“Please get dressed now, Julianne.” His voice was low and rough.
She reacted to what she thought was his embarrassment and immediately began backing up.
“I’ll change in the bathroom,” she mumbled, hurriedly searching for a yoga outfit and her old shearling slippers.
“Why don’t you have the heat on?” he called as she darted into the bathroom.
“It is on.”
“Hardly. It’s almost the same temperature in here as it is outside. And walking around in a towel will make you sick.”
Julia closed the door behind her, ending their conversation.
Gabriel adjusted himself and looked around for a thermostat, but of course, there wasn’t one. He was soon on his hands and knees wrestling with the aged radiator that was the only source of heat in the main room of the apartment. How can she live like this? It’s freezing in here.
When Julia exited the bathroom, she found Gabriel still in his dress coat, kneeling in front of her radiator as if it were an altar. She giggled.
“You’re on your knees more than the average professor.”
He shot her a look. “Very amusing, Julianne. This radiator is useless.
Do you have a space heater?”
“There’s an electric baseboard heater in the bathroom. But I don’t use it.”
He shook his head as he got to his feet and strode past her. He cranked up the heat and made sure to leave the bathroom door wide open.
“Just let me warm the apartment up a little. Your hair is wet, and you’re going to catch cold. I should make you some tea,” he offered, hanging his coat up on the back of her front door.
“I could do that,” she said softly.
“Allow me.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and picked up the electric kettle, filled it with water from the bathroom faucet, and got down on hands and knees to plug it in underneath the dresser.
Julia tried very hard not to stare at the way his black wool trousers clung to his really very fine derrière as he plugged in the kettle. To distract herself, she compared his current behavior with the way he had behaved during his last visit to her little hobbit hole. It was as if there were two Gabriels, and she was only now being visited by the nice one. This newer model is just as handsome but infinitely more attractive.
“Now,” he said, looking around. “I need to warm you up.”
Gabriel fixed his eyes on her and pulled her into a hug, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you answer your phone?”
“I answer it. Just not while I’m asleep or in the shower.”
“I was worried. You didn’t answer last night, and you didn’t answer about an hour ago.”
“I was washing my hair.”
Gabriel buried his face against her neck, inhaling her scent. Vanilla.
“Julianne,” he began, bringing his left hand to touch her face.
She blinked rapidly. “Yes?”
He grew silent.
She looked at him in surprise. His eyes were dark, and he was staring at her intensely.
He leaned over and began feathering his lips up and down the left side of her neck, beginning just under her ear lobe and ending at her collarbone.
A flash of want flared in Julia’s stomach and lower down. His lips were barely floating over the surface of her skin and making every drop of blood in her body rush to that space. His touch had never felt so erotic, so affectionate.
Up and down and up and down, he worshipped the curve of her neck, now and then darting his tongue out to taste her skin. Now and then he withdrew his lips so that he could nuzzle her gently with his nose or his chin, the slightest hint of stubble subtly scratching across her flesh. He fluttered his mouth with soft kisses down to the hollow at the center of her throat and pressed his lips there firmly, beginning his sojourn up and down the right side of her neck.
Julia moaned and closed her eyes, sliding her arms up his back to trail her hands in his hair. Her fingertips moved without conscious thought, stroking the edge of his hairline just above his shirt collar.
“Mmmmmmm,” she breathed.
“Does this please you?” he whispered, continuing his gentle kissing.
She murmured her appreciation.
“I want to bring you pleasure, Julianne. More than you know.”
He paid special attention to the skin around her ear and just under her jaw line, teasing her slightly with his tongue. “Tell me if I’m pleasing you.”
She barely heard the question, focused as she was on the myriad sensations that coursed through her body and the warmth that fanned across her flesh. She no longer felt cold. She no longer felt anything but him.
“You please me, Gabriel,” she whispered dazedly.
“This is a declaration of desire,” he breathed against her ear, making her quiver. “If we were lovers, I would kiss you like this to signal my intention to take you to bed. And you can only imagine the delights that await you there. But at this moment, I can only declare that I burn for you. I won’t let myself touch your lips for fear that I wouldn’t be able to stop.”
Julia moaned even louder, and Gabriel continued, moving her hair away from her shoulders so he could expand his exploration. He poured out the lightest of kisses, covering her neck until he finally took the edge of her earlobe in his mouth and drew on it slightly, tracing the edge delicately with his tongue.
“If I were to taste your mouth now, I couldn’t answer for the consequences. So I can only adore this beautiful neck. I know that in a few seconds I will have to pull away, before the temptation becomes too much.
