Note: Sometimes, a story can come to you as a gift when someone else has an idea that creates a visual in your mind so strong that you simply must write it. That's how this story was. It began with a casual comment from Uma about Maximus. I let it go almost immediately, because I was only then working on the first in a series of Maximus pieces. But this idea she planted refused to go away and I couldn't get it out of my mind that there was something I wanted to explore that I was not letting myself examine because I didn't think I was capable of writing it. And then one night I asked Uma if she remembered this comment she'd made to me about Maximus and, with her encouragement, I started thinking about exploring this character more than I have ever been willing to try. I asked her so many questions, seeking her perspective on what she saw in his character and also in the context of the society in which he lived. All those questions helped me figure out what this character would be in my story and how I would see him -- not exactly as she sees him, but of course I wouldn't see him the same as an historian well-versed in and affectionate about his culture. Not only did she contribute essential dialogue for Maximus, but she challenged my conceptions in a way that forced me to go deeper into my initial visual. Then, one day, I saw this story like it had already been written. So powerful was this image that I ended up writing most of this in a few days. And then Uma spent so much time helping me refine it and it became something far better than I could have done on my own. Who can ever say a simple thanks when someone's been that essential to you being able to realize a story? This is the only way I could think of.

 

 

December, 2003

There is always this place I go to in my mind when I have to fly long distances. It's like I get into a groove that has nothing to do with the time zone I left nor the time zone I arrive at. I think it's why jet lag hits me hard. Even when I sleep on the flights, I still feel like I'm missing on a few cylinders when I land.

The plane banked in for its final approach and I looked down at blue water shimmering with highlights. It was day where I was landing and my body was so sure it was night. And I was feeling every single hour of this long trip.

I was also feeling that disappointingly familiar sense of disconnect. 

I had been so sure when I left that I was thrilled to be going to see Maximus again. I had mentally re-read every email we'd exchanged since he'd been gone these weeks. I had heard his voice a thousand times when he had asked me to come to him.

But over the course of that flight, I'd heard that familiar inner voice that tells me the bad reality. And it was telling me this was a mistake. That I'd misread him. That he'd only asked me over because he was lonely and horny.

'That wouldn't be such a bad thing,' I told my inner voice in response. 'I like being with Maximus lately. Besides, haven't I said that I'd try being the woman a man I want to be with needs from now on rather than continuing to always just take from them? What he needs right now is that I be the substitute for the woman he'd like to be having a hot affair with. And that's fine. I still care about him and I like the sex.'

So all I get out of it is sex, eh? Sure, sure. I kept saying it to myself ... because I needed to be convinced again.

The plane didn't land so much as it plunked down on the runway. It jarred me to reality and by the time I was moving out into the terminal, I felt ... like I remembered the old rhythms with Max.

The way we sparred and jousted. The verbal warfare. The challenge we loved being with each other. The respect and friendship.

And then I felt him. Like this brush with a rough charge of pure man. 

And then I saw him. Waiting patiently for me. Watching me intently. Giving me that slight bow of his upper body when he realized that I'd spotted him. No smile.

And through the crowds of people arriving and meeting, we wove our way toward each other.

"Anna," he said to me, his soft voice pitched low and neutral as it drew out my name like he so often did now that he was calling me this. Anna. Every time I heard him call me that, I felt like he was giving me a compliment.

"Max." I touched his face and grinned at him. And off went my smart mouth. "Mmm. I still like the new look. Fetching, Max. You look every inch the seasoned K&R professional. Terry and Dino would be so proud."

He had this short beard, all neat and trimmed, that covered and accentuated the jaw line and even way up his cheeks and down onto his neck. It looked divine on him, those wisps of black whiskers. His hair was just a bit longer but still crisp looking. Damn but he looked good. And the way he was dressed ... my God, it was like he knew just how I wanted him to be. Jesus. It was obscene. I could just picture him in his work mode. These soft wool slacks, black, tailored to hang from him like a dream. A light charcoal grey sweater that hugged his body with shallow ribs that accentuated the cut of his chest. And over it all, a black leather bomber jacket.

"Nice of you to remember my leather fetish," I said with a chuckle, fingering his jacket's collar. He gave me a look as he reached to take my laptop bag from where it was slung over my shoulder.

"It's good to see you, Anna," he whispered hoarsely near my ear. "Welcome to Dubrovnik."

It sent shivers racing down me and I looked away from him.

Let him lead me toward baggage claim and we barely spoke. I felt this case of nerves battling for supremacy with the jitter-jatter of jet lag fatiguing. When my bag came off the carousel and he reached for it, I studied his ass and longed to touch it. Shook myself hard and willed myself to be alert because I was just never sure what to expect with Max.

Too far from home. Never a good thing when I felt the loss of control. Eager to be with him. Unsure how to react to just how eager I was and how glad I was to be near him again.

Inside the parking garage, I stood waiting for him as he placed my bags in the trunk of his car. When he came to unlock my door, I stepped away to give him space. But his hand on my waist checked my movement. And a moment later, he had me pressed up against the side of the car ... his hands hard on me under my open coat ... and he was kissing me like he was almost angry with me.

I'd almost forgotten how good he tastes. How exquisitely he kisses. How weak he makes me feel.

"Is this really you going so fast, Maximus?" I muttered when he drew his lips from mine. "What happened to that stoic who could wait months in frozen lands and still deny himself?"

"Would you have me deny us both then, my lady?" he replied, his voice suddenly hard as glass and I knew he'd caught on that I had pulled back from where we'd been in our recent communications. "Which of us will be begging the other first? I am not sure I've seen evidence of your ability to deny yourself when it comes to a good fuck, as you would say it."

I took in a sharp breath. My eyes searched for the tops of my shoes. I felt my face flame and my temper flare. "Well, that was a long way to come to be called a whore. And now that the trip's complete for me, I can just get out on the next plane."

In the dead stillness that clamped in on us, I could only hear two people trying to control their hard breathing and the rustle of his leather jacket as he shifted his stance. And then his voice cut in like a knife ... sharp, cleaving the moment in two.

"Is this what you want, Ann? Where is my Anna? Let's not retreat back behind masks. Either of us."

His hands were instantly gentle on me, rubbing warmly along my back. I imagine he felt me trying hard to relax with him. I cleared my throat and tried to find appropriate words. "Maximus, I am afraid that this wasn't ..."

"No," he said, his voice rough and edgy. "I need your strength, mistress. I need the woman who has helped me seek another way to approach my life. Forgive me for my harsh words; they were beneath us. Let us find a way to start this visit over."

I looked up into his eyes and knew what that had cost him. I owed him the same courage he'd just showed me. "Sorry, Maximus. I do want to spend this time with you. I was looking forward to this chance to get to know you better. Maybe it's just jet lag has got me all gee-gawed."

His mouth flickered with his attempt not to smile. "Gee-gawed?"

"Yeah. You know?" He shook his head at me and gave me that condescending chuckle he does. The one that feels like he's putting me in my place so successfully. I smacked him lightly on his chest and glared at him as I felt the tension between us break and our rhythm get in sync. "Stop it. You know what that means. It means I'm seriously fucked up from flying way too many long ass hours to get here to you."

"You have such a flare for words, Anna. No wonder you work with them for your living," he said and this time I would have cheerfully strangled him except it was funny.

I tried not to stare at him as he drove us into the city from the airport. The drive in took about a half-hour and we talked of utter nonsense on the way. And suddenly he pulled over on the hillside and we hopped out of the car. He pointed down toward the cluster of red-roofed buildings hugging the seaside that reflected gaily back at us in the sun. His voice sounded calm and so riveting as he pointed out the ancient wall - from medieval time, actually - that enclosed the oldest section of the city. When he stopped talking, it took me a few minutes to realize he was holding my hand in his and smiling at me.

"What?" I said and backed away from him.

"Come here to me," he said softly, tugging on my hand. "I was simply enjoying this view of you here with me. I had imagined it many times."

I felt myself blush as he enclosed me in a hug that made me feel warm all over.

Should I have known that he'd be staying at one of the best hotels in this place? When did Dino really chintz on such details when it came to this business? Not with his understanding about appearances and expectations.

The hotel was perched up a slope from the seaside and had its own beach. Truly, it was not just a hotel but more like a resort, with terraces and landscaping and its own restaurant and outdoor café. Max was in a corner room, eight stories up. From one side of his balcony, we could look out over the water; from the other one, we could gaze at the luster of a seaside city that was increasingly seeing its tourist trade return after the internal wars that forever marked this land in the memory of people from my own country. I had actually been very dubious about coming to Dubrovnik when Max had first asked me.

Croatia is much too dangerous, I'd said. It's safe in this city, he'd told me, and so beautiful you will adore it. If it's so safe, then why is it a hotspot worthy of your new employers assigning an operative, I'd retorted. This is simply the safe place for me to operate out of but the mission will often call me into Bosnia, which is far from safe, he'd told me. It had made me see something in all this - a reminder that what Max and Terry and Dino did was always inherently dangerous for them.

It had been a few weeks that Max had been in Dubrovnik. He'd spent his time setting up a network of operatives and beginning his efforts in whatever the mission was. I hadn't asked about it; I always knew there were aspects to what they did that I shouldn't know about.

We'd seen each other in a hurried night about ten days before he flew out of the States for this posting. In that space of time between, we'd traded emails, talked on IM and even talked by phone once when we both happened to be awake and alone at the same time. There was a different tenor to our communications since our last night. A stronger friendship. He seemed more open with me, even a bit sentimental. I felt I'd found a new friend with whom I could talk about anything and everything - and always knew I'd get an insightful, intelligent response along with the education of his viewpoints.

And when he'd asked me to come there, at first I'd said yes and then I'd thought it wasn't a good idea. But then, I realized I'd missed his touch. Just the thought of Maximus and the way he could touch my body ... the way making love with him gave me memories that would make me shake for the intensity and mastery he brought to bear ... God. From the moment I said yes, in the back of my mind, I'd been counting the days and minutes down until we'd be here ... standing in his hotel room ... just us ... alone ... no distance.

And yet ... there we were and he never made a move to initiate anything. Another man feeling the way he was might have shoved me up against the door and begun fucking me senseless before the door had closed.

But not Max. And I suspected it was all part of his mystique. That way he can have of controlling me by controlling himself. And after his comment at the airport, I damned sure wasn't going to be the one to start by begging him to make love with me.

