Julia kissed the dragon once again, very, very gently.
Gabriel inhaled sharply at the feeling of her mouth against his naked flesh.
She moved her hands to stroke his hair, hoping it would comfort him.
“What does the dragon represent?”
“The dragon is me or the drugs or both. The heart is mine, and it’s broken, obviously. Maia will always be in my heart. You probably think it’s horrible — to have such a morbid and ugly thing on my body. Permanently.”
“No, Gabriel, I don’t think that. It’s like…a memorial.”
“Paulina was about five months pregnant when she lost the baby. She was not in her right mind and neither was I, so we didn’t have a funeral.
A couple of years ago I had a headstone erected for Maia in Boston.” He grasped Julia’s hand in his and kissed her palm.
“She isn’t buried there.” His voice was pained.
“She wouldn’t be there, anyway, Gabriel. She’s with Grace now.”
He paused and stared at her as his eyes filled with tears again. “Thank you for that,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her hand once more. “There’s a stone angel on either side of the headstone. I wanted it to be beautiful.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely.”
“You’ve already received part of her memorial.”
She looked puzzled.
“Your bursary. I named it for her —
Julia wiped a tear that sprang suddenly from her eye. “I’m so sorry I tried to give it back to you. I didn’t know.”
Gabriel reached up and kissed her nose. “I know that, my love. At the time, I wasn’t ready to explain how significant the bursary was. I only wanted you to have it. No one else was worthy.” He kissed her again softly.
“I should tell you that I asked Rachel about it. She had no idea.”
“No one knows about Maia and Paulina except for Richard. And Grace. I was so ashamed of everything. They thought it would be enough for Scott and Rachel to know about the drugs. No one knows about the tattoo, however. You’re the only one.”
She tangled her fingers in his hair, willing him to find peace. “Your Puccini scared me,” she whispered.
“It seemed…fitting.”
She shook her head.
“The way I treated Paulina. She loved me for years, and I couldn’t love her back.” He shrugged awkwardly and shifted his gaze so that his intensity burned into hers. “I would never treat you like a butterfly, like something I’ve captured for my own amusement. I’d never pin you to a card and pull off your wings.”
She shook her head as a pained look crossed her pretty face. “Gabriel, please. I trust you.
In proof of her declaration, she kissed him, moving her mouth in concert with his until she had to pull back to draw breath.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.
“Maybe we don’t deserve each other, but I can choose who I love. And I choose you.”
He frowned as if he didn’t believe her.
“Please let me love you.” Her voice cracked on the last two words, and a stray tear pushed down her cheek.
“As if I could even contemplate living without you.” He drew her to him, the desperate passion of his tortured soul binding the two together.
She met him movement for movement, taking and giving all at once as she leaned over the beautiful man who rested his weary head in her lap.
His mouth found her wrists as he kissed them with wet, open kisses, sucking gently at the delicate place where pale veins were covered by rice-paper skin.
“Forgive me, Julianne, but I need you. My sweet, sweet girl. So much.”
His eyes were a blue fire, and his voice was gravelly.
Before she knew what was happening, he’d repositioned himself so that he was sitting on the couch and she was straddling him. Their upper bodies pressed tightly together, his hands worshipping the gentle sway of her lower back and the curve of her behind through her wool trousers.
In the back of her mind, Julia recalled one of the black-and-white photographs from Gabriel’s bedroom. And in that instant, she recognized its beauty and its passion from a first person perspective. It was want and need and desperation and deep, deep unconditional love now made free through the telling of dark, hidden secrets.
He felt her love in her kiss, her embrace, the way her fingers lightly brushed the back of his neck and the surface of his tattoo, coaxing open-mouthed kisses up and down the lines of his chest. She would give him everything. She would do anything to take away his pain, including offering up herself.
With trembling fingers, she undid the buttons of her blouse and slipped it from her shoulders. A faint gasp from Gabriel’s mouth mirrored the sound of the silk sinking slowly to the floor.
She was his atonement.
Chapter 32
Julia awoke the next morning stark naked.
Or so she thought.
She was in Gabriel’s bed with their bodies wrapped around each other.
Her head rested on his shoulder while his left arm ran across her right hip, their legs scissored, their hips pressed close.
She moved a hand down his back until she found soft cotton covering his most beautiful of curves, which she explored surreptitiously. Then she looked in between them and realized she was wearing her pink bra and panties.
In her dream, they’d fallen into bed naked and made love for hours.
Gabriel had placed his body over hers and held her gaze like a magnet as he entered into her slowly, until the two became one. An eternal circle with no end and no beginning. He’d worshipped her with his body and his words, and it was far more emotional and lovely than she’d ever dared hope.
But it was only a dream. She sighed and closed her eyes as the previous evening’s events came flooding back. Sorrow and relief commingled and spread across her heart; sorrow for Gabriel’s loss and tortured desperation, and relief that all their secrets had now been spoken.
Gabriel murmured her name, his eyes moving beneath his eyelids in deep rem sleep. He’d been so tired the night before. So broken. Julia kissed his cheek and quietly extricated herself from his arms, padding to the bathroom.
When she regarded herself in the mirror, she saw wild, rumpled hair, smeared eye makeup, and lips made fuller from kissing. Several love bites, mild in color and quite painless, dappled her neck and chest. He’d been a gentle but enthusiastic lover.
She washed her face and brushed her hair, taming her mane into a high ponytail and provocatively forsaking her purple bathrobe for one of Gabriel’s button down shirts. She fetched the
When Julia entered the kitchen she was faced with a mess, for no one had cleaned up after dinner, their hands and minds too full for such pedestrian concerns. After indulging in a slice of apple pie with Vermont cheddar, Julia proceeded to return Gabriel’s apartment to its formerly pristine condition. It took longer than she
