London, Early December, 2003

The menu is in English, I know it is. But the words ... somehow, they float before my eyes like they are hieroglyphics or some strange amalgamation of polyglot Latin bastardized by Greeks ...

"You just seem a little forlorn. Everything all right with Max?  Is he okay?"

She must have been saying something before that ... was I zoning out on conversation just as much as I am zoning out on the menu? I blink and look across the white linen tablecloth at ... my friend. My good friend.

What is it with women and their female friends? They are the very ones we need to be surrounded by and yet, I swear, I've known more than my fair share of women who simply cannot be friends with other women. I find that women who are truly good friends with other women are also the kind of women that get along with men ... women whom men find fascinatingly good friends. Not that they can't also be lovers, these women whom men find make good friends. In fact, I would venture so far as to say that men fancy these types of women as lovers over the other type -- the type that are not good friends to women and really therefore cannot be such good friends to men. Or maybe it's just the kind of men I am friendly with prefer this type of woman ...

Shit.

She's looking at me. God. I'm rambling even in my own mind! I bet I've done nothing but ramble this whole hour we've been together. She came all the way to the airport in London to spend time with me while I've got this silly six-hour layover before my flight to New Orleans via Chicago. And here I am, lost inside the rambles of my mind.

God, but I am an idiot. "I feel like I'm adopting Max as my cause. You have to feel sorry for him, don't you, if that's the case? I mean, look at the poor guy -- you're the one he wants to be with more than anything and you won't have a thing to do with him really. And the one woman who's after him is the one who fights him constantly. How's that for his ego, you suppose?"

Uma. She of the energetic charm, the deep well of intelligence, the raging inferno of friendship. Looking at me with those sharp eyes that were maybe never fooled; maybe they have always seen more than they should. Enough to know when a female friend doesn't know how to say what's really on her mind.

"It will spark him up a bit," she says and her frown at the menu makes me uncomfortable even if her voice was sweet and light.

I give an internal, invisible shrug and remind myself ... you are a fucking idiot, Ann. Remember ... this issue of Uma and Max ... none of your business but more than that, it's a quicksand of emotions now for Uma. So ... if she can keep it to banter where Max is concerned, I can, too. Right? Oh yeah. That's me -- Inane Banter Queen.

"He's sparking all right." I waggle my eyebrows at her and we both start laughing.

"Anyway ... you seem to be doing less fighting and more fucking these days... if you'll pardon my language."

I cock an eyebrow. My God, I'm just back from time with him in Dubrovnik and I need to talk to her about him ... but ... how can I? It's just that ... well, she's always seemed to know him and I have questions and concerns ... What can I say? "It's been ... an interesting week."

"Really?" she asks with this little sigh.  "Gonna tell me all about it?"

Oops. Is there ever a void to swallow you up when you need it? Never is one for me. But I would give anything for one when I find myself saying to her ...

"I know you'll think I'm crazy but all week, I kept wishing I was you when I was with him." My eyes open wide at the shock on her face. "God, that sounded odd, didn't it?"

"Why? You didn't want any sex?"

"Well ... no. I just meant that I can't understand most of the shit he does. And I just kept thinking, if I was Uma, I'd understand him."

We trade sudden smiles. I know she knows what I meant. I know she knows I'm not really as insensitive as that would have sounded to anyone else. After all, this isn't the first conversation we've had about Max since I've come to want to get to know him a bit better. "I can barely keep up. You know, they never really prepared us for this at Uni."

"Agreed. But you just know stuff about his culture and his times that I'll never get. It really makes it tough to relate to him."

"Yeah, but he still throws me," she says and I let it pass because I hear the regret in her voice.

"And he did things ... he just surprised me sometimes."

"Did things?" A pause. "Yes ... he is unpredictable. Just when you think you have him sussed, he does something..."

We are both silent for long moments. I have this flash of memory and just blurt it out. "I mean ... can I really believe that he'd be sentimental? Max? Do men like him really get that way? It seems so ... un-Roman to me."

She gives me that 'tut' again that she gives me when I say something silly. "Of course. They were so sentimental. A strange mix -- brutal and sentimental. Cried easily. It wasn't unmanly."

"Like one night ... we had this huge argument that really was just a case of us not understanding the other's viewpoint. I thought ... I don't know what I thought he'd do but once we figured it out ... It just seemed to really bring out this other side to him. I mean, he was ... sentimental. Like from nowhere it seemed he's reciting this beautiful poem he said he learned as a boy to charm the ladies. And you're right; it wasn't unmanly at all. It was ... amazing, really."

I see this smile on her face and wonder what memory of Maximus that has triggered in her. "They were very romantic, you know."

It still amazes me. My voice is hushed. "Imagine him telling me a poem in Latin. It was beautiful."

"Roman love poetry is amazing. Wonder which one? He won't be like Lach - Max knows hundreds by heart."

"This one was something by a poet named Cata-something. Oops. Don't I feel like the idiot? Can't even remember the poet's name."

"Catullus?"

"That's it!" 

"Well, it won't have been one of his rude ones. I like them best," she says quickly and starts laughing. I am laughing with her in a second. Something about the way she laughs at moments like this.

"No, it wasn't rude. It was pretty. He said it was a man to his mistress, telling her they should make love despite what people would say because life's too short. He told me he and his friends memorized it as youths to charm the ladies. I imagine it worked quite well ..." I ramble on, all dreamy eyed, like no one had ever quoted a poem or sonnet to me.

"Da mihi mille basia?" she asks quietly. When I frown in confusion, she quickly adds, "Sorry... 'Give me a 1000 kisses?'"

"Yes! That's it!" I clap my hands at the luck that she'd know the poem. Waggled my eyebrows at her. "Oh, I remember that part well. You should hear it in his voice. Or maybe you have."

But she isn't smiling anymore. Her voice is serious and ... confused, I think. "He said that to you? Jesus."

A waiter in a white jacket pours wine for me and tea for her. It's too early in the day her time to drink but I'm not on her time ... I don't know what time my body's on but somewhere in the world, it's okay to be drinking at this hour.

When the waiter glides away, I say, "Jesus? What's with that reaction, Uma?"

"I didn't expect that one. That's all," she says quickly, closing the menu and signaling for the waiter's return for our orders ... like just with this gesture, she's drawing this conversation to a close.

Oh. God. There was obviously something special to her about that poem! I listen to her order a salad and I numbly give an order for the same thing without really hearing what she'd ordered. I feel awful to have been so stupid, so insensitive. I grab her hand and make her look me in the eyes when the waiter leaves again. "Oh, no, Uma. Did I just fuck up some special memory for you? Did Max tell this one to you and ... I mean, I assume it's in his arsenal, eh? I'm sorry if I just messed this up for you."

"No. He never said it to me. It isn't like that." She draws herself up. Stiff upper lip and all, eh?

"I'm sorry. I feel I've said something to upset you, Uma."

"No. Not at all. Just took me by surprise ... take no notice. He's just a very unpredictable man."

I try to recover some class and grace. I know she's upset but if she wants to hide, I ain't about to press her. So I purposely try to lead us away from the minefield. "Yes, he is. I am never sure what to expect with him. Perhaps it's one of his charms."