After we deposited my bags and he gave me the tour of the suite, he asked if I'd like to walk into the old town to have lunch. I heard my stomach growl at just the mention of food. I'll take that as a yes, he said wryly, and I blushed. He took me to a sidewalk café that was on a picture-perfect square with a huge fountain in it. I couldn't ever get over European cities like this - where there was never a scrap of green grass because ever inch was paved with stones. It was a charming sight for its distinct difference from my home.

I let him order for me and listened enchanted to his deep voice speaking a language I couldn't comprehend. He looked so at ease and as if he was enjoying the rhythm of this place. Over local wine, he let me ask him about this city, what he did to pass the time and I only asked questions that would keep him talking.

His voice ... I had missed it. And that unique mind. It was nothing more than that. But I was also feeling the other-worldliness of such experiences of coming into a foreign country where you don't know the language or lay of the land or customs ... where almost every single thing that happens to you for a while feels significant and mysterious.

"Let me take you back to the hotel," I heard him say to me and with a start, I realized that I'd been zoned out.

"No, no. I'm fine. Let's finish lunch," I said, my voice sounding sluggish to my ears.

"You are nearly about to fall asleep in your dish," he chided me. Rising from his place, he held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. It took us about fifteen minutes to get back to the room. In that time, I felt more refreshed ... just to get up and moving around, I suppose.

Now, don't think too badly of me. I had a new case of nerves in riding the elevator up to the room. The elevator doors closed and we were alone. He pulled me into his arms and held me. The way he moved into me. The way his hands stroked me. The way he whispered into my hair. Something about knowing with certainty that when we left this elevator and got in his room ... that he was expecting we'd have sex. Oh, good God, I asked myself, why would that scare me?

I came all this way, I told myself. Why be shy now?

But I was. Only now can I look back and understand that it was because this meant something to me - this first time with him after we'd begun to try to forge a deeper friendship and in doing so, he'd said things to me that were so sweet and sincere. Some of those emails and IM's ... we'd neither of us hidden behind the masks we normally did.

And this was going to mean something ... this first time we would be together since then.  It was another step and I had thought I was eager to take it but standing there in his arms ... I wasn't sure I was ready.

But when we got in the room, he simply escorted me into the bedroom, asked if I needed help unpacking and then withdrew, telling me he'd wake me up in a few hours and see if I felt I'd successfully slept off the jet lag.

When the door closed, I stood there staring at it. I wasn't sure if I was disappointed that Max hadn't ripped my clothes off and had at me ... or if I was flattered he'd cared enough to read the situation and had decided not to press me until he felt I was ready.

I unpacked quickly and took a quick cat bath to get rid of some of the travel feel. Pulling out the negligee that I'd bought just to wear for Max, I paused while I held the pale olive raw silk. And thought about what he'd said. That he'd be coming in to wake me up. Thought about how I'd love nothing more than for him to see me covered by nothing but a thin sheet. Thought about how I'd love to feel that such a sight might prove too much even for Max the stoic to resist. Eh, a version, albeit a weak one, of Basilinda, that game he'd taught me.

Refusing to question my befuddled mind, I slipped nude between the covers, nestled down into the mattress and don't remember much until ...

I heard my name. Someone whispering it, low and dangerous, right up against my ear. The light press of a firm body above me. The feel of breath on my neck and then lips on my throat and when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was stretched out with my head back and my neck arched ... riveted in a sensation that took my breath away and took me into another world.

"Oh God," said a voice that was like mine only so deep and husky.

"Anna," he was saying and I was reacting as much to the way he captured my name as to the way he held my body captive. "Be with me, Anna."

It took forever to regain control and relax until I could simply look up into his eyes. His face above mine, a hand smoothing back the hair from my eyes. When he saw me really focus on him, he gave me this flicker of a smile but the warning in his eyes was lurking just on the edges.

"Maximus," I whispered to him. "Am I dreaming? If so, please don't leave me."

Soft grunt of approval and then he moved against me. "Does that feel like a dream, lady?"

"God." It was only then I realized what it was that I was feeling. 

He was already fully sheathed inside me.

Full of him. So full I wondered how he'd been able to fit. I could feel myself contract around his girth as the realization hit me. That he'd somehow played with me in my sleep until I was wet and compliant ... and then he'd used every skill he possessed to enter me so slowly, so masterfully that it never even registered in me until he woke me with his voice and drew my attention to where he lay buried inside me. Just the image of what he'd been seeing when he'd been taking me ... how I must have sighed and moaned in my sleep ... how my body must have instinctively welcomed him ... I gushed around him as I wondered how hard he'd had to fight for control to witness the way even my unconscious wanted him.

A huge shiver raced through my body and I fought the enjoyment this brought me. It was like being conquered by a superior force and liking it. It was like being taken against my consent and wanting him to do it. It was a riot of conflicting feelings inside.

But as he began to move slowly in me, all it seemed like was he was taking me with him on a journey for which I'd bought a first-class, one-way ticket.

Maximus.

Never what I expect. Never what I plan on.

I could see him watching me, reading the flits of differing feelings and understandings race across my eyes. And when I was left with nothing but whimpering appreciation for the way he felt inside me, only then did he kiss me.

Slow. Forceful. Never letting me dodge his intent. Never letting me not acknowledge that I wanted his tongue as much as he wanted mine. Yet, languid in his exploration of my mouth.

Then, kissing across my jaw in light pulses timed to his soft thrusting below.

Mouth at my ear. "Do I have your attention now, mistress?"

"Yes. Absolutely." A deep catch in my voice.

That soft grunt and a harder thrust inside me. My answering moan.

"Good." Sucking kiss at my neck and I was trying to get my mouth on his skin, my hands kneading his back then drawing down to his ass and holding him there, pulling him into me. "Anna ... are you with me now? Do you remember me yet?"

We both stopped moving and our eyes met as his face hung above me again.

"I remember you."

"No more masks, little one. Be my Anna -- the woman I've come to know. Time to stop hiding from me."

All I could do was nod at him and then reach for his lips to seal the deal.

He was right and I knew it. But that didn't make it easy.

In my heart of hearts, I think I had known this visit would be an exploration of the friendship. It was a chance to start acting face-to-face the way we had begun to act in our communications. To just enjoy the discovery we'd made of the parts of us that could be easy-going as opposed to only the challenge.

And here he was, not letting me get away with retreating from our friendship's progress. Knowing that's what I'd been doing and probably also guessing that I'd done it almost by nervous habit.

"No masks, Max. Not today. Not in this moment." I sighed it out to him.

"We have no more need of them, Anna. We are safe with the other."

No man's ever totally safe. No man. And I would never lie to Maximus about something this important.

"We are as safe as we can be," I replied and I think he understood my meaning matched his as closely as it ever would.

His mouth met my throat and I gasped as he raised my knees even as he began to thrust more firmly into me. "I have missed you so, little one. Your memory has kept me company on many lonely nights."

I felt tears and blinked them away. To hear him say such a thing! I gave myself over to him, knowing he would take good care of me. Outside, it was dark and cool. Inside, it was light and warm.

Perhaps he really had been celibate during his time there as he seemed to imply. He certainly seemed to have stored up an abundance of sexual energy. Even when Max is not exposing me to new erotic ideas of lovemaking, he's granting me time with a skillful master of this act. He let me stay on my back under him until I came the first time.

He whispered against my ear as I was recovering from the rawness of that first coming ... telling me that now he was going to show me some of the ways he'd envisioned taking me. It made me come again, frantic in feeling it overwhelm me with a speed so unexpected.

On my knees. Feeling him going deep inside while his fingers played with my clit and his other hand fondled my breasts.  On top, giving him unfettered access to me and obeying his every order for my movements over him. Asking him to let me taste him but not surprised to be denied in the face of his own vision of what he wanted. "Later," he told me and I shuddered at the power of his implications. Rolling me over and licking into my folds while strong fingers clenched into my inner thighs and refused to let me go until I was speechless and whimpering.

And finally grunting in real need at me and coming into me like he would not be denied anything. My legs around his waist and my nails digging into his back as he went at me over and over. Murmuring into his neck. Gasping as my internal muscles clasped him so hard and I came again, crying into his chest even as he came with a deep groan of real joy.

I told him in the morning that he'd been the perfect cure to my jet lag. After he'd worn me out, I slept the whole night through. And by the morning, my internal clock was reset to his time zone.

"I should patent you," I told him as he pushed me ahead of him into the shower and I felt that achy, relished feeling between my legs. "I feel like I could take on the world after that rest."

"You will need every bit of energy, Anna. In fact, you will need some right now." His body pressed mine into the wet tile and I felt the joy of his hardening cock being pressed rhythmically into my thigh even as his mouth took its time exposing my neck to its higher calling as the receptacle for his most erotic kisses.

"God, Max, I'm starving!" I said suddenly and shoved him away from me, backing him into the opposite wall of the shower as I went to my knees. "Oh, and what luck! Room service has delivered a tasty treat for me."

His response was a rather strangled laugh that echoed off the tile and got lost inside the beating of water from the showerhead. As I tended to him ... enjoying that feel of him inside me and the way Max has the ability to ask for what he wants from me with nothing more obtrusive than plain requests or a shift in his body or the touch of his hand ... Not coming for me until he'd taken full pleasure from my tongue and my hands and I'd been able to meet his needs in that moment ... and then coming for me in this way that he knows turns me on for its enthusiasm. It always makes me feel powerful and skilled.

We spent the day as tourist and tour guide. Max had once been stationed in this area, but that would have been centuries before the old part of the town had been surrounded by the ramparts that protected it from marauding tribes of Slavs, he explained. Still, there was something about the knowledge he held of this land in his time that lent him a sharp appreciation for its people and customs. And after just one day exploring this city known as 'the jewel of the Adriatic,' I think I understood why it had been so smart for Terry and Dino to have sent Max here as an operative.

We walked along the city walls and he showed me a poem to liberty inscribed in its stone. Hearing the words coming from Max's mouth was like nothing I could have imagined.

His fingers traced the words as he spoke them: "Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro," he said.

"What's that mean?"

"It means, 'Liberty is not to be sold for all the gold of the world.' A strong sentiment for a strong people."

We strolled along the top of the wall. He let me take his hand. "So, Max, it sounds like you grew to admire the people of this region when you were here before. And it makes me wonder what that was like. Here in this place, admiring the people, and yet conquering them for Rome?"

I got this quick glance of warning from him. "It was the way of my time. And I did my duty."

"With strength and honor," I said as he pulled me to a stop. I watched him lean a hip against the edge of the wall and turn his face to look out into the harbor. "I wasn't trying to score any points against you, Max. I was honestly curious. Every single thing about your world can seem incomprehensible to me and I feel like I will never truly know you without asking questions."

