It really was quite funny. Julia stifled a laugh, wishing she had her cell phone close at hand so she could take a picture of him. She would have loved to have used that shot as her screensaver. Or her avatar, should she ever have need of one. She gently freed his face from his shirt and sat back on her heels, gasping.
Gabriel’s naked chest was stunning. Indeed, his entire upper body was a study in perfection. He had large, muscular arms, broad shoulders, and excellently toned pectorals. He’d always seemed to have a slender build, Julia thought, especially when his physique was masked by sweaters or jackets.
But there was nothing slender about Gabriel now. Absolutely nothing.
And Gabriel had a tattoo. This surprised her greatly. She’d seen photos of Gabriel and Scott with their shirts off — pictures from summer vaca-tions taken before she moved to Selinsgrove. But she could have sworn that Gabriel did not have a tattoo in those pictures. So the tattoo was recent, within the last six or seven years.
The tattoo was over his left pectoral, above the nipple and spreading over to his sternum. The image was of a winged medieval dragon that was wrapped around an oversized heart, crushing it between its two front feet.
The heart was lifelike, not stylized, and the dragon’s claws dug into its flesh so deeply that blood seeped from its wounds.
Julia gaped open-mouthed at the dark and disturbing image. The dragon was green and black with a coiled, barbed tail and large fluttering wings. Its mouth was open and breathing fire. But what captured her attention was the black lettering across the surface of the heart. She was able to make out the letters m a i a. Maia. Or was it m.a.i.a. — an acronym?
Julia had no idea who Maia was or what m.a.i.a. was. She’d never heard the name from Rachel or any of the Clarks. It seemed to her to be completely out of character for Gabriel, the Gabriel she barely knew once and the one she was only beginning to know again, to have a tattoo at all, let alone one so large and haunting.
He has a tattoo like that underneath his clothes and he wears a bow tie?
With a sweater?
Julia wondered what other surprises lurked across the surface of his skin, and her eyes wandered a little lower. Even in a seated position, she couldn’t help but notice his well-defined abdominal muscles and the deep V that extended from his hips to down beneath the waistband of his wool trousers.
Holy crap. Professor Emerson must work out — a lot. Could I take a photo of his abs — and his V — for my screen saver?
Julia blushed and turned away. She was being bad, ogling The Professor. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to do that to her, especially at a low moment. So feeling more than slightly guilty, she gathered up his soiled clothes and the towel that she used to clean up the sick that had dripped onto the Persian rug in his bedroom, and took them to the laundry room.
She quickly placed everything in the washer, filled it with detergent, and started a wash. Then she passed through the kitchen to fetch a glass and a pitcher of filtered water from the refrigerator.
In her absence, Gabriel had managed to stagger to the imposing silk-draped bed that was in the center of the room. He was now seated on the edge, barefoot and clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs, his hair sticking out of his head in all directions.
Holy cow.
Although there was probably nothing hotter in the universe than the sight of a half-naked Gabriel sitting on his bed (except perhaps for the surface of the sun), Julia averted her eyes and placed the water on his nightstand.
She wanted to ask him how he was, but she thought maybe she should give him a moment. So she stood back and let her eyes roam around the room.
And what she saw astounded her.
Gabriel’s penchant for black-and-white photographs was more noticeable here, for every wall but one was adorned with pairs, each extremely large and hung in imposing black frames. However, it was the content of the pictures that Julia found surprising.
The photos were erotic. Pictures of naked, primarily female forms, although sometimes a female and male together, with the faces and genitalia either absent or in shadow. Tastefully posed, they were quite beautiful, and Julia would not have said that they were filthy. But they were highly sensual and amative, much more sophisticated than average pornography and far more arousing.
One showed a couple from the side, facing one another and straddling a bench of some kind. Their torsos were pressed together, his hands in her long, fair hair. Julia blushed as she wondered if the photo was taken before, during, or after the beautiful couple made love, for she couldn’t tell.
Another was of a woman’s back and a pair of man’s hands, one of which embraced her middle back and the other cupping her bottom. A tattoo ran across her right hip, but the writing was in Arabic, Julia surmised, so she couldn’t read it.
But it was the two larger photos that hung over the bed that caught her attention.
One of them depicted a woman lying on her stomach. A man’s form floated over hers, almost like a dark angel, pressing a kiss to a shoulder blade and splaying his left hand across her lower back. It reminded Julia of Rodin’s sculpture, The Angel’s Kiss, so she wondered if the photographer had been inspired by that work.
The other photo took Julia’s breath away, for it was the most overtly erotic, and she was instantly repulsed by its rawness and aggression. It was the side view of a woman lying on her stomach, with only her length from mid-torso to knee visible. Hovering above her was part of a male form. His hand was planted white-knuckled on her left hip and bottom cheek, his hips pressed tightly against the curve of her backside. The man had an attractive gluteus maximus in profile and long, elegant fingers. Julia was disturbed by the photo and immediately looked away in embarrassment.
