Sabrina looked away, ashamed of cowering.
Gideon walked her back to her dressing table, sat with her and took up her brush to run it through her hair. “You do not need to look at me right now, if you had rather not,” he said. “But you do need to listen. I have never hurt a woman in my life, and not for lack of opportunity.”
“An understatement, I think.”
He nodded at her reflection in the mirror, but no pride laced his look, only fact, plainly stated. “When you and I climb into that bed, which we will do.” He sighed and faced her. “When we are intimate and you want me to stop—whatever I am doing,—beginning now and until the moment death parts us, you must simply say, stop, and I will do so. Do you understand me?”
“You do not even want me. Why are you being so kind?”
“I can see that I will need a great deal of time to prove my humanity to you, but I take courage in the fact that it is not just me who frightens you. It is any man, is it not?”
“Except Hawksworth.”
Her husband sighed. “Ah, yes. Hawksworth.” He slapped his knees with the flat of his hands and stood. “And on that sobering note, I will take my bride to our marriage bed.”
Why sobering? Sabrina wondered. Was her husband jealous of a dead man? Oddly, the notion calmed her as nothing else had since the ceremony. That sign of insecurity in him was more a proof of humanity to her than kindness, for the latter could be falsified, the former, no proud man would own. And this man was prouder than most.
When Sabrina had settled herself against her pillows, however, her husband remained standing, there, at the side of the bed, as if he were waiting for something in particular.
Sabrina sat up. “Your grace?”
“I expected you to remove your gown.”
“Not in this condition, I will not.”
Her husband sighed, disappointed, she thought, and unfastened his splendid, black dressing gown, beneath which, he wore...nothing but the skin God gave him.
Sabrina squeaked and turned her face to her pillow.
The sound he made was something of a strangled chuckle. “Scoot over a bit,” he said.
She did, appalled that her naked husband wanted to share her bed at all, never mind climb onto her side of it, when he had an entire side of his own to occupy.
He settled in behind her, nevertheless. Close. Too close. Did the bed seem smaller suddenly? The covers, warmer?
Skin, she felt along her legs. His legs, hairy, hard, abrading and...incredible, slid against her own. Sabrina assured herself that she did not warm to the sensation, not even a little.
Her rogue of a husband found the hem of her gown, lifted it and stroked her ankle, the underside of a knee, the inside of a thigh, his insolent hand moving too quickly, yet too slowly to be borne.
She trembled, she shivered, then suddenly he was stroking her big naked belly and Sabrina groaned in mortification, but in relief also. He had not touched her where she expected and she was grateful, though a strange lethargy assaulted her at his simple touch of her belly, bringing a heaviness to her limbs and breasts.
She wanted somehow to stop him, but she could not.
The bed, which had not seemed empty on nights previous, seemed now to be filled properly, with the wicked-as-sin Duke of Stanthorpe wrapped warm and snug around her.
Sin notwithstanding, Sabrina found herself almost able to breathe, again, for perhaps the first time since climbing into the bed.
Slowly, sensuously, as if he must know intimately every inch of her child’s haven, the knave who owned her smoothed his big impertinent hand along her girth.
With the quickening beat of his heart at her back, and his gentling whispers at her ear, he told her she was beautiful in her maternity, aglow, the most wondrous of God’s creatures … with child.
Unable to keep herself from falling under the unrelenting spell of his practiced touch, Sabrina relaxed to the point that, several mesmerizing minutes later when he sought her embarrassingly moist center, she jumped and squeaked in surprise, protestation, or, God help her, in jubilation. Nevertheless, she grabbed his hand and brought it back to her belly.
“I will not hurt you,” he whispered, his mouth at her ear, enhancing his spell. “Pleasure will not hurt you.”
“It will do you no harm, either,” Sabrina snapped.
CHAPTER SIX
Men were the same the world over, Sabrina thought as she tried to ignore the … something … her clever husband stirred, there, where no man had ever touched her before, though he was not even touching her there now.
