Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride (4 page)

‘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.

‘I…I came?' she asked, trying out the new word.

‘Yes.' He flopped down on the pillows next to her, looking smug. Laurel gradually surfaced through the ripples of pleasure, a wicked idea coming to her. She rolled over onto one elbow and found that his head was resting on his loosely clasped hands. She took one, kissed the pulse point, leaned over and kissed the other wrist.

Patrick's lids closed and he made a sound like a purr. Like lightning she whipped one loop over his right wrist, one over his left. He opened his eyes with an outraged roar and she wriggled off the bed, half terrified by what she had done. ‘Let me go!'

‘Don't you trust me?' she teased. His eyes as he looked at her seemed strangely unfocused and she realised that he was finding this extremely arousing, whatever he might say. One glance down at the powerful erection rearing up from the tangle of dark curls confirmed it. ‘Methinks you protest too much, sir,' she said, trailing one finger up the length of him before she ran to the dresser.

‘Of course I— Leave that alone!' But she was already digging into the open drawer.

‘What is this? Oh!' Laurel dropped the intricately carved ivory object back into the drawer with a thud.
Why would anyone want… No, don't think about it.

Feathers. She picked up a handful and regarded Patrick thoughtfully over a bouquet of them. Sauntering back to the bed, she dropped them one after another onto his struggling body and watched the effect. Yes, that was a most satisfactory response. If she brushed the ostrich plume down his chest he moaned and his nipples hardened. She lifted it from his body and let it drift down her own torso. When she opened her eyes, panting slightly, Patrick's were fixed on her. He licked his lips as though they were dry. His eyes promised things she could only guess at. He had played these games before, that was quite clear.

Laurel dropped the plume, got her unsteady legs under control then went back to investigate further, pulling out another drawer.

Books, with pictures. She leaned down and thumbed through. Her mouth went dry.
Oh, my. Perhaps not. Not yet…

The next drawer was full of coiled leather.

‘Oh, no. Absolutely not,' Patrick said as she pulled out a long whip, its thong trailing across the floor. His hands clutched at the rope in a futile effort to break it as she gave an experimental flick. The crack made both of them jump.

‘No,' Laurel agreed with some feeling, dropping the whip. Then her fingers found a mass of soft ribbons and she pulled it out. Not ribbon: long shreds of suede were attached to a handle. She eyed it with interest and came back to the bed. There was so much to learn about her own body, about his, but she was beginning to grasp the basic principles. Caress, tease, titillate.

‘Don't you dare,' Patrick warned, straining against his bonds. His body, Laurel thought, was magnificent. Dressed, he was tall and lean and moved elegantly. She was still fascinated by how, naked, that leanness revealed itself as hard, fit muscle.

‘But you can't do anything.' Laurel trailed the ribbons over his feet, up his leg. She bent over and blew, sending the feathers into the air and removing his last protection. She trailed the suede strips higher, watching his muscles tighten and bunch, his erection grow in the nest of dark curls.

‘You like this,' she stated when he growled at her and she flicked the implement, raining dozens of feather-light blows across his groin and stomach. ‘Oh, yes, do not deny it. Perhaps I should get that other whip after all.'

Patrick moved so fast that she had no chance of escape. His legs came up, caught her in a tight grip that pulled her to him, trapping whip and feathers between them. He succeeded in catching one loop with the opposite hand and twisted the wrist free. Then she was under him.

‘Wicked,' he said and grinned. Then the amusement faded away and they lay there, silent, reading each other's eyes. ‘You are sure?' he asked after an aching minute. ‘Laurel, my darling. You are quite sure?'

‘Yes.'
Never more sure of anything
, Laurel thought. Then she saw the expression of possessive tenderness in his eyes and was suddenly shy. ‘Patrick?'

‘Don't worry,' he said, sounding as though he understood. He rolled off and began to kiss her—slow, drugging kisses—as his hand stroked lower until he was cupping the mound between her thighs. Laurel gasped as she pressed against his palm, aware that she was hot and wet and aching for him. ‘It will be all right. See—your body knows what to do.'

Laurel wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in the angle of his shoulder and neck and he laughed, a low, husky sound as his weight shifted over her. She opened for him, wondering at the way her body made a cradle for his, wondering at how slow and careful he was being after the urgency of their lovemaking before.

