The Gift (Part Six)

Jocelyn hadn’t a good night’s sleep since Gabriel had come to her that first night after encountering him on her train ride home. She woke every morning since feeling restless and mentally exhausted. She’d come to dread the fall of night. She hadn’t seen him these past two week. Regardless, images of him filled her mind every time she closed her eyes to slumber.  More than dreams they felt like memories, memories of things that haven’t happened.  As she sat at her desk in the small boutique law firm where she worked, she would’ve sworn she’d heard Gabriel’s velvet voice whisper:

“Yet, my love, they haven’t happened yet.” 

She had images of herself dressed in vibrant silks, twirling, dancing under the stars.  Running through the woods so fast, the leaves were a blur of dark green in the moonlight.  Riding glowing ocean waves naked.  In all of them she and Gabriel were side by side, hand in hand, but the most stirring were the images of them loving and feeding.

Last night she had dreamed of Paris. Jocelyn saw herself and Gabriel naked and writhing in a bed larger and more decadent than any she’d ever seen centered in a sumptuous room, surrounded by candlelight. A window was open to the night. The moon and stars shone on the Eiffel tower in the distance. A woman joined them. The woman was small and curvaceous. With Gabriel still sheathed inside her, Jocelyn had bit and fed from the woman in an intensely perverse and erotic location. Jocelyn had woken in a cold sweat hours before dawn.  The shower had washed away the shame and the arousal but the dream wouldn’t fade.

None of them had.

With her mind spent, the thoughts of everyone she came into contact with seeped into her defenseless mind and rooted there, clamoring for attention.  She was helpless to them all. Jocelyn watched the office manager approach. She couldn’t block the woman’s uncharitable thoughts.

Jo’s been looking ragged for days, bet she found a man.  Like it’s not unfair enough to have that body and that face but the bitch has a friggin’ brain too. 

Her patience worn to the breaking point, Jocelyn spat, “It’s not my fault you can’t turn down a twinkie, Holly.”  Holly stopped in her tracks, mouth agape and eyes bulging.  Jocelyn cursed herself a fool.  “I’m sorry, Hol, really.  I didn’t mean that.  I’ve got a blistering headache and you were making a beeline right for me with this look on your face like I’m responsible for all the world’s ills. What can I do for you?”

Mildly placated Holly asked a few questions about an upcoming mediation and then suggested Jocelyn take a few days off if she was getting sick. 

“Better you now than everybody later because you were too stubborn to admit you’re sick until after the germs got spread around the office.”  Holly said. Jocelyn nodded, logged off her computer, collected her purse, and went home. She silently prayed the whole ride home on the train, her first since that night that she wasn't guarded and paranoid, that that she’d be able to find a dreamless sleep with the sun in the sky and Gabriel in the ground.