Free The Reclaiming of Ivy Leavold (Markham Hall Book 4) by Sierra Simone

 

    “Julian?”
    “Wildcat.”
    “I think George is asleep.”
    I raised myself up on my arms to peer down at the baby nestled between us. We had taken our son out for a picnic today, and after Ivy and I had eaten and Ivy had nursed George, we’d all laid down on the blanket to stare up at the sky—George waving his tiny, dimpled hands the entire time.
    But Ivy was right. With a belly full of milk and his mother and father on either side, he’d drifted off to sleep, his hands up by his round little head, his small curved lips parted. I could hear the barely audible snores issuing forth, and I adjusted the light blanket around his chest. Ivy said I was abnormally preoccupied with keeping him warm, but despite his chubbiness, he still seemed so small and fragile to me, even at four months old, and the thought of him being uncomfortable or unhappy for even an instant made me viscerally upset. So I made sure his every need was accounted for—that he only had the softest clothes, that he was never more than a few steps away from his mother, that Ivy had everything she needed while she rocked and nursed him in our room.
    Ivy was curled around him now, looking up at me with the kind of wild look that made me wonder if she was all human, and I half imagined that if a stranger should stumble upon our makeshift den right now, then she would snap and snarl at him like a wolf.
    It made me want to pin her to the ground and fuck her while she snarled at me.
    In fact, my biggest struggle right now was that everything about Ivy—already perfect for me in every way—had somehow managed to become even more perfect since George was born. Her body, always beautiful, was now ripe and lush in a way that made me hard constantly, in a way I couldn’t articulate to her whenever I tried. It had something to do with her fuller, heavier breasts, overflowing in my palms when I cupped them. And something to do with her hips that now flared enticingly out from her waist. And also the impossibly soft skin of her stomach, etched with slowly silvering marks that evoked the primal nature in me, because I had caused those marks, and it made me want to plant my seed in her again and again and again.
    But more than her new body, it was her , her fierce maternal protectiveness, the frankly spiritual way she and George were bound together—it was impossible to explain without being either completely carnal or completely maudlin and so I gave up trying. Instead, I had tried to show her with my lips, with my hands, and—after the physician had given his consent—in the more traditional married fashion, although I’d be lying if I said that things had been the same after George’s birth.
    How could they be?
    But how ironic that when I desired her the most, she seemed to desire me the least.
    “Come here, Ivy,” I murmured and she did, although not before kissing the tufts of George’s raven hair and adjusting his blankets.
    She crawled over to me and I pulled her down, so that she was flat on her back and I was propped up by her side, able to caress her neck and collarbone. But the moment I reached for the hem of her skirt, a tension settled over her that I’d gotten used to these last few months, a whole-body anxiety that had never troubled her before, even when she was a virgin. I’d tried to coax her past it, tried indulging this new fragility, tried talking around it, but it hadn’t abated in the twelve weeks since we’d resumed having sex and I was starting to worry that maybe it never would, that maybe that part of my wildcat had died the moment George had been born.
    “Be honest,” I said, looking into her dark eyes. “Does it still hurt? I can use my mouth…”
    She shook her head, closing her eyes. “It doesn’t hurt. Go ahead.”
    Go ahead?
    Like I was a customer at a brothel and she was just the forbearing whore? What the fuck?
    No. No, that was not going to stand. Not with me. Not today.
    I pulled my hand out from under her