“Yes, wildcat, a dress code. It’s a masked party. And I might suggest that you avoid bringing your aunt.” And with that, I dropped a kiss on her forehead, lingering just a second longer than was appropriate to breathe in the flowers and soap smell of her hair.
Her mouth opened, as if she were sucking in a breath at my touch, and I could see her pink tongue behind those fuckable lips. And because I couldn’t help myself, I wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and whispered, “If you were still mine, my dick would be buried in that perfect mouth right now. If you were still mine, I’d bend you over the nearest chair and make all these guests watch as I ate your cunt and made you come in front of them like a little slut.”
She did gasp then, unconsciously moving to press her body to mine, her body no doubt remembering how I made good on all of my promises.
But I wouldn’t let her grind against me to seek relief. If she wanted it, she’d have to come and get it.
I bowed to her and then walked away.
He left me in the middle of the dance floor, in the middle of a dance, and for a minute, all I could do was stare after him, conscious only of the way his lips had felt against my skin, of his dirty, filthy words.
Like a little slut.
I shivered. I was, wasn’t I? Because, despite everything, I wanted to be his little slut still. If he had ordered me to my knees to suck him off right there on the ballroom floor, I would have.
But even though I could still see my Julian blazing in those green eyes and any fool could have sensed the naked desire sparking between us, he had never once actually slipped the bounds of propriety. His hands had never strayed and even his kiss had been chaste.
What was he doing?
And did I want him to stop?
Eventually, I became aware that I was blocking the path of other dancers, so I moved off the dance floor and back to the patio. I put my hands on the railing, and I remembered I still had that envelope in my hand. The Baron’s party. A party I shouldn’t bring my aunt to.
Curious, I started to open it.
“I wouldn’t go flashing that around if I were you,” Silas said, appearing from nowhere. He had a cigarette in one hand and a full champagne glass in the other. “This is for you,” he said. “You were looking a little flushed dancing with Markham out there. I thought maybe you were thirsty.”
I accepted the drink, although I didn’t tell him that the flush was from arousal and not exertion. He probably already knew.
He leaned against the railing, still smoking. “If people see you with that envelope, mark my words: there will be gossip. Not that everyone isn’t gossiping about you right now anyway, but it’s all good gossip so far. With that envelope, you will create a reputation that will be hard to undo.”
“Is the Baron that reviled?”
Silas nearly choked on his cigarette smoke. “Reviled? Hardly. The Baron’s parties are the most exclusive parties in London. Everyone is dying to get in, and so of course those that don’t get invited are bitter beyond belief. But it’s the bitterness of the jealous. Those same people pander to the Baron and his friends constantly in order to be included in one of his fetes.”
“Even though they know the parties he throws are not quite…proper?”
“It’s because of that. It’s London, Ivy, in the most exciting century to be alive. Why wouldn’t people want to have a little fun? And the Baron guards his parties and his guests’ privacy very carefully, so you can be assured that you can sit before the rector on Sunday without sweating.”
I tucked the envelope into my dress, still undecided about whether I would go or not. I wasn’t worried about my reputation so much as myself. If I went, would I find myself drawn to all the things I’d been trying to avoid? I knew I would.
Such temptation.
I turned to Silas. “What is Mr. Markham doing?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why is he being so…” I searched for the right word. “Well-behaved?”
“Are you complaining?”
My cunt still hummed with the need to be fucked, but my mind was mostly clear. Mr. Markham wanted me, but he was willing to do it on my terms. He was willing to keep himself apart from me. I could barely stand it, so I knew it had to be next to impossible for him. “I’m not complaining.”
“He loves you.”
“And I love him. But that doesn’t make us right for each other.”
“What does that even mean?”
I stared into the garden. “We don’t bring out the best in each other. And he has a lot of ‘not the best’ inside of him.”
“I suggest you examine your definition of ‘best,’ Ivy. Are you holding your relationship to your rubric or to the rubric you think you should have?”