“I seek your pleasure, Sabrina, not mine.”
She craned her neck to look back at the scoundrel. “Do you think that I was born yesterday?”
There, that strangled chuckle again.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Not at all,” said he, all wide-eyed and feigned innocence. “I merely find myself thinking that your not having been born yesterday is a fact for which I shall remain eternally grateful.”
As if to prove his words, he planted kisses at her shoulder, her collarbone. Unusually skillful kisses. And while his one hand played lower along her belly, in an oddly soothing yet agitating way, the other came around to cup her breast and finger her nipple, adjoining the separate actions with a charged filament of sizzling fire.
Liquid heat pooled inside Sabrina, there, where he might have stroked had she let him, spiraling to and from places where his hands, and other parts of him, met and sparked off complimenting portions of her.
Sabrina moved her legs, just to sense the full length of his, from thighs to arching feet, and when she did, she unwittingly opened for him, and he made to take advantage.
She jumped when he touched her, crying out involuntarily, and again she brought his hand back to her belly. But in the back of her mind, Sabrina knew that she was being dishonest with herself.
She had cried out at the wonder of his touch, however fleeting.
Who was this woman living inside her skin? This woman who took a man to her bed and gloried in his touch, after everything. Never mind that he was her husband, that he would care for and protect her children. Who was she?
As if he understood her sudden need to be soothed, he gentled her as he might a skittish mare, with sweet, tender words and soft amiable strokes, making her deliciously drowsy, yet amazingly alert at one and the same time.
Afraid to forego some new and momentous sensation, Sabrina refused to succumb to sleep, but neither would her treacherous past allow her to succumb to exhilaration. One seemed a waste and the other a danger. And yet, she felt as if there was something of this experience she was missing, and she coveted the unknown.
“Your grace,” she said, barely recognizing the soft, lazy voice as her own.
“Yes, Sabrina.”
How sweet her name sounded on his gifted lips. How foolish she was becoming for reasoning so. “I have never experienced anything quite like this before.”
“Never?”
Sabrina caught a suggestion of cocksure satisfaction in her new husband’s hypnotic voice, and as a result, she experienced a disgraceful surge of gratification at having pleased him.
“Do you like this new experience?” he asked, his breath against her ear, warm and shivery, raising the hair on her arms and the temperature in the room.
“Is it terribly wicked, do you think?”
“Terribly,” he said on a nipping half-chuckle against her neck. “But did you not know that wickedness is suspended in the marriage bed?”
She sighed. “Then God must surely be a man.”
She felt, rather than heard, a hint of mirth in the ripple of her husband’s chest at her back and in his weakening arms around her.
At another time she would challenge his ridiculous notion of suspended wickedness, but right now, she had rather float as talk. How amazing that his hands on her skin, almost everywhere, could feel so fine.
“Shall we remove your gown?” her undeniable
rogue of a seducer asked in such a way as to insure compliance, the last traces of mirth not entirely missing yet from his voice.
“Yes,” she said, knowing herself for a weakling and wishing she cared.
Her nightrail was gone before she quite understood the forfeit. But her bridegroom had been right; every touch felt better, richer, tighter, skin to silken skin. Then his mouth covered her breast, pulling pleasure from her deepest recesses in undulating waves of pure sensation. Touching her in such a way, and in such places, as to make her arch and reach in an anxiety of expectation, and yet, she could not bring herself to open for him.
She would not make that mistake again.
When she found herself turned toward him, his shaft hard against her thigh, rigid and prodding, sparked a memory, an old and frightening discomfort, Sabrina whimpered and pushed at that invasive portion of his anatomy.
“Yes,” he gasped, at the accidental stroke of her hand, the single word bearing a plea, hoarse and urgent, but not harsh or demanding, as she would have expected. And the very absence of threat helped her to recall his promise, which she grasped like a lifeline as she called him on it. “Gideon, stop.”
