He was the first person Grace had ever known who was incredibly rich but who didn't act like it. Instead, he just acted kind of like a normal guy—he put his feet on the coffee table, he sometimes drove himself to work, and he even sometimes played with his food, like that time he had shown her “how real Italians cook pasta” and thrown some of it at the wall to see if it stuck.
And Grace couldn't stop thinking about how attractive he was, either. She'd wake up in the morning with her pussy already wet and ready to go, just waiting to be filled. If Christian was there, of course they'd have sex; on the infrequent mornings when he wasn't there, she'd felt that she needed to bring herself off or wouldn't be able to concentrate for the rest of the day—but that had only left her feeling lonely and not entirely sated.
She liked having him there in bed with her too; he helped her get over her nightmares, and there were many nights where one or the other of them would wake up and spontaneously start to work on the other person, waking them with soft touches and deliberate gestures.
And his tongue—god, that man could do things with his tongue that made her toes curl! She'd never realized how easily she could get turned on before, but Christian seemed to take her body as a kind of challenge, trying all sorts of new things and cataloguing which ones worked and which ones didn't. She'd known she liked kissing with tongue before and she'd had guys go down on her before, but she was pretty sure Christian could easily make her come just by using his tongue on her nipples.
Christian, for his part, felt the same about Grace: that she was incredibly good at reading his needs and using them to drive him absolutely crazy. She would usually start off with her hands, letting his heavy prick just rest in her palm for a long moment while she thumbed at the slit, waiting until she was rewarded with a bead of precome. Then she would smear that around, allowing more and more of his shaft to slip through her fist each time she pumped her hand back and forth.
He liked it when she used her nails on him, whether she was drawing sleepy patterns on his skin early in the morning or in post-coital bliss, or when she was dragging them down his back in a fit of passion. She was so absolutely beautiful too, but at the same time, in all of their interactions, she managed to come across as adorable more than anything else. He didn't really know how she managed to be both things at once, but he liked it.
That afternoon, Christian was supposed to be overseeing a project at the office, but he found himself shut up inside his own office, unable to quit thinking of the bewitching woman he'd left back at home. They'd had a nice morning and he'd come into the office late; when he'd left, she'd been sitting half naked in bed, a sheet draped over her lap, with a book in hand, her brow wrinkled slightly in concentration.
You never would have known that just an hour before that, she'd been falling apart beneath him, begging him to let her come. He'd denied her permission the first few times, testing her limits, and when he'd finally allowed her to come… Well, it was a pretty heady feeling for both of them. He couldn't believe he had lucked out with a woman who was so malleable and yet also so headstrong.
Thinking about that morning, he couldn't help but touch himself through his slacks; even though he'd been having sex fairly frequently lately, it seemed like he was constantly still in need of more. The more attention she gave him, the more he craved.
He thought about calling her up, but he didn't know how she'd react to that. Instead, he contented himself with pictures of her that he had in his head: her splayed out on the bed with her legs wantonly open—her touching herself as he undressed as fast as he could… He especially liked to picture her the way she was first thing in the morning, so sleepy and gorgeous and ready-to-please.
Christian glanced guiltily at the blinds on his office windows and checked the lock on his door, then collapsed into his desk chair and undid his belt and his button. His penis sprung free of its former confinement, curling anxiously up towards his desk. He spat into his palm and started rubbing at himself, imagining it was her hands on him instead.
He set a similar rhythm to the one he would set if he were inside her, pulling slowly out and then slamming back in. In his head, he could hear those soft noises that she always made, could see the surprised and needy look that she usually got on her face. God, she was beautiful like that…
The problem was, despite all the images in his head, doing something like this without her here just wasn't enough. If anything, it made his panther itchier to claim her as his mate—and despite the fact that the woman had been living with him for nearly a month now, he still had yet to claim her, still waiting for the right time.
His feline side didn't approve of that. His human side insisted it was necessary.
Whatever the case, he still had yet to inform her that he was a shifter; there was never really a good time to do so, and truth be told, he was a bit nervous about what her reaction might be. Would she still trust him? Would she be afraid of him? He just didn't know.
The more restless the panther got, the more difficult it was to get himself off with his hand alone—but that was all he had at the moment. He rocked desperately up into his hands, smearing around the precome and trying hard to mimic the feel of her vagina closing around him—but it was futile, and he could feel his orgasm slipping further and further away the more he overanalyzed his need and tried to compensate for the current lack of her.
He slammed a palm down on his desk, causing a few papers to flutter down to the floor, and then buttoned himself up in disgust.
“Tonight,” he promised himself. “Tonight, I'll tell her all about what I am and about the mating process.” He breathed in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm down his overexcited body and the restless panther side. “Tonight,” he vowed again.
He wanted everything to be perfect, so he quickly wrote out a list of things that he knew she liked that he could incorporate—things like her favorite food (lasagne), her favorite color (blue—they could put those blue placemats out on the table), etc. He wasn't really any party planner, but he hoped she would appreciate the effort, anyway.
