A Touch of Heaven

Chapter Three

I open my eyes in the dark. What time is it? Where am I? What the hell has happened?

With a struggle, bits come back to me in something of a jumble. Staring at the ceiling, I attempt to sort through them, pull them to the surface of my half-asleep brain. Some of them make me smile in the darkness, feeling sensual and slightly wicked. A little debauched.

As far as I can decipher, I passed out from pleasure again, had an orgasm so stupendous that I blacked out from the intensity of it. Or at least, I think that’s what happened. There’s no other explanation for me being awake one moment and out cold the next.

Does this always happen with Patrick? Boy, he’s good. Do his women always swoon when he makes them climax?

Still drifting and not fully with it, I stir and test my limbs in my usual exploration of possible pain. Everything seems fine though, better than fine. I wriggle my hips and wiggle my fingers and there’s barely a twinge.

Excellent. But it’s still a task to order my thoughts and clear my brain. In fact, the more I reach for it, the fuzzier everything becomes. Something’s sharp enough though, and I smile, gasp, almost reliving the delicious pleasure of Patrick’s mouth against me. My sex flutters as if he’s still down there, making magic with his tongue.

But still there’s something else bugging me. It’s big and scary, but I just can’t make it resolve. My mind keeps blanking when I grapple for it, almost as it’s automatically trying to save me from myself, and some appalling, astonishing secret or shock.

Then, still thrashing my brain cells, I freeze. It’s not memory though, just physical realization. My heart starts to pound.

Beside me, I hear a soft sigh, and to accompany it the sound of a body shifting against the mattress.

Oh, how wonderful. How wonderful and strange and unexpected.

I’m not alone.

Rolling to one side, I pat around and find that far from disappearing and leaving me to wake alone like before, Patrick is still here sleeping next to me. We’re both reposed on the top of the duvet. I’m naked and lovingly swathed in my favorite fleece throw again, and he’s just lying there, fully clothed, on his side with his hands tucked beneath his face like an angelic child.

Angelic? Oh God…

It all comes slamming back in with the force of a pneumatic hammer. The memory emerges from the lingering clouds of sleep. Something that just has to be a dream or some kind of mind trick, because it’s too crazy and far too far out there to be real.

I could swear I saw wings. Yes, wings, for heaven’s sake. Great big, honking wings, attached to Patrick’s shoulders.

Well, I say attached. That was a bit of a grey area. They seemed to be there, and yet they weren’t there. Beautiful, substantial constructions of immaculate, snowy-white feathers, yet transparent as if projected on a screen.

Crikey, it’s no wonder I passed out. Who wouldn’t?

They’re not there now though. Gingerly, I sit up and shake off my throw, and then, shifting my weight as little as possible, I lean over him. No, no wings. The back of his waistcoat is dark silk, smooth and undamaged, covering his strong back and certainly not hiding any supernatural appendages. Just to be sure, I cautiously reach across and touch the satiny cloth. There’s heat from his body, and his muscles are firm and resilient, but there’s nothing at all there that shouldn’t be.

I frown and my mind capers around a bit. What about hypnotism? Was he using the power of suggestion for some arcane purpose he’s yet to reveal to me? It has to be that. It’s a game, and I just don’t know why he’s playing it yet.

A little sigh interrupts my examinations, and I freeze. Rocking back again, I look down into Patrick’s eyes, so blue and still lambent despite the darkness. His expression is clear and innocent, but it could be hiding terrible danger.

“Hello.” He unfolds his hands from beneath his cheek and then unfolds himself up into a sitting position.

He’s so handsome. So like a man, a gorgeous one, but pretty normal. So not like any man I’ve ever known, or imagined knowing, perhaps not even a man at all. No, please, that’s ridiculous. He is a man. He’s got to be.

“What I think I saw… I imagined it, didn’t I?” Suddenly it dawns on me I’m as good as naked, and I scrabble for my throw and wrap it tightly around me. I wish I could reach my old velour dressing gown hanging on the hook behind the door. It covers me from neck to toes, and it’s substantial. “Are you some kind of hypnotist? Or something like that?”

