Chapter Eight

 

“Do we have an agreement?”

I didn’t hesitate. I was done running from him.

For now, at least.

“Yes,” I said. “We have an agreement.”

“Perhaps it would be helpful if we arranged a signal between us, something that would alert me to your need to stop or to leave.” He came closer, and he pulled my hands into his. “That way, if the time ever comes, you won’t have to think of what to say and you won’t have to say anything more.”

“Like what kind of signal?”

He let go of my hands and pressed his fingers against my lips. Instinctively I opened my mouth to nip and lick at them, tasting myself as I did so. My body began thrumming desperately for him once more.

“What’s your favorite flower?”

“Bluebells,” I replied, thinking of the way they had bobbed and rustled around Mr. Markham in the meadow yesterday.

He slid a finger into my mouth and I sucked on it eagerly, wishing it were his cock. “Bluebell, then. Remember that, Ivy. When you say that to me, I shall stand aside and let you leave, even as it kills me inside.”

He pressed up against me, grinding his erection into my corseted stomach. “And if I ever push you too far in your education, if I ever make you feel only pain and no pleasure, use that word then as well. When I hear bluebell, I will stop immediately. That is the signal you will use to tell me if I have gone too far and you need to stop. That and no other word, do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Say yes, Ivy.”

“Yes.”

He rucked up my skirt, exposing my stockinged legs and bare pussy. His whole face darkened with lust. “Now,” he growled. “We need to address the fact that you are not wearing your ring. Not to mention that I found you on the road, walking away from me.”

I felt tears burn at my eyes—tears not of sadness or fear, but of unequivocal relief. This—this was how we were meant to be together. Him demanding, me yielding; me fighting and him relishing the fight.

“I won’t apologize for leaving,” I said, lifting my chin.

“Don’t test me.” His eyes were on my legs and sex, still open to the air. “Or I will show you exactly what it’s like to be afraid of me.”

He palmed my cunt—hard—and my knees weakened. “How am I to teach you if you are going to play truant?” he continued. “Should a teacher not discipline a wayward pupil?”

“Not if the pupil didn’t do anything wrong,” I shot back. But my fierce words were belied by my body, which was melting under his possessive touch.

“What is your signal, wildcat?” he asked calmly.

“Bluebell,” I answered, confused. Didn’t we just talk about this—

I was pushed suddenly to the ground. The air was knocked from my lungs and I didn’t have time to catch it again before he was on top of me, his mouth sealed over mine. He had never treated me so roughly, never pushed me, and everything in me struggled not to escape, but to push him back. To fight back.

Bluebell, my mind remembered.

But no. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to conquer him.

I scratched at his neck and he groaned, reaching up to pin my wrist above my head. He did the same with my other arm until both wrists were held fast to the ground by one of his hands. I thrashed underneath him, half wanting to buck him off, half desperate for any friction against my aching center, and the more I thrashed, the wilder he looked, until he was yanking his trousers open and pulling out his swollen member. I rolled to the side, thinking I’d manage to get on top of him, but my shoulder was slammed back into the ground, and before I could move or even think, his knees were in between my legs and he thrust inside of me so roughly that I saw static at the edges of my vision, as he seated himself fully in one stroke.

I was wet, but not entirely ready, and I felt the searing heat of him as he dragged himself back out and slammed into me again. “You lay still and take your punishment,” he growled at me, driving into me with another powerful thrust. The weight of his body against my clitoris and the flexing of his hips in between my thighs sent spikes of desire to my core, but the whole scene—us rutting in the road like animals, him restraining my arms and forcing himself on me—it aroused me even further. Of course, he wasn’t truly forcing himself—he had made sure that I remembered how to make him stop. But the illusion of struggle scratched an itch deep inside of me. The truth was that I was furious with him and furious with myself for loving him and furious with Violet for finding him first and then dying and making everything so complicated. I wanted to bite him and scratch him and pull his hair; I wanted to expend all this pent-up anger and pain on his body and score his psyche liked he had scored mine.

And maybe part of me enjoyed being punished. No one since my parents had bothered to take care of me, emotionally, financially or otherwise, and I had prided myself on being independent, but there was something so primally comforting about ceding control. When he mastered me, I felt a burden lift that I didn’t even know was there, the burden of emotional self-sufficiency and isolation. And that’s why he was right—I did like him dangerous and unsafe. Because, however perverse it may be, when he took my body, he was showing me that he was going to take care of me, in all the ways that I needed.

And what was that feeling, if it wasn’t safety?

This realization stunned me. I went slack underneath him as I tried to process it, taking in how perfectly the jagged edges of our souls interlocked, how perfectly he had known me even when I hadn’t known myself. He had always seen this in me, this need to be mastered, and he had given it, as he had given me his heart.

And I could see it now, his heart, as he thrust into me with everything he had, as his eyes glossed with what could only be unshed tears. I watched them as they fell and licked them off my lips as they dripped onto my mouth.

“You’re crying,” I whispered.