He placed a few calls to make sure everything would be ready when he arrived at home, although the best way to word things escaped him. Of course, Pearson and some of the other staff knew what he was—there really was no way to explain it to someone that they might sometimes come home to find a sentient panther lounging on the living room couch.
But they were fiercely loyal and wanted to protect him, and that didn't mean they would approve of his sharing that information with all and sundry. They'd been frustrated enough when he'd accidentally shown Miranda what he could do.
Miranda… He hadn't thought about her in a while, although he probably should have wondered what she was up to. His psychotic ex-girlfriend lived to make his life difficult. Even though it had been over three years since she'd cheated on him and ran off with someone else, she still expected that Christian would pay her bills every month. And he had been, up to the point when he'd met Grace, in a mis-guided attempt to keep the society ladies happy.
Now that he'd decided he no longer wanted anything to do with her and had refused to pay her for that month, well…suffice it to say that Miranda was not very happy with him at the moment. But then again, between the number of people the authorities were going after for the slave trade scandal and Miranda, well...it seemed like most of the elite had turned against him at the moment.
And the scary thing was, he almost didn't mind. He'd give up all the business deals he was currently working on if it meant he could keep Grace happy and safe. And he didn't think that was just his panther side talking, either: he was pretty sure the human side agreed. It was...disconcerting, to say the least.
Christian collected the papers that had fallen and booted up his computer, knowing he needed to quit allowing Grace and all the other drama to distract him; he had come into the office, after all, to get some work done—he would much rather have stayed home in bed with his mate. The sooner he go
t everything finished up here at the office, the sooner he could race home to her and tell her his secret, the one he'd been keeping hidden for as long as he could remember.
Chapter Eight
It was one of those rare moments when Grace was all by herself at the mansion, and she kind of reveled in it. Not that she didn't love Christian or recognize the use of having a full staff of servants around (it was especially wonderful, for example, to have somebody else cook them breakfast in bed after a night of passionate love-making, or to be able to chat on the phone with her sister while Pearson drove her in to work!).
But it was also nice to know that she could turn on music and wander around the house singing off-key while she did some tidying (not that there was really anything to tidy) or that she could catch up on terrible TV shows without fear of being caught (although she suspected Christian would've been intrigued).
When the front bell rang, she hesitated to answer it, but then again, she'd been half living there for nearly a month at that point, so she might as well answer it. It was probably only the mailman with a package or something anyway.
So she was a bit surprised to find an impeccably-dressed, beautiful young woman waiting at the door. Glancing past her, Grace could see a limo waiting in the driveway, so she must be one of Christian's friends amongst the elite.
“Um, hello,” Grace offered, feeling a bit shy in her tee-shirt and jeans in the face of this woman's designer suit.
The woman offered her a charming smile, though—she didn't seem at all as standoffish as most of the other society women Grace had met over the past month. “Hello,” she said pleasantly, holding out her hand. “I'm Miranda Keating, I don't think we've met yet? You're the talk of the town, though; all those women have been positively drooling over Christian for ages now!”
“Oh, uh, it's nice to meet you,” Grace said.
“And you,” Miranda enthused warmly. “Say, Christian doesn't happen to be around, does he?”
“No, he's out at the moment,” Grace answered. “Some work business. Did you need to talk to him?” She wondered why the woman hadn't just called on the phone… And Grace didn't want to be the jealous type, but she hadn't heard Christian mention a 'Miranda' in the whole time they'd known each other, but if they were such good friends that they just dropped by one another's houses every so often… Well, Grace didn't want to jump to conclusions, but it all just seemed a little strange.
Miranda was still smiling, though. “Actually,” she said, “it was you that I stopped by to see, not Christian. Do you mind if I come inside?”
Grace blinked, automatically backing into the house to give Miranda space to enter. The woman swept past her and led the way to the sitting room, clearly very familiar with the place. “Did you want a drink, dear?” Miranda asked, pausing by the bar. “What I need to tell you might be...a bit disconcerting.”
Grace swallowed hard, thinking back to how she had originally come to be there in Christian's home. Had she been wrong all along? Was Christian really involved in the sex slave trade ring? Grace didn't want to admit that she might have been deceived again, but…well, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
Miranda could clearly tell the direction her thoughts were running based on her facial expressions, and Miranda herself began to look sympathetic. “Yes, I'm afraid it really is that bad,” she said. “Why don't you have a seat and I'll make us a couple drinks. Trust me, I'm your ally here.”
Grace nodded dazedly and sat down on the couch while Miranda went about mixing a couple drinks at the bar. “Is Christian involved in the...sex slave ring?” she asked tentatively.
Miranda sighed, handing Grace a drink—and one whiff of it told Grace that it was strong. That was probably for the best, though. “It's a bit more complicated than that,” Miranda said, sitting beside her on the sofa.
She spun a lock of hair around one finger, clearly thinking of how to say what she wanted to say next. “You see,” she said, “I once belonged to Christian. I escaped...a few years ago now. In fact, I'm surprised it's taken Christian this long to move on to his next victim.” She paused. “Because that's what you are, dear—as much as I hate to say it. You're his victim.”
