“That’s it,” he said. “Isn’t it so much better this way? You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours. This cunt will be mine to fuck whenever I want.” He continued slowly for a few more strokes, holding me still while he drove me wild with his restrained but inexorable pace. “So tight,” he murmured, watching himself as he slid in and out. “So perfect.”
There was something rawly erotic about surrendering my life to him, almost more erotic than surrendering my body. Would he really do those things he said? Make me come in public? Make me suck him in front of other people? The thought wound my body tighter than a drum.
“Julian,” I said. Green eyes met mine. “Use me. Do those things you can’t show anybody else. Please.”
A flush crept up his neck. Without a word, he roughly flipped me over, so that my feet touched the carpet and I was bent over the table. He didn’t miss a beat, just buried his dick in me again, a hand wrapped around my neck for leverage. This angle was so much deeper and his thrusts so much stronger that I realized I was making noises—mews, cries, moans—that were entirely out of my control. And then he slid a finger into a place I’d never imagined, and that deep place within me—the place Julian was now pounding repeatedly—surged at this new development. His finger moved, and I realized he was stroking himself from inside of me, using the pressure to make me tighter than ever.
His hand moved from my neck to my front, where he quickly found my swollen clitoris and began working it hard and fast. “I want to feel you come around me,” he told me, his voice near my ear. “I want you to squeeze my dick with everything you have.”
Between his driving cock, his fingers on my clit and the one working in my ass, I could feel it building, like a storm, heavy and unstoppable. In fact, it almost frightened me. Everything in me felt too tight, too taut, and I felt brittle, like I would shatter if I stood before the oncoming waves.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, and as the words came out, I realized they were about more than the pleasure threatening to break me.
“I know,” came the deep voice of my lover. “But I’m not. I’ll be right here with you.”
And then another finger pushed into my ass. I made another noise, impossibly close now.
“That’s it,” Mr. Markham encouraged, the circles on my clit growing relentlessly rough. “Show me how you can come.”
It started deep within me, near the head of Julian’s cock, the muscles spasming outward so hard that tears pricked at my eyelids. It ripped through my folds, through my clitoris, through my ass; it tore up through my chest and down to my legs, seizure after seizure, clench after clench, and my mind abruptly switched to blackness, my only focus on the soaring surf that took my body. I was bucking my hips, trying to grind myself back into Julian and I was only distantly aware of the wild noises I was making.
Bit by bit, the waves subsided, leaving me breathless and quivering and acutely sensitive to the fingers and cock that still worked me. A second orgasm gathered itself within, whirling and swirling.
“I’m going to come inside you,” Mr. Markham said, his words breaking into a groan. “I’m going to fill you with my seed. And when you’re full of me, you’ll remember that it’s me you’re marrying, me you belong to, and me that you love.”
And then he gave a soft moan. “Yes, here it comes. Oh, God, Ivy. I love you so fucking much.”
A groan sawed out of his mouth and I felt him pulse hard inside of me, a never-ending heat and throb, and my body responded in kind. My second climax came at that moment, softer and milder than the first, but strong enough to milk him, strong enough to make me cry out again.
He was still coming, thrusting and panting, and then with a shudder, everything about him stilled. We stayed like that for a moment, his fingers and cock still buried inside of me, our limbs limp and sated, my mind slowly flickering back into conscious thought.
He abruptly pulled out and flipped me over onto my back. He spread my legs with his hands, stepping back like an artist examining his work. I once again propped myself on my elbows, and I could see his cock, still glistening and erect, the occasional aftershock still making it jerk.
He used a finger to probe my entrance. “I wish you could see this, Ivy,” he said. “It’s beautiful. My cum spilling out of you. I want you to walk around every day like this, with my seed in your cunt, so that you will belong to me even if I’m not with you. Every day.”
“Every day,” I repeated, my voice hoarse from screaming and grunting.
He buttoned himself up, gathered a blanket from beside the sofa, and gently wrapped me in it. Once I was safely in his arms, he grabbed the shredded remains of my dress and carried me up to his bed, where he unlaced my corset and put me between the sheets.
