Swallowing hard, his mouth dry, missing the bottle he’d emptied a full thirty minutes earlier, he tried to enjoy her ministrations,tried to pretend that his stomach wasn’t rebelling in disgust at what he was doing.

But it was, and he wanted to turn and toss its entire contentsonto the fetid, sewage-soaked cobblestones. Taking deep breaths, he focused on his cock, on the warmth that surroundedit, on the base human throb that rose from deep inside it, and grew to a feverish pitch with the strokes of a hot tongue. It had nothing to do with his head, his heart, but sought only guttural release, and he forced himself to distance,to focus, to let his body take what it wanted.

He was grateful the event was quick and to the point, absolutelyrelieved that his body cooperated, and she was rearranginghis trousers in less than two minutes. He wanted to go home. Prying his eyes open, he held his hand out to her, so she could rise off the street.

The sudden coy smile on her face startled him. “You’re an odd one, ain’t ya?”

It was only the second time he’d heard her speak, and her voice was high in pitch, but rough. Gabriel shrugged, fumblingaround for a coin to give her, his fingers ineffectual, shaking.

“Same place tomorrow?” she asked, straightening his coat in an oddly tender gesture.

Gabriel felt his alarm returning. He was about to say no, he wouldn’t be seeing her the next day, when the street-hardenedwhore, who had probably lost her place in a bordello due to bad temper or excessive alcohol consumption, brushed his hair back off his face with her filthy fingers.

“A body could fall for a strange one like you. Please say you’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll do it for nothin’.”

“No, that’s not necessary.” He didn’t even want her physicalattentions. It had been to prove a point to himself, to show that what he suspected to be his punishment was merely a figmentof his fanciful imagination.

But her fingers gripped the front of his shirt. “Please say you will. I like the way you taste. I been thinkin’ ’bout you all day.”

Oh, God. Gabriel felt the automatic plea rear up in his mind, though he knew he was not going to receive any help from that quarter. He was fallen, so deep and dark down in the pit that he had been given the ultimate punishment beyond banishment from heaven. He had been given the curse of havinghis flaws emulated by the women he encountered.

“I’ll do whatever you want, just let me be with you, love you,” she said, eyes red-rimmed and desperate, greasy hair tumbling over her shoulders, callused hands running along his chest.