“No, I’m afraid you didn’t imagine it,” says the so-called angel on my bed.

He’s quiet and unshakably calm, which only makes me almost judder with confusion and frustration. “Oh, come on. You’re not really telling me you’re an angel, are you? You’ve got to be kidding. You are joking, aren’t you?”

He shakes his head in answer.

“Well, that’s just great.” I’m still taking this in, and it’s hard. In fact it’s impossible. So many implications I daren’t even think about. If he’s scamming me somehow it’s bad, bad, bad. But if he believes it himself, that’s even worse. If he’s delusional… “How on earth can you be an angel when I’m not even sure I believe in them?”

I feel cold and sick. Maybe I’m the one going mad, not him. But if he is a dangerous lunatic, then how the hell can I see his hallucination?

“You don’t have to believe in me for me to exist.” The words are nonsense. They don’t compute. He scans me with those sharp eyes of his, and I can feel him reading my fears and doubts. He makes as if to move forward and embrace me, and I shrink back. How can something as delicious as the pleasure we’ve shared go bad so quickly.

I must get him out of here. I could be in deadly peril. My brain instructs me, but my heart and body still respond to his beauty.

Oh hell, do I still want him? Even after this latest bombshell?

“Won’t you give me a chance to explain?” The sadness in his voice twists my heart. It sounds so genuine, and yet it could be another trick. If he’s anything like what I fear him to be, he’s as fiendishly clever as he is adorable to look at. Adorable with tragic eyes filled with pain.

Slowly, more laboriously than I’ve ever seen him move, he climbs off the bed. It’s as if I’ve aged him overnight with my disapproval. I want to surge forward and embrace him and hug away all the pain, but still…still…

Oh, I just don’t know. I think I need a little space.

“Very well.” His words are barely audible, but they’re louder than the ones that I only thought. Whatever or whoever he is, his mentalist powers are extraordinary.

Relief gusts through me like a wind as he walks away towards the open French window. But it’s a cold and wintry blast, despite the balmy summer night. Again, I battle the urge to rush to him and cuddle away his sorrow and our conflict.

At the threshold he pauses. “May I come to visit you tomorrow? During the day time perhaps, in the garden? So we can talk?”

So we can talk about what? About his ridiculous claims? How he does what he does? Talk about the infinitesimally slight and frankly terrifying possibility that he might actually be telling the truth.

“I don’t know. I need to time to think. Some space.” I babble the usual clichés, everything inside me helter-skelter. I do need to be alone so I can attempt to find a calm place.

“Very well.” Patrick already seems to be in a calm place, but I’m not too sure he likes it. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.” He yanks in a breath, and his exquisite old-young face shifts and changes in a rapid shadow-play of stark, conflicting emotions. “But…well, I might not be here too long now, and I’d like us to come to some kind of agreement and to be friends before I go.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe.”

He nods and the moonlight glints on his hair. “Goodnight, Miranda.” He starts away across the balcony, and like an idiot I do scoot across to him. But I stay on my side of the divide, in my darkened room.

Still at sixes and sevens, I say the first stupid thing that comes into my head.

“Aren’t you going to fly then?”

He jumps, looks completely taken aback. A flare of hope lights his eyes for a second then dulls again.

“No, not this time.” With a final nod, he starts away down the stairs.

While I head for the kitchen, seeking a cup of tea, my body still shakes.

The next day, I have my time and my space, but I still don’t arrive at any conclusions. I fumble through a morning at the charity shop, making so many mistakes that they send me home early. And a while later, I’m sitting in the kitchen, comfort eating a chocolate éclair and turning over everything I heard and saw and felt and did during my two brief but astounding interludes with a man who may or may not be an angel-or a confidence trickster-when the phone rings.

“Hello, Miranda, love. How are you doing?”

My ex’s familiar voice used to make my heart flutter but today that organ feels indifferent to him and disappointed that it’s not another voice. The voice of someone I’m wishing and wishing and wishing would come around and see me, even if he is probably as bad for me as my ex-husband.

