Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 1.50)

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I don’t give up.’

‘You can’t work miracles,’ she said, reaching up to touch his cheek.

‘Perhaps not.’ He looked down at her. ‘But I can recognise one when I see it.’ And he bent to kiss her.

Chapter Four

‘You taste good.’ The words were breathed against her lips. Laurel started to answer him and his tongue probed into her mouth. It was startling and intimate and all the aches and tremors that his body had stirred in hers came back in a flood.

How quickly she was learning the taste of him, the feel of him. How quickly her body was learning to respond. Laurel opened to him and kissed back, tangled her tongue with his to explore and to taste and to tease.

The rumpled sheets beneath her slid like silk as she moved, restless and yearning; her hands wandered, touched, experimented, savouring the novel feel of male skin at her fingertips. Patrick was smooth over hard muscle in some places and in others there was crisp hair to run her fingers through. Muscles, so clearly defined, moved as he shifted his weight until he was leaning on one elbow, bending over her, and Laurel closed her eyes, floating deliciously on sensation and trust and delight.

She felt shy again; more than a little nervous, if truth be told. Already, lovemaking was more overwhelming than she had ever imagined—and she was still a virgin. She knew it would hurt and she would have to be brave about that.

Patrick’s mouth found hers again, and she slid one hand into his hair, worried that he might stop kissing, even for a second. While he kissed her she did not have to think, only to respond and feel. His free hand moved down, found her breast and moulded it, catching the nipple between his fingers, tugging and squeezing until the pleasure had her whimpering against his mouth, arching her body, wanting to feel his weight over her again.

‘Impatient?’ he said wickedly, raising his head.

‘Desperate,’ she panted. And it was true, even if she felt a cowardly anxiety for the frightening part to be over.

‘Hmm. These things shouldn’t be rushed.’ Patrick slid off the bed, leaving her to sit up with a gasp of protest.

‘It is all right for you,’ she said, frustrated indignation overcoming the tattered remnants of modesty. ‘You’ve…. You’ve…’

‘Come is the word you are looking for,’ Patrick said, opening drawers and rummaging.

‘Oh.’ Blushing, she stored that away. ‘What have you got there?’

‘Things to play with,’ he said, turning with a grin, his hands full of silken cords. ‘Things to deal with impatience.’

Laurel eyed him suspiciously as he padded across the floor toward her, his hands fashioning two loops as she watched. He was going to tie her up. Her wrists felt the ghost sensation of the cords that had tethered her to the pillars. This is different, she reminded herself firmly. This is Patrick.

‘Do you trust me, Laurel?’ he asked, sitting beside her.

‘Yeeess,’ she said, drawing the word out into three doubtful syllables that had him laughing. She had not seen him laugh before. It took years off his age, revealing a carefree, amused man without, it seemed, a worry in the world. She found herself smiling back as she offered him her hands. Trust. ‘Yes.’

He looped the soft silk around one wrist, threaded it through the rail of the headboard, then captured the other. ‘Now then.’ He slid to her feet, making her arch up to try and watch him. Defeated by the ropes she fell back. ‘Are you ticklish?’

‘No. Oh! Oh, that is my toes—why does it feel so good…’

He sucked each toe, his clever fingers caressing her instep, her ankles, until she was wriggling, torn between laughter and something else entirely. He shifted until he was kneeling between her feet and then began to lick, slowly, thoroughly, up her legs, his tongue curling hot and wet behind her knees to make her gasp, his hands pressing her thighs apart until she lay shamelessly open to him. She tugged, tried to free her hands and could not. What was he doing? Surely he could not get any satisfaction from this?

‘Patrick! Set me free—I want to touch you.’ And then she understood: he wanted to touch her just as much. He wanted more than simply that final culminating pleasure: he wanted hers as much as she wanted his. Making love. She had never realised why it was called that before; she had thought it just a pretty euphemism.

‘I know. You will just have to be patient.’ He was laughing, she could hear it in his voice.

‘This is torture!’ she protested, gasping with the impossible pleasure of it and whatever was twisting, knotting, inside her. She tugged, but the silk held her fast and that, in itself,

was exciting. She was powerless and he could do what he wanted. But he was eager and aroused and she had done that to him—and that was her power.

The licks turned to kisses and tiny nips as he worked up her thighs, his fingers sifting into the tangle of hot, moist curls, opening her there, too. ‘Oh!’ It felt shamefully intimate. She knew she was blushing, could feel him looking at her. Does he get pleasure from looking at me like this? Do I please him? He will stop now, she thought, come up the bed and… ‘Ahh!’ A long finger slid between the secret folds. She felt how wet they were and blushed deeper, even as she writhed with the pleasure of it.

The finger slid into her, then another, flexing and stretching and caressing the tight channel. It was almost pain, but not quite. It was unbearable and yet she could bear it—somehow. She want to press down, to tighten around him but did not dare. In a minute it will not be his fingers, she thought, feeling the flicker of fear again.

Then, as she lay there, quivering with an apprehension that was part pleasure, part trepidation, he kissed her, deeply, intimately, so that she arched up from the bed, sobbing, and his lips and his tongue were at the core of her, driving her up into delight until, when the world stopped spinning, he was lying over her, his lips on hers.

How long had she drifted? she wondered, floating down to earth to find him freeing her hands, leaving the rope looped over the headboard.