“Can you promise me something, wildcat?” he asked, laying down next to me. “As my future wife?”
“Mmm?” The sheets were so soft.
His fingers touched my hair. “Promise me that you’ll never ask me about Violet’s death. About the night before it happened. Please.”
“Why?” I managed to say. It was such a strange request, maybe even a disturbing one, but my mind was so heavy, so tired, and my soul was still singing.
His arms tightened around me. “Just promise.”
If I had been fully awake and not fresh from being fucked senseless, then I would have been alarmed at this. Alarmed at the deliberateness with which he had waited until I was at my most vulnerable, my drowsiest. I would have wondered what he wanted to keep secret and why.
But I wasn’t fully awake or fully aware—and maybe even if I had been, I would have promised anyway. Because I loved him. Because I wanted him to keep loving me. Because I didn’t want anything to keep us from each other.
And I didn’t want to believe that he could have killed Violet. His secret was something else, surely. He was ashamed that they had fought that night. He had said things he now regretted. It couldn’t be anything graver than that. I refused to let it be.
“I promise,” I murmured sleepily. I meant to say something else, about how I trusted him no matter what, but my mind seemed unable to compute even basic thoughts. Instead, I kissed his fingers as he brushed the hair away from my face, and I fell into a deep slumber as the worries rattled in their small boxes deep into my dreams.
I woke from sleeping like a tree wakes from winter, unfurling my limbs and stretching, feeling promise and contentment in the future, though I did not know exactly why.
I rolled my face into the pillow, unbelievably soft, unfamiliar, and then my other senses came to life. I smelled the grass and sunshine smell of Mr. Markham, I saw the richly embroidered hangings above the bed, I felt the delicious twinges from bruises both inside and out—bruises I had begged for the night previous.
And then it came to me, all of the memories, all of the decisions, everything from last night: I had agreed to marry Mr. Markham. I had said yes.
I became aware of another presence in the room, and I looked over to see Mr. Markham sitting in a chair across the room from the bed, his long legs stretched out before him, his green eyes watching me like a predator watches prey. Intently. With ownership. But this observation didn’t frighten me. At least, it didn’t frighten me in the sort of way that would persuade me to avoid him. Rather, it electrified me.
He was wild and feral, like myself. We were the same—solitary animals forced into human skin.
I sat up and stretched some more, feeling muscles pull and complain in ways that recalled the way the carpet had felt under my toes as I was bent over a table.
Mr. Markham’s mouth twitched, as if he knew what I was thinking of. “Come here, Ivy,” he commanded.
I slid off the bed and walked toward him. I’d been put to bed completely naked and I remained that way, but I felt no shame. Indeed, I felt a sense of satisfaction at the way his eyes blazed at the sight of my bare breasts and hips. When I reached him, he issued another order. “Kneel.”
I obeyed without thinking. Whatever he
wanted, I wanted. One flesh. Wasn’t that the wedding vow? We would be one flesh. And flesh cannot doubt itself. Flesh cannot deny itself.
“Good girl.” He stroked my tousled hair. “You know, I half-expected you to vanish in the night. To evanesce away like a phantom. Or a dream. I couldn’t fall asleep for fear that you wouldn’t be there when I woke.”
I turned my face into his hand. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
His eyes burned once more. “Yes. Yes, I’ll make quite sure of that.”
The boxes rattled in the back of my mind, the deep fears and the knowledge that I had buried, but I ignored them and instead pressed my lips to the inside of his palm.
He made a noise of approval. “You are still willing then, to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“And to have me teach you how to please me? And how to let me please you?”
“Yes.”
He unbuttoned his breeches, keeping his eyes pinned to mine, revealing his stiffening cock. Without warning, his hand was on the back of my head and he was feeding it into my mouth, forcing me to open, to take him as deeply as I could.
He groaned. “Fuck, Ivy. That mouth. It’s almost criminally good.”
