Robin Schone by Gabriel's Woman (10 ebook reader TXT) 📕

she fought hers. Afraid to want, unable to stop either the fear or the

desire.

“Is that why you came to the House of Gabriel tonight... to find a woman who does not deny her needs?

” she asked hesitantly.

A pulse pounded deep inside her vagina, once, twice, thrice; a matching pulse ticked inside his cheek,

once, twice, thrice. . .

“How far will you carry this game, mademoiselle?” he asked in a curiously harsh voice.

“It is not a game when a woman gives her virginity to a man,” Victoria replied unevenly.

“What if I want more than your virginity?”

Flyaway strands of hair aureoled his head, creating a silver halo.

She realized where she had seen this man before: she had seen his likeness inside stained-glass

windows. He had the face of an angel.

An angel who brought salvation with one hand and destruction with the other.

Tears pricked her eyelids. “That’s all I have.”

“You have seen men with women.”

The images Victoria had seen over the last six months—of hurried couplings and open gropings—was

reflected in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said.

There was nothing she had not seen these last six months.

“Then you know there are many ways that men want women.”

Heat and coldness raced up and down Victoria’s spine.

This was blunt speaking, indeed.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever taken a man into your mouth, mademoiselle?”

The warm breath laving her skin was suddenly ice-cold against the scalding heat that crawled down her

neck and chest. “No.”

Light and shadow glimmered inside his eyes. “But you would do this ... for me?”

Victoria fought a lifetime of inhibitions. “Yes.”

For this one night...

With this one man ...

“Do you speak French?”

“Un petit peu,” she admitted. A little.

Enough to teach grammar to children. But he would not want to know her prior profession. After this

night neither would ever see the other again.

The prick of the steel pins inside her right palm arced up her arm.

“The French have an expression called empétarder” he said, marble skin glowing like candle-warmed

alabaster. “Are you familiar with it?”

“Petarader means to ... to backfire,” Victoria said shakily.

Breasts swollen. Nipples hard.

“Empétarder is an antonym,” he murmured, gauging her reaction.

“It is used purely in a sexual content, meaning to receive something through the back.”

Through the . .. back.

Victoria’s breath caught in her throat.

Her comprehension shone in his dilated pupils.

“Would you grant me access there, mademoiselle?” he asked deliberately, provocatively. “Would you

share your body with me ... in whatever way I asked?”

Victoria’s instinctive response was to recoil.

No.

The darkness inside his gaze would not let her recoil.

“Yes. If that is what you wish.”

“But would you take pleasure in such a possession?”

“I. . .” Don’t k now. Victoria swallowed; her breasts bobbed with the motion; breasts he had yet to

touch. “Pleasure is always preferable to pain.”

“There is always pain in pleasure, mademoiselle,” he said in a strangely remote voice. “The French

sometimes refer to an orgasm as la petite mort, the little death. Would you share your pain ... as well as

your pleasure?”

The little death . . .

There was no little death on the streets of London; every one of them was fatal.

“I would try,” she said.

“You would let me hold you when both of our bodies are dripping with sweat and the scent of our sex

fills our lungs,” he said, a statement rather than a question.

His words were electrifying.

“No one has ever held me,” Victoria confessed unbidden. No one save a child .. .

But Victoria did not want to think about that. Not tonight.

“But you would let me hold you,” he persisted.

Dripping with sweat. The scent of their sex filling their lungs.

She took a deep breath, smelling the faint, clean, masculine scent that was uniquely his. “Yes.”

Victoria would let him hold her.

“And you would hold me.”

The barrenness inside his eyes squeezed her heart. He did not believe a woman would want to hold him.

Or perhaps he did not believe a whore would want to hold him.

“Yes,” Victoria said.

“Because I would give you two thousand pounds,” he prodded.

“Yes,” Victoria lied.

It was not for two thousand pounds that she would share her body with him: this man had touched her

with his words if not his body.

A tiny warning bell rang inside Victoria’s head. It chimed that it was the height of presumption for a

woman such as she—a woman who had no experience—to assume that a man such as he yearned for

intimacy.

Victoria ignored the warning.

His hair was longer than fashion prescribed; it curled over his collar.

Feeling curiously weak yet infinitely powerful in her femininity, she reached out a trembling hand to

touch a spun silver curl.

There was no warning, no protest of wood to signal that he moved, but suddenly the distance between

them spanned far more than the inches that separated their bodies.

“Get dressed, mademoiselle,” he said flatly. “And tell me the name of the man who hired you.”

Chapter

3

G et dressed, reverberated inside Victoria’s ears. It was followed by, And tell me the name of the man

who hired you.

Abruptly she became aware of the fireplace that warmed her buttocks and her breasts that all at once

felt like blocks of ice.

Heavy.

Cumbersome.

Undesirable.

She did not understand the blond-haired man’s dismissal. She did not need to.

Rejection was rejection in any language, whether it be verbal or