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

somewhat as he bent down and rekindled the banked fire in the fireplace. A good fuck might make me feel better…
    I started to sit up to pull off my dress, and then Silas stood up and saw me. “No, love,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you. You lay back and stay still, and I’m going to make you feel better.” His voice was sweet and attentive, but there was something deeper in it that I’d never heard before, something about the words maybe, or something about the intensity in his gaze.
    Whatever it was, my body responded immediately. I lay back down and waited patiently, my tears still flowing, but quieter now, softer. Everything had a blurry sheen to it, blurry and slowed-down somehow, as if time had begun to run differently. I watched as he took off his jacket and unknotted his tie, and then tossed both into a nearby chair. His shirt collar hung open now, exposing the strong cords of his neck, the delectable curve of his Adam’s apple. He walked over to the bed and started unlacing my boots, and watching his long fingers easily manipulate the laces was so inexplicably erotic, or maybe it was the way he glanced up at me when I shifted on the bed, a stern glance as if he suspected I was about to disobey his request for me to stay still. Whatever it was, it pulled heat from my face down into my chest, deeper into my stomach, as he pulled off my shoes. As he wrung out a damp, cool cloth and began to sponge the tears off my face.
    I looked up at him, at those eyes with their sweeping eyelashes, at those slightly parted lips, at those cheekbones seemingly cut from stone, and he met my stare with a sweet smile, and it was too much, this intimacy without sex, this closeness and care without agenda. I looked away, my cheeks burning.
    Could he tell, I wondered, what strange, complicated feelings he inspired in me? Could he read everything in my eyes? Did he know that for the last six months, I could only come when I thought of him, did he know that I indulged in long, embarrassing fantasies about a future that could never exist?
    And if he did know, could he ever feel the same way?
    His fingers wrapped around my chin and rolled my face back to his. I resisted a little, but the motion was insistent, and when my eyes met his eyes, the combination of the authority and devotion there took my breath away. The cloth moved over my lips, dabbing gently, and it was as if he knew , knew that my mouth was the one place I needed to be cleaned right now, but also the place that his touch burned the worst, because having this man that I loved touch the place where Cunningham—
    I tried to turn my face away again, but then he bent over me and replaced the cloth with his lips.
    “Don’t move,” he whispered against my mouth. “Just let me have it.”
    Oh God.
    His kiss tasted like Silas—a clean, fresh taste with a hint of gin. And it felt so masculine—firm and warm and not too soft, determined and restrained all at once. I breathed in the breath that he breathed out, his parted lips just barely pressed to mine. No tongue, no motion, and normally if a man had his lips against mine, I’d take charge. I’d reach up and find his neck with my hand, and then I’d flip us over so that I was on top, driving the scene. But he’d immobilized me with nothing more than the firm authority in his tone and the blueness of his eyes, and so I stayed frozen as he brushed his lips against my mouth and then began nibbling on my jaw and throat, his hand sliding underneath my neck to tilt my head up and give him better access to what he wanted.
    And that’s exactly what it felt like, like he was taking what he wanted—kisses and bites and licks, as if he’d laid me out here simply to taste my skin and sample the hollows of my throat and upper lip. I’d never let men take what they wanted from me; I was the one who took what she wanted, but for some reason, this didn’t bother me right now. It didn’t bother me that someone looking in