pale, slippery wet...

Contrarily, her body clenched to keep it inside her.

“Calme-toi,”
he murmured huskily.

Relax.

“I remember the first time I saw a woman like this.”

Gabriel’s gaze was intent on Victoria.

“How old were you?”

“I was thirteen.”

The same age he had been when the madame had sold his services.

Gabriel’s finger reversed its journey, slowly ... slowly . . . sinking inside her until it filled her.

“What did you think, when you saw her. .. like this?” Victoria managed.

“I thought that if a man had a soul, it existed inside a woman.”

Victoria’s chest constricted; then her constricted.

One finger became two.

Stretching her. Opening her.

She sharply inhaled. “Gabriel...”

His dark lashes slowly lifted. “I like the way you say my name.”

Slowly his two fingers slid out of her while he watched her face for signs of pain .. . pleasure.

“How is that?” she asked, voice catching.

“As if you believe I have a soul.”

He curved his fingers, as if they were a hook, and gently raked the inner wall of her . “Come for

me, Victoria. You said you’d share your pleasure with me. Share it.”

He held her gaze, hooked fingers sliding, twisting, searching . . . Electricity shot through her body.

It felt as if she had a second oris inside her , or as if her oris were accessible from within.

Gabriel . Fingers hooked. Holding her gaze.

Fire raced through Victoria’s veins, shimmied down her spine.

There was no fire inside his eyes, just calculated intent.

She wanted more than his expertise.

“I can’t,” she choked.

A smile flitted across his face. “You can. You will.. . You are.”

Victoria’s body bore down. She exploded. Voice crying out.

When her gaze focused, Gabriel waited for her. “What did you see?”

“Light,” she panted.

Shaking. Inside. Outside.

Two fingers became three.

Her body was wide open; she could not squeeze him out. Victoria’s fluttered around him—
three

fingers.

“I feel it,” she gasped. “I feel myself... fluttering around your fingers ...”

“Yes.” A curious expression crossed his face. “I feel it.”

Victoria couldn’t draw in enough oxygen. “I said I wouldn’t touch you.”

His gaze sharpened. “Yes.”

“But I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you what I want.”

“What do you want, Victoria?” Gabriel asked, sudden remoteness coming into his eyes.

How many had told him what they wanted . .. and never asked him what he wanted?

“I want you to taste me. I want you to remember my taste.”

Not a of the senses . ..

“And then I want you to do what you want. Anything. Everything.”

His dark lashes blocked her gaze.

She could feel moisture oozing out from her . Did he see it?

Perhaps he did not like the taste of ...

Gabriel sank down between her thighs. Three fingers sliding ... out... in ... out... in. Deep. Hard.

Riding out one . Creating the need for another.

Silvery-blond hair merged with dark pubic hair.

When Gabriel’s breath whispered across her vulva, Victoria thought she would die. When Gabriel’s lips

closed around her, she knew she would die.

When Gabriel’s tongue touched the hard tip of her oris, Victoria did die.

There is always pain in pleasure,
Gabriel had said.

Darkness glittered inside the light, but still, only, light.

Victoria opened her eyes. And stared up at white enamel.

She did not remember closing her eyes; she did not remember lying down.

All she could feel was the emptiness inside her body and the tiny aftershocks that continued to dance on

her oris.

The dull clang of metal impacting wood penetrated her consciousness.

“What did you see, Victoria?”

Victoria had seen . . . “Light.”

She sluggishly turned her head toward Gabriel and the dull clang.

Gabriel reached into an open tin. His mouth was wet and shiny.

From her.

“What I wanted, Victoria,” he grated tautly.

It took Victoria several seconds to remember what was inside the tin ... It took her several more

seconds to realize what Gabriel was doing.

A silver drop of moisture glimmered on the tip of the large, plum-shaped crown . . .
bite,
Madame René

had called it. Pinstriped wool framed a bush of dark blond pubic hair. Smearing the silver drop of moisture

over the purple-hued head, he expertly smoothed up a rubber sheath, one inch, three inches, five inches,

seven inches, nine inches...

Her stomach convulsively tightened.

Victoria’s gaze jerked up to Gabriel’s face.

She did not recognize it. His lips were drawn, skin darkly flushed, eyes silver shards of light.

“You said anything and everything I wanted.”

Yes.

“This is what I want,” he rasped. “I want to bury myself inside you, and then I want you to come until

you make me come.”

Gabriel looked as though he expected her to object.

Victoria fought for air. For one paralyzing second she did want to object.

“That sounds”—terrifying, exhilarating—“heavenly.”

His sheathed manhood jutted out from the pinstriped wool trousers. “There is no heaven, Victoria, but I

can show you hell.”

Victoria did not doubt it.

Gabriel knelt on the floor. He bowed his head, silver hair sweeping his forehead.

Wool scratched her inner thighs. Rubber prodded ungiving flesh.

Victoria edged back on the bed.

The rubber was far, far thicker than had been his fingers.

A finger lightly pressed her oris.

Victoria’s breath caught in . She was riveted by silver eyes.

“Take me, Victoria,” he said rawly. “I took your hymen with my fingers. Now take me ...”

“You’re larger than your fingers ...”

But smaller than his hand . ..

Gabriel circled her oris, lightly, beguilingly.
Her choice...

Victoria’s muscles unclenched.

A fist...

It felt like a fist prodded her, impossibly large ... and then it was impossibly lodged inside her.

He circled her oris, light, hard, slow, sure ... Pain.
Pleasure...

Victoria’s body opened, impossibly, for more. More pain. More pleasure . . .

The pain stilled; the pleasure did not.

A heartbeat throbbed inside her.

Harsh breath filled the room. “Come for me, Victoria, and I’ll give you another inch.”

The fist lodged inside her portal remained steadfast; the finger circling her did not. It slipped down . ..

tested the tightness of the thin ring of flesh circling him, glided back up, slippery wet. . . circling round, and

round, and round, lacking depth; she needed him deeper...

