All this decided upon, I promptly fell asleep.
When I woke up, I had that heavy, groggy disorientation that comes with having slept either too much or too little. I was unable to tell if I’d been asleep for days or only for a few minutes, although the lamplight I was currently squinting against indicated it was still nighttime. I started to roll over to shutter the lamp, only to find myself impeded in some way that my sleep-fogged mind didn’t comprehend. The impediment turned out to be silk ropes, binding my wrists and ankles and securing them to the posts of the bedstead.
“They’re tied pretty well. In case you were thinking of struggling,” a voice observed.
I blinked once, hard, to clear my vision. “Castor?” What the fuck?
The Baron just smiled. He was sitting in an armchair by my bed, a book open on his lap. I glanced around—soft lamps, silk ropes, me still stark naked from when I’d undressed earlier. Was he planning what I thought he was planning? I’d been with a couple of men before, but never in the, uh, receptive capacity, and I wasn’t sure that tonight was the night I wanted to rectify that.
“Relax, Silas. I’m only here to be a witness.”
My brow furrowed. “A witness to what?”
He nodded towards the door, which had just clicked open, revealing a slender young woman in her middle twenties, a woman I recognized from a few of the parties at the Baron’s but whose name I didn’t know. She was as naked as I was, small-waisted and small-breasted. More arresting to me than her nudity was her dark red hair, unbound and tumbling down her back. If you had only seen Molly a handful of times, it would be easy to confuse the two, although this woman had brown eyes and no freckles and a very timid expression you’d never see on Molly’s face.
But that didn’t matter right now, because the only thing that mattered was that this woman was naked and walking towards me, and that I was naked and tied to a bed, and no fucking way could I stomach the idea of sex with a stranger right now. I yanked on the ties again, this time in earnest, growing more panicked as the Baron’s words proved true and the ropes refused to give.
“Castor, untie me,” I pleaded.
My loyal ally these many years, the man Julian and I saw as a mentor, shook his head.
“You are not my friend anymore,” I said, my voice tight as I tried to kick at the leg ties.
The Baron let out a loud laugh. “It’s for the best, Silas, I promise.”
The woman approached the bed and stood at the side, looking at me almost shyly. This gave me hope. If she was shy, then she might be nervous. If she was nervous, then maybe I could talk her into turning her pert little ass around and leaving the room. Leaving my bereaved heart and my soulless body alone. “Look,” I told her. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but it’s not true. I mean, it was true, but it’s not true right now. Or any more. I don’t want to have sex with you—I’m sure you’re a very nice person and you are very pretty, but I only want one person right now, and you’re not her. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
She cocked her head to the side, and then someone stepped out from behind the screen in the corner of the room.
Molly.
“Silas, I’m flattered,” she said with a small smile.
I sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Molly.”
She moved over to the bed, on the opposite side of her would-be doppelgänger, and everything about her was designed to send tendrils of heat through me. Jolting my heart awake and—more embarrassingly given my utter and complete nakedness—jolting my dick awake. She wore a dressing gown the same golden color of her dress earlier tonight, her furled nipples tight and hard under the thin silk. Her thick hair tangled and waved around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in a mass of glorious copper. Somehow, the mere suggestion of her naked form under that silk did far more for me than the overtly naked girl perched just on the other side of the bed.
“Come here,” I said, before I could stop myself. Before I could think about the painful way we parted, before I could think about her vengeful fiancé and his ridiculous contract. Before I could think about the other people in the room. I just wanted her close. I wanted her touching me, her cinnamon smell surrounding me, her hair tickling my face and chest.
She didn’t climb onto the bed with me, but instead raised her hand and ran her fingers from my wrist down to my chest, where she splayed her hand against my pectoral muscle. The warm pressure of her touch sent more blood to my groin, and now my desire was completely and utterly apparent.
But I didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck about anybody else in this room. I kept my gaze on my Molly.
“Come here,” I repeated.
She bit her lip. “I want to,” she whispered.
“But,” Castor interjected, standing from his chair, “we have a slightly unusual arrangement tonight.”
Molly nodded and her face cleared, as if the Baron’s voice had reminded her of something crucial. “What you said to me tonight…” She glanced up at Castor and the woman, and then back down to me, her expression uncomfortable. Molly didn’t like emotions and even less liked feeling them in front of other people. “I reacted poorly. And I want you to know what it meant to me, all the things you said…all the things you made me feel.”
“And this is how you wanted to show me?” I couldn’t help it—despite everything, I grinned. I mean, I was willing to forget all the heartache of tonight, if it ended where it looked like it was going to end. But then I remembered. “But what about Hugh? And the contract?”
She sighed. “Exactly.” Her fingers trailed down my chest to the ridges on my stomach, back and forth, back and forth, until she reached my navel. I hissed and my erection bobbed to full strength. But her hand went no farther. “I can’t show you the way I want to show you. But I looked at the contract, and there is a way around it.” She moved her hand from my stomach and I exhaled with disappointment. But then her hand was caressing my cheek and I turned into her touch.
“Castor is acting as a legal witness, because Hugh wouldn’t dare to contradict the word of another peer in court,” Molly continued. “And Viola is going to help us.”
“Help with what—shit.” A hot mouth closed over my cock, small and wet, and all I could see was that red hair moving over my pelvis. I tried to squirm away, and when that didn’t work, I tried to buck away, groaning in frustration and something worse.
“Shh,” Molly said, and she pressed her fingers against my lips. I stilled, but I didn’t shush.
“Molly, please don’t do this to me,” I beseeched her. “I fucking love you. I don’t want anyone else. Please don’t—dammit.” Viola had reached between my legs and was now gently toying with my balls. I was doing everything I could not to enjoy it, not to feel it; I thought the coldest, driest, dullest thoughts I could think of. I thought of Molly’s face when she’d walked in on Mercy and me, I thought of hearing her say Clare.
“Clare,” I said hopefully. “Clare?”
“Nice try,” she said and then she shoved her fingers in my mouth. Shit. That was hot.
“Just listen for a minute,” she said seriously, or at least as seriously as one can say something when one is shoving one’s fingers down someone’s throat. “I want to fuck you. I can’t. I want to suck you. I can’t. I can’t touch your cock, and a man definitely cannot touch any part of me ‘with intent to bring to satisfaction.’ But the contract says nothing about witnessing you perform sexual acts with someone else. It says nothing about me touching myself while you watch. And so here’s what’s going to happen tonight. You are going to do as I say, you are going to take what I want to give you and take it when I want to give it to you.”