Robin Schone (33 page)

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 hot breath.

“You sent one of the men who let me inside your house.” Dawning comprehension flowed through

Victoria. Her right eyelash fluttered against his lips. It did not stop her accusation. “You sent him there to

punish him.”

“I sent him there because he is a former club member.” Gabriel’s lips skidded off of her eyelashes; he

stared down into Victoria’s eyes, firmly cupping her face, forcing her to face the truth. “You asked what I

wanted in a woman. I’ll tell you what I want, Victoria Childers.”

But Victoria suddenly did not want to hear.

“I want a woman to touch me, knowing what I am,” he said, a lash of hot air, silver gaze relentless. “I’m

a beggar, a thief, a whore, and a killer. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get the second man. I want you to

want me, knowing what I am. I want you to look into my eyes when you take me into your body, and know

what it is that you’re taking, a beggar, a thief, a whore, a killer. I told you I want you to love me, but I can’t

promise I can love you in return. I can’t promise I can save you. I can’t promise you won’t die. But I can

promise you that I would give my life to save yours. I can promise you that I can satisfy your every desire.

There’s no sex act I haven’t done, no sex act I wouldn’t do to please you. You were excited by what you

saw through the transparent glass. I won’t share you with another man, but I can show you what it would

feel like to be with two men. All I ask in return is that you let me touch you, that you let me take care of

you. And that you share your pleasure with me. Make me see light when you orgasm, Victoria. It’s the only

light I’ll ever see.”

Can’t promise I can love you . . . Can’t promise I can save you ... Can’t promise you won’t die.

Won’t share you . . .

Victoria couldn’t breathe for Gabriel’s breath; couldn’t feel for Gabriel’s heat; couldn’t move for the

anchor of his manhood.

He had been a successful prostitute because he had learned as a child to disassociate himself from

hunger, from cold, from emotional involvement.

But one man had touched him.

It
would tak e a brave woman to love a man such as Monsieur Gabriel,
Madame René had said.

But Victoria wasn’t brave.

She had become a governess rather than expose her father as a misogynist who hid his hatred of women

behind moral righteousness. She had taken care of other women’s children rather than marry and discover

she was a whore who lusted for a man’s love over the fruit of his seed.

Victoria had come to the House of Gabriel to survive, not to die.

She had not come to the House of Gabriel to learn to accept herself by accepting a fallen angel. But she

had.

She was not brave.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she managed.

Victoria didn’t want to rely upon a man.

Gabriel’s hands tightened, hard flesh squeezing, cold cloth abrading. “You wouldn’t survive the streets,

Victoria.”

“You did,” she quickly rejoined.

His silver gaze would not let her escape the truth. “I was born on the streets; you were born a lady.”

Victoria’s past rose up between them, the head of his manhood pulsing against her stomach an acute

reminder of a woman’s weakness. “My mother ran off with another man.”

“You’re mother left your father, just as you did,” Gabriel said bluntly. “Just as he forced your brother to

leave.”

“I don’t understand what it is that you want from me.”

“I told you what I want from you.”

He wanted her to accept him, all of him. Beggar. Thief. Whore.
Killer.
All he asked in return was that

she share her pleasure.

Victoria licked her lips, a slick flick of her tongue on chapped lips. “You are asking me to ... live in your

house.”

“Yes,” he said bluntly. Silver eyes guarded.

“Providing we survive.”

“Yes.”

But for how long?

How long would Gabriel be alive? How long would
she
be alive?

Reality was an unwelcome intruder.

“That is not necessary,” she said stiffly, suddenly, painfully self-conscious of her too sharp bones and

tautly stretched skin and her breasts that jutted out from her chest. “I gave my virginity willingly.”

“I didn’t take you because you were a virgin.”

How difficult it was to admit the truth.

“You were aroused because I flaunted myself in front of you. You would not have been tempted if I had

not paraded in front of you ... naked. Or propositioned you, in front of the transparent mirror.”

“I am nightly surrounded by women who do more than flaunt their nakedness, Victoria.”

Uncertainty twisted inside Victoria. “But this is different...”

“Yes.” Gabriel would not let go of her face, her gaze. “It is.”

Victoria did not glance away from the starkness inside Gabriel’s gaze. “Are you sorry you bid on me?”

The heartbeat that thrummed inside her backside and her vagina and her stomach drummed inside her

ears, waiting for his answer.

“No.”

Victoria read the truth inside Gabriel’s eyes.

Beautiful eyes.

“I didn’t see light when I reached orgasm inside the shower, Gabriel.”

Pain.

Victoria had hurt an angel.

Steam aureoled his water-darkened head. “What did you see?”

Victoria looked into Gabriel’s silver eyes and saw his face reflected in the shower, copper instead of

alabaster. “I saw you.”

She had seen his pain. She had seen his pleasure.

Memory flashed through Gabriel’s eyes: the circling of his flesh; the blossoming of her flesh. The cry of

her pleasure.

The endless orgasms he had given her the night before.

The endless orgasms he would give her this night.

But she had not known last night what she knew tonight.

No man had ever wanted to care for her.

Words rushed up into Victoria’s throat. “My hair is wet.”

The hands cupping her face tightened. “I’ll dry it.”

Hot tears pricked her eyes. “It’s tangled.”

“I’ll comb it.”

Desire trickled down Victoria’s thighs; the slickness between her buttocks reminded her of how

intimately this man knew her desires.

“I was a virgin last night.”

Victoria swallowed. Now where had that come from?

Carnal knowledge glittered inside his gaze. “I know you were a virgin.”

“But I didn’t bleed.”

Darkness banished the silver light inside his eyes. “I didn’t want you to bleed.”

Victoria remembered the bulbous crown of his manhood sliding inside her, inch by inch, orgasm by

orgasm . .. The rising heat inside her would not be contained. “Did you see light when I reached my first

orgasm?”

“Yes.”

“But you only put three fingers inside me.”

And not the five he had inserted inside the woman whom he had sought to be a part of.

The heat inside Gabriel’s gaze took Victoria’s breath away. “You’re not ready for that kind of

penetration.”

“But I will be ... someday?” she asked uncertainly.

If
he
survived.

If
she
survived.

If
he wanted her when danger was no longer an aphrodisiac.

“Someday, Victoria, I will give you five fingers.” His face was marble-hard. “Someday I will touch you

so deeply and fill you so completely that you will never regret touching me.”

Victoria fought for oxygen that was not heated by his breath. “You already have, Gabriel.”

Heat engulfed her.

She was going to drown in his gaze. “Please let go of me.”

The silver fire glittering inside Gabriel’s eyes stilled. Warm breath feathered her lips. “Why?”

“Because I think I am going to orgasm,” Victoria said frankly, voice ringing in the misty air.

Light and darkness shimmied inside Gabriel’s gaze.

The knowledge of her desire. The knowledge to appease her desire.

Lowering his head, Gabriel lightly rimmed her lips; his tongue stabbed through her womb. In the next

heartbeat he was gone. While Victoria’s body throbbed on the brink of climax.

As it had throbbed inside the shower, his stomach and chest plastered against her back and buttocks, his

bite
buried so deeply inside her they had been one body.

A towel caught up Victoria’s hair—Gabriel gently dried it, each sensuous rub a palpable caress. She

stood stock still while he dried her buttocks—skimming over the crevice that still bore the remnants of his

penetration—patting dry her legs . . .

A dull thump resonated inside her ears. Coldness abruptly abraded the sensitive area between Victoria’s