Angelina began to light the candles he’d put around the room months previously simply because they looked good. She switched off overhead lights as she continued around the room touching her flame to the wicks, making sure he had plenty of opportunity and time to watch the graceful movements of her lithe body. Six were burning by the time she returned to the fireplace and the space had already begun to fill with the rich perfume of earthy, fresh sandalwood and sweet, heady frankincense.
Control seemed impossible now. He wanted to hold her, feel the contact of her skin against his, his lips on hers, his hands on her —
She broke into his guilty thoughts. ‘Do you have a lover?’ Angelina asked, eyes glittering in the low light.
The question was so brazen the corkscrew he’d just placed on the wine cork slipped and stabbed into his left thumb, slicing it open.
‘Merde!’ he growled.
He heard her gurgle with laughter behind him, guessing at what was happening.
‘Idiot!’ he added.
‘Let me help,’ she said, gliding over.
He didn’t want her to touch him, but she was already close enough for him to smell her perfume — violets, he thought. The whole situation of candlelight and blood, pain, comfort: it was all dangerous and wrong.
Angelina had reached for a tea towel and was pressing it onto the cut.
‘It’s not deep,’ she assured him, still amused.
‘I’ll look after it now,’ he began, awkwardly reaching to take over.
‘No-one’s watching, Gabe. Relax. Let’s just stop the flow of blood,’ she said, preventing him from pulling his hand away.
‘You’re very different when René is not around.’
‘You haven’t answered me.’
He remembered her question. ‘Why would you use the word “lover” when most people would say “girlfriend”?’
She looked up at him now and he felt his throat tighten. ‘It’s clear to me you don’t have a girlfriend,’ she replied with the utmost confidence. ‘Lover strikes me as more accurate.’
‘How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?’
‘There’d be signs of her around here. And don’t look at the scented candles — they don’t fool me,’ she giggled.
Angelina was being witty. Perhaps the slashed thumb was worth it.
‘What’s wrong with the word “lover”, anyway?’ she challenged.
‘Nothing … it’s just intimate.’
‘And that disturbs you?’
‘It doesn’t disturb me,’ he defended, hearing the lie in his hollow tone. ‘It’s a confronting word for want of a better description.’
‘Confronting?’
‘Too direct. It became an impolite question because of it,’ he cautioned.
She laughed at him. ‘You’re intimidated by a word.’
‘I’m not intimidated,’ he replied.
Angelina smiled. ‘Aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I’m usually good at reading people. My mistake. So answer my question then.’
He took a breath, feeling vaguely ridiculous as she held his hand. ‘No, I am not romantically involved with anyone at present.’
She cast a glance over his ingredients. ‘And yet this is such a romantic dinner you’re making for yourself.’
‘It’s a risotto.’ He could hear the defensiveness in his tone.
‘But risotto is a meal to share, to savour with another. There’s nothing lonely or selfish about a risotto. Risotto is a meal made with love because it takes time; a meal that speaks of love to the person you share it with because you have taken that time over it.’
Gabe swallowed. Surely it wasn’t that complex?
‘Such a tactile dish,’ Angelina continued. ‘Lots of attention,’ she said, mimicking stirring the pot. She rubbed her belly but there was something suggestive in it. ‘And so warming.’ She unwrapped the tea towel from around his hand as she spoke. They both watched as the blood sprang again to the surface and oozed through the cut. It was hardly flowing but it was bright and glossy. ‘Glutinous … sticky … wet,’ she murmured and then shocked him by raising his hand to close her lips around his thumb.
He could feel her tongue licking at the blood and instantly he felt an erotic rush of blood elsewhere. The risotto was forgotten — as was the bleeding thumb and the still unopened bottle of wine.
Like a helpless schoolboy his face guided itself to her mouth. He vaguely registered the smell of violets on her breath before drowning in the desire to pull her as close as humanly possible. She was so petite he had to bend to hold her properly. Before he knew it, she had clambered up onto him as a child might, her supple legs wrapped around his hips, her arms around his neck. She was light and tiny, but her body was all woman.
The kissing was mind-blanking. He was robbed of all thought, all awareness of anything beyond desire. His traitorous fingers began exploring her body. Somewhere deep horror resonated that he was taking advantage of a vulnerable patient, but the patient was now rhythmically moving against him and moaning softly.
He was supposed to be a man entirely in control and yet here he was … like putty, suddenly incapable of resisting when she made her body so available — soft, compliant, eager. He blamed his new mood to change his life, he blamed the return of the cathedral — his mind palace — back in his thoughts. He wanted to blame the raven that had unnerved him — in fact anything except being a vulnerable man in the presence of an erotic young woman.
Suddenly they were on his bed and he was pulling off his clothes and hers. Gabe knew he should but he didn’t want to exercise control. He wanted Angelina. He needed this. His inner voice assured him as he pulled at her buttons. She’s adult, she’s consenting … she’s —
… your patient! reinforced another — René’s — but he ignored that caution.
Angelina never let go of him. There was always some part of her connected to him — mouth, hand, breast. It was as though she knew that to break the connection was to break the spell.
And then their bodies joined as one and Gabe was lost to it, riding a wave of unbelievable joy that he had found something he’d not thought possible to ever find since Lauren and Henry had died. It wasn’t love — he knew that. It wasn’t even affection because they’d barely paused to consider any fondness which might exist between them. He couldn’t call it emotional … there hadn’t been time to build this relationship.
It was purely the physical closeness to another that he’d denied himself for so long. She was unlocking years of pent-up need. There was nothing else but Angelina in his hollow, sterile life. Only her — beneath and above him. She was suddenly his sun, his sky, his earth, his sea. And he travelled with her now, drowning in her depths and soaring to her heights.
Did it last for eternity or was it just a brief interlude? Gabe lay confused and ashamed. The candles still blinked and guttered softly from a draft somewhere; the bloodstained tea towel still lay on the floor where it had dropped. His thumb had stopped bleeding now but he could see smudges of blood on the sheets. He glanced at the clock next to the bed. It was only just coming up to nine. He’d arrived at his building at around seven-forty he guessed. So he’d lost not even an hour and a half of his life and yet it felt as though he’d been absent for days.
He turned to gaze at Angelina, sleeping as still as a corpse next to him with her lips parted. There was blood smeared on her cheek where he’d held her face to kiss her, and seeing the blood reminded