"One of his many." My eyes dart up to her face; she has this small, wistful smile on her lips and she is somewhere else entirely. And then her eyes focus on me. "Do you understand that poem, Ann?"

I give a good, unladylike snort ... it's a laugh thinking I'll ever 'get' a poem or its meaning. "Just what he told me. He told it to me in English after he said it in Latin because, of course, I wouldn't have understood it otherwise."

"I mean it isn't just a simple love poem."

"Then what is it?"

"Roman poetry is very loaded with meaning and symbolism. They were very literate people."

Giving her a wry grin in the hopes it will break the sudden tension in the air. But also because I think I maybe don't want to know where this is going. "Which is another reason to have been you when I was with him. I don't even get most of the symbolism in poems in English, as you know."

"You know when someone gives you a flower and the Victorians ascribed meaning to every flower?" I look away from her and feel something shake in me. Does she know? "Well, poems were like that to them. There is always a subtext. He knows you don't know that but he wouldn't have chosen that poem idly."

Flowers ... meanings ... symbols ... poems. I remember the flowers. "He's into subtext, I'm learning. He brought me flowers the last night I was there and told me their meanings."

"Max? Flowers? I don't believe it!" she tells me sharply. Our eyes meet. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this ... or maybe he wants you to find out."

"Or maybe it was just a pretty poem he remembered saying to young women to get in their pants," I say.

"No - he wouldn't have used that poem. There are plenty of others for seduction." And then she gives me a little grin and rubs my arm. "And they didn't wear pants."

It cracks us both up. It is the perfect touch.

As we sober up, I realize something. She isn't going to tell me even though she thinks I should know. But she isn't going to do it unless she knows I want to know. And that means I need to know.

"Okay, now you have to tell me. What's the subtext of the poem?"

I wait as she stirs her tea and sips. A delaying tactic? Trying to organize her thoughts? Trying to decide how much to say? When she leans back in her seat and takes a long breath that ends in a soft smile, I know she's made up her mind to just tell me what she knows she'd want to know if she were in this position.

"Catullus was a young handsome poet but pretty impoverished. He met a very beautiful woman called Clodia; she was the sister of one of the most dangerous politicians in Rome. This is Caesar's period ... Julius. They were all scrabbling for power." She looks at me hard. "Okay ... no more history."

Licking her lips and looking up at the restaurant's overhead lighting. Continuing but this time, it is a story I know she treasures. "They had a very passionate affair. She was a free thinker and sexually adventurous."

For just a moment, I have this moving picture in my brain of my times with Maximus ... of our adventures, our passion. And I start listening harder.

"She took him places he had never been," Uma is saying. "And then she moved on to new pastures. He was sick with love but he didn't know how to tell her. He wrote a series of poems to her and read them in public. He called her Lesbia -- no lesbian connotation!"

In my best smart-ass voice: "Whew. I was getting worried what he was trying to tell me."

"Mea Lesbia," she says, dropping into Latin and gazing at me. "Vivamus, mea Lesbia ... 'Come let us live, my Lesbia, and pay no heed to the sermonizing of old men...'"

Inside my brain, I hear Max's voice in that night ... his version of this poem's beginning: "Vivamus, mea Anna ..."

"She threw his love in his face time and time again," Uma continues. "His poems became progressively more disillusioned until some are quite hateful. But they are all very beautiful and tell of the pain and joy of love ... and how once captive, you can never be free."

We look at each other. I feel the room waver around us. I can't even think. I know she knows what a confusing mix of emotions I'm feeling.

"That's why I was surprised," she says gently. "You wouldn't say that poem to anyone except a woman who you loved very, very deeply."

"But why would Max say this poem to me? Uma, you have to believe me, there's no love here between us. It's not me he loves. We're more friends than anything."

"Makes you wonder though, doesn't it?"

"I simply can't believe that. He doesn't feel that way about me," I state, and in my voice is a bit of anger. There just is no way ... no way could it be Max getting in too deep with me. I don't want to hurt him. "Unless ... this must just be him on the rebound."

"Don't be so sure," she says. "One thing is clear, Ann. He feels more than he is showing ... and that poem is proof."

I look directly down into my lap and feel sick. If I'd been alone, I would throw up. I don't understand ... is this anger or fear that I'm feeling? I slam my open hand down on the table and everything on it jumps in rude shock. Anger, then. Am I angry at him? Or ... me? I cover my eyes with my hands. "God. I feel horrible. You don't know what I did."

"What did you do?" she asks me and I feel her warm hand on my forearm.

"Before this night, I think it was the day I got in, he wanted to play a game. He wanted me to be the object of his romantic impulses. See if I was woman enough, he said." I uncover my eyes, drop my hands and look at her. Ashamed for feeling like I've trifled with his emotions when he is so vulnerable. "I thought he was just feeling lonely."

"Well, he is lonely ... but he is used to loneliness. What did you tell him?"

"I told him I knew it wasn't me he felt that way about. And then he backed off."

"Did he fear to give too much of himself away?"

"But that isn't the worst of it, Uma. Because, later, after this night when he told me the poem? Something happened and I ... I don't know why I did it ... but I asked him to play the game with me -- to let us pretend for the rest of the time I was there that he felt romantic about me and I would pretend to believe it."

"And now you wonder if it was a game or not?"

"And I wonder how much that hurt him that I would say that." In my mind, our last night together plays and I don't know how I'll ever face him again.

"He never really plays, you know? It is not in his nature..."

I shake my head hard at her. "No. He always plays games with me. Why would I have not thought it was a game?"

"His games are his desires that he cannot articulate. He is not a frivolous man, Ann. If he wants simply to get his rocks off, he behaves differently."

"You're wrong. He likes games. This is just one of them."

"It depends how you define 'game.'"

And then I blurt it out; it is what I've always rather assumed with Max. "He's pretending that I'm you. That's all this is. A bit of fantasy for him."

She rolls her eyes and gives me this annoyed snort. "That is such crap."

"No. It's not. It's always been that way with us. He only ever sought me out because we were close."

"You should be ashamed of yourself ... he knows exactly who you are. Whatever reason he had in the beginning is different now."

"Then he has to know I don't need this shit right now," I say with this pissy sigh.

"That may be why he talks in riddles. Give him the benefit of the doubt," she tells me, tilting her head to peer at me. "But he cares, Ann - or he would simply fuck you and share nothing with you."

"God. What have I got myself into?" I whisper it out to her and I think I would cry but I cannot even process tears.

She takes my hand and squeezed it across the table. Reassurance. "You have got yourself involved with a very, very beautiful man."

Growling at her in frustration and wishing she hadn't just said that. "Max was so perfect because nothing would ever happen between us."

"Famous last words."

"If he's so beautiful, then why do you avoid him so?" I say, full smart-ass mode and knowing the answer already because she's told me before.

"Because he is so beautiful to me. Isn't that obvious?"

"Yes, it is. And I know you find that dangerous to what you have with Terry."

She puts a hand across her lips and whispers past it, as if she is in awe of the memory: "Do you know how close we came? A hair's breadth away. I can't go that close again to the fire. I will get burned ..."