I loved it. All of it. The salty taste of him as he slid against my tongue, the way I could smell soap lingering on the skin of his stomach, the groans issuing from his mouth. His hand on the back of my head as he drove the pace. The way he didn’t stop me when I used my fingers to caress him, to cup him, to dig into his thighs and hips and pull him closer to me.
“You are so eager to please. Look up at me—no, keep me inside your mouth as you do. Yes, that’s it.”
I kept my eyes up as I pleasured him, experimenting with flicks of the tongue and variations in suction, more aroused by his steady gaze and heavy, determined hand than I would have been by the enthusiasm and encouragement of any other man.
“You are so inexperienced, wildcat. I almost don’t want to teach you. There is something—ah yes—you are able to stoke me to impossible fire with your ignorant eagerness. Yes, just like that.”
I brought my hand to his shaft and began pumping him in time to my bobbing mouth.
“Yes,” he hissed, his eyes fluttering closed and his self-control finally ebbing away. “Suck it, pet. Suck hard.”
His cock swelled in my mouth, no longer flesh but stone, every vein and ridge as hard as marble. I expected him to ejaculate right then, wanted it even, but my head was tugged roughly back.
“Get your dress,” he growled. “Crawl to it.”
It took me a moment to remember the garb of green lawn that he had cut away last night, to remember that he had brought it upstairs with us. He released my hair and I crawled over to the bed, where I saw the ruined dress crumpled on the floor. My sex felt exposed as I crawled, exposed and wet and hungry, and when I cast a look over my shoulder, I saw Mr. Markham staring at me with a look so predatory it bordered on ferocious. I grabbed the dress, eager to get back to him, but stopped when I saw something under the bed. It was a small chest of rosy wood, bound with bright golden hardware. Inlaid into the side was more gold—swooping letters spelling out AW.
Arabella Whitefield.
It must have been her chest, and Mr. Markham must have saved it. Not only saved it, but stored it under his bed, as if he didn’t want anyone to find it. And the box gleamed and shone; it wasn’t dusty. It was dragged out frequently then, dragged out and its contents lovingly viewed and cataloged. My heart squeezed at this unexpected devotion he showed his first wife.
“I’m growing impatient,” he said darkly.
I turned away from the bed—and its tragic box—and brought the dress over to him, painfully aware of how tight my nipples were, how heavy my breasts felt as I crawled.
He sat still, as still and as composed as if he were at a formal dinner, his elbow braced on the arm of the chair and his head braced against his fingers as he watched me. But at formal dinners, men didn’t sit with their trousers open, their rigid dicks standing at attention, pre-cum glistening at the top. But even as it throbbed, even as I saw Mr. Markham’s pulse thrumming in his neck, he made no move to touch himself. He only watched, with hunger, as I presented my old dress to him.
“Spread your legs, Ivy,” he said.
I did, feeling the thick hand-knotted rug slide against my knees, feeling the cool air kissing the wetness along my center. The ache inside of me tripled, and then tripled again as Mr. Markham impatiently kicked my knees further apart. His cock pulsed, but still he refrained from touching it. I watched as a small droplet of pre-cum oozed down the silky underside of his dick, wanting nothing more than to lick it off, to lick him until he finally, finally, finally lost control.
“Not yet, wildcat,” he said, guessing at the look on my face. But I couldn’t look away from that part of him. It was so magnificent, so beautiful, and all I could feel was the emptiness in my cunt where it should be, stroking and rubbing me from the inside out. I wetted my lips and leaned forward and then my jaw was caught in his fingers, not bruisingly hard, but hard enough that a shiver of possession shuddered through me.
“I said, not yet.”
I tore my gaze away from his cock and met his eyes. They were as they always were—coolness warring with passion, pain warring with pleasure. Torture and guilt and shame, underscored by desires that he would never be able to deny himself.
Those eyes searched mine, asking questions and demanding answers.
Can I take from you?
Yes. Please, God, yes.
Satisfied, he let go of my jaw. “Are you wet?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Show me. Touch yourself.”
