Robin Schone (45 page)

Straightening, Gabriel kicked off his trousers.

He was naked with no stockings snagged at his ankles or slippers hiding his feet.

He had beautiful feet.

Between one heartbeat and another he dropped down onto his knees before Victoria, moist breath

scorching her stomach. He tugged her left foot up.

Victoria floundered, falling, hands grabbing a head, hair silky soft, no purchase there; hands grabbing

shoulders, instead, muscles tensed beneath smooth skin . . .

Gabriel’s naked skin pulsed beneath her fingertips. He reared his head back. His breath kissed her lips. “

Tell me more, Victoria.”

Tell him how a child’s fairy tale could help a man who had never been told fairy tales as a child.

Victoria stared into Gabriel’s eyes and tasted Gabriel’s breath. Leaning over him. Caught by his need

and her position.

She told him more. “The angel and the child passed over well-known spots,”—Gabriel pulled off her left

slipper, her left stocking, fingertips indescribably erotic, smoothing over her ankle, the top of her foot.. .

Victoria caught her breath—“places where the child had often played, and through gardens full of beautiful

flowers.”

Gabriel released Victoria’s left foot, tugged at her right, momentarily pitching her off balance.

Victoria’s fingers dug into the knotted muscles that were his shoulders. “The angel asked the child,”—

she tried to regulate her breathing, failed—“which flowers shall we take with us to heaven to be

transplanted there?”

Gabriel straightened; perforce Victoria straightened.

The room tilted; in one motion Gabriel swept her up into his arms and set her onto her knees in the center

of the bed, mattress rolling, springs creaking.

Gabriel reached for the silver tin of condoms on the oak nightstand, long eyelashes gouging dark shadows

into his cheeks. “Which flower did the child choose?”

Expecting the obvious: only the most beautiful flowers were worthy of heaven.

“There was a”—Gabriel rolled up a sheath onto his manhood, brown rubber devouring the purple head of

his crown . .. the bulging blue veins—“a slender, beautiful rosebush, but someone had broken the stem so

that”—the sheath disappeared into the thick blond hair curling around the base of his penis—“that the

half-opened rosebuds were faded and withered.”

Had there been roses in Calais? she fleetingly wondered.

Gabriel lifted his left knee onto the bed, mattress dipping—he grabbed Victoria to hold her flailing body

upright; she simultaneously grabbed him—right knee joining so that he knelt in front of her.

Breast to chest. Stomach to stomach. Groin to groin.

Gabriel did not move, caught in his need to be touched and his need to be free.

The nippled condom prodded her clitoris.

She carefully gripped his waist. There were bunched muscles there, too.

Pain darkened the silver of his eyes.

Gabriel did not pull away. He cupped Victoria’s face, hands hard, eyes intent, breath scorching her lips. “

Put me inside you, Victoria.”

Put him inside her ... while she . . . ?

She moistened her lips, tasting his breath. “Shall I... finish the story first?”

“No.” His breath licked her upper lips, his penis licked her nether lips. “When I’m inside you, then I want

you to finish it. I need to feel you, Victoria. I need to feel you holding me inside and out. I need you to make

me believe ...”

That a thirteen-year-old boy born in a gutter could be an angel.

Gabriel filled her hand with hot, rubber-sheathed flesh; he overflowed her hand with hot, rubber-sheathed

flesh.

Gabriel did not fit into the tight space between her thighs.

Hot breath filled Victoria’s lungs; hard flesh seesawed between her nether lips, sliding with each breath,

each adjustment of the mattress.

Equally hard hands slid down her face, her neck, her shoulders, her arms ... he firmly grasped her hips. “

Lift your right knee and put your foot on the bed, leg splayed.”

“What then?” she breathed.

This was awkward; this was reality.

This was a man and a woman sharing comfort as well as pleasure.

“Then you put me inside you,” he murmured, as if in pain, words hot and moist, “and lower your knee so

that you squeeze my cock and there is no place that we don’t touch.”

Inside. Outside.