Even so, as Steve and I chat, I start to warm to him, and it’s as if I only remember the good times, not the bad. We skip from one inconsequential topic to another at first, but pretty soon I begin to hear the tension in him, the edge I recognize from the beginning of our end. When I ask if anything’s wrong, it all spills out, a tale of woe.

His business has failed. His new relationship is rocky. He misses me, or so he says. Part of me almost believes him. But when massive debts are mentioned, I grit my teeth, indentifying the real reason for his call.

Of course, he couches it in a touching display of regret for what he did to me, and heavy-handed intimations that we should get back together again, but we both know he’s really tapping me for money. And quite a lot of it.

As we talk, it’s like I’m in a play or following the action in a book. The real me is thinking, what would Patrick do? I don’t know why, but it seems important to know what he thinks and to take the course that he’d approve.

Why? Why? Why? I’ve only known him two days and he might well be even more self-serving than the man I’m speaking to. Or he might be just the one to set me on the true, right path.

When Steve gets my unspoken message that I don’t want him back, he comes out and lays his cards on the table. He asks for a loan.

“I’ll pay you back when I can, you know that, love, don’t you?”

What I do know, or at least suspect, is that if I give him it I’ll never see it, and probably him, ever again.

I’m on the spot. I must decide. Apparently, Steve borrowed the money from people that he shouldn’t have, whose methods are unscrupulous.

After what he did, I should say no. And yet, I still remember a time when he made me happy, and I can’t deny the love that we once had, even if mine was greater.

I say, “Okay,” and then feel light and dizzy. In my mind, Patrick seems to smile and nod.

Later, I lie on my mattress beneath my parasol out on the balcony. I feel strangely calm about the money I’m going to give to Steve, even though it’s a sizeable bite out of my assets and I might end up having to find a job again.

It’s the other beautiful young man who’s making me restless. The one whose very nature I turn and turn over in my mind.

Thoughts whirling, I begin to regret the two glasses of wine I had with lunch. I don’t normally drink during the day, but these are special circumstances. I’ve never been faced before with such a conundrum.

Who are you? Who are you? What are you? Who are you? Who are you?

It beats like a mantra in my brain until I’m hypnotized and feeling drowsy. The afternoon is warm, the scent from the flowers below is sweet and soporific, and the wine was good stuff and packed a punch. Before long I feel myself drifting, and I welcome the haze. At least if I sleep I won’t have to think. Or ponder. Or even just wait.

In my dream I’m still warm, though the heat is diffuse, not like the sun. I feel as if I’m floating, yet lying down, curled on my side, perhaps on a soft couch, or maybe even suspended in mid air, unbound by gravity or weight. I’m no longer wearing the light day dress I lay down in and my eyes are closed, yet still I seem to see a mellow glow.

I’m relaxed. I feel free. No doubts and fears and worries assail me. I smile as a presence gathers against my back, molding to the shape of my spine and buttocks.

Patrick.

I know it’s him, even though I can’t see him and he doesn’t speak. Warm arms circle around me, sweetly familiar, and I feel completely safe and happy as if the real world and its questions don’t exist. He grips me lightly at breast and crotch, and his mouth is soft as velvet against my ear. Loving his touch, and yes, loving him, I arch against him.

His lips feel heavenly pressed against my skin, and his hold on me tightens, keeping me close against him. Then we seem to roll and turn and float. There’s a sound like beating and long, deep flapping, and I realize-without surprise, because it’s a dream-that we’re flying. He’s gripping me securely against his body while his great wings bear us aloft.

The sensation is beautiful, transcendent, and it seems perfectly natural that he should start to caress me intimately. He curves his hand at my breast and cups me, thumb working slowly on my nipple in time to the lazy strokes of our celestial flight. Between my legs, his long finger divides my labia, pressing in through the soft mat of my pubic bush. He squeezes my crotch in the same languid rhythm.

