When I was a child, the fact that I was adopted made me an object of curiosity at the Catholic grade school where I learned to fear God, worry for the priest and dread the nuns. The nuns would tell me I was a blessed gift to my parents. My classmates wondered what I'd done to be passed along in the night to a new family. The priest prayed that I would not follow in my mother's footsteps.

Everyone thought they knew my history. They none of them did.

My adoptive parents came to believe that I'd been left behind by an unmarried teenage couple who had tried to raise me but found the task grew increasingly bitter in the harsh reality of surviving a life on the edge. The nuns believed my adoptive parents, unable to have their own children, had prayed to the right mix of patron saints to intercede for God's mercy and benevolence to find them worthy to raise one of his more needy creatures. The priest was sure my mother had been young, single and a tramp who'd borne me out of wedlock only to give me up when she decided she was too young to be saddled with a bastard child. My classmates thought the fact I had reddish-blond hair while my adoptive parents had dark brown, almost black hair meant I came from the union of two exotic, star-crossed lovers who were out there searching for me.

I was three years old when my mother left me at a cloistered, little-known abbey in Colorado. The monks sheltered me for six months, waiting on her to return. When she didn't, they reluctantly gave me to a Catholic adoption charity for housing and, later, so that they could find suitable parents who were willing to take a non-infant. My adoptive parents took me to their home when I was a few months past my fourth year. For some odd reason, they decided to declare my day of adoption as my official fourth birthday. On this day, I was also re-christened with the name they chose for me. So in my relatively brief life, I had already had three names: the one my birth mother gave me but never recorded for it was a name that bespoke a fulfillment of a vision she had about me, the one she put on my birth certificate to cloak me in another identity, and the one my adoptive parents chose for me based on nothing other than that it was a name they both liked the sound of. In that way, it has come to pass that my records have bestowed a false birthday and a false name on me.

All of this ran through my mind as I handed over my passport to the Customs agent in London's airport. I wondered if he knew that in many ways, the trail from my birth to my present would be impossible to find. I must find a way to remember this, I told myself.

"Judith Gambrell," the Customs agent said as he studied my passport. "Do you have anything to declare?"

Such a standard question. What might he do if I told him the truth?

"No," I said and smiled pleasantly at him.

Inside, my gut churned. Someone was watching me. Someone I did not know. This is how it feels to be hunted, I thought.

I had noticed the young man on the flight. No, when I really had thought on it, I could have sworn I had seen him along the corridors of LaGuardia as I wound my way from one concourse to another to pick up the flight from New York to London. Perhaps it had only been my imagination, though. I tried to put it down to this general unease and fear I'd been encased within for days. It had only gotten worse after I'd spent a day and a night in my mother's inner sanctum. And then another day ripping apart every clue she'd left in her house. I'd tried to destroy them all. Ever since I'd walked away from the place in Captiva, I hoped I had done the right thing. But I felt then that time was not a luxury. I only knew two things: I had to begin the journey my mother had foretold for me and I had to get to Max. He would protect me.

Whether the young man had indeed been shadowing me at the New York airport or not, I was not totally sure. And even if he was, it could never have been because he knew who I was. No matter when our paths had first crossed, I had really taken full note of him on the plane, as he moved down the aisle and paused when he reached my row of seats. He had looked hard at the numbers on the bulkhead over me and then frowned at the number on his boarding pass. He had seemed almost ready to sit next to me but an older man brusquely asked him to give him the room he needed to claim that seat the young man was eyeing. The young man had sat two rows behind me. He was small, wiry, young. Maybe in his early twenties. His dark brown hair was short and done in that avant-garde style of messy spikey fringes sticking up and out in odd, uneven angles at the top of his head. He wore a black t-shirt, black slacks and sneakers. He read a book and watched me. Like that was all he was on the plane to do. Every time I glanced back at him, he tried to beguile me with a carefree smile. He stood near me while we waited to claim our bags. He chatted to me as we stood in line, me behind him, to pass through the Customs area. I looked up during my interview with the Customs agent and saw the young man hovering about outside the smoky-brown door to the main terminal.