It’s too much already. You have no idea how much I want you.” Gabriel’s voice was raspy, and he seemed to be breathing rather fast.
Julia felt her legs grow weak, and she started to sway…And that’s when the electric kettle began to whistle at them. Gabriel pressed a chaste kiss to her cheeks and went to make tea, while Julia sat down shakily on one of the chairs. Her heart was thumping so loudly she thought she was having a heart attack. She leaned her head forward, holding it in her upturned hands.
If I’m this unglued while he’s kissing me, what am I going to be like when he…
“What kind of tea, darling?” Gabriel’s voice held only the smallest edge of amusement as he watched her try to catch her breath.
Of course, the only reason why he was able to catch his breath so quickly was because he’d walked away. And he was far more skilled than she at hiding his feelings, except upon visual inspection.
“Lady Grey. It’s in the tin by the teapot.” Julia’s voice was shaky.
“I’m not a tea drinker, so it won’t be as good as yours. But hopefully it will be potable.”
She arched an eyebrow at his choice of adjectives, but politely thanked him when he placed the pot of tea, teacup, and saucer in front of her.
“I bought a few things for dinner. Have you eaten yet?”
“I had soup.”
“Julianne.” He sat next to her and gave her a scolding look. “Soup isn’t a meal.”
“Yes, I believe I’ve heard that before.”
She rolled her eyes, and Gabriel laughed.
The first items he took from the bag were a bottle of wine and a Rabbit corkscrew.
“Do you have wineglasses?”
“Yes.” Julia stumbled over to her small kitchen area to fetch them.
She still had questions about Gabriel’s relationship to alcohol, especially in light of his past. But she had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, for the present.
When she returned to the table, she read the wine label: Serego Alighieri Vaio Armaron Amarone 2000.
“Is that who I think it is?” She extended a finger toward the bottle.
Gabriel took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. “Yes. Dante’s son bought the vineyard in the fourteenth century, and the Masi family still produce wine from it.” He sat back in his folding chair and regarded her quietly. She seemed awestruck.
“I didn’t know his family had a vineyard.”
“It’s a very good wine. Although in light of our past, perhaps you find the choice overly sentimental?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I don’t.”
“I had to work late, but I wanted to have dinner with you, so I went to Pusateri’s and ordered take out. There’s manicotti, Caesar salad, and a loaf of bread. How’s that?”
Julia looked at the array of food set in front of her and immediately felt hungry. “What are these?” She pointed to a cellophane package of cookies that had a reindeer on the label.
Gabriel grinned. “Lime cookies from the Dancing Deer Baking Company. They’re my favorite. Why don’t you let me look after this while you dry your hair and drink your tea?”
He reached out his hand to run it through Julia’s long, wet curls.
“Why do you keep feeding me?”
His hand stilled. “I told you, I like giving you pleasure.” He withdrew his hand, his expression quizzical. “This is how a man acts when he is interested in a woman, Julianne. He’s attentive and anticipatory.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “Perhaps I’m trying to indicate that if I am this attentive with respect to sating your culinary longings, I’ll be even more attentive with respect to satisfying other — ah — appetites.”
Julia flushed immediately, and Gabriel touched her cheek with his hand. “Your skin is lovely,” he breathed. “Like a rose in first bloom.” He gazed at her admiringly. “Rachel stopped blushing when she started sleeping with Aaron.”
“How do you know?”
“As I recall, we all noticed it. One minute she was reading The Little Prince and the next she was buying lingerie.”
Julia chewed at her lip thoughtfully. “I loved that book.”
“We need to see with our hearts and not our eyes,” said Gabriel.
“Exactly,” she murmured. “I like the part when the fox talks to the prince about the process of taming. And the fox decides that he wants to be tamed, to be the prince’s fox, even though doing so will make him vulnerable.”
“Julianne, I think you should dry your hair now.”
He removed his hand from her face and stood up quickly, turning his back on her allegedly so that he could prepare dinner, leaving Julia to wonder what had so disquieted him.
After dinner, they found themselves sitting on her bed as if it were a sofa. Gabriel propped up some pillows against the wall and leaned back, putting his arm around her waist.
“I’m sorry it’s so uncomfortable,” she apologized meekly.
“It isn’t uncomfortable.”
“I know you hate this place. It’s small and cold and — ” She gestured to the room with a wave of her hand.
“I will regret forever what I said to you when you were kind enough to invite me in. I don’t hate this place. How could I?” He interlaced his fingers with hers. “This is where you are.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for making everything beautiful just by being.”
She smiled as he brought their hands up to his mouth and kissed each of her fingers tenderly, one by one.