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

Michael had taught Gabriel to read.

Les deux anges. The two angels.

I loved a man, mademoiselle. If I had not loved him, you would not be here.

Was Michael an actor in this unscripted play?

The sin is in loving, Gabriel had said.

He had been hurt through the love he bore his friend.

But loving was not a sin.

When I became a man, I wanted to experience a woman’s passion. I wanted to feel the pleasure

that I gave. Just once.

She had breathed in the heat of Gabriel’s body. Had tasted his breath.

Victoria didn’t know the touch of his skin.

She didn’t want to die without knowing if Gabriel’s touch was worth dying for.

Fear was a powerful aphrodisiac: the void it created demanded to be filled.

By knowledge.

By action.

By Gabriel.

Laissez le jeu commencer.

Flinging back the covers, Victoria slid out of bed.

A metal tin gleamed on the nightstand. It was filled with condoms. Flat rubber sheaths that were rolled

onto a man’s erect penis.

The seduction of an angel. ..

Dolly had told her that a man would not seek to protect himself with a virgin, and then she had given

Victoria the corrosive sublimate tablets.

Now Dolly was dead and Victoria was alive.

Gabriel’s silk robe clung to her breasts and her buttocks. It was floor-length. It would reach Gabriel’s

calves.

Were they covered with the same dark hair that matted his chest, she wondered, or were they covered

with the silver-blond hair that capped his head?

Cap ... Hats.

Victoria hurriedly stepped into the ... study, he had called it. A library by any other name.

Ridiculous disappointment sliced through her. She had known he was not in his suite merely from the

throbbing emptiness inside her.

Victoria perused the gold-embossed books—and did not see one single title or author.

She saw blood. She saw Mary Thornton.

She saw Gabriel.

Victoria wondered what he was doing—waiting in the night, breaking into the Thornton’s town house, or

returning to his own house.

Victoria wondered if he would learn that the Thorntons were associated with the man he sought, or if he

would learn that they worked independently to destroy women’s lives.

Gabriel had said that he did not fear a bullet. He had also said he did not know what to expect.

Victoria wondered if Gabriel was still alive.

Victoria wondered how long she would live.

Gabriel had burned down the former House of Gabriel. Why?

So many whys .. .

Vigorously she prowled Gabriel’s study, steering clear of the pale blue leather couch.

The lone boatman riding the shimmering sunset and the glittering blue water silently watched her from

the safety of the painting.

A cabinet proved not to be a cabinet, but a door similar to the one leading to the bedroom. Victoria

pushed it open.

The plush maroon carpet inside Gabriel’s office gave way to flat, dark wool carpet. Dim electric light

illuminated a hallway.

Freedom.

Victoria stepped inside the narrow corridor.

The door swished closed behind her.

Gasping, she whirled around, images of the glove box filling her head.

The door had not locked behind her.

Victoria’s heartbeat did not slow down.

There was danger in the corridor.

There was danger in Gabriel’s suite.

Victoria faced the corridor and the danger.

The hallway was short, only forty or so feet long. Reflected light shone at the end. It was brighter than

the dim light that lit the corridor.

She realized another corridor intersected the short, narrow hallway. A corridor with windows of light.

Heartbeat outracing her feet, Victoria cautiously walked toward the lit corridor.

She reached the end of the hallway.

A long corridor ran diagonal to the short hallway. Light splashed the outer wall at regular intervals.

The light was not caused by windows.

Windows adjoined outer walls; the lit portals came from an inside wall.

There was no reason for the wave of fear that crashed over Victoria or the undercurrent of longing that

tugged her forward.

Pulses pounding inside her ears, she stepped up to the first portal.

Brilliant light illuminated a plush red bedchamber. The bedchamber was not empty.

She stepped up to the second window; the bedchamber on the other side was a lush green instead of

red. It was not empty, either.

The third bedchamber was decorated in gold; the fourth in blue . . .

Victoria saw men; Victoria saw women.

Victoria saw the world that Michael and Gabriel had ruled. A world where no touch was forbidden and

pleasure was the price of desire.

Victoria saw naked need in all of its guises ...

Chapter

15

Victoria knew the moment Gabriel stepped inside the corridor. She felt him through the silk of his robe

and through the thin covering of her own skin: a burning awareness of what the French madame had made

him, and of what the man he sought had taken away from him.

They were two reflections in the glass, a dark-haired woman who had been taught that touch was

morally reprehensible and a silver-haired man who had indulged in the pleasures of the flesh without ever

once experiencing its beauty.

The man and the woman on the other side of the glass experienced both the pleasure and the beauty.

They touched, feminine hands skimming hard masculine flesh; masculine hands skimming soft feminine

flesh. They kissed, lips brushing, clinging, devouring. They embraced, breasts to chest, stomach to stomach,

thighs to thighs.

He was young, handsome; she was neither young nor handsome.

They were oblivious to the difference in their ages and their outward attractiveness. Passion made them

partners; need made them equals.

“Can they see us?” Victoria asked softly.

“No.” Gabriel’s voice was curiously taut. “They see a mirror.”

While Victoria and Gabriel saw a window. And inside that window, the man and the