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.