Robin Schone (25 page)

The man and the woman parted. She spoke; he responded.

Victoria could see their lips move, but she could not hear what either said. She could only watch them.

And imagine the words they murmured.

Words praising a woman’s passion.

Words venerating a man’s need.

Words Victoria had never heard or spoken but would like to hear and speak before she died.

The man strode toward a mahogany nightstand—erect manhood fencing the air, twin leathery pouches

bouncing below—and picked up a squat white jar.

Victoria had seen men flash their appendages on the street; she had never before seen a man fully

naked. Buttocks sculpted, muscles delineated. Body studded with hair.

The sight was breathtaking.

“Do they know that the mirror isn’t a ... mirror?” Victoria asked.

She sounded breathless.

She
was
breathless.

The letters had spoken of many of the things she had witnessed this night; seeing was far more

compelling than reading.

“The man knows,” Gabriel said.

The man was a prostitute, he did not need to say.

“But the woman doesn’t?”

“He might have told her.” Superimposed over the man and the woman on the other side of the mirror

was Gabriel’s silver eyes. “She came to the old house once a month.”

The house that he had burned.

But she didn’t want to think of fire. Destruction.

Death.

“With the same man?” Victoria queried, mouth dry, skin flushed.

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen them together before.”

“I’ve seen them occasionally.”

She watched his reflection. “You watch people when they engage in sexual congress.”

“The House of Gabriel is a business, mademoiselle. In this business men and women sometimes die. It is

up to me to ensure that no one dies in my house.”

Gabriel was not a vain man. Yet he had named his house after himself. . .

“Why did you name it the House of Gabriel?”

“So that the second man would know where to find me.”

Victoria swallowed. “Is there a first man?”

“He’s dead.”

By Gabriel’s hand.

Victoria tried to fit this latest piece of the puzzle into the frame of her life.

“You said that you blackmail people.”

Now Victoria knew how he got the information with which to blackmail them.

“I merely make recommendations to certain people, mademoiselle,” Gabriel returned neutrally.

And he employs our k ind,
Madame René had said.

Did Gabriel blackmail his patrons to find work for failing prostitutes?

Motion snagged Victoria’s attention.

The woman sat down on the bed, back facing the mirror; gray-streaked brown hair brushed the silk

sheet.

Her eagerness for the younger man’s touch was palpable.

Victoria could identify with her need.

For a second she felt the give of the mattress, heard the squeak of springs. Felt the cool caress of silk.

Impossible.

“Do you get... aroused when you watch them?” Victoria asked hurriedly.

The silk robe caressed her nipples with each inhalation, each exhalation; it felt like sandpaper. Her skin

felt like overripe fruit about to burst.

“It’s business,” Gabriel said flatly.

The business of pleasure.

Victoria had entered the business when she auctioned off her virginity.

Would she have had the courage to do so then, knowing what she now knew? she wondered. Would she

have sold herself knowing that sexual congress touched the soul as well as the body?

The man unscrewed the squat white jar, sat both the lid and the jar down on the mahogany nightstand.

Victoria fought to control her breathing. “What is in the jar?”

“Lubricating cream.”

Lubricating cream
pierced her vagina.

She was wet, Victoria realized.

And Gabriel knew it.

Was he erect?

“Are all the bedchambers equipped with jars of... of lubricating cream?”

“Yes.”

“The man has ... touched her,” Victoria said unevenly. “Surely the woman doesn’t need artificial

lubrication in order to... to accept him.”

The silver eyes inside the mirror snared Victoria’s attention. “That depends, mademoiselle, upon where

he penetrates her. And with what.”

Where.

With what.

She did not have to ask about where. But—

“What do you mean, what
he penetrates her with?” she asked carefully.

Watching the man. Watching the woman.

“Each room is supplied with an assortment of”—he hesitated—
“godemichés.”

Victoria was captivated by both Gabriel’s hesitation and the unfamiliar French term.

“What is a ...
godemiché?”

The masculine eyes reflected inside the mirror glinted pure silver. “It is a leather device that is shaped

like a penis.”

Victoria’s vagina involuntarily clenched. She had earlier witnessed a man inserting a penis-shaped device

into a woman’s body.

They had both seemed to derive enjoyment from the act.

“The assortment you supply... they come in various sizes?” Victoria asked.

Gabriel’s image was transposed over that of the younger man and older woman. His shirt was not

buttoned. Shadowy hair showed through the vent. “Yes.”

Less than nine inches? More than nine inches?

“With what other devices may a man penetrate a woman?”

“Watch and see, mademoiselle.”

The older woman laid back on the silk sheets in a tangle of gray-streaked brown hair. The younger man

kneeled between her legs.

Victoria stared.

He was ... kissing her. There. Between the thighs. On a woman’s most sensitive flesh.

Victoria’s nether lips throbbed.

“Surely he does not require lubrication in order to kiss her,” she said on a sharp intake of breath.

She had witnessed this act over and over during the night; it was far different witnessing a man kiss a

woman’s privates with Gabriel standing behind her.

“He is preparing her,” Gabriel said impassively.

He was not immune to what he witnessed. The intensity of his gaze scorched her skin.

“What is he preparing her for?” Victoria insisted.

The woman’s legs came up; her heels notched the edge of the bed. She reached for the man’s head, to

hold him in place.

Victoria clenched her fingers.

The younger man eluded the older woman. Reaching for the squat white jar on the nightstand, he

scooped the fingers of his right hand into it.

Gabriel was left-handed.

The thought came from nowhere.

The man brought his lubricated hand between the woman’s splayed legs.

Victoria squeezed her thighs together.

The woman threw her head back, face contorted with ecstasy. Or perhaps it was contorted with agony.

“What is he doing?” Victoria breathed.

“He’s stretching her.”

