He wanted to be back, and in his room, before anyone became aware that he had spent the night elsewhere. He also had another reason for being back before breakfast. He parked beneath the naked branches of the plane trees and walked, ankle-deep, through fallen leaves around to the front door. There was still a warm, fuzzy glow somewhere deep inside him. The taste of Dominique lingered on his lips, as did the sense of her wrapped in his arms, as she had been all night, head resting on his shoulder, purring gently. Enzo himself had slept very little, but he didn’t feel tired. The comfort of intimacy had made him more relaxed than he had been in a very long time. He had savored it through all the dark hours of the night, dozing intermittently, vaguely erotic dreams washing over him, to be lost from grasp or memory on surfacing once more to consciousness. In some ways he had not wanted to sleep, as if in doing so he might have missed it all; the feel of her skin on his; the closeness and warmth of another human being.
