The Education of Ivy Leavold

by Sierra Simone

  Why was it that this particular act, more than anything else we’d done, seemed to require so much trust? Why did it seem like such a barrier? But I did trust him, and it was time for me to show it. I let my head drop as I felt him press against my anus.

  “I trust you,” I said.

  And without any further interlocution, he rammed his dick so far up my ass that I screamed. He didn’t gentle me or pet me like he had before, he didn’t tell me to be quiet, but he did grab hold of my waist with both hands as I tried to squirm away. My mind had gone blank, my lust had evaporated and all there could be was pain and invasion and the urge to flee.

  Flee.

  And then, out of nowhere: Bluebell.

  Bluebell to make it stop, to make the pain stop. But I couldn’t even speak; my breath had been driven from my chest, every part of my throat and mouth felt closed and suffocated, yet I was gasping for air, for relief.

  And Julian was fucking me all the while, fucking me so hard that his balls slapped against my sex every time he drove himself home. “Ivy, you are so goddamned tight,” he said over my whimpers and shrieks. “I wish you could see this, how your tight ass is gripping my cock as if it doesn’t want to let it go.”

  I was still trying to squirm away, and he was still restraining me as he plunged mercilessly into me, and then he said, “You’re crying,” and I realized I was. I was sobbing, with shuddering breaths and thick tears and no coherent or conscious thoughts in my mind.

  “Who is your teacher, Ivy Leavold?”

  The words came even though I could barely breathe. “You are.”

  “And do we leave our teachers? Do we walk away from them without so much as a goodbye?”

  The tears were dripping fast and wet onto the rug now, and my chin was quivering. I shook my head.

  Mr. Markham stabbed into me with a movement so brutal that I screamed again. “I didn’t hear you. Do we walk away from the one person who loves us most in this world without even a goodbye?”

  “No!” I cried out.

  “And why not?”

  I shook my head. It was too much. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even breathe.

  Another pitiless thrust. “I said, why not?”

  “Because…because you love me.”

  “Almost. Try again.”

  God, he was so deep. So deep in such a virgin part of me. And the pain—I found to my shock that it wasn’t quite pain anymore, although it wasn’t pleasure either. It was sensation, pure and simple, a stimulus that sent electricity to every nerve ending I had—even ones I’d never felt before. Something was kindling besides pain, something so primal, so strange and yet so familiar, and I couldn’t name it.

  “Try again.” His voice was a little softer now, though his motions were not.

  “Because,” I gasped. “Because I love you. Because I need you. Oh God, Julian, it hurts and it’s such a different hurt than I’ve ever felt, please, please stop.”

  He slowed and then stopped, his dick still buried completely in my ass. He curved his body over mine. “Say it again.”

  “Please stop?”

  I felt him shake his head. “You know I won’t stop unless you use our signal. No, the other thing you said. Say it again, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart. I felt a fresh wave of tears at that. He had never used such a tender word with me, not once in our affair. “I love you,” I repeated. “And I need you, Julian. I need you always.”

  He pressed his lips to the curve of my shoulder. And then stopped kissing me and simply rested his face there, breathing in the smell of my skin. “When I saw the ring on the table in your room, I thought my life had ended,” he said, and there was no trace of cruelty or anger in his voice, only a tangible, strangled pain. “I know that I must not cage you, but you must promise not to abandon me. If you need to leave, then you must at least give me a goodbye.”

  I won’t leave. But I didn’t say the words out loud, because even now, I couldn’t be sure that they were true. “I don’t want to leave you again,” I said instead.

  “You are still crying, my love.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I know. But you haven’t given our signal yet, which tells me that you still want me to teach you this lesson. And you’ve been such a good pupil, Ivy, so obedient and so willing. Will you trust me a little bit longer?”

  After a moment, I nodded slowly. The pain was slowly ebbing away the longer he stayed still, allowing that simmering sensation—the one I couldn’t name—to rise to a slow boil. I realized that my nipples were tight and hard, that wetness was dripping from my cunt.

