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

Gabriel,

alabaster face dark with shadow, white shirt open at the throat.

Madame René waited to see just how brave Victoria was.

Victoria waited to be struck down with mortification.

What did Gabriel wait for?

“Lift your arms, mademoiselle, so that I may take your measurement.”

Madame René’s voice came from a long distance. Her intentions were all too clear.

She wanted Victoria to posture before Gabriel.

She wanted Victoria to seduce a man who was renown for seduction—a man who had not touched a

woman in fourteen years, eight months, two week s and six days.

Victoria thought of the years she had lived in other women’s houses caring for other women’s children,

paid by other women’s husbands.

She had no home, no children, no husband.

Gabriel’s home was a tavern, he employed prostitutes who were less fortunate than he, and he had no

one to hold him.

The dark-haired woman in the cheval mirror lifted her arms; Victoria the woman felt her breasts lift and

her nipples harden.

Passable breasts, the modiste had said.

The silver eyes in the mirror tested Victoria’s breasts, gauging their roundness, their fullness.

Their desirability.

Did he, too, find them passable?

Madame René stepped forward. Cobalt blue-covered arms reached around Victoria’s chest.

Encircling her.

Touching her.

The measuring tape cinched her breasts while heat and light scaled up and down her skin.

Victoria’s heightened awareness was reflected inside Gabriel’s eyes.

How long had he stood in the doorway—listening, watching? Victoria wondered breathlessly.

Why hadn’t he made his presence known?

Why hadn’t he protested at being the topic of discussion?

Victoria took a calming breath.

She had never been brave.

Perhaps with this man Victoria could be what she had never before been.

“Madame René. You said if Mr. Gabriel had taken me, that my mouth and my breasts and my”—

Victoria faltered, gained courage from the sudden stillness in those watching silver eyes—“my sex lips

would be swollen.”

The measuring tape dropped; Victoria’s nipples popped up. The scratch of a lead pencil scribbling on

paper raced up and down her spine.

“Have you seen ... women ... like this . . . naked . .. after they spent the night with him?”

The body-warmed metal tab dug into Victoria’s left armpit.

The silver gaze inside the mirror focused on Victoria’s left armpit.

“I have, mademoiselle.”

The tape extended to Victoria’s wrist, smoothed by deft fingers.

The silver gaze followed Madame Rent’s hand.

The breasts of the naked woman in the mirror rose and fell; Victoria’s lungs alternately inflated and

deflated.

“Is he ... was he ... gentle with the women?” Victoria asked.

She did not recognize her voice.

It was husky with desire.

Or perhaps it was fear that made it husky.

Both tape and metal tab dropped.

The silver gaze snapped up to Victoria’s waiting eyes.

“ Un prostitute, mademoiselle,” Madame René said, voice unnaturally businesslike in this most

unbusinesslike situation, “is as gentle or as rough as a patron wishes.”

More hurried scribbling.

Victoria felt rather than saw Madame René circle behind her back to her right side; all of her attention

was directed on those silver eyes.

The hard tab dug into her right armpit.

The silver eyes bore into Victoria’s tender skin and the dark tuft of hair that resided there.

Victoria licked her lips—lips that were rough and chapped.

Reality jarred through her.

What was she doing?. . .

“Surely a woman ... a woman does not enjoy it when a man is rough with her,” Victoria said unevenly,

breath rasping her throat.

The silver gaze prodded the pulse that rapidly beat at the base of her neck.

“When aroused, mademoiselle, we do not want gentleness.” One second the tab was digging into

Victoria’s skin—almost painful, but not quite—the next second it was replaced by chill relief. “An

experienced man—or woman—knows when une petite pain will heighten the pleasure.”

Pain. Pleasure.

There is always pain in pleasure, mademoiselle.

“And Monsieur Gabriel... he knows when a little pain will heighten a woman’s . . . pleasure?” Victoria

asked.

“He knows, mademoiselle.”

The silver eyes neither confirmed nor denied Madame René’s assertion.

Victoria’s throat inexplicably tightened.

Had the man who raped Gabriel also known when pain could bring pleasure?

“You may lower your arms, mademoiselle.”

Victoria lowered her arms.

The silver eyes in the mirror measured the shift of her breasts.

Suddenly, Madame René stepped between the woman in the mirror and the woman who was Victoria,

and then the elegant, red-haired modiste disappeared.

A swish of silk was followed by a soft thud.

Victoria stared down.

Madame René knelt on her knees before Victoria. Her face was on a level with the tightly curled hair

that marked the juncture of Victoria’s thighs.

The peacock feather danced.

“Spread your legs, mademoiselle.”

Victoria gazed into silver eyes and found the courage she needed: she spread her legs.

Frigid air invaded her.

Something more substantial than air feathered her stomach—the peacock feather. At the same time, a

metal tab imprinted the juncture of her right thigh—close, too close to the feminine flesh that was suddenly,

painfully swollen.

Victoria involuntarily started.

Warm fingers firmly held the metal tab in position. Or perhaps it was the silver eyes in the mirror which

held it in position.

Gabriel’s gaze burned ... Victoria’s mouth, Victoria’s breasts, Victoria’s sex lips.

“What type of—forcefully Victoria concentrated on forming a sentence instead of on drowning inside

those silver eyes and the debilitating heat they engendered—”of woman did Monsieur Gabriel prefer?” she

asked, sandwiched between the man behind her and the woman who knelt on the floor before her.

“Monsieur Gabriel prefers”—deft fingers lightly traced the measuring tape down Victoria’s