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.

Chapter Four

In the middle of the night, I snap awake. The bed is empty beside me. Dreading the worst, I feel hollow, instantly bereft, as emotionally widowed as years ago when Gerald died.

But Patrick’s still here. As I roll onto my side, I see him by the window. He’s naked and kneeling in the moonlight.

It seems a funny way to have a meeting with his Boss.

As I watch, Patrick nods and smiles, his face suddenly radiant. Then he turns to me and bestows the same glowing expression on me.

“Are you all right?” I sit up in bed, peering at him. He looks strange, resigned yet happy, more peaceful and more truly angelic than I’ve ever seen him. Rising gracefully, he walks to the bed, lifts away the covers and slips onto the mattress beside me.

“Can you be content with a man?” He touches my face, his fingers warmer than human fingers should be. I know he has powers and whatever it is they do is sinking into me. His touch his exquisite. “Can you be content with just a man?” he repeats.

What a strange question. Has he made his choice? Is he safe? Can he live? I open my mouth to ask questions of my own, but what comes out is something altogether different.

“Yes. Of course I can. I’ve been happy with men up until now.”

It’s true. I have been, for all my ups and downs. And even with Patrick, it’s his humanity I love, not his otherness.

“Good,” he says simply, then leans in to kiss me.

The taste of his mouth and the stroke of his tongue against the margins of my lips is gorgeous. But even so, the questions roil and surge. I try to pull away, but Patrick gently holds onto me, and I feel as much as hear him say, “Relax” against my mouth.

I try to. And suddenly I can. As we kiss, a new illumination comes to me. Why fight? What will happen, will happen. Patrick’s made his choice, and whatever it is, I know he’s made it with my welfare in his mind and his heart. All I have to do is believe that and trust him. It’s so simple.

I finally understand what a leap of faith is all about. And I’m ready to take mine alongside Patrick by making love.

Still kissing me, he rolls across me, and I feel his erection hard and hot against my thigh through my nightgown. I press myself against him, moving to caress him by hitching my body against his cock. His low growl against my lips tells me he likes it.

We kiss on, and on, our hands roving over each other as our mouths press and flex and savor and taste. Whatever fears and forebodings I might have had are firmly secured in the casket marked believe and trust. I can only enjoy and revel in Patrick’s body.

The fact that I can touch him now, and pleasure him, adds dimensions of joy to the experience. I stroke his buttocks and he purrs and moves against me. I touch his cock and he gasps and growls my name. It occurs to me, as he leans back for a moment so he can peel off my nightdress, that technically he’s a virgin. But that small yet awesome fact doesn’t seem to impede his ability to make love. He seems imbued with all knowledge, all skill, all instinct.

The glide of his hands subdues me, yet at the same time sends me soaring. His touch seems to be everywhere, exploring, delighting. Intense sensations make me grab involuntarily at his shoulders, his ass. I might have broken the skin there, but he doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, my abandoned fervor only seems to drive him on to greater heights and more vocal expressions of response.

Eventually, he moves between my thighs, and a sly whisper of reality intrudes itself.

Should we use a condom? Do we need one? Why would we need one?

He’s a perfect, pure virgin angel and I know for a fact that in that respect, at least, I’m completely healthy, even if unlikely to conceive. And if I were to? Well, if that happens, that’s good too.

He pauses, no doubt reading those thoughts, so I smile up at him and clasp his buttocks, urging him on. The resulting light in his eyes, and the way he smiles at me, are nothing short of heavenly. “Oh, my love, my love,” he sighs, then thrusts.

Tears fill my eyes as my body yields to him, my silky channel stretching around his heat and hardness. His cock feels magnificent inside me. Bigger, harder, hotter than any of the very few I’ve previously welcomed, but even if he’d been average, he’d still have delighted me-because he’s Patrick.

Thrust in to the hilt, he groans, and I experience a moment of fear.

Believe. Believe. Trust.

With happiness, I do, and I start to soar, rejoicing anew. Patrick’s body is still real, alive and full of magical substance as he presses against me, in deep, and then starts to thrust again. He moves smoothly, rhythmically, perfect in this as in all things. Is he still an angel? Is he human? Is he both, yet neither, maybe the sum of many parts?

But as we rock and writhe against each other, our bodies moving in a sweet, synchronized dance, such philosophical questions become irrelevant. We’re just a man and woman in love, joining our bodies in pleasure.

I try to hold out, to save my climax to match his, but he has the better of me. When he kisses my neck and then angles his body anew, going in deep, he works my clitoris with his swiving plunge, and I’m lost, lost, lost.

Pleasure is incandescent, and I rise through layer after layer of it, floating up as if I were the angel, as if I had wings. “Patrick. Oh, Patrick,” I cry, holding onto him, and even in the midst of sublime sensation, I experience more wonder.

I’m holding onto him, one hand clasping at his bottom, the other hooked around his shoulder. My pussy is clenching again and again on his cock, but even so, I feel a strange glowing, effervescing sensation in my hand and I’m compelled to slide it down from his upper back towards his waist.

I hear a familiar sound, like billowing sails, and my eyes snap open.

Spread out from my angel’s back, and curving round us both, are his great white wings. And as his body arches and he beats them once, twice, and three times, he cries aloud and comes in glory, along with me.


When I wake again it is morning. The sun’s rising in the sky and my bedroom is warm. My body feels well rested and well pleasured, with no arthritic twinges other than a slight one in my left hip, but much less than usual.

Patrick.

I fly straight up in bed, and then moan inarticulately.

He’s gone.

But he can’t be. He said to trust and to believe. The unthinkable can’t have happened. There must be an explanation.

I refuse to accept that I might have lost him.

Clambering out of bed whilst fishing around for my nightgown, I refuse to give up hope, even though Patrick’s clothes are nowhere to be seen. My faith starts to waver, but just as I grit my teeth and start to get angry with myself, I hear a familiar sound coming closer, approaching up the stairs.

Someone’s singing. They’re singing in a sweet way that’s both tuneless and tuneful at the same time. My heart leaps as Patrick appears in the doorway with a smile on his face and a cup and saucer in his hand.

“Good morning, Miranda,” he says. He sounds both happy and somehow a bit uncertain, as if he’s not quite sure of the sound of his own voice. With his shirt and waistcoat hanging open, he looks both innocent and effortlessly macho.

“Good morning to you too. You’re still here then?”

He pads forward barefoot and sets the cup down. A bit of its contents slop over the side into the saucer, and he makes a little sound of mild exasperation. The way he frowns and stares at the spilt tea is perfectly adorable.

But Patrick himself isn’t perfect any more. My face cracks into a Cheshire Cat-like grin, and I want to leap up into the air and whoop for joy.