  “I want you to relax again. Be my wildcat, be my kitten. Purr and arch and let me pet you. Give yourself entirely over to me right now. Yes, out in the world and in our marriage, you are your own woman, and I would not have it any other way. But in our bed, you are mine; your thoughts, your actions, your gasps and your moans. They are all mine and I would not have that any other way.”

  His words rolled over me, reassuring in their security, in the safety they represented. The safety I hadn’t known until today that I needed.

  “Yes,” I assented, and I relaxed, feeling everything in me loosen and sigh with relief. “Julian?”

  His hands tightened around me at the sound of his name. “Yes, wildcat?” His voice was husky and deep and he sounded near tears.

  “I am yours. Take me.”

  He held me with his strong arms as he rocked back, so that he was sitting on his heels and I was sitting on him, facing the fire, his cock still deep within me. His fingers found my lower lips and then delved in, curling up as his palm ground against my clit. I melted into him, the pleasure making me loosen, and he slid the tiniest fraction deeper into me.

  “That’s it,” he coaxed. “Good. Now I’m going to set you down and start fucking you again. And you have my permission to come.”

  He eased me forward and then helped me turn, so that I lay spread on my back. He slowly stroked in and out of me as he gently rubbed my clitoris, and the first jolt of true pleasure made me cry out.

  “What is it?” he asked kindly.

  “It…” I could barely speak, for that dark simmer had now erupted into something more intense than I’d ever felt before. “…It feels good.”

  “It’s going to feel even better when you come with my cock in your ass,” he promised. “Just stay with me. Feel me.”

  And I did feel him, every single inch of him, as he pulled out and pushed in. I was panting now, the past hour of denial catching up with me, my body demanding to orgasm even with this new type of pleasure that so closely resembled pain. Mr. Markham grabbed my bound hands and guided them to my swollen center, pressing my fingertips to my bud. “Rub yourself,” he commanded, and then he plunged two fingers into my cunt. I did as he ordered, watching his eyes grow darker and darker as he watched me—breasts moving, tied hands pleasuring myself, his shaft pistoning in and out of my virgin ass.

  “Keep rubbing,” he said, and then used both hands to take my hips. He began pounding hard and deep, but instead of crying out, I grunted and moaned like an animal, feeling a deep surge of pleasure every time he slammed himself home. My hands worked faster and faster on my clit, and then, on a particularly deep thrust, I felt my orgasm coalesce, a looming shape gathering form and strength. It would pull me under, I knew, and I resisted it, twisting sideways and pulling my hands up to my chest.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Julian growled, pressing my shoulder back into the rug. “I’m taking you with me.”

  He pressed close enough so that the hard muscle above his cock rubbed against my center, and he fucked me with short, fast thrusts that kneaded my clitoris while his cock stroked my ass. I was writhing uncontrollably now, and I no longer knew if I was writhing away or toward him, only that there was nothing left but the fire he had lit and continued to stoke, and everything in me felt so deliciously wound up, so deliciously full and hot, and I was going to come so hard.

&nbs
p; “That’s a good pet,” Mr. Markham said, still growling. “Come for me, sweetheart. I want to watch that pussy clench while I spill into your ass.”

  It came like a storm—like a hurricane—an unstoppable and devastating force of nature that could not be stayed or diminished. His words removed the last line of resistance, and with a flutter, my clit spasmed, and then my core clenched and released, and then wave after perfect, impossible wave roared through me. I was crying or I was screaming—I was too far gone to know which—but as I rode out the fury of my climax, I saw the naked lust in Julian’s eyes as he watched my cunt, watched it pulse and weep. He drove in hard and harder and even harder, until there was no knowing where he ended and I began. And with deep long pulses, he jetted hot bursts of cum into me, pressing in and grinding his dick into my channel with a primitive, cruel strength.

  It took minutes for my orgasm to fade, or perhaps it was hours, but when I came to, the fire was still popping merrily on the andiron and I was on Mr. Markham’s bare chest, wrapped securely in his arms.

  “Give me your left hand, wildcat.”

