Robin Schone (30 page)

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was all too recognizable, but something else superseded the fear.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 shower spray; at the same time he swung

her around and slammed the front of her body against the copper-lined shower.

Victoria’s hands slapped against the wall.

“You promised,” he gritted, water filling his mouth, burning his eyes, his chest, his thighs, every inch of

his flesh that touched Victoria. “You promised not to touch me.”

But she had touched him.

She had opened her body and taken his fingers and his cock until the darkness of pending orgasm

disappeared inside the blinding flash of her pleasure.

“I promised I wouldn’t touch you last night,” Victoria gasped into the pounding water, bracing herself

against the copper wall, “and I didn’t. I kept my promise to you, Gabriel.”

But she hadn’t kept her promise. She had touched him with her passion and her pleasure.

I see you, Gabriel. . .

But she hadn’t seen him.

She hadn’t seen the boy who had begged beggars or the whore who had begged a man.

Gabriel could feel Victoria’s fear, smell it over her desire—she had been afraid when she stepped into

the bathroom. It had been her fear that had told him what she planned.

She planned on freeing an angel. But he wasn’t an angel.

He was a nameless piece of shit that had wanted more, dared more, and had paid the price.

Gabriel pressed against Victoria, fingers circling the softness of her upper arms, thighs cupping her

buttocks, the length of his cock sandwiched between her crevice, hair clinging to them both, hers, his. He

let her feel his hardness, his strength.

Her vulnerability.

“Is this what you want, Victoria?” he crooned. The shower scourging his skin.

Victoria turned her face in profile, right cheek riding slippery copper. Water streamed off his face,

coursed down her left cheek, plastered her hair to her scalp, a shell-like ear, a fragile neck.

“Yes,” she said. Still not giving in to her fear. “I want you to touch me.”

He had touched her last night, but it hadn’t been enough.

For her. For him.

“How do you want me to touch you, Victoria?” he murmured seductively. Knowing how to please;

knowing how to hurt. He did not know how to love. Whores didn’t love. “Do you want me to touch you

like I touched a woman, or do you want me to touch you like I touched a man?”

Water spiked Victoria’s lashes, rained down her cheek. “Is there a difference?”

Steam twined around them.

Evocative. Provocative.

“Women are softer.” Gabriel brushed Victoria’s ear with his lips— she had a small ear, dainty, infinitely

vulnerable. It scorched his lips; the crevice between her buttocks squeezed the length of his cock. “They

bruise more easily.”

Victoria stiffened at the light kiss, suspicious of his gentleness. An angel bearing gifts ...

“Men are harder, more muscled.” Gabriel delicately tasted the rim of her ear, the core of her ear, a hot

plunge of his tongue. Water coursed down his face, his chin, dribbled onto her shoulder. “They like it

rougher. Shall I be rough with you, Victoria?”

“Was the man who made you beg rough with you, Gabriel?” Victoria challenged, water-blackened hair

clinging to his lips.

Gabriel gritted his teeth in memory.

The second man had not been rough, but his accomplice had been. Gabriel had welcomed the pain.

Victoria would not welcome pain.

But that was all Gabriel could give her.

“Does the thought of men fucking men excite you?” he asked softly, deliberately crude.

It had excited the women Gabriel had been with in the past. They had sought a fair-haired angel to

compare with a dark-haired angel.

But Michael was the angel; only he could show a woman angels. Gabriel had shown them the darkness

of desire.

“He raped you,” Victoria insisted to the steam and the streaming water.

Innocent. As Michael was innocent.

Hungry. As Gabriel could never be.

“Two men raped me,” he rejoined silkily, nuzzling her cheek, heartbeat pounding in his fingers that

banded her arms, his chest that cradled her narrow spine, the length of his cock that rode the crevice

between her buttocks.

“But one man gave you pleasure,” Victoria doggedly persisted.

Damn her.

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed softly.

One man had brought him pain; the second man had brought him pleasure.

He could have withstood the pain. He had not withstood the pleasure. It would taint Gabriel forever.

