Julia shivered despite the warmth of the kitchen. He touched her hand.
‘Are you okay?’
‘You don’t understand. It was terrifying, I really wanted to kill him. It wasn’t so much that I’d lost control as much as something else had got control of me. It’s happened before, with far more devastating consequences.’
Gabriel moved closer; he’d never wanted someone this much, nor been so calculating about it. With every other girl it had been spontaneous, instant lust, instant gratification, but with her it was different, adult. Fascinated by the soft down on her forearms, he was finding it hard to concentrate. Dragging his eyes away he spoke up.
‘Anyway, terror is good, isn’t it? I experience it all the time. Like the other night outside the bar—you were terrified but you were enjoying yourself. Admit it.’
His persona suddenly slipped into the bravado of the adolescent—so patently insecure yet ridiculously audacious. Julia couldn’t help smiling.
‘Gabriel, you weren’t scary.’
‘I wasn’t?’
Deflated, he wondered why the idea was emasculating. He’d hoped she had been a little frightened—of the consequences of them actually making love.
‘Neither were you,’ he lied, trying to navigate the excruciating anticipation he felt about making a pass. When was the right time? It had always seemed to him that such events opened up magically: the man simply moved towards the woman and it happened miraculously, without any clumsy banging of noses, clashing of teeth, misdirected tongues; without the woman pushing the man away in horror.
How do you read women, he’d asked his father once. All José had said was that it was like the weather: you look for a moment between the clouds. When the shifting, impenetrable emotions of the woman momentarily cleared, then you pounced. Gabriel had listened doubtfully. His father was an old-fashioned Latino who inherently believed that a woman wanted to be taken, whatever she might think consciously. Naomi’s friends had taught Gabriel otherwise. And then there was Julia: complex, distraught and intriguingly intelligent. Whatever his head might think, his body and its pounding hormones were propelling him towards one action and one action only.
‘You know it was wrong, don’t you?’ Julia finished her drink. It had been strong, the tequila a slow burn momentarily erasing her sorrows. ’You know that as your employer and elder, I have responsibilities, an emotional understanding of events that gives me an edge over you.’
‘Right, like that’s really apparent.’
‘And…it should be special…you know…with a girl your own age.’
Christ, she thinks I’m a virgin. Gabriel almost burst out laughing. He would have, but Julia looked so solemn sitting there, her face scrubbed clean, her skin a red and cream patchwork.
And suddenly, there was the break in the clouds. He saw it just as his father had described: an infinitesimal shift in her features. Fearing that any hesitation might lead to a lost opportunity, Gabriel reached across and lifted her hand. Turning the palm up, he kissed it. Then, standing, he pulled her towards him, threading his fingers through the loose knit of her pullover, touching her skin, reaching for her breasts, taking her mouth into his.
This time Julia didn’t want to hesitate; she craved the release, to know she was desirable, that he desired her. And the loveliness of him was wondrous. Marvelling, she cupped his head with her hands, engulfed by the sweet, clean smell of his hair. His shoulders, on the brink of bursting into their full breadth, reminded her that he wasn’t quite a man, but she was beyond caring. She forgot herself, who she was and who she was with, as his lips caught at her. Teasing out that cord of sex, the edgy precipice between lust and desire. Amazed at the fierce trembling that had started somewhere below her belly, she stared down as he pulled the jumper up to her breasts. Then, her buttocks resting against the edge of the stool, his mouth travelled down her body, biting gently along the way until he reached her and spread her, his lips and tongue greedy for her clit. Gasping, she leaned back against the bench, her elbow almost knocking over the half-finished glass of tequila.
Gabriel looked up from her pubic hair, along the whole terrain of her body as it rose above him. He thought she looked magnificent, her features softening as her ecstasy came in mounting ripples he could read beneath his fingers, against his lips. He wanted to make her scream, make her take him seriously, to see him as an equal.
As she drew close, she pulled him up by his hair then kissed him deeply, his face and mouth smelling of her. Wi
thout a word, he slipped out of his pants and pushed inside her, his cock rigid against his slight hips, his soft pubic hair. The shape of him was so profoundly different that she struggled, her body adjusting to the new parameters, fighting part of her that clung to the illusion that by making love she was breaking a spell, severing a visceral cord that still existed between her and Klaus. Irrational. Animal knowledge.
Enjoy this. Relax, she argued with herself.
But before she had a chance to protest, Gabriel had hoisted her onto his hips. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck. The fragrance of mouthwash, gum and, strangely, chocolate rising up as he walked her, trousers still caught around his shins, in a half-shuffle into the lounge room.
They reached the couch; slowly he lowered her down while trying to stay inside her. He succeeded. They lay there for a moment, Julia’s legs wrapped around him, his cock still hard in her, her breasts pushed up against his face.
‘Okay, so you’re not a virgin.’
And they both broke into laughter, the shape of him vibrating within her. Then, as he took her breasts into his hands, she rode him until all was burnt away.
Afterwards, they lay there together, Gabriel curved around her back, Julia staring out into the room, its familiar corners now alien.
‘I would have killed him,’ she whispered into the creeping darkness, to no one in particular.
‘I know.’ He softly kissed her neck.
PART THREE
The Fall