Ivy watched as Luke closed the door firmly behind him. The second it had shut, her knees gave out entirely and she sank to the floor. She was still shaking uncontrollably and tried to take deep breaths in order to steady herself. Her emerald green dress fanned out like a pool around her, the creamy lace edging creating a striking contrast against the dark wood of the floor.
She did a mental check of her body - its reactions. She was fascinated by science, by anatomy, by any information she could gleam at all from the books that lined her bedroom walls but nothing she had read had prepared her for this.
Her hands were shaking and clammy, her breath laboured, her stomach tight yet fluttering. She listed these things off in her mind as if it were a check-list of symptoms. Her thighs were trembling and she could still feel the hot flush that had overtaken her face. Her breathing was laboured, coming in short gasps.
Her nipples were hard. She could feel them still, tight and insistent against her bodice. The soft fabric of her under-shift suddenly seemed too soft; the delicate fibres tickling the sensitive nubs. That had been the last thing that had tipped her over, she remembered.
During the game, against the wall, that was when the symptoms had started. The heady feelings had overwhelmed her in a sudden rush, she had barely been able to comprehend it, it had all happened so quickly. But then, when he had touched her nipple, she had felt a flash of something more, even more than when his thigh had pressed between her legs. It was as if the layers of her skirt had dulled the contact and therefore her reaction. But not her bodice. At the delicate touch of his thumb against her breast she had felt her mind swaying.
In that moment, it had felt like her sense of self, maybe even her sanity, had been teetering atop a high precipice and she had been about to tumble. Amongst everything else, THAT had been the moment, the direct jolt of fear that had truly terrified her. What on earth was happening to her body?
And this last symptom: the place between her legs, the place she so little thought about. It was still burning. The jolt of fear that had been intertwined with his touch on her bosom had seemed to shoot straight there, setting alight a sensation that had been building since he'd first pinned her wrists together, ending the furtive chase. It has been so strong, almost painful, but not quite... there was something else. But what?
She quickly lifted her skirts, running her finger up between her legs, along her trembling thighs. She hesitated once she reached the top of her legs, her hand resting just before the juncture where they met. She stroked her fingers along the inside of her thighs, trying to comfort herself in a desperate attempt to stop them trembling. The shaking had begun to get more intense again and she could see her legs vibrating, her usually pale skin painted a flush red.
Building up her courage, she traced her fingers higher. Looking directly into the fire, she reached out with the tip of her index finger and touched herself as lightly as she could. She was so sensitive that the intense sensation that coursed through her upon contact almost made her double over and she quickly wrenched her hand away. She looked at her fingers, startled. They were wet.
She searched every dark recess of her mind that she could access to try to distinguish what was happening to her. It seemed to resemble intense fear. The shaking, the feelings in her stomach. They must come from adrenaline. Yes, the fight or flight reaction. But she couldn't remember any information about why that would cause this reaction between her legs.
And regardless of the reaction between her legs, why would she become so terrified of Luke? She had never feared him before, never with any of their chase games. He had never hurt her. Even when he'd pressed her against the wall today, it hadn't hurt... or, not exactly. The memory caused another intense surge of heat to lash through her groin and a moan fell from her lips before she could catch it.
Frustrated, no, infuriated at her lack of knowledge, her inability to understand, she forced herself to stand up and quickly moved to her closest bookshelf. She squinted hard at the titles but in the dying light she couldn't make out the words. She shot a glance at the window, saw that the sun had now almost completely fallen down to hide behind the hills; leaving her room in near-total darkness, save for one candle. Of course, the fire - it hadn't been lit.
She ran her fingers through her hair in anguish. She moved to the servant's bell by the door, reaching out to tug at it, summon someone to light the fire, but stopped herself. She couldn't bear to do it, to have anyone in the room right now would have been too much but especially to light the kindling that Luke had set up, as he did every night. It seemed wrong, intensely wrong.
She swirled on the spot and scanned the room. A chest of drawers sat beside her bed and she rushed to it, pulling out the drawers frantically, searching for the matches that she was sure she kept in there. She often read late into the night and needed to be able to light the candles by her bedside. She just hoped she hadn't used the last match.
