The Lover Read online

  There was only polite interest in Gabriel’s voice. The air between them quickened with tension.

  “I know because I saw what he did to you. I would have killed him myself if you had not,” Michael returned evenly. “Sell the house. Start a new life.”

  “Are you suggesting we engage in a ménage à trois, mon frère?” Gabriel mocked.

  Michael did not have to answer. He dropped the veils of pretense and for one moment allowed the man he was to openly surface.

  He wanted. He needed.

  He would not share his spinster.

  Not even with Gabriel.

  “Go to her, Michael.” The mockery left Gabriel’s eyes. He suddenly looked tired, his perfect skin drawn like fine parchment. “No one will hurt her tonight.”

  “And you know this because you are … God’s messenger?” Michael asked, his eyes narrowed, wanting to believe.

  Knowing that everything had a price.

  Gabriel was as close to a brother as he had ever had. There was nothing the man could give him that he did not already have.

  Was there?

  “I know it because I’m your friend, Michael.”

  There was no warmth in Gabriel’s silver eyes. No sign of friendship.

  The words were enough.

  They had to be.

  He had not been able to kill Anne. His spinster.

  He did not know if he would be able to kill Gabriel. His friend.

  Michael turned and opened the library door. Raoul was in the foyer, pruning the potted hyacinth. A maid in a white cap with a white pinafore pinned to her black dress energetically mopped the floor. Anne was upstairs … doing what?

  Something cold and wet slithered down his cheek.

  He stared at the mirror-shiny oak floor. And realized he had tracked in mud and rain.

  His hair was plastered to his head. His shirt underneath his open coat stuck to his body.

  Anne had accepted Gabriel.

  He wanted her to accept him. To cry out the name Diane had refused to utter: Michael.

  He wanted to touch her. To reassure himself that she was safe.

  For one more night.

  Anne was not in his bedchamber.

  The sweet perfume of the roses on the nightstand weighted the air. Rose petal-stamped boxes were piled on the yellow silk-upholstered chaise lounge.

  Rose petals were Madame René’s trademark. A symbol of fading youth and fallen virtue.

  The first of Anne’s new clothes had arrived while he was out. While she was out.

  There were so many things he wanted to do for her. To do to her.

  Where was she?

  Steam drifted out from underneath the bathroom door.

  Michael thrust it open.

  The breath was knocked out of his lungs at the sight of Anne. Even as it registered in his mind that she stood naked, left foot resting on the toilet seat, head bowed, spine curved, right hand disappearing between her splayed thighs, she lurched upright, her neck twisting around in alarm.

  Startled awareness shone in her eyes. Crimson embarrassment followed. It painted her face; her neck.

  Clearly she had not expected anyone to interrupt her.

  Gurgling water from the draining bathtub filled the silence.

  Had she been aroused by Gabriel’s beauty? he wondered, waiting for the pain to strike even as his body readied to satisfy her.

  “I …” Anne licked her lips, her pink tongue pale in comparison to the bright red that blotched her cheeks. “I was positioning my diaphragm.”

  He remembered her questions after she had given him the gift of fellatio: asking if he had ever ejaculated inside a woman’s vagina without benefit of a French letter. Asking if there were other means of protection that could be used to prevent conception.

  The pain struck him with the force of the carriage that could so easily have killed her.

  She had not gone shopping; she had visited a physician.

  “You want to take my sperm into your body?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Yes.”

  Michael’s heart skipped a beat. She could have died. All for the sake of feeling a whore’s naked flesh. A whore’s seed. “Shall I assist you?”

  Remembered failure at fitting a condom over his penis flitted over her face.

  Her lips tightened with resolution. “No, thank you.”

  She waited for him to leave, to accord her the privacy in which to prepare herself for the man whom she believed was her lover.

  The last of the bathwater slurped down the drain.

  He did not leave.

  Uncertainty flared in her pale eyes. “I have never done this before.”

