How well I remember those days of just learning a man's touch is different than that fumbling petting that you get from the boy you think knows. You learn; you move on. Eventually, you crave that elusive touch that you know is out there... somewhere.

I thought I had found it once.

How well I remember the moment his touch became death to me.

And then he died before I could get over it.

Now what?

This is what.

"Did you really dream about me here... between these sheets?"

He handed me a glass of champagne. He had removed the bottle's cork and it had been a whisper. I had told him his abilities so far impressed me but that I still hadn't quite forgiven him for the way I first found out he had abilities.

He had smiled at that. But he hadn't been looking at me when he smiled. He'd been looking down, at the champagne flutes he was filling for us. Before he'd picked them up, after he'd replaced the champagne in the ice bucket that he'd called ahead for... he had simply shrugged his suit jacket off. I had liked that. I liked watching a man undress when it's casual and when it's also latent with sexual potency.

The suit jacket had slid down his arms. He had turned around, checking to be sure it was neat. He had placed it carefully over the back of the chair pulled up to the table set there, where the ice bucket was. His hands had smoothed over the shoulders of the jacket. He had made it neat, precise. But he also had enjoyed that tactile experience of running his big palms over luxurious, masculine cloth.

Only then did he pick up the flutes and walk toward me.

Only then did he answer me.

His eyes flicked to the bed in question. Then back at me. He was all man. He was in power. In control. In charge. Into me.

"This isn't the only bed. Not the only sheets I've sweated in while dreaming of you, Eris."

"You sent me postcards..."

"After every dream. From every hotel."

It made me blush, the tone of voice he used to say that. I wanted to ask him to tell me each of his dreams of me. To learn I had somehow become this man's fixation... this was when I really looked at him and considered what that might mean. "That's a lot of hotels."

"Yes, it is." He sighed then. His eyes looked sad, tired. I reached out and cupped his cheek. "That's a lot of dreams of you, love."

"It's the elusive element of me. I would gather you are realist enough to know that, Terry."

"I'm also romantic enough to believe it means something that I cannot stop dreaming of you."

"You have a girlfriend. Right here in this city."

"I did. Yes. Did. Past tense."

"I see. Although, I won't be coy with you. Obviously, your status didn't really bother me or I wouldn't have come over here. But..."

"But? Now it does?"

When he said that, he made a move on me. He got closer. His hand went to my back. The small of my back. It was the lightest pressure. Just his fingertips. Drawing me closer. Encouraging me to simply make the decision that he knew I had already made.

"Now it does. Yes. Now it does."

"Yeah?" Whispering now. Inviting intimacy between us. "Why does it?"

"Because I've seen that you're more than my own dreams of you."

"You dreamed of me? Doing what?"

"Kissing me."

His hand on my back was warm. The flat of his palm pulled my body to his. "A toast to dreams, Eris?"

"To finding out if reality is better than dreams of each other," I replied.

We sipped our champagne.

"Eris? I'm not in this for one night with you."

"I was. In it for one night with you. I was. But I don't think I am now."

"I know. And I promise you this, Eris. By the end of this night... in the morning... If you even think you could walk away, I'll find the way to make that impossible."

His hand. His touch. His body. My touch. My body.

Reactions.

Discovery's beginnings.

The only man I would have let touch me. To this day, I do not know why.

But I do have a theory.

Sometimes you glance up against another person's orbit. And in that glance, some DNA is exchanged. And somehow, you simply know, somewhere down deep. You know that this is a person you should take the time to know.

As improbable as it can be in this crowded world, we had met.

Where I might have been most in need of the emotional validation that the most virile, outwardly confident, intelligent, dangerous man I'd ever glanced up against was interested in me... it had turned into something quite different.

Now it was about two lonely people who didn't feel quite so lonely in this big world because we were both of us, the kind of people who needed something outside ourselves or we would have forever lived insular lives surrounded by people who didn't know that about us.

He had taken my hand that night, walked me out onto a balcony that moved us into that distinctive cacophony that makes one feel anonymous in the caldron that is New York at night.