Victoria felt the woman’s penetration all the way up to her throat.

Her breath caught in her throat. “With his whole hand?”

“He will start out with one or two fingers.”

Victoria remembered Gabriel’s fingers.

They were long. White.

The young man leaned over and kissed the older woman between her thighs. He did not remove his

hand.

Victoria did not have to see what he did in order to feel it.

She trembled .. . with desire. Earlier she had trembled with fear.

“What does a woman feel like, when a man has his fingers inside her?”

Even Victoria’s voice shook.

“Like hot, wet silk.”

The anger in Gabriel’s voice took her by surprise.

His eyes in the mirror were not looking at Victoria’s reflection; they stared through the window. Gazing

into his past and seeing the women he had been with.

The women who had begged him for their pleasure and who had then begged him for release.

But he had not begged them.

Gabriel had only begged for release once in his life. A rape of the senses.

Victoria saw the pleasure Gabriel had given women in the twist of his mouth. In the silver eyes she saw

Gabriel’s pain.

The older woman on the other side of the glass tossed her head back and forth, silk sliding, hair tangling.

Her breasts quivered, as if she ran a race.

A race to completion.

Gabriel ran with her.

The woman’s mouth opened—to take in air or to cry out, Victoria did not know which.

Gabriel was lost—in the memories of pleasure or in the memories of pain, she did not know which.

“What do you feel?” she asked Gabriel. Aching with pleasure. Aching with pain. “How many fingers do

you have inside her? One or two?”

“Five,” Gabriel said raggedly.

Victoria couldn’t breathe.

Five fingers
jabbed deep inside her.

“I want to feel her pleasure,” he rasped. “I want to be a part of her pleasure—just once, and not apart

from it. I want to be a part of a woman that I am pleasuring.”

And not apart from her.

It should not be possible to splinter with pain at the same time that one swelled with desire: it was.

“This woman. Does she”—Victoria marshaled her voice—”does she enjoy having five of your fingers

inside her?”

A drop of moisture beaded on Gabriel’s forehead; it sparkled like a diamond in the dim light. “A woman’s

vagina is created to stretch.”

But surely not to accommodate an entire hand.

So why did Victoria’s body yawn to accept it?

“How did you . . . penetrate her with five fingers?”

“One finger at a time.” The drop of sweat disappeared inside Gabriel’s eyebrow. “I spent three hours

preparing her body.”

Victoria imagined receiving one finger, two, three, four, five. A finger at a time. Hour after hour. Panting

breath ticking off the minutes ... body opening ... lubricated hand slipping . .. entering through the ring of her

portal.

Pleasure building.

Ecstasy. Agony.

“Tell me,” Victoria said, breathing in time to the rise and fall of the older woman’s breasts. “Tell me

what you feel.”

Silver lights glittered inside Gabriel’s reflected gaze.

“I feel a woman’s clitoris against my tongue.”

Victoria’s clitoris swelled to the point of pain.

“It’s so hard it feels like it will split open with her need to orgasm.” Gabriel’s voice scraped Victoria’s

skin. “My fingers are fluted, my thumb tucked into them. The woman’s vagina is so hot it burns. I can feel

her flesh stretch—taking my fingertips ... my fingers . . . first knuckle deep . . . second knuckle deep ... the

width of my palm. The walls of her vagina are forcing my fingers to curl into a fist. All I can see and smell

and hear and feel is her. The smell of a woman’s need. The suction of a woman’s flesh. The sight of a

woman’s stomach tightening.”

Victoria felt Gabriel’s fingertips slide into her. .. first knuckle deep . .. second knuckle deep . .. the width

of his palm. Her stomach tightened, filled with an angel. ..

The body of the woman on the other side of the mirror bowed until only her head and her heels supported

her weight. Her mouth opened wide in a guttural cry.

“I feel her orgasm bursting over me,” Gabriel said, breath harsh in the narrow corridor. “It clenches

around my wrist and squeezes my fist until there is only her pleasure.”

Slowly the older woman’s body sank down to the bed, body lax.

The younger man raised his head: his features were strained with his need.

Victoria had seen many different types of need this night. She had seen the need for intimacy, the need

for sexual gratification, and occasionally, in the eyes of both patron and prostitute, the simple need for

human contact.

The younger man’s need was reflected in Gabriel’s face. “But it was her pleasure that milked my hand

—”

Suddenly the silver eyes reflected in the glass pinned Victoria.

She returned his stare unflinchingly.

“—not mine.”

Vaguely she noted that the man behind the glass wiped his hand on the sheet beside the woman and

reached for a small flat tin beside the squat jar of cream. It was identical to the tin of condoms that had

come with her dinner tray.

The younger man jerkily stood up and then he was standing between the older woman’s legs and she

was raising her arms and her body to take him while the man behind Victoria stood apart from their

passion. Apart from Victoria’s passion.

Apart from his own passion.

“This is what he wants,” Victoria suddenly realized.

Gabriel’s nostrils flared. “What?”

“He wants you to hurt.”

But Victoria didn’t want Gabriel to hurt.

She took both of their lives in her hand. She turned and faced their desire.

“You want to touch me,” she said. Praying that it was true.

The truth shone in his eyes. “Yes.”

Victoria’s chest constricted at the need in his eyes. “But you’re afraid.”

“Yes.”

Of touching. Of being touched.

Victoria gambled. “I want you to touch me.”

Gray. Silver.

Fear. Passion.

“I know you do,” Gabriel said.

He did not touch her.

“I want you to feel my pleasure,” Victoria said baldly. “I want to lie down on your bed, naked. Like the

woman behind the mirror. Like the woman you remembered. I want you to prepare my body. I want you to

give me the pleasure you gave her. And I want to share it with you.”

Gabriel sucked in his breath. “You’re a virgin.”