Victoria cried out. And convulsed. “God!”

The large fist-shaped crown that stretched her beyond bearing sank inside . .. two inches deep.

“What did you see?” he grated.

Light. Darkness.

Silver. Gray.

“Light. . .”

Circling. Circling.

“Gabriel...”

Victoria’s body yawned independently. Jagged sensation ripped through her.

He sank inside her another inch .. . three inches deep.

Victoria panted for air.

One inch per ... Six more to go ...

“What did you see, Victoria?”

She throbbed. He throbbed.

The bedcovers clenched inside her fists throbbed.

“What did you see, Victoria?” he repeated tensely.

“Light,” she said stubbornly. There was no darkness in pleasure ...
No sin in loving
... “Oh, God”—the

sound ripped out of — “Gabriel... I can’t... Gabriel...”

“What, Victoria?” Sweat dripped like tears down Gabriel’s face. “What can’t you do?”

Or not do ...

He wanted her to stop him.

Victoria did not stop him.

“I need . . .” she gasped, the light of pending circling before her eyes, his finger circling her

oris.

“What do you need?” Gabriel crooned. Holding himself back from the pleasure.

Anger tore through Victoria.

He must feel it. How could he not feel her flesh caressing him, milking him?

Gulping him?

“I need to have another .”

Gabriel gave her another . And then he gave her another inch.

She couldn’t breathe past the fist that lodged inside her .

“What do you see, Victoria?”

“Light.”

Another . Another inch.

Five inches...

“What do you see?” he repeated. Wanting her to see the darkness that he saw.

“Light,” she gasped. Silver strands of hair haloed his head. “I see light.”

Victoria could no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure. She pushed up for another ,

another inch of Gabriel.

Six inches .. . seven inches . . . eight inches. . . .

“What do you see, Victoria?” Agony laced Gabriel’s voice.

His white linen shirt clung to his chest. The sweat-soaked linen revealed his every inhalation, his every

exhalation. His breath timed to the pulse that drummed inside her and against her oris.

Victoria with difficulty focused on him and not the fading that fluttered into the need for another.

There was no room inside her body for breath, thought.

The fist inside her plugged her every sense.

Gabriel’s body. Gabriel’s need.

She would die if he did not stop; she would die if he did.

An angel’s pleasure ...

Gabriel’s circling finger would not give Victoria respite.

What did she see .. . ?

“I see you, Gabriel,” Victoria gasped. “When I come, I see you.”

Pain.

The pain on his glistening face sealed the air inside her lungs. The impact of his body knocked it out.

Gabriel slammed into her, against her, flesh, hair, wool trousers, past, present. At the same time another

slammed through her body.

A voice cried out. Victoria did not know who it belonged to, her or Gabriel. His heartbeat was hers, her

flesh was his, the that ripped through them was theirs.

Victoria knew that Gabriel had felt her pleasure. She knew it because he left her. Body. Soul.

Her fists clenched in the mangled covers.

She had not touched his body, but she had touched an angel.

Victoria did not know if Gabriel would forgive her.

She squeezed her eyelids shut and stared at darkness, listening to the soft click of his boots, crossing the

bedroom floor, entering the bathroom...

Her body counted the passing minutes. She felt hollow inside, as if he had created a tunnel inside her.

The faint sound of plumbing vibrated in the air: Gabriel had flushed the toilet. A soft click penetrated the

stillness, a door opening.

She could feel his stare; it was as palpable as the throb deep inside her womb.

“Mary Thornton cooperated,” he said flatly. Tension throbbed inside his voice. “The man who wrote the

letters is Mitchell Delaney.”

She would not cry.

The darkness behind her eyelids writhed. “I do not know a Mitchell Delaney.”

“He knows you, mademoiselle.”

“My name is Victoria,” Victoria said. And she enjoyed the way Gabriel said it, the “V” a soft caress.

Yes, the man who wrote the letters knew that she wore silk drawers instead of wool. He knew that

women had the same ual needs as did men.

He did not know the woman who was Victoria Childers. But Gabriel knew her.

He had touched the very heart of her soul.

Gabriel turned around and walked away.

Chapter
17

Gabriel walked the streets, turning, twisting, slipping through an alley, waiting on the other side, breath

misting the yellow fog, heartbeat measuring the silence, silver sword raised in welcome.

No one followed him.

He wished someone had.

Gabriel wanted to kill.

Gabriel wanted to escape the scent and the feel of Victoria.

Gabriel wanted to deny the pleasure she had given him.

I see you, Gabriel. When I come, I see you.

For a second—with the head of his pulsing against the mouth of her womb—he had almost

believed that he had a soul.

Forcibly, Gabriel concentrated on the night.

No one had followed him to the Thornton town house, either by day or by night. Yet someone had

watched Madame René enter his house.

Someone had intercepted the boxes of clothing she had sent to Victoria.

A dull clip-clop interrupted Gabriel’s thoughts, the hooves of a solitary horse. Heartbeat accelerating, he

eased back inside the mouth of the alley.

Approaching light materialized into carriage lamps. A hansom cab rattled by.

The driver could be headed to the stables. Or the driver could be following Gabriel.

It disappeared into the fog.

Gabriel maneuvered three more streets. Several more hansom cabs meandered through the early

morning fog. He hailed the third one by stepping out in front of the passing horse and grabbing the leather

halter.

The horse shied; the cabbie cursed.

“Git yer ‘ands off me ‘orse, ye—”

“I will give you two gold sovereigns if you take me up,” Gabriel said softly.

The average cab fare was sixpence per mile; a sovereign was equivalent to two hundred and forty

pence. Gabriel did not have to clearly see the cabbie’s face in order to see the calculation in his eyes: he

would have to travel eighty miles to earn two sovereigns.