I frowned.
“How fully do you want to live your life? With all parts of yourself awake and feeling? Or with only the parts that some people think are decent? Jules woke you up—all of you—and now you’re trying to go back to sleep. Do you really think that’s the wisest?” Silas took a final pull off his cigarette and then flicked it onto the ground. “I hope to see you at the Baron’s.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said faintly, turning his words over in my mind.
Was I really trying to go back to sleep?
The envelope burned a hole through my dress as Esther and I rode home. I was wrestling with this massive, planet-like question as we rolled through the London streets. Had Julian really woken me up? Was this a part of me that had always been around, simply waiting dormant for the right stimulus?
And if so, was it even possible to disown that part of myself?
“I heard the best gossip about your ex-fiancé today,” Esther confided.
My ears perked up, but my mind was still fumbling with these questions that Silas had raised, all while I felt impossibly conscious of the envelope poking my corset through my dress. The choice to embrace the wild, sensuous Ivy. It was literally pricking at me.
“Well, it’s not so much about him as about his first wife, Arabella Whitefield. Do you know of her?”
I thought of her sad-eyed miniature in the library. “Yes, I know of her.”
“One of the wealthiest families in Yorkshire. Anyway, apparently, her father Josiah Whitefield was quite the philanderer. Bastards sprinkled all over the North. And before he died, he was raising one of them in his house. Can you imagine? Poor Arabella. Growing up next to a bastard.”
Arabella had had much bigger problems, like being fatally ill, but I didn’t mention that to Esther. I just made a neutral noise, which she took as encouragement to keep talking. I mostly ignored her, now that I knew the gossip wasn’t about Mr. Markham, and debated about going to the party. Because it was a difficult debate. I wanted to go more than anything. And I didn’t want to be a spectator. I wanted Mr. Markham to fuck me there. I wanted mouths and hands on me. I wanted people to watch me and I wanted to watch other people while Mr. Markham’s face was between my legs.
But I shouldn’t want those things.
And there was the crux of the problem. Silas claimed that I was trying to force myself back to sleep, but I wasn’t sure. It was more like standing at the edge of a cliff and deciding whether or not to jump. Because with Mr. Markham, I couldn’t be sure if I would survive or be dashed against the rocks. And once I leapt, it wasn't something I could take back.
“…and after they died, the estate got sold off, and the bastard got shunted somewhere else without a cent. Isn’t that shocking?”
Esther had been talking this entire time. Reluctantly, I turned my attention to her. “It is sad to be sure. But shouldn’t Mr. Whitefield have provided for him in the will, if he truly wanted to protect him?”
Esther nodded vigorously. “But they say after Arabella died, he lost his senses with grief. He doted on her, you see. And so he died not soon after. Pneumonia, the doctors said, but really everyone knows it was of a broken heart.”
It was dark, so Esther couldn�
��t see me roll my eyes. “I don’t see what’s so shocking about the story. I just assume almost every man of stature has a bastard child somewhere.”
“You’re right,” Esther said. “But it’s our job to balance the unfairness of all this philandering with knowledge. Men may be free to do what they like without getting in trouble with the church or the courts, but a woman’s chief weapon is her tongue, and we can make sure no man escapes unscored by it.”
Sometimes I really liked Aunt Esther. “It’s a wonder you’re still unmarried,” I said, but I said it warmly, and she laughed.
“I simply haven’t met a man who can handle me yet, my dear. But when I do, then I’ll submit to the yoke immediately.”
In my mind, I was biting Ivy’s neck hard enough to make her cry out.
While I’d waited for Gareth to fetch my bluebells for the day, I’d constructed several perfect ways to punish my wildcat for running away. As I absent-mindedly squeezed and stroked myself through the fabric of my pants, I dreamed all these ways up like houses and lived in them fully, resisting the urge to pull out my dick and truly bring myself relief. I didn’t want it this way. I only wanted her.
