Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

tried to hide it. I wondered if there was a man—but there couldn’t have been: no one saw or heard of one.
    â€˜And it was so unlike Bella—she was always the calm one, the dutiful daughter, the one who endured their father’s bullying.’ She sighed, thinking of Meg and her two lost sisters and her own, startling, precarious, happiness. ‘Will you ever find them, do you think?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I don’t give up.’
    â€˜You can’t work miracles,’ she said, reaching up to touch his cheek.
    â€˜Perhaps not.’ He looked down at her. ‘But I can recognise one when I see it.’ And he bent to kiss her.

Chapter Four
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Impatient?’ he said wickedly, raising his head.
    â€˜Desperate,’ she panted. And it was true, even if she felt a cowardly anxiety for the frightening part to be over.
    â€˜Hmm. These things shouldn’t be rushed.’ Patrick slid off the bed, leaving her to sit up with a gasp of protest.
    â€˜It is all right for you,’ she said, frustrated indignation overcoming the tattered remnants of modesty. ‘You’ve…. You’ve…’
    â€˜ Come is the word you are looking for,’ Patrick said, opening drawers and rummaging.
    â€˜Oh.’ Blushing, she stored that away. ‘What have you got there?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Do you trust me, Laurel?’ he asked, sitting beside her.
    â€˜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