The Reclaiming of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 4) Page 2

  “I won’t ask again.”

  I stood unhappily, as he went and gathered my clothes. He dressed me then, and with a casualness that was almost cruel, he let his hands graze against my sensitive skin as he worked. His fingers brushed past my stiff nipples, lingered around my thighs, and after he laced my nursing corset tight, he grabbed me by the waist and pulled me into him, so that my back was pressed to his front, his erection grinding against my ass.

  He wrapped his fingers in my hair and yanked my head to one side, and then he bent forward and scored the skin there with his teeth, biting and sucking and nibbling from my ear to my collarbone until I was slumped against him, knees weak and panting hard.

  And just as quickly as it started, it stopped, his wicked mouth moving away from my neck. I whimpered again, but he paid me no mind, tugging a dress over my body and deftly wrapping my hair into an elaborate bun, which he quickly pinned up.

  “I have some business to attend to in Scarborough today, so I won’t be back until dinner,” he told me, stepping away and eyeing my form, as if to admire his handiwork. “Bessie Knope, the nurse, will be here shortly before dinner, and I’ve already directed our housekeeper to acquaint her with the house and George’s nursery when she arrives. All I require is that you be in the dining room at seven. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  He gave a short nod and grabbed his jacket from where it had been slung over the chair. He walked out of the room, pausing only to drop a tender, affectionate kiss on the sleeping George’s forehead, and then I was alone.

  Bessie Knope ended up being precisely the person I would have myself hired to take care of George. She was a plump, patient woman in her fifties, and when she took a squirming George into her arms and started crooning to him in a soft, playful voice, the pair bonded so quickly that I almost felt jealous. But any jealousy I might have felt was immediately quashed by the insatiable, unbearable lust that had dogged me all day. More than anything, I wanted Julian to come home, drag me into the library, and fuck me until I was too sore to walk.

  That’s not what happened.

  At seven, right after nursing George and handing him off to Bessie, I sat in the dining room, my heart pumping fast. I wanted Julian—I wanted Julian’s body—but I was also nervous. Wary. A little frightened of him even. And that made me want him all the more.

  But when he came in to the dining room, he came in with a packed basket of food and handed it to me, along with a pocket watch. I looked up at him, confused.

  “Your hour…or rather, my hour…tonight will be spent alone by the stream in the woods.”

  I blinked, still not understanding, and he smiled.

  “You have spent every waking and sleeping moment with George since the day he was born. But I remember a woman who longed for freedom, for the outdoors, for time to ramble and explore on her own. So tonight, you are your own dinner partner and your dining room is the forest you love so much. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “You don’t want…?”

  He took me by the hands and helped me up, pulling me tight to him. “What I want,” he said into my hair, his chest rumbling against my cheek, “is for you to do as I say before I spank your ass for disobedience. Now go.”

  Heat flared in my core at his words, but the stern expression on his face told me not to test him, at least not yet—although I’d be lying if I didn’t say a part of me wanted to. Wanted to say no, just to see what he’d do. Wanted to defy him right up to the moment he held me down and pushed his cock inside me.

  Then I heard a squawk from George—he and Bessie were in the parlor—and even though it was a happy squawk, it still brought everything else crashing down on me. The exhaustion, the exhilarating joy, the feeling like every nerve I had was scraped open and exposed. What was I thinking, gallivanting off for dinner by myself when I should be with my baby? Or if not with him, then attending to Julian’s neglected needs?

  My husband saw my hesitation, and a stormcloud came over his features. “Go,” he said, and his voice brooked no argument. I went.

  When I came back an hour later, Julian was reading the paper in the library while Bessie rocked a sleeping George nearby. I’d spent the first part of my hour away fretting and feeling guilty, but then the summer evening had been so sticky and hot that instinct had taken over and I’d gone for a long swim, and as I entered the library, I felt cooler and fresher than I had in weeks.

