The Seduction of Molly O'Flaherty by Sierra Simone Page A

split open with relief and also with so much shame, that he of all people should see me like this, that he of all people should bear witness to my weakness. My breath left my body in a jagged exhale and with it went my self-control; my tears returned with triple the force and I buried my face in my hands, desperate to hide all this messiness from him. All my messiness.
    “Molly?” I heard him ask, voice laced with concern and surprise. Quick footsteps, and then I felt him drop to his knees next to me, his hands in their cold gloves pulling at mine.
    “Sweetheart. Look at me,” he murmured.
    I couldn’t stop crying, so I just shook my head, the small movement making me dizzy again, because I couldn’t get enough air and I didn’t even want to try to get enough air. What was the point?
    He gently peeled back my hands and then the cool leather of his gloves pressed against my flushed cheeks and my feverish forehead. “Darling Molly,” he whispered. “My Molly. What is it?”
    His words were too tender and too kind, the starkest possible contrast to what Cunningham had just done to me, and some foolish part of my mind hissed that I didn’t deserve his lovely words, that if he knew what I’d just done, then he’d drop his hands in disgust and walk away. I sobbed even harder at this thought, the truth of it curling tendrils around me, into me, into my very soul.
    You don’t deserve him. And either way, he wouldn’t want you if he found out…
    “No, darling, I didn’t mean to make you cry harder,” Silas shushed, gathering me close. My face was pressed against the clean-smelling fabric of his morning jacket, my body cradled between his hard thighs, and he began to rock me back and forth. “You can tell me, lovely. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
    I shook my head again, the finely spun wool of his clothes abrading my cheeks as I did. I couldn’t tell Silas. I mean, I couldn’t tell anyone, but especially not him. Not after this last summer when I’d realized that the strange tightness in my chest whenever I thought of him, my preference for him and him alone when our friends played together, the surprising distance of the jealousy I felt toward Ivy Leavold—now Ivy Markham—when all these years, I’d assumed I was in love with Julian. It had all come to head when Silas and I had fucked on Julian’s parlor floor after introducing Ivy to our version of Blindman’s Bluff. I’d wanted to use him to show everybody that I didn’t care about Ivy, that I didn’t care about the obvious attachment Jules felt toward her, but in the middle of it all, I’d looked down at Silas, at his adoring blue eyes and his dimpled smile and wide shoulders, and it finally started to make sense. Somehow along the way, somewhere in our decade of friendship, I’d fallen in love with Silas. And I had no way to process that revelation; I’d thought that I’d loved Julian—everyone thought that. But what I felt for Silas was so much deeper, so much subtler, so much sweeter, and it scared me. I’d never felt that way about anyone before, ever .
    I’d done my absolute best to avoid him ever since that moment.
    But of course, he was here now, seeing me at my most pathetic, and there was no way to undo the damage this moment was doing. Even if he never found out about Cunningham, he would still walk away from this thinking I was weak and womanish, the kind of enervated female who sobbed and fainted at the slightest provocation.
    In fact, any moment now, he would let go of me and wish me a good day, and leave, grateful to get away from my chaotic emotions. I was sure of it.
    He didn’t.
    Instead, his arms moved around me and then I was lifted into his arms as he rose easily to his feet. His lips swept across my forehead in a chaste gesture that was so unusual for him, but so very Silas at the same time, and then he carried me upstairs, into the blue and gold sanctuary of my room, laying me on my bed. My tears started to slow