“I trust you,” I said.
And without any further interlocution, he rammed his dick so far up my ass that I screamed. He didn’t gentle me or pet me like he had before, he didn’t tell me to be quiet, but he did grab hold of my waist with both hands as I tried to squirm away. My mind had gone blank, my lust had evaporated and all there could be was pain and invasion and the urge to flee.
Flee.
And then, out of nowhere: Bluebell.
Bluebell to make it stop, to make the pain stop. But I couldn’t even speak; my breath had been driven from my chest, every part of my throat and mouth felt closed and suffocated, yet I was gasping for air, for relief.
And Julian was fucking me all the while, fucking me so hard that his balls slapped against my sex every time he drove himself home. “Ivy, you are so goddamned tight,” he said over my whimpers and shrieks. “I wish you could see this, how your tight ass is gripping my cock as if it doesn’t want to let it go.”
I was still trying to squirm away, and he was still restraining me as he plunged mercilessly into me, and then he said, “You’re crying,” and I realized I was. I was sobbing, with shuddering breaths and thick tears and no coherent or conscious thoughts in my mind.
“Who is your teacher, Ivy Leavold?”
The words came even though I could barely breathe. “You are.”
“And do we leave our teachers? Do we walk away from them without so much as a goodbye?”
The tears were dripping fast and wet onto the rug now, and my chin was quivering. I shook my head.
Mr. Markham stabbed into me with a movement so brutal that I screamed again. “I didn’t hear you. Do we walk away from the one person who loves us most in this world without even a goodbye?”
“No!” I cried out.
“And why not?”
I shook my head. It was too much. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even breathe.
Another pitiless thrust. “I said, why not?”
“Because…because you love me.”
“Almost. Try again.”
God, he was so deep. So deep in such a virgin part of me. And the pain—I found to my shock that it wasn’t quite pain anymore, although it wasn’t pleasure either. It was sensation, pure and simple, a stimulus that sent electricity to every nerve ending I had—even ones I’d never felt before. Something was kindling besides pain, something so primal, so strange and yet so familiar, and I couldn’t name it.
“Try again.” His voice was a little softer now, though his motions were not.
“Because,” I gasped. “Because I love you. Because I need you. Oh God, Julian, it hurts and it’s such a different hurt than I’ve ever felt, please, please stop.”
He slowed and then stopped, his dick still buried completely in my ass. He curved his body over mine. “Say it again.”
“Please stop?”
I felt him shake his head. “You know I won’t stop unless you use our signal. No, the other thing you said. Say it again, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. I felt a fresh wave of tears at that. He had never used such a tender word with me, not once in our affair. “I love you,” I repeated. “And I need you, Julian. I need you always.”
He pressed his lips to the curve of my shoulder. And then stopped kissing me and simply rested his face there, breathing in the smell of my skin. “When I saw the ring on the table in your room, I thought my life had ended,” he said, and there was no trace of cruelty or anger in his voice, only a tangible, strangled pain. “I know that I must not cage you, but you must promise not to abandon me. If you need to leave, then you must at least give me a goodbye.”
I won’t leave. But I didn’t say the words out loud, because even now, I couldn’t be sure that they were true. “I don’t want to leave you again,” I said instead.
“You are still crying, my love.”
“It hurts.”
“I know. But you haven’t given our signal yet, which tells me that you still want me to teach you this lesson. And you’ve been such a good pupil, Ivy, so obedient and so willing. Will you trust me a little bit longer?”
