Free Robin Schone by Gabriel's Woman

him. But he had wanted him to.
    After all these years he still wanted to protect the dark-haired angel with the hungry violet eyes.
    Gabriel’s gaze glanced off of Michael and settled on the chocolate covered sandwich.
    A sharp pang constricted his chest.
    Twenty-seven years earlier Michael had been unable to stomach the smell of chocolate, let alone the
    taste.
    “When did you acquire an appetite for chocolat, mon frere?” he asked neutrally.
    Gabriel knew that his voice bore the same knowledgeable cadence as did Michael’s: they had both been
    trained to entice, to seduce, to gratify.
    “Six months ago,” Michael said. And popped the chocolate coated sandwich into his mouth.
    Gabriel’s lips burned in memory: six months earlier he had kissed Michael’s scarred cheek. Then he had
    killed the first man.
    How easy it would have been to pull the trigger and kill Michael. Six months earlier.
    Tonight...
    “How is Anne?” Gabriel asked abruptly.
    The warmth that welled inside Michael’s eyes and the smile that lit his face almost brought Gabriel to his
    knees.
    For one heart-stopping second he did not recognize the man before him.
    Gabriel had seen Michael half starved with hunger and fear. He had seen him half mad with pain and
    grief.
    He had never before seen Michael happy. But he did now.
    Michael had found what Gabriel would never find: love. Acceptance.
    Peace.
    All with a woman who preferred violet eyes over gray. A dark-haired angel over a fair-haired one.
    A man who valued life instead of a man who had taken life.

    Instantly, the light illuminating Michael’s face dimmed, violet eyes once again coldly calculating. “Why
    don’t you come visit us and find out for yourself, Gabriel?”
    “Do you miss me, mon frere?” Gabriel mockingly riposted.
    “Yes.”
    For one unguarded second Michael dropped his mask. There was no deception in his eyes, no artifice in
    his voice.
    An invisible fist clenched inside Gabriel’s stomach.
    Michael loved him, and Gabriel did not know why.
    Michael had never condemned Gabriel for being a nameless bastard or for the choices he had made.
    Gabriel wished he had belittled him, judged him.
    Gabriel wished he could hate, and know that it was hatred he felt rather than fear in disguise.
    He looked away from Michael’s violet eyes.
    They had not changed in the twenty-seven years Gabriel had known him—they still openly hungered.
    Victoria’s eyes were also hungry.
    Guileless blue eyes that hungered for sex.
    For love.
    For acceptance.
    The second man had sent Victoria to him because she hungered. As Michael hungered.
    Because she wanted. As Gabriel was incapable of wanting.
    But why?
    “You taught me to read and write,” Gabriel said, wanting to understand the second man’s motives.
    Wanting to understand Michael’s motives. “Why?”
    “You taught me to steal; I thought it a fair exchange.” Sharpness spiked Michael’s voice. “Who’s the
    second man, Gabriel?”
    Gabriel unflinchingly met Michael’s gaze.
    “You know who he is,” he replied imperturbably.
    It had been Michael who had found Gabriel chained in an attic like a dog, lying in his own filth, praying
    for death.
    But Michael had not let him die.
    Gabriel wished he had.
    “You told me he was the second man who raped you,” Michael said.
    Two men had raped Gabriel; he had killed one, the second man still lived.
    Gabriel did not look away from the suspicion that glimmered inside Michael’s gaze. “I said there was a
    second man,” he agreed evenly.
    “Yet prior to six months ago you never mentioned that there was a second man.”
    “I did not realize you were interested in details. Forgive me, mon vieux,” Gabriel said silkily, purposefully
    goading Michael. “I thought your interests lay elsewhere.”
    In women instead of men, he implied.
    Michael did not rise to the bait.
    “What I thought, Gabriel, was that you were the one person in my life whom my past did not destroy.”
    Black lashes veiled