  I obeyed, every muscle limp and sated. I felt the cool metal of my engagement ring slide over my knuckles, and I sighed in pure contentment.

  “There.” His voice was a deep rumble below my ear. “You are mine again, are you not?”

  I nodded. I was irrevocably his, every square inch of me, no matter how hidden.

  “And I am yours, Ivy. If only you knew how much I am yours.”

  I nuzzled my face into his chest and let sleep drift over me, not realizing until I was almost past the threshold of unconsciousness that he was saying my name, over and over again, like a man chanting a prayer.

  Ivy. Ivy. Ivy.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been asleep until I awoke.

  Strong fingers were rubbing my back, my shoulders, my thighs, massaging a warm oil into my skin and kneading my sore muscles. My eyelashes fluttered open, making a soft whispering noise against the bedsheets. I was on my stomach in Mr. Markham’s bed, and everything I could feel ached—ached in a way that was so delicious and satisfying that it barely hurt at all.

  “Keep resting, wildcat,” Mr. Markham said, his hands now on my calves. “Let me take care of you.”

  “You already have,” I murmured into the bed, fighting the heaviness of sleep to stay awake. The clock on the mantelpiece indicated that it was late evening; I’d been asleep for a few hours at least. “Let me take care of you again.”

  I could almost hear the smile that I knew had to be on his face. “I know you want to. But I would also be a very bad teacher if I didn’t help my student recover from her lesson. Now this will hurt for just a moment, but then I promise it will make much of your pain go away.”

  And then I felt his fingers trail down my back, tracing the line of my tailbone as it curved into my ass and the sore, soft flesh between my legs. I tried to stir, my body shying away, but he kept one hand on my back. “Stay still for a moment,” he said, authority coloring his words. I stayed, but I couldn’t help squeezing my eyes shut as I felt more oil—a different kind, gauging by the temperature—slide down my skin. And then a single finger pressed against the tight entrance of my ass, pushing in slowly but forcefully. My breath caught—it hurt—and I tried not to cry out.

  “Shh,” Mr. Markham soothed, the hand on my back now gentling me, like I was a skittish horse. “Shh. Let me take care of you.”

  The finger worked in and out of me, and it was only after a minute or two of the tear-inducing pain, that I realized he wasn’t getting ready to fuck me again. He was coating me with oil, inside and out.

  “This will numb the pain significantly,” he said. “I promise.”

  And he was right. Within a handful of minutes, the raw pain faded, replaced with a tingling warmth.

  “Better?” he asked, climbing off the bed to wash his hands in the nearby basin.

  “Much,” I said.

  When he came back to me, he held a small glass of a reddish brown liquid. He helped me sit up and bade me to drink it, which I did, although it tasted terrible. He gave me cold water to wash the bitter taste out of my mouth.

  “Have you ever had laudanum?”

  I shook my head.

  He seemed a little surprised. “It will dull the pain and help you sleep, but it may make you sleep very deeply or with very vivid dreams. Don’t be frightened if that’s the case—I will be here with you.” He helped me settle back into the bed. “I must leave you for a time—I am expecting a visitor—but once I finish speaking with him, I promise I will be with you for the rest of the night.” He swept a tender kiss across my cheek and then left.

  I wished he would stay, but at the same time, I was happy to have a moment to myself, not because I wanted to be away from him necessarily, but because I still needed to process the events of today. The running, the catching, the fucking. All of it, so full of love and turmoil and pain.

  Had I known that Mr. Markham could be so barbaric? Surely I had—there was nothing about anything he did that led me to believe he was a gentle soul, deep down. But I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I had been genuinely frightened of him last night, genuinely trying to get away, mere seconds away from uttering our signal. He had hurt me—on purpose—had punished me and had been aroused by doing so. No gentleman did that. No gentleman grew rigid and thick at the thought of a woman sobbing underneath him.

  But Mr. Markham did.

  I rolled onto my side, watching the fire, feeling the pleasant burn of laudanum pumping through my veins, feeling the sweet ache in my pussy and the tingling numbness of other recovering parts. Why wasn’t I running away then? Why hadn’t I told him right after that it had been too much, too painful, and that I was leaving? Why did I want it to happen again?

