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

the

electric light—a cold, wet, slick shield.

Victoria turned with Gabriel.

He could feel the heat of her nakedness. See his reflection inside her blue eyes, clouded with fear one

moment and glowing with desire the next. He could smell his soap and his shampoo on her skin and hair,

masculine scents femininized by the sweetness of her sex.

Stooping, Gabriel grabbed up her dress.

His gaze was on a level with her pelvis.

Victoria’s pubic hair was dark and curly. The lips of her sex were dark rose, like her nipples.

They were moist with arousal. Swollen with desire.

And he had not even touched her.

Damn Madame René to hell.

Victoria’s curiosity would build. As would Gabriel’s.

She would wonder how it would feel, to take a man one inch at a time. He would wonder how Victoria

would feel, slick wet flesh stretching one inch ... two inches ... five inches ... seven inches ... nine inches...

He would wonder what she sounded like when she cried out, first with the pain of losing her virginity,

then with the pleasure of obtaining her first climax with a man.

He would wonder what it would take to make Victoria beg.

Gabriel straightened.

“Yes, Mademoiselle Childers, he made me enjoy the rape,” he said coldly, deliberately. “Just as you

enjoyed reading the letters written by a man who terrorizes you.”

Gabriel turned his back on her—he could not remember the last time he had turned his back on either a

man or a woman—and threw her dress into the fireplace.

Black smoke curled up the chimney.

Gabriel tensed.

If Victoria tried to save the wool dress, he would stop her.

He didn’t want to hurt her. But he would.

“You have no right to destroy my clothing,” Victoria said tightly.

She did not try to salvage her dress. She, too, knew that he would hurt her if she interfered.

Right.

Whores did not have rights.

Blue fire skimmed a brown wool sleeve, died.

“You have lived on the streets long enough to know that might is right,” he said bluntly.

“And your might is greater than mine.”

Anger laced Victoria’s voice.

She did not like having to rely upon a man.

Gabriel knew too well what it was like being powerless.

“Yes, Mademoiselle Childers,” he turned back toward her, “my might is greater than yours.”

The stench of smoldering wool permeated the bedroom.

Victoria’s blue eyes sparked fire. “I do not have any more clothes.”

Gabriel could give her that much.

“Madame René will send clothes shortly.”

Velvet. Silk. Satin.

Clothes of beauty as well as practicality.

Gabriel would do everything within his power in order to give her a life in which to enjoy them.

Victoria tilted her chin, lips chapped, cheekbones too sharp, the line of her jaw too vulnerable. “I do not

want your charity.”

No, a woman such as she would not want charity.

“What do you want?” Gabriel asked softly. Knowing the answer.

She wanted the pleasure an angel could bring. Voir les anges. But did she want the pain an angel could

bring? La petite mort?

“You said you would assist me in obtaining a position as governess,” Victoria returned stubbornly.

Gabriel did not reply.

He did not want to see her working in another man’s house, supervised by another man’s wife, caring

for another man’s children.

Tension coiled about them.

Fear. Desire.

A drying strand of dark hair glinted auburn underneath the overhead electric light. “I do not think the

clothes that Madame René creates are designed to be worn by a governess.”

Gabriel wanted to reach out and touch Victoria’s hair, to feel the outward chill and the warmth of her

skin underneath.

She would not survive the streets, let alone the second man.

Would she survive Gabriel?

It was time to find out.

“But you are not a governess, Mademoiselle Childers.” Gabriel held her gaze. “Are you?”

Victoria read the truth in his eyes.

She squared her shoulders; fleeting regret streaked through Gabriel that her nipples were no longer hard.

“How did you discover who my father is?”

“Libraries are wonderful institutions, mademoiselle,” Gabriel said politely. “The births and deaths of the

members of the ton are meticulously recorded for the good of the general public.”

She stiffly walked toward him, breasts lightly bouncing. She stiffly walked past him, buttocks gently

swaying.

Gabriel watched her through narrowed eyes.

Victoria jerked the pale blue silk spread off the bed and clumsily wrapped it about her.

She was hiding from a past that she did not want to admit.

Gabriel listened to the rustle of silk, the pop of an ember, waiting for her to regain her courage.

It did not take her long.

Slowly, pale blue silk clutched in a knot above her breasts, Victoria Childers—daughter of Sir Reginald

Fitzgerald, one of the richest men in England—turned to face him.

“My father will not pay to have me returned,” she said with quiet dignity.

Gabriel believed her.

“I do not plan on returning you to him,” he said truthfully.

“Nor will he pay you to keep silent about my . . . my lapse of respectability.”

A pulse throbbed in the base of Victoria’s throat.

She had a beautiful throat. Long. Slender.

It would bruise easily.

“I do not need more money.”

Gabriel had more money than he could spend in two lifetimes.

Victoria did not believe him.

“Then why did you go to the effort of digging up my parentage if you do not plan on blackmailing me?”

she asked tightly. “Blackmail is the price of sin, is it not?”

His cynical words, coming out of her mouth, momentarily jarred Gabriel. It did not deter him.

“Have you sinned, mademoiselle?” he gently taunted.

Victoria looked him squarely in the eyes. “Not yet.”

Gabriel’s testicles tightened.

With anger. With desire.

He could not touch her. He would not let another man touch her.

Not as long as she remained in his protection.

“Your father could be indirectly involved with the man who sent you here,” he suggested.

A swift intake