The Punishment of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 3) (8 page)

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he murmured.

“I’m Esther Leavold,” she said. “I’m accompanying my niece, Ivy.”

At my name, his eyes flickered with interest. “So this is the Ivy Leavold that has Julian Markham so taken?”

Now it was my turn to blush. Did Mr. Markham really talk about me so often that my name was known to one of the peers of the realm? Or was it Silas who had told him?

Either way, I could no longer hide. I stepped forward and gave a small curtsy.

He turned his attention back to my aunt. “And you are the woman from Bombay who has arrived with a massive fortune and no husband.”

Perhaps it hadn’t been Mr. Markham or Silas who’d told him about me. Perhaps Lord Gravendon was simply one of those people who knew everything.

Esther was smiling at him now, all pink lips and white teeth, and I watched as the Baron stared at her mouth. “Yes, no husband. I haven’t met a man suitable enough yet, and besides, if I were married, I would miss the chance to chaperone Ivy to such exciting events.”

The Baron’s voice was low when he spoke. “Now, Esther, I hope you will give your niece a few unchaperoned moments? To reunite with her fiancé?” His brown eyes were boring into hers with a heat that was palpable even to me.

“Of course,” she said.

“Turn around for me, Esther,” he ordered abruptly, his voice graveled.

Blushing and clearly surprised, Esther obeyed, spinning a slow circle while he watched, his pupils dilating.

“Might I claim the pleasure of your company for part of the evening?” No one missed how his voice rolled over the word
pleasure
. “Since you are a new guest, I would very much enjoy giving you a tour of the house and introducing you to my friends.”

“I would be honored,” she stammered. I’d never heard Esther stammer before.

He leaned down and whispered something in her ear, and she laughed her loud tinkling laugh. Then she turned to me. “Go on, dear, it’s all right. Go find him.”

I didn’t wait to be told twice.

The party swirled and undulated around me, a sea of champagne glasses and feathered masks, and it was all so decadently gorgeous, so dreamlike. But what struck me as I walked toward the ballroom was not how out of place I felt, but how perfectly at home I was with it all. I was at one with this vision; I belonged here. I wasn’t shocked by the couples kissing openly on the dance floor, I wasn’t scandalized by the shirtless man—still masked—being chased by a group of similarly masked women. People pressed close together, in various states of undress, so that there were flashes of creamy white skin as the other dancers spun and stepped as if there was nothing different here than at the London assembly halls. The smell of wine and sex hung in the air as thickly as the trilling notes from the eight-piece band in the corner, and men and women licked their lips and beckoned to me as I passed, and I collected it all inside of me, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that was my new life.

How could I stay away from this? This state of ripe and unfettered sensuality, where wildness was not a condition to be tamped down and pruned away, but something to be celebrated and admired?

I passed by faces I knew—Molly, Silas, Helen, Adella, Gideon. I evaded their grasps and crooned invitations for now, only wanting one person. The person I came here for.

And there he was, standing by the far wall, leaning against the paneling and looking bored. He had on a simple mask of black cloth tied around his face, with two openings for his eyes.  Even with his impeccably tailored suit and a silk tie that probably cost more than anything I’d ever owned before I met him, he looked roguish and untrustworthy. A pirate or a highwayman, an outlaw ready to commit another crime.

And, oh, how I wanted that crime to be committed against me.

I felt Ivy’s eyes on me. I don’t know how, across a ballroom of that size, and where, admittedly, a fair number of people had been looking at me all evening. But I felt it in the prickling heat on the back of my neck, in the way my body suddenly lurched into hyper-awareness, the way the mask felt against my face, the way the fabric of my clothes moved against my skin as I turned. Why my pulse pounded, I didn’t know, because she had told me she was coming tonight. I had expected it, prepared for it, but still—the enormous, wonderful, almost stupidly joyful truth of it was so much more than I had anticipated.

She was really here. She’d come back to me.

The ballroom was sunken two or three steps from the main floor, and she stood at the top step, her dark eyes pinned on me. My dick surged just seeing her; she looked beautiful in the way that only Ivy managed to pull off—both incredibly fuckable and unbelievably ethereal at the same time. Her gold silk dress was sleeveless, so I could trace the lean curves of her shoulders and collarbone right to the low bodice, where her breasts strained against her corset. I wanted to suck on them until she begged for me to fuck her. I wanted to press them together and slide my cock into them. I wanted to cup them as I took her from behind.

