I woke from sleeping like a tree wakes from winter, unfurling my limbs and stretching, feeling promise and contentment in the future, though I did not know exactly why.
I rolled my face into the pillow, unbelievably soft, unfamiliar, and then my other senses came to life. I smelled the grass and sunshine smell of Mr. Markham, I saw the richly embroidered hangings above the bed, I felt the delicious twinges from bruises both inside and out—bruises I had begged for the night previous.
And then it came to me, all of the memories, all of the decisions, everything from last night: I had agreed to marry Mr. Markham. I had said yes.
I became aware of another presence in the room, and I looked over to see Mr. Markham sitting in a chair across the room from the bed, his long legs stretched out before him, his green eyes watching me like a predator watches prey. Intently. With ownership. But this observation didn’t frighten me. At least, it didn’t frighten me in the sort of way that would persuade me to avoid him. Rather, it electrified me.
He was wild and feral, like myself. We were the same—solitary animals forced into human skin.
I sat up and stretched some more, feeling muscles pull and complain in ways that recalled the way the carpet had felt under my toes as I was bent over a table.
Mr. Markham’s mouth twitched, as if he knew what I was thinking of. “Come here, Ivy,” he commanded.
I slid off the bed and walked toward him. I’d been put to bed completely naked and I remained that way, but I felt no shame. Indeed, I felt a sense of satisfaction at the way his eyes blazed at the sight of my bare breasts and hips. When I reached him, he issued another order. “Kneel.”
I obeyed without thinking. Whatever he
wanted, I wanted. One flesh. Wasn’t that the wedding vow? We would be one flesh. And flesh cannot doubt itself. Flesh cannot deny itself.
“Good girl.” He stroked my tousled hair. “You know, I half-expected you to vanish in the night. To evanesce away like a phantom. Or a dream. I couldn’t fall asleep for fear that you wouldn’t be there when I woke.”
I turned my face into his hand. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
His eyes burned once more. “Yes. Yes, I’ll make quite sure of that.”
The boxes rattled in the back of my mind, the deep fears and the knowledge that I had buried, but I ignored them and instead pressed my lips to the inside of his palm.
He made a noise of approval. “You are still willing then, to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“And to have me teach you how to please me? And how to let me please you?”
“Yes.”
He unbuttoned his breeches, keeping his eyes pinned to mine, revealing his stiffening cock. Without warning, his hand was on the back of my head and he was feeding it into my mouth, forcing me to open, to take him as deeply as I could.
He groaned. “Fuck, Ivy. That mouth. It’s almost criminally good.”
I loved it. All of it. The salty taste of him as he slid against my tongue, the way I could smell soap lingering on the skin of his stomach, the groans issuing from his mouth. His hand on the back of my head as he drove the pace. The way he didn’t stop me when I used my fingers to caress him, to cup him, to dig into his thighs and hips and pull him closer to me.
“You are so eager to please. Look up at me—no, keep me inside your mouth as you do. Yes, that’s it.”
I kept my eyes up as I pleasured him, experimenting with flicks of the tongue and variations in suction, more aroused by his steady gaze and heavy, determined hand than I would have been by the enthusiasm and encouragement of any other man.
“You are so inexperienced, wildcat. I almost don’t want to teach you. There is something—ah yes—you are able to stoke me to impossible fire with your ignorant eagerness. Yes, just like that.”
I brought my hand to his shaft and began pumping him in time to my bobbing mouth.
“Yes,” he hissed, his eyes fluttering closed and his self-control finally ebbing away. “Suck it, pet. Suck hard.”
His cock swelled in my mouth, no longer flesh but stone, every vein and ridge as hard as marble. I expected him to ejaculate right then, wanted it even, but my head was tugged roughly back.
“Get your dress,” he growled. “Crawl to it.”
It took me a moment to remember the garb of green lawn that he had cut away last night, to remember that he had brought it upstairs with us. He released my hair and I crawled over to the bed, where I saw the ruined dress crumpled on the floor. My sex felt exposed as I crawled, exposed and wet and hungry, and when I cast a look over my shoulder, I saw Mr. Markham staring at me with a look so predatory it bordered on ferocious. I grabbed the dress, eager to get back to him, but stopped when I saw something under the bed. It was a small chest of rosy wood, bound with bright golden hardware. Inlaid into the side was more gold—swooping letters spelling out AW.
Arabella Whitefield.