Gabriel understood the streets: he understood the men and the women who worked them.

He did not understand Victoria.

“Where’d ye be wantin’ to go?” the cabbie asked cautiously. “I need to be gittin’ back to th’ stables.”

“Not far,” Gabriel said pleasantly, aching from , aching for more . “I want to go to the Hundred

Guineas Club. I want you to slowly circle the block until I pound on the roof. When I pound on the roof, I

want you to stop. Another man will join me. He will then tell you where to take us.”

The cabbie did not have to ask directions to the Hundred Guineas Club. Like the House of Gabriel, it

was known wide and far.

“I’ll do it if I gits th’ gold boys up front,” the cabbie said craftily.

The horse nervously sidestepped, narrowly missed Gabriel’s foot.

Gabriel quickly calmed the sweaty horse, gloved hand firmly sweeping its neck. Remembering the feel of

Victoria’s pain, taking his fingers and then his ; remembering her pleasure, taking the s he

forced upon her and asking for more.

He knew what the cabbie thought: he thought Gabriel trolled for a male .

Unaccustomed anger shot through him; he tamped it down.

Thoughts did not kill; the second man did.

“I will give you one sovereign now and one when the ride is over,” Gabriel said easily.

Greed surpassed the cabbie’s moral scruples.

“ ‘Op in, guv’nor.”

The cab stank of stale cigar smoke, cheap gin, old perfume and sweat.

Gabriel stared out the window. Streetlights battled the fog, winning on one street, losing on another. Men,

women and children wove in and out of the yellow mist.

He thought of Victoria, walking the streets, alone. Living on the streets. Alone.

Quickly he squelched the image.

She would not live on the streets. Gabriel would make sure of that.

A stream of cabs clogged the street in front of the Hundred Guineas Club.

Gabriel pulled a heavy silver watch out of his pocket: it was not yet time.

The cab slowly circled the block four times. On the fifth circle a tall blond-haired woman wearing a

crimson velvet cloak stepped toward the cab stand.

Gabriel his cane up, knob first, and sharply rapped on the roof three times.

The cab pulled over.

Scooting across the leather seat, Gabriel kicked the door open, keeping as far away from the window

facing the sidewalk as he could.

The woman hesitated.

Gabriel the head of his cane through the open door, silver shining in the yellow fog.

The woman approached, paused to give the cabbie her address. The front of the cab dipped, wood

protesting; seconds later the woman sank into the seat, worn leather creaking, velvet rustling.

A
hip pressed Gabriel’s hip: he gritted his teeth. Cloying perfume drowned out the various other

stenches.

Leaning forward, the woman grasped the door handle. The darkness that closed around Gabriel had

nothing to do with the slamming door, and everything to do with the shoulder that suddenly rubbed his

shoulder.

There was no room to move, no space in which the side of the cab or another human body did not block

him.

The cab lurched forward.

Gabriel turned his head and stared at the blond head beside his while every muscle inside his body coiled

to kick open the door so that he could escape.

Back to Victoria. Back to the hope she promised.

“Did you discover anything?” he asked neutrally.

“Yes.”

The voice was not feminine; it was masculine.

Self-disgust resonated inside the cab.

A hand fisted inside Gabriel’s chest. He had done this to the man sitting beside him—he and the second

man.

“I told you that you did not have to do this, John,” Gabriel said quietly, fighting the sway of the cab and

the fear he had lived with for almost fifteen years.

“I have done nothing this night that I have not done thousands of times before,” John said tonelessly.

Ten years earlier, John had whored to survive; this night he had done it for Gabriel. John would never

forgive either Gabriel or himself.

Gabriel did not blame him.

Reaching up, John ripped the blond wig off his head.

“You did not have to take me in ten years ago.” John’s hair briefly shone gold in the light of a passing

street lamp; it was immediately dulled by shadowy fog. “I would still be there if it were not for you.”

They both knew better. John would not be a at the Hundred Guineas Club; he would be dead.

“I did not see Stephen,” he said instead.

“You are not supposed to see him.” John continued to stare at the cab door. “Stephen is surveying the

club, as you instructed.”

Whereas Gabriel had instructed John to play the .

John slowly turned his head; his eyes gleamed in the darkness. “They use feminine names. I could not

directly ask about Gerald Fitzjohn.”

John did not tell Gabriel anything that he did not already know. But Gabriel had information to relay to

John.

“Fitzjohn is dead,” Gabriel said remotely. And then, remembering Evan and Gaston’s horror, added, “He

was decapitated.”

John showed neither surprise nor horror. This night he had endured far worse than death. “A man said

that Geraldine had stood him up.”

Geraldine was the feminine version of Gerald.

Gabriel tensed.

Gerald Fitzjohn could go under the name Geraldine. But then again, he could use another name.

The cab rounded a corner. Gabriel grabbed the overhead strap. “What was the name of the man?”

“He called himself Francine.”

Francine ... Frances.

Viscount Riley bore the name of Frances. He was a crony of the Duke of Clarence, the heir to the

throne of England.

The royal duke signed in the club register with his mother’s name: Victoria.

“He said the night before that Lenora stood both Geraldine and himself up,” John continued

unemotionally, “and that he had not seen Lenora since.”

Lenora . . . Leonard.

Gabriel did not know offhand of a member of the
ton
or a parliament member who was named Leonard.

Did the second man?

Had the second man killed the man who called himself Lenora as he had killed Gerald Fitzjohn?

The questions rose with the throbbing pressure of John’s hip and shoulder.

Why had not someone followed Gabriel?

Why were the Thorntons still alive?

“Do you know of a man named Mitchell Delaney?” Gabriel asked, control slowly eroding from the

cloying smell of perfume and the closeness of John and the pleasure that continued to throb inside his groin.

Victoria’s pleasure.

What did the second man plan? For Michael? For Gabriel?

For Victoria?

