Night and Day Read Online Free PDF

stairs. Dark brown, maybe, or purple; you’d bet purple because you have a suspicion of who it is, and he’s just the sort to wear a purple silk dressing gown. Not a robe. A dressing gown.
    And it’s not quite a suspicion, but more of an instinct. Your body thrums like a sympathetic tuning fork when he’s near, just as it did with Bertie.
    You let the door close quietly behind you and follow him, up the stairs instead of down, to a door that stands open against a sky still spattered with stars. Silently you creep up the stairs and stand looking out the door at him. He has his back to you, his face turned toward the paler sky in the east, his feet bare on the tarpaper of the flat roof. There is nothing else here, just the furnace chimney and the low, dingy brick walls that frame the roof. Just him and you and the dawn sky.
    The first edge of sunlight creeps over the horizon, and he drops the dressing gown, letting it slither down his body to lay in a tumble at his feet. Your breath goes still in your chest.
    He stretches his arms out as if he is basking in the watery light. His shoulders are taut with muscle, his arms long and strong, his lean back leading down into a dimpled, firm bottom and long, powerful thighs and legs. He is completely nude, standing with his arms spread like a king, like a sacrifice, his head thrown back. In the dark of the club, his hair looks black, but now you see that it’s brown and bronze, and the sunlight as it moves across the roof raises sparks of red and copper. And it’s long, down to his shoulder blades—it hadn’t been that long last night, certainly not. It fits him, somehow. Not Rick the club owner, lazy and laughing, but this creature, this king, this worshipper.
    And then he begins to glow. First a soft, subtle gilding of his skin that makes no sense; he should be dark and silhouetted against the sun, but he is golden, glowing. Brighter and brighter he shines until the sun has cleared the city horizon, and by then he is incandescent. And finally, light explodes around him, white and painful and glorious.
    When you open your eyes again, you are back in your bed, and it’s only the ceiling that you see, this time in the pale light of very early morning. You blink, confused, and then realize you must have dreamed going up on the roof, dreamed seeing Rick shining like an arc light, taking in the sun as if it were sustenance.
    There’s a light knock on the door, and Rick himself sticks his head into the room. “You’re up,” he says in surprise. “Thought you’d still be asleep. You were dead on your feet when you came up last night.”
    “I’m awake,” you acknowledge. “And I feel fine. Hungry.”
    “Throw some clothes on, and I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes. Mario doesn’t come in until noon, but I know a place not too far away that makes an excellent breakfast. Coco’s still asleep; she loathes mornings, so I don’t often have company.” Then he’s gone, the door closing with a quiet click.
    You get up and go to the closet to find that some kind brownie has cleaned and pressed your shabby clothes and hung them up on the rod beside a handful of Arrow shirts in your size, and fine wool trousers folded over pants hangers. There is a white linen suit hooked on the back of the closet door with a note pinned to the lapel that reads, “Wear Me.” It makes you laugh, but it would look stupid with your battered black lace-up shoes, so you reach instead for your second-best trousers, your first-best having been the wool ones you wore for three straight days and never want to wear again. But then you see a pair of white-and-cream shoes on the floor of the closet beside your brogans, and you crumble to the silent pressure of the Bellevues’ generosity and your own desperate need to look good for Rick. A five-minute shower and shave and a brush of your teeth with the new toothbrush in the glass, a quick process of dressing in new clothes from the skin out, and