I closed my eyes against the image of him driving into the rector’s wife, a look of vicious triumph on his face. I closed my mind against the spike of dark, dark lust the image inspired in me.
And that was the real reason I had fled so suddenly—what all this meant about me. Normal women didn’t feel the way I did, I was certain. They weren’t excited by acts of barely restrained brutality. They didn’t purr at the thought of being called a pet, a kitten. They didn’t feel that any amount of submission or possession was worth seeing that perfect, vulnerable soul inside the man, and I did. Everything that Julian did, to me and to others, energized and enlivened me. Sometimes with fear, sometimes with lust, sometimes with unrelenting waves of love. But why was I okay feeling fear mingled with all these emotions?
Because deep down, you always truly felt safe.
And especially now that he had confessed the truth of what happened the night my cousin died, of how his revenge on her infidelity had driven her to rush into that fatal horseback ride, I knew that he wasn’t a murderer. That my body had always been safe from him. Safe with him.
But what about my heart? Could I trust that he wouldn’t turn that barbarism on me? Would I be able to withstand the onslaught of his darkness?
Or was I just as dark?
And even if we could work our way through all of this, what if I no longer satisfied him? What if I couldn’t perform the way he wanted me to, couldn’t be a good pet?
Hollowness flooded through me, chasing out everything else. And what did it matter in the end? I had left, and while I had given him permission to follow me, I didn’t know that he would. Julian Markham was a proud man.
My trunk had already been placed inside, so I stripped out of my traveling dress, unhooked my corset and petticoats, and changed into a fresh chemise. I washed my hands and face and then I crawled under the blankets of the bed. Even though it was only late afternoon, I knew once I closed my eyes, I would fall asleep. And I did.
I gave her two days. Of course, I followed her to London as soon as I could, my valet insisting on coming with me in what I saw as a fit of loyal pique, and I obtained the address of this Esther Leavold as soon as humanly possible, but I didn’t go there. Not yet. I would allow her as much space as I could possibly stand.
Which to be honest, wasn’t much. I had barely slept since she’d left, my every thought consum
ed by her. I missed her wild laugh, her defiant smile. I missed the way her body had come to life under my touch, as if she were a treasure only I could unlock.
Just the thought sent a spike of heat through me. God, what I wouldn’t give for her to be with me now. I would kiss my way up those perfect thighs, those thighs that were strong and lithe but still impossibly soft, and then I would bury my face in her cunt. I would lick and nip at her until her back was arched and her feet were pushing uselessly against the floor, and then I would seal my mouth over her clit and suck until she came. And while she was still riding the waves of her orgasm, I would shove into her, hard. She liked her fucking rough, with the edge of pain on the periphery, and I loved watching her come apart in my hands, her hips bucking and her eyes delirious. Her perfect lips parted. I would make her come on my cock one more time before I surrendered myself, before I pumped her full of my seed.
I was hard just thinking about it, but I ignored the urge to stroke myself off, to blunt the edge of ever-present hunger I had when it came to Ivy. It would be a paltry substitute. It would be no substitute at all. And I had never been one to accept anything less than what I wanted.
And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t want to ease any of my pain, physical or emotional. I wanted to hurt, I wanted to be miserable. I wanted to hate every moment that I wasn’t with her.
I looked around the opulent hotel room that I had rented only a short walk away from Esther Leavold’s house. I knew Molly and some of the others were in town, but I had no desire to see them. Molly had little patience for romantic love and so would be impossible. The others had no experience with this kind of attachment at all—their love lives stopped short at dalliances and brief courtships. Even Silas didn’t truly understand, although he had been the only one to truly stay by my side while I’d chased after Violet.
Pointlessly chased after Violet.
I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. Fuck. Just thinking of it made me furious and devastated and ashamed all at once. I wanted to say that she had broken my heart with her infidelity, but that wasn’t quite true, because by that point I’d realized that I didn’t love her in the slightest. No, it had been my honor and my pride that had been wounded, and in a way that made my actions all the more reprehensible, because I couldn’t even claim to have been blinded with heartbreak.
The horrified look in Ivy’s eyes as I had told her…
But in a way, it had been such a huge relief. This sin I had carried with me, had borne alone. Silas knew that something had happened with Mrs. Harold, but gentle soul that he was, he had no idea that it hadn’t been the ordinary extramarital tryst. Even he, my oldest friend, would be aghast.
I stood and paced the large room. How was it on the heels of my worst moments, my darkest sins, I had stumbled upon the one person I had been unconsciously searching for my entire life? The time in my life when I least deserved love and goodness, and then Ivy had appeared, wary and distant and perfect.
I had known from the moment I held her wrist and felt the blood thrumming there, the moment I saw the pulse fluttering in her neck. I had known that there was something different in her, something that I responded to on such a deep level that it was impossible to control my reactions to it. But how could I take her, at my mercy as she was? If I despoiled my dead wife’s cousin, only a month after her death, then I would be that same monster who had fucked another woman for revenge. No—I had vowed to myself to protect her, no matter how much I wanted her. I was a better man than that.
But I hadn’t counted on her wanting me too. And truthfully, I was not a better man than that. How could I claim to be, when I still hated the memory of Violet, when I still didn’t know if I would honestly go back and undo what I had done the night she died? When I couldn’t even truly let Ivy go, when I had promised her I would?
She said it was okay to follow her, I reminded myself.
Which was good. Because I couldn’t wait any longer.
I'd been trying to draft a letter for about three hours, and so far it only read Dear Julian at the top. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, really, and even more than that, I wasn’t sure what I should say. Should I tell him that it was best if we dissolved our engagement? My aunt Esther seemed to think so, and she had spent the last day and a half reminding me. This would have been the wisest option, according to every bit of conventional wisdom I knew.
But I couldn’t write the words. Every time I started, a wave of exhaustion and nausea would crash over me and I would lay down my pen and stare out of the window, letting melancholy thoughts chase themselves over and over again.
But how could I write anything else? If I wrote how I really felt—how lonely and lost and empty—if I told him how I’d spent my days in London, barely eating and listlessly watching the street outside the window, then he would take that as encouragement. Confirmation. And that was unfair to him as well as me.
A knock at the door. My new lady’s maid, Polly, came in. “A caller in the parlor, Miss Leavold.”
“It’s for my aunt, surely,” I said, turning back to my unwritten letter.