  Julian folded the paper down and looked over the top, smiling when he saw my wet hair, and then flipped the paper back up to continue reading. And later that night, after George was asleep, rather than let him stay curled next to me, I tucked him in his cradle and turned to Julian expectantly…only to find that he too was fast asleep.

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Would he be angry if I woke him up? Would he be angry if I took care of this need myself?

  But I didn’t want that. It wouldn’t be the same, not without him, not without his muscled form moving over me, driving into me. Not without his fingers twined in my hair and his low rasping voice in my ear.

  So instead I settled myself against the pillow and stared at him, for the moment content simply to run my fingers along his naked chest, to trace the perfect, stern profile of his face with my eyes. This man, this grim, brilliant, attentive man. What was his plan, sending me off by myself? How had he known that I would enjoy it so much?

  I fell asleep that way, staring at him, timing my own breaths to the slow measured rhythm of his and feeling more like myself than I had in a long while.

  The next few days passed in a similar fashion. I would wake up, nurse George, and then be dressed by my husband. He’d abandoned the casual touches of the first day, and now was shamelessly torturing me—rubbing my clit before he pulled on my stockings, tweaking my nipples before lacing up my corset. But again, at night, rather than use our hour alone for dealing with the lust that he created, he sent me off alone. One night to read, another night to walk in the garden, another night to nap in front of the library fire.

  And after four days of this, I was done. Done. Arousal clung to me like a haze, and I couldn’t shake it off. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t reason, all I could do was watch Julian like a starving predator as we went about our days. Watch the narrow hips under his pants, the tight forearms when he rolled up his sleeves. The stubbled line of his jaw as he answered letters and bounced the baby on his knee while he read.

  That evening, I sat in the dining room at seven, fully expecting to be sent off on my own again and dreading it. The hours by myself had been amazing—relaxing and clarifying and peaceful—and each time I’d returned to my family, I’d been so incredibly grateful for Julian orchestrating all this. But now that I had regained my equilibrium, begun to remember who Ivy was beyond being George’s mother, I remembered who else Ivy was. She was Julian’s wildcat, and without him, nothing felt right.

  “Mrs. Markham,” Julian said to me as he walked in the dining room. “You may stand. That chair will not be necessary.”

  Confused, I stood.

  He turned to our new butler. “Please arrange for my dinner to be brought in, and my dinner alone. Mrs. Markham shall eat hers later. And after the meal is served, I’d like this room cleared, and there are to be no interruptions for the next hour.”

  If the butler found anything odd with these directions, he didn’t show it. Instead, he hurried to obey, the door swinging shut behind him.

  My chest tightened with excitement, my stomach doing flips as Julian went to the clock on the dining room mantel and checked his pocket watch against it.

  “Am I staying here tonight? With you?”

  “Oh, yes, wildcat, you are staying. Do you remember our signal?”

  Our signal. The word I would speak if the pain—physical or emotional—grew too much for me.

  “Bluebell,” I whispered.

  The pocket watch shut with a click and he turned. He was already hard, his dick a thick ridge straining against his pants, but the rest of
him seemed completely composed, completely in control.

  “I hope you’ll keep that word close at hand, my wife.” His eyes glinted green in the candlelight. “Very close.”

  My meal was brought in, and after my plates were laid on the table, Wilson bowed and left the room exactly as I had asked. I locked the door behind him and turned to face my wildcat, whose cheeks were deliciously stained with color. Color that I’d put there with my days of teasing and torture.

  I walked over to her and lifted her chin with my finger, examining that blush like an artist would examine his painting, pleased with the effect the flush had against her skin, my cock swelling at this small thing.

  I wasn’t blind—I’d seen the need building in her the past few days, like a geyser threatening to erupt—and it was entirely on purpose. Her words the other day by the stream, go ahead, had unlocked something in me, some determination, some need to master her that had laid dormant since George’s birth.

  Go ahead.