Victoria raised her knee, leg splayed, and rested her foot flat onto giving silk. Nippled rubber notched her

portal.

“Take me, Victoria.” Flyaway hair haloed Gabriel’s head. “Take me into your body and make me feel

like an angel.”

Victoria took Gabriel into her body, fingers guiding his flesh, slipping on her flesh, nipples prodding his

chest, wiry hair prickling her breasts, elastic portal suddenly opening and swallowing him, the bulbous

crown, the thick stalk ...

Victoria gasped. Gabriel’s eyes closed, as if he, too, could not bear the pressure.

Hardly daring to breathe, she lowered her leg. Air locked inside her chest. Gabriel filled her completely,

vagina, lungs .. .

His eyelashes snapped open. “Tell me about the rosebush.”

Rosebush?...

Victoria desperately grasped Gabriel’s shoulders, thoughts circling, floundering—where had she left off

in the story? “The child—the child wanted to take the hurt rosebush so that it would— it would bloom

above in heaven.”

With each word Victoria could feel Gabriel vibrate inside her vagina and slide between the lips of her

labia.

“When the angel took the rosebush, he kissed the child’s eyes open to keep him awake, because he was

sleepy.” Hot, moist lips kissed Victoria’s left eyelid. Tears pooled in her eyes, leaked from her vagina. “And

then the angel gathered some beautiful flowers and some plain buttercups and heartsease.”

Gabriel kissed Victoria’s right eyelid, eyelashes fluttering, his lips petal-smooth. The kiss rocketed down

to her vagina.

“The child said”—Victoria squeezed her thighs together; Gabriel’s breath plummeted through her—“the

child said, ‘We have enough flowers,’ but the angel only nodded; he did not fly upward to heaven. Gabriel

—”

Pleasure robbed her breath.

The agony in Gabriel’s eyes gave it back.

“It was dark and still in the big town.” She sank her nails into his shoulders, forcibly concentrating on the

story and not the agonizing pleasure that was Gabriel. “The angel hovered over a small, narrow street. But

the child could only see ... a heap of straw ... some broken plates ... pieces of plaster, rags, old hats, and ...

other rubbish.”

The French gutter Gabriel had been raised in suddenly reflected inside his eyes.
Straw . . . Offal.. .

Brok en glass . . . Rags ... Rubbish.

Victoria found the strength to continue the story of an angel instead of bursting like a helium-filled

balloon. “The angel pointed to a broken flowerpot... ‘and to a lump of dirt which had fallen out of it.’ The

flower had been thrown out into the rubbish.”

Like Gabriel had been forced to live in rubbish.

Con. Fumier.

Gabriel’s chest rose and fell, nipples rubbing her nipples, the wiry hair matting his chest prickling her

breasts.

Victoria ached for Gabriel; Victoria ached from Gabriel.

“The angel said, ‘We will take this with us.’ ” Her throat and vagina tightened, voice and sex strained

past bearing. “But the child . . . couldn’t understand why.”

Did Gabriel understand? Victoria fleetingly wondered.

“The angel... he said that... a ... a sick boy with crutches had lived there in a cellar ... a boy who .. . who

was poor ... and who could not... could not go out to ... see the flowers.”

Gabriel bleakly stared into his past, anchored to the present by Victoria’s body and her words.

“In the summer”—Victoria’s nails gouged crescent moons into his flesh—he did not flinch, flesh turned

into marble while hers cried out her need—“beams of sun would lie on the floor for ... for a half an hour

and he would ... he would sit in the sunshine ... and he would say he had been outside.”

Gabriel’s childhood dreams shone on his face. How often had he pretended that he had what passing

children had—shoes, clothes that hid elbows and knees ...

How much longer could Victoria concentrate on a story she had not heard in twenty-three years instead

of the thick flesh that nudged her womb and slid on her clitoris every time she breathed, every time she

spok e?. . .

“One day a ... a neighbor’s son brought him some ... some field flowers. One of them ... had a ... a root.

He planted the flower, and it grew.”

It had survived, as Gabriel had survived.

Flyaway hair haloed the head of the man who still did not recognize his worth.