Curving to fit tighter against him, I place my hands over his, feeling his warm, smooth skin and the way the fine muscles of his fingers flex and stretch as he strokes me. I tilt my hips to give him better access, and to press my bottom against the hard mass of his erection. He’s naked in flight, and his cock is burning hot, like a rock against my bottom crease.

As we fly and writhe against each other, he sings to me, his voice liquid, wordless music in my ears. Even my own groans of need and desire are in harmony, matching the rhythm of his arpeggios and the stroke and squeeze of his fingers.

Helplessly aroused and with the heavy drag of desire winding in my belly, I surge against him, my clitoris tingling beneath his beautiful, accurate fingertip. My legs wave wildly, but he holds me without effort, our bodies turning together in slow rolls, unshackled by forces of nature. He plays with my nipple and rubs his cock along my anal groove, hot and teasing.

Time doesn’t pass the way it normally would. Breaths take an hour to draw in. The circle of his finger around my clit seems to last a day. When I have an orgasm, the pleasure builds over what seems like a millennium, intensity spiraling and soaring as do we, swooping and rolling as if we were diving through waves of bliss.

“I love you,” I sob as all goes soft and dark.

Just as we’re extinguished, Patrick answers, “I love you too.”

I wake a while later to gilded twilight, the dying sun creating a skyscape that echoes my dream. If that’s what it was.

My body feels heavy, replete with pleasure. As if I really did swoop and fly with Patrick, turning and barrel-rolling into ecstasy. It’s hard to sit up, as if I’m pinned to the mattress by complete relaxation, but I manage to haul myself up, gritting my teeth at a few little twinges as I straighten.

We’re supposed to be having a talk. Did I say I’d go over and see him, or did he say he’d come here? I can’t remember. I only know I want to see him. I want to know. I want to hear whatever he has to say. Although after that strange dream, I’m not sure what I believe.

Yesterday, I could swear I saw wings. And just now, I can almost imagine I felt them too.

But they’re not there now, even though Patrick is.

What on earth is he doing? He’s on his knees, beneath the tree in the garden next door, head bowed. Crikey, is he praying?

Suspicion and cynicism flare, even though I’m disappointed in myself for it. But still, I wonder if he knows I’m here, and the penitent posture is an act.

He looks hazy and indistinct in the golden evening light, his hair gleaming where the last rays of the sinking sun dapple upon his bowed head through the gaps between the leaves and the branches.

You’re a strange man, Patrick. A very strange man indeed. That is if you are a man at all.

As if he’s heard my thought, he looks up. He doesn’t smile, but gives me a strange, complex look. Then he closes his eyes, nods and makes a little pass with his hand as if he’s crossing himself. A heartbeat later, he’s on his feet, brushing the dust from the knees of his trousers and then tugging his waistcoat back into place.

As he walks in my direction, skipping over the little hedge, I imagine how his naked body looks, and how it felt in my dream.

He can’t be an angel. I don’t think they even exist. And even if they do, why would one be prancing around my next door neighbor’s house and garden, apparently with nothing to do but chat up middle-aged women and romance them and make free with them?

That’s not what angels do, is it?

He swoops up the wrought iron stairs as if wing-assisted, and when I make as if to stand up, he sinks gracefully down onto the mattress with me. But down at the bottom, keeping a safe distance of propriety between us.

“I still don’t quite believe you are what you say you are.” No use beating about the bush, eh? “I’m not a religious person. Although I sort of believe in some greater power for good. Angels have always been a metaphorical concept for me, not an actual…um…thing.”

He’s sitting cross-legged, and he props his elbows on his knees and steeples his fingertips. “Well, yes, I get that. It’s a perfectly reasonable belief system.” He shrugs and quirks his plush, gorgeous mouth in a way that’s far from innocently pure. Well, at least that’s the way it looks to me. “But by the same token, I can’t deny the truth of what I am.”

“But how on earth can you be here? I mean, shouldn’t you be up there…um…glorifying or something?” I’m talking about the incomprehensible, the unbelievable, matters of faith. And I don’t think I’m really qualified to do so. “What are you doing just hanging about here, sunbathing and eating junk food and reading romantic novels?” Not to mention giving pleasure to needy, sex-starved divorcees?