"But things have changed, haven't they?"

"Oh, yes ... things have changed ... but all things stay the same."

"Not really, Uma. Not everything does." Saying it to her soft.

"As far as Max goes, one day, if he still wants me, which is unlikely, I will see him again ... but now is not the time."

"He'll want you. Trust me."

And I think this would be good for them both but I don't say it. And she also doesn't say whatever she might have been thinking about this aspect. We edge our conversation away from Maximus by talking about some of the other men in our lives whom we both know. She brings me up to date on a few of them; I have so little news to tell her as I've been pretty insulated lately.

You see, Uma really is a good friend. To women and to men. Notice how she doesn't judge me? She's the one I can talk to about anything -- obviously. She's the one who keeps me informed in this circle of people I should be closer to but choose to keep a certain aloofness there as if it protects me somehow from feeling too strongly.

Later, the plane's maybe five seconds from lifting off the runway and I'm trying hard to find something else to think about rather than my fear of takeoffs ... and what do I focus on? Fuck all if it's not that text message from Maximus ... the one he'd sent me after I'd left him in Dubrovnik. 'No more pretending,' it had said. I look out the plane's window and it isn't London spread below me that I'm seeing. Nope. I am looking off somewhere further in the distance.

I see Max on that balcony of his hotel suite in Dubrovnik, staring out to sea, facing in this direction. It wasn't the sex, it wasn't the arguments, it wasn't the challenge. It was the vulnerability that did it to me; it was that moment when the innocent boy in him came boldly out to confront me.

The passion of our unconventional relationship.

I would give a lot to be able to put my arms around him just then and shelter him. How unexpected.

And I wish I could be saying to him, "No more pretending, Max. I'll swear to it if you will."

There is no promise of love that I am able to make right now, so those words are going to stay within the maze that is me. I catch my reflection in the plastic of the window and I see myself as he might. I don't think I'd know what to do with me. And the truth is, I'm not very good at love. Not now. Maybe I never was. It would take a strong man to enter into the fray with me.

Because I feel something for Max. I think it could be love or at least the beginning of love. God, but I don't want this because I am afraid to screw it up. But then I get the sense of how futile any future with him will be if I'm never going to be willing to be open to finding out if this is love. I don't want to be a coward.

If this is love, I don't want to miss this chance with him. I press my forehead against the window and whisper the words I think he wants to hear: "Come let us live, Maximus."

California, Late January, 2004

He woke me from a sleep that had been restless and worried. I sat up with a start and it took me so long to remember where I was. I must have been frowning at first but when I was really awake, all I could do was hug him in to me.

I felt his mouth move against my ear before I even realized he'd said my name. He has this way of saying my name that seems to cause the most unexpected reactions in me. In that night, I fought tears. But I was smiling against his cheek.

"How pleasant to arrive here after this long trip to find you waiting for me. Are you angry I was delayed?" he was asking me.

"Big man like you scared of a little girl like me? Tell me another one," I teased him.

He gave me his 'tsk' and it made me chuckle against him. A heartbeat later, he was holding me against him and all felt as it should have.

I leaned away from him and just looked at him, taking him in as he was in this night. In that brief moment between us, words seemed trivial and whatever else was happening, I wanted to swim to his island. "Max. I've missed you so. You have no idea."

He gave me no verbal answer and I wanted none. None. I wanted just to know I'd given him the sense of arriving back at his farm after a long overseas trip and finding someone there who had missed him with an acuity he could witness. I so often had this feeling about Max ... after the Dubrovnik trip with him especially ... that he felt adrift and as if he had a need for there to be someone out there in the world keeping a specific vigil for him wherever he roamed. I knew that feeling in my bones; perhaps it's really why we'd grown closer lately?

We sat there breathing in the same space and making note of that and how it felt to be alone together again. Him ... squatting down before the couch on which he had found me asleep. Me ... sitting before him on the couch and finding him looking tired, worn out and yet strangely at peace.

"Welcome home, Maximus," I whispered.

He gave me this brief nod and stroked my thigh. Then touched at my earrings. The ones he'd given me. It's when it dawned on me. He wasn't speaking because the words that reflected what he felt were too much to get out. God, what this man is capable of making me feel.

"Okay, enough of this. I bet you're hungry and in serious need of unwinding so you can get some sleep to get rid of jet lag. Why don't you let me take care of you for a while? Here, let's loosen that tie and collar. C'mon, come sit in this lounger and just chill for a while. I'll make you a drink. You relax and I'll warm up dinner. I'd made some spaghetti ... seemed easiest ... just in case you really made it in tonight ... and ..."

His hand around my wrist pulled me to a stop even as he settled into the overstuffed lounger that Egan had told me had been Doc's contribution to the house's new furnishings. Just his eyes ... it was all I needed. They told me he was grateful for the way I was handling this. I bent and kissed his forehead. Then started bustling about, trying to distract us both. Drinks, music, dinner, dessert ... giving him a bath ... wiping his body dry ... keeping it intimate but not sexual ... tucking him in bed. Wandering back through his house to lock up, turn out lights ... pausing to note he must have not awoken me the moment he came inside because his suitcase was in his bedroom and his briefcase was in his study ...

And I wondered as I dried my hair ... had he simply needed finding me there after this trip? He'd sounded unsettled yet aggressive when we'd spoken on the phone the day before ... him calling to say he'd be delayed and me assuring him that I'd find my own way to his farmhouse from the airport in San Francisco.

So he'd known I'd be there and when he had arrived, he'd come into his new home after his deadly mission to Croatia to rescue a hostage and protect Karolina ... Dino had told me I might find Max to be much too intense just then. And I could picture Max's homecoming if I closed my eyes. Opening his front door ... dressed in a business suit that was showing the effects of long travel only interrupted by his stop in London then brief layover to meet with Dino in New York ... wearing an overcoat ... carrying a suitcase, briefcase and laptop bag ... road-weary and wanting to be in the one place he felt belonged to him ... to find a woman he could squint at and imagine was always going to be there waiting to greet him when he came home ...

Was that his fantasy? Wasn't it every man's? Or maybe it was just what too many men I knew would have fantasized ... a life in which they could rush out into the world, do great feats, slay dragons, win the girl ... and then a home they could retreat to when worn down and there find a woman with open arms who kept the hearth swept and stoked. A woman passionately in love and who loved him with passion in their bed.

I slept in his shadow that night. I dreamed dreams of domesticity and simplicity of purpose. I dreamed what it might have been like for me if I'd been less me. When I woke, the sense of the dreams lingered and I did not fight them. I had no fight left; I put away the part of me that never stopped struggling. This time was for him.

He slept deep and long. I slipped from bed and let him sleep on. I made coffee and then watched him sleep because I wanted to store up on his memory until I was sated. He had become just that important to me. And I had always figured that in the crazy set-up of our lives, we wouldn't really get that much time together. Just these fleeting days of seeing each other on fly-by visits we tucked into our busy lives lived for the most part in far-flung cities -- him living on the West Coast; me living in the Deep South. And both of us with jobs that took us on the road so much. Both of us with other commitments as well.