“No.” John shifted in the darkness; he created as much space between them as he could, whether

because he could not bear the touch of another man after the night or to give Gabriel a reprieve, Gabriel did

not know. “Does he belong to the club?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. The carriage wheels echoed his apprehension.

Gabriel was not a fool.

There were men who were more adept at hunting than he.

The men who guarded Michael and Anne
could
be bribed or killed.

A man
could
have followed Gabriel without his knowledge.

Any moment, now, the cab would stop.

Men
could
be waiting in front of John’s door. Men
could
kill John and take Gabriel.

The cab jerked to a halt.

John stuffed on his wig; his thigh and hip and elbow and shoulder unavoidably crowded Gabriel’s thigh

and hip and arm and shoulder.

“The woman who owns the flat does not know what I am,” he said stiffly by way of apology. “I would

rather she think a woman came to visit me.”

“You know the landlady?” Gabriel asked, hoping for John’s sake that he knew her carnally.

Hoping for John’s sake that he could find the solace the second man had deprived Gabriel of.

“She’s a widow. We occasionally take comfort in each other.”

“Take comfort in her tonight, John.”

John did not respond. Leaning forward, he pushed open the cab door and stood up.

Back bowed, he abruptly spoke: “It is said you have not had a woman in almost fifteen years.”

“So it is said,” Gabriel agreed.

A brief smile quirked his lips. What did his employees think now that Victoria had requested a tin of

condoms?

“Who will you take comfort in tonight, Gabriel?” John asked.

Gabriel could not block the images of Victoria that flashed before his eyes. Victoria watching the male

and the woman through the transparent mirror. Victoria offering to let Gabriel touch her.

Victoria’s s flushed with pleasure as her stomach tightened in preparation for and her

splayed legs pushed up for more: more fingers, more Gabriel.

“There is no comfort for some men,” he said shortly.

Yet Gabriel had been comforted.

The thought of the second man sent a chill down his spine. If he touched him now ...

“I did what I did tonight willingly, Gabriel.” Flickering gaslight silhouetted John’s head. “Do not blame

yourself.”

Gabriel wondered exactly how far John had gone to help him. He offered the only solace he could. “I

will increase your salary.”

“There’s no need.” Gabriel could not see John’s expression; he did not need to. “When you have the

man you seek, I’m buying a farm. I discovered tonight that in the last ten years you gave me back my

humanity. For that, I thank you.”

And for asking him to pose as the he used to be inside the club he used to work, John would

never forgive Gabriel.

Gabriel had given John his humanity back, only to snatch it away.

The cab dipped; the door closed.

Gabriel was alone, as he preferred to be alone. There was no reason for the darkness to press on his

chest.

There was no reason
to
feel the loss of an employee.

Gabriel purposefully helped men and women who had no other choice but to steal or to find

occupations better suited to their needs. He would promote another man from within his ranks and hire a

replacement.

He should be glad at John’s departure: Gabriel wasn’t.

The second man was systematically destroying Gabriel’s new life, just as he had destroyed his old one.

But he had given him a woman. And Gabriel still did not know
why.

Chapter
18

Victoria blindly watched Gabriel open the armoire, seeing in her mind’s eye what she heard. Silence

popped inside her ears. A drawer opened, closed. A second drawer opened, closed. A third drawer

opened.

She envisioned the contents of each drawer.

She had seen his underclothes, touched his wool drawers—fine wool as soft as silk—watched a gun and

a knife sink into his pile of starched white linen shirts.

The third drawer closed.

Victoria saw Gabriel leave in the whispered closure of a door.

She wondered what time it was.

She wondered when Gabriel would forgive her. And instantly realized he would not forgive her until he

forgave himself.

Victoria had wondered what she would feel like after losing her ity; now she knew. She felt empty.

She opened her eyes and stared at the black pit that was the ceiling: in her mind’s eye she saw again the

brilliance of white enameled paint and the sweat that had poured down Gabriel’s face like tears.

Victoria had known Gabriel’s touch. She would never be complete without it.

Swinging her legs over the bed, she sat up.

She winced.

It felt like she had been reamed out with a stovepipe.

It felt like her heart was being ripped out of her chest.

She had not asked for this . . . the letters. The pain.

The pleasure.

Victoria stepped into the bathroom. And remembered ...

I’m cold. I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.

Gabriel had warmed her, first with a robe, and then with his finger, his lips, his tongue, his
bitte.

Victoria stepped into the copper tub. And remembered ...

The Liver Spray . .. It is not positioned to message the liver.

No.

Is the spray stimulating for men?

Not to the extent that it is for women.

Victoria showered in stinging hot water. And remembered ...

I
remember the first time I saw a woman lik e this.

What did you think , when you saw her?. . .

I thought that if a man had a soul, it existed inside a woman.

Victoria soaped herself. And remembered ... every place Gabriel had touched her. Her lips. Her tongue.

Her cheek. Her s.

Her oris ...

Victoria’s oris throbbed in memory.

Did Gabriel throb in memory?

Her vulva was swollen; it radiated heat. He had called her a
portail.

I lik e the way you say my name.

How is that?

As if I have a soul.

Victoria quickly rinsed the soap away and toweled herself dry.

Gabriel’s brush possessed neither dark nor pale hair. All evidence of their joining destroyed.

His toothbrush was damp. Averting her gaze from the dark-haired woman in the mirror, she brushed her

teeth.

Victoria still had no clothes.

The silk robe was in the bedroom, on the floor where she had dropped it. Feeling unexpectedly shy,

Victoria wrapped the damp bath towel about her body.

She should not have been surprised to find that Gabriel’s bedchamber was occupied: she was.

Victoria clutched the knotted towel between her s. At the same time, a brown-haired man looked

up. He looked to be in his midthirties, and did not appear at all chagrined to see a woman wearing nothing

but a towel.

