Page 16 of The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
He watched me with some amusement. “You are something apart, Miss Leavold.”
I jumped down, landing as lightly as a cat. “So you tell me.”
The wind picked up for a moment, tossing the leafy branches into a rustling susurrus, and then the rain began, a slow, steady drizzle.
“We should get back to the house,” I suggested, gathering my skirts to make a run for it.
“Nonsense. We’ll get soaked.”
“So?”
The rain intensified, turning from a light and clinging mist into an opaque curtain of silver. Mr. Markham took my hand and led me into the center of the small temple, where the roof protected us from the worst of the downpour, although gusts of wind still whipped droplets onto our damp clothes and hair.
“We’ll wait it out,” he said firmly. “It won’t last long.”
I looked longingly out—running through a deluge like that looked like an enlivening adventure—but then when I looked back at Mr. Markham, my heart stuttered and I realized that there was no place I would rather be. Especially when he was looking at me the way he was now, with darkly green eyes and a mouth that looked nothing so much as hungry.
“Sit, Miss Leavold.”
“What?”
“Sit down.”
I sat, not knowing why and also not knowing why I found it so easy to obey when I was so unused to obeying the whims of anyone other than myself. He knelt in front of my knees.
“You have made a mistake,” he said. “You’ve let yourself be alone with me.”
“How do you know that wasn’t my plan all along? You were the one who promised not to touch me. I never promised not to touch you.” And I ran my thumb across his lower lip. It was soft and slightly wet from the rain.
He bit it and the sensation went straight to my core. I took in a breath.
His hands slid up my ankles, past my low boots, and up my calves and thighs. I’d planned on a quick swim, so I hadn’t worn anything underneath my dress. He discovered this when he reached my upper thighs.
Now it was his turn to draw in a breath. “Miss Leavold,” he said huskily. “You have been very bad today, haven’t you?” He rucked up my skirt, drawing it up to my hips. “Let’s see exactly how bad you’ve been.”
The skirt was now bunched up around my waist and my pussy was exposed to the open air.
“It was just so I could go swimming,” I explained, a little breathlessly. He looked ravenous.
“Was it? And were you not hoping you would also run into me?” He ran a finger down my folds and I shuddered.
“I was hoping that.” I couldn’t lie with his fingers on me.
“Hoping what?”
“To find you.”
“And?” A hand reached up to caress my breast. I moaned.
“And that you would touch me again,” I whispered.
“I want to, wildcat. I do. But I have promised you that I wouldn’t.”
“Please,” I said breathlessly. “Just this once. I’ll do anything…”
He continued running his fingertips along the most sensitive places, stopping now and again to swirl gentle circles on my clitoris. The rain made a solid sheet of privacy around us, but at that point, I didn’t care. The entire kitchen staff could have gathered around to watch Mr. Markham pleasure me, and I would have still begged him to keep going.
“Anything?”
