Robin Schone (32 page)

It had not stopped the second man.

He buried his face into the nook of Victoria’s neck, seeking solace in the wet slickness of hair and flesh;

the back of Victoria’s head ground into his shoulder.

“Oh . . . my . . . God!” She gasped in agonized pleasure. “Gabriel. Gabriel. Please . . . don’t... stop!”

The truth would not be denied.

“I couldn’t stop it,” Gabriel said, lips sliding against her hair, her neck, cock sliding inside her body.

Crimson stained the darkness behind Gabriel’s eyelids.

He had slit the accomplice’s throat. His blood had been hot and slippery.

Like the shower water.

Like Victoria’s body.

Like sex.

“I couldn’t stop it,” he repeated.

And pumped his hips in pleasure and pain. Unable to stop the flow of memories.

Of black hair. Of violet eyes.

Of love. Of hatred.

Gabriel’s left hand blindly sought comfort, smoothing up Victoria’s water-slick waist, over sharp ribs,

curving around soft, round flesh, fingers convulsively closing over her left breast. Her heart hammered

against his fingers; her nipple stabbed his palm, passion both balm and scourge.

She could so easily be destroyed. By the second man.

By Gabriel.

He pressed his lips behind Victoria’s ear. It did not silence the words that erupted inside his chest and

exploded out of his mouth. “I... couldn’t... stop it.”

Not the pain. Not the pleasure.

Not the loss.

Love was not innocent. No matter how badly Gabriel had wanted it to be.

The second man had taught him that.

A low cry burst out of Victoria’s throat. It vibrated against Gabriel’s lips. She suddenly strained

backward, body opening, grasping, milking his flesh until Gabriel’s knees buckled with the truth and he was

slipping, falling ...

Hard copper impacted his knees.

Victoria fell with Gabriel, body gulping an angel’s release.

He had not been able to stop it.

A shock of water blasted Victoria in the face, and then it was gone, the climax that had brought her to

her knees, the water that had brought her to orgasm, the internal heartbeat of the man who had taken her

into his world and shown her the pain and the pleasure of sex.

I
. . .
couldn’t
.. .
stop it,
reverberated inside the copper grotto.

An angel’s cry.

The copper was hard; Victoria would have bruises on her kneecaps. Electric aftershocks danced inside

her bottom and her pelvis and her breasts. Five fingers seared her stomach; her heartbeat drummed against

the palm of a hand.

Gabriel’s hand.

Her throat tightened, remembering her pleasure, his pain.
They chained me. I couldn’t
move. I couldn’t

fight.

In her eagerness to free an angel, Victoria had deprived Gabriel of the very choice the second man had

deprived him of: she had forced him into carnal relations.

An apology rose to her lips; “The water stopped,” came out instead.

It was too late for apologies.

“Yes,” Gabriel said tonelessly, his voice a fleeting caress against the base of her neck and her shoulder.

Victoria stared at the copper-skinned woman imprisoned inside the shower. Five copper fingers imprinted

her stomach; her left breast was protectively cupped by a copper hand. Copper-blond hair blended into

water-blackened hair.

Tears stung Victoria’s eyes. She had to know.

“What happened when they finished with you?”

“They left me.”

But not to die.

Gabriel’s words were muffled by Victoria’s hair and skin; his implication was not.

They had not wanted Gabriel to die. But he had wanted to.

“Who released you?” she asked, voice unsteady, knowing the answer.

“Michael.”

The chosen one.

A boy with hungry eyes who had not begged.

“He’s not French.” Water crawled down her cheek. “How is it that he was in Calais?”

“He had stowed away on a boat from Dover when we were thirteen.” Gabriel’s voice was distant; his

lips moved against her hair and, beneath that, the crook of her neck. The hair covering his chest and

stomach pricked her back; the wiry hair covering his groin tickled her buttocks. “I watched him steal a loaf

of bread through a baker’s window; it was obvious he had never stolen before. I pounded on the window to

distract the baker so he wouldn’t get caught; then I followed him. Michael shared the loaf of bread with me

on a road to Paris.”

