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

erect when you are with women?”

“I have not been with a woman in over fourteen years,” he said flatly.

“I am not ignorant, sir.” Victoria’s nails dug into her palms. Pleasure. Pain. “I am fully aware that a

man does not need to have sexual intercourse with a woman in order to get erect.”

“Perhaps you should rather ask, mademoiselle,” Gabriel said, voice suddenly, dangerously, provocative, “

if I get erect when I am with men.”

The coldness inside his eyes took Victoria’s breath away.

She took her life in her hands. “Do you?”

Gabriel strode toward her.

Victoria’s heart leaped up inside her throat.

Gabriel halted in front of the satinwood fireplace.

Hunkering down, he grabbed the black-iron shovel from the bronze poker stand and pushed aside the

ashes from the night’s previous fire. Leaning over, he grabbed one stick of wood from the wood bucket,

two sticks, three, shirt alternately stretching—revealing the corded play of muscles—and then bunching.

He was hiding.

Victoria knew that because she had spent her entire life hiding.

“Why is it, Mr. Gabriel, that Madame René refers to an orgasm as voir les anges, yet you refer to it as

la petite mort?”

Gabriel abruptly rose and reached inside the obsidian urn on top of the satinwood mantel. Squatting back

down, his knees yawned widely.

The taut globes of his buttocks were clearly delineated inside the black silk trousers.

A safety match ignited; sulfur fumes burned her nose. A tiny yellow flame nibbled on a log, spread in a

sheet of blazing blue and orange fire.

Victoria did now know how much longer she could stand naked in his presence. And then she did know.

She could not stand before him naked one second longer.

Victoria pivoted on bare toes that stuck to the wooden floor. Righting herself, she stepped toward the

lifeless brown wool dress.

“If you pick up that worthless rag, mademoiselle, I will take it from you.”

She halted, buttocks tensed.

The silver eyes reflected inside the mirror were above her own: Gabriel had soundlessly stood up.

“You wanted to know if I get erect when I’m with men.”

There was no emotion in his voice; so why did pain suddenly squeeze the breath out of her lungs?

“Yes,” she managed.

“Turn around, mademoiselle, and face me if you want the truth.”

Victoria slowly turned, bare toes mashing polished wood. Squaring her shoulders, she met his gaze.

It was as flat as the mirror behind her.

“A man, mademoiselle, does not need to feel desire in order to have sex, all he needs is a stiff prick.”

Bitte. Cock. Prick .

“I don’t”—she tilted her chin—”understand.”

“You were aroused by Madame René’s touch.”

Victoria sucked in air. “How dare y—”

“—because you imagined that it was I who touched you.”

Yes.

But she did not say it.

“Sexual organs, mademoiselle, are apparatuses.” Cynicism tarnished the silver of his eyes. “Like my

bath or my shower. If you turn a valve cock”—he paused, allowing the double entendre to sink in, valve

cock, cock —”it releases water. It does not care whether it is a man or a woman who turns it.”

If that were the case, then why were his eyes so bleak?

“You are saying that there need not be emotion, or feeling, in order for a man to ...” Victoria struggled to

find the words, she, a governess who had never even heard the word cock until six months earlier, “to

sexually perform—”

“That is correct.”

“—and that the . .. that copulation is merely a reflexive response, a matter of cause and effect.”

“Yes.”

She would not look away from his gaze.

“Are you saying, then, that you did not orgasm when you were with ... a patron?”

“No, mademoiselle, I am not saying that,” he said frankly.

And when there is no respect. . . or affection?

It is a rape of the senses.

“You do not enjoy sex,” Victoria said.

Gabriel did not deny it.

“If your cock, sir, were no different than a mechanical apparatus, you wouldn’t be afraid to touch a

woman. Yet you are.”

Darkness glittered inside his eyes.

There was only one thing that could have put that darkness there.

If Victoria continued, there would be no going back.

He could kill her for what she was about to say. Victoria would not blame him.

But there were worse things than death.

Living without the comfort of touch was far, far worse than death.

Victoria knew that because she had denied herself that simple comfort for over eighteen years.

She said what had to be said.

“The man who raped you”—the warning inside Gabriel’s gaze stabbed through Victoria’s heart; it did

not stop her—”he gave you pleasure.”

Victoria was vaguely surprised that the crackling flames inside the fireplace did not freeze.

“He knew how to make pain pleasurable.”

Darkness obliterated the silver of Gabriel’s irises.

“He made you enjoy sex.”

Chapter

10

“And you will never forgive yourself for it.”

Victoria’s voice rang out with feminine conviction.

Jamais. Never.

Gabriel timed her breathing with the rise and fall of her breasts rather than the memories her words

evoked.

He could kill her. And she knew it.

Or he could let the second man kill her. And she knew that, too.

She was afraid. But she did not hide behind her fear.

She was the one woman who dared confront his past.

How had the second man found her?

Gabriel padded toward Victoria with calculated intent. She did not back away.

Purposefully he circled her.

Her hair the night before had been dull and lustreless—like her cloak. It now shone underneath