Gabriel might not like the older man much either, but he could not ignore or countenance anyone being attacked within shouting distance of his club.
He glanced up at Bruno, the man who had been set to guard the front door this evening. “What happened?”
The large man shook his head. “Lord Gordon left the premises about ten minutes ago with the intention of walking home. The moment I heard shouting from two streets away, I ran to investigate and discovered his lordship prostrate on the road and in this condition.”
“I hope I have not overstepped, Blackborne.” Peregrine Evesham entered the room. “But upon seeing Lord Gordon’s condition, I immediately sent for Lord Winter to attend him.”
Gabriel nodded distractedly. “Well done.” He should have thought of that himself.
“Bastards jumped out at me ’fore I knew what was happening,” Gordon mumbled, his eyes still closed, his breathing shallow. “Four of ’em. Heard one of ’em say ‘the earl will be pleased’ before they ran off when this fella here appeared.”
Could it be the same mysterious earl as before?
Gabriel had given no more thought, with the advent of Victory into his home and life, to the earl that Evesham had mentioned during his own beating the previous week.
The same earl whom Abigail, Bastian’s wife, had also heard mentioned when her stepfather was murdered. Rafferty had owed a gambling debt to Bastian at the time, and for a while, Abigail had believed Bastian to have been the earl the murderers had been referring to. Bastian, with the help of Gabriel, had persuaded her otherwise. Although it was several months since that murder had taken place, and that other earl had never been apprehended.
Consequently, this was the third time Gabriel had heard the earl mentioned in connection with someone being killed or attacked. First during Rafferty’s murder, then in connection with the attack on Evesham, and now this latest assault upon Lord Gordon.
Gabriel had not known Rafferty, but he did know that a month ago, when Abigail had briefly resided at Club Venus, Evesham and Gordon had vied for the purchase of Abigail’s innocence.
The beating of these two specific men surely allowed for the possibility Bastian might be the earl mentioned after all?
No, damn it, Gabriel would not believe that.
Bastian could be hot-tempered, and Evesham’s and Gordon’s interest in Abigail could be reason enough for Bastian to harbor a grudge against both men.
Except Bastian and Abigail were currently away on their honeymoon.
And Bastian could easily have hired these thugs to attack Gordon during his absence.
Of course he could. Indeed, it was the perfect alibi, if Bastian should need one.
Gabriel still refused to believe it. Bastian had been mortified when he learned that the murder of Rafferty had left the man’s stepchild orphaned and destitute.
Because he had felt guilty for having the man killed?
At the time, Bastian had vehemently denied having any involvement in Rafferty’s death. Also, Gabriel and Bastian were good enough friends that he felt sure the other man would have discussed it with him if he had felt a need to administer any sort of retribution to Evesham and Gordon. Besides, there were those incidents at Club Venus to take into account too, and Bastian certainly did not hold any sort of grudge against Gabriel.
Even so, all the evidence was starting to point toward Bastian as being behind the attacks, at least.
Because it was supposed to?
Gabriel had no time to dwell on who was to blame and why. He needed to deal with the reality of here and now rather than lose himself in speculation and conjecture.
“Oh my goodness!”
Gabriel turned to look at a pale-faced Victory as she stood in the now-open doorway staring at the prostrate and bleeding Lord Gordon. Her cloak was wrapped tightly about her, successfully hiding the male attire she wore beneath it.
“You should not be in here.” Gabriel rose abruptly to his feet. “Bruno, escort Miss Jones back to my study, if you please.”
“It does not please me,” Victory stated, her glare one of challenge.
Gabriel’s hands clenched at his sides. “And you will learn the punishment for not having pleased me when I am able to rejoin you!”
“More empty threats?” she taunted, a contemptuous half smile curving her deep-rose lips.
