“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 and to inhabit Paradise with him forever. And to live a life that would rival the beauty of Botticelli’s illustrations.

And that is why at the age of twenty-three, Julia Mitchell was still a virgin, with the photograph of the man who ruined her for others tucked in the back of her underwear drawer. For the past six years, she’d slept with his picture under her pillow. No man had ever come close to comparing to him; no feelings of affection had ever approximated the love and devotion he inspired in her. Their entire relationship was based on a single night, a night she relived in her memories over and over again…

Chapter 7

Julia parked her bike next to the Clarks’ large, white home and walked to the front porch. She never knocked when she visited them, so she skipped up the stairs and pul ed the screen door open. What she found inside shocked her.

The glass coffee table in the living room was smashed, blood spattered on the carpet. Chairs and cushions were strewn about, and Rachel and Aaron sat huddled together on the sofa in the center of the room. Rachel was sobbing.

Julia stood there, gaping in horror. “What happened?”

“Gabriel,” said Aaron.

“Gabriel? Is he hurt?”

“He’s fine!” Rachel laughed almost hysterically. “He’s been home less than twenty-four hours, and he’s already gotten into a shoving match with my dad, made my mom cry twice, and sent Scott to the hospital.”

Aaron continued rubbing his girlfriend’s back in order to comfort her, a grim expression on his face.

Julia gasped. “Why?”

“Who knows? No one ever knows what’s going on with him. He got into an argument with Dad, Mom stepped in between them, and Gabriel shoved her. Scott said he’d kill him if he ever touched her again. So Gabriel threw a punch and broke his nose.”

Julia gazed down at the pieces of glass that were now embedded with blood in the carpet. A dozen or so cookies, crumbled now, were scattered in and around the glass along with the remains of what appeared to be a couple of cups of coffee.

“And this?” She pointed at the macabre mess.

“Gabriel pushed Scott through the coffee table. Scott and Dad are at the hospital, Mom is locked in her room, and I’m spending the night at Aaron’s.”

Rachel began to drag her boyfriend to the front door.

Julia stood frozen to the spot, unable to move. “Maybe I’ll try to talk to your mom.”

“I can’t stay in this house another minute. My family has just been destroyed.” With that, Rachel fled with Aaron.

Julia intended to climb the stairs to find Grace, but she heard a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen, so she quietly padded to the back of the house. Through the open back door she could see someone sitting on the porch, swinging a beer bottle to his lips. A shock of brown hair shone in the fading sunlight. Julia recognized him from Rachel’s photographs.

Before she had time to think about it, her feet walked out the back door, and she found herself sitting some distance from him on a chaise lounge, her knees drawn up under her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs and looked over at him.

He ignored her.

Julia traced his appearance with her eyes, hoping to burn the vision into her memory. He was far better-looking in person. She looked at his blue and bloodshot eyes, which were startling under his brown brows. She followed the angle of his high cheekbones, his straight, noble nose, and the squareness of his jaw, noting the two or three days’ growth of beard that shadowed his skin and the kiss of a dimple. Her eyes came to rest on his full lips, noticing the curve and fullness of the lower one before she was able to drag her gaze reluctantly to look at his bruises.

Gabriel had bruises and blood on his right hand and something purple on his left cheek. Scott’s fist had met its mark, but surprisingly, Gabriel was still conscious.

“You’re a bit late for the six o’clock show. It ended thirty minutes ago.”

His voice was gentle and almost as pleasing as his features. Julia thought momentarily about what it would be like to hear that voice pronounce her name.

She shivered.

“There’s a blanket right here.” He gestured to a large, plaid wool blanket that was bunched up near his hip. Without looking at her, he patted it.

Julia watched him warily. Satisfied that his anger had cooled, she walked over to him and sat on a nearby stool, still keeping a healthy distance between them. She wondered how fast he could run. And how fast she could run if he was chasing her.

He handed her the blanket.

“Thank you,” she murmured, pulling it around her shoulders.

Out of the corner of her eye, she took in his figure and noted how he had folded his considerable height casually into an Adirondack chair. His shoulders appeared broader in his black leather jacket, the planes of his pectorals visible underneath the fabric of his tight black t-shirt. His long legs filled out his black jeans well, and Julia noticed that he seemed taller and heavier than he’d looked in his sister’s old pictures.

She wanted to say something. She wanted to ask him why he’d gone berserk on the nicest family she’d ever met. But she was too shy and too scared of him to do that. So she asked him if he had a bottle opener instead.

He frowned at her before pulling one out of his back pocket and passing it over. She thanked him and continued to sit there quietly. He turned to the half-empty case of beer behind him, chose a bottle, and held it in front of her.

“Allow me,” he said, seeing her now and smiling. He took the opener back, uncapping her beer with one swift movement and clanking their bottles together. “Cheers.”

Julia sipped her drink politely, trying not to choke as the strange, yeasty flavor entered her mouth. She hummed unconsciously and waited.

“Ever had a beer before?” Gabriel grinned.

She shook her head.

“Then I’m glad I’m your first.”

She blushed and hid her face behind her long mahogany hair.

“What are you doing here?” He wore a curious expression.

Julia paused, wondering how best to put it. “I was invited to dinner.”

I was hoping to finally meet you.

Gabriel laughed. “I guess I ruined that. Well, Miss Brown Eyes, add that charge to my tab.”

“Will you tell me what happened?” She kept her voice quiet and tried not to let it shake.

“Will you tell me why you haven’t run away yet?” His blue eyes found hers, and he looked at her sharply.

She ducked her head again, hoping the act of submission would cool his sudden flare of anger. Sitting with Gabriel after what happened was a stupid thing to do. He was drunk, and there was no one to rescue her if he decided to get violent. Now was her chance to leave.

Inexplicably, however, Gabriel’s arm reached out to close the gap between them. He pushed her hair behind her shoulders, his fingers tangling in the waves slowly, very slowly, before he withdrew. A connection of sorts flowed from his fingers and into her hair. Julia absorbed the sensation and hummed again softly, forgetting his question entirely.

“You smell like vanilla,” he remarked, shifting his body so that he could stare at her properly.

“It’s my shampoo.”

He finished his beer and opened another, taking a long pull from the bottle before he turned to her again.