  Did that mean something was wrong with me? Was I the truly twisted one in our engagement?

  The thought followed me as I spiraled down into sleep. The sleep was as thick as marsh mud, a gloppy clinging sleep that made me wakeful and fretful and sweaty. I twisted in the bed, sweet dreams of kisses and clouds morphing into visions of a frozen field, of Mr. Markham laughing over Violet’s corpse. Visions of him fucking her as violently as he had fucked me, visions of him fucking Molly, of him fucking Brightmore. It’s not real, I would manage to think as I clawed my way back to consciousness, but then I would tumble right back down into the nightmares.

  I dreamed I was in a cage, a circus cage, the walls made of iron bars and placed in the middle of a wide tent. There were faces in the crowd, faces I knew—Silas and Molly and Gideon and Helene and the others—and there was a cage next to me. Violet was inside, gripping the bars and staring at me with a tear-streaked face.

  Footsteps echoed, boots on the hard-packed dirt of the ground, and Mr. Markham came into view. I could see only his legs, long and firm, and a whip dangling at his side. I knew—somehow—that if I didn’t perform, if I was an unsatisfactory pet, that I would feel the whip. I looked at Violet, now sobbing, and I also knew that something worse than punishment might happen. If I disappointed Julian, would I be abandoned? Killed?

  Except—how disturbing—there was a part of me that craved this fear. In fact, it barely felt like fear at all because it was so energizing, so electrifying. God, what was wrong with me?

  The whip struck the ground and I jumped, starting to shudder with dread and excitement as the keys jingled. I was about to be let out. I would have to perform…

  I jolted awake, the sheets twisted tightly around me and sweat making my hair stick to my face. Adrenaline spiked through me and the laudanum made it impossible to think clearly, and I couldn’t tell whether the walls were made of stone or iron bars and I could hear the keys still jangling, jangling…

  But it was the clatter of hooves in the courtyard. Mr. Markham’s visitor.

  I decided to get up and get a drink, which I did, groggily and shakily, my hands and limbs feeling too weak to hold my glass. The laudanum. It worked well.
I leaned against the window, resting my tired head against the glass, as a small man with white hair climbed easily off his horse. Nobody came out to greet him, but a rectangle of yellow light cast on the dim driveway told me that the door was opened. The man strode right in, his posture respectable and polite but his steps determined.

  It was the man from the hotel in York. The one who had known my name.

  I made a decision despite the growing murkiness of my thoughts, pulling on the scarlet dressing gown and belting it tightly, moving to the door as quietly as I could. A thousand questions raced through my mind. Did Mr. Markham know this man? Had he known him when he’d seen him in York? And how did the man know me? And, above all, why hadn’t Mr. Markham told me that this visitor was the same person we’d seen in York?

  Was he trying to keep it a secret?

  But I only made it as far as the door before my knees grew too weak to support my weight. I held on to the door handle for a moment, trying to summon the strength to keep moving, but there was no hope. I’d taken more laudanum than I thought, perhaps, because I could feel the blackness at the edges of my vision, the tumbling of my thoughts growing erratic and dreamy, and I managed to find an armchair nearby before I collapsed and knew no more.

  It was morning when I woke—early morning, gauging by the rosy light filtering in through the curtains. I was no longer in the armchair but in bed, a long, muscled body pressed against mine. I was gathered in his arms, my face to his chest, and I could tell by his breathing that he was awake. Awake and unhappy.

  I tilted my head back to look up at him.

  “Good morning, wildcat.” A small smile curved on his lips. “You slept like the dead last night.”

  It had felt that way, although the lingering tendrils of nightmares still brushed at my mind—leering faces and whispered threats, Mrs. Brightmore’s scowl and Mrs. Harold’s honeyed voice, Molly’s sharp eyes and Julian’s rasping words. Cages and whips. Fear and lust and shadows. The prickling feeling of being watched by unseen eyes. If the dead dreamed, surely those were the kinds of dreams they had.