Tap, tap, tap.
Startled, Julia yelped. A muffled voice from outside her window started speaking rather loudly, and the tapping noise continued in earnest. She ran to the window, threw back the curtain, and looked down into the worried face of Gabriel.
“You scared the hell out of me!” she screeched, unlocking the ancient window and trying with one hand to pull it upward while anxiously clutching her towel with the other.
“You wouldn’t answer your phone. Or the doorbell. I thought something was wrong. I walked into the backyard and saw your lights were on.”
Gabriel noticed that she was struggling and slid his fingers underneath the window. “Let me do this.” With one movement, he lifted the window and proceeded to hand her a couple of paper bags.
“What’s this?”
“Dinner. Now stand back, it’s cold out here.” He placed his hands on the windowsill, trying to hoist himself up.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m crawling through your window. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I could let you in the front door like a normal human being,” she protested, putting the paper bags on her card table.
Gabriel eyed her somewhat hungrily as he swung his legs through the window. “Not undressed like that you can’t.” He closed the window tightly, locked it, and pulled the curtain closed. “You should put some clothes on.”
Julia trembled as he reached out a finger to stroke the skin of her bare shoulder.
Smooth, soft, wet, and warm, he thought .
She wrapped the towel more tightly around herself as he averted his eyes. She was barely covered and damp from the shower, and the sight of the two together…he twitched. More than once.
“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.