I hadn’t even finished my sentence before he thrust into me. My back arched off the table, pleasure and pain lancing through my core and out to my limbs, out to my toes and fingertips. I felt every curve and crest of him and whimpered as he slowly withdrew to the tip, his hand still flat on my stomach. He bore into me again, slowly but not softly, his other hand coming around to grip my thigh. After he sank all the way in, he ground himself against me, rubbing against my clit, and my back arched again.
“That’s it,” he said. “Isn’t it so much better this way? You’ll be mine and I’ll be yours. This cunt will be mine to fuck whenever I want.” He continued slowly for a few more strokes, holding me still while he drove me wild with his restrained but inexorable pace. “So tight,” he murmured, watching himself as he slid in and out. “So perfect.”
There was something rawly erotic about surrendering my life to him, almost more erotic than surrendering my body. Would he really do those things he said? Make me come in public? Make me suck him in front of other people? The thought wound my body tighter than a drum.
“Julian,” I said. Green eyes met mine. “Use me. Do those things you can’t show anybody else. Please.”
A flush crept up his neck. Without a word, he roughly flipped me over, so that my feet touched the carpet and I was bent over the table. He didn’t miss a beat, just buried his dick in me again, a hand wrapped around my neck for leverage. This angle was so much deeper and his thrusts so much stronger that I realized I was making noises—mews, cries, moans—that were entirely out of my control. And then he slid a finger into a place I’d never imagined, and that deep place within me—the place Julian was now pounding repeatedly—surged at this new development. His finger moved, and I realized he was stroking himself from inside of me, using the pressure to make me tighter than ever.
His hand moved from my neck to my front, where he quickly found my swollen clitoris and began working it hard and fast. “I want to feel you come around me,” he told me, his voice near my ear. “I want you to squeeze my dick with everything you have.”
Between his driving cock, his fingers on my clit and the one working in my ass, I could feel it building, like a storm, heavy and unstoppable. In fact, it almost frightened me. Everything in me felt too tight, too taut, and I felt brittle, like I would shatter if I stood before the oncoming waves.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, and as the words came out, I realized they were about more than the pleasure threatening to break me.
“I know,” came the deep voice of my lover. “But I’m not. I’ll be right here with you.”
And then another finger pushed into my ass. I made another noise, impossibly close now.
“That’s it,” Mr. Markham encouraged, the circles on my clit growing relentlessly rough. “Show me how you can come.”
It started deep within me, near the head of Julian’s cock, the muscles spasming outward so hard that tears pricked at my eyelids. It ripped through my folds, through my clitoris, through my ass; it tore up through my chest and down to my legs, seizure after seizure, clench after clench, and my mind abruptly switched to blackness, my only focus on the soaring surf that took my body. I was bucking my hips, trying to grind myself back into Julian and I was only distantly aware of the wild noises I was making.
Bit by bit, the waves subsided, leaving me breathless and quivering and acutely sensitive to the fingers and cock that still worked me. A second orgasm gathered itself within, whirling and swirling.
“I’m going to come inside you,” Mr. Markham said, his words breaking into a groan. “I’m going to fill you with my seed. And when you’re full of me, you’ll remember that it’s me you’re marrying, me you belong to, and me that you love.”
And then he gave a soft moan. “Yes, here it comes. Oh, God, Ivy. I love you so fucking much.”
A groan sawed out of his mouth and I felt him pulse hard inside of me, a never-ending heat and throb, and my body responded in kind. My second climax came at that moment, softer and milder than the first, but strong enough to milk him, strong enough to make me cry out again.
He was still coming, thrusting and panting, and then with a shudder, everything about him stilled. We stayed like that for a moment, his fingers and cock still buried inside of me, our limbs limp and sated, my mind slowly flickering back into conscious thought.
He abruptly pulled out and flipped me over onto my back. He spread my legs with his hands, stepping back like an artist examining his work. I once again propped myself on my elbows, and I could see his cock, still glistening and erect, the occasional aftershock still making it jerk.
He used a finger to probe my entrance. “I wish you could see this, Ivy,” he said. “It’s beautiful. My cum spilling out of you. I want you to walk around every day like this, with my seed in your cunt, so that you will belong to me even if I’m not with you. Every day.”
“Every day,” I repeated, my voice hoarse from screaming and grunting.
He buttoned himself up, gathered a blanket from beside the sofa, and gently wrapped me in it. Once I was safely in his arms, he grabbed the shredded remains of my dress and carried me up to his bed, where he unlaced my corset and put me between the sheets.
“Can you promise me something, wildcat?” he asked, laying down next to me. “As my future wife?”
“Mmm?” The sheets were so soft.
His fingers touched my hair. “Promise me that you’ll never ask me about Violet’s death. About the night before it happened. Please.”
“Why?” I managed to say. It was such a strange request, maybe even a disturbing one, but my mind was so heavy, so tired, and my soul was still singing.
His arms tightened around me. “Just promise.”
If I had been fully awake and not fresh from being fucked senseless, then I would have been alarmed at this. Alarmed at the deliberateness with which he had waited until I was at my most vulnerable, my drowsiest. I would have wondered what he wanted to keep secret and why.
But I wasn’t fully awake or fully aware—and maybe even if I had been, I would have promised anyway. Because I loved him. Because I wanted him to keep loving me. Because I didn’t want anything to keep us from each other.
And I didn’t want to believe that he could have killed Violet. His secret was something else, surely. He was ashamed that they had fought that night. He had said things he now regretted. It couldn’t be anything graver than that. I refused to let it be.
“I promise,” I murmured sleepily. I meant to say something else, about how I trusted him no matter what, but my mind seemed unable to compute even basic thoughts. Instead, I kissed his fingers as he brushed the hair away from my face, and I fell into a deep slumber as the worries rattled in their small boxes deep into my dreams.