Why would someone have a photo of that hanging on his wall? She shook her head. From gazing at the photographs, one point was abundantly clear: Professor Emerson is a back man.
Given his décor and his choice of artwork, Gabriel’s bedroom appeared to have one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to serve as a cauldron of seething lust. She knew based upon what she’d observed, that he must have intended it to be so, despite its obvious and palpable coldness — a coldness that was in keeping with the overall glacial atmosphere of his entire apartment. In this taupe-walled space, a chill emanated from the photographs, the ice-blue silk of his bed coverings and curtains, and the sparseness of the all-black furniture of the room, dominated by an over-sized bed with an ornately carved and high-posted headboard and a low and equally intricate footboard.
Medieval, thought Julia. How fitting.
But the photographs were soon supplanted in her attention by something else, something even more surprising. She stared in shock at the painting on the far wall, her jaw dropping open.
On the wall opposite Gabriel’s large and medieval bed, and strangely out of place amongst the black-and-white erotica, was a Pre-Raphaelite oil painting in brilliant and glorious color. It was a full scale reproduction of Henry Holiday’s painting of Dante and Beatrice, the same painting that hung over her own bed.
Julia’s eyes darted from the painting, to Gabriel, and back to the painting again. He could see the painting from his bed. She imagined him falling asleep at night, every night, looking at Beatrice’s face. It was the last thing he would see at night and the first thing he would see in the morning.
Julia hadn’t known that he owned that painting. He was the reason why she owned it; was she, by any chance, the reason why he did?
She began to tremble at the thought. No matter who came into his bedroom, no matter which girl Gabriel brought home to warm his bed, Beatrice was always there. Beatrice was ever present.
But he didn’t remember that she was Beatrice.
Julia shook her head to suppress those thoughts and gently persuaded Gabriel to lie down. She covered him with the sheet and the silk duvet, tucking the edges under his arms, across his chest. She sat down on the bed next to him, watching him as he looked at her.
“I was listening to music,” he whispered, as if he was continuing a conversation.
She frowned in confusion. “What kind of music?”
“Hurt. Johnny Cash. Over and over.”
“Why do you listen to that?”
“To remember.”
“Oh, Gabriel. Why?” Julia blinked back tears, for that was the one Trent Reznor song she could listen to without heaving, but it always made her weep.
He didn’t answer.
She leaned over him. “Gabriel? Sweetheart, don’t listen to that kind of music anymore, okay? No more Lacrimosa or Nine Inch Nails. Walk out of the darkness and toward the light.”
“Where’s the light?” he mumbled.
Julia exhaled deeply. “Why do you drink so much?”
“To forget,” he said, closing his eyes and resting back on the pillow.
With his eyes closed, she was able to admire him. She surmised that he would have been sweet-looking as a teenager — all big sapphire eyes and kissable lips and sexy brown hair. He might have been shy instead of angry or sad. He might have been noble and good. If Julia and he had been closer in age, he might have kissed her on her father’s porch, taken her to the prom, and made love to her for the first time on a blanket under the stars, in the old orchard behind his parents’ house. She might have been his first, in some more perfect universe.
Julia contemplated how much pain a human soul, her soul, could bear without shriveling completely, and she turned to go. A warm hand darted out to catch her.
“Don’t leave me,” he breathed. His eyes were only half open, and they pleaded with her. “Please, Julianne.”
He knew who she was, but somehow he still wanted her to stay. And the way his eyes and his voice grew desperate…she could not deny him when he looked like that.
She wrapped her hand in his and sat beside him again. “I’m not going to leave you. Just sleep now. There’s light all around you. So much light.”
A smiled played on his perfect lips, and she heard him sigh; the grip with which he held her hand loosened. She took a deep breath, held it, and ghosted a finger over his eyebrows. When he didn’t flinch or open his eyes, she softly stroked them, one by one. Her mother had done this when Julia wasn’t able to sleep as a child. But that was ever so long ago, long before her mother neglected her in order to pursue other, more important interests.
Gabriel was still smiling, and so Julia bravely moved her hand to his hair. Feeling the unruly strands running though her fingers reminded her of a day she’d spent on a farm in Tuscany during her year abroad. An Italian boy had taken her out to a field, and they had walked together, her hand floating over the tops of the grasses. Gabriel’s hair was feather light and soft against her hand, like the whispering Italian grass.
She began to stroke his hair, the way Grace must have done at one time. He allowed her fingertips to trail down the side of his face, tracing his angular jaw and rubbing gently against his stubble. She touched the merest hint of a dimple in his chin and began to move the back of her hand against his high and noble cheekbones. She would never again be this close to him; if he were awake, he wouldn’t let her. He’d have bitten her hand, she was sure, and gone for her throat.
