Chapter Nine

 

No fire had been lit in the library, as it was midday, but the damp weather seemed to pervade the room, and I shivered as we stepped inside.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“A little. I’ll be fine.”

He set me down on a damask sofa. “Fine’s not good enough for my wildcat.” He dropped a kiss on my forehead and went to draw up the fire. I watched him as he knelt and laid wood on the andiron, his long legs folded underneath him, his powerful arms straining the fabric of his shirt and jacket.

His motions were smooth and assured as he lit the fire, using newspaper to light the slender kindling sticks. When the logs finally caught, he set down the poker and turned toward me.

“Go get your engagement ring,” he said, “and bring it down.”

I bit my lip, feeling the first ripple of apprehension mingle with my anticipation. I felt boneless and relaxed and eager for more, but the engagement ring reminded me that Mr. Markham wasn’t finished fulfilling my request to break me. I had fissured his usual control and composure, and I didn’t know what the coming hours would bring, save for him penetrating me in that forbidden place. And even as the thought made my sex pulse with want, it terrified me, this new boundary Mr. Markham was breaching.

I shivered again, not from cold this time, and left the library, straightening my dress as I went up the stairs in case I encountered anybody as I did. I didn’t, although I heard the voices of some maids as they tended to a bedchamber down the hall. I took my ring and returned to the library, where Mr. Markham sat on the sofa awaiting me. He had one arm flung along the back of the sofa and the other lazily stroking his cock, his eyes glued to me as soon as I entered.

“Bring the ring here,” he said, and I obeyed, dropping the ring into his outstretched palm. “Now go lock the door. We are not to be interrupted.”

I realized my hands were shaking as I turned the ornate key in the lock. Was I excited or was I scared?

And given what I had realized about myself—and about us—did it matter which?

I turned and faced him, my fiancé and master, pressing my back against the door. Blood and warmth and want pooled in my core as I watched him watching me. His hand moved slowly over his shaft, which was thick and rigid, and his other hand held the ring, which sparkled in the silver light coming in through the tall windows. He was so magnificent, with his male organ so prominent and demanding, with his long legs and sun-browned hands and square jaw.

“Come over here.”

I did, but I moved slowly, warily. The sex on the road had been stark and raw, an encounter that had soothed something inside of me, his fucking an alchemy that transmuted my days-long torment into a bliss I could’ve never imagined. But I was still nervous about being punished further. I didn’t naturally crave pain or gravitate toward it, anymore than I craved any other illness or injury. I knew Mr. Markham would take care of me, even as he claimed every inch of my body as his own. I knew that everything he did, he ultimately did for me.

But still my steps were slow.

Bluebell, I reminded myself. Bluebell bluebell bluebell.

He watched me with amusement as I came before him and stood in between his parted legs. “Undress,” he said as I shifted my weight.

He had seen me naked so many times before, but somehow this time was different. Perhaps it was knowing what was coming, knowing that I was still being punished. Perhaps it was the look in Mr. Markham’s eyes—stern and arrogant all at once. Or maybe it was the ring that he spun casually in his fingers, the symbol of our promise—the symbol of my decision to stay, despite everything.

I unbuttoned my dress clumsily, shucking it and my petticoat—both liberally sprinkled with mud and leaves from our interlude in the road—and then pulled off my stays and chemise. Off came my boots, and when I reached for my garters, Mr. Markham reached up and stopped me. “Allow me,” he said and leaned forward. I felt his warm breath on the inside of my thigh as he took the fabric gently between his teeth and tugged it down over my knee. He did the same on the other side, and I couldn’t suppress a shudder as he pressed his lips to the sensitive skin on the side of my knee, his mouth hot and soft even through the silk. He leaned back and very deliberately set the ring on the end table, the diamond pointing toward the fire and sending prisms arcing across the thick leather spines of the books.

I stared at it now as he used both hands to ease my stockings down my calves, taking each foot onto his lap as he peeled the silk away, kissing my ankle, and then setting it gently back on the floor.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, tracing a long finger from my foot all the way up to my womanhood. “And you are made for fucking.”