She came towards me then, descending the steps, and I stayed where I was. Every atom of my body screamed to go to her, to meet her and catch her up in my arms, to wrap myself around her and never let go, but I had already waited so long for her and I had to be sure. Had to be sure that she really wanted this, wanted me. Because after tonight, I was not letting her walk away again. I couldn’t. It would kill me.

She seemed oblivious to the stares of the other guests as she passed through the crowd, but I wasn’t. As always, the sting of jealousy only heightened my arousal, my need to reaffirm that she was
mine
in all the ways that counted. They may fantasize about that long dark hair—tonight curled up so elaborately and studded with diamond pins—but only I got to twist it around my fingers as she sucked on my cock. They may stare at the slim lines of her torso, but only I got to hold her down and come on her flat stomach as she lay panting from the orgasm I’d given her.

Mine mine mine.

And that’s what I said when she reached me. When she lifted her eyes to mine, her face half-obscured by a delicate black and white mask, I couldn’t restrain myself any longer and I yanked her roughly to me. “Mine,” I whispered in her ear.

“Yours,” she murmured.

And then she did something that nearly shredded me. She laid her head against my shoulder and sighed happily. It was like having an exotic bird land willingly on your finger or having a tiger purr under your touch. It was both magical and humbling.

“Christ, Ivy,” I said, my voice growing unexpectedly rough. “You’re really here.” I turned my face into her hair, smelling that scent that was uniquely hers—soap and flowers and something like rain—and breathed it in, wanting to spend my entire life with her in my lungs, in my blood.

“You were right,” she said, not moving her head. “You were right all along. I’m so sorry.”

I tucked my finger under her chin and lifted her face to mine. “You never have to apologize to me. Do you understand?” Her eyes searched mine as I spoke. “If you hadn’t left, you would’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if you had. You would've always had one foot out of the door, and this way, we both know. We both know that you came back, on your own.”

“I feel like I’ve wasted so much time. Being away from you. Being away from myself.” A tear welled and then slid under her mask to trail down her cheek.

I wiped it away with my thumb. “It was a waste, Ivy. I was desperate without you and I was furious that you hurt yourself.” I licked the tear off my thumb, wanting to lick more of those tears, wanting her to know that every single one belonged to me. “Because your heart is mine, wildcat. You betrayed and wounded yourself and you suffered, and it’s my job to protect you from suffering.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes downcast.

I leaned forward to nip at the shell of her ear. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”

She pressed against me, running a hand up my chest to cradle the back of my neck, and she pulled me down to her lips. I groaned the moment our mouths touched, unable to keep myself from grinding my erection into her corseted stomach. Her lips were so warm, so soft, and I devoured them, my hands sliding down to grip her upper arms as I moved my mouth over hers, parting our lips so I could taste her.

She tasted exactly like I remembered—perfect.

I had wanted to wait to make love to her the first time; I had wanted to bring her upstairs to a soft bed and take my time worshipping every inch of her body before I moved on to her punishment, but I had to be inside of her right now, and there was no way I could wait. Luckily, at the Baron’s, I didn’t have to.

“Follow me,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her behind me. I led her to a wide velvet bench obscured by a curtained alcove in the far corner of the ballroom. I sat and she followed, but I wrapped my hands around her waist and lifted her so that she was sitting sideways in my lap.

“Come here,” I growled, pulling her flush against me as I pressed my mouth against hers.

She made small sounds in the back of her throat as we kissed, kittenish noises of pleasure, and then gasped when my hand found the inside of her ankle. I continued moving up, her skirts hiding most of the activity, finding where her stockings ended, tied with delicate silk garters. And then there was nothing separating me from her pussy. Which was gloriously, perfectly wet.

She squirmed, trying to grind against my hand, and I pulled it back, amused. “So greedy, wildcat.”

“It’s been so long,” she said. “I need you.”

“Right here?”

“Right here.”

My cock was as hard as stone, thick and pulsing, and even if it hadn’t already been my plan, there would have been no possible way I could deny her. “Hold on,” I said, subtly rearranging her skirt so that her bare ass and pussy rested against my trousers but still hid everything from view. I reached underneath her and fumbled with my buttons, my hands shaking from too much desire, too much excitement, too much suppressed need. Even the stimulation of freeing my shaft was enough to make me close my eyes. Fuck. I wouldn’t last long at this rate.

