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

face of an angel.”

Victoria’s bottom lip quivered. “What do you see when you look at me, Gabriel?”

Dark eyelashes veiled Gabriel’s eyes. Slowly, he traced a trail of fire up her face: hard flesh cupped

Victoria’s right cheek. “I told you my name isn’t Gabriel.”

Victoria moistened her lips, tasting his breath, the lye residue of soap on his finger, the pleasure he had

given her. “You said you named yourself after Gabriel, therefore your name is Gabriel.”

Slowly his eyelashes lifted. “And you still want to touch me.”

Victoria could not lie. “Yes.”

“I cried, Victoria.”

Would you cry for an angel, Victoria?

Tears welled up inside her eyes; a single tear leaked from the hard flesh riding her lower stomach. “

There’s no sin in crying, Gabriel.”

No sin in living.

No sin in loving.

“No, there isn’t.” Cold, wet cloth abraded Victoria’s left cheek; it was instantly warmed by hot, hard

skin. Gabriel cradled her cheek as if she were made of precious glass. “Crying is natural. When there are

no tears, Victoire, there is the danger.”

Victoire. French for Victoria.

Victoria held perfectly still underneath Gabriel’s touch, breathing his breath, inhaling his scent.

“I sent a man to the Hundred Guineas Club,” he murmured, as if the club held some significance.

It didn’t.

“What is the Hundred Guineas Club?”

Hot breath scorched her lips. “It’s a men’s club.”

“A club where men congregate.”

London abounded with men’s clubs.

“It is a club where men assume the personas of women,” Gabriel said. Waiting for her shock. “Some of

the men dress as women.”

Victoria had seen a woman’s severed hands stuffed inside leather gloves. She refused to be daunted by

a man’s choice of clothing. “Why did you send a man to the Hundred Guineas Club?”

Gabriel gently cradled her face between his hands. “I sent a man there to whore for me.”

To whore ... for Gabriel?

“Surely he did not have to do so if he did not want to,” Victoria replied unevenly, heart pounding inside

her body, outside of her body.

“He hated it.” Gabriel’s breath filled her nostrils and her mouth. “Now he hates me.”

Yet Gabriel had sent him to the club, knowing that he would hate it.

Victoria fought to keep her hands at her sides and not to touch his body that was so tantalizingly near.

There was danger in touching an angel.

Gabriel would fight the very love he wanted.

“Why did he ... prostitute himself... if he hated it?”

Gabriel’s manhood slickly skidded across her stomach. “He did it out of loyalty.”

“You asked him to prostitute himself, knowing that he would hate you for it,” she breathed into his mouth.

The washcloth was slightly cooler than Gabriel’s hand. Rougher. More abrasive. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Why had Gabriel deliberately sent someone into a situation that demeaned him? Knowing firsthand what

emotional damage it would do?

Gabriel’s breath stoppered Victoria’s lungs; the head of his manhood stoppered her navel. “The second

man was not alone when he bid on you.”

Victoria’s stomach somersaulted.

The second man killed everyone with whom he came into contact. If he had been with someone that

night, perhaps the hands inside the gloves had not been Dolly’s .. .

“Was the man he was with dressed as a woman?”

Hot breath seared her lips; equally hot flesh scalded her stomach. Slick fluid threaded down her inner

thighs; a matching thread of fluid meandered down her lower abdomen. “No.”

“But he was a member of the Hundred Guineas Club.”

“Yes.”

Victoria’s fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. “And now he’s dead.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed imperturbably. As if death were an everyday occurrence.

On the streets death was an everyday occurrence. The women he had earlier referred to—the crawlers

who begged from beggars—sat on the steps of the poorhouses, too weak, to walk, waiting for it to release

them from poverty.

Gabriel’s heartbeat pounded against her cheeks and her stomach, timing the seconds until she

understood.

“This man who would kill—” us “—you ... Does he impersonate a woman?” Victoria asked, surrounded

by the heat of his body and his breath.

“Sometimes.”

Images of the women Victoria had seen during the auction flashed through her mind. She had seen no

woman who looked as if she were a man in women’s clothing.

London streets were more simple than London clubs. On the streets men fought men to inflict the pain

that had been inflicted upon them.

There was no rhyme or reason to the man Gabriel described.

There was no sense in the cold and the heat that alternately pulsed inside her veins.

Fear. Desire.

They should not go hand in hand.

“You said he would hurt me . .. sexually,” Victoria said, struggling to understand what Gabriel

understood. “He does not prefer men over women, then.”

Gabriel lightly kissed her left eyelid, lips like gossamer. “It is the power of sex that he enjoys, not the act

of sex.”

Victoria blinked, eyelashes fluttering against silky smooth skin, the wet flick of a tongue. “You are saying

that he is removed from the act of sexual release.”

“Yes.”

As Gabriel was removed from the act of sexual release.

She skittered away from the comparison.

“And when he kills?” she asked. “Is it inflicting pain that he enjoys, or the power of being able to inflict

pain?”

Gabriel kissed her right eyelid, lightly tasted her lashes, a wet lick of heat. “The power.”

“So by sending someone to the Hundred Guineas Club,” Victoria calmly reasoned, heart pounding, pulses

racing, “you hoped to find a clue to lead you to this man who would kill—us.”

Us reverberated between them.

“That is what I planned,” Gabriel agreed, a gust of