Read Online Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) by Annette Blair - Free Book Online

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