And she knew it, this woman who had been sent by the man who one by one had peeled away the

layers of an angel until there had been nothing left.

Angels did not beg, but he had made Gabriel beg.

Victoria strained against Gabriel—to see him, to touch him, to be a part of him, he who had fought so

long to remain apart from anyone. “I want to know!”

Gabriel had wanted to know. . . what a full stomach felt like, so that he could hunger for more than food.

He had wanted to know what it felt like to be warm, so that he could covet more than shoes and clothing.

He had wanted to know what it felt like to have a home, a place he wouldn’t have to fight other beggars

over.

Curiosity killed: love. Hope .. .

Gabriel contoured Victoria’s ear with the tip of his tongue; the length of his cock was snug between the

cheeks of her buttocks. The tears he could not cry leaked from the tip of his crown. “What do you want to

know, Victoria?”

“I want to know what he did to you.”

Memory slashed through the heat of the water pounding his body and the softness of Victoria’s skin.

Pain. Pleasure.

“You saw men fucking men through the transparent mirrors, Victoria.” Gabriel filled her ear with his

breath. “Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to be fucked in the ass? Or do you want me to tell you

what it’s like to be raped?”

Water-beaded copper framed Victoria’s chin. “I know what it’s like to want to be a part of someone,

Gabriel.”

Last night she had been a part of him, as he had been a part of her.

The darkness of the truth lapped at Gabriel until he felt he would explode.

“I was not apart from one man,” he said seductively.

He had never been apart from one man.

Michael. Michel.

For a while, Gabriel had thought he, too, could be an angel.

The second man had shown him what he was.

Con. Fumier.

“He hurt you, Gabriel.” Steam blurred Victoria’s face. “I want to take away the hurt.”

Had the man or men who had taken John hurt his body as well as his soul? Gabriel wondered.

Would his widow take away his pain?

Had Anne taken away Michael’s pain?

Who will you tak e comfort in ... Gabriel?

No one.
Jamias.

Never.

Gabriel did not deserve comfort.

“And you think you can take away my hurt by doing. . . what, Victoria?” Gabriel queried lightly, sharing

his breath, his heat, the water that deluged his body. “By letting me rape you?”

“I want you to show me what he did to you.”

Water dribbled off Gabriel’s nose onto Victoria’s cheek; it crawled between their bodies and danced on

the tip of his cock, washing away his tears. “Which man, Victoria, do you want to know about?”

“I want to know what the man who hurt you did to you,” Victoria’s voice echoed inside the copper hood,

goading him, galvanizing him. “And then I want you to show me what the man who made you beg for

pleasure did to you. I want you to make me beg, Gabriel.”

Gabriel had not begged for pleasure—he had begged for release. And then he had begged for death.

He did not want Victoria to beg—not Victoria with her hungry blue eyes.

“Do you know where men are raped, Victoria?” Gabriel murmured provocatively. Erect flesh nestled

between the crevice of her buttocks. Chest cradling the narrowness of her shoulders and her spine. The

crown of his cock throbbing with each breath, each heartbeat. Water buffeting them both.

It would be so easy to kill her. . .

“Yes, I know where men are raped,” Victoria said through the pounding of the shower.

But she didn’t know. Men weren’t raped through their bodies; men were raped through their minds.

Twisting his torso, Gabriel reached back and jabbed his fingers into the jar of cream Victoria had set on

top of the cabinet encasing the tub. They came out coated with thick white cream.

Water beaded on his ringers, pearled on the cream.

A part of him yet apart from him.

But he didn’t want to be apart from one woman.

“Do you want to know what I felt, Victoria?” he goaded her. Killing her. Killing himself. “Do you want

to know what it’s like to be fucked in the ass?”

“Yes.” Victoria threw her head back, swallowing water, swallowing fear. Her hands remained flat on

the copper wall, a willing sacrifice. “I want to know what you felt.”

But it wasn’t what Gabriel wanted.

He didn’t want a woman to know what he felt.