He lay on his belly, both arms underneath his pillow, cradling his head. His eyes flickered back and forth beneath their lids. Sometimes, the muscles in his jaw would clench and I wondered what he was dreaming. His shoulder muscles, even still and unflexed, were rounded with appealing virility. One leg was straight, the other bent at the knee and drawn up waist high.  The sheet covering him dipped and pooled along his contours from his shoulders down. Only the tip of his knee peeked out from the sheet.

I stood watching him, feeling this wish to be strong enough to protect him from me and every other woman who'd never be what he most needed. I watched as he turned over and my heart turned in this amazing flip-flop and I found myself wishing to be strong enough to protect him from any woman who didn't love him.

He lay with his head turned hard to the side. His neck was studded with stubble and I knew if I bent over him just there, he would smell and taste of my desire for him. It was more that he simply drew me into him than that I ever made a conscious decision to stand there wanting him.

One arm was draped in total repose across his chest, his hand languidly lolling over the sheet about waist level. That rampant knee was still jutting out, just on the opposite side this time. The sheet still pooled in the valleys of his form and still highlighted the peaks of his body. I could see the bulging outline at his groin. I looked longer at the shape of the thighs and the scars upon his chest and arms.

The more I knew Maximus, the more he intrigued me. I could have stood looking at him forever.

The day could not have been more glorious if it had been trying to win some contest. I had taken a long walk and gathered wildflowers. It was sunny, warmer than I had expected, cheerful, breezy ... and I had hiked along rolling terrain and followed a stream that flowed soft through its rocky path.

I made my way back to Max's farmhouse even as the sun began to reach its zenith. I found him standing on his back deck, wearing nothing but an old pair of jeans, surveying his property as it stretched out before him and he was also watching over the woman under his protection.

"Did you dress like that just for me? I approve," I told him when I reached the bottom of three steps up to the deck. Gave him this little growl and he shook his head at me but he still grinned. Was there ever a time when that easy smile on Max's face ... the one that lit his eyes and was accompanied by him tilting his chin down ... would not totally captivate me? "Would you like some lunch? I went shopping yesterday and I've got ..."

He shook his head and there was a new light in his eyes as he stepped toward me. "Is that all you planned to do during this visit, Anna? Feed my belly?"

"I'll feed whatever hunger you've got, Max."

"Yes? I am ravenous but not for food. I am hungry for you. Will you satisfy my appetite, mistress?"

My hands smoothed over his bare chest and up to his shoulders. I bent in to kiss at his nipples, letting my tongue linger. I heard this satisfied sigh from him as my hands traveled up his neck and then down his back. I tucked all ten fingers inside the back waistband of his jeans and simply felt the way his body responded to my nearness. My palms pressed in on the small of his back and he arched his groin into that perfect position to align with me even as his own hands pressed up avidly on my ass to lock me in tightly to him. I could feel our twin wants and still we lingered to relish this moment.

"I have missed touching you, little one," he finally told me after we rocked in each other's hold for long moments.

"This time, it counts between us, Max. Let's make every single second about connecting. I am bare before you and ready for what may come."

"You are not bare yet, Anna. But you will be. I will strip you down and have my fill of you and then I shall take more."

I trembled at his words and the light in his eyes. I mouthed all I was able to respond: Please.

"Are you sure, Anna? I may ask for far more than you realize."

I swallowed hard and then admitted what he needed me to admit to him. "This is how I wish to be with you. Bare. Only me. Nothing else." Naked. Needy. Giving. All at once. The contradiction of all I am. Selfish even when sacrificing.

"Come with me, Anna. Simply be with me. It's all I ask of you." All he'd ask for but wishing fate had granted him more. The essence of him. Strong even when weak.

Inside his bedroom, I noticed shifting shades of sun flitting across an unmade bed that still bore the imprint of his body. I fought the impulse to flop face first into the mattress and get lost inside the smell and phantom warmth of him. I had this momentary vision of what that would feel like ... my mouth against wrinkled sheets and my hands stroking fabric that had he had stroked ... and it was enough for it to be real to me.

"Have you noticed the view from this window?" he asked me, his mouth at my ear and his hands not even touching me. I leaned back against him and shook my head. "Come see it with me."

I let him point me toward the window and then I walked to the clear panes. I felt his hands as they released my hair from the clip that had held it. I felt the light brush of his palms as his fingers arranged the length of my hair down my back. I turned my head and felt his lips upon my temple.

"The light ... sometimes it is golden. Like now." His breath flittered across my cheek as he spoke. His fingers trickled slowly ... so slowly ... down my arms and then nudged under my shirt to tickle along bare skin above my jeans. "I wish to see you shimmer in this golden light, Anna."

His fingers nudged at the bottom button to my shirt from the inside ... like he was just trying to give me the hint of what he wanted me to be doing for him. It felt as if he'd reached right inside me ... it got to me how he could do this, how he could be a man of such strength and power who knew that controlling it to be so subtle just emphasized it to me.

I looked at him over my shoulder as I unsnapped my jeans. He walked backwards across the room, and then settled into an overstuffed armchair. I suspected a woman had picked it out for him. It was an indulgence I didn't think he'd have even thought to search for. I think he might have been content with whatever had been there, even if he'd had only a sleeping blanket and a hotplate. As long as it had been a functional shelter for a weary body, then Max wouldn't have needed luxuries or softness. But if he had them, if someone else took the time and trouble to think of this for him, he would have accepted it and utilized it.

I had noticed that utilitarian bent when I'd gotten there two days before. After I'd arrived and been let in by his caretaker, I'd spent the first two hours just getting used to Max's place. Just studying how and where he put things along with the things he kept on display. It seemed easy to me to pick out the touches that had been put there by other hands and what he himself had given personal effort to doing. There was something about the ritual of nesting that struck me as I'd gotten into interpreting his home.

Do you know that I have always despised that concept of "a woman's touch" around the home? I suppose it's because I don't have all those thoughtful nuances of caring for hearth and home that seems to be a right of my sex. There's something missing in me, perhaps. But what I could do is bridge the practical with the whimsical. I could marry the functional with the indulgent touches that say something about the way one chooses to find comfort.

After perusing his home, I made changes. Primarily small ones and unimportant ones. But I simply believed that there was a part of Max that wanted me to take it upon myself to fuss over this aspect and to make him feel that a woman who loved him had touched his home. Otherwise, why did he ask me to consider coming there rather than him coming to my home for this visit?

There was only one major thing I did for him and I'd done it pretty quickly, while waiting on him to arrive. I created a wall display out of things I'd brought with me for just this purpose. I wanted him to remember me even when he was here by himself. I'd framed scraps of handmade paper on which I'd had a friend letter stanzas of Roman poetry ... in his native Latin ... because it was a Roman love poem from Max that would always be the tie between us that I might cherish most of all.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked me.

"You."

"And what ... exactly ... was it of me you were thinking?"

"Of how much I want you."

"What of what I want?"

I shivered in the wake of his voice. "I will give it to you, Max. All you have to do is ask."

He walked toward me and I followed his eyes as they looked down then up my naked form. Open. Bare. Standing before him. Vulnerable by choice.  Reckless by nature. Trusting by my own will.