I smiled slightly, recalling him speaking those same words on the night we’d first lain together. He slid his hands around the backs of my thighs and up to the curve of my ass, pulling me closer to his face. The sofa was low enough that his nose brushed against my pubic bone, and then he nuzzled his face into me, seeking my heat with his lips and tongue. The moment he tasted me, he made a noise of pleasure in the back of his throat, as if I were a feast he’d been starving for. As if my taste were the single most delicious and perfect thing he’d ever known.

He held me tight against his face, not letting me move, even as my nipples peaked and my clitoris swelled and my hips began jerking of their own accord. He laved and sucked me, sucking on my bud until it felt about to burst, like ripe fruit, licking at my folds until I felt wild with the need for more.

I arched my back and laced my fingers through his hair, tugging on it in sharp yanks I couldn’t control. I rubbed myself against his face shamelessly, all thoughts falling away except for the need to climax, the need to drive his tongue deeper and faster into me. His stubble burned and scratched at the inside of my thighs, a luscious contrast to the soft silky hair twined around my fingers, and as I pictured the chafed red skin of my inner thighs, the way I would look marked and used after he was finished with me, I felt my climax rush in.

“I’m going to come,” I panted, grinding my pussy against his face. “I’m going to—”

He wrapped his hands around my hips and pulled me firmly away from his face. My orgasm hovered like a mirage, shimmering waves that were just out of reach. I cried out, my body fighting to get closer to him, struggling against his iron grip. He looked up at me, his beryl eyes unforgiving.

Unyielding.

“No, Miss Leavold. No orgasm for you just yet, I’m afraid.”

I must have looked incredulous or defiant or both, because his expression changed into something rougher, more implacable.

“You are going to be a good girl while you take your punishment, correct?”

I dug my fingernails into his hands, trying to pry them off my hips. “Not if you’re going to be like this,” I said, my voice protesting and plaintive. I knew I had no power here. I knew that I wanted to have no power here. But resisting felt so natural, as natural as submitting when Julian’s will finally overcame my own. I dug deeper, no plan except to release his hold on me and maybe bring myself off with my own hand.

He didn’t wince, even though I knew I had broken the skin in a few places. Rather, he let go of my hips and seized my hands in a fierce one-handed grip, tight enough that I had no hope of struggling free, but not quite tight enough to bruise. I tried pulling backwards, leaning my body weight into the effort, while he used his other hand to unknot his tie and slide the fabric from his neck. Once I realized what he had planned, I pulled harder and harder, squirming and twisting to get away, but it was no use. In a matter of seconds, my wrists were bound with silk, and he was standing before me, eyes burning with anger and his member still very erect, the wide tip flaring with unabashed need.

“You are quite the wayward pupil today,” he said, unamused. He laced one hand in my hair, dislodging the pinned braids and twists that I had hastily thrown up this morning, and then dragged me over to the table like a cat by the scruff of the neck. He bent me over the table, pressing my face against the cool, glossy wood.

“You consented to be my student, did you not?” he asked.

I couldn’t nod, not with the way he had my head pinned, but I squeaked out a yes.

“You consented and then you removed your ring and tried to leave. I can’t let that stand, Ivy. I cannot.”

And then there was a sharp crack and a stinging burn that rocked my entire body. I cried out, moaning into the wood, searching for the right word to say, and then there was another crack and I shrieked, the flash of pain taking me more by surprise than the first.

He was spanking me. He was bending me over and slapping my bare ass with his hand. The word I needed—the word I was desperate to say—finally filtered through the pain. Bluebell. But at the same moment, I felt the wetness between my legs.

I was so aroused that I was almost dripping. I moaned again, not from pain this time, but from want. And did I want him to spank me again? I decided that I did.

I turned my head as much as I could, my mouth meeting his thumb, and I bit down as hard as I could. He hissed in anger, snatching his hand away, but he didn’t spank me again.

“I know what you want, wildcat. You may resist my teachings, but you can’t hide that greedy cunt from me. You want me to turn this beautiful ass red and glowing, and one day, I promise you, I will. You will learn to take your discipline any way I choose to dole it out.” He ran a hand from my neck down to my lower back, his touch soft and loving. “You are so beautiful right now, Ivy, bent over for me. I love it when you think you can fight me. But I will love it even more when you have succumbed to your discipline and you take your lesson with eagerness.”