She immediately recognized him as the man who had led her to Gabriel the night she had sold her

ity.
Gaston,
Gabriel had called him.

Scrambled thoughts flitted through her head. He would know of the condoms that she had requested.

Would he now apprise the servants of her scrawniness?

Victoria took a fortifying breath. She had stood in front of Madame René without running for

cover; she could at least stand before Gaston covered in a towel without collapsing into hysterics.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked icily in the voice that had occasionally quelled rambunctious charges.

Gaston smiled, brown eyes warm.
“Mais non,
mademoiselle. I merely brought you these boxes.”

The white boxes he held out were stamped with red rose petals.

Victoria shrank back.

“Non, non,
mademoiselle,” Gaston said quickly. “I delivered these myself from Madame René. See?”

Gaston set the boxes onto the rumpled bed.

Heat surged through Victoria; it was not ual in nature.

A large stain blotched the corner of the sheet where she had lain, body leaking her pleasure. A metal lid

lay on the satinwood night-stand; there was no mistaking the rolled sheaths that lay inside the small tin

beside it.

Gaston did not seem to notice. Or perhaps, employed in the House of Gabriel, he no longer paid attention

to the physical realities of ual union. He lifted the lid off of a rectangular box.

Victoria steeled herself, remembering blood, remembering Dolly’s ha—

The box contained a black satin corset.

Apprehension turned into feminine curiosity.

“Voilà.”
Gaston turned to Victoria and flashed her a smile. He had perfect white teeth. “It is merely a

pretty corset, mademoiselle.”

The heat surging through Victoria’s body did not diminish at Gaston’s reassurance, a carryover from the

years spent pretending to be a paragon of virtue. It did not matter that her pleasure stained the sheets or

that an open tin of condoms sat on the nightstand. Men
did not
discuss—or flaunt—women’s underwear.

Gaston was impervious to the restrictions imposed by society. He proceeded to open each box,

describing the softness of silk chemises, holding up a pair of drawers adorned with blue ribbons so that she

could admire the paper-thin silk, proudly displaying garter belts, silk stockings, fine silk gloves, a bustle that

looked more like an apron than the wire cage Victoria had worn for years.

Approval glinted in Gaston’s brown eyes. “It is
très
fashionable— Monsieur Gabriel picked it out.”

While Victoria pondered the thought that Gabriel had personally chosen intimate apparel for her, Gaston

—like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat—held up a golden brown colored silk reception dress that

should have looked tawdry with its garniture of wine-colored velvet and lampas underskirt of cream with

green, yellow and dull red figures; it was beautiful.

She involuntarily reached out. Corded silk clung to her fingertips.

It was far softer than the cheap silk drawers she used to purchase—only not so cheap on a governess’s

salary.

“Mademoiselle will need help with her dress,” Gaston said with obvious anticipation.

Victoria snatched her hand back, abruptly, achingly aware of the towel that draped her body and the

bare flesh it did little to hide. She would
not
allow another man to see her . “I assure you, sir, I am

capable of dressing myself.”

Gaston really did have a disarming smile. She remembered the smile in Gabriel’s eyes when yesterday

she had reprimanded him over the number of boxes stacked on the couch.

And now he had picked out underwear for her.

“Non, non,
mademoiselle, you misunderstand me,” Gaston said hurriedly. “I do not offer my services;

Monsieur Gabriel employs maids. I will send one of them to you.”

Victoria had dressed herself ever since leaving her father’s house.

“Thank you, but that is not necessary.”

“Mais out,
it is necessary, mademoiselle,” Gaston adjured. “Monsieur Gabriel has instructed that we

care for your every need.”

There was no stopping the blistering heat that surged into Victoria’s cheeks. “I assure you, sir, my every

need has been attended to.”

“C’est très bon
—it is good that you have come.” The knowing gleam inside Gaston’s brown eyes was

unmistakable. “Monsieur Gabriel, he has been alone too long.”

Gabriel had referred to an as
come.
Surely Gaston did not—

“He will not allow me to touch him,” Victoria said.

She bit her lips—too late, the words rang out.

Gaston’s brown eyes did not condemn her. “But he has touched you,
n’est-ce pas?

There was no mistaking the evidence of his touch.

Her lips were swollen, her eyes shadowed.

“Yes.” Victoria squared her shoulders. “He has touched me.”

Gaston slowly refolded the dress. “Monsieur Gabriel has not touched a woman—or a man—in all the

time I have been with him, mademoiselle.”

Victoria’s throat tightened. “How long have you been with him?”

The brown-haired Frenchman neatly tucked the beautiful golden-brown dress back into the box. “I have

been with Monsieur Gabriel for fourteen years.”

“You are his friend?”

The rose-petal stamped lid closed over the crimson silk dress.

“We at
le
Maison de Gabriel—the House of Gabriel—are not his friends, mademoiselle.”

Victoria’s eyes widened in surprise.

Dress safely boxed, Gaston’s thick dark lashes slowly lifted. Victoria looked into Gabriel’s eyes, brown

instead of silver.

“We are his family,” Gaston said flatly. “In this house we are all family to each other.”

Gaston, too, had survived the streets.

“Are you a ...
une e?”
she asked impulsively.

Gaston’s gaze did not waver.
“Out,
mademoiselle, I was
une prostituee,
if there were clients who

wanted me. When there were not, I was—as you English say, a pickpocket and a cutthroat.”

A cutthroat. . .

Victoria took a deep breath. “I take it you are no longer engaged in your former occupations.”

Suddenly the cold flatness of the streets left Gaston’s eyes. They twinkled engagingly.
“Non,

mademoiselle, I am no longer engaged as a pickpocket or a cutthtroat. Monsieur Gabriel would not like it if

we stole from or killed his clients. I manage Monsieur Gabriel and his house.”

And the employees who worked in the House of Gabriel.

A family of es, thieves and cutthroats.