Gideon stopped—breathing nearly—though his heart pounded fit to burst, as if he had run up against a door of steel, his body screaming for denied release.
He pulled his arm from around his trembling wife and fell back against his pillows, perplexed and aghast.
Embarrassed at his prominent arousal, he raised a knee, as if he could hide that throbbing evidence, and rested his arm along his brow. Closing his eyes, he waited for his breathing to catch up with his pumping heart.
He felt a dip in the bed as his bride moved beside him. He felt her breath against his arm, sensed her concern.
“Your grace?” she queried. “Are you unwell?”
Almost warily, Gideon opened his eyes, and met the bright violet gaze of his tremulous bride. A single droplet of true remorse hung suspended from one long sable lash.
Gideon released his breath on a last fading glimmer of hope, bowing to another inevitable night of discomfort. “’Tis nothing a romp to the finish would not cure,” he said, but he knew better than to expect it.
“Oh.” His untouched bride took her full bottom lip between perfect, white teeth.
Gideon groaned inwardly as he watched, while he contemplated soothing the poor beleaguered lip by sacrificing his own for her nibbling pleasure. But he contented himself with gently prodding the abused lip free with his index finger. “Do not. You will hurt yourself.”
She bit down on his finger, tugged it playfully, and a shaft of white-hot lightening shot straight to his groin. Startled by the unexpected jolt, Gideon winced and moaned as if he had been struck.
“Your grace?” Sabrina’s face became a study in naive disquiet.
What spell had this frustrating mix of seductress and saint cast upon him that she could leave him in such terrible shape, hard and needy as all hell. And instead of getting upset at a teasing bride who halted him at the worst possible moment, he wanted to smile just for looking at her.
“Do you worry about me?” he asked, absolutely amazed that he could think as much.
Sabrina nodded, all wide, exotic eyes, and needy in her own right, except that he could not put his finger on her need, exactly. He could not name or imagine it. But he sensed its existence, keenly.
Twirling one of her thick raven curls around his finger, his hand hovering above her breast, just inches away, Gideon enjoyed the silken warmth of it, even as he was engulfed by a strong wave of serene possession. “Why did you stop me?”
For a minute, Sabrina seemed to consider her answer. From the multitude and diversity of expressions that marched across her rich, perfect features, he imagined her reaching a conclusion then pondering a choice somewhere between fabrication and truth.
Finally, she nodded. “I was testing you.”
Gideon could only gape and wonder what the devil he had gotten himself into. Then all thought fled when his bride leaned toward him, as if she would confide a secret, and the blanket fell from her breasts. Heavy with milk and ripe for suckling, her tantalizing nipples, with their dusky aureoles, stood proud and mouth-watering.
“Good God, woman,” he said, salivating at the sight, while heat pooled in his loins. “Forgive me for saying so, but I have this sudden and horrific fear that you will test me to my dying day.”
In self-preservation, he covered the enchantress up to her neck.
Wide-eyed with understanding, she grasped the blanket tight against herself.
“Did I frighten you badly?” He had to know.
The innocent siren licked her lips. “Almost.”
Gideon barked a laugh. “Almost, by God. Did I, at least, pass your test?”
A shrug, a nod, and a sidelong glance toward the location of his incessant throbbing. “I guess.”
“God’s teeth, woman. If you have another trial in mind, give it to me now, or watch me perish in a blaze of nervous anxiety.”
The sound she made was nearly a giggle, or a gurgle, he supposed he should say, and still she stared at his burgeoning erection. “Staring, will only make it worse, Sabrina.”
“Can I do anything to make it less … inconvenient? It seems to be getting huge.”
“Why thank you, Sweetheart. And yes. Touching it would help.”
Damned if she did not reach right out...and pull as swiftly back. “I am sorry. But I...cannot.”