“Well, we get sent on missions, to perform tasks, to deliver messages, and because some of us quite like it here, we get a chance to stay a little while and hang out.”

Angels just hang out? How very bizarre.

“Right. Yes. Okay. I sort of buy that, even though it still seems totally out there.” I stare at him, entranced by his winsome little smile, this angel on holiday. “Er, are there usually many of you around down here? Hanging out?”

He waggles his brows at me. “Oh, about a pinhead’s worth, at any one time, give or take.”

We both laugh, despite the fact that I feel sort of woozy, as if I’ve wandered into The Twilight Zone.

“And is it very different here? I mean, to the other place?” I can’t bring myself to say the word Heaven.

He looks more sober all of a sudden. “More different than you can possibly understand. In fact, while I’m in human form, I find it quite difficult to comprehend it myself.”

“I don’t understand, you are still an angel, aren’t you? I saw wings.”

“Yes and no.” He frowns very hard. As if he is trying to understand and describe the unknowable. “To be here I have to take a temporary human form. When I’m there-” he looks up, but somehow I don’t quite think that’s where he means “-I’m a different kind of being entirely, existing in a different state.”

My head’s starting to ache. “But what are the wings? They looked like wings would look…down here. There must be some similarity.”

“They’re a metaphorical representation of something beyond your imagination.” He shrugs again. “Like I said, something the human mind has no conception of.”

I struggle and struggle, despite this, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. I always have been a stubborn cuss. And I when I fail, I start to shake, feeling scared and filled with wonder in equal parts.

This is so big.

In a move so fast that it too may be incomprehensible, Patrick is close to me, holding me against his warm and very human-feeling chest. It dawns on me that my shaking must have been visible. Just like the pallor in my face. I’m in shock.

“Don’t be afraid,” he croons. “I won’t hurt you. I’ll never let anything hurt you.”

And in that moment, I believe him and wind my arms around him.

“I could do with a drink. I had a couple of glasses at lunchtime, and I don’t normally do that. But if ever there was a special circumstance, this is it.”

“Do you want me to fetch you something?” He strokes my hair lightly, the soothing action making me feel better by the moment.

“No, it’s all right.” I edge away, looking into his blue eyes. “I’ll get it. Better still, let’s go inside and have a drink across the kitchen table. I always feel more sensible and in control when I’m in my kitchen”

“Good idea.”

Together we make our way through my bedroom and along the landing and down the steps. Patrick leads, unerringly locating the kitchen.

“I suppose you know everything, that is, including the exact layout of my house?”

Patrick smiles as he draws out my chair then grabs two glasses from the drainer and the already opened bottle of red wine. “No, I don’t know everything. Only my Boss knows everything. We angels just have very sure instincts. Coupled with which, the layout of the Johnsons’s house is exactly like yours.”

We laugh again. How prosaic is that? I’m attributing him divine powers that he doesn’t actually have. Although I’m trying not to think about that other unknowable concept, the one he calls the Boss.

The wine is rich and warming, an easy-drinking California blend, full of fruit. It hits the spot and I start to feel calmer, as if everything that’s happened, and that I’ve learned in the last few days, isn’t quite so preposterous.

“So how did you end up here?”

Sitting across from me, Patrick sips his wine with obvious enjoyment, and I wonder what he drinks wherever it is he usually hangs out. No, silly, he probably doesn’t drink at all.

“I had a little job in the neighborhood, talking to someone who needed a bit of reassurance.” His long fingers play over the stem of the glass. “He won’t remember my visit, but he won’t be so scared now.”

Ah, Mr. Grey at Number 24. He’s very, very old, and he’s just had a heart scare. I don’t know him very well. His family mostly takes care of him very nicely. But I once helped him tune his television when he called out to me when I was passing.

How wonderful that an angel helped him out in a time of need too.

“How long can you stay?”

Suddenly, I feel very, very afraid. I’m scared of his answer. It dawns on me that no matter how foolish it is, after just a few days, I’ve fallen hard for him. I don’t want him to go. I want more time. I want more of him. I want it all.