My only consolation was that he could not have a weapon as he'd just gone through Customs. I don't know why I thought about that.

When I was cleared through the official inquiry that determined I was safe to enter this country, I stopped before exiting that area to call Max. I had not given him any details on when I'd be arriving, only the day I planned to travel. I had spoken to him just the day before, just before I left Captiva, and he had asked me for my arrival information. I had said something to the effect that nothing was really that settled yet but I'd let him know. I had sensed he wasn't going to be pleased that I'd never called him back once I booked my flights but the truth was, I hadn't been certain that I should put him to so much trouble as to meet me there when I could take a taxi to his place.

No, that's not the truth. It's what I'd tell him, but the truth was less sure than that. In fact, it had been in my mind that perhaps I should spend time examining why it was that I was so willing to simply put such faith in him but that maybe I should know more about him first. I had had this thought that maybe I'd spend a day or two in London on my own, learning what I could about this man in whom I felt such deep, utter belief that had not needed proof.

"Can you pick me up at the airport?" I asked him when he answered his phone. Just jumped in because I was rattled and needed him. No preamble. No soft words of need. No revelation of how relieved I was to hear him and know he was somewhere close enough to be of use to me. "I've just arrived."

He must have heard something in my voice. "You should have told me your flight information. I would have been on hand to greet you. Wait for me in the international arrivals lounge. I will be there in an hour."

"Max?"

"Yes, my lady?"

"Hurry."

Perhaps I sounded to him as if I was only in need of being near him because I so longed to be with him as a man who incited passion within me. Or perhaps he somehow heard through what he would have liked that to mean to realize that I was in danger. I never asked him.

The young man sat near me after following me to the arrivals lounge. I chose a seat close to the uniformed guard who monitored this area. After about forty minutes, the young man looked up from his book, glanced at his watch, looked about as if making a decision, looked at me with a sweet smile and then got up and left.

A heavy sigh left me. A few minutes later, an elegant woman of about thirty sank into the seat that faced me across a small aisle and asked me what the local time was.  By her accent, I knew she came from that ubiquitous northeast Atlantic coast area of the U.S. I felt this affinity for her; like me, a lone traveler across the big ocean. After she adjusted her wristwatch to meet my answer, she looked up toward me, a word on her lips, a conversation about to start between two women waiting in a foreign country. But before she could say anything, her eyes darted to my left and they widened in this brief look that almost seemed she'd seen something that frightened her.

I turned, expecting the worst to greet my eyes. But instead, it was the one vision I most needed to see.

"Oh God, Max!" I sobbed out his name as I rose and rushed into his startled embrace. He whispered against my hair, asking me what was wrong. I looked up into his eyes. "Someone was following me and ... Oh God. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't shown up."

"Who? Where? Show me, Eris." In his voice, on his face, I read one thing: this man would not allow harm to come to me.

"He might be gone now. He left this area a few minutes ago." I described the young man to Max.

He peered slowly around us, his eyes studying the crowd, taking measure of every man in there. When he looked down at me, his intensity gave me a feeling of safety. "Did he threaten you in some way, Eris? Tell me what he did to you."

"No, he didn't actually do anything ... he just ..." It swept over me. I'd overreacted. I'd been looking for a threat and I'd invented one. I sagged against Max. "I'm sorry. I am not normally so paranoid. I've just been a bit ... jittery."

"Perhaps you are simply tired, Eris?" he said softly as he stroked my jaw. 

I blushed at my foolishness. He smiled in response. I felt the full awareness of his proximity. I remembered walking into the ocean with him. How it felt that first time in his arms. The cool water. The heat of his skin. The brace of the waves. The steadiness of his body. The pull of the current. The desire in his eyes. The wildness of the coast. Our primal natures unleashed in that one, exquisite moment of recognition.

"I'm so glad to see you, Max. Could we start over? Perhaps we can pretend that I greeted you less like a crazy woman and more like a woman who ..."