Victoria squared her shoulders. “I am relieved to hear that, sir.”

“Pas du tout
—not at all, mademoiselle.” There was admiration as well as humor in Gaston’s brown

eyes. “Your breakfast is in the study. You may eat it now or wait until a maid has helped you to dress.”

As a governess, Victoria had eaten with the servants. She was not used to being fussed over. The

lingering heat of embarrassment dissipated at the novelty of being pampered.

“Truly, monsieur, I do not need the services of a maid. But thank you. I will enjoy breakfast—and the

clothes. They are very beautiful.”

Gaston looked pleased at her praise. “If there is anything you need, you must feel free to ask.”

She needed to heal an angel. There was only one way to do so.

Victoria looked into Gaston’s kind brown eyes and asked for what she needed.

For what Gabriel needed.

Chapter
19

A shadow covered Victoria. Gabriel’s image lay heavily on her eyelids, her s, her stomach, her

thighs.

Instantly, she awakened, heart pounding, breath catching.

The bathroom door gently swung closed. A thin line of white light flooded the crack between floor and

door.

Gabriel had returned.

Throwing back the bedcovers, she slid out from between the linen sheets.

Her s hardened. From cold, she told herself.

And knew that it was from fear.

Victoria was not looking forward to the part she must play this night, but she would play it. She would

free an angel.

Orange and blue flames blackened wood.

The fire was dying from lack of care.

Victoria had been dying ever since her mother had left her with a cold, unloving father. Gabriel had died

a little every time he gave pleasure but did not receive it in return.

The squat white jar on the satinwood nightstand was a pale blur in the feeble light.

It was all the light Victoria needed.

She reached out, fingers grasping—

Metal.

The silver tin of condoms.

Letting go of the metal, she grasped the glass jar that Gaston had earlier delivered. Fingers trembling,

Victoria unscrewed the lid and carefully laid it on the nightstand.

Metal impacting metal shot down her spine.

Victoria had placed the lid on top of the small tin. She could only hope that her decision was better

planned than her coordination.

The smooth wooden floor was cold, hard. Her s—passable s, Madame René had said;

symbols of a woman’s sin, her father had claimed—stabbed the air.

Gabriel had seen Victoria’s s; she had not seen him.

Gabriel had touched Victoria; Victoria had not touched Gabriel.

Yet.

God help her if she did, Gabriel had said. Because he couldn’t.

Or wouldn’t.

Victoria opened the bathroom door.

She could sense Gabriel’s awareness the moment she stepped inside.

A long, elegant hand reached out from the depths of the shower and turned a . Water sprayed in the

silence; steam billowed out of the wood casing.

Strangling the glass jar of lubricant she had asked Gaston for, Victoria stepped forward.

Gabriel’s face was turned up into the shower spray, hair sleek and dark. Water sluiced down his

muscled back, tight buttocks, and long, long legs.

He was beautiful. Far, far more beautiful than any other man she had ever seen.

Gabriel knew Victoria had entered the bathroom. He knew Victoria watched him.

He knew what Victoria intended to do.

Slowly he lowered his head. Water-darkened hair hugged the back of his head, shaped the nape of his

neck.

“I will kill you if you touch me, Victoria.”

Gabriel’s voice was distant; tension penetrated the water and the building steam.

“I would not be here, Gabriel, if you did not want me to touch you,” Victoria returned calmly. And knew

that it was true.

The man who was responsible for being at the House of Gabriel had known Gabriel’s needs. He had

provided Victoria to fulfill them.

“My name is not Gabriel.”

Victoria steeled herself for the truths she would learn this night. “What is it, then?”

“Garçon. Con. Fumier.”

Victoria knew that
garçon
was the French word for boy.
Con
and
fumier
were not a part of her

French vocabulary. Any more than had been
portail,
a woman’s , and
godemiché,
a leather phallus.

“We are not responsible for what other people call us,” she returned evenly.

“Do you know what
con
is, mademoiselle?”

Gabriel’s voice echoed hollowly in the copper grotto over the steady spray of water.

“No,” Victoria said truthfully.

“It’s bastard. Do you know what
fumier
means?”

“No.” But she had no doubt that Gabriel was going to instruct her. “I do not.”

“Fumier
means a piece of . Gutters are filled with sewage; I was born in a gutter. I lived in a gutter.

A nameless bastard. It wasn’t that made me what I am,” Gabriel said into the thickening steam

while the water washed over him, “it was living.”

The price of survival.

“There is no sin in living, Gabriel.”

No sin in living. No sin in loving.

Victoria knew that it would take far more than words to convince Gabriel of the truth of her statement.

“I once saw a stained glass window in a cathedral. There were two angels in it; I didn’t know they were

angels. One had dark hair, the other had fair hair. An old woman sat on the church steps, what you English

would call a crawler, a woman who begs from beggars. I asked her who
les deux hommes
—the two men

—were. She said they were angels. She said the fair-haired angel was Gabriel, God’s messenger. Michael,

the dark-haired angel, was God’s chosen. She said there was no hunger in heaven, and that angels didn’t

beg. Michael and Gabriel, she said, were God’s favorite angels.”

Steam billowed out of the copper grotto, clogged inside Victoria’s nose and chest.

“When I saw Michael in Calais, he was a half-starved boy with hungry eyes who wouldn’t beg and didn’t

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 ity 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

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 .

The muscles inside her clenched with desire.

She had seen Gabriel briefly the night before, while he covered himself with a , 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 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, s dangling, head lifting to hold

Gabriel’ s gaze.

“My father forbade embracing.” She straightened up, s 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 until the darkness of pending

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

Innocent. As Michael was innocent.

Hungry. As Gabriel could never be.

“Two men 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 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 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 ing 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 ed in the ? Or do you want me to tell you

what it’s like to be ?”

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 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 , 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 , 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 throbbing with each breath, each heartbeat. Water buffeting them both.

