My cock pressed against her entrance, her flesh parting as I pushed, until the head of my dick was buried. I braced my weight on my other hand and let up on the pressure on her throat, and then slowly slid in farther, hissing out a low breath as she took me in.

“So tight,” I groaned quietly. “So fucking tight.”

And then I slid in the rest of the way, buried to the root. I paused. Not because I wanted to draw out the moment for effect or because I wanted to give her time to adjust, but because I wanted to savor it. Savor her. I hadn’t been inside her for so many months.

“You feel perfect,” I told her. “You feel so fucking perfect. Your pussy was made for me, you know that? It was made for me to fuck.” I pulled out and thrust back in, and her back arched off the ground again. “Doesn’t that feel good? Doesn’t that feel so good?”

“So good,” she echoed, her hips wriggling in an effort to rub her clit against me. “So…oh.” I changed my angle and buried myself deeper, making sure that the base of my cock ground against her as I did.

“You like that?” I asked, leaning down so that my mouth was at her ear. I continued to thrust and grind, deep and hard and slow, the way women like it, pressing on her throat just enough that she was reminded of my hand there, of my strength and power over her. “You like it when I fuck you like this? How about when I fuck your ass? Do you remember how hard you’d come then?”

She nodded, her eyes closing, a flush creeping up her neck. She was getting close. And as much as I wanted to go over the edge with her, I wanted to watch her. I wanted to watch her come undone under my body, I wanted to watch her unravel and fall apart and drop her steely-strong mask, just for me. Only for me.

I pushed in and pressed down and squeezed, grinding and rubbing, and her mouth was open in a breathless moan and her eyes were pinned to mine, and then I released my grip on her throat. Her climax took her, seized her, tossing her about like a rag doll as the convulsions wracked through her. I could tell that she couldn’t breathe, hadn’t been able to catch her breath after I let go and her orgasm snatched her up, and so I watched her carefully as she finally came down, gulping in deep, desperate breaths.

“Oh my God,” she finally wheezed. “Oh my God, that was so good. That was…” She reached up and pressed a palm against my cheek. Her gaze was open and vulnerable. “Only you,” she finished, in a voice that was somehow both less and more than a whisper. “Only you make me feel like this.”

“I know,” I growled. “Because you’re mine.”

Something in her expression shuttered, and I frowned, but she wrapped her hands around my neck and pulled me close. “Come inside me, Silas,” she murmured. “I want to feel it.”

So I obeyed, my arms sliding around her back to cradle her as I thrust into her, burying my face into her neck and smelling the sweet, cinnamon smell of her skin. She was so beautiful and so perfect and I wanted to be like this forever, smelling her and feeling that tight silk grip around my cock forever. I wanted her to be my wife.

She said my name again, and that, along with the thought of her as my wife, did me in. It sent heat curling down my spine and into my cock, tightening and tensing until I was rutting mindlessly, groaning as it finally crashed over me, through me. I pulsed long jets of cum deep into her, so deep that that I could feel my hips digging into her inner thighs and my balls pressed against her ass. I dropped my head beside hers, my forehead resting on the grass, loving the feel of her body so slender and soft under mine, wishing I could keep her gathered in my arms forever.

After a minute or two, I withdrew and raised up onto my knees to look at her. Tousled red hair and rumpled silk skirts and her cunt still open to me. I used my thumb to open her to my gaze, wanting to beat my chest like a fucking caveman when I saw the glistening traces of my semen.

I bent forward and kissed her clit, gently and reverently, and then I layered worshipful kisses on the insides of her thighs, above the lines of her stockings.

“Marry me,” I said in between kisses. “Have my children. Be mine.”

She sighed, her body twitching with a suppressed giggle when I reached the back of her knee. I showed her no mercy then, nibbling and licking through the thin silk of her stockings, and fending off her arms as she sat up and tried to push me away from the ticklish skin. I tackled her back down, transferring all those nibbles and licks to her ear and her jaw and her lips, until her giggles turned into quiet moans, happy sounding inhales of surprise whenever I found a particularly sensitive spot.

“What do you say?” I asked, pausing my work to look down at her. “To marrying me?”

“Silas…” she said, trailing off. “We can’t. Besides…”

“Besides what, doll? Besides the fact that I love you?”

She met my eyes, and her gaze was sharp, perceptive. “No, Silas. I didn’t mean that. I meant besides the fact that you fucked Mercy—and you almost did it again—and I don’t think I can forgive you for that.”

Pain lanced through my chest. “Please tell me that’s not true,” I whispered. “Please tell me there is a way I can win your forgiveness.”

She struggled to sit up, and I let her, even though what I really wanted to do was pin her to the ground and kiss her until she relented. But I knew I didn’t deserve that right, I hadn’t earned it. It didn’t matter if I fucked Molly a thousand times, it was her mind and her heart that I wanted to possess, and so it was pointless to keep her here if she didn’t want to be kept.

“The truth is that I understand why you did it,” she said, now avoiding my eyes. “And maybe it could have been me, maybe it would have been me, because we’re so much the same, Silas. And we weren’t made for marrying or for children or for love. We enjoy fucking, we’re good at fucking, we’re both good with money and business—that is what we must content ourselves with.”

“I don’t want to be content with that,” I told her. “I want more. I want you.”

She stood up, arranging her skirts so that they hung straight down to the ground and when I reached out to help, she took a step farther back. “What I’m saying is that even though I can trust you with my body, I know I can’t trust you with my heart.” She studied the ground, as if it held all the answers, but even from this angle, I could glimpse the shine in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done this…this was a mistake.”

I scrambled to my feet, panic clawing at the base of my skull. I couldn’t lose her; she couldn’t walk away, not after what we had just shared.

“Molly…”

“I’m not going to say the safe word, Silas. I don’t need a safe word for a game I’m not playing.”

I drew in a ragged breath. Please play, I wanted to beg her. Please let me at least try to win you back.

She extended her hand, like she wanted me to shake it, but instead I took it in my own and kissed it, letting my lips linger there. Goose bumps raced up her arms, and when I straightened, a single tear had spilled out of her eye, falling slowly down one cheek. She let me pull her closer, and I wiped the tear away. “Don’t do this,” I said. “Don’t let Hugh win…don’t let the board win.”

She shook her head. “I am going to win, Silas. You think just because I let you spank me, I’m submissive? When have I ever been anything other than the mistress of my own life and the mistress of everyone around me? I control my life, I control what happens from here on out, and you aren’t man enough to wrestle the reins from me, so just give up.”

And with that, she was out of my arms and walking away, leaving me with her tears drying on my finger and a broken heart.