Grace started to interrupt her—she didn't feel like a victim; Christian had been nothing but kind and caring to her! But Miranda held up a hand. “Please, let me finish,” she said. “It's...difficult to talk about.” And Grace fell silent at that, thinking back on her own story and how difficult that party still was to even think about, let alone talk about.
“Christian bought me, just like he bought you,” she confided. “And I'm guessing he played the same tricks with you as he played with me. Yes, for the first few months of the relationship, he was so kind and so caring, almost letting me believe I was free.
“We'd have breakfast in bed, and we'd have incredible sex. He'd show me around town, take me to parties and make me feel like a princess, make me feel as though I was the only woman he had ever truly had eyes for. I'd never felt so beautiful or special in my life. He promised me a life free from worry, where we could spend all day in bed if we pleased and where I could focus on my hobbies rather than work. I began to think that I'd found the one.
“But that was a lie, of course. By the time anything had changed, I'd fallen out of touch with my friends and family: he was my entire world. Nor was I going to work—why should I need to, when he was there to pay for everything? In short, there was no one to comment on the bruises that began to pop up more and more frequently, and no one to miss me when I eventually disappeared.
“The first time he hit me was around three months into our relationship. I'm sure you've had a taste of how sharp his anger can get, but you probably disregarded it—he was angry at the other men at the auction, but that was righteous anger on your behalf, right?
“It's a bit different when that anger is directed at you.”
Miranda paused and took a deep breath; Grace took a large swallow of her drink, hands shaking. She couldn't believe that first Liam and now Christian had fooled her so easily.
Miranda shook her head. “The thing about Christian is, he...isn't human. He's a beast, preying on innocent young girls like you or me. He gets away with it because he has money and can pay the authorities off, but everyone knows what he's up to. Who do you think arranges those 'parties' as a front to a giant sex slave trade? Christian pays his henchmen to go out and find eligible young women. Some of them get off lightly, with only a night's worth of horrors to contend with. Others, like us, are not so lucky.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and Grace couldn't help but scoot closer to her on the sofa, putting a gentle hand on the other woman's shoulder. “I just can't believe...” she began, then trailed off. Why should she trust Christian, after all? She hardly knew anything about the man except for what she'd heard from him herself, and that could easily have been lies designed to keep her from going to the authorities about this whole thing.
“He's a horrible, wicked man,” Miranda continued after a long moment and a sip of her drink. “The only way I was able to escape was that he injured me badly enough that I ended up in the hospital. For a while, I wasn't even sure I would survive, there was that much internal bleeding.
“After that, fortunately, Christian decided he was tired of playing with me and moved on to other targets. I tried to go to the authorities, but no one seemed to care—they all already knew this was going on, and they just turned a blind eye to it. So I left town and set up a life somewhere else, but...this is my home, and all my family lives here. It's not fair that I should have to leave just because of this monster. Anyway, I was always worried that there would be someone else like me who was drawn into Christian's web without any sort of warning.”
Miranda turned pleading eyes on Grace. “Please—you have to promise me that you'll listen to my warning and leave this place. I don't want to see you hurt the way I was. He's a beast, I'm telling you—an absolute beast. Maybe next time he won't stop at in
juring someone but will actually kill them. You seem like a nice girl; I don't know you, but at the same time, I don't want that to happen to you. Things like this should never happen to anyone.”
Grace shook her head helplessly. “I just… He's been so good to me. But it all makes sense, when you tell me what happened to you. I guess I sort of suspected it as well...” She felt a pang in her heart: she'd so wanted for this one to be different, and she'd thought it was. But the things Miranda was saying rang eerily true.
“I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Miranda said sincerely.
Grace sighed and impulsively leant over to hug the other woman. “Thank you for coming out here to tell me this,” she said. She swallowed. “I guess I need to get out of here before Christian gets back—who knows what he could be planning or how long I have before he...snaps.”
“That's probably the best idea,” Miranda said sympathetically, nodding her head sagely. She pulled a small slip of paper from her clutch and passed it over to the stricken Grace. “If there's anything I can do for you, don't hesitate to call me, please. You aren't alone in this.”
“Thank you,” Grace said again, standing slowly and moving to deposit her glass at the bar. She shook her head dazedly. “I guess you know where the door is? I'm going to grab some things and then...leave.”
“Do you need a ride anywhere?” Miranda asked. “I could–“
“No,” Grace said, cutting her off. The sooner she got away from these crazy socialites, the better! “Thanks, but I'll be fine—I'll call a cab. You wouldn't want to take a limo into my part of town anyway; too many narrow streets and sharp corners.” She tried a smile, but she could feel that it fell a bit flat.
“All right,” Miranda said. “Like I said, though, if you need anything—even if you just need to talk for a bit—you know how to contact me.”
Romance: Auctioned To The Panther: BBW Dragon Shifter Romance Standalone (Wild Shifters Book 2) Page 5