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

piece of shit. Gutters are filled with sewage; I was born in a gutter. I lived in a gutter.

A nameless bastard. It wasn’t whoring that made me what I am,” Gabriel said into the thickening steam

while the water washed over him, “it was living.”

The price of survival.

“There is no sin in living, Gabriel.”

No sin in living. No sin in loving.

Victoria knew that it would take far more than words to convince Gabriel of the truth of her statement.

“I once saw a stained glass window in a cathedral. There were two angels in it; I didn’t know they were

angels. One had dark hair, the other had fair hair. An old woman sat on the church steps, what you English

would call a crawler, a woman who begs from beggars. I asked her who les deux hommes—the two men

—were. She said they were angels. She said the fair-haired angel was Gabriel, God’s messenger. Michael,

the dark-haired angel, was God’s chosen. She said there was no hunger in heaven, and that angels didn’t

beg. Michael and Gabriel, she said, were God’s favorite angels.”

Steam billowed out of the copper grotto, clogged inside Victoria’s nose and chest.

“When I saw Michael in Calais, he was a half-starved boy with hungry eyes who wouldn’t beg and didn’

t know how to steal. He reminded me of the dark-haired angel in the window. I wanted to be like him; I

wanted to have eyes that hungered for more than a crust of bread and a warm, dry place to sleep. I wanted

to be an angel, so I took an angel’s name. When the French madame gave me the opportunity to escape

poverty, I took that, too. I would take it again, given the choice. Make no mistake, I am a bastard. If you

touch me, I will hurt you. And I assure you, Victoria, I can hurt you in ways you’ve never dreamed of.”

Emotion squeezed Victoria’s chest until she could not breathe over the pressure and the steam. Fear

was all too recognizable, but something else superseded the fear.

Gabriel hurt.

She had the power to stop his hurt. If she had the courage.

“We do what we must in order to survive,” Victoria said quietly. Hearing the echo of her earlier words,

hers, his ...

I am sorry that you were sold against your will.

But it was not against my will, mademoiselle.

“Do we, Victoria?” Gabriel asked incuriously. Water pouring over him.

“Yes,” Victoria said decisively, “We do.”

Else she would not have auctioned off her virginity at the House of Gabriel. And she would never have

met a fair-haired angel who yearned for love.

Gabriel pivoted so quickly, the motion stole Victoria’s breath. Or perhaps it was seeing him fully naked

for the first time that stole her breath.

Water spiked his eyelashes, sluiced down his chin, splattered onto the slick brown-blond hair that

covered his chest and arrowed down his groin.

Victoria stared.

He was erect. Water streamed off the bulbous tip of his engorged sex.

The muscles inside her vagina clenched with desire.

She had seen Gabriel briefly the night before, while he covered himself with a condom, and even more

briefly, when he had walked toward her with his rubber-sheathed manhood jutting out from the vent in his

gray wool trousers.

This was a man unashamedly exposed, blue veins pulsing, every gradation of color revealed—pale flesh,

dark flesh, purple-tinted flesh. Two tight, leathery mounds swung below a thatch of water-darkened hair.

There was no question whatsoever inside Victoria’s mind that Gabriel could hurt her in unimaginable

ways. Just as he had been hurt.

Just as he would go on hurting.

Her choice ...

Slowly Victoria raised her eyelashes.

Through the coiling tendrils of gray steam Gabriel’s gaze was flat and uncompromising. The eyes of a

boy who had wanted to be an angel and a man who had lost the promise of paradise.

For the first time Victoria was glad of the six months that had deprived her of food and clothing and

ultimately shelter. Glad, even, of her bones that were too sharp and her flesh too tightly stretched across

them.

Victoria knew what it was like to be cold and hungry. She knew what it was like to sell the hope of love

for food and shelter.

Madame René had said that seduction consisted of painting naked images with words. Creating the

anticipation of... a k iss . . . a caress.. . an embrace.

“My father forbade kissing,” Victoria said deliberately. “I would like to kiss you.”

The only sound in the bathroom was the pounding of water and the drumming of Victoria’s heart. Slowly

she sat the glass jar down onto the wooden cabinet encasing the tub, breasts dangling, head lifting to hold

Gabriel’ s gaze.

“My father forbade embracing.” She straightened up, breasts and vertebrae settling. “I would like to

embrace your body with mine.”

Carefully she stepped into the copper tub.

“My father forbade touching.” Hot water misted her face, lapped her right foot, her left foot. “I would

like to touch you, Gabriel.”

For one long second Gabriel could not breathe, locked inside hungry blue eyes while hot water needled

his head and shoulders. It streamed down his back, his chest, his groin, his buttocks.

Every inch of his body cried out a warning. If Victoria touched him—

Cool fingers enclosed Gabriel’s erect flesh.

Electric need.

Blinding anger.

He did not want this.

But Victoria had not given him a choice. Just as the second man had not given him a choice.

Grabbing Victoria’s wrist, Gabriel jerked her underneath the