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‘This moment...’
Gabriel flexed his hips, and they gasped together. She wrapped her legs around his waist, taking him further inside. The storm took hold of them again and after just a few minutes of the most intense pleasure that Gabriel had ever experienced, he felt her start to come, and he was pushed over the edge with a force that almost made him black out.
Long moments of almost head-splitting release gave way to a breathless embrace. Her body was warm in his arms, and he already wanted to make love to her again. Clara nestled against him, and he kissed her.
‘That was...’ There wasn’t any point in trying to find the words. They simply didn’t exist.
‘Yes, it was. It definitely was.’
‘Do you want to sleep?’ He drew a sheet up around her shoulders.
‘No. You?’
‘Not for one moment. We have so much more left to do.’
* * *
They’d talked for a while, snuggling together in the darkness. And then Gabriel had made love to her again. This time, he’d taken his time about it.
He wanted to explore every part of her body, demanding that she do whatever she wanted with his. And there was so much that she wanted to do. They whiled away the long hours of the night together, giving and taking everything.
‘I suppose it’s time...’ A spectacular dawn had tinted the sky with red. Clara wondered whether it might be just for them, and whether everyone else saw just a normal sunrise. It seemed possible.
‘Yes. How long will it take for you to get packed?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘I’ll raise you on that and meet you in the shower in twenty-five minutes.’ He trailed kisses across her cheek.
An extra five minutes with Gabriel was worth any number of creases in her clothes. Clara got out of bed, blowing him a kiss as she danced through to her
own room.
* * *
Gabriel had flipped the switch on the shower, turning warm water to cold, and she’d jumped out from under the icy jet with a squeal. That had woken them both up, and Clara felt alert enough to face his parents at the breakfast table. When they left, his mother hugged her warmly, telling her that if she didn’t return she’d come to England to find her. And Clara noticed that the handshake between Gabriel and his father turned into a hug.
They sat in the back seat of the car together, without touching. The driver was probably discreet enough not to mention anything he saw in his rear-view mirror, but Gabriel seemed to know instinctively that Clara was more comfortable with keeping their relationship to themselves. It was only when they’d settled into their seats on the private plane, and the stewardess had gone to her own seat for take-off, that his hand moved towards her.
‘You’re tired.’ His finger grazed her chin. ‘Would you like to come home with me and...sleep a little?’
‘Sleep? You’re seriously asking me to come home with you and sleep?’
‘It’s the weekend. We can improvise.’ He leaned forward, whispering into her ear, ‘We could sleep all day and make love all night if we wanted.’
That irresistible smile of his turned improvisation into a plan. It turned leaving, because Clara knew that was what she had to do, into staying for just a little longer.
‘Sounds perfect. Do you have any strawberries?’
‘We can stop for some on the way...’
* * *
Gabriel could see that Clara was tired. She’d slept a little on the plane, and when the car delivered them back to his house, she left her luggage untouched in the hallway and followed him upstairs. London was as hot as Italy at the moment, or at least the crowded streets made it seem so, and they stripped off their clothes and curled up on the bed together.
This was a first. He held her as she drifted off to sleep, and realised that this was exactly what he wanted to do. A dreamless sleep was usually just a natural consequence of sex, but with Clara, Gabriel didn’t care whether he dreamt or not. He knew she’d understand the bad dreams and be there for him, and if his dreams were of her then he’d find the way to make them real when she woke up.
The suggestion that sex was a way of connecting, in a world where love was just too complicated, wasn’t new to Gabriel. When the realities of a relationship set in, which generally didn’t take very long at all, it was time for a civilised goodbye. But Clara was different. She’d been his friend first, through one of the most challenging periods of his life. When they’d finally made love it had been more explosive than anything Gabriel might have anticipated.