"A woman who? Yes?" he said it soft, his mouth parting ever so slightly as he let the word 'yes' linger on his lips.

"A woman who wants nothing more than to pick up where we ended in Finis Terrae," I said evenly. The sense of Max seemed to restore my dodgy equilibrium.

Our eyes held the other. People around us ... did they notice the intensity in the air reverberate and echo about our bodies?

"Are these your bags?" he asked me. I noticed the woman was gone. "This is all you brought? And here I thought you only packed lightly when you would have to carry your own items."

He said it with that wry wit of his. It made me chuckle when he glanced up at me as he picked up the small suitcase and the backpack I'd brought with me.

I walked close to his side as we left the airport and entered the parking garage. I looked around, still nervous. Still waiting on that young man to jump out at us. But the area was deserted. Max drew to a stop at a black Mercedes and I studied its soft lines as I thought about how it surprised me not a bit that he would drive something like this. I heard the trunk snap shut after he'd stowed my bags there. When I looked back toward Max, he was advancing on me. He would never be denied. His mouth light against mine, his hand behind my head to lock me to him, his other hand at the small of my back to lock my groin to his, his tongue now pressing between my lips, now past my teeth. My arms were around his waist, shooting up his back until I was pressing his chest into mine. Lost inside the cloud of lust that came from nowhere yet had never been far away from my dreams of him.

This was how he greeted me. As a man.

He gentled out of the kiss with small sips of my mouth and lingering nips of his lips upon my jaw. His mouth ended up over my ear. "You may stop worrying about being followed or being in any danger. That is my job, to watch over you, as I once promised. And you must always follow my words of instructions when it comes to matters of your safety, Eris. Do I have your most solemn vow?"

I nodded into his neck. He gave me only a small moment to absorb this before he opened the passenger door and gave me his hand to help me inside.

Inside his apartment, he seemed as if he were off a beat or two. He motioned to the kitchen, nodded his head in the direction of the bathroom. That was the grand tour, I thought to myself with an inward chuckle. He said he would place my bags in the bedroom.

Everything was sparse inside his living room, I noted as I stood there looking around when he left with my bags. Not sparse in that there were not 'things' about but sparse in the space given to them to breathe. Utilitarian. Neat. Regimented. Even the books on his large bookcase were lined in military precision.

Only one thing seemed out of place in this living room.

A flare of an indulgence. A piece of refined, sophisticated sculpture upon a marble stand that stood just to the left of a fireplace. It was an almost pure white marble owl. It was a style that marked it as ancient and mysterious. My fingers reached out to touch its soft round shapes and my eyes fluttered at a sensation that felt like someone had reached out and stroked sensuously down my spine.

The next thing I remembered was Max touching my fingers as they stroked over the oval beak of the owl. His eyes were steady on mine. His other hand dappled and caressed down my lower spine, into that dip that comes just before the rise to my derriere.

He had been nervous before. For some reason, I understood then. He'd simply been overawed to find me there with him, to face that reality, to know it was happening. No longer were we both out of time and ordinary place in Finis Terrae, where our paths had joined. Now here I was in his solid reality. With the excitement of the airport gone, he had probably stood there watching me standing in his living room and realized that I was there with him. I was there on purpose. I was there intending to continue on the path with him.

"You wished to pick up where we left off, my lady? There is so much within that sentiment with which I would agree. I would wash away the days between when I last saw you and this moment. I would remember passion in your arms. I would see again the fire in your eyes that I placed there. I would see you loose, barely able to recover after I have loved you," he whispered hoarsely. He leaned toward me. I saw the specks of gold in his eyes flash. His breath felt like the most welcome source of air in my life. His hoarseness continued as he spoke into my neck and as his hand dropped from the owl and gently cupped one of my breasts. "May I be prurient and tell you how I have laid awake at night with thoughts of you and our intimacy keeping me from rest?"

I was unprepared for that level of honesty until I remembered that this was the way we had been with each other in Finis Terrae. I reached back for that way I'd been with him. I reached inside and found it right there on the surface needing only this utter, inescapable allure of his definitive masculinity to remind me of the impact he'd had upon me. My entire being felt alive. Fear, nerves, unease ... they fled in the face of what it was like to be alone with him again.

