Robin Schone (34 page)

buttocks.

Her eyelids shot open—when had she closed them? “What—”

“I hurt you, Victoria.” A muscled arm circled her waist, held her securely in position. Gentle, firm

pressure washed away the remnants of the cream, circling around and around. “Let me take care of you .

..”

Victoria forcibly relaxed her muscles. “I would prefer that the care be mutual.”

Gabriel washed her and washed her until she squirmed for him to stop, and then she squirmed for him to

do more than wash her. Victoria reached behind her ...

Only to grasp empty air.

She fought down a surge of frustration. “Gabriel, I
will
touch you.”

Gabriel’s voice came from the vicinity of the washbasin. “You already have, Victoria.”

Victoria pivoted. Gabriel turned, comb in hand.

“I will touch more than your”—Victoria hesitated briefly, raised her chin a notch, defying the society that

forbade women to use anything but the most harmless of platitudes, chicken bosom for chicken breast,

gentleman cow for bull, unmentionables for a man’s trousers—”your cock.”

Silently Gabriel stalked her, an ivory comb in his right hand. Long, pale fingers extended toward her. “

Then take my hand, Victoria.”

She stared at the long, naked fingers that had been a part of her the night before. She stared at the long,

naked penis that had shortly before been a part of her, and would soon be so again. A tiny heartbeat pulsed

in the bulbous, purple-hued head.

Gabriel’s desire.

Knees suddenly weak, she took his hand.

Victoria opened the bathroom door and stepped ahead of Gabriel into darkness.

Blinding light pierced her.

Victoria blinked.

The solid warmth of Gabriel’s fingers disappeared. “Sit down on the bed.”

Victoria mutely sat on the edge of the bed, mattress dipping, springs squeaking, feet firmly placed

together on the wooden floor.

Her bottom was tender.

Stooping, shoulder muscles flexing, testicles dangling, Gabriel grabbed three logs from the brass scuttle

and threw them onto the fire that still miraculously burned. Black ashes and gray smoke billowed up the

chimney.

It seemed a lifetime since she had stared at that same fire.

“I will try to let you touch me, Victoria.” Gabriel’s voice was muffled, words directed at the flame that

slowly curled up the fresh logs.

He would try to let her touch him.

He would try not to let her die.

But he could not promise either.

“I would enjoy giving you pleasant memories to replace the painful ones, Gabriel.”

Gabriel turned toward her. “Every time you orgasm, you give me another memory.”

She
would not cry.

Victoria watched Gabriel as he silently padded toward her, long legs eating up the distance, engorged

bite
battling the air. “I had never seen a man prior to my unemployment. Five months ago I saw one on a

street corner. I didn’t realize his trousers were open. I thought he had a sausage dangling out of his pocket.

”

Gabriel halted in front of her. There was no mistaking the flesh that stabbed the air in front of her for

anything but what it was. “There is a French term called
andouille a col roule.”

Victoria threw her head back. “What does that mean?”

“Sausage with a rolled down collar,” Gabriel said solemnly.

The twin leathery pouches beneath his manhood were tight.

“What are a man’s”—Victoria swallowed, recalling English street slang—“a man’s ballocks called in

French?”

“Noisettes.
” Hazelnuts.
“Noix.”
Nuts.
“Olives.
” Olives with an accent.
“Petite oignons.”

Victoria’s eyes crinkled in sudden laughter. “Little onions?”

An answering laugh glimmered inside the depths of Gabriel’s silver eyes.
“Croquignoles.”

“Biscuits,” she translated.

The laughter abruptly leaked out of his gaze.
“Bonbons.
”

Victoria’s glance involuntarily sought out the twin objects of their discussion. “I enjoy the flavor of

bonbons.”

Tentatively she reached out a curious finger. Gabriel’s testicles were ridged, as rough as the hair-studded

leather they resembled.

Pure, raw energy slammed into Victoria. It did not come from her.

Slowly Victoria lifted her hand. Holding Gabriel’s gaze, she tasted her fingertip, a deliberate swirl of her

tongue. “You do not taste like
petite oignons,
sir.”

