GABRIEL'S WOMAN
Kensington Brava
ISBN: 1-57566-698-7
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Prequel: The Lover
In the erotic tour de force The Lover, readers met not only brooding, passionate Michel des Anges, but his life long friend - the mysterious Gabriel, a man with a past as dark as the London night. Now, renowned author Robin Schone explores one of her most talked-about characters in a novel that reveals the blackest secrets of a man's soul...and the explosive heart of a woman's desire.
Destitute and terrorized by a nameless pursuer, thirty-four-year-old Victoria Childers has only one thing of value left - her innocence. Its price will buy her safety. But Gabriel doesn't want her virginity - he wants the man who stalks her. Trapped together in a house where every desire can be fulfilled, Victoria and Gabriel are plunged into a deadly game of passion and pursuit, where the greatest threat is carnal hunger and the only rule is survival.
Excerpt
Gabriel's face was turned up into the shower spray, water-darkened hair long and sleek. Water sluiced down his muscled back, tight buttocks, and long, long legs.
A dull pain stabbed through Victoria's chest for the beauty that was his and the pain it had brought him.
Gabriel knew Victoria watched him.
He knew what Victoria intended to do.
He knew there was only one way to stop her.
Slowly he lowered his head. Water-darkened hair hugged the back of his skull, shaped the nape of his neck.
"I will kill you if you touch me, Victoria."
Gabriel's voice was distant; tension penetrated the raining 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 her auction at the House of Gabriel had known Gabriel's needs. He had provided Victoria to fulfill them. . . .
"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 shit. Gutters are filled with sewage; I was born in a gutter. I lived in a gutter. A nameless bastard. It wasn't whoring 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. . . .
Emotion squeezed her 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 earlier words, hers, his. . . .
"Do we, Victoria?" Gabriel asked incuriously. Water pouring over him.
"Yes," Victoria said decisively. "We do."
Else she would not have auctioned off her virginity 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 naked 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 sex.
The muscles inside her vagina clenched with desire . . .
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 inside Victoria's mind whatsoever that Gabriel could hurt her. 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 that was 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 naked images with words. Creating the anticipation of ... a kiss ... 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, breasts dangling, head lifting to hold Gabriel's gaze.
"My father forbade embracing." She straightened up, breasts 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."