"Maximus, your words! How they stir me. How they bring back the memories of erotic moments with you that I have dreamed of so many times that I began to wonder if I would wear these dreams out! I have such need for your desire of me; never hold back. Surely this must be our destiny?"

His hand grasped mine and he held it to his mouth. Each fingertip was licked. This slow, adamant way of reacquainting his taste buds with me. He took a step back and drew me with him gently but uncompromisingly. It was an overwhelming sight. A man such as this ... the honesty between us.

"The images I saw fired my blood. The memory of your scents - both the perfume that reminded me of you and the natural aroma of your womanhood still assailed my senses." He pulled me closer to him, placing my hand at the small of his back before cupping my face in both of his. There was no tenderness in his gaze. Only hunger. I could not speak. His voice was firmer, unequivocal male, more sure than ever of the fact that this was a continuation of our first time. "I am but flesh and blood after all and my body has its own response. Does it shock you to know what you have brought me to? My Stoic reserve in tatters before the desire for your body and presence back in my life?"

"Not shock. Awareness that in you is the mirror for my own desires. I am here now, Max. In this night, it is love I offer you along with my body."

"I will take your all." Perhaps it was the way my other hand trembled as it reached to stroke his neat beard. What had been a hoarse voice of a man about to take a woman became a suitor who wished a willing captive for his most carnal desires made flesh. "Forgive me if I speak too plainly. It is not lust but passion that drives."

"I need your passion. Give it to me."

My voice gave out as his body stepped into me. I opened to him. Every sweat-soaked dream of him taking me evaporated in the face of the real thing.

His mouth never touched mine for so long. It kissed over my eyes. It rushed and roared over my ear. It bit and sucked into my neck and throat. It followed desperate fingers that unclothed me in tactical strikes in between my efforts to unveil his bare skin to my own searching hands. It waited until he had picked me up and wrestled my body onto a black leather couch. It never hesitated again when my legs were pulled apart before kissing and licking my folds. It spoke hoarse words to my ears as his body came atop my writhing form. It touched my mouth only when his hardness gained entrance to the core of me and I was saying harsh words, cursing to him to fuck me fuck me fuck me.

When had I ever been this way with a man? When had desire driven me to forget to stay tucked neatly within myself even when sharing my body with another person? This is what he'd done to me ever since that first morning together in which he'd found the way to my body's deepest, secret ability to react to a man who knew me as if he'd been given preternatural knowledge of me.

"I love you, Max," I mouthed against his temple after his coming filled me such immense feelings toward him that I didn't think I could ever do them justice with words. We lay sprawled on the couch, his weight pressing me down into the buttery softness of the leather. He moaned and was still moving blindly within me, not yet growing noticeably softer and still eking out every single iota of tactile comfort he took just to be inside me. The scent of his semen tangled with my own scent of arousal. It struck me as the most pungent proof of his masculinity.

"I would swim up inside you if it would mean I could keep you with me forever," he groaned to me. "I had never thought to find this love with you."

Was this a portent of our union? Admission of love we'd felt from the first moment we'd really released our spirits to find each other in Finis Terrae? And now, walking to face a pilgrimage we neither of us fully could have contemplated yet never once flinched from? Where he would need my ties to blood and I would need his courage to shed blood?

"We know so little about each other." I said it to his neck.

"We know the important things." He said it to my temple.

In his bed, I lay in his arms in the dark of night and couldn't sleep. My body was on a different time zone. He was reluctant to let me lie awake alone. Yet I could tell by the languor of his body that he was unconsciously longing for some rest.

"I quit my job," I told him.

"I am in the military," he told me.

"Can you take leave?"

"Say the word. I will do it."

"Get some sleep now. We'll talk more in the morning."

