I closed my eyes. Old Silas would have loved this. Old Silas had spent many nights with multiple women in various configurations, nights with one woman perched happily on his face while another perched happily…elsewhere. But New Silas wanted something different, New Silas wanted Molly and only Molly.

And it was so fucking unfair that Molly was doing this to me, making me respond to another woman when I only wanted her.

“Open your eyes,” Molly ordered. I did, keeping my gaze well away from Viola, and having something of a realization at the same time.

“Next time we do this,” I told Molly, “you’re going to be the one tied up. Next time we do this, I’m going to make you submit to whatever I want, even if it’s another man fucking you. What do you think about that?”

She didn’t answer, but the pink flush in her cheeks and the part of her lips betrayed her response.

I continued, “You’re doing this to stay in control, and it’s not going to work.”

“I’m doing this because of the contract,” Molly maintained.

“No, you’re doing this because if my hands were free, if it was just you and me in here, you know you wouldn’t leave this room as the same person. You know that nothing would be the same, and you can’t let go of that feeling of security and sameness right now, because everything else is so uncertain, everything else is changing, and your sense of self is all you have left.”

“Listen to him,” Castor said from his chair. “I think he’s right.”

Molly shook her head. “This isn’t about control, Silas.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “But maybe it is. Maybe, in spite of tying me up and watching another woman fuck me, you are still going to leave here changed. You are still going to leave here completely wrecked, thinking of me and of the effect I have on you, knowing that you can’t live without me.”

She leaned closer to me. “Is that a dare?”

“Are you scared that I’ll win?”

She rolled her eyes. “I never lose.”

“Bold words, Mary Margaret. Care to stake some money on that?”

“And how would we judge if I won?”

“I’ll be the judge,” the Baron chimed in.

“There you go,” I told her. “As impartial as they get.”

Finally, she just smiled and laughed. “And what would you like, Silas? Half my kingdom?”

“No. How about the price of a boat ticket?”

She stiffened, and I knew that she understood exactly what I meant.

“If I win, if you still can’t keep control of tonight, then you run away with me. Anywhere, France or America or Italy…I don’t care where. As long as we’re together.”

She bit her lip. “And if I win?”

“I’ll disappear. And leave you to your company and Hugh in peace.”

It was a risky gamble—for both of us. If she agreed, she could lose her company. Or I could lose her. Of course, we both knew it was only a game, that I would never press her to leave her company behind if she didn’t want to. But either she felt supremely confident in her ability to dominate me or she secretly wanted to lose, because she looked at me and said simply, “Okay.”

“Good,” Silas said in a husky voice. “Let’s get started.”

God, looking at him like this—tied up, being serviced, his face full of frustrated lust and suppressed pleasure as he tried to fight off how good Viola was making him feel—I was wet just watching him. Did he really think he could top me from the bottom? Without being able to touch me? When I loved this so much, having him tied up and completely at my disposal to play with as I pleased?

And how much did he really think he had changed? I knew Silas, and Silas had never been the type to turn down sex when it was offered, and even though I now believed he really did love me, I also believed that he was a man through and through, and would be easy enough to tame. Like a cat with cream or a dog with a bone from the kitchen, I would tame him with Viola’s pussy.

“Look at this, Silas,” I purred, nudging Viola’s legs farther apart so that he could see how wet she was, just from playing with his cock. I’d chosen Viola mostly because she looked like me, but also because, despite her somewhat prudish upbringing in an austere town up North, she was a purely sexual creature, the kind whose arousal was uncomplicated and universal. She didn’t need to be in control and she didn’t need to have control taken from her, she didn’t need to be with a man or a woman—all she needed was sex, in any configuration. And Silas was a hell of a configuration; I couldn’t blame her for responding to his long, muscled form, stretched into tense and powerful lines.

Silas glanced over to Viola—victory, he listened to me!—and then glanced away, looking bored. Shit.

“I want to see yours,” he said. I don’t know how he did it, managing to sound growling and commanding and yet so cultivated at the same time, but however he did it, it sent chills down my spine, and I found myself obeying despite my earlier intention not to, climbing up on the bed and rising up on my knees. It will tease him more if you show him, I rationalized. It would rile him up, crack that veneer, and then I would win.

It’s just a game, I thought, a silly dare. It’s meaningless.

But it wasn’t meaningless, not really. It didn’t matter that the real world stakes might not apply when the sun came up, what mattered were the stakes now. Here, in this room, it was real. It did have meaning, and Silas was right—I had tied him up because I’d known that if I came to him and confessed my own feelings, told him the impact his confession had on me, then he would have laid such a devastatingly complete claim to me that nothing else would have mattered. I would have walked out of this room and surrendered my company happily, I would have said yes to Silas’s proposal, I would have given up everything because I would belong to Silas and not to myself.

I wasn’t ready for that.

Maybe I’d never be ready.

Except I wanted to be, deep down. Wasn’t that why I’d agreed to his silly dare? Because part of me wanted him to rise up and claim me, to take care of me—not with money or a house or a legitimate marriage even, but take care of me, my inner soul, my inner Mary Margaret O’Flaherty. I wanted there to be one place in my life where I didn’t have to be strong, one place where I was able to rest.

I spread my legs for Silas.

“You’re wet,” he rasped. I sensed his desire—his weakness—and decided to exploit it, grabbing Viola by the hips. Silas’s cock slid from her mouth with a wet pop, and she rose up, her face flushed and her lips swollen and pink from sucking Silas. I kissed those lips, softer and silkier than a man’s, and I reached up to stroke her breasts.

Silas did not bother to hide his interest.

Viola and I were on the same side of the bed, and it was easy for me to bend my head down and suckle her breasts. I fluttered my tongue against her nipple, and she arched her back, giving a little cry.

“So you can touch her?” Silas asked. “She can touch you?”

I straightened and pulled Viola in for a close embrace, pressing our bare stomachs together, squeezing our breasts against one another’s. Silas’s expression didn’t change, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw his rigid cock give a surge. He liked seeing Viola and me together. I noted that.

“The contract only says I can’t be touched by a man,” I clarified. It was a ridiculous oversight; as if sex between two women somehow carried less emotional or physical weight than sex between a man and a woman. But I supposed those were the narrow-minded men of England for you, even in our modern, industrial times. “I don’t think Hugh’s solicitors know our habits very well.”