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Grace would be happy that I’m taking care of her son.
“Will you be all right for a minute?” Julia asked, pushing his soft hair out of his eyes.
He groaned again, eyes closed, and she took that as an indication that he would be fine. But Julia had a difficult time letting him go. So while he sat there, moaning, she petted him a little, stroking his hair and chattering to him as if he were a baby.
“It’s all right, Gabriel. It’s all right. All I ever wanted was to be nice to you…to care for you a little…even if you never cared for me.”
When she was satisfied that she could leave him alone for a few minutes, she went into his bedroom and quickly began looking through his chest of drawers for something, anything, that she could change into. She resisted the impulse to rummage through his underwear in search of a prize that she could take home (or sell on eBay) and grabbed the first pair of boxer shorts she could find. They were black and decorated with the shield of Magdalen College and looked as if they would be too small for Gabriel’s finely shaped derrière.
Even Gabriel’s underwear is pretentious, thought Julia as she searched for a t-shirt.
She went to the guest washroom and quickly stripped off her fouled clothes, hopped into the shower just to rinse the vomit out of her hair and the stench from her skin, then changed into his things.
Afterward, she tried to tackle the disaster that was Gabriel’s cashmere sweater. She cleaned it as best she could, soaking it a little in the sink. Finally, she placed it on the marble countertop to air dry. He’d have to have it dry-cleaned (or burned). Julia took the rest of her clothes, put them in the washer, and returned to the master bathroom.
Gabriel was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees up to his chest and his face in his hands. He was still moaning.
Julia quickly cleaned the toilet and kneeled beside him. She didn’t like the idea of leaving him in vomit-soaked clothes, but she didn’t like the idea of undressing him either. He’d probably accuse her of sexual harassment or something, and she didn’t want to deal with a drunk and angry Professor Emerson. Or a sober and angry Professor Emerson. For like a dragon, he could turn on you in a second if he thought you were pulling his tail.
“Gabriel, you’ve thrown up all over yourself. Do you understand? Do you want to stay like this or…” She let her voice trail off.
He shook his head with some semblance of understanding and tried to remove his tie. Of course, with his eyes closed he had little success. So Julia gently loosened the tie and slowly pulled it over his head. She blotted it with water as best she could, leaving it on the counter. He would have to dry clean it too.
While her back was turned, he began undoing the buttons of his shirt.
However, it was much more difficult than he anticipated, and so he cursed and tugged at the buttons, almost tearing them off in the process.
Julia sighed. “Here, let me.” She kneeled beside him once again, brushed his long fingers aside, and quickly unfastened the buttons.
He shrugged out of his dress shirt and immediately pulled his t-shirt over his head. Because he was disoriented he was unable to free his head from the shirt, so he just sat there with it wrapped over his hair like a turban.
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 p**n ography 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.