I waited until his sounds slowed and when he snored ever so lightly. I slid slowly out of his hold and left his bed. In the moonlight, I watched him sleep. Should I use him in this manner, I wondered. Yet I had been sent to him. Or perhaps I'd misunderstood my mother's vision to me. Sometimes I had not been able to figure out the full meaning of her riddles until it was almost too late.

This I knew, though. I would need him. I could trust Max with my very life. I could trust no one else if I wanted to survive the coming pilgrimage.

I wandered into his living room and felt the owl draw me near. With both hands, I stroked it until the marble felt warm beneath my palms. Before me, darkness opened and I saw shadows play. Steamy shifts of gray made it hard to find details to focus upon. I thought I saw a woman's feet dangling between the three legs of a stool. There was a blonde man, it seemed to me.

This was so strange. I pulled my hands from the owl when the scene shifted. I knew then that whatever it was, I would be drawn forward even if it were against my will.

When I woke, it was mid afternoon in London. I was in Max's bed. Alone. I stretched hard and slowly rose from the deepness of sleep. Inside his bathroom, I relieved the fullness of my bladder as I examined this stark white space. He even had white towels. I took a quick shower and, later, as I brushed my teeth, I studied my face in the mirror. It was flushed from a night with him. This woman before me was reeling from the impact he'd had on her body; she felt safe and languid for the first time in days.

Inside the bedroom, I pulled a t-shirt from my suitcase and shrugged it on as I padded bare-footed down the hall into the living room. Sunlight flooded the space and particles of dust danced before my eyes. I found him in the kitchen, reading at his table there. In his big hands, the book seemed delicate. His eyes followed my progress toward him. When I bent to give him a kiss, he grabbed my upper arm and pulled me none too gently into his lap. His kiss was playful. A peck here. There. Teasing me. Keeping away from really giving me a kiss of depth. I tried to capture his lips; he kept them from mine. I put my hands on his face and tried to keep him still. I giggled like a child at this silly lover's game. His eyes calmly studied me. He was too strong for me to control. I loved that feeling.

"So delicate," he whispered to my chest when my laughter eased and I lay back against the table to peer up at him with a lazy smile upon my face. "And here I was falling in love with you."

"Was? You know very well you are already." I teased him back and pulled myself up to stretch like a cat along his body. "You are only asking yourself how you ever made it this far without me in your life. Admit it."

"Then I admit it. And shall I call you Judith or Eris when I whisper endearments to you, my lady?" he asked me in a sudden too-soft whisper.

I froze in his arms but he gripped me in tight to his chest. His mouth at my ear. His voice tough; his tone hushed as if waiting to be hurt. "Why have you hidden your identity from me? Your identification ... who are you?"

"It is a story," I told him. He shook me gently. "I had planned to tell you."

But still, I did not tell him the fullness of the truth. It was not yet time.

I laid my head on his shoulder, my fingers kneaded the sleeve of his shirt. I spoke the words so easily. It never worried me that they came so easily, these not-quite-lies, this truth in abeyance.

"Max, when we met, I was using my birth name for a reason. I thought it could help me release my every day worries so that I could take all I should from the pilgrimage. But I didn't lie; Eris was the name my mother gave me. What I didn't say was that my adoptive parents re-named me. This is the Judith Gambrell name on my passport and every other document you could ever find. I meant no harm." He loosened his hold on me and I sat up to look in his eyes. "You reacted with such incredible interest and understanding to the name Eris. For the first time in my life, that's who I wanted to be. With you, it's who I am."

His eyes studied mine, as if seeking confirmation of the truth. I gazed at him and thought true thoughts to disguise truths not yet revealed. I thought of winters spent lost amidst the library racks in college. I thought of two summer internships that allowed me to earn my keep while engaging in archeological research projects in lands far more exotic than one with my financial background should have ever touched. I thought of my hands as they held clumps of that raw earth in Greece and the way that earth seemed to send electrical charges through me. I thought of feeling that same charge the instant my foot touched the path to Finis Terrae. I thought of that first morning with Max, spent and lost within elements of myself I'd never known existed. I thought of all the essential ingredients of him that he'd let me learn about already; I thought of how much I wished to know every single one of his hopes and dreams. I thought of how I longed to make him feel that the parts of him that suffered, they had met the one person who could take his pain and turn it into a shining love that knew no bounds.

