Free The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty by Sierra Simone Page B

guide her, to coax her, to force her to admit that she wanted me and only me and that nothing was worth letting us go.
    But I wouldn’t. Because I loved her, because I respected her, because I knew why her company was important to her. If she’d been any different, any less driven and fiercely independent, then she wouldn’t have been my Molly.
    She slid her hands up my stomach, resting them flat on my chest, and I felt her touch reverberate everywhere along my body. “I don’t want to marry Hugh,” she said. “I don’t want to spend another moment apart from you, and maybe it’s the gin talking, but damn the consequences. Damn the company. If that’s the price I have to pay to be your Molly, then I’ll pay it gladly.” Her eyes searched mine, sapphire in the low light of the ballroom. “I love you. I think, in a way, I always have. The night we met in Paris, do you remember?”
    Julian and I had brought her to our hotel room and fucked her together, him coming in her mouth and me coming inside of her. I definitely remembered.
    “We fell asleep together,” she continued. “You and me, snuggled close while Julian slept on the other side of the bed. It was the first time I’d ever slept with a lover—man or woman. Some part of me must have known, even then, that I was meant to be with you.”
    My grip on her tightened again, and I leaned in to kiss her. “I love you,” I said against her lips. “I love your mind and your cunt and that smile that hardly anyone ever gets to see.” She moved her lips to mine, but I pulled back ever so slightly. “I want to hear you say it again. Say that you choose me. Say it.”
    “I choose you.” It was a breath, just whispered syllables against my mouth, but those syllables meant everything. Having this, her choice, her apparent willingness to walk away from everything simply to be with me, wasn’t something I expected. And it wasn’t something I would have consciously wanted. But now I knew it was something I needed , confirmation that her yearning for me was as great as mine was for her.
    And the best part was yet to come. I pulled back. “Molly, I need to tell you something. And I know you’re going to be furious with me, but I just hope that when I explain why I did it, you’ll eventually forgive me.”
    She tensed in my arms.
    “Julian and I didn’t just invest in van der Sant’s company. We invested in yours too.”
    “What?”
    I kept going, before she could hoist her defenses any higher. “We knew there was a possibility even after you married Hugh that something could go awry with O’Flaherty Shipping, and we didn’t want you to be without allies inside the company. Together, Julian and I acquired about twenty percent of the shares.”
    Still tense and suspicious, I saw her retreat into her mind to run through the calculations. “So between the three of us, we have almost forty percent of the shares,” she said slowly. “Still less than half, but not an insignificant number.”
    I found her face with my hands, forcing her away from her mental ledger and back to me. “It won’t be easy if the other shareholders leave, Molly. But you could still salvage the company.”
    She worried her lip between her teeth. “Maybe. If van der Sant still agrees to partner with my company. And that’s a big ‘if,’ given what Cunningham did.”
    “Or we can sell everything and move to an Irish cottage by the sea. I will do whatever you want, Mary Margaret: if you want to leave and start fresh or stay here and fight. I will be by your side.”
    Her blue eyes seemed to melt, less sapphires now and more evening sky. “I know you would.”
    “So you’re not angry with me? For trying to ‘rescue’ you?”
    She gave me a rueful smile. “Not this time. But don’t make it a habit.”
    Relief rushed through me. Still holding on to her face, I demanded, “Say it one more time.”
    “I choose you.”
    I choose you.
    My dick was still half-hard from our