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

and the sight of him had tainted Gabriel’s every waking thought, his every dream.

The feeling of being watched when he awoke could have stemmed from a dream. The scent of him in

the dark bedchamber could have been conjured from memory.

Gabriel’s concern for Victoria could be making him paranoid.

He could not afford to trust. To feel. To want.

To need.

But he did feel. He did want.

He did need.

History was repeating itself.

Six months earlier Michael had allowed his feelings for a woman to interfere with his judgment. Michael

would have been killed if Gabriel had not interfered.

Michael would have died because of a woman.

Michael might still die because of a woman.

Because of Victoria. A woman who had become a servant rather than be dependent upon a man who

belittled women; a woman who had sold her virginity rather than succumb to a man who victimized her

because of her virginity.

And now she was dependent upon Gabriel; victimized because of a man she had never met.

We do what we must in order to survive.

“Send Gaston up.” He hid the fear pumping through his blood behind the mask that was Gabriel. “I will

watch over the woman for the time it takes you to get him.”

“Yes, sir,” Allen said.

Gabriel remembered the feel of Victoria’s body pressed against his. She was so thin he could snap her

bones like twigs.

“Have Pierre prepare breakfast à deux,” he said abruptly. I’ve never eaten pineapple. Is it sweet? “

Tell him to include fresh pineapple. I will ring when I want the tray sent up.”

Gabriel did not wait for Allen to respond. He closed the door.

Victoria drew him toward the bedchamber.

Light from the window in the study sliced across the wooden floor. The scent of sex and sweat and

satisfaction permeated the air.

Hers. His.

Gabriel’s flesh immediately hardened.

Victoria lay as Gabriel had left her, damp hair spread over the pillow instead of his shoulder; leg

sprawled over the sheet instead of his thighs.

He remembered the silk of her skin, slick with water in the shower, slippery with sweat in his bed.

He remembered the wet silk of her hair and the heat of her buttocks between his thighs as he combed

through the tangles of their past.

He remembered the touch of Victoria’s finger on his testicles. The sight of Victoria tasting her finger

flashed through the darkness of his life, dark hair blackened by water, cheeks flushed with excitement, blue

eyes glinting in the electric light.

I would say you taste of. . . les noix de Gabriel.

No woman had ever played with him. They had climaxed for him, but they had not played with him.

They had not touched him.

They had not loved him.

Victoria’s eyelids popped open.

Blue eyes studied silver eyes, color blackened by darkness, need shadowed.

Victoria had witnessed his naked orgasm. And not once had she asked the question he could not

answer.

Gabriel had thought himself impervious: to pain, to pleasure.

To a woman.

Once again the second man had proven him wrong.

Gabriel tensely waited for Victoria to regret touching a homeless fumier.

“I got your pillow wet,” Victoria said in a small voice. She sounded far, far younger than the

thirty-four-year-old woman Gabriel knew her to be.

“I’m not concerned about my pillow.”

“I got you wet.”

A sudden smile creased Gabriel’s face, secure in the knowledge Victoria couldn’t see the smile or the

vulnerability that lay behind it.

“Yes, you did,” he agreed solemnly.

“I’m wet now,” Victoria said guilelessly.

Gabriel had had two orgasms only hours earlier. He should not be hard. He should not want Victoria so

badly that his testicles ached.

She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman.

She was death in disguise.

“Show me,” Gabriel said silkily, knowing the danger of playing sex games but unable to resist the

temptation that was Victoria Childers.

“It’s dark,” Victoria reasoned. Gabriel pictured her teaching a silver-haired child; she would speak in

that same tone of voice. “You can’t see.”

“I can see.”

Gabriel could see the trap that was Victoria.

Gabriel could see that he had seriously underestimated the second man.

Victoria flipped the covers aside, bed squeaking, cloth rustling.

Her skin glowed like pale, polished marble. She had long, slender legs.

Gabriel had felt them wrapped around his waist; he wondered what they would feel like thrown over his

shoulders.

He could not help himself. He sat on the bed and touched Victoria, the perfect bait.

The wet heat of her fisted inside his groin.

Her clitoris was swollen with need.

Gently he slipped his finger between her lips and stared at the shadow that was her sex. The lips of her

labia furled around his middle finger, as they had furled around his cock only hours earlier.

She was so wet he could drown in her. She was so responsive that he wouldn’t mind dying inside her.

But there were more lives at stake than his own.

A tentative hand grasped his penis.

Gabriel stiffened, bracing himself. The expected memories did not come.

Gabriel would pay for the reprieve; he just didn’t know how.

He didn’t know when the second man would come to take away the gift of Victoria Childers.

A padded thumb swirled around the crown of his penis; the touch vibrated inside Gabriel’s chest.

“You’re wet, too,” Victoria whispered, unable to hide her excitement.

She was too new to sex games to draw out the arousal. Gabriel had been trained in sex games since he

was thirteen.

He concentrated on