"Since we have met, Eris, I have found myself alone no longer. I was not expecting to meet someone at this time of my life. You changed everything. Even when you were so many miles from me, I knew my walk through this life could now be done with a companion. You. But I also knew that I had no choice but to wait for you to come to me of your own volition. That from there, you might be with me if the fates allowed." His fingers captured my chin. His eyes examined mine. His tongue crept out, absent-mindedly examining his own lips. At last, his chin tilted up in an almost-haughty reaction. "Tell me no more lies, Eris."

"It wasn't really a lie, was it, Max?"

He gave me a look of supreme warning. I blushed and looked away.

"Eris, there is something more to your coming to see me, isn't there? You are safe to tell me."

With a long sigh, I chanced a glance back at his face. I found only patience there. Could he understand? "When I called you from Florida, you told me, 'If my strength and my heart can be put to your service then you know that I will never falter. I will be as a faithful hound to watch you when you sleep and shadow your steps when danger lurks unseen.' I knew then that you would help me. I had heard those words before, in a dream. I did not understand them at the time; now I wonder if you were even then drawing me forward to meet you in this time when what you offer me is the one thing I needed to find."

His warm hands settled upon my hips and his eyes narrowed before he said, "I meant those words. However I may serve you, I will not fail you. Tell me what I may do for you, Eris."

Ah. He understood then, I thought. This man ... where had he come from to have such faith, such insight? To not be at all shaken by this revelation that I'd heard his words in a past dream even before he'd thought to utter them? Where had his faith in me come from?

"You told me you believed in signs and portents. I have had such a sign just last week, a dream in which I heard your words and also saw a sign I did not recognize until last night," I said. "I have told no one this, Max, but a vision sent me to Finis Terrae and there I met you upon the road. It wasn't until later ... until that other dream and then you saying these words to me in that phone call that I realized ... I was meant to meet you. And this dream, Max, in which I heard those words you later said to me? It was that dream that made me realize my pilgrimage wasn't over. My way forward will lead me to go to places in the world that would not be safe for a woman to travel alone. It is an adventure of my life and I have no choice but to proceed. If I have you to travel this path with me, danger is bested by your vigilance over me."

"Tell me of the sign you saw in your dream."

"Your owl, Max," I told him, pointing to the small statue in his living room. "In my dream a white owl came to me at the cusp of day as I wandered up a stony path with trees around me that were out of place from where I've ever lived. But in my travels, I have seen such landscape in Greece and Turkey. And into this dream, came your words."

My hands cupped his face. His eyes were almost liquid. His hands were under my t-shirt; flat upon the small of my back; gently, imperceptibly inching me closer to him. My voice gained the intensity of the moment's passion.

"My dream, your words. Together they point me to where I would most wish to be and had feared to go. Spiritual revelations and prophecies come so often at high points of danger. When we met, Max, we traveled to the end of the earth; this time, will you come with me to the gate of heaven? Would that be 'porta Olympus' in your tongue? That was a guess -- am I even close?"

He blinked a few times. A slight frown on that rugged face that was already so dear to me. "The gates of heaven. The term could be rendered many ways. Portae Olympi perhaps - if I were a god, which I am not, far from it. If I am blessed, Portae Elysii, the gates of Elysium, that heaven for mortals across the river Lethe where all earthly cares are forgotten." His hands had brought me so close that all he had to do was purse his lips to find mine. Find them he did. One light peck. A shy smile from him that took years from his visage. "But there are many heavens, and until I close my eyes and give myself over to that final sleep, I wish for one that does not require my death. Or at least only the small death. Within your portals, madame, where heaven on earth lies."