Victoria had never before seen naked need inside a man’s eyes; she saw it now, in Gabriel’s eyes.

“What do I taste like, Mademoiselle Childers?” he asked hoarsely.

Victoria tasted her finger again. “I would say you taste of...
les noix de
Gabriel.” The nuts of Gabriel.

The laughter immediately sprang back into his eyes, light dispelling the darkness.

Immediately she dropped her hand, feet primly together on the floor, breasts hot and heavy. “Thank you.

”

“For what?” Gabriel asked tautly, every muscle inside his body tensing as if to ward off pain.

“For allowing me to be a woman.”

And not calling her the whore that every gentleman would have called her.

One second Victoria sat before Gabriel, the next second she was airborne. The squeak of springs

surrounded her. A bounce of mattress found her sitting between Gabriel’s legs, muscled thighs gripping her

hips.

“Don’t ever thank me, Victoria.”

Gabriel’s voice was harsh.

Victoria opened her mouth to retort. Ivory teeth tugged through a knot of tangles.

Deliberately she grasped hard, hairy thighs, fingernails digging into muscled flesh, sharing her pain. The

ivory teeth of the comb worked through the knotted tangles.

Victoria did not move, overcome by sudden recall. Her mother had brushed her hair.

But she didn’t want to think about her mother.

Heat radiated from the V of Gabriel’s legs.

“What are a woman’s breasts called in French?” she asked abruptly.

“Melons.”

“Melons,” Victoria translated. “That’s very . .. quaint. Much better than apple dumplings, I’m sure.” A

popular slang on the streets of London.

Tears abruptly pricked her eyes. The small hurt inflicted by the unknotting of another tangle instantly

disappeared in a glide of ivory.

“Miches,”
Gabriel murmured.

Victoria smiled wryly. “Loaves of bread.”

The staple of every diet.

“Ananas.”

“What is that?” she asked with a catch in her breath.

“Pineapples.”

Victoria’s nails dug more deeply into Gabriel’s thighs—he did not flinch. “I’ve never eaten pineapple. Is

it sweet?”

“Sweet.” The knot in her hair yielded to ivory teeth. “Tart. Prickly on the outside. Juicy on the inside.”

The governess in Victoria surfaced. “A woman’s breasts are not prickly.”

“Your nipples, Victoria, are very hard. They prick my skin.”

So, she imagined, did her nails. She unsheathed them.

The comb glided effortlessly through her hair. Victoria’s head fell back.

“I used to burn and throb between my legs.” She stared up at the white enameled ceiling. “I didn’t know

that the button of flesh between my thighs was called a clitoris, I only knew that it was wrong to touch

myself there. But then, when I had no place to go, I did touch myself. I didn’t see light when I touched

myself, Gabriel.”

Victoria waited for condemnation, confessing what no lady should confess.

“What did you see, Victoria?” Gabriel’s voice was hot and moist, there against the side of her head, her

ear . ..

“I saw darkness, Gabriel.”

The gliding ivory stopped; hard fingers found the top of Victoria’s thighs. A single finger worked

between her legs, her lips ...

“I saw cold and hunger and loneliness . ..” Lightning bolted through Victoria’s clitoris, the seesaw motion

of Gabriel’s finger; she bit back a gasp. “But I didn’t see any sin.”

Prickly skin nuzzled aside her hair—Gabriel’s cheek. Scalding heat licked her ear—Gabriel’s tongue
.
“

Remember, Victoria.”

The bedroom tilted.

Victoria lay on her back, mounded velvet indenting her buttocks, linen sheets smooth against her spine.

Brass glinted out of the corner of her eyes, the bed rails.

The mattress shifted; Gabriel reached for the tin on the night-stand, his hip abrading her hip. Metal

scraped metal, thudded against wood.

Victoria tensely waited, unable to breathe past the scent of his heat and the closeness of his body.

Mattress dipping, Gabriel straightened, a rolled up sheath of rubber between his thumb and forefinger.

Anticipation squeezed Victoria’s lungs.

Dark lashes shielded Gabriel’s eyes.