This was the moment she had been frightened of, she realised, aware of him nudging against her. But this was Patrick and this was right, her body knew. Her mind was still capable of surprise though, she found, gasping at the pressure, the intimacy, the heat. Her hands slid down to his waist, holding him, urging him on when he seemed to hesitate, just at her entrance.

‘Laurel?'

She was not certain what he was asking. Permission? His eyes frowned a little, his jaw was rigid with tension. But she said, ‘Yes,' trusting him, and he took her mouth as he surged within her, filling her utterly, sweeping away the moment of pain with his strength. He was still again and she struggled to deal with this new feeling, with the fullness, the awareness that they were joined. Tentative, she found new, unused muscles and squeezed.

‘Laurel,' Patrick said again in a voice she had never heard him use, his hips moving under her hands as he thrust into her, catching her up in his rhythm, making her gasp and sob with the intensity of it. ‘Come with me, Laurel. Come with me, my darling Laurel.'

And sensation splintered and she heard his voice mingling with hers and she was flying, clasped close to his body, and then sinking down, limp and replete and safe in his arms into darkness.

Laurel woke to the sensation of cool and dampness. When she opened her eyes she found Patrick sponging her body carefully with a linen towel, his face intent, his hands gentle. ‘You're awake.' He dropped the cloth back into the basin and she saw he was draped, Romanlike in a sheet.

‘Yes.' What was he thinking behind those warm hazel eyes? Regret? Disappointment at her lack of skill? Or did he remember their lovemaking with pleasure? She found herself too shy to ask. ‘What time is it?'

‘A quarter past three. We'll need to wait a little longer—to four perhaps. I rang the bell and someone came—it took a while, but they were fully awake.' He gestured at a side table. ‘I ordered wine and some food and I asked for something for you to wear.'

‘Really?' Laurel wriggled up against the pillows. ‘Didn't they want to know why?'

‘I implied that I wanted the fun of taking clothes off you again.' Patrick grimaced and held up a skimpy gold silk gown and a pair of fragile kid slippers. ‘This is what they brought. Not exactly the thing to wear to escape notice on the streets, but better than the rags of that shift and bare feet. You can use the shawl you found in here earlier, as well.'

He busied himself at the table and came back with wine and a plate with a chicken leg and some bread and butter. ‘When did you last eat?'

‘I don't know,' Laurel said ruefully as she reached for the meat, her mouth watering. ‘There was a rather ghastly pie at an inn where the stage stopped. Since then, I haven't had much appetite. I tried to force something down because I needed the strength.' Most of it had come straight back, but she wasn't going to tell him that.

‘How the devil did you get here, anyway? I know you wanted to go to Falmouth to find work and see Meg, but how exactly were you tricked into coming here?' Patrick filled his own plate and came to sit at the foot of the bed.

‘I got off the stage at the Belle Sauvage inn and I was looking around to see if I could work out where to go for the next stage and this respectable woman offered to show me,' Laurel said through a mouthful of bread and butter. ‘The next thing I knew I was bundled into a carriage with the blinds down.' She swallowed, controlling the remembered panic. ‘I bit someone.'

‘Good,' Patrick said, leaning over to fill up her glass. ‘I am sorry I shouted at you and said you were foolish. These people are plausible and ruthless—it was not your fault. So they brought you here and you saw me and thought the worst.'

‘I thought…'
Lie, don't let him know you doubted him
, something said inside her. But this was Patrick: she couldn't lie to him. ‘I thought—just for a second—you had come to rescue me. And then I realised that was impossible. I thought you were one of them, one of the men who would… I am so sorry.'

‘Don't be sorry. I understand,' he said, his eyes meeting hers above the rims of their glasses. ‘You were angry with me. I was furious with you, too—relief, I suppose. For a while there I thought I wouldn't be able to afford to buy you.'

‘You are the sort of man who will not give up. You would have done something.' The red wine warmed her stomach and the food put strength back into her. She would need it, Laurel sensed. Her whole future hung in the balance. She was his—he had bought her. But she was no one's slave, nor was he a man who would compel a mistress to stay with him, even one who had surrendered her virginity to him.

‘What is it exactly that you do? You don't spend all your time hunting missing women, do you?' She smiled at him. ‘You were incredibly discreet in Martinsdene.'

