Chapter 5Charlie woke up with toasty toes and hazy slumberous heat suffusing his body and a large masculine weight at his back, keeping him securely on the sofa, one arm draped over his waist. He spent a second or two processing all these sensations.
He had not meant to fall asleep, but exhaustion—and pleasure—had swept up and overwhelmed him. Travel, rain, rescue, and now this.
Electricity. Need. Every piece of his body singing, like flower-petals in the wind, like petrichor in the air.
He was awake now. He gazed up at the hermitage: at the curve of the wall in neat grey stone, at the place where the wall met the cone of the roof, the wooden beams. The wood lay serenely above. Beyond the walls, the gardens stretched out: full of life, color, the presence of history and the scents of gr