"Give in to me for a small while, Anna." I let him turn me back toward the window and he whispered to me about the golden light kissing my skin. His hands were soft on my breasts and I watched them as they kneaded me there. I leaned my head to the side and his mouth kissed in at the curve of my neck. I trembled ever so slightly as his mouth moved down my spine.

Behind me, he dropped to his knees. Soft words from his mouth. "O me felicem! o nox mihi candida! et o tu... lectule deliciis facte beate meis!"

It was a surreal moment ... as if we connected on some other plane ... absorbing how it felt that he was saying opening words of a poem he'd find later were among those of Propertius that I'd found in my research and had framed for his wall... or maybe he'd noticed them there and he thought this was what I needed? This statement of pure joy just to be making love with me? Whether they leapt to his mind unaided or what I'd done had intrigued him, it couldn't have possibly mattered. Max would not have uttered them to me unless he'd meant them. And that I'd even recognized them ... the impact of this moment was not lost on me even as I felt myself swept up totally in the feeling that he could be this way with me.

I gave in to him ... his desire was my pleasure.

Gentle touch from his hands along my ribs, to my belly, to my hips. His mouth making love to the base of my spine and I felt like I might melt away in the rhythm of Max. He asked me what I wanted from him most of all. I dropped my head, raised my hands until they touched the glass before me and I braced myself to feel him cajole me into baring more of myself. It had never been my clothes he'd considered a barrier he'd breech in this day; it had been my walls of tenacity.

"So like you, Max," I breathed out to him. "Do you have any earthly concept what it's like to be a woman in your hold? I never know what you'll do but I always know what I'll feel."

"And what do you feel? Do you feel my hunger for you?"

"That's it exactly." I could barely breathe out those words.

His hands continued their homage to my body. Just the lightest of touches, languid, as if each stroke mattered in the same degree as any other did. Down my legs. Up my thighs. Lingering forever upon my rear. With this rumble from deep within, he kissed in where my thighs rose to my cheeks. His fingers traced along my folds and his mouth ... Oh God. His tongue.

"Max. I can't ... I ... Oh. God!" His name sliding out of my mouth as a long sigh.

He nuzzled in against my flesh; his hand cupped my sex as if he owned it. He waited until he knew I was with him again.

"I wish to taste you here. I wish to taste you as you come for me, Anna. Again. And again."

"Oh, God." Arching to receive his lips. Wanting to sink down to my knees but his hands would not allow that. Before I even realized it, I was struggling and writhing within his grip and he'd followed my body's retreat until I was plastered against the glass and unable to do anything but give in. I opened my eyes and looked out at his land. At the soil. The plants. The shape of rigid lines against soft rounded hillsides. Woodsy vines holding tender grapes. Tendrils mixed with leaves. Brown and green. It all felt a part of the experience when I came into his mouth.

That rough grunt of satisfied man. His hands turned me to face him. His touch was so tough and so nurturing.

"Don't let me go. I would fall if you did," I panted to him.

A smile on his face as he rose before me. His arms gathered me to him and his mouth took mine. I tasted what he had. I reached up for more and I reached down to free him from his jeans even as he was dragging me with him as he backed up to the bed.

He picked me up and placed me ever so precisely on the bed. "I want more," I whispered to him. I knew he'd know what I meant. He nodded even as he stood to shrug off his jeans.

In his hands, I had never felt inhibited ... no matter the trepidation I might feel to walk toward what he'd show me, I never stopped once he touched me. I had gone right with him wherever he'd led and I believe that's one thing Max most felt when he was with me. There might have been so many things I would change, but that was not one of them.

I turned over on my back and watched him walk away from me, as if he were upside down. There was something surreal in the view. I slithered toward the edge of the bed and let my head dangle over. I observed as he left the room. I closed my eyes and felt the way this angle was disorienting. I opened my eyes when I heard his soft footfalls upon the bare wood floors and imagined the way he could have been my all if it had been our destiny.

"Max, I learned a love poem for you."

He dropped to his knees and I saw he was holding the bunch of wildflowers I'd gathered that morning on my walk. "Yes? Anna, you honor me."

I smiled; suddenly shy in the face of his attention. He stroked the flowers down my throat and then kissed in their wake, gently asking me to give him this poem. "I have it written in Latin, but I can't speak it in that language. So I memorized it in English."

He stopped moving, his head resting upon my breasts. Such an odd position for us ... upside down to each other, his fingers barely touching my torso, my hands languidly playing in the hair of his thighs just below the sweet swell of his rump. Odd perhaps, but with such an intimate casualness in how comfortable we were in the pleasure we took in building up to physical love with time devoted to mental seduction.

So I gave him the poem ... giving him the interpretation I'd found that seemed most in keeping with how I imagined the poet had meant the rhythm of images to be:

At last
It has come.
Love!
There - my secret
In all its nakedness.
Covering it up -that would have made me ashamed.
The Goddess of Love read my poems
And made it happen.
She dispatched him
Straight to my aching breast.
She keeps her promises!
Everyone's talking about it - my happiness -
That is those who've got none of their own. 
Perhaps I shouldn't have written this,
In case someone reads it before my love.
But I'm so glad I've been bad! 
So bored with seeming nice! 
Let them shout it out: 
I've got what I deserve 
And so has he. 

Oh, but they were ancient thoughts ... found in research I'd done so I'd have something to give him that I hoped would make this moment as it should have been ... their author was Sulpicia, the only Roman woman whose love poetry survives, and only five short poems of hers even made it. Ancient words that seemed to embody to me the timeless impact of a woman's realization that she feels love for a man.

He said nothing when I finished, his head there against my breasts and I could feel his body breathing in that moment. There was something about the way I was laying there, with my head over the side of the bed and my view was not of the world as I was used to ... it added to the surreal nature of me, the illiterate in such things, reciting a love poem to Maximus, who above all men I'd ever known, was able to express strong emotions within the subtext of recitations of ancient love poetry. I turned my head and kissed into his thigh.

His fingers trailed from my ribs, over my breasts, up my throat, along my face ... as he stood up and looked down upon me. I watched him from where I was; took in the magnificence of his form and the way his hardness was a detail framing him in my view. I had to touch him. He gave me no choice if he was going to be this close and I could smell him.

Petals fell through the golden sun toward me. I could not see them strike my body because of how my head was hanging over the bed's side. But I felt them. They teased my skin and sensitized my every nerve ending where they fell.

My hands slid around his thighs. I prodded him toward me even as he dropped more petals from the wildflowers.

Closer still and I breathed him in. My fingers traced down then up then over his cock. I plucked the droplet from his tip and placed it delicately upon my tongue. It made me moan. I heard this deep rumble from the pit of his throat. He bent his knees and presented his hardness to my mouth. I took my time to taste him, to feel him, to remember all of this for I'd never want to forget. Not ever.

When he was buried inside my mouth, I felt his thumb smooth over my cheek and he muttered to me about how it felt to him to be where he was. If I had not already been wet, that would have been beyond my resistance. As it was, I wanted to disappear inside the torrent of my want for him.