  It was almost like a taunt, a dare, daring me to try to make her want me, and I had never been one to turn down a dare. And so that night when I’d stayed up late in the library, determined to find a way out of this, I’d listened to the darkest parts of myself, the parts that could sense what she needed from me, the parts that delighted in the idea of giving her those things.

  And bit by bit, I had resurrected my wildcat, summoning her back to life like a magician summons a shade. Night after night, she came back to me and George with more of that feral perfection in her face, and night after night, I witnessed her frustrated desire growing and growing until she was practically frantic with it.

  I had coaxed her back from whatever place she’d gone, and now it was time to remind her of why she would stay.

  I let go of her chin.

  “Mrs. Markham—” I loved calling her that, calling her by my name, and I especially loved it in moments like these, moments laced with discipline. “—there will be no need for your dress either. Please take it off.”

  Her breath caught, and she hurried to obey, fumbling with her buttons and ties as I sat and picked up my wineglass, adjusting my erection as I did so. I held the glass by the stem, pretending to watch the swirling liquid while really watching her. Her long neck, her strong arms. Her delicate shoulders appearing from the husk of her discarded dress. The compressed curves of her breasts and the narrow lines of her waist.

  She was undeniably beautiful like this…but she was more beautiful naked. I wanted all of her newly ripe flesh available for me to squeeze and plump, I wanted to run my fingers over every inch of soft skin, I wanted to trace the marks on her stomach, knowing that I put them there when I planted my child in her belly.

  “Continue undressing, Mrs. Markham. I’ll wait.”

  I savored my wine—a good red, laid down by my grandfather—and watched her progress, watched as she shucked her snowy white nursing corset and lace-trimmed petticoats until she was fully exposed to me, the flush on her cheeks mirrored by the one creeping up her chest.

  Finally, she stood completely naked, too aroused to be shy, too far gone in her own lust to question me.

  Which was exactly what I wanted.

  “Bend over the table, Mrs. Markham. No, not there, here. In front of me. I want to see your cunt while I finish my wine.”

  Slowly she stepped in front of me and slowly she bent over, stretching her arms out in front of her so that her back was flat enough that I could have balanced my wine glass on it if I’d wanted to. The table was just high enough that she had to stand on the balls of her feet to bend at her hips, and I wanted to devour the lines of quivering muscle that ran from her calves to her ass and then press my face between her legs and devour the silky wet heat there. And then I would stand up, unfasten my trousers and stab into her without any warning…

  I ran a palm over my throbbing hardness, letting out a silent breath and willing myself back to complete self-control. I had denied myself these past days along with her, and I was full to bursting with the need to fuck this woman.

  But the need to punish her was stronger, and so I would wait. I would feed the monster before I fed the husband.

  I took my time finishing my wine, enjoying how every moment without my touch, without my voice, seemed to unravel her. I could see her fighting the urge to turn her head and look at me, biting her lip to keep from speaking, which was a very good wildcat, very good indeed.

  I drained the wine and set the glass down as I stood up. I had planned on eating my dinner at a leisurely pace, on making her suffer more, but I couldn’t sit still a minute longer with her like this: legs shaking, ass up, pussy so close and so, so inviting…

  I unknotted my tie, grateful she couldn’t see how painfully hard I was, how my fingers shook as I yanked the fabric away from my neck. I managed to master myself enough to keep my hand steady as I ran it up her flank and over the curve of her ass, up to the delicate nape of her neck.

  “Ivy Markham,” I said, said it as if I were introducing her to an audience. “Ivy Markham. My wife.”

  Her control fractured and she turned her head to peer up at me, her dark eyes wide and pleading. If I hadn’t already been hard, that look would have done me in.

  She shrieked as my hand came down on her ass, hard enough that it stung my palm and I could see the livid lines of each finger on her skin. My cock twitched against my trousers, begging to be let free. I spanked her again, and again, and again, my breathing growing more ragged with exertion and arousal, my stomach clenching into a hot fist of angry desire.