Without hesitation, I ran my fingers over my clit, sucking in my breath as I did. I was already so aroused, so swollen, that I knew it would only take a moment’s work to bring myself to climax. I pressed my fingers against it once more, circling and circling as hard and as fast as I could, my core already beginning to clench.
Mr. Markham caught my wrist in his hand. “No,” he said sternly. “This is not for you.”
My lips parted in surprise. He had, of course, denied me pleasure often in the past, but now that we were to be married, surely those obstacles that had held him back before were removed?
I should be upset, I realized. I should be furious. But God, that stern voice, that command. That implication that I was only here to be used, to be an instrument to bring him satisfaction.
It made me more aroused than ever. I trembled with the need for release, my nipples painfully peaked, my breath now shallow and panting.
“Put your fingers inside,” Mr. Markham said slowly, deliberately, as if talking to a servant. “Put them all the way in.”
I complied, unable to stop the small whimper that escaped me.
“Now pull them out.”
I moaned now, missing even the paltry stimulation of those two fingers.
“Hold them up so I can see.” He examined my fingers in the muted light, turning them this way and that, acting oblivious to the way I was spreading my legs even farther, trying to grind myself against my heel, the floor, anything. He sucked my fingers into his mouth, licking and voracious, and the sensation of his tongue flicking across my fingertips was enough to drive me mad.
He removed them from his mouth, but kept them pressed against his lips. “In my heaven, Ivy,” he said, “there is no food to eat, but only your pussy. When I taste you, I know that I’ve tasted salvation. Now place your hands on my knees. You are not allowed to touch yourself under any circumstances.”
“Please,” I croaked. “Mr. Markham, please.”
“Shh. Quiet. Watch.”
He took the dress and wrapped the soft fabric around himself. “This is where your tits were, Ivy. Where they were rubbing against the dress. Do you know that the night you came here, after we spoke, I came to this very room, to this very chair, and pulled out my cock? It was already hard—it had been hard from the moment I held you
r wrist in my hand and felt the delicate skin there. I could feel your pulse, your very lifeblood, so close to the surface as I held you.” His hand moved slowly up and down his shaft, rubbing the cotton against himself. The wide crest of his crown appeared and disappeared, and damn how I wanted it inside me.
“I couldn’t wait to get undressed or even take off my shoes. I unbuttoned my trousers only enough to free my dick and then I worked myself harder and faster than I have since I was a schoolboy. I wanted one of your dresses then to climax in. I wanted you to watch as I did it.”
His hand moved faster now, and I could hear the fabric rustling as it brushed against the chair and the wool of his pants. “I had to settle for my hand, of course, watching cum spill over onto my fingers and onto my waistcoat when I knew, even then, that it belonged in your cunt, on your tits, in your hair.”
My fingers were gripping his thighs so hard that I knew they’d leave marks. I also knew that he liked it, he liked it when I repaid his dominance with fierceness, when I submitted but with teeth and scratching and twisting.
“Watch now,” he said. “I’m going to come on this dress. I’m going to mark it. Destroy it. Because you are mine now. You wear the dresses I give you. You climax when I say you can.” His breath was ragged now, rough like unpolished granite, rough and lovely. “Say it,” he said. “Say that you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I breathed. “My body belongs to you. My pleasure belongs to you. Only you.”
His other hand caught my face once again. “Only me.”
“Only you, but please, I need—” My hands were already sliding off his legs. I couldn’t help it. I had to touch myself, had to. I was almost weeping with the agony of it.
Effortlessly, he grabbed both my wrists, his long fingers keeping them pinned together at his knee. His eyes glittered green with triumph. “Here it comes,” he growled. “Watch.”
And watch I did, as ejaculate spurted in thick, white ropes onto what used to be the most expensive dress I owned. He made no noise, his hips stayed still, his hand still a vise around my wrists. But he came hard and long and by the time he was done, my eyes were burning with tears and wet desire was beginning to slide coolly down my thighs.
The Education of Ivy Leavold Page 2