And then the world shifted on me. I felt his weight change as he leaned his hands onto the mattress. With no preamble, just this growl, he shoved his nose into my crotch and then pushed his head between my legs. My hands hung onto the back of his thighs; his hands dug into my ass and held me to his mouth as he pumped lightly into mine.

He was relentlessly hungry, ravenous and unafraid to show it in all its brutality. 

He sucked. I sucked. He growled. I whimpered. He continued. I couldn't. He pulled out. I was captured. I clenched my nails into his thighs and wanted to die and wished to live forever as long as I could be with him like that.

And after I could do nothing but beg him and beg him, he crawled on the bed and pulled me up with him. In the middle of sheets that I had dreamed of falling face first in, I sat in his lap and watched him enter me. My hand held his cock and his hands held my hips, keeping me above him, hovering as I impaled myself on him. And as he went into me all the way, my head fell back and I heard myself shiver out a groan.

What does it feel like when I am inside you like this, he asked me, his mouth at my breast.

Like the world disappears and I am nothing but a woman and there is no other pleasure but to be with this man who can make me feel this way, I told him.

Pleasure, he mouthed against my neck, I know exactly how that feels. 

He took my hand and used the heel of my palm to rub against my gasping clit. I started crying even before I came and I pleaded with him to tell me what to do for him. You're doing it, he said.

When I raised my head, he wiped my tears and never smiled. He carefully placed my chin on his shoulder and I hugged in around his head. I felt him bite hard into my neck.

Each measured stroke up into me was marked by words in Latin and I recognized these words and held my breath as each line came out ... spoken by Max in this voice of absolute and hoarse devotion for how he now knew I relished these gifts of love poetry from him in a way that made him feel cherished for the man he was to me ...

"Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes
tuae, Anna, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis ..."

He spoke the lines until I stepped into a pause from him and finished the poem in English ... my own voice strong in its quiet depth for him ...

"... so many kisses to kiss you with
would be enough and spare for love-crazed Anna,
too many for the inquisitive to be able to count
or bewitch with their evil tongues."

He was struggling and I could feel his chest heaving with the effort to not come until the moment was complete between us.

Only a kiss ... people say that all the time. 'Oh, it was only a kiss; it didn't mean a thing.' 'A kiss is just a kiss.' But the kiss we shared, it meant more than should have been possible. I am an emotional recluse; I come down off that mountain and I usually fuck it up. I don't believe this is happening to me. It's not fair and I am out of answers. I should have stayed on the mountain but then I would have missed this man.

Into the pause of the kiss, he laid me back on the bed but never let me slide from his lap. His arms held fast around my waist and he had traction to grind into me, leaning over me, my hands clutching into his biceps and him slowly coming closer until his lips hovered above mine.

"We were meant to meet. Kismet," I whispered to him, my lips moving against his ... so softly, it could have been my imagination except I knew it wasn't.

"That is no secret," he whispered back. "I knew it the moment I heard about you."

It made me smile. "You lie like a rug. You just wanted to fuck me is all."

And suddenly we were both laughing. I held his face in my hands and he rocked against me. I moaned. He raised an eyebrow and said, "Tell me you did not desire me as well. Why else would you have been so afraid to see me?"

"I didn't think you'd think much of me. I thought ... who would have put us together in a million years?"

And somehow ... it passed between us just in that instant. That what was happening between us had changed everything and we had acknowledged it without even talking about it. Not really.

He nuzzled into my neck. I sighed against him as he started the rhythm again. I was already so sensitive that when he reached between us and stroked once ... twice ... rough thumb ... I bit him hard into his shoulder as I came ... he took it and loved it. Grunted into my hair and said something that might have been obscene except it was how he felt and I loved that he did.

"Prove it," I said when I caught my breath.

He came with this stream of words that I knew I'd never ask him what they meant for they were not words of love or seduction. They were the words of a man who knew he'd conquered the woman he'd just fucked. He would never have wanted to be reminded of that.

I'd never forget it.

Do you know how people talk about burning their bridges behind them? Like it's something to fear even though I think sometimes it's the very incentive one needs to get on with your life when you realize you cannot continue on the way you were going? If the old bridges were there, leading back to the safety of what you knew was familiar even if wrong, some of us might find it much too hard to make the tough choice and live with it.

This visit with Max? We'd set it up a few weeks earlier. It was supposed to be the opportunity for us to exist together and figure out where we went from the new reality of having acknowledged that what we had between us was more than sex.

Things change. They had for both of us in the interim. But I don't think what we felt about the other had really changed. Just life around us changed and maybe it changed what was possible and maybe it just showed us the bridges in our lives. Max had a new focus after what had happened in that last mission to Croatia. We talked about that the first night he'd been there with me in California. Sometimes I think Max tells me things like that because he's testing me to see if things like that matter to the way I feel about him.

I watched his eyes when he told me. I usually didn't know what was going on inside him but I studied his eyes and hoped I'd begin to learn him better that way.

He had noticed I was doing this the next day. It had amused him. He'd taken me with him when he and his caretaker had walked among the vines and talked about soil testing and new techniques and irrigation leaks and insect control ... until I got bored. So I'd gone exploring a bit and found myself wandering into the shade of the barn. When my eyes adjusted to the lower lighting, I realized there were a few horses in stalls. Now, me, I'm not much of a horse person. But that didn't mean I was insensitive to them. I was just a bit overwhelmed by them. I walked down the line of stalls and pictured Maximus astride one of them.

"It helps if you have a treat for her," Max's voice said from behind me. I was looking into the liquid brown eyes of this horse who was regarding me with serious suspicion. But when she heard Max, she whinnied out a heartfelt greeting.

"She likes you!" I giggled. "She's done nothing but stare at me like she wants me out of her house."

"Here, give her this carrot."

He placed it in my hand but I went about it the wrong way and at the last moment, he pulled my hand back. Then showed me to place it in my flat palm and lift it to her until she accepted it. But I jumped back when she made a move and Max gave me a 'tsk' that was anything but amused. He held my arm and forced me to stand there and let the horse take the carrot from me. Her lips felt softer than I expected.

"Here. Pet her on the ... No, let me show you." He came behind me, an arm around my waist to keep me in place, his other hand around my wrist and guiding my hand to stroke between her nostrils. She blew warm, moist air at me. Max talked low and gentle to the horse.

I turned in his arms and just watched him pet her and talk to her. "You are the most amazing man, Max."

His eyes never left the horse but his hand around my waist drew me in tighter to him. "And all because I am unafraid to touch a horse?" he teased me.

"You aren't afraid to touch me," I said and only then did his eyes drop to mine. I stroked my fingers down his cheek. "I feel like when you touch me, I am getting all these different parts of you and I want to know them all."

He blinked, fast, a few times. His jaw seemed to set. He tilted his chin down and leaned in against me. His mouth was soft against my forehead. I felt rough wood against my shoulders. His hands held mine. "You see too much in me."

"You don't let me see enough, Max. Or am I just blind?"

"Why is it you seek to know all about me? Perhaps I am best left as is." 

I think maybe the fact I wanted to learn all about him was something he enjoyed. It seemed to me that Max was so used to thinking of himself as somehow less than the sum of him that he was often surprised when others thought so highly of him. He was just so used to living in his own skin that he couldn't see that his own honor and valor set him off as someone of real and deep value to the rest of us. He had the tendency to dwell upon the aspects of himself that he felt might have been his downfall, as if being him had harmed those who loved him and therefore he had failed in some way.