"You have made clear to me how little you approve of war, little one."

"This has nothing to do with that. And I wasn't seeking an argument. You have to remember that I'm not Uma. I am not an historian well versed in your ways and customs. If I err in my questions, at least I ask them with the honest intent of understanding and learning."

His eyes came back to me, hard and resolute. "Why must Uma enter into so many of our conversations?"

Swallowing slowly and turning away to look out at the harbor. "Because she's rather like an unspoken participant in anything that happens between us, isn't she? Maybe if you and her simply ..."

"We have a new understanding between us, Anna. Do not intrude."

"I wasn't intruding. I was ... encouraging. She loves you, Maximus. I hope you always know that."

"Enough," he fairly barked at me.

I turned to look at him. I imagine both our chins were raised. That defiance we both get when we are insulted to have been unfairly treated. But I read his vulnerability on this subject.

"I'm sorry, Max. That was wrong of me. Forgive me that in my affection for you both I would say something I have no right to even have an opinion about."

Curt nod from him and I felt him close down on me. He changed the subject swiftly and began leading me to the next place he wanted to show me, St. Blaise's Cathedral. From there I was taken to a maritime museum and we lingered in an old square where a farmer's market was set up.

Safe conversation and yet I was still just taking it all in. I loved watching him interact with the people we came across. That regal bearing of his and the instinctive way we all recognize quality. His voice tripping easily over words that held so little meaning for me. It reminded me of that night when he'd spoken Latin as he'd begun making love to me. I was standing next to a stall as Max negotiated the purchase of oranges and suddenly was lost inside that moment. I was looking at him in the sunlight and feeling his hands on my skin that night. He glanced up at me as I flushed at the memory and I think he knew some sexual desire for him was lighting my brain.

God. Is this what it's like craving drugs?

"Perhaps we should get you out of the sun, Anna," he said as he came to stand before me. Giving me this smile that told me he knew I was feeling hot over him.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I replied.

That little grunt he does and you just know there's no way he'd ever be dumb enough to answer you. His hand on my forearm to lead me away. Choosing a restaurant without hesitation and escorting me inside. Some devil inside me decided to come out and play with him. I reverted to more questions about his time in this land ... to his role as part of Rome's force of soldiers.

He parried my every thrust until finally he gave me a huge sigh of disapproval, leaned back in his chair and gave me this haughty lecture about the culture and light that Rome brought with its occupying forces.

And how once the people understood the advantages to Roman citizenship, things "proceeded as they were meant," he said.

"Meaning the natives rolled over and let you have your way," I replied.

Narrowed eyes at me and it suddenly dawned on me that he was enjoying himself. "Especially their women. In fact, their women were worth the time - as long as they knew their place."

Even though I figured he was baiting me, that remark still lit my fuse and I was off.

"Oi! Knew their PLACE? I should teach you to say something like that in front of me."

"So - I can be as cruel as you can be when the mood takes me," he said as he leaned in toward me. And when he was so close that he could speak low to me, so low no one else would hear, and with his voice deep with dark intent, knowing it would do such things to me, he said, "Would you teach me my place? Oh, mistress of game-play? Femina ludorum?"

He hovered there near me, waiting on my response. I had this flush of heat and wasn't sure where it centered. Disappointment that we were going to turn this into yet another game between us? Excited to have another chance to play yet another sex game with Max who was the master at this and made me excited just to wonder what new things he'd teach me?

Low voice to match his. "That's me. Always good for a game. What game would you play with me now?"

"Perhaps a more simple one. A very old game. Has been played since the beginning of time."

"Will you teach me?"

"I would be honored."

"What are the rules?"

"Ah, that is the difficult one because there are no rules. It is ever changing. Boy meets girl. There are endless scenarios ... but only two conclusions."

"Yes or no?" I asked with a chuckle.

"Win or lose  ... but even that depends on your point of view."

"I imagine you're a winner."

"I have scored some victories but I have been vanquished."

"So modest, Max."

"I admit the possibility of defeat ... even if it is unlikely. A man is a fool if he thinks himself invincible." Pulling back to look at me with intent. "Particularly when his opponent is a woman of spirit."

Swallowing hard even as his hand found mine atop the table and he stroked over it with his thumb, never taking his eyes from mine. "Are you issuing me a new challenge, Max?"

"I will set a task that you may find difficult. Are you sure you wish to embark on this unknown quest?"

Was this a warning I should heed from him? As unwilling as ever to back down from him. "Is the reward worth the risk?"

"You tell me. Has passion in my arms not brought you its reward?" His finger leapt to my throat and followed the swallow of nerves that I took. "What would you risk to feel that again, Anna?"

"I would take a risk." I said it soft and yet without a moment's hesitation after he asked the question.

He gave me a slight grin and leaned in again. The way he was so close and yet refusing to touch me made me feel his power. "Let me romance you ... be the object of my affections ... allow me to touch the soft heart that you keep so well protected by the sharp barbs of your tongue and intellect. Take a risk that you might feel something for me if I pierced that armor. Are you woman enough for that?"

"It's not me you want to romance, Max. We've always been straight about that," I whispered to him. But the truth is, I was lying to him even as I was telling him the truth. "I don't think you want that, Max. Honestly. I'm just a bit of fun for you. And I'm fine with that. I have enjoyed what we have. It's not something I take for granted. It's very dear to me."

On a dime, his mood changed. Gone was the man pressing me with aggression and suggestive looks; in his place was a polite gentleman escorting a lady. "I play the snake in the grass ... I go too far. It is my mood. I apologize."

"I'll take it as a compliment instead."

"I hope you do. You are entirely right about your assumption But, Anna, I do not regard you as a bit of fun. I reserve that dubious honor for women of a very different caliber than you."

We traded small smiles and gripped hands. Friends. Good enough friends that if one of us wanted to make a stab at more, the other could feel free to say no, and we'd remain friends.

"You are a fine tonic for a tired man."

"Max, you're a fine tonic for any woman. You do realize that?"

"Then we must raise each other's spirits. Let's devote ourselves to that in this visit."

"Great idea, Max. That'll be our theme, eh? You know, it's a bit of a challenge for me to have come here to see you ... not knowing anyone but you, not speaking the language ... I'm completely at your mercy."

"My mercy? Ah, mistress, do you really trust me that much?" Saying it in this mock growl, like he was playing hard at being the dangerous man.

But I gave him back sincerity and knew he'd take to heart the fact that I was placing my fate in his hands. A responsibility for me I knew he'd honor. "I trust you implicitly, Maximus, or I would never have come all this way to be with you."

I was to recognize only the next day that trusting in Maximus carried with it the reality that he would take advantage of my lack of power in those dynamics. It wasn't cruel the way he did it, and I doubt it was anything more than this instinctual way he has of exerting dominance.

But there was a part of me ... ever a compulsive freak about maintaining control for my person ... who fought it even as I rather enjoyed the temporary role of letting Max be in complete control. He might have given me some choices, but they were carefully controlled options ... "Shall we see the museum or the church next? Would you like to shop for souvenirs here or stop for a coffee over there?" ... and there wasn't really a single thing about the day that wasn't easily dictated by Max.

But as the day wore on, I began to wonder if he was enjoying this ... and if he was, would he feel like it should always be thus between us?

And there is this real attractive aspect of this as long as it was just temporary or a part of the normal ebb and flow of any relationship between a man and a woman. And here's what it was: Maximus in charge could be devastating and addictive. Like the way he could do things that with other men might have seemed almost spur of the moment but you'd know that somehow, he'd planned it all out very carefully before you ever even got there.

Early that afternoon, we were at the hotel ... naked ... wrapped in sheets and each other ... and yes, I do realize that it had been him who'd seduced me into a bit of afternoon delight but ... well, I am me after all. I would never have said no to him. I woke from my nap some time later and we were lying side by side facing each other.

I thought he was getting all dreamy-eyed; he kept staring at me and brushing my hair back from my shoulder, then fingering my earlobe. Then his eyes got all puzzled and he frowned at me. My eyebrows shot up in response.

"These earrings, Anna. Are they ... do you really like them? They seem rather ... ordinary."

"What? Christ, Max, what a rude thing to tell a woman. Really!"

"Perhaps I should examine them closer. Would you take them off and let me see them over here in the light?"

I narrowed my eyes at him and in this irritated huff, I took them out of the holes and handed them over to him. He rolled away from me, snapped on the bedside lamp and I heard him go, "Hmm. Mmm." Then he gave that disapproving 'tsk' sound he does.

"Oh, crap, Max. Give them back and stop acting like you even know what nice earrings are."

Without turning back to me, his hand shot back toward me and he mumbled something that sounded like, "Here, wear these instead. I prefer them. They will be much more becoming on you."

He slid his hand over mine and I felt something drop into my palm. Two little somethings. I looked down.

Then I looked up into his eyes as he regarded me over his shoulder. "Oh, Max."

Surprised eyes at me and I knew I should have smiled but I just couldn't. "Have I done wrong then, mistress? You do not like them?"

I looked back down at my hand and shook my head at him. "No, quite the contrary, Maximus. God, they're ... beautiful. But you shouldn't buy me things like this. It's not necessary."

He shifted back to face me and I felt his finger under my chin. Our eyes met. Mine were probably glittering with unshed tears because his face slowly lit up with a smile that carried up into his eyes. "When you wear these, remember that I am thinking of you. That is the only reason I give them to you."

Nodding at him and trying to speak. Finally, laughing at my own clumsiness in expressing a feeling to him in the face of his unexpected sentimentality. "It's just that ... I'm still not used to ..." Then shutting up and saying the only thing I should have told him. Leaning in to kiss him. "Thank you, Maximus. Those words mean more to me than anything."

"Do you like them?"

I sat up next to him and looked at the earrings. Somehow ... how was it? ... he'd picked something perfect for me. He started telling me how he'd been walking along and seen them in the window of a jewelry shop. Made by a local artisan, he said. And he knew I'd like that and he knew I'd like their simplicity and, most of all, he knew I'd like that they were emeralds. Green ... my color ... but it's more than that and somehow he had noticed. The emerald in each earring was pear shaped and that dusky hue of emerald that makes them deceptive because at first you think they're nearly transparent but if you look closely, you realize they have hidden fire and depth. Each emerald was suspended by a thin, short piece of twined gold, dangling from two small gold leaves that each sheltered a diamond. I undid the posts behind the leaves and put the earrings in my lobes.

"I love them, Max. They're beautiful. And I treasure the sentiment that makes them all the more special to me."

