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

one disorienting moment the pain she felt shone in his eyes.

Immediately, the pain was gone.

From his eyes, but not from hers.

“Yet you came here, selling your virginity”—there was no emotion in his voice, no life in his eyes—”like

a woman on the street.”

Victoria would not cower from the truth. “Yes.”

“How do you want to be taken, mademoiselle?” he asked abruptly.

With passion. With tenderness.

But they both knew she had sold that right.

Victoria’s breasts shimmered with the force of her heartbeat. A steel pin pierced her palm.

“With respect,” she said tautly. “I want to be taken with respect... because I am a woman.”

Not because she was a virgin. She wanted to be respected because she was a woman. Because she

was not pure.

The gathering tension squeezed the air out of Victoria’s lungs.

“ ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,’ “ he recited unexpectedly.

Watching her. Silver gaze sharper than the steel pin pricking her palm. “Are you a devotee of Shakespeare,

mademoiselle?”

Victoria blinked at the sudden change of conversation. It did not slow down the race of her heart.

“I am not particularly fond of that particular play by Mr. Shakespeare, no,” she managed.

“Which play is that?”

“As You Lik e It, ” Victoria said . “The play you just quoted from.”

The air vibrated—a door opening somewhere in the building, perhaps. Or closing.

“Do you enjoy the stage?” he asked in that tantalizingly seductive voice that no man had a right to

possess.

It danced on her skin like St. Elmo’s Fire.

Teasing. Tantalizing.

Taunting her with what she could not have.

She forcibly concentrated on his question and not her need and her nakedness.

Victoria had only once been to a play.

“Yes,” she said. “I enjoy the stage.”

Again there was that subtle vibration—a chord of response.

But to what?

“Come here, mademoiselle.”

The soft command did not lessen the pressure constricting Victoria’s chest.

Now he would take her. Fully dressed, while she wore sagging stockings and worn half boots.

Leaning against the wall or bent over the desk.

Lik e a whore.

Victoria realized how ridiculous she must look—a former governess who possessed no elegance and

whose sole redeeming value was her hymen. How comical he must have thought her, demanding respect

when her clothes would be sneered at by the lowest of drudges.

“My shoes—“ she stalled.

“Leave them on.”

“That is not . . .” Victoria’s voice trailed off.

“Dignified, mademoiselle?” he offered, mouth twisting cynically.

The knowledge of other nights and other women was indelibly etched on his face.

How many times had he gone through this ritual? she wondered.

How many skittish virgins had he calmed?

“I was going to suggest. .. practical,” Victoria replied, fighting for control.

She did not know this woman who stood unabashedly naked in front of a stranger, who cried out her

pain and her need—she scared Victoria as much as the silver-eyed man.

“I assure you, mademoiselle, your shoes will not get in the way,” he said cryptically.

The thick carpet sucked at Victoria's feet; she waded forward, pelvis jutting.

Her thighs rubbed together; the friction dancing on her swollen nether lips glittered in his eyes.

He knew of the desire his beauty created, those eyes said. He knew of the moisture that leaked from

her vagina and the heat that beaded her nipples.

He knew more about Victoria in the short time they had spent together than any other person she had

ever known.

Victoria's left heel turned.

Hair swinging like a pendulum, face burning with embarrassment, she righted herself.

The silver-eyed man showed neither approbation nor derision, marble made into flesh. He swiveled in his

chair, wood creaking, physically following her progress, expression inscrutable.

Victoria halted, hemmed in by his body and the desk. Behind her, the wooden fire crackled busily,

unaffected by the pending loss of a woman's innocence.

He smelled of expensive soap; underneath that she breathed the faint aroma of tobacco and perfume

that had pervaded the downstairs saloon.

The top of his head was level with her breasts; the toes of her worn shoes were scant inches away from

the toes of his suede-and-black-patent boots.

The advantage of height was no advantage at all. Victoria had no doubt whatsoever who was the

strongest. The quickest.

The most dangerous.

He stared at her breasts for long seconds, at her nipple that peeped through the mane of hair hanging

over her right shoulder.

His lashes were long. Thick. Dark as chimney soot. They cast dark, jagged shadows on his pale,

flawless skin.

Only now he was not so pale. Dusky pink edged his high cheekbones.

Victoria could feel her nipples lengthening, hardening underneath his gaze.

Slowly, his lashes lifted. Silver eyes riveted hers.

“I don’t want to want...” she whispered fiercely, feeling ineffably vulnerable.

She had never wanted to want... a man’ s touch, a man’s kisses, a man’ s passion ...

The thin prick of his pupils dilated, silver metamorphosing into black. “Desire is a part of all of us,

mademoiselle.”

Victoria’s throat inexplicably tightened. “You do not seem ... afflicted ... by these desires.”

Regret skidded across his face, was swallowed by the blackness of his pupils. “Desire is not considered

to be an affliction by some.”

But it was by him, Victoria all at once realized.

This man fought his needs, as