And once in Paris they had both been trained to be prostitutes.

Victoria listened to what Gabriel did not say as well as that which he said. If Michael had not known how

to steal, then he had not been born on the streets.

Michael was what Gabriel was not, a boy who had not been raised in a gutter and been labeled filth.

Gabriel had named himself after an angel in order to be worthy of Michael’s friendship.

Long seconds passed; steam dispersed into wispy gray tendrils of mist. Beads of water streamed down

the copper man and woman inside the shower grotto.

Her bottom ached from Gabriel the man; her heart ached for the boy who had wanted to be an angel.

Hot breath caressed Victoria’s left ear. “I begged Michael to let me die.”

But Michael had not let him die.

Gabriel’s words seared Victoria’s skin with the truth: Michael loved Gabriel, just as Gabriel loved

Michael.

He didn’t deserve to hurt.

“You killed the first man.” Anger suddenly resonated inside the copper grotto. “Why didn’t you kill the

second man?”

Six months earlier Victoria would have been aghast at her blood-thirstiness. She had not known then how

pleasure could become a weapon.

“I couldn’t find him.”

Victoria’s heart pounded against five fingers. A man had destroyed Gabriel, and . ..

She tried to turn her head, to see Gabriel; her hair that was caught between them stayed her. “You did

not know his name?”

“No.”

“And now?”

“I still don’t know his name.”

But Gabriel knew something about this man who had systematically hurt him. Something that he was not

telling Victoria.

Something that had come between the love two angels bore each other.

Victoria’s knees ached; the heat of Gabriel’s body bound her.

She wanted to touch him; she was afraid to. She was afraid she would cause him more pain.

“How long have you been a proprietor?” she asked, wanting to distract him, wanting to hold him.

Wanting
to
give him the comfort he still could not take.

Gabriel shifted. He sat on his heels, pulling Victoria back with him so that she sat on hard, hairy thighs

instead of kneeling on hard, ungiving copper.

Equally hard flesh prodded her behind.

Victoria’s heartbeat quickened.

Gabriel’s breathing deepened. “Fourteen years.”

I
have not touched a woman in fourteen years, eight months, two week s and six days,
he had told

her the night she had auctioned off her virginity.

“You built your first house”—Victoria grappled for the truth— “in order to lure this man?”

“Yes.”

But he had not been lured. And Gabriel had burned down his house. Only to rebuild it.

“Why did he come back, after all these years?”

Gabriel released Victoria’s breast. “For revenge.”

“But it was he who hurt you.”

Gabriel released Victoria’s waist. “For money.”

Black mail is the price of sin . . .

“Did he try to blackmail you?”

Gabriel lifted Victoria to her knees. “For sport.”

Instantly the copper-skinned woman inside the grotto was free and once again Victoria could feel the

cold metal tub, the wetness of her flesh, the burning discomfort where Gabriel had penetrated her, the

slipperiness of the cream between her buttocks.

The utter aloneness of the man behind her.

She could sense Gabriel standing, a stir of air, a slight pop of a bone. A copper-skinned man towered

over Victoria inside the shower grotto.

Gabriel stepped over the tub. Victoria stared at a tautly muscled thigh, a hair-studded testicle, pale marble

buttocks.

Silently he padded across blue-veined marble, halted in front of the satinwood cabinet that encased the

wash basin. Mist clouded the mirror; all she could see of Gabriel were his strong shoulders slick with water,

sleek back, narrow hips, tight buttocks, long, long legs and the dim reflection of his bowed head.

Water splashed; steam roiled. Buttocks tightening, Gabriel thrust his hips forward.

Victoria did not have to see his actions to know that he washed his genitals.

Her bottom burned and throbbed.

Her pain. His pain.

Gabriel grabbed the washcloth off the wooden towel rack and plunged it into the basin.

Planting her hands onto the satinwood cabinet encasing the copper tub, Victoria clumsily pulled herself up

to her feet.