He sat up with me and his hands swept my hair up off my shoulders. He examined me critically and then grinned at me. "Then you're admitting that I do know what nice earrings look like?"

I started laughing and tried to tickle him in retaliation but it had no effect on him. Then I tried jumping into his body to knock him off balance but all it really did was put me at his mercy. His arms held me tight to his chest and what started as fun turned serious in a breath as our eyes met and something told me to pay attention.

And then his cell phone rang. And I think it was a really good interruption.

His light voice turned all firm within the time it took him to hear the first words of the person calling. I could tell from Max's tone that it was business and since he was speaking Croatian, it had to be a local contact. To give him space to do whatever he needed, I went to take a shower and by the time I returned to the bedroom, I heard him on his phone in the other room. He was speaking English and I guessed he was calling in to Dino or Terry about whatever was going on.

Off the phone and walking purposefully toward me. Work, he told me, was intruding. Brief kiss and he was in the shower. I dressed and then sat on the bed and watched him get ready. Will you criticize me for being such a perve if I admit that the sight of him strapping on his shoulder holster made me pant? How about the fact that his entire demeanor, that brusque, focused manner he had in preparation made me want to throw him down on the carpet and fuck him hard? Yikes. I really am a perve, aren't I?

I didn't ask what was going on and he didn't offer me any details. Just that he had received word that someone they'd been curious about was now staying at a hotel near Dubrovnik. He was driving up to do a bit of surveillance and hoped to return before the next morning.

I assured him I'd be fine; I promised to stay in the room when he insisted. I knew a few minutes after he left, I'd be out beach-combing. Hell's bells, the beach at the resort was incredibly safe and he was overreacting to his need to control my every movement.

While I was mentally plotting how I'd spend an evening alone and even contemplating how I'd bundle up in my coat and sweaters to wander back into other parts of the city I hadn't seen yet, I lost track of him. He was in the other room and suddenly I heard this short blast of cursing.

When I found him, he was down on the floor and strung around him were various bits of gear he was unpacking from black cases he'd drug out of the closet. In his hand was a large camera body and he was trying to shove a telephoto lens on it. I cringed. As someone who once made her living as a photojournalist, seeing someone else abusing a good lens' bayonet mount as he was doing is like scraping nails down a chalkboard.

"Here. Let me," I said, without thinking, and simply pulled the body and lens from his hands.

"Be careful with that. It's an impossible ..." His mouth stopped in mid-thought as I handed him the camera back with its lens properly seated. "How did you do that, Anna? It refused ..."

"Max, there are a few tricks to it but ... Wait, haven't you been trained on your gear? They wouldn't send you out into the field without knowing all this stuff, would they?"

He turned his face and I saw his jaw set in a firm line. "There was much to learn and little time."

"Do you know how to use this camera?" I asked him. "I mean, if you can't get the lens on ... Max, why would they send you out with such a complicated camera? This is something only a seasoned pro should use. There are far simpler and more idiot-proof cameras on the market now."

"Idiot-proof?"

"Sorry. It's just a saying. I didn't mean it as a put-down. But this camera is one of the newer digitals by Nikon and if you don't know a lot about it, it would be nearly impossible to get a decent shot with it. And they gave this to you to use?"

His eyes met mine and I read him clear. Of course it would be the technology that would be at once his greatest challenge and he would have been too proud to admit when he didn't pick it up instantly. And I was betting he didn't ever let anyone know he needed more help because of that pride and because he would not have wanted Terry to find out. Damn, but the competition between those two ... I remember joking about it once. It didn't seem too funny just then.

I looked around him. I could help him learn the camera. The other stuff looked like electronic toys. I like electronic toys. Love figuring them out and have to admit that I have a great time reading their instruction books and ...

"Max, let me help you. Do you have time for me to give you some instructions on the camera?"

An annoyed 'tsk' from him. Silly question from a silly girl. "Do you think I have not tried to make this camera work, little one? It is an obstinate piece of ..."

Took the camera from him. My finger flicked the camera on and I turned and pointed it out the window to check its focusing and tracking. Watched in the viewfinder as it went through its paces. Selected my options. Took a picture. Checked the digital readout. Then looked over my shoulder at Maximus.

"That is impressive."

"Not really. I just have the advantage of years of experience with photo gear. And I have a friend who owns one just like this so I've used them before. Besides, it's not really that different than mine."

We looked at each other. He fidgeted and began to pack up a backpack.

"So, what are we going to do? Want me to come with you, Max? I can work the camera for you and maybe I can explain its workings in a way that's easier for you to understand."

Max took this deep breath and his eyes examined me. "This won't be dangerous. And I would never let even a hair on your head be harmed in any event. You know that, don't you? We will do our surveillance from far away."

"Hence this huge ass sucker of a lens."

He gave me his chuckle that tells me I've amused him in spite of himself. And then, as only Maximus, General of the Armies of the North, can do, he made a command decision. "Indeed. Wear something warm, comfortable and dark. Shoes you can run in if the need arises, which it will not, but we shall be prepared."

I listened to him telling me what to bring and wear even as I was jumping up to start changing. It felt like a jolt of pure adrenalin. Was this me about to go out on a K&R mission with Max? Okay, not really, but still ... how exciting!

Tried hard to tamp down the excitement I was feeling so it wasn't just leaking out of every pore. But he could tell from the way I kept giggling over stupid things and the way I wanted to run to the car while he strode purposefully and controlled. Got a lecture on the drive away from the city about the need to do exactly as he said.

We pulled into a tiny parking area at a bar along the highway that was hugging the coast as we went north. As he parked, he made a call on his cell phone and about a minute later, the door to the bar opened and this slight, dark haired girl of about 25 came out. She rushed to his car and looked startled to find someone in the passenger seat, but she recovered quickly and jumped in the back. They talked for a few minutes; I couldn't understand them, of course, for she was obviously from this area. His voice was brusque, all business; hers was young and responsive to his tone.

When they stopped speaking, she hesitated with her hand on the handle of the door. Her eyes flickered up to his face and I saw his head give her a curt indication that she was dismissed. She got out, hopped in a small car parked nearby and Max followed her as she drove further north a short way. Finally, she pulled off the highway and we trailed her down a road that feathered down toward the water. She slowed down and motioned Max to pull over at this clearing on the side of the road. Through the windshield, I looked down and saw a large house, its light stone walls glittering in the late day's sun.

Looking back up, I noticed her car was gone.

"Your local contact?" I asked him.

"Yes, she has said the man is attending a meeting here. We'll wait and you will take the picture of each person leaving. I'll have my local team identify the man we are curious about as well as the others he is meeting with."

So we hunkered down for a long boring afternoon and evening. At first, to kill time, I went through some of the camera's functions. Max had this aversion to even trying to play with the gear. But slowly I coaxed him into seeing the fun of it ... okay, so I coaxed him by letting him choose a sexual favor I'd do in return for him successfully learning each thing I was trying to teach him about the camera.

It's like I always say ... with Max, even when I lose, I win.

But before long, he had a new way of feeling about the camera. I told him he was a techno-phobe but that I considered it my new sacred duty to make him lose that phobia before I left. He agreed to let me help him get comfortable with the technology that was causing him problems.

I should have kept the conversation there. But for some reason, I asked about the woman. There had just been something about her and I was curious.

He was studying the house through his binoculars. 

"So, Max, who was the girl?"

"One of my local contacts."

"You always sleep with members of your team?"

His jaw tightened but he didn't say a word.

"Oh, come on, Maxie. It was plain as day to me. I had wondered whether or not you'd taken up the veil while you were here all on your lonesome. So she's your local honey?"

"She is a local contact." Said in that distinctive growl of a voice he has, the one that is meant to tell you not to dare cross him.

Yeah. That works on me, right? "Jesus, Max, don't pretend you haven't had her ... I can tell by the way she looked at you."

"I'm not pretending. I have had her. She is nothing to me."

I just sat there. God. Those terse words. That utterly dismissive voice. The fucking 'above it all' body language. My words were soft and deceptive because in just that brief remark, he'd infuriated and offended me. "Nothing? She's nothing to you?"

"That is what I said."

My face turned to the window at my side and I tried so hard to maintain control of my own anger. But there was just something about this moment that would not be denied. At first, our voices were like fun-house mirror images of each other: mine was soft but undeniably steely; his was even, cold and utterly in control. And if Max had known me better, he might have guessed I was launching an inquiry that only an old news reporter determined to spring a trap could do.

"Yet she's your lover?" 

He laughed like there was ice in his veins. "Don't be ridiculous. She's just a ... local woman."

"She has to be something to you, Max. She's a person. Christ, she is enough of a person to you for you to take her to your bed."

"What do you want me to say?"

I turned in my seat and stared at him as he kept watching the house through his fucking binoculars. "What kind of man doesn't understand this concept?"

He pulled the binoculars down and looked at me coldly. "And what concept would that be that I clearly am not man enough to understand?"

"She's not just a hole for your dick, Maximus. She has thoughts and feelings and desires. She is a person who should be respected. How could you sit there and pretend that you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about?"

"How could you even speak to me like that? If I make a private arrangement with a woman what possible business is it of yours - or anyone's?"

"Give me a break, Max. How you treat someone like that speaks volumes about the kind of man you are."

"I don't think you quite understand me ..."

"I sure as hell hope not," I spit out at him, and recognized within myself that I was beginning to let my emotions show too baldly.

He shook his head, did this sigh and turned back to his binoculars. "I merely see no reason why I should have to explain myself to you for what is so blatantly obvious."

Dismissed. Just like that. Like he thought he could verbally snap his fingers at me and expect me to fall in line? My body was flushed with the pulse of my fury and disappointment in him. I went totally silent and closed my eyes until I felt I could speak with a smidgeon of control.

Such a soft voice; so deceptive. "What's obvious to me is that you still see yourself as some kind of conquering force here."

But, to this, I got a blinding rush of anger from him. His tone was brutal. "Are you so naive that you imagine men need to make romantic declarations merely to ease their need? She didn't make any promises to me either - it was a business arrangement."

"Are romantic declarations just that to men like you? Just a way to get a woman to give it up to you?" Our eyes were locked. I went to spring the trap. "So this is a business arrangement? You pay her, then? She's a whore?"

"I do not pay her. That is not what I meant."

"Oh, I see. A bit of sweet talk, get some pussy and out you go?"

"Do not be so crude, it doesn't become a lady - it is the talk of a whore."