I dreamed of things I would almost certainly do—tying her up, fucking her in the ass, wrapping one hand around that smooth column of a throat—and things I would never do. It was those things that had me desperate at the moment, the thoughts of things I had done with other women but that I would never be able to do with Ivy—not because they were anything but arousing to me or because I didn’t think she would enjoy it, but because I was so fiercely possessive of her that sharing every part of her, cunt included, would drive me to a jealousy so vicious that I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
But I lost myself in them now, picturing Ivy bent over a table and then tied that way, her legs spread and her sex exposed to anyone who wanted to see. I would let men I trusted—Silas, the Baron, Gideon—finally sample all of her. I’d watch them come inside her, I’d watch them take turns, I’d watch her face as the Baron thrust into her without a shred of mercy, and then I’d watch as she came apart with pleasure at the onslaught.
Fuck. Just the thought of using that many cocks to punish her was enough to make me nearly lose it in my pants, like a boy in school.
I took a deep breath and steered myself away from thoughts of my wildcat. Or at least thoughts of her naked. I was about to visit her, and when I did, I intended to honor my unspoken promise to court her properly, to win her back with the part of myself that wasn’t all darkness, if such a part existed. I would prove my devotion to Ivy by being the kind of man she didn’t think I could be. An honest one. A loving one.
But once I had her back, she’d better be prepared.
As I rode in the cab to her residence, I wondered if Ivy’s aunt would like me. Approve of me. Part of me didn’t care in the least, but the rational side of me knew that demonstrating the strength of my love for her would involve winning over her family as well. Her family of one.
As it turned out, she was the one waiting for me in the parlor when I arrived at her house that afternoon, and my stomach clenched upon entering, because for a moment, I thought I was looking at Violet. The same blue eyes, the same fair hair. The same fine features straight from a painting. But then she smiled, and I relaxed. Esther was no doppelgänger. Shorter and curvier, with a face much more disposed to happiness.
“Mr. Markham,” she greeted, not making to stand. “Ivy will be down shortly. She went to lie down after her meal.”
“Is she feeling well?”
Esther met my gaze with a frank expression. She may be a socialite, but she wasn’t a simpleton. “I think we both know the answer to that. Now, I assume those are for me?”
I offered her the bouquet of white roses that—yes—I had brought as a bribe for her regard.
“Thank you.” She examined them for a few seconds then dropped them on the couch next to her. “Now, have a seat, will you?”
I sat, leaning back and crossing my legs so that my ankle rested on my knee. I wasn’t nervous, but I was anxious. I wanted to see Ivy. I wanted to touch her. Every moment since I’d left the ball last night had felt like an hour, an eternity. All I wanted was to be home, with her in my bed and with the world far away.
“Did you murder my niece?”
The question was abrupt, but in a way, not unexpected. I knew what people thought of me, what Esther must have heard about me. In fact, I was almost grateful that she simply came out and asked, rather than letting her unspoken suspicions poison things between us.
“No, I didn’t kill Violet,” I said, looking her in the eye. “We were unhappy. And I was not the best husband I could have been to her because of that. But I didn’t kill her. The constables saw fit not—”
“We both know the constables would have thought twice before charging a man like you with murder, Mr. Markham,” Esther said coolly. “So I don’t care what they saw fit to do. But I do care if you are a dangerous man. Because as much as I’ve tried to persuade Ivy away from you, I see now that it’s likely to fail. And I need to know that she’s safe with you.”
“Let me make one thing clear,” I said, uncrossing my legs and leaning forward, pinning her with my eyes. “I am indeed a dangerous man. I am in no way safe. But I belong to Ivy Leavold as much as she belongs to me, and I will never, ever let any harm come to her.”
Esther swallowed, and I relaxed a bit, knowing the effect my direct stare often had on people.