He stopped moving, his head hanging in between his muscular shoulders. “Yes,” he said thickly. “I almost lost you.” He met my eyes, his green ones lanced with pain. “I need you, Ivy. And the idea of life without you…I can’t stand it.”

He let go of my wrists and then slid his hands under my waist and lifted me up. We were still joined together and I now rested on his lap, my skirts bunched up around us. He laid his head against my breast as I started moving and wriggling on top of him, trying to grind my clitoris against his pubic bone. “Why do I need you so much?” he asked, his voice quieted by my chest. “Why do I want to cherish you and break you at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice wavering as I worked myself on his shaft, feeling heat creep up my neck. “But I feel the same way about you. I want you to cherish me and to break me too. I want to rage at you and serve you. Oh, Julian,” I moaned as my channel stroked his cock. “Try to break me now. Please.”

His grip on my waist tightened and I felt his cock swell impossibly hard inside of me. He was hesitating, I saw, resisting that dark urge inside of him, and I didn’t know how to show him it was okay, that I needed that part of him right now or I would fly apart in doubt.

“I remember our signal,” I told him, as gently as I could while I rocked back and forth in his lap. “But please, hurry, I—”

And then I was on my back again and he was kneeling, holding my hips up and driving into my pussy as if I weighed nothing, as if he were using my pussy the same way he used his silk handkerchief—to get himself off with no other consideration.

“I am going to fuck you here in the road,” he said, each thrust slamming the head of his cock deep, deep inside. “I’m going to mark you with my cum. And then I’m dragging you back to the house, and I am going to fuck your ass until you’re sobbing and you know what it really means to be punished.”

I moaned with naked want at the thought, my clitoris throbbing with the idea of being treated so savagely, of his thick cock taking me wherever Mr. Markham wished it to.

“Does that make you wet? Me fucking your ass? Only sluts like to be fucked that way. Are you a slut, Ivy?”

I moaned again, incoherent with need, my orgasm building inexorably in my pelvis as Mr. Markham pounded into me again and again. “Little sluts have to be punished,” he grunted. “And fucked until their greedy little cunts are satisfied.” His fingertips dug into the soft flesh of my ass, hard enough to bruise, and I loved it, panting as the bright points of pain counterweighted the pleasure.

“I know you want to come on my dick. Show me how a little slut can’t help but come whenever she’s being fucked like she deserves.”

And then he ground my pussy against him, hard and fast, my bud rubbing against him and the head of his cock rubbing against the secret spot deep inside.

His eyes met mine, and his face was uncontrolled—uncivilized even—pure triumph and lust painting his sharp features as he watched me come unraveled. My pussy contracted and then exploded with sensation, vivid release ripping through me, making my back arch so far off the ground that only my shoulders still made contact with road. I writhed against it, trying to ride it out, but I had no control of my body—my hips were still firmly in Mr. Markham’s hands and raised up to his cock as he knelt. He held still as I clenched around him, his eyes fluttering closed. “Ah, fuck. That’s good, Ivy,” he breathed. “You come so good. I can feel it squeezing me.”

And then he drew my hips back and impaled himself in me again, his body staying stationary while he used my sated pussy like the rest of me was inconsequential. Then he abruptly let go, pulling out and fisting his cock, slick and wide and almost purple in its near-climax.

“Show me your cunt,” he ordered and I spread my legs wide. With a muttered fuck, he jerked himself once, twice, violently hard, and a stream of semen shot onto my pussy.

“Now your tits,” he said and his voice was tight with the effort it took to control his orgasm. I hurriedly pulled down my bodice as far as it would go, exposing the tops of my breasts and the barest pink of nipple. Another rough stroke and he marked me there. “Your mouth,” and this was now barely a strangled rasp. I opened wide, and with a long panting breath, he jerked himself to completion, lacing my lips and my neck and my tongue with his ownership.

His cock stayed hard and red, and the lust in his face was barely dimmed as he sat back on his heels and looked at me, skirts above my waist and marked like his property.

“Where do you belong?” he asked.

“Here.”

“Whom do you belong to?”

“You.” And the answer was so easy, so natural, that I couldn’t believe I had fought it these past few days. And his role in Violet’s death—I would worry about that when the time came. For now, all I had to do was revel in his possession of me and my possession of him in return.

He rose from the road, and without bothering to tuck his still-erect dick back into his pants, picked me up and carried me over to Raven, who had been grazing patiently all this time. He climbed into the saddle, then easily lifted me in front of him. I stroked his exposed member as he turned Raven toward home.

“The servants will see,” I said as we rode back into the courtyard.

“I don’t care. I want them to know how hard you make me. Just as when they hear your screams tonight, they’ll know how satisfied I make you.”

True to his word, he dismounted and helped me down into his arms and carried me inside, his cock buried in my skirts and my skirts still tangled with my petticoats.

“About punishing me more tonight…did you mean what you said, in the road?” I asked as we bypassed the stairwell and walked toward the library.

Julian looked at me and then leaned his head down to speak in my ear.

“I meant every fucking word.”