The drawers were empty and she resisted the urge to scream. She quickly dropped to the ground, scanning the wooden floor for any hint of matches. And then she saw the cardboard box under her bed. She must have simply dropped them down a night or two before, absent-minded from whatever book she'd been caught up in.
She moved over to the fire, matches clasped in her still-trembling hands. The first few matches she tried to strike snapped. She was being too vigorous. Obviously the adrenaline was still surging through her delicate frame. She took a moment to steady herself, taking a deep breath in and holding it for a few moments before allowing it to trickle out of her lungs slowly.
The next match burst into flame instantly. She carefully lowered it down to the kindling, lighting first one corner, then the next, as she had seen Luke do so many times before. The thought made her squeeze her eyes shut with an over-whelming emotion that she couldn't put a name to. She shook herself mentally and carried on with the fire.
Eventually, the entire kindling structure was roaring with flames, heat licking at the sides of the hearth. She quickly rose and began to frantically pull books down from her shelves, anything that she thought could help, could explain what was happening to her body.
She had never felt so terrified, so confused by her own senses. She felt betrayed in some way and suddenly that anger latched onto Luke. Luke, who had been there when this happened, had seen her body behave in strange ways and yet said nothing. He had just left. What if she was ill? She just didn't know. But Luke knew so many things about the world that she didn't, having been allowed to roam beyond the castle walls. He might have been able to help her.
With a new bout of anger, she began to tear the books from their shelves, not even considering the titles anymore. Once she had nearly emptied the bookshelves of their contents she set herself down on the floor in the middle of the pile, in front of the fire. There she remained for hours, reading furtively well into the night.
******
Luke stormed out of the castle and into the grounds, his fists clenched against his sides and an awful feeling causing his stomach to churn. He couldn't remember ever being so furious with himself. Yes, furious, but also something else. There - niggling at the back of his mind was an even deeper feeling of pure, burning lust. This made him even angrier and he quickly pushed that feeling as far away from his conscious thoughts as it could go.
He sped up his pace and quickly reached the stables where his horse was kept. It was a beautiful, strong black mare. It had been the first thing he'd bought with his wages from the castle and he had learned to ride with an avid fascination. Learning to control such a beautiful creature had filled him with intense feelings of strength, a feeling he hadn't forgotten since. He had been planning to teach Ivy to ride -- she had wanted to learn. She always wanted to learn. He shook the thought from his mind as the painful realisation surged through him that he wouldn't be able to teach her now.
He swiftly jumped up into the saddle, setting into a gallop and racing along the road leading to the town. As he rode, he couldn't help running over the scenes of that night in his mind. Like an endless spinning wheel it kept going, images of her flashed like lightning bolts before his eyes.
Her quick breathing, her flushed face, the sweat on her breasts, the roll of her hips against his thigh. Damnit, why hadn't she said something? He had been following her cues! And yet something had pushed her over an edge of some sort. He knew she had been aroused, as sure as he knew anything, could tell the signs from a mile off. So why had she become startled, HOW had he pushed her too far?
Because he was a servant, surely. Because he was below her. In all the books she had, he was sure there were Fairy Tales, romances. He'd never seen them on the shelves but she was bound to have them hidden somewhere. And what happens in Fairy Tales? The princess gets her prince. Prince Charming. That was her fear, that's what had caused her mind to overcome her desire - that she'd been made to feel that way by a mere servant of hers.
With a roar he whipped the reins to speed his horse on, wanting to get as far from her as he could. It was a straight line from the castle and as he rode he could still glance behind his shoulder and see the castle in the distance; Ivy's window a tiny pin point in the otherwise all-consuming darkness of the massive stone structure. And then, with a start, he tugged at the reins, causing his horse to skid to a halt.
Ivy's window. A pin-point. A pin-point of light. That meant that the fire had been lit. He hadn't done it; he hadn't gotten that far before being caught up in her talk, her words, her...
That meant that someone else would have had to light the fire for her -- she'd have had to call for one of the other servant boys, and she would have watched as this other man set aflame to the structure that he, Luke, had built for her.
He always lit the fire for her at night, and the break in this tradition wounded him more than any other thought that he'd had so far. He dug his heels into the horses flank with a fresh surge of fury. So, he obviously wasn't special to her. Their time together, their talks, easily replaced.