  Michael could not say the same. He had watched one woman so prepare herself: Diane.

  He did not think of Diane when he looked at Anne.

  Long seconds passed while his spinster wordlessly wrestled with decorum, trying to decide whether to be the uninhibited woman she longed to be or to safely hide behind modesty.

  Michael chose for her.

  “Finish. Now. Or I will,” he said softly.

  “Do you enjoy watching a woman introduce a foreign object into her body, monsieur?” she asked defensively.

  Another time he would smile at her naïveté. Not now.

  “Yes, I do,” he said deliberately. “Do you not enjoy having me watch you?”

  She did not answer.

  She did not need to.

  They all needed to be wanted: Anne, Michael. Gabriel.

  Self-consciousness screaming in her every muscle, her every tendon, Anne turned back to her task.

  He should warn her that French letters were more than contraceptive devices. That if he were another man she might end up with a condition far worse than pregnancy.

  He knew he wasn’t going to.

  She offered him an intimacy he had long given up hope of ever experiencing again.

  Shrugging off his wet wool jacket, Michael stepped forward to more closely watch Anne as she struggled to position the diaphragm over her cervix. She was determined to win the battle between rubber and flesh.

  He stared at the minute play of muscles in her back. At the water-darkened clumps of hair that clung to her skin. At her rounded buttocks, moist and flushed from her bath.

  His chest tightened. His testicles tightened.

  She was heart-stoppingly vulnerable, bowed over with no means of defense—gut-wrenchingly beautiful, preparing to take his sperm.

  Unable to resist the temptation she presented, he lightly stroked a finger up the dark crevice between her buttocks, splayed his hand across the sensitive skin at the base of her spine.

  Anne instinctively arched into his touch.

  He smiled, a sexual grimace of masculine satisfaction. “I lied.” About so many things. “I’ve never felt anything as soft as your skin. Silk velvet doesn’t breathe. It doesn’t pulse with need. But you do. Every time I touch you I can feel your passion. Tell me what you’re feeling, Anne. You told me you have imagined that I suckled you. And that you touched your breasts when you did so. Did you ever imagine taking me inside you? Did you ever put your fingers inside you when you wondered what it would be like to lie with me?”

  She stiffened in silent protest.

  Michael lightly feathered the soft vee of skin above the dark crevice between her buttocks with his thumb. “Lovers, Anne, can share anything,” he murmured. Except the truth. “Did you?”

  “No.” Her voice was muffled.

  “Did you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  A pulse frantically beat against his thumb. The palm of his hand. Inside his penis.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid that I … that I would compromise my virginity.”

  Starting at the base of her spine, slowly working upward, he gently massaged her vertebrae, one at a time. He remembered the taut circle of flesh he had massaged—ruptured—less than forty-eight hours earlier. “When our liaison is over, will you put yo
ur fingers inside you when you remember me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She didn’t know … if she would insert her fingers inside her body to ease the ache of loneliness? he wondered. Or she didn’t know if she would do so and remember him, a scarred whore who betrayed her trust?

  “Will you take another man?” he pressed.

  “No,” she quickly denied.

  Michael could not squelch the burst of primal satisfaction her response elicited.

  He did not want another man doing to her the things he had done to her. The things she had done to him …

  A purple shadow marred the pale, smooth skin between Anne’s shoulder blades.

  He gently touched it. “You have a bruise.”

  She shuddered. In pain? In memory? “A street sweeper pushed me.”

  A street sweeper …

  The throbbing inside his cock crawled up his body and lodged in his temples.

  A wisp of steam circled Anne’s bowed head. The skin underneath his fingers continued to bunch and stretch.

  The bruise had been caused by a blunt object.

  Gabriel had said a beggar had pushed her.

  There was no reason for a street sweeper to resort to violence for the penny he would receive. No reason at all to strike her with a broom when a hand would attract far less attention.

  One more night, Gabriel had promised.