Each morning, I got in the habit of taking long hikes in solitude. By the time I'd get back, Max was always hard at it in the fields, enjoying the physical exertion and the mundane tasks of running the vineyard. Sometimes, I would walk to where I could observe him but most times, I stayed within this silly make-believe world of 'playing house with Max.' It never bored me, this time alone while he was off. It somehow seemed a good pace to these days. I spent parts of each of my days planning lunch and dinner for Max ... and when he was with me, it just seemed like he appreciated the ease between us as much as I appreciated having this luxury of concentrating on getting to know him in a different, more adult way.

He indulged the urge I had to add color to the insides of his home. I would ask him, wouldn't that wall be nice if it was wallpapered or sponge painted or leathered or something other than off-white? And he would look at the wall and then consider me. Do with it as you would like, he would say. I'd ask him what colors soothed him and he'd shrug but I felt he withheld opinion because he was enjoying my interest in making his place more homey.

I took off in his truck one morning and spent hours at the paint store. When I got back, I found him in the field, mending a fence. I showed him paint splotches; he blinked in alarm and tried to feign approval until I took pity on him and showed him the colors I really wanted him to consider. I got in a bit of trouble for my sass, not to mention needing a head to toe washing to get rid of the hay he rolled me in when he dragged me off kicking and screeching into the barn.

He had been hot ... sweat pooling along his chest and lower back ... dirt along his forearms where he'd been carrying supplies ... cowhide gloves gripping a hammer in one hand and a framing rail in the other.

My own body was clean and cool. 

He'd raised a rust-stained glove in my face and told me he'd overlook my impudence just this one time if I'd just stand there and let him pretend I was an obedient woman coming down to see to her mate's need for a drink of cool wine.

I put my hands on my hips and gave him a stern look. "You really are such a ..."

"Do not say it, Anna," he said with this mock glare that we both knew for what it was.

" ... a man."

He cocked an eyebrow. "You say that as if it is a bad thing."

I looked him up and down. "It's not all bad. You're good for some things." He gave me a smug grin. "Like taking out the trash and killing bugs but other than that ..."

When he lunged for me, I yelped in surprise because even though I expected him to do something, he did it with such silky speed that I couldn't get away in time. He had a hand on my wrist and he was hauling me up to him ... and then I said something about his big hands were also good for cracking walnuts when I couldn't find the nutcracker ... and that was it. He threw me over his shoulder, told me he wasn't letting me get away with disrespecting the male sex and started stalking toward the barn. I kept teasing him ... told him he was also good for getting things off the top shelf for me and for pumping gas in the car ... And then screeched as he smacked me this tiny slap across my ass.

Inside the barn, he turned this complete circle and I asked him what he was up to.

"I am about to show you something these big hands of mine can do other than cracking walnuts for you," he said ... his voice this low, dangerous tone that made me giggle for how he was letting me see this playful side to him. "Do not tempt me to make the demonstration very unpleasant, little one."

"Oh. Really? Big talk is all you are. And just ..."

But my breath caught as I felt him start climbing the ladder up into the hayloft. I struggled in his hold and ordered him to let me down so I didn't fall ... Imagine the reception that got?

With no preamble, he sat on a bale, set me on my feet and told me to apologize. I smirked at the look on his face, trying so hard to play with me ... and flipped him a finger. He pulled me swiftly over his lap ... a move I would never have seen coming from Max. He positioned me so my feet could not touch the ground and one arm leaned into my waist, keeping my wriggling body where he wanted it ... and he gave me this utterly harmless spank. Just that insanely fast, I felt helpless ... and lost.

His big hand rubbed on my cheeks and I struggled. He shushed me then yanked my pants down and then lingered with his finger trailing the edges of my panties. Somehow, things shifted on me ... I felt this ultra-awareness come over me and thought, "I promised him I'd be up for anything he wanted."

I whimpered out his name ... He gave me another tiny pat on the rump and I thought, "He can do better than that!" I felt the roughness of his jeans against my arms. He slowly peeled my panties down and cool air stroked my ass ... and I felt vulnerable but safely excited.

"You wouldn't dare," I said softly ... knowing he needed one last bit of sass to spur him on. 

He hesitated with his hand on me, then raised it ... I wiggled, anxious for it to be over, willing to be whatever he needed me to be. The whole world seemed to be waiting on him.

Max is so rarely what I expect. I think I could know him for a hundred years and still not be able to guess his next move.

I was waiting on him to spank me. Instead, his hand ran softly over one cheek and then down to cup my sex. I swallowed hard and willed myself to have discipline.

"Go on, Max. Spank me."

"Surely you do not wish for this ... do you?" he whispered.

A beat. "What do you wish for, Maximus?"

In a flash, his hand cupping my sex and his other hand holding my arm dragged me to sit, my jeans and panties at my ankles, my body dangling over one of his knees, straddling it, facing him ... eye to eye. His head tilted to one side as he licked his lips and really tried to read me. "I do not wish to hit you."

I reached a hand out to touch his face. "You can spank me, Max ... if you want. It's just a game. Go on."

His eyes closed and he sighed. "I do not wish for such games between us but I am willing to engage in them for your sake. Tell me that is what you want, and I shall do it."

I felt this warm blush creep over my face and when he looked at me, I leaned into his shoulder. "I am trying so hard, Max. I just want to give you what you want."

He chuckled. "So it seems we have been at cross purposes again, Anna. Both wanting to do for the other and thinking we knew what that might be. If you asked me, what do I want you to be, I would simply say, you. Be the woman I know, Anna. She is more than enough for me. She is the woman who fires my lust after all and it is her spirit as well as her mind I enjoy."

I nestled in against him and couldn't help the wiggle over his hand because it was still guarding my sex and it felt so good. "What else do you want of me, Max? Let's see, there were three roles for women, right? Wife, mistress, slave. Which do you want me to be? I've been the mistress. Did you want something new this week? Slave perhaps?"

"You know very well that I do not desire you be a slave," he said softly.

"What then?" I sat up and looked in his eyes. And never blinked. "Wife?"

His response was instant. It was gentle and it came with a smile. "I do not want a wife."

"I do not want a husband."

"Then you have your answer."

"So ... we're just as we want to be, right?"

"Are we?" he asked me, his low voice such a challenge.

"I am right where I want to be. But then will ya just lookie where I'm sitting?" I chuckled to him and it took him a moment to realize I was purposely switching gears. I wiggled around just a bit and he took in this deep breath. "You know those big hands of your, Max? Know something else they're good for?"

That big hand under me moved ... so did its fingers. I gasped as he said, "Tell me, Anna."

"Oh, Max."

"Have I guessed it then, my lady?"

My voice was so hoarse and I closed my eyes before I even finished the attempt to keep sassing him. "You're good, Spaniard, but you're not that good."

"Am I not, little one? Can you truly say that?" he asked me, his mouth right at my ear and his entire body tensed to prove me wrong.

"Max ... God, the things you can make me feel ... I can't ... Oh God."