Victoria’s body greedily clutched Gabriel as she fought to continue an angel’s story. “Every year the

flower—” she breathed more deeply—“bloomed. It was the boy’s ... own flower garden. He gave it water.

.. and made certain it got... all the sunbeams. He dreamed about... his flower. He turned to the flower... for

comfort . . . even when he ... even when he died. But when the ... the boy died ... no one was there ... to

take care of his flower. And it was ... tossed out.”

Into the rubbish.

“And that is why, the angel said”—Victoria could feel her body swelling—“they were taking the flower

to ... to heaven ... because it gave more
real
joy, the angel said, than the most... the most beautiful flower

in a ... queen’s garden.”

Victoria had seen many gardens—flowers planted to blossom in fashionable patterns. They had none of

them imparted any joy.

“ ‘But how do you know all this?’ asked the child,” Victoria said, voice stronger. “ ‘I know it,’ said the

angel, ‘because I myself was the . . . boy who walked upon crutches, and I know my own flower well.’ ”

Gabriel suddenly focused on Victoria instead of his past. “And who am I, Victoria? The boy who died or

the angel who’s carrying him?”

Victoria fought for control, won. “The angel, Gabriel.” Gabriel’s face spasmed, marble splintering into

flesh. “Why?” “Your house is your garden, Gabriel. You take broken people and give them new lives.”

Victoria remembered the older woman and the younger man, sharing their passion; she remembered Julien,

defending the House of Gabriel. “Take joy in your garden.”

A harsh, strangled sound escaped Gabriel’s throat—he threw his head back, eyes closed, dark lashes

spiked. Victoria did not mistake the clear liquid crawling down his cheeks for sweat—they were the tears

of an angel.

Gabriel silently climaxed, fingers digging into her hips, hands dragging her forward until Victoria’s face

pressed into his throat and her arms had nowhere to go but around his shoulders. She held him. Sharing his

tears. And then she shared his orgasm.

The white enamel-painted door swung open. Gabriel froze, right hand raised to grasp the brass knocker.

Anemic sunlight turned brown eyes into amber. There was no emotion in their reflective depths.

Gabriel would recognize those eyes anywhere: they were the eyes of cold and hunger.

The echoing clip-clop of four hooves trodding a cobbled street rang out behind him.

“Monsieur Gabriel.” The butler stepped back; silver threaded his thick chestnut-brown hair. He inclined

his head. “Mademoiselle Childers.”

Gabriel instinctively sought the small of Victoria’s back; his leather gloves and her clothing blocked her

flesh but not the healing comfort of touch. He fought the urge to turn around and hail the departing cab;

instead, he urged Victoria forward into the small foyer of the brick town house.

Three figures were reflected inside mirror-shiny oak paneling: the chestnut-haired butler, black coat

ending in twin tails; a man— taller than the butler—who wore a double-breasted gray wool coat and black

bowler hat; and a woman who was the same height as the butler, hair hidden by a black Windsor hat, body

shielded by a dark blue cloak.

Victoria reached up and pushed back the black half veil on her Windsor hat.

Even in the oak paneling her skin glowed.

Gabriel’s guts twisted.

He had brought that glow to Victoria, a man who demanded her love but who wouldn’t promise to return

it. And now he saw the past through her eyes.

The small parlor had not changed in the seven months since he had last seen it. The variegated blue

blooms of a hyacinth plant and a small, silver tray shone in the polished surface of a small oak side table. A

mirror-shiny oak floor stretched out beyond the foyer. Flanked by wrought iron balustrades, a marble

staircase marched upward.

“They are expecting you,
monsieur, madame.”
The butler extended a white-gloved hand. “If I may have

your cane, sir ...”

Gabriel’s left hand involuntarily clenched the handle of his silver-headed cane. He did not know what to

expect... from the people who waited.

Victoria caught his gaze. Her blue eyes were clear and calm.

It was his choice, they said.

He could continue living in the darkness of the past or he could step into the brightness of a future.

Gabriel gave the silver-handled cane that was no cane to the butler.