It would be so easy to kill her. . .

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

But she didn’t know. Men weren’t through their bodies; men were 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 ed in the ?”

“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.

He didn’t want anyone to ever know what he had felt.

Easing back, Gabriel brought his hand between their bodies. He smeared himself with cold, slick cream

—the crown, the shaft; Victoria’s buttocks teased the back of his hand and his knuckles.

Firmly grasping himself, he encircled her with the lubricated head of his . . . slipping, sliding,

enticing, beguiling. “Is this what you want, Victoria?” he crooned. A by nature as well as by training.

Victoria tensed, unprepared for either pleasure or pain.

Last night he had breached her ity, a thin layer of flesh that he had gradually peeled back to allow

one finger, two fingers, three.

He had not ruptured it, neither with his fingers nor his .

A clever would repair the hymen and sell it again.

But Victoria wasn’t a .

Her ity could be reclaimed. If he took Victoria now, she would never be able to claim innocence

again. She couldn’t heal Gabriel; but she could be destroyed by him.

He didn’t want to hurt her.

What Gabriel wanted hadn’t stopped him in the past.. .From . From killing.

He knew it wouldn’t stop him now.

Circling, circling, Gabriel pressed inward. And almost collapsed at the pleasure that shot through his

.

But he didn’t want the pleasure.

Victoria instinctively arched her body. Even in this she accepted him. She who had never known the

pain that men could give women. The pain that men could give men.

“Is it?” Gabriel whispered invitingly into Victoria’s hair, and her water-slickened cheek. Circling,

pressing, circling, pressing harder, circling, pressing harder still, wooing her body into accepting his as he

had been trained to do twenty-seven years earlier. “Is this what you want, Mademoiselle Childers?”

“Yes.” Victoria squeezed her eyelids together and turned her head into his lips, seeking solace in the

man she had invited to her.

So that
he
might not hurt.

But he would never be free of the hurt.

“Tell me, Victoria, is this what you want?” he crooned, chest cradling her back while her hands

flattened against the copper wall tried to hold back her pleasure and her pain. But she couldn’t hold them

back. Experienced that Gabriel had been, even he had not been able to hold them back. “All you

have to do is tell me to stop, and I’ll stop. Tell me, Victoria. Tell me to stop.”

Or he would die. And take her with him.

Victoria took the sloping tip of his into her body. And gasped her death sentence. “Don’t stop!”

Past echoes screamed inside his skull.

Stop . . . Stop . .
.
Stop . . .

They were followed by:
N’arrête pas.. . N’arrête pas.
..
N’arrête pas. ..

Don’t stop ... Don’t stop ... Don’t stop ...

Gabriel’s muscles bunched inside his thighs and his buttocks. Left hand sliding down Victoria’s arm—a

woman’s arm, soft, slender, so easily bruised or broken—he smoothed her waist and cupped her hip.

He didn’t stop.

Victoria’s outspread fingers clenched into fists. She milked his flesh, frantically trying to adjust to the

alien invasion.

Her pain vibrated in the hot mist.

Gabriel buried his face in her wet hair.

He didn’t want this.

The shower relentlessly pounded down on them, a man and a woman who had been brought together

because of their fear and their desire.

“Tell me to stop, Victoria,” Gabriel whispered, drowning in the spraying water and the tight haven of her

body, the past he had survived and the future he had been denied.

“Don’t stop!” she gasped.

“Tell me to stop, Victoria,” he repeated. And withdrew until just the crown of his was inside her.

Victoria’s muscles convulsed, trying to stop him, trying to pull him back inside.

The pleasure. The pain.

Gabriel didn’t want Victoria to see darkness when she reached her .

Voir les anges. Le petit morte.

Gabriel wanted Victoria to see angels, not death.

“Don’t stop!” she cried, a death knoll.

He eased inside her another inch. “Tell me to stop, Victoria.”

“I can feel the head of you”—Victoria in hot mist, water streamed into —”oh, dear

God!”

Gabriel could feel Victoria as keenly as she felt him. Flesh slippery inside and out. Pressure growing,

building, seeking an outlet.

She had to stop him.

He drove home.

Victoria’s pelvis slammed against the copper wall. “Oh my God!” burst out of .

Heat.

Gabriel did not remember a woman being this hot. He could feel the slick wetness of her skin and the

slippery heat of her body knotting inside his .

“Tell me to stop, Victoria,” he repeated raggedly, slipping, falling into the past.

“Did you tell him to stop?” she gasped, taking into her body the French boy who had wanted to be an

angel and the who had begged for release.

“Yes!” Gabriel hissed through clenched teeth. And could not stop himself. He eased out of Victoria. For

his pleasure, not hers. “I told him to stop.”

Victoria bit her bottom lip—she had beautiful lips, bottom lip only marginally fuller than her top lip. Water

streamed down her temple. “But he didn’t stop.”

He didn’t stop. He hadn’t stopped until the second man had told him to stop.

Then the nightmare had begun.

“Tell me to stop,” Gabriel said.

Begging. But angels didn’t beg.

Victoria’s buttocks clenched. “No.”

For a second, Gabriel couldn’t breathe for the pain and the pleasure.

“Then beg me not to stop,” he said ruthlessly.

“Make me beg, Gabriel,” she challenged, a part of him.

But he didn’t want her to be a part of him.

“Make you beg . . . how, Victoria?” Gabriel asked, voice dangerously soft, body shaking with need,

inside,
outside.
“Do you want me to make you beg for me to stop?”

Pain.

“Yes.”

“Or do you want me to make you beg me
not
to stop?”

Pleasure.

“Yes,” she repeated, gasping, trembling.

Willing to take both his pain and his pleasure.

But Gabriel didn’t want to give Victoria his pain.

