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

woman that neither

Gabriel nor Victoria dared to be.

“How is it that we see them but they see a mirror?”

“The mirror is only half silvered.” Gabriel’s gaze did not waver from the man and the woman. “Strong

light reflects off the silver, like in a regular mirror, so that a person will see their image instead of glass, but

if strong light were shone behind the glass as well as in front of it, it would become transparent.”

Victoria had never before heard of transparent mirrors.

“Can they hear us?” she asked softly.

“Not if we speak quietly.”

The man and the woman parted. She spoke; he responded.

Victoria could see their lips move, but she could not hear what either said. She could only watch them.

And imagine the words they murmured.

Words praising a woman’s passion.

Words venerating a man’s need.

Words Victoria had never heard or spoken but would like to hear and speak before she died.

The man strode toward a mahogany nightstand—erect manhood fencing the air, twin leathery pouches

bouncing below—and picked up a squat white jar.

Victoria had seen men flash their appendages on the street; she had never before seen a man fully

naked. Buttocks sculpted, muscles delineated. Body studded with hair.

The sight was breathtaking.

“Do they know that the mirror isn’t a ... mirror?” Victoria asked.

She sounded breathless.

She was breathless.

The letters had spoken of many of the things she had witnessed this night; seeing was far more

compelling than reading.

“The man knows,” Gabriel said.

The man was a prostitute, he did not need to say.

“But the woman doesn’t?”

“He might have told her.” Superimposed over the man and the woman on the other side of the mirror

was Gabriel’s silver eyes. “She came to the old house once a month.”

The house that he had burned.

But she didn’t want to think of fire. Destruction.

Death.

“With the same man?” Victoria queried, mouth dry, skin flushed.

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen them together before.”

“I’ve seen them occasionally.”

She watched his reflection. “You watch people when they engage in sexual congress.”

“The House of Gabriel is a business, mademoiselle. In this business men and women sometimes die. It is

up to me to ensure that no one dies in my house.”

Gabriel was not a vain man. Yet he had named his house after himself. . .

“Why did you name it the House of Gabriel?”

“So that the second man would know where to find me.”

Victoria swallowed. “Is there a first man?”

“He’s dead.”

By Gabriel’s hand.

Victoria tried to fit this latest piece of the puzzle into the frame of her life.

“You said that you blackmail people.”

Now Victoria knew how he got the information with which to blackmail them.

“I merely make recommendations to certain people, mademoiselle,” Gabriel returned neutrally.

And he employs our k ind, Madame René had said.

Did Gabriel blackmail his patrons to find work for failing prostitutes?

Motion snagged Victoria’s attention.

The woman sat down on the bed, back facing the mirror; gray-streaked brown hair brushed the silk

sheet.

Her eagerness for the younger man’s touch was palpable.

Victoria could identify with her need.

For a second she felt the give of the mattress, heard the squeak of springs. Felt the cool caress of silk.

Impossible.

“Do you get... aroused when you watch them?” Victoria asked hurriedly.

The silk robe caressed her nipples with each inhalation, each exhalation; it felt like sandpaper. Her skin

felt like overripe fruit about to burst.

“It’s business,” Gabriel said flatly.

The business of pleasure.

Victoria had entered the business when she auctioned off her virginity.

Would she have had the courage to do so then, knowing what she now knew? she wondered. Would she

have sold herself knowing that sexual congress touched the soul as well as the body?

The man unscrewed the squat white jar, sat both the lid and the jar down on the mahogany nightstand.

Victoria fought to control her breathing. “What is in the jar?”

“Lubricating cream.”

Lubricating cream pierced her vagina.

She was wet, Victoria realized.

And Gabriel knew it.

Was he erect?

“Are all the bedchambers equipped with jars of... of lubricating cream?”

“Yes.”

“The man has ... touched her,” Victoria said unevenly. “Surely the woman doesn’t need artificial

lubrication in order to... to accept him.”

The silver eyes inside the mirror snared Victoria’s attention. “That depends, mademoiselle, upon where

he penetrates her. And with what.”

Where.

With what.

She did not have to ask about where. But—

“What do you mean, what he penetrates her with?” she asked carefully.

Watching the man. Watching the woman.

“Each room is supplied with an assortment of”—he hesitated— “godemichés.”

Victoria was captivated by both Gabriel’s hesitation and the unfamiliar French term.

“What is a ... godemiché?”

The masculine eyes reflected inside the mirror glinted pure silver. “It is a leather device that is shaped

like a penis.”

Victoria’s vagina involuntarily clenched. She had earlier witnessed a man inserting a penis-shaped device

into a woman’s body.

They had both seemed to derive enjoyment from the act.

“The assortment you supply... they come in various sizes?” Victoria asked.

Gabriel’s image was transposed over that of the younger man and older woman. His shirt was not

buttoned. Shadowy hair showed through the vent. “Yes.”

Less than nine inches? More than nine inches?

“With what other devices may a man penetrate a woman?”

“Watch and see, mademoiselle.”

The older woman laid back on the silk sheets in a tangle of gray-streaked brown hair. The younger man

kneeled between her legs.

Victoria stared.

He was ... kissing her. There. Between the thighs. On a woman’s most sensitive flesh.

Victoria’s nether lips throbbed.

“Surely he does not require lubrication in order to kiss her,” she said on a sharp intake of breath.

She had