy, stop,” I said. And when she didn’t, I placed my hands on either side of her head and lifted, my dick stone-hard and wet as her mouth left it.
“Mercy,” I said again, ignoring the voice that told me to stick my cock right back in her mouth and fuck her throat until this erection was finally vanquished. “I really like you. But I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
But she wasn’t listening to me. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was looking past my shoulder at the entryway to the parlor, her expression surprised, and then I turned my head to see Molly standing there.
I stood abruptly, which was an idiot move, since my cock was still out. It was still hard, and worse, still wet from Mercy’s mouth, and now on full display for Molly, who looked murderous.
Maybe murderous wasn’t the right word. She looked like she could obliterate worlds, like the Hindu god Shiva, and every self-preservation instinct I had told me to run away. I had no interest in once again testing the boxing skills an impoverished Molly had learned as a girl in the gutters of Liverpool.
Instead, I buttoned myself up and walked towards her, debating what to do. After all, I’d told her when I’d proposed that we wouldn’t have to live as man and wife, and clearly since she was cavorting around with other men, she didn’t feel the need to prove her loyalty to any one person, so why should I? Our group had never been about sexual exclusivity. Even Julian had shared Ivy with our friends and me.
On the other hand, I had just realized something important, something huge, and it meant that I had betrayed her. I loved her and I let another woman put her mouth on me. Not just any woman, either. The woman who had driven us apart the first time.
Guilt crawled up my spine and lodged itself in my throat.
I stopped just short of striking distance, deciding on cautious honesty. “Molly, I can explain. But before anything else is said, you need to know that I—”
Hugh stepped out from behind her, and it was clear he’d been hovering out of sight the whole time. The pompous needledick.
“Silas,” he said, sliding an arm around Molly’s waist. “Fancy seeing you here. How’s your face feeling?”
I wanted to rip his throat out. “Marvelous. Look, it didn’t even bruise.” I tilted my jaw so he could see how little damage his punch had actually done.
He looked sour, and that give me the smallest micron of pleasure. I turned my attention back to Molly, trying not to notice the way Hugh’s fingers splayed against her rib cage, trying not to think about them going home together last night, trying not to think about her fucking him like I so wanted her to fuck me.
“Molly,” I tried again. “This—I know this looks bad. And it is bad, I’m not denying that, but I realized something when Mercy was…” I trailed off. Fuck. There was no way to have this conversation without completely driving home the fact that I’d been, once again, caught fooling around with Mercy Atworth.
Molly didn’t say anything to fill the silence, but she met my eyes, and what I saw there punched me in the chest. Pain and betrayal and rage, and the same deep, deep sadness I’d seen in her last year. The kind of hopeless despair that seemed so unlike her.
“Will you say something?” I pleaded. I was used to people talking to me, I was used to people smiling and laughing around me, and I had no idea how to handle this silence. This stone wall of O’Flaherty. Say something, you idiot. Make her laugh or make her blush or make her mad—anything is better than this silence.
I decided just to go for it. To just tell her. “Molly, I love you.”
If the words sounded grand and important in my head, if I imagined them accompanied to music like they were part of a Gilbert and Sullivan show, I would never admit it to another soul, because in reality they came out weak and defensive and a tad bit manipulative. They in no way sounded noble or heartfelt or even genuine—they sounded like a kid telling his parents he loved them to avoid a strapping.
Molly responded predictably; whatever despair had been there before was now entirely wiped out by a fierce anger. She stepped forward, and it was only with great courage that I held my ground, bracing myself for the inevitable strike. But she didn’t hit me. Instead, she leaned forward and said in a voice so low that I knew only I could hear it:
“Get. Out.”
“Molly—”
“Clare,” she seethed.
Clare.
Fuck.
With one last glance—a glance that was more like a glare on her end—I left.
I met Frederick Cunningham over lunch at the Cafe Royal. The venue was my choice, as it was primarily frequented by a younger, more fashionable set than Mr. Cunningham was likely used to, and I wanted him to feel out of place. I also wanted to meet him on familiar ground. Home territory.
I watched his face crease with distaste at the ornate pillars and brightly frescoed ceilings, and at the women dining beside men, all in a jostling swarm of Bohemians, journalists, and military officers.
Good.
The more unsettled he was, the more defensive he’d be. And defensive people often revealed their weaknesses.
I stood to shake Mr. Cunningham’s hand as he approached, and then we both sat down, him appraising the restaurant while I casually appraised him. Mid-forties, good-looking—if a little prettyish for a man. Undoubtedly wealthy, given the expensive cut of his suit and the fob watch gleaming under his jacket. But as I watched him condescendingly place his order and then sip tiny, Lilliputian sips from his wine glass, I deduced that whatever power he held came solely from his money and nowhere else. He didn’t possess an innate respect for his fellow man—which meant that underneath his arrogance, there was a deep-seated and unconscious insecurity. And nothing about his carriage or demeanor belied anything but bored derision. No intelligence, no perception, no idea of his own soft spots. No inherent strength of will.