‘I've a small estate near Falmouth,' Patrick said, looking into the depths of the wine as though he could see the scene. ‘It doesn't bring in much, although I'm working to improve it. I'm a younger son, so I have no expectations. I want to enter government service and for that I need a patron and a reputation. I have been acting as a confidential agent for anyone of any standing in the area who'll employ me. This case is proving more intractable than most,' he added, his mouth grim.

‘You'll solve it,' she said. ‘You came to the mystery of the Shelley sisters late, that is all.' He gave a complicated jerk of his head, half agreeing with her, half, she could tell, clinging to the high standards he had set himself. ‘You have your career all mapped out. You are a planner, aren't you, Patrick Jago?'

‘Oh, yes,' he agreed, still staring into the wine. ‘Build up the estate, buy more land, employ a steward, impress some more patrons. I have it all worked out,' he added as though mocking himself.

And find the right wife.
The unspoken words seemed to hang in the air between them.
That is not me
, Laurel thought as her stomach gave a painful swoop.
Orphaned daughter of the minor gentry without money or connections or the slightest influence. Ah, well, it has seemed like a fairy story from the beginning, complete with ogres and dragons and my white knight.

The clock struck four and she looked up, bemused by her thoughts. ‘Time to get out of here,' Patrick said, standing up and reaching for his clothes.

‘Where are we?' Laurel got up, too, and struggled into the flimsy gown. It was virtually transparent, but with the large shawl draped and tied it would pass.

‘An alleyway down the side of Almack's Assembly Rooms. In the middle of fashionable St James's,' Patrick said, tying his neck cloth with a simple knot. ‘Very convenient for gentlemen squiring wives, daughters and sisters to the
ton's
premiere marriage mart if they become bored with genteel dancing and lemonade.' He shrugged into his coat and checked his pockets. ‘Eleven guineas. We'll do.'

He led the way down to the main floor, then found the service stairs at the back. There were faint sounds coming up from below as some unfortunate kitchen underling made up the fire and filled the kettles for the new day. ‘I thought so,' he murmured, his hand on the back door handle. ‘She's left it unbolted to fetch in the coals.' They slipped out and into the cold dawn light without incident.

‘Where are we going?' Laurel huddled next to him as the sleepy hackney carriage driver Patrick had hailed in St James's Square set off.

‘Back to my inn room. I'll order breakfast and you can wait while I get money out of the bank. Then we'll take the mail to Falmouth.'

‘You'll take me to Meg?'

‘Yes,' he agreed.

‘Oh, thank you.'

‘Don't thank me—I have an ulterior motive. I want you with me.'

‘But why should you?' she asked, her breath catching.

‘Because you belong to me in every way that matters,' he said, his eyes steady on hers. ‘You believe that, don't you?'

‘Yes! But you hardly know me, Patrick.'

 

Patrick looked at the anxious violet eyes watching him from the shadows and read the uncertainty in them. No, his heart was not mistaken: she felt the same way he did.

‘Don't you want to make an honest man of me?' he asked. ‘You tie me to the bed head, you torment me with feathers, you do unspeakable things with an implement I am unwilling to put a name to and then you won't come with me?'

Laurel made a choked sound somewhere between laughter and a sob. ‘Idiot. Men do that sort of thing all the time I expect.'

‘I don't,' he pointed out. ‘At least, never when the person with me meant so much to me. I wouldn't mind repeating the experience with you. I have pocketed some feathers. The amount this evening cost, I thought the least they could do was to throw those in.'

The sound became more of a chuckle. ‘Oh, don't tease me! How am I ever going to pay you back?'

‘You cannot, it will take months. Years. A whole lifetime, in fact. And here we are at the
Belle Sauvage
.'

The light was brightening and the yard was beginning to work up to its full early-morning bustle. Patrick paid the driver and then reached into the carriage. ‘Come here, Laurel. You can't walk through the yard in those slippers.'

She protested faintly but did not struggle as he took her in his arms and walked across the yard to the accompaniment of whistles from the stable boys.

‘I'm so sorry,' she mumbled into his lapel and he realised that her worries went deeper than humour could reach.

‘The key is in my pocket,' he said as they reached his door. ‘Can you find it?'

‘Put me down,' Laurel suggested as she scrabbled in his pockets. ‘No, here it is.'