"Olympus. What a thought," I whispered across the fraction of an inch between us. My finger played upon his lips. It swam inside his mouth for a lingering second before I removed it and then suckled the taste of him within my own mouth. "But in this case, the gate of heaven is on Patmos at the Cave of Revelations. It is a perilous journey these days. I would never chance it without you, Max. Have you been to Patmos? I have not but I have been to other islands in this swath of the sea of seven blues. Can you feel the beat of the sea as the pulse of a woman's inner core?"

It was as if we were speaking a dual language. One of practical matters of the journey ahead to Patmos, a Greek island off the coast of Turkey ... the other of the journey ahead to slating the lust that our innuendo had moved us into. This man. This woman. We responded to the honesty of our bodies as if it was the most potent omen of them all. Perhaps it was.

"Portae Olympi," he said hoarsely as he pushed a finger slowly, gently into my vagina.

"Gate of heaven," I whispered in response. "It opens for you."

"I will not fail you, Eris."

I did not know if he was giving me his own prophecy. But it was a powerful message, no matter what drove it.

Whatever conventions might have withheld another man ... whatever reserve I had found within myself in the past with other men ... none of this ever mattered with Max. He simply gave himself over to his passion. It was enthralling. It was basic. It was primal.

He lifted my hips to the table before him. With no artifice or reason to cajole me, he simply tugged my t-shirt off over my head. Then he told me to lie down as he reached to sweep his book from where it might have interfered with me. My hands clung to the fabric of his shirt, gripping in as he rose from his seat and at the look on his face, I lowered myself to a prone position upon his kitchen table. I thought about the lonely meals he must have served himself upon this table. I thought about the lonely meals I had prepared and served myself at a small table in a much smaller kitchen on a faraway continent.

Alone no longer.

My hands would not release his shirt. I felt him jostle against my body and looked down to watch as his big hands undid the snap and zipper of his jeans. I watched as he slowly lowered them. He wanted me to watch. He enjoyed me watching him about to take me.

His hard penis strained forward when it was released from where the jeans had captured it. He let the jeans drop and one of his hands gathered his cock at its base. He stroked it, his hand looking strong. Gentle, sweet drops of liquid gathered at the tip and his palm stroked over them, lubricating the length of his shaft as he continued to proudly masturbate before me.

I closed my eyes at the sight. "Such beauty," I whispered to him.

"Such beauty," he echoed to me.

His other wrist nudged my hip and I glanced down to see that he was now leaning in over me, his hand upon the table bracing him, balancing him in a gesture of dominance.

"How can you make me feel such abandon?" I asked him as I stroked his arm and tried to draw his chest down upon mine. I was not desperate. I only wanted to understand emotions and passion that had changed so much of me recently. He was a key to what was happening to me. It was more than my mother's death. It was Max's presence in what remained of my life. He had unlocked something within me.

He slipped his hand beneath the small of my back as he bent to lick into my navel. I arched in response to his simple gesture of wet, wide tongue upon exposed flesh. Looking out through narrowed eyes, my eyelashes gave the world a fluttering look. I was breathing through my mouth; uneven, loud, unfeminine pants of building chaos. He stopped jerking himself off; he placed that hand firmly over one of my breasts and shoved it, nipple first, into his mouth as he bent over me. I felt the hard nudging of his penis between my thighs but he was content to play with my body a bit before we joined man inside woman.

I muttered his name; it lodged deep within my throat. It sounded almost animalistic, this noise I was making that begged him to take me flying again.

"I had a dream as well, Eris," he said as he pulled my flesh from his mouth. I closed my eyes; arched my neck; held my other breast up and forced the nipple against his cheek. He responded to my plea and sucked it within his mouth. His teeth held it while his tongue flickered against the hard tip of my nipple until I shivered deep within the core of me.

"Tell me your dream, Max," I cried out as I bit back on a guttural cry of response when he suckled deep, tough, uncompromising. He made me wait until he was ready to release my breast. He laid his cheek upon my belly.

"In my dream, a wolf patrolled the night. In his path, a python. Between them passed recognition and respect. The wolf turned back and a woman stood waiting. His mistress. His reason for being on that path."