  I was angry. Yes, I could feel it, such a twin passion to lust, both so fiery, so energetic, both restless, agitating, primal feelings.

  She could feel my anger too, I could tell, as her ass glowed red. Tears were sliding slow and silent from her eyes, dripping onto the tablecloth, and God, I wanted to lick those tears. I wanted to swallow her cries. I never considered myself a sadist—I preferred control, not pain—but in that moment, where the cost of four months of alienation and longing finally reared its ugly head, there was something so deeply, deeply moving about her offering physical pain to me, about her letting me exorcise this on her willing body. It scratched an itch somewhere so deep inside that I’d hadn’t known it was there, and I felt drunk with the relief of it.

  I paused my work and took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a minute. Not because I was afraid of hurting her—she knew what to say to get me to stop—and because even as undone and raw as I was at this moment, I still knew her limits and my own strength. No, I needed a moment because if I kept going, I was going to abandon all of my plans and fuck her right now. And while I knew it would be delicious and healing, I wanted more than healing. I wanted renewal. I wanted rebirth.

  When I opened my eyes, they fell on the bottle of oil near the center of the table, kept for vegetables and bread, and I entertained the brief but intoxicating fantasy of drizzling that oil on her most intimate parts, of working it into her ass and then fucking her there in a fit of hot, slippery glory.

  I forced myself back. The monster before the husband, I reminded myself. There would be time for both.

  Instead, I bent myself over her body, pressing my rigid dick against her naked ass as I spoke low in her ear. “All this time that you’ve been lost to me, you’ve never spoken your signal.”

  My face was so close to hers that I felt rather than saw the confusion break through her mindless sensation. “What?” she asked, voice cracking.

  I let my fingers trail over her hip and then back down to her ass. I slid my hand between my pelvis and hers, finding the tight, dry pucker I’d just fantasized about, and then dropping farther down to her slick, swollen cunt.

  “Think about it, Mrs. Markham. All the times you shut yourself off from me, all the times in the past four months that you’ve laid back and became nothing more than an inanimate doll—why did you not simply tell me no? Why not use your safe word, when you know that I’d always honor it?”

&nbs
p; “I…” Her voice was shaky and indistinct, as if she were struggling to formulate thoughts. “I…wanted to be a good spouse. I wanted you to get what you needed.”

  There…I found her clit, now a ripe little bundle, practically begging to be rubbed, pinched, plucked. I grazed a fingertip past her, so lightly as to barely touch her at all, and she moaned loudly into the table.

  “See, I don’t think that’s true,” I told her. “I think that’s what you told yourself. I think that’s maybe even what you still believe. But deep down, there is another answer. The real answer. Do you know what it is?”

  I shoved two fingers past the soft lips guarding her entrance, shoved them in deep. She moaned again, rolling her face against the table.

  “I don’t know,” she managed, her feet scrabbling adorably at the carpet in her effort to open her legs wider, raise her hips higher to me.

  “Yes, you do.” Leaving my fingers in her, I straightened and used my other hand to smack her ass again. She gasped, and then I took my fingers from her pussy and rubbed around her other entrance, using her own wetness to ease a finger inside, then two. She was trying and failing to catch her breath, her fingers turning into claws, twisting into the tablecloth. Wine glasses and vases of flowers were knocked over, and the sound of that coupled with the feeling of her ass like a scorching furnace around my finger was enough to break my resolve. Just a touch. That wouldn’t throw anything off, certainly, just a few strokes in and out to head off this desire and keep my head clear.

  I reached down and unfastened my trousers, my dick tilting forward, but still pointing almost straight up. In a moment’s work, I had the oil in hand and spread around the crinkled skin, my shaft also covered with a glossy sheen, ready to take her dark flesh.

  I pressed the head of my cock against her and she cried out.

  “Yes,” she whimpered. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Careful with that word, Mrs. Markham,” I said, halting my movement. “You don’t know what you’re saying yes to.”