This new revelation makes me shake again, and I swig down more wine, only just avoiding a major coughing fit. My eyes water a bit, but when they clear, Patrick’s by my side, stroking my back.

“Better?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Do sit down. I’m all right.” Tension makes me tetchy. I don’t want to know, but I have to have an answer. “When do you have to go?”

Patrick pulls up a chair at my side of the table and sits in it, facing me. Our knees touch and just the slight contact of it makes me weak with lust. It seems my libido isn’t subject to the slings and arrows of stress and angst and bizarre revelations. It just goes on and on wanting and wanting.

“I should be gone now. I’ve already overstayed my allotted time for this visit.” He reaches for his glass but doesn’t drink. Instead, he pushes it around, sloshing the wine in precarious circles. “But I don’t want to go.”

Because of me, he’s stayed because of me? I don’t dare ask. I start to fidget with my wine glass too.

“We’re allowed a bit of latitude, but not as much as I’ve been wont to take. And this time I’ve stayed even longer than usual.”

“I see.” My heart’s thudding and my brain’s starting to tick, tick, tick, balancing and measuring ramifications. I’m trying to stay in control, even though there’s a banshee inside me ready to scream her loss.

I’ve only known Patrick a couple of days, but I cannot bear to say goodbye. I love him already, and even for someone with a risky habit of falling in love quickly, this is a record.

Does he love me?

He said so in my dream, but that might just have been my wishful thinking speaking. That sensual flight we shared was purest fantasy. Or was it? All this talk of states beyond comprehension makes me wonder.

Fear of the pain of loss forces me to practicalities.

“When will you come back?” I take a quick sip of wine, more carefully this time. “I mean, can you come back? Here, I mean, to this, um, vicinity?”

He closes his eyes, and his face is suddenly a taut mask. I see an intimation of the banshee, the formless shrieking anguish hidden beneath the handsome human features, and I know that the answer isn’t going to be a good one.

“Yes, I can come back.” He’s hesitant, as if the words are hard.

“Ah, but there’s a but, isn’t there?” From the expression on his face, I suspect it’s a big one.

“Where I come from time doesn’t pass the way it does here. I might come back in a week, but it could just as easily be a decade. Or a century. Or a millennium. There’s no way to know in advance.”

The shrieking anguish starts to stir and roil and get a real grip on me.

“But surely, you can be sent to specific times, like to comfort Mr. Grey?”

Patrick heaves a great sigh. “But I can’t be sent back for my own purposes.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “And I can’t be sent for yours either” He moves his thumb again, the action sweet and seductive and soothing as it skims the pulse point at my wrist. “The mind of my Boss is unknowable. It’s not for the likes of us to understand or question his choices.”

Anger surges inside of me, but Patrick’s grip on my hand tightens. “Don’t. It won’t help. It can’t.”

Concepts way beyond me whirl in my head, dancing and circling with more human emotions like loss, anguish…and love.

“So that’s it then.” I clench my teeth, fighting the urge to rage and, yes, to blaspheme. “It’s been nice, but now it’s over.”

Taking a deep breath, I try to stay calm and fix on Patrick’s face. He’s here now, perhaps for a few hours yet. There’s time, time to be with him in the deepest, closest way. I imagine that perfect body poised over mine, that beautiful cock pushing into me.

He gives me a wry, poignant, painful, beautiful smile.

“In a way, that might be the answer.”

I know he’s read my mind, but I can’t read his. “What do you mean?”

“As an angel, I am, by definition, celibate, beyond sex.” He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it softly. “But if I fuck you while I’m in human form, well, that might mean I’ll be cast out.” He turns his face, rubs it against the skin of my palm. “The trouble is though, I’m not quite sure to where.”

No, surely not? Does that place exist too? I think of evil and the Devil and Lucifer, another angel who was cast out of Heaven.

“Oh God, you can’t take that risk for me.”