He stepped behind me, so close that I could feel the fabric of his trousers on the back of my legs, and then without warning, he rammed into me, sheathing himself in one rough thrust. I was wet, but still not entirely ready, and so the thrill of pleasure I felt was serrated and jagged, the kind of feeling that curled my toes and hardened my nipples and clenched my core.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” he said, and in his words was a slender crack in his armored control. He bent over me as he sawed in and out, kissing my shoulders and biting my back in ferocious bites, as if he wanted to devour me whole. I shuddered and rocked into him, his touch driving me wild. He took my hips in his hands and then swiftly kicked my legs apart to widen his access—and to let him plunge deeper. The wider stance meant I could barely touch the floor, and so he held me up by the hips, driving into me relentlessly as my toes scrabbled for purchase on the carpet.

“Ivy, I feel your pussy swelling. It’s getting tighter and tighter and there—your fingernails on the table. You’re about to gauge the surface.” He leaned in and rasped in my ear. “If you come without my permission, I will flay your ass raw and withhold your pleasure for days…or weeks. That trip to York will seem like child’s play in comparison to the deprivation I can wreak.”

His cock was so big—so big and so hard—and the way he had me lifted up meant that the wide head of his dick was stroking the irresistible spot inside. The spot that turned off my brain and made me into a rutting animal.

“I can’t stop,” I said breathily. “You…you’re too good and your cock…oh Julian, it’s making me feel so good.”

“Fuck.”

His name. It was his name that did it. I often forgot it was my best weapon; for whatever reason, it undid him, snagging at the cracks in his control. With a growl that bordered on a roar, he pulled out and grabbed me by the back of my neck—truly like a cat this time, snatching me off the table and forcing me over to the tall windows against the far wall. My bound hands made it nearly impossible to avulse myself from his grip.

He took my silk-wrapped wrists and lifted them high above my head. “What are you—” And then I was pressed—no, smashed—against the cold, cold glass, pressed from my swollen clitoris to my breasts to my cheek, which was turned to the side. The window was a cold shock to my system, and my nipples beaded uncomfortably as goose bumps raced across my skin. My climax retreated, oh so slowly, as painful as withdrawing a splinter from the skin. I whined against the glass, my breath creating fogged clouds that advanced and disappeared, advanced and disappeared, hypnotic in the way they matched the pounding of my heart.

“You will not come until I say.” Another stinging slap across my backside. “Is that clear, Miss Leavold?”

I nodded slowly, feeling almost like a snake under the charm of a pipe-player. My conscious mind tried valiantly to make sense of all the pushes and pulls of Mr. Markham’s will and my own, of the impossibly numerous sensations and tingling nerve endings and thwarted mating instincts. It couldn’t.

“Good,” Mr. Markham said, and then he patted my head, stroking my hair softly. “That’s a good pet.” His words sunk in through my misted mind, strangely soothing. “You want to make me happy, don’t you? You want to please your teacher?”

Yes. God yes.I nodded, eagerly this time. Yes, that was what I wanted. For his wide smile to crack that strict expression, for his faint smile lines to crease around those forbidding eyes. I wanted to hear him say that he loved me. I wanted him to praise me.

I was brought over to the sofa, led by my wrists, and then Mr. Markham sat. His shaft was slick and wet and dark now, though I could still see the blue traceworks of his throbbing veins, veins that fed the monster jutting out from his hips. “I’m not going to come in your cunt,” he told me. “But you are going to ride me until I am ready to. It is your task to make me come.” He reached down and cupped his heavy balls, exposed by his open trousers. “I need to come hard, Ivy, do you understand? I need to drain every last drop.” He leaned back. “And if you accomplish this task well, you will be rewarded after your punishment.”

My cunt pulsed at the thought. Reward. Praise.

Love.

He inclined his head ever so slightly, giving me consent, and I climbed onto him as fervently as a sinner dropping to her knees in church. My tied wrists made it difficult to position myself, and he didn’t help. He rested his arms on the back of the sofa, watching me intently, doing nothing to guide himself inside my soaking wet pussy. Finally, I managed, and I drew in a sharp breath at how good he felt, how good it all felt, and I sank down to the root, wiggling a little to impale myself fully.