Oh, man. He'd just punched a big button. Screw him, I was thinking. "Do you whisper sweet things to her when you're in her? Do you know what she desires? Do you care what she desires? Or is it just ... get your rocks off and out you scoot?"

He held his hand up, clamping his mouth shut. I watched his jaw tighten as he turned to look back out the windshield. Refusing to speak to me, he merely pointed toward the house. When I looked down, I saw three men coming out and heading for cars. Put the camera in front of my face and I felt myself zone into work mode.

Without a word, I was snapping their pics. When all the cars had disappeared and it was obvious no one else was coming out, he started the car and we headed back to the hotel. I stared out at the void of sea on the drive and wished I was anywhere but here. My heart was beating with fury. And I felt this well of disbelief in me.

I had forgotten who I was with. I had believed him when he said to me ... This was reality though, I told myself. This is the Max that always used to make me feel like he came from another planet. Women as just a means to sexual satisfaction. I remember Uma saying once that Max would think nothing of scratching the itch for sex; that to Romans, it meant not much more than the need to eat or take a shit. Crude way to put it, she'd told me, but if Max wanted it, he'd get it from a call girl or someone else and it would mean nothing to him.

And that's about what I felt like. Nothing.

"There's no reason for this petulant display, Anna. This girl and what I do with her are nothing to you," he pronounced into the silence as he pulled into the parking space at the hotel. "I wish you to drop this matter as it should be."

"Drop it? Max, do you have any idea what a jerk you're being? Why the fuck would I drop this? Christ."

His hand grabbed hard around my forearm as I tried to get out of the car. I turned to slap his hand away but then I saw this wave of something in his face ... frustration, confusion. His voice was not quite so calm anymore. "Anna ... you must understand that I try to fit into this modern age but it is hard for me to erase attitudes of a lifetime. I have never been cruel or violent to a woman and I have always tried to give them pleasure. But ... I simply see sex in a different way from you. It is not meant to demean a woman - to service me was an honor women would have fought each other for."

He almost had me. Right up until that last bit. To 'service' him. That's what sex was to him? It just shook me to actually hear him say it. How would we ever find common ground with such a basic concept to divide us?

"Do you really care what a woman wants or needs? Do you care to even find out, Max? Because I can assure you that to that girl, you are more than someone who makes her come."

"That is arrogance to you - it is respect and honor to me. I give her a part of myself but I cannot give her any more ... it is not in my nature."

"No, Max, to me, it's a two-way street. It's not about honoring you. It's about something between the two people involved."

"I see your point, Ann, I do see your point ... but try to judge with a different eye. Do you think men of your time are so different? Do you know how many times I have been approached in a bar with an offer of casual sex from a woman who wants nothing from me but my body?"

"That's so different, Max. Those women have some power over their own lives and their own bodies. Do you really suppose this girl does?"

"Ye Gods, we could run round and round this argument all night." He rubbed his hand over his face and turned from me. I jumped out of the car and headed briskly for the elevators. Hoped I'd get up and into the room without him ... needing space from him more than anything I could have imagined in that night. But he caught up with me and we rode in frozen silence.

At the door to his hotel room, he looked at me as he put the key in the lock. He gave me that 'tsk' sound of his and I glared in response.

Through tight lips, he gritted out, "The girl and I have spent several nights together and yes, we have spoken and no, I didn't merely ... fuck her ... but I will not allow her close and she has to understand that."

"And how would you feel if you heard her tell a friend that you were nothing. Nothing, Max. How can you say that about another human that you are making love to with regularity?"

"I didn't mean nothing as you imply ... I meant she has no bond with me ... it is the use of words ... we use them differently."

He bowed me into the room but slid his hand down my arm as I passed him. I couldn't figure him out. I didn't know if he was honestly trying to get me to understand something or if he was just hopelessly trying to convince me that I needed to shut up and put up.

I wish to God I was the kind of person who could have simply shut up and put this down to a difference in our cultures. But to me, it was a bottom line knowledge about Max that I needed drilled into my head so I'd never forget that we'd never be much more than occasional fuck buddies and then maybe I could turn a blind eye to this aspect of him.

"So let me get this straight. You've been clear with her, told her she's never going to be close to you?"

A frown shadowed his face but he didn't say anything.

"That's what I figured," I whispered.

"It was obvious."

"Next time you sleep with her, Max? Ask her where she thinks you're heading with her. I promise you, it's not obvious to her."

"How do you know? You saw her for a few minutes in a darkened car."

Gave him this short laugh. "I probably know more about her in those few minutes than you ever will."

He went dead silent for a moment. Then his eyes came up to meet mine. Hard voice from him. "I promise. I will be honest with her. Talk to her as an equal. But I doubt she will feel any better."

"No, I doubt she will. But at least she'll know she's dealing with a jerk," I snapped out at him as I turned and walked away from him ... wanting ... no ... needing distance from him as I felt this wave of anger cresting because ... dammit ... why was I this angry with him over this?

I heard his laughter behind me as I crossed the lounge, heading for the relative safety of the bedroom; mocking, biting. Then his words. "Am I a beast? Is that how you all think of me? A crude, uncivilized barbarian compared to you modern sophisticates as we once judged a German or a Briton?"

No reply from me; and then I had my hand on the bedroom door when it happened.

His words lashed out at me, the furious voice of the General, commanding obedience and subservience. His due. His right. "Speak to me! Do not simply walk away! Turn around!"

I didn't so much as slow down. If I had, I would have said something that I could never have taken back. Before I could slam the bedroom door closed, he was through it and he was yanking my body back against it. I was more than just shocked; I was caught totally off guard.

A dark intensity oozed from him. His hands held my elbows against the door and he glared at me. "How am I to be any different if you simply turn from me? Do you not understand how hard it is for me to even speak to a woman like this? It is not my fault ... can you never make even a small allowance for me?"

And this was the moment that my real anger came out in words and I know I was reacting more to the shock of what he'd just done than to anything. "How can you treat a woman like that? What do you tell yourself about the women in our group? About me? Are we just as unimportant to you? Am I nothing to you as well?"

"Never. It's different. You are women I care for. You are family. She is someone I go to when I am in need of physical release. You are someone I go to for ..." He stopped suddenly and I caught this other light in his eyes.

Sometimes, even in the midst of Maximus at his most virile, there can be a light that comes into his eyes and he looks like a boy to me. Like there's an innocence in there that I never expect and for which I am never prepared for the way it makes me feel about him. But as quickly as I saw it leap out at me, the little boy gave way to the man.

Trying to coax that boy out again. Whispering to him: "For what, Max? What am I to you?"

"You are a woman who infuriates me and frustrates me and ..." His voice shifted from anger to passion. A flip side. Too fast. I could never keep up. "And you make me feel as though I will burn up with my desire for you."

Panting out to him ... getting into what he was feeling even though I knew I should be more careful. "That's it then? The sex? I know what you mean. That's how I feel about you, Max."

We looked at each other. He looked flush with wildness, unwilling to be in control of either of us. Like he craved something and didn't know how to get it without just taking it.

His virility devastated whatever good sense I had in me. This man who made me think nothing in the world had ever prepared me to be a woman I was with him.

The instant his hands left my arms and grabbed for my sweater, I was attacking his pants. His rough hands yanked apart the stitching at the neck of my sweater and even as I heard the ripping, I felt his mouth shove in hard and tough against my neck. I felt his teeth and the exquisite pain made me moan even as I was able to reach and hold his cock. It was hard and magnificent. Weeping already.

He was pumping forcefully into my hands even as he was grinding himself against my body. Like he just couldn't get enough stimulation. I felt the sweater ripping along its seams and it turned me on like quicksilver. Trying to shove him back to the bed ... wanting to simply leap up onto his dick ...

Haven't you ever just gotten carried away? When this primal force inside yourself is unleashed and nothing you ever thought about yourself prepares you for what you're willing to do to heed its call? This was me.

But Max took over. He was so much stronger than me. And I loved the display of that superior strength and I loved the way he was not willing to be in control just then.

He whipped me around; I watched the room spin before my eyes. And then he had one big arm around my waist, lifting me up off my feet ... I felt like a doll in his hands, like he could do anything and there was nothing I could do. But I wasn't scared; I was way too into this to be scared just then. Way too into the combination of anger, lust and want.

His arm gripped in so tight and I felt the air leave my lungs as he hoisted me up, carrying me across the room. I was struggling to breathe. Then he dropped me facedown on the bed.

I felt his hands on my jeans, under me, clawing at the opening, ripping down the zipper and then pulling them down my hips. Then grunting in satisfaction as he yanked them off my ankles. I wasn't fighting; I was egging him on. Taunting him that I'd never be like that girl. That he'd never fooled me. That I knew what he really wanted from me.

This strangled roar from him and he manhandled me onto my back with me suddenly fighting him every inch. Until ... until his hand gripped in around my neck and he was gritting out to me to stop or he would take what he wanted.

"Take it then. It's yours anyway," I croaked out to him.

His eyes flashed at me. I felt tears welling hard in my chest and I was trembling and trying to fight down the red panic about to drown me in this reminder of a past trauma. And I know the exact moment when he realized what was happening in my mind because the light came back in his eyes. He shook his head, this too slight movement, so quick, almost like a jerk. Staring into me ... looking lost. Lost little boy.

"Maximus," I whispered as I felt his hand relax its stranglehold. Heard the plea in my voice. The invitation.

His eyes closed and he leaned his forehead against mine. His hand stroked my neck and I felt his chest trembling under my hand as he struggled to calm his breathing.

This hazy time of trying to regain my foothold in the world. What had just happened?

"Such strong emotions, Anna," he whispered to me. "Anger and love. How easily one can become the other."

Someone had said to me once ... that there's this thing about strong emotion. How each one has their opposing twin and that it's impossible to feel that strongly about something unless there's an element of the twin there as well.

He picked me up and carried me into the bathroom. Sat me on the edge of the tub while he ran water in it. As we waited for it to fill, he knelt before me and held me to him. There was nothing sexual in this moment; this was two people trying to figure this out and determined to hold on to a friendship.

In the bath, we washed each other with warm water and tried to rinse away the anger with the soapsuds.

"Max?" I asked him softly and he looked at me through his eyelashes, his big hand running a soapy washcloth over my shoulder. "What you said ... about how I won't make even a small allowance for you? I don't know why I do that. I don't know why I find it so much easier to fight with you rather than ... I had hoped to come to understand you better in this trip and it seems like I just ... I expect too much from you, don't I? I don't know why it is that I am so arrogant as to think that I know what's best for anyone. I can't even manage my own life that well."