Gabriel turned, washcloth in hand. His face was pale, remote. Apart from her instead of a part of her.

“Nothing has changed, Victoria.”

Victoria
would not
cry, not for herself, not for a fallen angel.

She stepped over the satinwood cabinet encasing the copper tub, slipped on marble, grabbed satinwood

paneling to keep from falling. Cold, wet
hair slapped her cheeks.

“The man will try to kill you,” Gabriel said tonelessly.

Instantly the heat of humiliation chilled.

Gabriel’s voice was closer.

Victoria’s head snapped up.

He stood over her, male flesh erect.

A single drop of moisture glistened on the bulbous tip of his manhood.

He had been a part of her—front, back.

She wanted him to be part of her still.

Victoria straightened. Her clitoris that he had gently pumped swelled.

More acutely aware of the slickness between her buttocks and the moisture that pooled between her

thighs than she was of her next breath, she riposted, “He will try to kill you, too.”

Gabriel did not skirt the truth. “He will try to hurt me by hurting you.”

Victoria’s heart skipped one beat, two.
Who was this man who hunted Gabriel, even as Gabriel

hunted him?
“Would it hurt you ... if he hurt me?”

“Yes.”

Her chest tightened. “Why?”

“Because I want you, Victoria.”

Her eyes burned.

“I want you to touch me.”

Her breath stopped.

“I want you to love me.”

Her heart halted.

“Yes, it would hurt me if you were hurt.” Silver light danced in the gray shadows that was Gabriel’s past.

“It would kill me to see you die, because you have touched
me
and not just my sex. You’ve touched me

with your passion and your honesty.

“You said you didn’t want to feel desire; neither do I. But I do feel desire; I need you to share that

desire. He showed me that by bringing you here. He will see you in my eyes and smell you on my skin. And

he will stop at nothing to kill you. Simply because you touched me.”

As he had killed Dolly, the prostitute, simply because she had guided Victoria to the House of Gabriel.

Victoria’s bravado haunted her.
If you compel me to stay, sir, I will seduce you,
she had threatened.

Then you will pay the consequences, mademoiselle. As will I.

Gabriel had known the danger of her desire. He had lived with the knowledge of what the second man

was for almost fifteen years.

Have you ever loved anyone other than Michael, Gabriel?”

“No.”

I
loved him as a brother.

Victoria’s chest tightened to the point that it was difficult to breathe. “I do not regret touching you.”

Gabriel stepped closer, alabaster skin pale, blond hair water-darkened. Hard flesh prodded her stomach.

“You will, Victoria.”

She inhaled sharply. “What do you want in a woman, Gabriel?”

Warm breath licked her cheek. “You feel compassion for a thirteen-year-old boy who wanted to be an

angel.”

It was not a question.

Victoria wouldn’t lie. “Yes.”

“And when you look at me”—a callused fingertip traced her bottom lip—”you see the face of an angel.”

Victoria’s bottom lip quivered. “What do you see when you look at me, Gabriel?”

Dark eyelashes veiled Gabriel’s eyes. Slowly, he traced a trail of fire up her face: hard flesh cupped

Victoria’s right cheek. “I told you my name isn’t Gabriel.”

Victoria moistened her lips, tasting his breath, the lye residue of soap on his finger, the pleasure he had

given her. “You said you named yourself after Gabriel, therefore your name
is
Gabriel.”

Slowly his eyelashes lifted. “And you still want to touch me.”

Victoria could not lie. “Yes.”

“I cried, Victoria.”

Would you cry for an angel, Victoria?

Tears welled up inside her eyes; a single tear leaked from the hard flesh riding her lower stomach. “

There’s no sin in crying, Gabriel.”

No sin in living.

No sin in loving.

“No, there isn’t.” Cold, wet cloth abraded Victoria’s left cheek; it was instantly warmed by hot, hard

skin. Gabriel cradled her cheek as if she were made of precious glass. “Crying is natural. When there are

no tears,
Victoire,
there is the danger.”

Victoire.
French for Victoria.