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It was a glorious Summer’s night. The sun had dipped down, low in the sky, but it was still sending little whispers of peach towards them, breaking up the blackness of night with remembered warmth of the day. The air smelled like honeysuckles and gardenias, and the night birds were singing mysteriously to one another, telling tales of what they’d witnessed.
Carrie perched on the edge of the rose garden, staring down at the arrangement of standard bushes that surrounded the less formal collection of blooms in the middle. The garden had been her father’s pride and joy, and Carrie adored it for that reason alone. Though it was a triumph in floral artistry, it was memories of her father lovingly tending the roses, pruning them with such particular care, that kept her coming back to it time and time again.
And even when she was away from Forest View, she made sure to have a bunch of real roses on her desk – not hot-house ones. She made a habit of sourcing proper, wild, over-grown blooms – even if it meant scaling a fence in the dead of night to crop them illicitly from someone’s garden. She’d done that in the village, near their school, creeping out once a week to gather a suitable bunch. Not, as the other girls had done, to go to the local pub and chat up the unsuspecting tourist trade. She’d crept out and risked detention to collect armfuls of roses.
She smiled now, dropping her feet from the stone-wall and falling elegantly onto the gravelled path. She was drawn to her favourite; the Albertine. She reached up and touched one of the buds – it was soft like silk. She held her fingers to her nose and let the gentle fragrance wash over her as a wave. It was glorious.
She broke the bud from the bush between her finger and thumb, making sure the stem was long enough to sit in a vase, then moved onto the next bush. A robin crested over her head and settled on a thin sprig of rose bush, eyeing her with undisguised curiosity.
“Hello, little one,” she said quietly, reaching a finger out and stroking its chest. It didn’t flitter away. Instead, it released a beautiful song. A happy tale that made Carrie smile. “You don’t care that I like second helpings of dinner, do you?”
The Robin’s song took on an indignant note, and she laughed. “Exactly my thoughts,” she agreed, lifting her hand in the air and watching as the bird took flight towards the forest.
Gael was too far away to hear the exchange, but the moon shone perfectly on Carrie’s face. He saw the happiness and beauty in her, and he froze. Midway back from his car, he had spotted her, leaping from the stone wall into the sunken garden. And a strange feeling had made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The word perfection came to mind, but he quickly brushed it aside. Gael did not believe in such sentimental stupidity.
He took another step towards the house, but then Carrie began to sing, and the sweet sound of her voice mingled with the cry of the nightingale and the robin, and he was powerless to resist. He changed direction, walking in long strides towards her location. He was quiet and it wasn’t until he was almost upon her that she saw him. She stopped singing and cleared her throat self-consciously.
Gael didn’t speak. His dark eyes seemed to cling to her face, as though he was trying to understand something. As though something was wrong with her? No. Her cheeks flamed. He looked at her as though something was right with her. She knew, though no one had ever looked at her with anything near that intensity.
She lifted a hand to her throat, her pulse hammering wildly beneath her fingertips. Her eyes, shimmering like jewels in the moonshine, were hooded with desire.
The rose, perfect and innocent, dropped from her other hand, falling with a silent thud to the ground beside her feet. She took a step closer to Gael, and he didn’t step back. His eyes continued to haunt her, boring into hers as though he could unravel the mysteries of the universe if he only looked hard enough.
Carrie’s stomach was in knots, and yet there was so much that made sense about that moment. She lifted a hand to his chest, and she could feel his heart thudding beneath her palm. She made a soft moan, and then stood on tiptoes, so that she could press her lips to his.
The powerful electricity was instant and overpowering. Her whole body trembled as the kiss – her first – made her bones weak and her blood boil. As if all the night birds and roses wrapped around them, and a spell seemed to fall. Carrie pressed her whole body to his; he was hard and strong; her heart was racing wildly.
His hand pressed into her back, the pressure of his fingers was light but demanding. Carrie was flooded with feelings – new feelings that made her mind reel. She felt as though the earth was tipping on its axis, sending time and space spinning in whole new directions. Some ancient feminine instinct moved through her, and she pressed her hips against him, moving them slightly, to lock their bodies into intimate proximity. She could feel the unfamiliar form of his manhood and it made her body ache with need.
It was over too quickly.
Gael stepped away from her, his face white, his hands shaking. “Carrie,” he muttered, his tone rich with condemnation. “What the hell are you thinking?”
She frowned, uncertainty making her stomach ache. “I…”
“You are seventeen! Still a child.”
Pain seared her soul. “But you… I thought you… I mean…”
“Yes?” He demanded, crossing his arms across his chest and looking at her as though she’d gone totally crazy.
“I thought you wanted…”
“Wanted you?” He made a noise that she took for frustrated amusement. “You are a child. Do you honestly think I would be so depraved as to want you?”
Her cheeks flamed with mortification.
“Look at you. You’re a schoolgirl. A kid. What the hell are you thinking, to go around kissing men like me?” His accent was thicker when he was angry. And he was furious, she realised.
She shook her head, her mind not yet recovered from the sensual pleasure of their contact. “I don’t normally,” she whispered breathlessly.
“God, you and your mother are two of a kind,” he snapped, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at her.
“What do you mean?” She whispered, shaking from shock and embarrassment.
Gael had said too much. Alexandra’s overt in
terest was not Carrie’s fault. His sigh was loaded with tension. “It does not matter. Honestly, Carrie, do you have any idea what kind of trouble you could get into?”