Couldn't help it. I just wanted him too badly. I wanted at him. I just put my hands on his shirt and tore it open. Buttons were lost but what was important was that his shirt was open and I could look at his chest. It seemed to do something to him. I'd leaned in to lick the salty flavor of his neck even as I was grinding over his hand when he tossed me down on the hay-strewn loft floor. He was kneeling over me and a half-second later, he was ripping my shirt open and yanking off my pants from around my ankles so he could get where he wanted unimpeded.

We were helter-skelter wild after that. Saying crazy nonsense words and obscene sounds to each other as horses beneath snorted and stomped. It was like it all got to us and we just reveled in a sex romp.

On top. On the bottom. Front. Back. So much fun. Him in control. Me riding him. Sweating and rolling in the hay. Coming and feeling the air snap. Him coming with this last huge jerk into me that made me come again just to witness how much he put into it. Drifting into semi-consciousness after but never drifting away from each other.

Lying there in his arms, with his thigh between mine, feeling the trickle of semen seeping through the space between our legs until it ran in this steady line down to the hay below me ... leaving this wet trail that attracted hay each time he shifted and drew me with him as he did.

I painted a room in his house each day I was there. I tried every technique I'd ever wanted to experiment with. I surrounded him with warm, muted colors and accent walls that held intricate, seductive flows of color, pattern and texture.

One afternoon, he took off early and surprised me. He found me sitting in the middle of his living room, contemplating the wall before me. When he asked what I had planned for this wall, I handed him a feather and together we made a light gray faux-marble wall with undertones of peach. When we were done, we said at the same time, "peaches seem appropriate." And when we looked at the other, I know we both remembered my vision and what had happened between us with peaches.

"Max, I brought you a housewarming gift," I said softly. "Can I hang it on this wall?"

He reached a hand behind my head and slowly nudged me toward him. "Yes." He said it in the perfect whispered hushed hoarseness. "Tell me about it."

"It's something that's been passed down in my family for a few generations. There's an old Cajun tradition that when a couple moves into their first home, they are given a broom made of willow reeds and bound with cypress bark. You sweep out any bad things that may have existed in the house and with them gone, it's a home filled only with the foundations of a good life."

"It was your broom?"

"My mother gave it to me when I owned my first home. Her mother gave it to her. It just ... it always meant something to me ... a connection to them both but also that I always knew they wanted the best for me in life. That's how I feel about you. I want the best for you even if it's not always the easiest. And I want a connection between us that's as much symbolic as tangible."

"I shall treasure it all the more, Anna. Thank you for this gift."

Never just a kiss with Max. It's never possible that it's only a kiss. I always feel that we trade too much when we kiss. Like we both put so much into it because we don't always talk the same language but we can kiss the same feelings.

He was sitting on the bench outside his front door the next afternoon. His head was drooping down and he seemed to be staring at his feet. His hands clutched the bench on either side of him. He was dirty and sweaty.

When he heard my feet crunching on the gravel drive, his head lifted and his eyes seemed to soften when they saw me. God. How can it be that he has the ability to touch me this way? He has no idea, none at all, that his weakest moments are overpowering me. I feel like in this week, he handed me this precious part of him.

"You look beat, Max. Why don't you go take a shower while I fix dinner?"

His hands came up and motioned me in toward him. I stood in between his knees and bent to kiss him on the lips. This light, caressing kiss that he returned in kind. My fingers stayed on his face after the kiss ended.

"What was that sigh for, Anna?" he asked me, his hands on my hips in this casual touch that seemed so intimate.

His eyes seemed a lighter green and I realized it was because his face seemed a darker contrast, with its combination of a healthy tan and some smears of dirt. My fingers swiped at some of the soil and then they simply traced the contours ... eyebrows, forehead, under his lashes, his lips, cheeks ... lingering finally on his jaw. Then I cupped his face in my hands and looked hard into his eyes.

"I have to tell you something important, Max. I want you to just listen and I don't want you to say anything back to me."

"Is this what you have been trying to find the way to tell me all week, Anna? I wondered when you would broach it."

I shook my head at him and then nodded. "No ... yeah ... I don't know. But all I can tell you is this ... before I leave, I have to tell you this and I need to know you believe it."

"Then I am listening."

He did that Max thing ... that tilt to his head, the way his eyes focus and the lines along his forehead crease in concentration. This way he has of listening that honors what you have to say.

"Okay," I whispered and let him pull me in closer. I pulled his head in against my breasts and waited until I felt him relax in my hold. "I want you to know that I love you, Maximus. And this love I have for you will exist regardless of how you feel about me and no matter how far you may be from me. It will last forever. I don't expect a thing in return except that you be you. I only want to love you like this. And the only reason that I want you to really hear me and to believe me is this: it would mean so much to me if you were able to trust in my love for you."

Long moments went by. His arms around me were never letting go. His breathing was fast and when I felt him shift, I knew he'd say what I would have in his place. And I didn't want him to remember saying those words to me. I honestly don't know why this was -- why I just had to know that for once in my life I gave love to a man without expectation of getting it in return. That if he'd said to me what I knew he'd want to ... "I love you as well, Anna" ... that instead of this being about me helping him believe he was loved, that it would be about us rejoicing in a shared love. Shit, but I am the first one to know I am hopelessly fucked up when it comes to love. But it was the only way I could do this.

"You don't have to say anything. In fact, I'd rather you not."

"Surely you wish to know how I feel about you, Anna."

"But I do know, Max. I have known for a while even though I don't think you maybe have trusted in it."

"I don't understand."

"I know. I never did before either. And I sure as hell don't have all the answers, but I do know this. There is something I feel for you that just is. It just is. And I like it. It has added so much to my life."

He pulled me down into his lap. I nestled into his body and felt its warmth and power. We sat there in this safe place and he told me about how nervous he'd been the first time he'd met me. He said he'd felt too much the barbarian. I held him to me and told him he'd been a far different man than I had expected when we met.

We made love in the shower. I watched dark soil wash down the drain as I arched before him and he entered me and so many things were happening between us and it was only a small portion that was physical. His soapy hands kneaded and caressed and ... he does have this way of taking me over. Like his hands can be everywhere I need them at once but then I realize that what I really like is how he holds me to him with absolute surety of what he wants. He just does what feels good and he has an earthy quality that is erotic and sensuous ... and loving.

That night, we relaxed on his back deck and looked out over moonlit acres of rolling vines and fencing. I was staring up at the stars and he asked me about New Orleans. I said things had changed but that I didn't want to talk about it. I knew I could tell him that. I knew he'd drop it.

It's one of the other ways Max fascinates me for his similarity to me. He won't pry when he knows you don't want him to do it. But if he senses you might need to unload a burden, he will make sure you know he's ready to step in to do whatever you need.

"Max? Do you remember telling me once that you believe fate is inevitable?"

"It is how I believe. It is how I have lived with my past."

"I remember you telling me that." Our eyes met. I got up and went to sit with him. He made room for me and together we watched the skies. "So fate brought us together for this time. That means it can be a good thing. Fate, I mean."

His arms squeezed in around me and I felt blessed for the fate of that moment.