Gabriel's Inferno

Let’s go to lunch. No need to worry, big brother, I have your spare key!”

Rachel strol ed back to the apartment, leaving a scowling Gabriel and an uncomfortable Julia to take the elevator down to the garage.

“Were you ever going to tell me who you are?” His voice was slightly accusing.

Julia shook her head and hugged her ridiculous knapsack more tightly.

He looked at her book bag and decided then and there that it had to go. If he had to see that hideous thing one more time, he was going to lose it. And Paul had touched it, which meant that it was polluted. She’d have to throw it away.

Gabriel led her to his parking space, and she immediately walked to the passenger’s side of the Jaguar.

He pressed a button and the Range Rover next to the Jaguar chirped.

“Um, let’s take this one instead. The four-wheel drive is better in the rain. I don’t like taking the Jaguar out in weather like this if I don’t have to.”

Julia tried to hide her look of surprise at Gabriel’s embarrassment of riches, especial y when he opened her door and helped her in. As she settled herself in her seat, she wondered if he’d felt the connection that passed between them when he touched her arm. Of course, he had.

“You let me make an ass out of myself.” He scowled as he drove out of the garage.

You did that all by yourself, thank you. Julia’s unspoken thought shim-mered between them, and she briefly wondered how good The Professor was at reading non-verbal cues.

“I would have treated you differently. I would have treated you better, if I’d known.”

“Would you? Really? And found some other student to rip apart? If that’s the case, I’m glad your anger was directed at me. Then you couldn’t take it out on anyone else.”

Gabriel gave her a cold look. “This doesn’t change anything. I’m glad you’re Rachel’s friend, but you’re still my student, which means we need to be professional, Miss Mitchell. And you will be careful how you speak to me now and in the future.”

“Yes, Professor Emerson.”

He searched her face for any sign of sarcasm but saw none. Her shoulders were hunched, and her head was down. He’d made his little rose wither.

Any blossoming had now been completely undone.

Your little rose? What the hell, Emerson!

“Rachel is very glad you’re here. Did you know that she was engaged?”

Julia shook her head. “Was? Not anymore?”

“Aaron Webster asked her to marry him, and she said yes, but that was before Grace…” He exhaled slowly. “Rachel doesn’t feel like planning a wedding now, so she’s called it off. That’s why she’s here.”

“Oh, no, I’m so sorry. Poor Rachel.” She exhaled slowly. “Poor Aaron!

I loved him.”

Gabriel frowned. “They’re still together. Aaron loves her, obviously, and agreed she needed some time away. There was a lot of…fighting at my parents’ house when I was home. She came to see me to get away. Which is laughable, really, since I’m the black sheep of the family and she’s the favorite.”

Julia nodded as if she understood.

“I have a problem with anger, Miss Mitchell. I have a bad temper. I have trouble controlling it, and when I lose my temper I can be very destructive.”

Her eyes widened at his declaration, and her mouth opened slightly, but she did not speak.

“It would be…inadvisable for me to lose my temper around someone like you. It would be very damaging, for both of us.” His declaration was so honest and so frightening, the words burned into her like fire.

“Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins,” she remarked, turning away from him to gaze out the window, trying to alleviate the burning sensation in her middle.

He laughed bitterly. “Remarkably, I have all seven; don’t bother counting. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust. ”

She lifted an eyebrow but did not turn around. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re only a magnet for mishap, Miss Mitchell, while I am a magnet for sin.”

Now she turned to face him. He smiled at her with a look of resignation, and she offered him a sympathetic look in return.

“Sin isn’t something that is attracted to a human being, Professor. It’s the other way round.”

“Not in my experience. Sin seems to find me even when I’m not looking for it. And I’m not very good at resisting temptation.”

He glanced at her, then returned his eyes to the road.

“Your friendship with Rachel explains why you sent gardenias. And why you signed the card the way you did.”

“I’m sorry about Grace. I loved her too.”

He looked into her eyes. They were kind and open, yet he saw traces of sadness and incalculable loss.

“I realize that now,” he admitted.

“You have satellite radio?” She gestured to the console as he switched on the radio and pressed one of the preset buttons.

“Yes. I usually listen to one of the jazz stations, but it depends on my mood.”

Julia reached out a tentative finger to the radio but withdrew her hand.

Gabriel smiled at her reticence, remembering the way she purred when he gave her permission to curl up in his favorite chair. He wanted to make her purr again.

“It’s all right. You can choose something.”

She ran through the pre-sets, smiling at his choices, which included the French cbc station and bbc News, until she came to the last one, which was labeled Nine Inch Nails.

“There’s an entire station devoted to them?” She sounded incredulous.

“Yes.” Gabriel squirmed a little, as if she had uncovered an embarrassing secret.

“And you like them?”

“When I’m in a particular mood.”

Julia pressed the button for the jazz station.

Gabriel felt rather than observed her visceral reaction. He did not understand it but decided not to probe it.

Julia hated Nine Inch Nails. She changed the station whenever they came on the radio. If a song of theirs was playing somewhere, she left the room or the building. The sounds of their music and especially Trent Reznor’s voice creeped her the hell out, although she never told anyone why.

She first heard them in a club back in Philadelphia. She was dancing with him, and he was grinding all over her. She hadn’t minded at first; that’s how he always was, but then that song came on, and as soon as the music began, Julia felt mildly ill. It was the strange sequence in the opening bars, then it was the voice, then it was the lyrics about fucking like an animal, and the look on his face as he brought his forehead to hers and whispered it to her, staring straight into her soul.

Whatever Julia’s religious beliefs and her half-hearted attempts to pray to lesser gods and deities, at that moment she’d believed that she heard the voice of the Devil. Lucifer himself held her in his arms and whispered to her. And the very idea, coupled with his words, frightened her.

Julia had wrenched herself from him and fled to the ladies’ washroom, looking at the pale and shaking girl in the mirror, wondering what the hell had just happened. She did not know why he had spoken to her like that or why he had chosen that moment to confess. Nevertheless, she knew him well enough to know that the repeated lyric was a confession of his deepest and perhaps darkest intentions and not just a mindless repetition.

But Julia didn’t want to be fucked like an animal; she wanted to be loved. She would have foresworn sex forever if she thought it would guarantee her the kind of love that was the stuff of poetry and myth. That was the kind of affection she craved desperately but didn’t actually believe that she deserved. She wanted to be someone’s muse — to be worshipped and adored, body and soul. She wanted to play Beatrice to a dashing and noble Dante