Victoria stared at the jagged shadows gouging his cheeks, at the thick stalk of blue-veined flesh he held

in his right hand, glanced back up at the shadow of his face, down again to the engorged purple crown that

was swallowed by a cap of rubber. He pinched the tip of the condom. And then there were no blue veins,

no gradation of skin color, only a long, thick rubber sheath that ended in a curly thatch of brownish-blond

hair. A tiny nipple—the end of the condom—protruded from the bulbous head of his sheathed penis.

Victoria raised her eyelids.

Gabriel was prepared for her. “I am just over nine and one-half inches long when fully erect.”

Gabriel read Victoria’s thoughts inside her eyes. He waited for her to ask the question.

To pit one angel against another.

Victoria did not ask it. She did not need to know how Gabriel compared to another man. Instead she

asked, “Why did you leave space at the end of the condom?”

“For my sperm.”

Victoria had felt his seed spurt inside her other orifice, a hot jet of fluid. She wondered what it would feel

like spurting inside her vagina, bathing her womb.

Gabriel leaned over her and grasped her hands. “Remember...”

Victoria’s arms stretched over her head, fingers guided to cold metal. Closing his fingers around hers,

Gabriel locked their hands around the brass bed railing.

“Remember, Victoria. . .” Gabriel murmured, a whisper of breath caressing her cheek, manhood lightly

nudging her femininity.

“I remember, Gabriel.”

Slowly he sank down on top of her, a prickly blanket of human flesh, chest compressing her breasts,

stomach molding her stomach, hips sinking between her thighs.

Victoria remembered .. . how cold and barren her life had been. Because of one man’s hatred of

women.

Victoria remembered ... the pain Gabriel had experienced. Because of one man’s ... what?

She did not know why the second man had hurt Gabriel.

She did not know why he had not killed Gabriel when he had been chained and helpless. Begging to die.

She did not know how love turned into hatred. She only knew that it did.

A husband’s love for his wife.

A brother’s love for his sister.

The love between two angels.

Cold air surrounded her right hand—her knuckles, her palm. With his left hand Gabriel found the core of

her vulva. Nippled rubber seared her, stretched her, penetrated her, filled her.

Gasping, Victoria convulsively grasped the brass rails in both hands.

“Don’t ever forget what I am”—scorching breath filled her lungs, a scalding tongue rimmed her lips— “

or what I can do ...”

Victoria could see every pore in Gabriel’s marble-perfect skin, could count every dark, thick eyelash

framing his eyes, could feel every nerve inside her body stretched to
accommodate the rubber-sheathed

penis that pulsed inside her.

A pale circle shone inside his eyes—her face. Did Gabriel see himself inside her eyes? “I remember

everything you’ve ever said, Gabriel.”

You have hungry eyes.
Like
Michael’s.

It wasn’t whoring that made me what I am, it was loving.

There were two angels . .. I didn’t
k now they were angels.

I wanted to have eyes that hungered. ..

How could Gabriel not see the hunger inside his own eyes?

“And knowing where I came from”—hot breath filled her mouth; her vagina was gorged on his manhood

—”knowing what I am, do you want me, Victoria?”

Victoria did not have to pause to think about her answer. “Yes,” she said, and cried out at the tunneling

flesh that lodged inside her throat and knocked the breath out of her lungs.

Gabriel swallowed Victoria’s cry. The mattress dipped, and then his left hand swallowed her right hand

and he was sucking her soul into his mouth, groin grinding into her groin, manhood knocking at the very

heart of her, mattress a squeaky symphony. He licked her tongue; he nibbled her tongue. He suckled her

tongue as if it were all that kept him alive. Gabriel licked and nibbled and suckled Victoria until his breath

became her breath, his flesh her flesh, and she didn’t care if she died; there was a pleasure beyond death.

A light beyond darkness.

The light was Gabriel—his tongue, his lips, his hands, his manhood that slickly pistoned between the lips

of her sex and the walls of her vagina.

Victoria’s back bowed, legs climbing hair-studded thighs, vagina yawning wider, taking him deeper . ..

“Look at me, Victoria.”

Victoria with difficulty opened her eyes.