I think about what I’ve just said, the actual words, and suddenly hysterical and inappropriate mirth bubbles up in me. It’s Patrick who’d be taking the risk, not his Boss.

As Patrick’s head pops up, I seem the same emotions in him, and first his lips twitch, then he starts smirking too, and within moments we’re both laughing uncontrollably. He wraps his arms around me as we rock and gasp and chortle, and in a way it’s almost as intimate an experience as if we really were fucking each other.

Eventually the gales of hilarity subside, and the knifepoint anguish of our dilemma reasserts itself. Patrick pours us both more wine and we sip it, swathed for the moment in thoughtful silence.

“But won’t he damn you forever just for wanting to fuck me? Even thinking about it, aren’t you putting yourself, and me, before his wishes?”

Patrick’s always seemed as if he knows so much more than me, but right now, his confusion and his doubt echoes mine, clear in his eyes.

“It doesn’t work like that. Unknowable, remember? He’s beyond comprehension, even by members of His heavenly host.” He laughs again, but more ironically now. “I don’t know why I’m calling Him a He… He’s beyond that too.”

I shrug. “Well, for want of a non-gender pronoun, I guess.”

What a mess we’re in. And we’re wasting what little time he might have left.

“When you’re up there…” I glance skywards, knowing that doesn’t really make sense either “…do you actually remember what happens when you’re here? I mean, don’t worry about me. I’ll get over all this. I’ll miss you, but I’ll move on. I’ve done it before.”

“Oh, I’ll remember you. I’ll be aware of everything. All my past, everyone I’ve met and known.” He stares at me, his eyes so serious and so blue. “This is why I know that I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve been fond of all the humanity I’ve interacted with, but I’ve never loved in the way I love you now.”

I start to tremble. Fear, a great weight of it, overwhelms me. Am I responsible for this? Patrick is a heavenly being, and yet he’s prepared to abandon divinity, just for me.

“You’re not responsible for me, Miranda. You’re not obligated. If I choose what I choose, it’s because I want to live my life in a world where you are, that’s all. If another man comes along who makes you happier I’ll be content knowing you’re happy with him instead.”

Staring at him, a thought occurs, and I voice it even though I’m now 100 percent positive he can read my thoughts.

“But when-if-you’re human, like the rest of us, you’ll have foibles and you might not be quite so high-minded. What then?”

“I’ll never hurt you, Miranda. Never cause harm to you in any way, or even think about it.” I believe him as he takes my hand again. “And I’m prepared to gamble that you will still care for me and give me a chance if I choose humanity.”

I still feel fear, but not for myself, just for him. Can I risk the fact that he might end up damned? How can I face that outcome? The burden of cause and possible effect still weighs me down, and I feel infinitely weary.

“I’d rather take my chances, a thousand times over,” he murmurs, his fingers working their magic against my skin. “A hundred thousand times.”

My thoughts swirl. Exhaustion turns my limbs to lead. I’ve never felt more tired in my life. And of course, Patrick knows this. No matter how much I want to stay awake to savor what are probably our last hours together, he and I realize I’ve got to sleep.

“Come along, my love,” he says quietly, urging me to my feet. “You need to sleep, and I’ll sleep beside you. I’ll hold you close.”

Suddenly, just the thought of resting next to him seems infinitely sweet. I shut out all the tortuous fears and ramifications of mortality and hold on to that simple human pleasure. My hand in his, I follow him upstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re lying in bed together. I’m in my usual nightdress and Patrick has stripped to his white T-shirt and his mid-gray jersey boxer shorts. My wayward libido stirs, of course, at the sight and feel of his sublime body so lightly covered, and it keeps simmering away quietly in the background. But somehow, it seems far more important just to be here, close and warm in each others’ space, rather than to fret for the intimacy of fucking when we just can’t have it.

A sense of peace settles over us. It hardly seems possible with Patrick’s choice ahead, but for now I feel calm. I’m in the best possible place and with the best possible man. He might be an angel, but I can’t imagine anyone more human and easy to love.

As I slide into sleep, I send up a prayer to his Boss to allow his servant a little latitude.