  A messenger boy. But not God’s …

  Jagged pain twisted inside his intestines.

  Had Gabriel, like Michael, been unable to kill Anne Aimes, a spinster whose only crime was wanting to be touched?

  Leaning over, he kissed her bruise, lightly laved it with his tongue, silently apologizing for the injury two fallen angels had brought her.

  Would continue to bring her.

  Contrition was not a deterrent.

  Straightening, he unbuttoned his trousers. The backs of his scar-roughened fingers teased the velvety plump softness of her buttocks. “Tell me when you’re finished.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked huskily. Underneath her desire she was restive.

  “Readying myself for you,” he rasped, easing out his erect penis.

  Anne shot up, her back impacting his chest. The icy, sodden linen of his shirt clung to her warm skin.

  Michael’s hand snaked out and latched onto her left leg before she could lower it. “Don’t. Don’t turn away from me.”

  Her leg quivered. “You’re cold. And wet.”

  But she didn’t pull away.

  A spinster’s needs … a whore’s needs.

  He had one more night to fulfill them.

  Gritting his teeth, he bent his knees.

  She was hot. Wet. The silky soft lips of her labia parted in welcome.

  Anne’s breath audibly caught in her throat. “The physician said that a woman’s vagina is shortened in this position.”

  “Yes.”

  Gently he notched his sex to hers.

  The liquid heat of her body raced up his spine.

  Anne clenched her muscles.

  “Relax,” he whispered.

  “I am,” she swiftly returned.

  She was afraid.

  So was he.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Anne. Help me.”

  Help me hold on for one more night.

  “How?”

  “Touch yourself.” He swirled the head of his penis around the taut ring of her vagina. Flesh on flesh. Essence commingling. Male. Female. Whore. Spinster. “Show me how you touch yourself when you think of me.”

  She stiffened in shock. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” He reached for her right hand and brought it up to her breast.

  Her fingers fisted in rejection.

  “I’m going to penetrate you,” he said raggedly, “and when I do, I want you to touch yourself. In the future, I want you to remember. I want you to feel the softness here—” Pressing her hand against her breast, Michel thrust through the ring of her taut flesh. Anne gasped, her fingers involuntarily opening to stop the pain. “And remember the hardness inside you.”

  As Michael would remember.

  This moment. This day.

  The man had taken everything … Everything but this night.

  He kneaded Anne’s hand, forcing her to knead her breast, and eased inside her another inch.

  She clenched around him, tighter than a fist. A spinster who had tasted the pleasures of the flesh but had yet to experience the pain of its betrayal.

  Seven dead, two more to go ….

  “Is your nipple hard, Anne? Tell me. Dites moi.”

  The French slipped out naturally. A remnant of the man he had used to be.

  Her vagina squeezed and nipped his invading flesh.

  “Yes.”

  “If I release your thigh, will you stay open for me?”

  The muscles in her leg corded beneath his fingers. “Yes.”

  “And will you take all of me?”

  If given a choice, would she take Michael as well as Michel?

  Would she take the man who hurt as well as the man who hurt her?

  “I will try.”

  Had Gabriel tried?

  Tentatively he released her thigh.

  Anne left her leg in position. Tiny ripples contracted her vagina.

  He cupped his hand over her lower stomach, feeling her softness, her heat, her internal contractions.

  Not enough.

  Groin curving to cup her buttocks, he eased another inch inside her.

  “Wait!” she gasped, head rearing back, body quivering.

  Michael paused, shaking on the outside. The inside.

  He nuzzled her ear. Trying to ease her fear. His fear. “What is it?”

  “The diaphragm—”

  He stilled, fighting a stab of hope, of wanting to survive. Even if through a child. “Is it in position?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t remember feeling this full.”

  Michael remembered ….

  Silver-eyed laughter, Gabriel watching a clumsy, half-starved English boy swipe a loaf of French bread.

  Michael remembered ….

  Stinging sweat blinding him as he worked over the madame, learning how to please a woman.