He wanted to think, if just for a moment, that he had found a soul, and that the soul’s name was Victoria

Childers. A woman who saw his face when she exploded with pleasure, the face of a man who had

forsaken his namesake.

Gabriel grasped Victoria’s left hip. His fingers spanned her hipbone.

His muscles bunched.

He wanted to ram Victoria until she screamed for him to stop. And then he wanted to ram her until she

begged him not to stop.

He wanted Victoria to take away the truth and bring back the nameless boy who had thought he could

be an angel.

“They chained me,” he said into the tumbling steam and the pounding water. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t

fight.”

All he had been able to do was endure until he could endure no more.

Gabriel slowly withdrew his until only his heartbeat was lodged inside Victoria.

The truth would not be denied.

“He didn’t use a lubricant,” he said rawly.

The two men had taken him for no other reason than to hurt him. Because he had loved a black-haired,

violet-eyed boy.

A boy who had taught him to read and to write.

A boy whom Gabriel had joined in ion rather than be parted from.

Gabriel flexed his hips: Victoria took him. As he had been taken.

The shower relentlessly pounded down on his head. On Victoria’s head.

“There is a word.” Water coursed down Gabriel’s face. “Algolagnia. It is pleasure that is

indistinguishable from pain. Do you want to know how pain can become pleasure, Victoria?” he whispered.

Dying inside. Dying outside.

throbbing. Past overcoming the present.

“Yes.” Victoria gulped air. Water. His . “Yes, I do.”

Gabriel had not begged until the pain had turned into pleasure. But Victoria would not understand that

until she herself experienced it.

All of a sudden he wanted her to understand. He wanted her to be a part of him.

He wanted her to forgive what he could never forgive.

Grasping her right hip, Gabriel slid his left hand forward, fingers slippery wet with cream and water,

searching ... finding.

Her oris pulsed between his thumb and forefinger, a woman’s most sensitive flesh, softer than silk.

She was hard—as hard as Gabriel was now. As hard as he had been made to be in the past.

Victoria convulsively jerked, quivered, stilled, realizing how one man could make painful while

another man made it pleasurable.

“Gabriel,” she whispered, water coursing down her cheek.

Last night she had come for him ten times. Each time she had cried out her pleasure, the internal

contractions of her
portail
had squeezed his heart.

“Would you cry for an angel, Victoria?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she said unsteadily, heart pounding inside her body. Or perhaps it was his heartbeat that pounded

inside her body.

The water rivuleting down Victoria’s cheek was salty. Tears for an angel.

Gabriel gently inside Victoria; at the same time he pumped her engorged oris, as if it were a

miniature .

It throbbed. Like he had throbbed.

Wrapping his right arm about her waist, Gabriel held Victoria against him while he squeezed her and

pumped her until both her flesh and his flesh swelled beyond endurance. Until the need for was

greater than the need to breathe.

And then he let her go. Hovering on the brink of release. His flesh sliding inside her body, against her

body.

And there was nothing she could do to reach .

“Would you beg an angel, Victoria?” Gabriel whispered, fingers hovering over her engorged oris that

screamed to be touched while he filled her so deeply he touched the very core of the woman who was

Victoria Childers.

With pain. With pleasure.

A woman whose only sin was in wanting an angel.

“Beg me, Victoria,” he said gently.

Like Gabriel had begged in the end.

Fear suddenly contorted her water-sluiced face.

Victoria realized that her body was an apparatus: an object that could be made to feel pleasure whether

she wanted to or not. She could never solely claim ownership again.

“No!” she gasped.

Too late.

Her pain and her pleasure wrapped around Gabriel’s .

She strained for the release he had not allowed her even as she fought to regain control of her body.

He did not allow her that, either.

Any moment now she would beg, as Gabriel had begged.

And she would never see light again.

Contrarily Gabriel didn’t want Victoria to beg. He didn’t want her to live with the knowledge of how

easily her body could become a weapon.

He didn’t want her to see darkness when he touched her.

The second man had given him a woman: if Victoria died because of her desire to touch an angel, he

could at least give her pleasure worth dying for.

Stepping, turning, slipping and sliding internally—flesh slipping and sliding against flesh externally—

Gabriel carefully turned Victoria so that she faced the side of the shower wall. He tightly instructed her, “

Turn the Liver Spray .”

He did not have to tell her why.

Victoria leaned forward.

The pain and the pleasure of her motion squeezed the air out of his lungs. He couldn’t stop it: the pain,

the pleasure. Gabriel felt each twist of Victoria’s wrist, as if she turned his instead of the valve ,

slippery sliding inside the fist-tight heat of her body a quarter of an inch, outside a half inch, inside a

pulse-stopping inch.

A shock of hot water squirted the top of his foot.

“Angle the spray up,” Gabriel said raggedly, holding on to her waist and to his sanity.

He did not recognize his voice. Did Victoria?

She clumsily positioned the spray.

Gently Gabriel walked her closer— slipping, sliding, her internal muscles caressing, nipping, two

bodies acting as one—until her pelvis pressed against the shower spray and water needled her swollen

oris.

“Oh, my... Gabriel!”

Surprise, pleasure, then pending flavored Victoria’s cry.

There had been no joy in Gabriel’s release.

Squeezing his eyelids shut and throwing his head up into the spray, Gabriel grasped both of Victoria’s

hips and so far up inside her that her buttocks cushioned his groin and there was no pending death, no

lurking memories, no second man. Just two bodies made one.

The shock of his entry was upstaged by the force of Victoria’s . Her muscles clenched about him

until Gabriel gritted his teeth, surrounded by hot water, slippery flesh.

A woman’s softness.

A man’s need.

Gabriel pumped his flesh into Victoria and held her so that she would gain maximum pleasure from both

his penetration and the spray of water. He felt her second before she did.

“Gabriel, please . . . Don’t!” Victoria cried.

Gabriel had cried, a twenty-six year old man who had never before cried.
Please. Stop.