“I didn’t kill Violet,” I repeated. “And while propriety and personal inclination force me not to name the circumstances, Ivy is aware of my alibi for that night and is satisfied of my innocence.”
“I see,” Esther said slowly.
I appraised her dispassionately, how her breathing had grown rapid and how she seemed unable to take her eyes off me. She responded to me in the way that Ivy had responded to me the first night I met her. She’s one of us, I thought. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Hell if I’d be the one to bring her into the fold—there was only one woman who could satisfy me now. But it may prove useful in winning back Ivy. Maybe she should come to the Baron’s party after all. The Baron himself was quite a fan of breaking in the newly converted—or those who didn’t even know they were converted yet.
“Miss Ivy Leavold,” a servant announced, startling Esther. I stood, turning, and as always, feeling my breath catch. Christ, this woman was beautiful.
She wore a blue dress—some pale color that set off her rich skin and glossy dark hair. That hair was bound up high, exposing the long elegant neck that I so loved to kiss, revealing the curve of her shoulders. For a moment, I lost myself in remembering what it felt like to push those shoulders down until she was kneeling in front of me. What it felt like to slide my cock past those soft lips…
I forced myself away from those perfect memories and stepped forward to kiss her hand. I didn’t let my lips linger on her skin, but from the shiver that passed through her at my touch, I knew I didn’t need to. I straightened and looked her in the eye. “Wildcat,” I whispered.
A wistful smile ghosted across her lips. “Julian,” she murmured.
God, what she did to me when she called me that. She had no idea, I knew. But she was the only woman who’d ever called me by my name—the only woman I’d ever allowed to call me by name. To other women, I had always been Mr. Markham or Jules or any other number of variations—all of which I encouraged. Let them think that informality and nicknames let them claim some sort of familiarity with me. They were wrong. But to me, there was something so intimate about hearing my Christian name from Ivy’s lips. Like she knew me. The real me. The real Julian.
Esther coughed politely and the moment dissolved.
“How about a stroll through Hyde Park?” I suggested, already reaching for Ivy’s hand again. “It’s a lovely day outside.”
Ivy quirked her head at me, that smile still tugging at her lips, and I knew she was wondering what I was doi
ng, what Julian Markham cared about taking a chaperoned walk through the park, why I was settling for chaste touches when we both knew that I’d rather have her on all fours panting in ecstasy.
It’s all for you, I wanted to tell her as I pressed my lips to her hand once more. Only for you.
The day was unseasonably warm and incredibly windy, the trees heavy with leaves about to turn, but I didn’t pay attention to anything other than Julian’s arm, ever so casually brushing against mine as we walked. Esther trailed behind us by several feet to give us privacy. I wasn’t sure what had transpired between her and Mr. Markham before I came downstairs, but Esther’s attitude toward Mr. Markham seemed quite altered. She had been very unhappy this morning when I told her that he would visit, but now…now she almost seemed to be encouraging us to spend time together.
“You look tired, Miss Leavold,” Mr. Markham said. “Are you feeling well?”
I looked up at him. His tie was knotted neatly around his neck and his face was freshly shaved. So different from the half-wild appearance he often had at Markham Hall. He was so perfectly handsome right now, but yet, I missed that wildness, I realized. This was how a man should look and should act when he was wooing a woman, but I wanted more. I craved more. I needed it.
And then I shook my head, trying to clear that thought away. No. Just because you need something doesn’t mean it’s right.
But I couldn’t keep myself from saying, “I am feeling better now that you’re with me.”
His eyes fairly smoldered then, and his hands twitched, as if he was holding himself back from something. From fucking me, probably, knowing him. The thought made me grin.
“I like seeing you smile, Ivy,” he said. “I wish I knew what was in that wild mind of yours.”
A gust of wind blew through the park before I could answer, blowing leaves off the branches, surrounding us in a miniature storm of emerald green. I stopped walking and closed my eyes, lifting my face to the sky.
The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) Page 4