  Michael remembered ….

  Long, endless hours, waiting for day to end and darkness to descend, his head pressed close to Gabriel’s in a shuttered room as he taught the French boy how to read and write.

  To be the gentleman neither of them was meant to be.

  He thrust home, burying the memories.

  Anne’s muscles struggled to adjust to full penetration, milking him like a hungry mouth.

  Heaven. Hell.

  Revelations. Truth revealed.

  Michael pressed his lips against her temple. “Shhh. It’s all right.”

  More lies.

  “I … You feel different.”

  Whereas she felt all too familiar. His only link to sanity in a world gone totally insane.

  “This is me,” he murmured rawly. “My flesh. Not rubber.”

  Slowly he pulled out, making of her flesh a vacuum.

  “Can you feel it?” she panted.

  He felt it.

  The pleasure of her. Embracing him.

  The pain building inside. Waiting for release.

  He felt it all.

  Michael thrust deep inside Anne, making her feel it all.

  The pain. The pleasure.

  What had the man given Gabriel that Michael could not?

  Anne leaned into his lips, his body, his cock, taking him. All of him.

  “I want to know—” Her voice caught on a gasp.

  He stared down at the pure profile of her nose. Moisture beaded on her lashes. Damp hair tickled his scarred cheek.

  “What?” She bore down, drawing a gasp from him. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what it feels like for a man when he’s inside a woman. Like this.”

  Blindly he reached down, burne
d flesh sifting through damp, springy pubic hair. He gently grasped her swollen clitoris between his thumb and forefinger. She was soft and silky on the outside; inside was a core of hardness that matched his own. A pulse beat inside her. Around his cock. Between his fingers. “You want to know what I feel, Anne Aimes?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath; their hands clamped over her breast rose and fell in unison. “Yes, I do.”

  “I feel this,” he whispered. “You squeezing me. Pulsing around me. Expanding with every heartbeat.”

  Gently, rhythmically, he pumped her engorged flesh, showing her what he felt.

  Wondering how long Gabriel had lied. Days? Weeks? Years?

  Would Anne feel this same sense of betrayal?

  “Match my rhythm.” He pushed up inside her, hard, wanting to plow into her so deeply that there was no man, no Gabriel—only Anne and Michael. “When I squeeze your clitoris, squeeze my bitte. Now. I’m pulling out. Squeeze me.”

  He squeezed her, feeling her life throb between his fingers. It could so easily be extinguished.

  “Michel—” Anne flinched.

  “Shhh. Relax. Hold me, like I’m holding you …. You wanted to know what I feel when I’m inside you. This is what I feel. You gripping me. Harder. Harder. Like this … Yes. Now relax. Squeeze me, release me, like a heartbeat. Yes, God, yes. That’s it. C’est bon,” he crooned, sinking into the rhythm, pumping, thrusting, fingers relaxing, contracting, up, down, in, out, just the two of them locked together, one body, one sex. “Feel how good you make me feel, Anne ….”

  Seeking the warmth of her neck, he rubbed his right cheek back and forth, back and forth, inhaling her scent, absorbing her softness, her passion.

  The essence that was Anne Aimes.

  But for how long?

  Ragged breathing harmonized with the cadence of their bodies. Hers. His. He could feel her wetness. Hear his hardness hammering into her.

  A crystal droplet of water dripped onto her left breast.

  Rain? Sweat?

  Tears?

  He had cried when the man took him. Once.

  The man had laughed.

  Michael had never cried since.

  Wrapping his arm around her, trapping her hand against her breast, he pulled Anne back against him until her resistance and his shirt melted and all that existed was the thrust of his penis into her vagina and the throb of her clitoris melding with his fingers, no past, no future—

  Time exploded.

  He felt it in his manhood; he felt it with his fingers. He felt it against his lips and his tongue, her voice crying out. “Michel! Oh, God! Michel! God, Michel, Michel, Michel!”