“I say, Blackborne.” Lord Gordon pulled himself up into a sitting position so he could see Victory better. “Ain’t seen this little lady here before. You really shouldn’t keep a spirited filly like this all to yourself.” Watery blue eyes swept over Victory with obvious approval, infuriating Gabriel even further.
“Miss Jones is not a resident at Club Venus,” he bit out between clenched teeth.
The older man raised his brows. “Keep her hidden away just for yourself, hmm, Blackborne?”
Gabriel’s chest expanded as he drew in a long and controlling breath. It really would not do for him to finish the job and strangle one of the patrons of his club, especially in front of witnesses. “Miss Jones is a family friend and not, as you seem to persist in assuming, one of the ladies of Club Venus,” he informed Gordon in a haughtily disdainful voice.
“Not yet, anyway,” Victory muttered.
Gabriel turned his icy gaze on her. “Not ever,” he stated tersely. “Now you will either accompany Bruno without further argument, or I shall be forced to begin your punishment with these gentlemen as our audience.”
Victory felt the heat of the color that no doubt brightened her cheeks, knowing that not a single person in the room could be in ignorance as to what form Gabriel intended for that punishment to take.
Curious as she was to hear more about the elderly gentleman having been attacked, she did not relish being humiliated in front of Lord Evesham and two men she had never set eyes on before now. One look at Gabriel’s angrily set features was enough to tell her he would administer that spanking here and now if she didn’t do as she had been instructed and accompany Bruno out of the room.
“Very well.” Her chin rose when she saw the blaze of triumph in Gabriel’s gaze. “But I am leaving, not returning to your study.”
“Feisty,” Lord Gordon admired again.
Gabriel ignored the older man as he took another step toward Victory, the two of them now standing almost toe to toe. “You will be very sorry indeed if you disobey me any further and venture from here alone after one gentleman has already been attacked this evening,” he warned softly. “And I will not care whom or how many people are watching.”
Victory was fuming inside, an anger she wished to use to lash out at Gabriel. But the icy glitter of his eyes warned her he meant every word he had just said. To infuriate him more would only add to her punishment. “Very well. But I do not need the escort of Bruno to find your study.” She gave the man a tight smile. “And if you”—she turned back to Gabriel—“are longer than five minutes, do not expect to find me still waiting for you.” She turned with a swirl of her cloak and marched from the room, leaving the door wide open behind her.
Victory had even more time, once returned to Gabriel’s study, to reflect on their lovemaking and to realize it had been reckless and hasty behavior on her part. Admittedly, she had wanted Gabriel desperately at the time, but his refusal to give her an answer to her question regarding other women he had seduced at Club Venus implied it was more a case of convenience on his part than a return of her own desperate passion. A case of Victory being here, and obviously willing, so why not take what was so freely offered before she disappeared completely into the ether.
The humiliation of that realization caused her to blush anew, and she turned with the intention of leaving the study and Club Venus. Only to come to an abrupt halt when she found her face pressed against Gabriel’s hard and muscular chest covered only by the voluminous shirt he had managed to pull on before they were interrupted.
He took a firm grasp of the tops of her arms. “Going somewhere?” he taunted.
; Victory tilted her head back to look up at him with defiant eyes. “I told you I had every intention of leaving.”
“If I had not returned within five minutes.” He nodded. “It took me mere minutes to instruct Bruno to return to guarding the door, to leave Lord Winter to attend Lord Gordon, and then walk down the hallway to here. In my estimation, that means I still have a minute and thirty seconds of the original five minutes remaining.”
Victory narrowed her gaze on him. “You obviously have other matters in need of your attention tonight and—”
“I assure you, nothing is of more importance to me at this moment, my dear Victory, than administering your long-overdue spanking,” he mocked. “Indeed, I find myself greatly looking forward to it.” He held her arm as he took her with him to the chaise where they had made love together earlier.