“Hurry,” Ivy said, wriggling deliciously in my lap. “Hurry.”

With my dick free, I held the base as I guided her to a semi-standing position, facing the ballroom. Her cunt hovered a few inches over me, and I could feel the faint heat of her folds, making my balls tighten in anticipation. Then I guided her down.

From the outside, our movements had been so incremental that it must have looked like she merely adjusted herself on my lap. Improper, of course, in a normal setting, but nothing to look twice at here. But what they couldn’t see—what even I couldn’t see but could only feel—was the wet silk of her kissing the head of my cock and then slowly, slowly working its way down. Each centimeter—each and every millimeter—felt tighter and hotter and wetter than the last, each perfect inch a reminder of the heaven I’d held so briefly in my hands and let slip through my fingers because of my own shadowed past.

But now, as she finally seated herself and as I tilted my hips up and guided her legs farther apart so that I was truly sunk to the hilt, I could really believe that my heaven had returned. Ivy Leavold was mine once more.

And now that she was here, now that I was once again feeling her wet cunt stroke me, every rough fantasy and every wish for untempered dominance over her returned with a vengeance. I had to push away the thoughts that crowded my mind just then—images of her ass pink from being spanked, of her eyes blindfolded and her mouth open for me. Of tying her to a table and letting every person here caress and lick her until she was too exhausted to come any more.

I bracketed her waist with my hands, my fingers digging into her corset with the amount of restraint it took to stay still and let her work herself on me with tiny, imperceptible movements. I buried my face against her silk-covered back, resisting the urge to take control.

“I want more,” Ivy whispered after a moment.

“We can go upstairs.”

She paused and then angled her body so she could look at my face. I inhaled sharply at the sudden twisting, biting the inside of my mouth to keep from coming into her right there and then.

“That would be nice,” she finally said. “But I didn’t necessarily mean…” 
She struggled with her thoughts. “It’s not about where we are necessarily. It’s just—well—the last time I left you, you punished me. Do you remember?”

Did she really think I could forget? I had relived every moment of that day thousands of times, from the moment I’d discovered that she’d left—impetuously, without money or a plan—from the moment I came in her ass. Like the day we’d spent traveling to York, I’d woken up the next morning with a sore cock, but it had been beyond worth it. I shuddered now, unable to keep myself from vividly recalling the feeling of sliding into her tight entrance, the way her body had shook as she came.

“I remember.”

“Well…” she hesitated then forged ahead. “I thought you would punish me tonight.”

I stiffened and my hard cock grew—impossibly—harder. “Do you
want
to be punished, wildcat? Right now?”

She turned some more in my lap, sideways now, still impaled on me. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want you to discipline me, like you did on that day. I know now that I need that. I need that from you. I want to prove to you tonight that I am ready to commit to you—to us—with all of me. Mind, body and soul.”

God, I loved her so much. I loved her so much that the word love seemed ridiculously inadequate for the magnitude of what I felt. I wanted to cut myself open and make her crawl inside of me. I wanted to live and breathe and drink every moment with her, for her, and then die for her a thousand and one times.

I leaned my head against her shoulder, trying to fight past the emotion closing my throat so I could speak. “You are perfect,” I told her, my voice low and choked. “You are so perfect and I don’t deserve you.”

She pressed a hand against my cheek. “Julian.”

All she needed to say was my name, and I felt as if she had uttered a wedding vow. I moved my head so that I could bite her, none too gently, on her bare upper arm. She gasped, tightening involuntarily around my member, and I savored the alarm that flashed briefly in her eyes.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You might be afraid of me.”

“I want to be afraid of you, Julian. I want you to try and break me, and then I want you to catch me and put me back together. We will have plenty of time for things that are slow and tender, but tonight…tonight I need you to discipline me.”

“Your wish is my command,” I said, lifting her off me, hiding the wince that came with losing the perfection of her pussy wrapped around my shaft.

The darkness had already flooded my mind at that point, my fingers itching with the need to tie knots and pull hair, every muscle in my body primed to fuck her so hard that she grunted like an animal. And then I would fill her with my seed, pump her so full of my cum that she’d be dripping with it for days.

Mine.