Gideon released his breath. ‘Twas probably for the best that she did not touch him, for if she did, he would burst into flame and embarrass them both. Simple as that. Just the idea drove him about as close to the edge as a man could get.
“Come here,” he said and when she complied, innocent that she was, he settled her on her side in front of him, spoon-style. “If you can ignore the inconvenience for a while, we can just settle down to sleep. Comfortable?”
She nodded. He liked that she was using one of his arms for a pillow. His other, he rested against her belly, where her little one seemed totally unwilling to settle into rest.
Despite his hard discomfort, contentment stole over Gideon in slow, soothing measure, while the old emptiness, that had long been his companion, seemed somehow to be missing from the softening mist of drifting night-shadows.
He thought he just might be able to sleep then, until his bride did something wondrous. She turned in his arms, reached over and curled her hand around him.
Gideon sucked in his breath and moved, involuntarily, within the glove of her grasp. “God’s teeth, Bree, you try me to my limits.”
“Is that bad?”
“Bad can be good. Much too good.” He tried to pull away, but she would not allow it. Since coming was a near thing, Gideon stopped struggling, wondering how a woman about to deliver a child could be such an innocent, at one and the same time.
She began to move her hand along his length and he could barely breathe, so incredible did her touch transform him. “What?” He shuddered. “What are you … planning to do?” he bit out, determined not to embarrass himself with the release he craved.
“I think...I might be ready now to...do what you started.”
“The devil you say? All of it?”
Like a hot poker, she let him go. “All of what?” Suspicion, he read. Dread.
“I think you do not really wish to do this,” Gideon said fighting disappointment.
“Why do I not?” Sabrina asked, snuggling against him, relaxing, and taking him into her hand again.
Sweet, sweet torture.
“Could we not continue?” she asked.
“Like this you mean?” He could not keep from nudging her blanket away and taking her nipple into his mouth once more.
She gasped and she sighed, and her legs shifted and stirred, as if she were seeking something she could not, or dare not, name.
In answer to the need she failed to recognize, Gideon again tried to touch her, there, at her core, but, again
, she would not have it, would not open for him.
She must have been frightened once, badly. Perhaps more than once. In that case, there was only one way to go about this seduction business—from the beginning.
After that, he touched her everywhere, almost. Never at her center, but nearly there. When finally she allowed him to cup her—legs still closed tight against him—she sighed and relaxed. And he thought that perhaps she floated at least.
She sought his chiseled mouth with her own.
Amazed at her boldness, Gideon complied and gave her his. He took command of the kiss, and to his shock and delight, she allowed him to use his tongue in such a way as to mimic the act he most wanted to perform.
She used him as her anchor then, her grip like a vise, a tourniquet, until he lost all feeling in his ill-used shaft. But never one to shy away from a challenge, Gideon became resolved to bestow a lightness of pleasure upon her, while denying his own need, and oddly enough, he barely minded at all.
“I could make you fly,” he whispered, when he sensed that she craved but fought his final touch with equal panic. “Let go, Sweetheart. Open for me,” he kept asking, but she would not.
Instead, she kissed him again.
“Let me touch you,” Gideon whispered at her ear a few minutes later.
“I cannot. I cannot. Do not make me,” she cried, but she did not let him go or push him away. Indeed, she seemed, for all the world, as if she were trying to climb inside his skin.
Even as he cupped her and allowed her to move against his hand, Gideon got as close as she seemed to want him. “You are a fine and beautiful woman, Sabrina—a wife, my wife—exquisite, precious. And I am the man destined to deliver you to a new and wondrous place. A place you have never journeyed, never imagined. Come with me to a summit higher than the clouds, and all the way to the stars.”
“I cannot,” she whispered.
Gideon let her set the pace, then, a gentle touch for a gentle rise. He would not ask her again, not this night.
Somehow, she must have sensed his surrender, for she seemed to relax and float, slowly, and more slowly, and he saw her smile just before she slipped into sleep.
Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) Page 6