“Put your hands behind your head. I want to see those tits bounce.”

I did as I was ordered and began rocking myself on his cock, grinding my clit against him, feeling my orgasm pulse back into life in mere seconds—

His hands shot out and lifted me up, until only the head of his cock was still notched in my cleft. “No,” he admonished me. “Bad girl.” He let me sink slowly back down. “Up and down only. You are not to come. You are here to fuck me until I spurt, nothing else.”

I knew I was whimpering but my resistance was melting away.

Why fight? Why fight, because when I obeyed, he gave me that look of kingly approval and animal desire, fused into one terrifyingly perfect glance—like he was ready to give me his kingdom and fuck me until I sobbed all at the same moment. No, the fight was fading, leaving nothing left but us, but our true selves and our true souls, and the slick sound of my folds embracing his organ, a sound older than any other human sound.

I put my hands behind my head again and kept moving up and down, my thighs—strong from all of my climbing and running and walking—easily lifting me up and down, up and down.

“More,” he said lazily, leaning his head back. His eyes were hooded. “Faster.”

I complied, my breasts bouncing as I slid up and down as fast as I could, root to tip, again and again and again. He closed his eyes. “Good,” he said and his voice had a quiet hitch in it, like he couldn’t quite control his breath. “Oh, that’s very good. You’re so wet, Ivy. You’re so wet and so warm. I could spend all day fucking you, and I will. Damn it all to hell, I will have you any way I want, any time I want.”

He was swelling, growing harder, and little growls were escaping from his throat. He opened his eyes—the man gone, nothing left but the male, that wild entity that was only unleashed when he was deep within me. He looked down at where we were joined. “Milk me with that cunt,” he demanded. His expression grew harsh and needy and cruel and uncontrolled, and I almost came just seeing his face. “Yes, like that. Just like that. Faster. Goddammit, I said faster!”

A sharp hiss and then I was thrown unceremoniously off, caught around the waist before I truly fell, and shoved onto the floor, facedown. The rug was the best rug in the house, deeply plush and silky against my cheek, but I didn’t have time to think about that. Mr. Markham was on top of me, his wet cock burrowing into my ass. I tensed, wondering if this was it—the thing he’d threatened to do on the road, but then he rocked his hips, his length sliding in between the globes of my ass, and I realized he was rubbing himself off against the soft skin there, pressing my ass tight around his shaft and pumping relentlessly into the slick, snug channel he’d made for himself there.

“Look at yourself,” he said. “Letting me hold you down and use you. I can see the head of my dick peeping through your ass cheeks when I thrust. My cock is so wet…you drenched me earlier with your pussy. Only whores get wet when men use them, Ivy.”

His words should have made me feel debased, devalued, but instead, they had me grinding my mound into the rug, arching my back at the same time, wishing against all logic that his cock would slip and find its way back into me where it belonged. He saw this. “You are so greedy for my cock, wildcat. And you’ll get it. Just not yet…” his voice trailed off as his thrusts became more irregular and frenzied. “That’s it,” he said savagely. “You’re going to feel me spill onto your empty cleft and you’re going to like it. Fuck.”

He stopped moving and pushed my cheeks apart, exposing the small, sensitive ring of my anus. He held his cock poised there, not stroking himself, just holding his root and pressing the velvet head against the thin, virgin skin of my dark entrance. And then he came with a dangerous noise—a noise that sent a shot of adrenaline through me, because it was raw and powerful and it hinted at dissatisfaction and unfinished business. His cum was hot and thick and still more came as he held his dick against my ass, coating me in himself. I wanted to see it, so awfully did I want to see what we looked like right now: me spread facedown on the carpet, him kneeling above me, one hand holding himself as he jetted cum onto my exposed entrance.

And then he was finished, his breathing the only sound in the room other than the fire, which I belatedly realized was very close to my position on the rug. It was warm, so very warm, and I didn’t move even as he stood, which ended up being fortunate for me.

When he spoke, his voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “Now we are truly ready for your punishment, Miss Leavold.”