He gave me this tiny smile and pulled me in against his chest, just holding me gently, big hands rubbing down my back as I listened to his heart beating.

"Her name is Karolina. Her husband died in the war and her son has a medical condition. The medicine he needs is hard to get and very expensive here ... that is why she does this dangerous work," he told me, his voice calm and even. "I paid his hospital bill ... she is very grateful and I know she in deeper than she should be."

I sat up from him and just looked at him. His eyes studied me and I couldn't read him at all. "Oh, God. Max. I can't believe that you ... God. I feel like the jerk here."

He shrugged and picked up the washcloth again. And it was only in that moment that I recognized what had just happened. An apology. He'd just apologized to me in the only way he knew how and ... it stunned me. The realization that he cared this much what I thought of him that he would do something that would feel as if he'd humbled himself before me.

"Maximus, why didn't you just say that? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to start this fight over, but I just don't understand and I want to. Why couldn't you have just told me something, anything? What did I do wrong in asking?"

"I thought it would make you angry if she seemed to have any hold on me. My wife would never have accepted such a thing."

Would I ever get him? He was such a mystery to me. We were from such different cultures and times. I saw the gulf before us and wondered where we'd find the bridge wide enough to ever span it. I smiled at him in response to his admission. "Max, the day anyone mistakes me for a wife ... don't ever be afraid to tell me such things. And I'll try hard not to bite your head off anymore."

"I mean ... I forget that a modern woman guards the sisterhood fiercely - in my day it was every woman for herself."

"Well, it still is, Max. Women are merciless. Except the ones in our group. We stick together. But never trust any other woman, okay?" It made us both laugh and the tension seemed to break with a definite snap in the air.

"I shall commit that to memory," he said and I loved hearing his chuckle as he said it.

I reached to smooth my hand down his chest. "One thing, Max. About this ... misunderstanding between us tonight. You need to teach me about such things. I'll never understand you if you don't."

"Then you will see me again? I haven't ruined my chances with you by my arrogant assumptions?"

"Oh, Maximus," I whispered and felt this gush of tenderness at his concern. Leaned in and kissed softly at his lips. "See you again? You won't be able to get rid of me now, Max."

And I was rewarded with the perfect response from Maximus ... his wide grin that is as rare as it is cherished.

In his bed, we whispered in the dark and made our peace. He sat against the bed's backboard and held me as I nestled into him between his outspread legs, my back to his chest, his arms light around me; leaning back into him, one arm slung back around his neck, the other tracing patterns through the hair above his wrist, both of us unexpectantly relaxed and open as we watched the night evolve outside the window.

Sometimes when I am with Maximus, I forget where we've come from and that never in a million years should anything much be happening between us. I asked him in this night, was it just that we were so far from home, the two of us. Strangers in a strange land. Was this why we seemed to care more?

Why was it that I craved his touch now?

Maybe it was like this ... because he has this way about him that makes me feel weak and strong at the same time.

Like how he touched me so light on my skin, just this almost-not-there glide of his fingertips down my abdomen ... all his concentration intent on that one little glint of fingerprints on me ... and it made me so weak that I thought I wouldn't ever stop shaking.

Like how his hands could demand attention from me. Brusque and rude and uncompromising. Forcing me to rise up almost in rebellion and making me feel the strength that leapt out of me to capture what I wanted from him.

So he starts this time like he isn't sure what he'll do. But I know the truth. He knows before he launches the first move. He circles me with his mind. He makes me believe I know what will happen and then he shifts and it's different. And then he shifts again.

Light fingers on my abdomen and he whispers that he can feel the tremors. I find my face is buried in his neck as he leans forward to watch my nipples react. He tells me how beautiful he finds the sight. Mouth on his neck until I gasp and pull away in response to his fingers trailing and tapping down my slit.

As his big hands take my breasts, holding them firm and feeling the way they like that, he is murmuring in my ear. That deep voice. It does make me lose myself. He speaks in Latin and, for once, I ask.

"What are you saying, Max? Tell me. It sounds so wonderful."

He smiles and pulls away. "It is Catullus. A famous poem to a mistress. It was very popular when I was a younger man. We learnt it off by heart so that we could charm the ladies." He chuckles at the memory and I know he's charmed more than one woman with these words.

"Say it for me. Recite the poem. Please." I half turn in his arms so I can see his face better.

"All of it?" He asks hesitantly and I wonder if he feels he will reveal too much of himself. "In Latin?"

"Please. I want to hear how you would say it in your own tongue. You must miss your own language." He nods and I see his face relax, his eyes go far away into another place and time as he speaks:

"Vivamus mea Anna, atque amemus, 
rumoresque senum severiorum 
omnes unius aestimemus assis! 
soles occidere et redire possunt ..."

His voice goes on ... drifting over words and I witness Maximus as I never have -- lost within the sheer joy of the beauty of his own language. Even without knowing the exact words, it has a powerful affect on me to hear this recitation. Silence covers us for long moments when he finishes and I am reluctant to break the spell but I want more from him and so I ask.

"What does it mean in English, Max? Why are you saying these words to me?"

His eyes focus on mine and he simply says the words in English to me:

"Let us live, my Anna, and let us make love
And pay no heed to the sermonizing of old people!
The sun will rise and fall forever
But we have only such a short time here on earth
Until we sleep the everlasting night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred more!
Give me another thousand, then a second hundred!
Then, when we have kissed many thousand times more,
Pray that we lose track. Never let us discover the number,
Lest our enemies work their evil charms against us by the reckoning!"

Does he know? That I am trembling long before he finishes because the man who says these words sounds like he wants me to have this poem as a gift only he can give me? That to be a woman at the receiving end of a love poem from Maximus is to be helpless?

I don't want to tell him. Instead, I pull his head down to me and we pause for a moment too long before we kiss. It is a moment in which I feel a thought linger on the edge of me but then I initiate the kiss. Soft, soft on his lips. We are in sync. Moving as if we are reading each other for the first time since I've known him. Deeper, fuller ... a kiss to last.

I get lost inside the pleasure of the kiss. His fingers invade me below and I don't even know that I remember he has hands or any other part of a body other than his lips. As the kiss ends, I turn in his arms, arching back against his chest in response to his fingers and trying to control myself.

But he wants more and his other hand is turning my face back toward him and he is kissing me again but this one is fierce and hungry. My arm is up and gripping around the back of his neck, seeking my anchorage, hoping the storm doesn't sweep me away. I barely notice that his hand that had been invading me below is gone and is now an arm around my waist to lift me slowly up until I feel his cock bounce out from where it's been nudging me in the back. It springs between my legs and he presses his words into my cheek as he breaks the kiss. He tells me to feel his need for me.

He is now intent on what he wants me to feel. His big hands down along the tender insides of my thighs, spreading them over his legs, bending his own knees and shushing me as I begin to pant in anticipation.

"Me tange! Touch me!"

I am holding his hardness in one hand, jerking on it, trying to be smooth, trying to follow his short, muttered requests. My other hand seeks his scrotum, knowing it will find a tantalizing feel of manliness. But I can't reach that far as his arm around my middle is keeping me pressed into his chest.

He is telling me ... time for me to take him inside me. His breath is scalding hot along my neck. His voice is a challenge to me. He describes in intimate detail what I am doing ... movements he's made so many times with me. Gather the moisture along the head, he says, and I slide his cock's tip into the slickness of my wet reaction to him. Put your fingers up and see how you feel ... and this is what I feel ... wet, ready, warm, soft. I tell him this and he grunts his approval. Just the tip, put it in ... and I ask him what he feels when he is in me like that. 'Inops. Needy,' he says. And I say, I know what you mean.

My fingers press him inside me, my body sinks down to absorb his girth. It feels invasive and I think it must be because I am too much in charge so I'm concentrating on too much at once.

He's got both arms around me now and he is slowly raising and lowering me on his cock. He kisses my cheek and for some reason this tender act gets so deep inside me that I feel myself drawing into spasms below. He holds me still until it stops and then starts up again. His mouth finds its next victim along my neck and he whispers in my ear. I have no idea what he is saying but it is his voice of sheer and utter dominance that I respond to.

I am coming, I tell him, like I'm pleading with him to tell me what to do in response. But he is now pumping up into me, his bent knees giving him purchase. His hands move along my body and he tells me he does not know what he wants to touch the most. My breasts long for him and I tell him this. He responds instantly. I can't seem to stop coming and I don't think too hard about stopping it. And then I am feeling limp and I can't breathe and I've got a hoarse voice from the cries I'm making to him. My God, but he feels so good inside me and the things he can make me feel.

He asks me, do you want me to come into you now? Do you want to feel my seed flood your womb? Do you want it now or do you want me to deny myself longer?

I ask him, do you want me to survive?

And that is his answer he seeks in this night. He raises me up, turns me easily in his arms and then lowers me back down atop him. Now we are able to see each other. He tells me that he wants me to see what I do to him. To witness how weak I make him in this moment.

He seems the antithesis of weak to me. Taut skin glistening with sweat, stretching across a chest that is broad and utterly, devastatingly masculine. Arms that bulge with justly-deserved strength. A corded neck that tenses in his struggle to complete this between us. This is where I dip down to kiss him. His pulse point there, where I can at once taste him and feel his power. I straighten back up when I hear him grunt with exertion and know his time is so near.

His hands on my face hold me so that I will witness how he feels as he is coming into me. He pants out words to me that come from nowhere as he is in the grip of this orgasm.

I am not sure I understand what has happened in this night. I only know that sometimes, examining something too closely makes it fly away as if it never existed.

Breakfast was fast and distracted. He had to get the photos of the night before out to his local team and start getting background information on the people in them. In between my running the photos out on the little printer he'd been issued and never did much more than snarl at, I was sipping coffee while emailing the pics to Terry and Dino via Max's account. No sense shouting it out to his bosses that he was getting a bit of extra help on his stuff.

I made a joke to him about how much I wished I could be there in person to see Terry's Queen Mother look when he got a load of the pics. He'll be so annoyed that you didn't screw up with the camera, I told him.

Then had a good laugh at Max's hard eyes my way and that now-familiar 'tsk' sound. I still so loved pissing him off.

Too soon and he was out the door with that brusque way he has of tending to his business. Despite his echoed request for me to stay safe within the hotel room while he was gone, I was dressed and out the door about ten minutes after he left. I spent the morning walking the coastline, heading away from the city and just having the best time hunting for shells.

But in the back of my mind, I was doing the waiting thing. Know what I mean? Where you know the other person's going to be doing something that carries an inherent danger and even though you know that they'll handle it with no problem, it's still stressful and carries within it some fear.