“What—”
“Over you go.” Having made himself comfortable by sitting on the edge of the chaise, Gabriel lost no time in pulling Victory facedown across his thighs and keeping her there with one hand placed firmly against her back and the other across the backs of her thighs. “Now, shall I proceed to do this with you still wearing these ridiculous pantaloons, or should you be bare-arsed?” he mused as if to himself.
“You would not dare—”
“Bare-arsed it is!” he decided before moving the arm on her thighs slightly up and around so that his hand could unfasten the buttons at the front of the pantaloons.
Victory gave a gasp the moment she felt the material of the pantaloons pulled down at the back and the movement of the cold air caressing her bared flesh.
Telling her Gabriel was no longer threatening her with a spanking. He really meant to do it this time!
“I am heartily sick and tired.” The hard smack of Gabriel’s hand landed on the cheeks of her bare bottom. “Of telling you to do one thing.” He landed another painful smack to the same spot. “And having you deliberately do the opposite.” The third time, he spanked her so hard, Victory was almost dislodged from his thighs, only the firm press of Gabriel’s hand on her spine keeping her balanced there. “Your behavior is not only unacceptable, but you constantly and deliberately put yourself in danger when you defy me.” Another two smacks were administered to each of the already painful cheeks of her bottom. “You will not do so again, Victory. Will you?” he prompted at her silence.
Victory was currently struggling too hard not to shed the tears that were threatening to fall to be able to answer him.
It hurt to have her bottom spanked. At the same time as she could feel the stinging and burning sensation transforming into a heated pleasure as it gathered between her thighs. The juices from that arousal wet her plumped pussy lips, and her breasts felt oversensitive, the hard nipples pressing against the cotton material of her shirt.
“Will you?” Gabriel administered another resounding smack.
Hard enough to startle her out of her distraction. “No, I will not,” she cried out, sensing that Gabriel really had come to the end of his patience with her.
His hand rested—deliberately so, it seemed to Victory—on the throbbing heat that same hand had caused in her bottom cheeks. “And are you sorry for your defiance?”
“I am sorry but— Gabriel, please do not spank me again.” Her voice broke with emotion when he delivered another hard smack to her already burning flesh.
“Then do not try my patience any further with your ‘buts,’” he warned. “Tell me you are sorry and will not be defiant again,” his voice gentled.
She dutifully repeated those words, her voice slightly shaky. “Might I sit up now?” The humiliation of lying with her bottom bared over Gabriel’s thighs, the evidence of her spanking visible on her reddened flesh for him to see, was becoming unbearable.
Gabriel was caught in the dilemma of acquiescing to Victory’s request and continuing to enjoy the view of her bared and delectable arse splayed across his thighs.
He hadn’t allowed himself to contemplate that beauty while he was spanking her, but had not been able to maintain that same distance of emotion since resting his hand on those heated globes. His cock was so hard, it throbbed in the same painful rhythm as his heart.
Victory’s bottom had been creamy, smooth, and unblemished before Gabriel spanked her. Now it was red and plumped, and his multiple handprints stood out starkly on that otherwise pale flesh.
Nor did he want to release her or allow her to sit up. What he wanted to do was explore her bottom further. Seek out that dark rosette nestled between the plump cheeks he couldn’t seem to stop caressing. To touch and caress her there too, until that tight muscle relaxed enough to allow him to push in a finger and explore inside.
“Gabriel?” Victory turned to look at him over her shoulder. Color burned her cheeks, and her arousal increased when she saw the naked hunger in Gabriel’s transfixed gaze on her bottom. “Touch me if you wish to,” she invited huskily.
His gaze flickered up to meet hers before returning hotly to where his fingers were now caressing and then parting her bottom cheeks.
Victory had no idea what Gabriel found so fascinating about such an intimate part of her body, but she could feel the evidence of his pleasure as his aroused cock throbbed against her hip.
She gasped as one of his long fingers stroked against the sensitive rosette between her bottom cheeks, quickly followed by the heat intensifying between her thighs.