We sipped champagne. He stood behind me. We didn't really talk. We just liked this moment of being together. Cherishing this anticipation. When he moved, I responded.

He came right up behind me. His arm wrapped around my waist. He swayed, side to side. An unheard rhythm that he wanted me to feel in his arms. I leaned my head back against his shoulder. He made the swaying more complicated. I had to give up anticipating how he'd sway, how I'd react to his swaying. I had to simply give myself over to his rhythm. It was the only way to react to a man like this.

His lips were gentle on my neck. I felt the stem of the flute as he rubbed it along my neck, using it to clear my hair back so his lips could kiss the skin of my shoulder and my neck. I shivered at how clever his lips were. I trembled to feel his physical want of me. I closed my eyes and held back tears to be in this man's arms and to wonder if the validation I was getting was going to make me desperate and needy.

He whispered to me. Soothing words. Love talk. Pillow talk standing up. Of how he'd wondered why I'd been dressed so sedately the night he met me. Of how he'd long wondered at the austerity of my expression that night when he'd first seen me. Of how he had made up answers in his own mind as to why I had no one to call that night who might have been worried about me if I hadn't returned.

It was soothing to hear him speak of thinking of me. To know I had not been the only one filled with questions I didn't mind waiting to find the answers to.

I had wondered about his interplay with that woman, his girlfriend. How reticent, casual, yet overtly sexual he had seemed with her. Not that he had pawed her... more, it was how she had prowled toward him. He was her sexual object.

He hadn't seemed to find that quite as intriguing as he had found the challenge I presented to him in walking away. I had wondered why it was that there seemed no real emotional investment for her on his part. And I had wished to ask him if he'd meant to make it that obvious.

So I asked him that night. Out there on the balcony.

He said making emotional investments was something he'd given up for Lent. I said that Lent was long since over. He said then maybe he could indulge his sweet tooth again.

I turned in his arms and looked in his guarded eyes.

"You deserve a woman who knows your value. In this night, all I can promise you is that I am the kind of woman who senses your value. But I will need more than one night to know you." My eyes dropped from his. To his tie. I began to loosen the knot. "I don't say things like that lightly, Terry Thorne. But any man who sends me postcards from all over, for months, without explaining them... but who says to me in this night that they are a record of his desire for me... this is a man I can say things like this to. Somehow, we have managed to get to quite a unique point for a first night. Wouldn't you say?"

A certain glint of different awareness in his eyes.

That flick of his tongue upon his top lip. The way his tongue curved up and then smoothed out. I reached up for it. He wouldn't give it to me at first. No. He wanted me to simply experience his lips first. Their size. Their shape. Their feel. Their warmth. The spot of dampness his tongue had placed upon the top lip.

His fingers lowering my zipper. Looking in his eyes while he did it. My fingers removing his tie. Looking in my eyes while I did it.

His palms flat on my spine. My breath affected.

Turning me around. His lips kissing my now-bare shoulder blades as his hands slipped my dress off my body. Watching it pool at my ankles.

My hands behind me. Blind. Gentle. His stomach sucked in to make it easier but also because his nerves were to the fore in that one moment when he must have realized I was not all that he expected... and liking that.

His hands sliding, gliding up over my skin. From my hips to my tummy to my ribs. Pausing as I got his belt undone; then slowly lowering the zipper. He resumed his exploration... now cupping my breasts over my bra. Tweaking the nipples. I shook. His mouth sucked in an earlobe when I finally touched over his hardness. He wore silk boxers.

I bent my neck sideways. A hint. I wanted his mouth there. There. Yes. Oh yes.

He pushed against me. His groin. A demand. He wanted my hands there. He wanted free of his confines. He wanted a reaction.

Yes.

My hands on him. One hand cupping him; one hand shoving his silk boxers down his hips and then grabbing in on his round, tensed buttocks.

His teeth on my shoulder.

"Oh God," I whispered. "You feel so good. You touch even better."

He moaned softly to me; his whole body seemed to give itself over to enjoying the touching I was doing to his genitals. He skimmed over my skin with his hands. He whispered encouragement to me. