Page 33 of The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
“Ivy—”
“I have no future,” I said. “I will never marry well, not with my family history and not with my lack of money. My only future is here, at Markham Hall. Unless you don’t want me.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t utter those words again.”
“Then what is at stake, Mr. Markham? Truly?”
He seized my waist and pulled me close against him. “My soul. Yours.”
Something about the desperate note in his voice made my blood flare, and I tilted my chin up, remembering the night we met, of the rasp in his words as he had taken my wrist in his hand. “My soul was yours to take from the moment I met you, Julian.”
With a low growl, he swept me into his arms and carried me out of the parlor, his eyes glittering in the dark of the stairwell as he carried me to his bedchamber. My pulse was racing, lust and adrenaline and disbelief and—yes, if I admitted to myself, the smallest trace of fear—but when the flickering firelight of Mr. Markham’s room threw his face into dim relief, I had never seen him look calmer. He set me down on the thick rug before the hearth, staring at me as he shrugged off his dinner jacket and unknotted his cravat.
The intensity of his gaze unnerved me, and I took a step backward toward the door, not because I didn’t want this, didn’t want him, but because I knew beyond a doubt that everything in my life was about to change, completely and totally.
“Don’t be skittish,” he said, holding out a hand.
If I took it, then I was giving him my consent. I was giving myself consent. All of the conclusions I’d come to about our relationship, about our future, about what I wanted—tonight would cement them. This moment was my last chance to withdraw, to plumb any uncertainties I had left. Was I truly ready to give my body to this man in such an irrevocable manner?
I placed my hand in his, and he pulled me close, his lips brushing against my ear. “Do you trust me?”
Any well-brought up woman would say no. But I wasn’t well-brought up, hadn’t been anything remotely like that since my parents died. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Good.”
His hands slid down over my shoulders to my waist, and he dropped a kiss on my lips. I tilted my face toward him, wanting more, but he moved around behind me, and I felt his fingers dance down my neck, down to the hollow between my shoulder blades where the buttons to my dress began. One by one, the buttons tugged and loosened, freeing me incrementally.
The dress slid down my body, the silk whispering against my petticoats and my corset. “A woman’s first time should be entirely about her,” he said in a low voice. “I promise to do my best, but you test every limit of my self-control.”
Oh, how I hoped that was true. I knew I should expect gentleness, but that wasn’t ever what I had responded to from Julian. Seeing him at the edge of his restraint, his eyes half-lidded as he barely resisted his own darkest urges, knowing it was me who made him that way, it made me just as wild. I craved that, that simultaneous feeling of power and lack of power.
“Don’t be too gentle,” I murmured.
“With you, wildcat, I don’t think there’s any real risk of that.”
My petticoats fell away, and he laid them carefully over a chair. Then came my corset, my breasts feeling heavy and full without its support.
When I was entirely naked, he stood before me, his eyes taking in every dip and curve of my body. I felt his eyes like his fingers, as if he were marking with his gaze all of the places he wanted to kiss. And I saw clearly the outline of his desire, his erection large and hard in his breeches. His eyes kept lingering on my breasts, on the place between my legs.
“You were made for fucking,” he said roughly.
I looked at his green eyes, the way his body exuded power and wealth and lust and raw animal need.
“I was made foryou,” I answered.
In less than a second, his mouth was on mine, lips insistent and demanding. My lips parted and our tongues met, his hand behind my neck as we kissed. Even weeks after our first kiss, the connection still made my pulse pound and my body respond in ways that made any memory of propriety laughable.
Mr. Markham bent his lips to my neck, licking and nipping and sucking, and then—without warning—he swept an arm behind my knees and I was being carried to his bed. He kept kissing me as he walked, deeply and urgently, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he were desperate to taste as many kisses as he could.
“Close your eyes,” he said as he laid me down. “I want you to think only about yourself.”
But that was impossible. As his mouth closed over my nipple, drawing it into a stiff point, all I could think about was him—his face as he worshipped my breasts, the shadows in his eyes as he held himself back from the depths of his own desire. The sight of his erection, throbbing for me and me alone.
He moved to the other breast, and I moaned out loud. He lifted his head. “If you keep making noises like that, I won’t be able to stop myself from taking you right now.”
That was exactly what I wanted, and I meant to say so, but then his fingers brushed against my center and my words were lost. He petted, he played and he teased, until my hips were pushing up against his hand, begging and begging.
He moved his mouth down, kissing a circle around my navel, until he reached my mound, which he blanketed with soft kisses. The first time his tongue swept across my clitoris, I thought I would weep. His tongue caressed me again, slowly at first, then in quick flutters, punctuated by kisses further down, where he’d lick inside of me. And then gently, so gently that I didn’t realize it was happening, his finger slipped inside of me. As he continued sucking on my clit, his finger crooked in just the right way, pressing against a place that made me buck my hips and pant. And then there were two fingers pressing, and his mouth hot and sucking, tongue dancing, and the knowledge that in a matter of moments he would be buried inside of me.