Every bit of quiet in the room began to crush me in the wake of his words. Who was this man who had visions, believed in destiny, did not blink from portents? Where had he come from to be here with me in this moment of such peril and such opportunity? Did he have answers when I only thought he would help me find them?

"Max, I need ..." I put my hands on his face as I opened my eyes. He released my breast and stared into my heart. I was so close to telling him more of the truth I had been withholding until I knew the right moment was there.

He shook his head at me and his eyes dropped down my body. His hand under my lower back lifted me into such a high arch that my belly brushed against his hovering chest. And then his mouth was there, kissing seductively into soft, giving skin. A deep, lyrical sigh from me produced a resonant, rasping growl from him. It was as if I'd loosened into the female with that reminder of his power; and he quickened into primal man.

He rose from me; my back stayed lightly arched of its own volition as I wriggled slowly on the table before him. My hands dropped between my thighs as he watched me with shadowed eyes. I felt ... Oh, God ... what I felt in that moment. Abandon. Pure desire. Naked lust. Absolute femininity.

My hands pulled my legs apart even as I raised my feet to place their soles upon the edge of that table. With bent knees splayed, I opened myself fully to his gaze. He licked his lips and looked his fill. I stroked through my wetness with fingers of both hands. It was as if now that I had decided to display myself to him, I wanted to display the depths of my willingness to be a sexual being.

It felt so good. I felt no shyness. How could I with the look upon his face as I gave myself pleasure?

His fingers of one hand joined mine. He did not chase my hands away at first; he simply joined in playing with me. But it took little time for him to place his fingers upon the nub of my nerves and to be taking me higher than I could have gone with myself. This was when my hands fell away from my body. I gave myself over to him. His own hands moved from there and I felt his slick fingers dig into skin at my hips even as his face neared my juncture and he audibly sniffed in my aroma. The scent he'd told me he had remembered long after I'd left him in Spain to return to Atlanta.

A whisper in the morning that I did not catch just before he kissed me there and I responded.

What I remember most is the feel of his big hands upon my waist. He held my waist and I writhed beneath the force of his mouth and tongue. His hands felt rough, with textured fingerprints and hardened pads. His hands were unrelenting in their determination to hold fast to my body even as they flexed and gently let me move around. His hands ... they pulled me to his mouth as he sunk into the chair before my exposed crotch.

My fingers curled and intertwined the short, proper locks of his hair. I was fascinated by what it was like to be touching the top of his head while he turned and probed and explored me. And even as I came, I was pulling relentlessly on his hair and commanding him to fill me. When his head rose from between my thighs, I watched through my lashes as he regarded me. There, at his mercy, seeking his body. Reduced to my barest elements.

But this was not how he saw me.

"Lady... you make me forget all things... no woman ever gave herself to me with such devotion... Your beauty... your beauty is as much your spirit as your form..." His chin glistened softly with evidence of the way I responded to him. He came slowly up my body, stopping first to kiss my belly and whisper there, "Someday."

When he said it, that one word, something inside me responded. I felt some awareness of the future that quickened my heart and made me clutch for him when he drew closer. I whispered against his chest as he came inside me, pushing hard, pulling back and then thrusting full in ... three times more before he broke through spasms within my walls that made his entry a challenge. But the sensation of him filling me chased me back to reality. I met his thrusts as best I could. His hands under my buttocks helped my response be strong enough to suit his need. He buried his face in my neck and pumped. We spoke in words that were punctuated by his thrusts. They were mindless words of love and release ... they hardly mattered.

He came into me. I felt his warm semen cascade and bathe my womb. I trembled as much from the orgasms as from the way the absolute awareness of that man's essence inside me made me feel.

We had so much to protect. We had so much to face.

That day, he helped me make the arrangements to travel to Patmos.

We left the next morning.

A pilgrimage that began with him taking me to the end of the earth was to continue with me taking him to the gate of heaven. What better omen could there be that this meant something signal in our lives? I would wait until I learned the revelation on Patmos before telling him ... our journey would not end there. It would be perilous for both of us. His destiny was entwined with mine. It might end with me.