‘I'm not putting you down until I reach the bed,' Patrick said, shouldering the door open and striding across the room. ‘There. Not as comfortable as the one we've been using, but it will do. Now, will you stay here until I come back?' She looked doubtful, biting her lip. ‘Give me your word, Laurel. I don't want to have to take you to my bank looking like that, but I will unless I'm certain you'll be here when I return.'

‘You won't want me after we get to Cornwall, I'm sure. I'm too ignorant, too naive, for you.'
This is love, isn't it? Love
and
lust
,
all mixed up into one delicious, heartbreaking emotion.

Patrick knelt by the bed, making her scoot back against the pillows. ‘Listen to me. I love you, Laurel. I love the way you kiss, I love the way you taste, I love your courage and your humour and the way you feel in my arms. I have known you only days—yet within minutes I felt I had been waiting for you all my life.'

‘Oh, Patrick.'

‘Are you going to argue with me? Tell me you do not like me? You may not love me yet, but I will not rest until I have made you happy.'

‘I believe you. I love you,' she said simply, suddenly utterly certain, catching his hands as he gestured with them. ‘I thought it might just be desire, but it is all mixed up together. Make love to me.'

He stared at her, the smile spreading slowly across his face until the joy danced in his eyes. ‘I love you, Laurel Vernon.' He took off his coat.

‘Patrick? I thought you were going to the bank.'

‘It won't go away.' He ripped off the crumpled neck cloth and sat down to yank at shoes and stockings. ‘I want to make love to you somewhere untainted by silks and perfume and money and fear. I want to make love to you on this rather lumpy mattress with the world going by outside the door. No ropes, no feathers, no artifice. Just you and me.'

‘Oh, yes.' This was no fairy tale, this plain inn room with the sound of post horns and shouting ostlers, the thud of running feet along the gallery on the other side of the thin wall. This was reality. This was the beginning of the rest of her life.

Laurel pulled off the gaudy silk and threw it across the room. ‘You'll have to buy me a gown and petticoats, as well,' she said.

‘Hmm?' He wasn't listening to her. ‘Your hair. So long.' Patrick reached out and touched it and she felt a little gasp escape her lips as though his hand had brushed her breast. Her nipples hardened and she leaned into his touch. He ran his fingers through the heaviness of her hair, lifting it and letting it flow free, his body tense as though he was focused on that one sensation alone.

He pushed her back onto the pillows, following her down with his weight, one hand still sifting through the tangled weight of her hair. His mouth on hers was gentle but possessive. She knew him now, the taste and the feel; she understood how to answer the probing tongue with little strokes of her own, with tiny nips of her teeth on the fullness of his lower lip, and all the time she let herself sink deeper into the reality of him. So much to learn about him, a lifetime to do it in.

She was so lucky, she thought hazily. Perhaps her friend Meg was, as well, if she understood Patrick's cryptic remarks about Lord Brandon. But nothing would make Meg truly happy until she found her sisters.

Patrick nipped at her ear and Laurel pushed her hands between them, felt the hard, flat plane of his stomach tighten as her hands skimmed down to the waistband of his breeches. She wriggled under him as she pushed them down and he arched up so she could lick and nip at his nipples, fascinated by the way they knotted, as hers did, loving the rough masculinity of the hair on his chest as she ran her fingers through it.

They tumbled over, off balance as he struggled out of his breeches and, released from his weight, Laurel slid farther until she could take him in both hands, stroke up the satin skin over hot, rigid muscle. Instinct overcame bashfulness and she dipped her head, took him in her mouth, spread her hands up to his chest to hold him and marvelled as Patrick groaned and fell back. Hers senses were full of him, under her hands she could feel his pulse thundering. Such power, she thought hazily, experimenting with tongue and lips as he shuddered.

Then he twisted, reaching for her, lifting her until she was straddling his hips. ‘Come here,' he said, his voice husky and she rose and let herself sink onto him, inch by aching inch as he filled her, completed her.

‘I love you, Patrick Jago,' she said, holding him tight within her. ‘Take me home.'

‘Oh, yes.' He bore up, lifting them both, driving into the heart of her as her senses unravelled into heat and light and a pleasure that was on the verge of unbearable. And then the world stopped spinning on its axis and they ran out of words or the need to speak and were at peace.