Went up to the room when I thought it possible Max might be returning soon. I tried to read and I tried to write. Gave up on each within about fifteen minutes. Instead, I just found myself leaning over the balcony and watching the water. Shivering in the weather and knowing I am such a wuss because it was about 55 degrees out.

When the phone rang, I grabbed it from the table next to the balcony door. A familiar voice asked for Max.

"He's not back yet, Terry," I said. And felt this cold clutch of worry that something might have happened to Max. Trying to maintain an even tone of voice. "Have you tried his cell?"

"He's got it turned off. Must be somewhere he doesn't need to be interrupted by it." He clipped off the words, like it was an effort to give them to me. "Annie? You're there with him? Hadn't realized."

"Yes. It's not a secret, Terry. We weren't hiding it."

He didn't say anything at first. And then: "Be careful, Annie. Maximus is clever and I don't trust him with women, especially now."

Shut my eyes and felt it. The snap of some undefined, irrational and instant resentment at the distance between us. And also ... my constant, never-ending want of Terry. "Oh, get over yourself, Terry. You're not exactly an unbiased source on Max."

His voice got tough. "He comes from a time when men used woman in many ways -- even the noble heroic ones. What drives him is his sense of honor -- but that is an entirely different concept to him than to you, or even to a man like me. Honor to him means protecting his name, possessions -- of which family are central -- and assuring his dominance over others. Think about it. Any chance something else might be driving his current behavior? Bite my head off but think about it anyway. "

"What the fuck are you getting at, Terry? Do you not think it's at all conceivable that a man might want me just for me? What -- am I the runt of the litter? Why don't you just spell it out for me."

"Consider my head bitten off. Still, hit a nerve there, didn't I? I'll give no more advice but you know I'll be thinking it. You just don't get it, do you? Why can't you just stop reading crap into what I say? I don't play games -- not with you anyway."

"Oh, that's such crap. I am going to try to keep in mind your long-standing insecurity over Maximus and Uma. It's fostered this competitive stuff between the two of you. Don't let that blind you where he's concerned. Max has been good to me -- he doesn't mislead me and I am enjoying having him for a friend."

"Give me a break. He means fuck all to me -- he's the one with the hang-ups. He lost. I won. To the winner the spoils, hey? And he doesn't like to lose, as we know. But I've said my piece -- but I noticed you jumped on that pretty darned fast. You missed my point. It was never about your lack of allure."

"Yeah. You're right. This was all about you."

Neither of us said anything into the cold silence between us for so long. I could hear his annoyed breathing on the other end.

"White flag, amante. Truce. Temporary ceasefire until we regroup and work out what exactly has gone wrong recently. Did you hear that? I almost apologized and admitted some fault. Make note of it on your calendar so you can remember the day." A snide voice at the end that hurt hard.

My bitter voice for him. "I love you, too, Terry. Thanks so much for the call. It just made my day. I'll have Max call you when he gets in."

I hung up on Terry and went back out to look out over the water. When the phone rang again, at first, I made no move to answer it. But then ... I didn't want to leave it like that with Terry. I got this feeling inside me, reminding me that all the distance I'd been putting between us recently would make this quarrel take on too big of a meaning between us. Before the second ring, I was heading for the phone and mentally preparing my apology for overreacting.

But Max got to it first and something told me, he'd come in while I was on the phone just a moment before and had tried not to overhear but probably had. He picked up the phone even as his other hand stroked my cheek and I slid in against his chest, listening as he answered with a short, business-like voice: "Maximus."

I could hear Terry's voice; slightly muffled but still the words were discernible, especially as his tone escalated from annoyance to anger. "Why is she there? You know that is absolutely against every fucking directive..."

"My decision. In the field, I decide."

"No, mate ... you do as you're fucking told..."

As Terry revved up, Max remained calm. In my mind, I knew that would piss Terry off even more. And I knew Max was doing it on purpose. "Is that so?"

"Put her on the next plane back ... or you might find yourself on it."

"She will leave when I am ready."

"Anything happens to her..."

"Nothing will happen to her."

"I'm warning you, you work for me now. I call the tune..."

"Then why am I not dancing to it? You pay me to do a job. I do it. You do not have any control over my life, whatever you may think."

"Is that a threat, mate?"

"Only an insecure man would be so paranoid."

"Fuck you."

"Was there anything else? I have plans for lunch..."

I heard the echo of Terry hanging up on Max and in my mind, I got this image of Terry throwing the phone against the wall in his office.

"Don't treat him like that," I whispered to Max. "He doesn't deserve it."

"He doesn't deserve your sympathy." If Max's voice had not been soft with those words, I am not sure I could have forgiven it.

"He deserves more from me than anyone will ever know. Even when he makes me angry, I always know he's trying to look out for me because he loves me. This isn't even about me; it's just about the pissing contest between the two of you." I matched Max's tone and kept it soft between us. But I suspect that he knew this was something I'd never back down from. I'm sure that's why he just let the subject drop.

Maximus took me out for the picnic lunch he'd promised me. We were so quiet with each other on the ferry ride over to the island that he'd told me was a quiet, laid back oasis where we could simply enjoy a day getting lost in another world together. We were lost all right ... both wrapped inside our own minds so hard that nothing seemed to click between us for a while. I sensed that Maximus was worried that Terry's intrusion might have given me pause about whatever it was that was happening between us. For some reason, I kept thinking about that one afternoon, the second day I was in Dubrovnik. Max's words. Asking me to become an object of his romantic movements. He might have been sincere and it made me sad. It was making me think about what had been happening in the days since then.

I was the one woman who was most active in his life at this particular moment when he seemed vulnerable. He knew he was affecting me. He wanted to affect me. I sensed a note of desperation in it - I hoped he wasn't mistaking it for something it wasn't because one of us would get hurt. He and I were forging a friendship that might have gone anywhere.

But to romance? How could it? Hadn't I made this hard pledge not to allow myself to love any man in this group again?

And then there I was ... sitting there in the sunlight and just existing in this easy mood with Maximus. I looked over at him and watched his profile as he leaned against a tree and contemplated the sky above us. I remembered what Uma told me once - that for all Max's skills in making love to a woman, he was a novice in the ways of women and love.

Was this me then? Crawling to where he was and snuggling up next to him? Accepting the smile he gave me and returning it?

Yes, it was. I knew it was because it was my heart that was thudding inside my chest. And it was my lips that kissed his. It was my tongue that played with his. It was my hands that slid up under his loose shirt and finally inside his dark jeans. It was my mouth that took him inside, my tongue that tasted up his length, my hands that jerked him in time to my ministrations.

And after, it was my cheek that rested along his thigh while his fingers twined in my hair. 

"Maximus, remember the game you asked me to play a few days ago?" I asked him.

He stroked my face and murmured his affirmation.

"Let's play 'pretend' for the rest of the time I'm here with you."

"What shall we pretend, Anna?" His voice got inside me and I felt flush with its cadence.

"Let's pretend that you possess romantic feelings for me. And I'll pretend that I believe it's true. It's just a few days ... and this is a pleasant fiction."

He didn't say anything until the first tear fell from me onto his naked thigh. "And what will we pretend when those days are over, Anna?"

"I don't know, Maximus. I don't. But I won't desert you. I promise."

So this is how I found myself becoming the temporary object of Max's romantic urges. Understand? Then whisper it in my ear, please. I need to get it straight in my mind.

I let myself go completely with Max in those days. I felt enraptured by him. I felt mesmerized by his style. We said words of growing affection. We said them as if we meant them. We never professed love; it's not Max's style to leap that far ahead and we were playing his game, so we followed his conventions.

The next night ... the last night I'd be with him ... we agreed that we wanted it to be so very special. I promised to wear that special negligee I'd brought with me and never found reason to wear before. He wanted to make an effort at romance that would surprise me, he told me. I like surprises, I'd sighed in just the perfect tone to make him feel the effort would be worthwhile.

And so, I found myself alone in the bedroom that night. I had preparations I wanted to make to be sure I could carry out my end of the bargain. Out in the other room, Max was making his own preparations.

After bathing and applying my perfume on pulse points ... a subtle scent that Max has told me he appreciates ... I slipped on the negligee and looked at myself in the mirror. Was this really me? I seemed somehow more sophisticated than I really was. Maybe it was the combination of the pale olive silk that clung to my body with a refined flattery and the emerald earrings and the way my hair had for once in my life simply gone up like it should have to show them off for Max. It made me look all cloudy and ethereal, if that makes sense, Diary. It made me feel like I could be this woman I thought Maximus wanted in this game of his.

Just before I left the bathroom, I looked at my reflection and realized I wanted to make a few changes before I went to him. Deep breath.

"I owe him this," I whispered. "I owe him the reminder that in this time, it's just us sharing this bit of gamesmanship."

My fingers never shook as they took off every piece of jewelry save the earrings he'd given me. Off came the diamond slight of a bracelet as well as the diamond and gold heart necklace given to me by other lovers who loved me. Off I took the emerald ring I have always worn on my right hand and that no one's ever asked me about. Only Max had seemed to sense the emerald's power and I think in that moment, I knew why he'd thought of me when he'd seen the earrings. The ring is a mystery of me that is hiding in plain sight. Just like so much of me.

I sat in a chair in the bedroom and waited until Max tapped at the door. When I came into the outer room of the suite, he had the drapes pulled back from the windows and only candles lit the room. They were everywhere. It made me smile to see the beauty of their light.

"Oh, Maximus. What have you done?" I whispered suddenly when I began to take in details of the room.

Flowers. Scattered around the room ... as if he'd simply unleashed a florist shop inside there. On the counters and tables. On the floor. This haphazard and enchanting vision of softness. They looked magical in the waving glow of candles. He'd gone to a lot of work -- and yet, I got the impression it was his attempt to make this night about the femininity he wanted me to exude. I was game to be that woman he wanted that night.

The perfect classical music filtering through. Champagne on ice. Strawberries. "You naughty boy," I chuckled at him and he smiled at me. I had told him once that the first real adult seduction I'd ever experienced had been at the hands of a man who plied me with champagne and strawberries. Had it worked, he'd asked me when I mentioned it. I'd just giggled, blushing so hard that he had roared with laughter at me. You're only young and inexperienced once, I had said to him. Never get so old you can't be surprised like that, he'd responded.

And then there was Max himself. Dressed for me, I think. I remembered the first time I met him. This was like that only more polished. Black jeans and a black silk sweater that Uma would have known the label for with one look. No shoes. His hair just the slightest bit mussed; this perfect counterpoint to the neatness of his beard.