Victory parted her legs even farther to allow Gabriel’s fingers to trail a path from that sensitive rosette to the moisture gathered on her pussy lips, and then back again.
He stroked the wetness of his fingers around the tight muscle of her bottom before the tip of one of them pressed into and then through that tight ring. Slowly, inch by inch, he pushed the length of that finger inside her.
It was the strangest sensation to be invaded so intimately. Strange and yet oddly arousing, her channel heating and gushing more warm juices as Gabriel began to slide that finger in and out. It became easier, the muscle relaxing, as he continued to thrust and claim Victory’s most secret place.
“Good?” he encouraged when she gave a low groan as a second finger joined the first. “I need words, Victory,” he demanded when she only continued to groan and push back against him.
“Good,” she gasped, her body trembling at the pleasure building higher and higher inside her. It was beyond erotic to picture herself draped over Gabriel’s thighs, her bottom cheeks parted and his fingers thrusting deep inside her. “Oh so good.”
“Can you come for me?” he prompted huskily as his other hand parted her legs even farther to allow him to glide one long finger inside her pussy while another stroked and pressed against her sensitive nubbin.
“God, yes,” she sobbed, the sensations overwhelming at being claimed so thoroughly, two fingers in her bottom, another inside her pussy, all while her nubbin was being stroked, soft and then hard. The desire to come was wild and raw and beyond her control.
“Then come now,” Gabriel instructed, his fingers thrusting deeper into her bottom and pussy at the same time as he squeezed her throbbing and swollen clit between two more fingers.
Victory’s climax, only the second of her lifetime, was even more intense than the first had been. Perhaps because she was more in tune with Gabriel’s demands and the ebb and flow of her own body? Whatever the reason, this release ripped through her with the force and heat of a forest fire. It claimed her completely, so that she quivered and shook and continued to come for several more long and powerfully pleasurable minutes.
Once that pleasure had abated, Gabriel began again, his fingers thrusting and claiming and stroking her to yet another climax.
Victory collapsed weakly across his thighs, her breathing erratic, totally unable to move after the force and length of those two releases.
Quite how long she would have continued to remain there, sated and limp, Victory had no idea. It was the sharp rapping of knuckles on the study door that finally galvanized her into moving.
>
Chapter Eleven
“Wait there!” Gabriel called out harshly to whomever had knocked on the study door. “Gently,” he warned Victory as he slowly eased his fingers from inside her body before helping her to stand and keep her balance. “Let me.” He pushed her shaking fingers aside when she attempted and failed to pull up and fasten her pantaloons.
“Neither I nor Evesham have all night to wait on your convenience!” a voice bit out, one that Gabriel recognized as belonging to the sharp-tongued Benedict Winter.
Gabriel appreciated knowing which two men were standing on the other side of that door but he still ignored their presence to continue to sit on the chaise and concentrate on fastening and straightening Victory’s clothing.
“Go and sit behind the desk so I can let them in,” he instructed, only to glance up and see Victory wincing at having the fitted material of the pantaloons pressing against her spanked flesh. No doubt sitting on her bruised and throbbing bottom would not be a good idea either. “Or stand over by the window,” he amended ruefully.
“Thank you.” She stepped gingerly, crossing the room before halting in front of the bay window, the movement obviously giving her great discomfort.
Gabriel felt a momentary pang of guilt at being the cause of that discomfort. But it was only momentary. Victory must learn, for her own sake, not to constantly put her life in danger. And if it took a sound spanking to achieve that caution, then Gabriel would happily administer it again. And again, if necessary.
The thought that some of that discomfort might be due to their other intimacies was less acceptable.
He crossed the room to place a finger beneath her chin so that he might lift her face toward his. “I did not hurt you during our lovemaking?” He hadn’t meant to be quite so demanding or introduce Victory to intimacies she might not be ready for. But, as he was quickly discovering, he seemed to have little control where Victory was concerned, needing to possess every part of her.
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