"Max? All these flowers. Different kinds. Did you have to buy out a shop?" I asked him.

"I had some assistance in gathering them," he told me, his tone trying to invite me to keep the mystery intact. "Each has a meaning."

Ah. Symbols. My Achilles' heel, I think.

"Lots of carnations," I teased him. "Easier to come by?"

He shook his head at me. But then he dipped down, picked up one of the red ones and said one word. "Fascination."

"Fascination?"

"Their meaning. Except the red ones, so I am told by the shop owner, also mean 'alas my poor heart.' Both meanings seem appropriate."

"Mmm. I see. Oh, and here are a few gladioli, flowers of the gladiators, eh?" 

A slight smile. "Strength of character."

"Oh, but of course." We both chuckled. He handed me a glass of champagne as I picked up an Arum Lily, a giant white monster with its yellow stamen rising up proud and firm like a rampant cock. I couldn't help the involuntary glance in the direction of the only other cock in the room. Not rampant yet. My eyes met his.

"Ardor," he said.

I tried hard not to blush at where my eyes went yet again.

"Do you not find these tulips quite magnificent?" he asked me, holding one up for my view. It was a deep dusky magenta around its base and its variegated coloring changed slowly to become almost creamy white at the edges of the petals. "I took it as an omen when these were available. Their meaning is 'beautiful eyes.' I got as many of them as I could find."

I grinned at the compliment and gave him a kiss on his cheek in reward.

There were other flowers, like coral-colored roses that meant 'desire,' yellow irises meaning 'passion,' and sweet buttery jonquils meaning 'desire for a return of affection.'

We refilled our glasses of champagne and toasted our pretend romance and real friendship. Smiling tender at him as he took my hand and led me out onto the balcony. His body shielded mine when I whined at the cold of the air. But as soon as he began to whisper to me to look out at the moon's trail in the water, I burrowed in close to where he was holding me from behind and his body was enough to keep me warm.

"This is so enchanting," I told him.

"Yes, you are," he said and I trembled helplessly at the feel of his mouth sucking along my shoulder and up to my neck. He showed me no mercy.

His hands touched along the raw silk I was wearing. I could tell the slight roughness of his fingers was pulling at the fabric. It focused me intently on what he was doing.

Words in the night. Whispered pants of another language that I never would understand. I wondered if he said things to me in that language that he would never have been able to say to me in a language I would understand.

But the words sounded like they were a conveyance of the deepest want and need, in keeping with his game. One hand moved to slide along my neck, his fingers moving up my throat and pulling my chin up and around to receive a soft kiss from him. His other hand massaged along my belly, nudging ever up, but going so slowly that I thought I would die if he didn't just touch me ... there ... take my breast in a hand that knew how to hold it, caress it, tease it, pleasure me. He pulled my glass from my fingers and I thought he was putting it down on the table before I dropped it. But I gasped in surprise to feel cold moisture dripping down my cleavage and realized he was pouring little splashes of champagne there.

I watched, intent on him. He licked his lips and turned me to face him as he bent to set the glass down. His eyes were on my chest. Fingers lifted my chin out of the way as he dipped down and licked up the remnants of the champagne.

"Oh, Max," I gasped and moved my body into his, feeling his hardness, knowing it was there, wanting to feel it like this divine teasing treat. My fingers played with his cock through the rough fabric of his jeans and I felt it jump just a bit in response. He was so divinely ready. "Will you take me here, sir?"

Grunt of denial. "I have other plans for you this night, mistress."

"What have I gotten myself into this time?" I whispered lightly and was rewarded with his dark voice.

"Let us just see, shall we?" he said and took my hand in his, leading me back through the outer room and into the bedroom.

Inside the bedroom, he asked me to climb up and kneel in the center of the bed. "What are you up to, Max?"

"I would look at you, Anna. Grant me this indulgence." And as I knelt, he walked around the bed, his eyes studying my body from various angles. It felt like he was both sizing me up and storing my memory inside him. For a long moment, he stood before me and seemed to hesitate ... but then he asked me to wait and he left the room. He returned with our glasses filled with champagne and with the bowl of strawberries. Bowing before me, he handed me my glass and invited me to take a strawberry.

I had remained as he left me; something told me there was a reason he'd decided he wanted me on display this way. About the only thing I ever feel sure of with Max is that there is seldom a detail he insists on that doesn't have a reason for being.

He took a seat on the edge of the mattress, leaned back on one arm and sipped his glass as he regarded me. "You are so innocent of what you are to me, Anna. Just as you are innocent of your own beauty. If you could see you as I do in this night then you would realize all you are to me."

I couldn't help it. The sentiment was so plainly expressed. It touched me so deeply. I went to where he was, leaned over him and kissed him, holding his face near mine for so long so I could linger over his lips. "Maximus, I love this side to you. It's a revelation to me."

"As you are a revelation to me, Anna. Your strength coupled with that soft hand that lifted me up when I was low."

"Mmm. Indeed," I said and fed him the strawberry. Enjoying just watching as his mouth would open and then his teeth bit into the soft, red flesh ... and then watching as his lips closed and he chewed. I stared, lost in a sudden memory of what his mouth could do to me.

From nowhere, I felt a softness gliding along the rise of my breasts. I looked down to find a tulip. He was drawing it slowly along my skin. It felt cool and silky. Its head was heavy with its petals and it would bobble ever so lightly when he dipped it along the contours of my breasts and cleavage.

"Kneel up, mistress," he whispered as he took my glass from me and placed it on the bedside table.

I complied immediately. Through half-closed eyes, I watched him kneel before me and he concentrated intently on the tulip. Drawing it along my body, over the silk negligee, down over the slight rise of my mound, down my parted legs until he reached my knees upon the mattress. With a deep sigh, he retraced his route, pausing to kiss along the path as if the tulip gave him permission to taste my warmth.

One side of my body at a time. Taking his time. Seeming to enjoy the way it sent me into another world with him. Up my hands went the tulip. His lips touched along my wrists, trailing along to my elbows and shoulders and to my neck. I felt myself shiver as he bent to kiss my closed eyelids.

I was so wet. It seemed almost an insult to the mesmerizing adoration of my body that he was engaged in that in my mind, I focused on the slow trickle of moisture between my legs. But it was a torture that kept me in the moment. Without it, I might have disappeared inside what he was doing with me as he continued with the tulip's path.

My hands reached out to touch him, just to steady myself. But as soon as I touched the fabric of his sweater, my eyes flipped open. "I need to see you," I told him and my body slumped down onto the bed as he rose away from me.

I love to watch Max strip. He knows it, too. From that first time he ever did it for me, seeming so nonchalant in the gazebo and yet never a doubt in my mind that he didn't know how much I loved looking at his body. Weeks of training had honed him well. If anything, he was more magnificent than ever.

He came back to kneel in front of me and I rose to meet him. My hands touched his arms and I leaned in to kiss along the contours of his muscles. I could have gone inch by inch to touch his skin; he was so patient with me. But when I slowed and simply looked up into his eyes, his arms came around me ... big palms resting flat on my lower back.

A beat. Letting me feel what it was like to be captured inside his embrace. Bending to kiss my neck and his hands slid down to my cheeks and pulled me in closer. Still such a light touch, still such a master at gaining my attention to the details.

Like the feel of his beard against my shoulder as he leans in there. Like the slow progress of his hand up my back and the even slower movement of his body into mine ... pressing me back ... forcing me to let him control us both as he lowers me to the mattress ... one hand on my back to keep me safe, one hand reaching to brace our descent.

Like the feel of his breath, puffing across my chest as he gives me words to tell me he savors my skin as I do his. Like the touch of his hand to guide me into a position he desires. Like the sound of his voice, encouraging me to try something with him that makes me feel my power.

Like the way he can point something out about what he's tasting and feeling against his mouth that makes me understand the detail he's noting. Like the way his cock can be the focus for me but he makes me slow down to appreciate its mysteries.

Kneeling over him. All fours ... so maybe kneeling isn't the right word. Warm fingers on my inner thighs. Hearing his murmurs from down there but feeling his hardness against my lips is more important, I think. Lowering myself over his face at his order, doing it slow because I'm paying more attention to not using my hands to take him in my mouth and wondering if I can fit enough inside to make it good for him. And always surprised that an orgasm can sneak up on me and render me helpless when it does.

Sitting on his cock. Facing him. Leaning back. Watching him as he wishes. Sighing to witness him entering me and whimpering when he shoves harder at the end. Smiling later when he asks me if I'm aware of the way I'm biting my lower lip at this moment. Panting when he says he'd rather be the one doing the biting of my lip. Letting him prove it.

And wondering ... just before I fall to sleep with him, punch-drunk with how he satisfies my desires ... is this what it would be like to feel romantic with him? Is there a way to rise above what we are to be more for each other? Knowing for a heartbeat that there isn't and letting the heartbeats count off the reasons why and not all of them have to do with this but it is central -- the people Max and I are would never make sense in that context. Would we? But a heartbeat later, I know there's a void in me that he's filling and I hope I can fill one for him. And that's all I know and that's all I want to know.

In the morning, I awoke Maximus with a smile and whispered request. One act between us to keep me company through the weeks that would likely separate us after that day. Knowing a peace of mind with him that filled me with a sense of contentment tinged with deep desire and excitement at just the hint of his touch of my skin.

We loved each other as if time was on our side. For once, I wasn't counting the minutes. I wasn't ignoring the fact I was leaving; I was enjoying the fact that I'd come to visit him.

At the airport, I was busy getting all my papers in order and being sure I had what I wanted with me in the laptop case that served as my carry-on. But at some point, Maximus put a hand on my arm and I looked up to read sadness in his eyes.

His eyes flicked away from me and I wondered when he'd become hesitant with me again. I pulled on his chin hairs and he turned serious eyes back at me. "Thank you for being with me, Anna. You have a place in my heart."

"You have a place in my heart as well, Maximus," I told him softly. It was what he needed to know. It was what I needed him to know about me.

I shoved away when we gave each other a grin because I didn't want to ruin this moment with other words.

On the plane, I closed my eyes and refused to look out the window until we were well on our way. Only then did I lean against the window and look down at blue water. When I changed planes in Rome, I turned on my cell to check messages. Among my text messages, one from Maximus: "No more pretending."

As I waited for boarding, I took out my book and it fell open to where I had pressed the petals of the tulip in protective papers.

"What just happened?" I whispered to myself. 

Had Max just slipped under my radar?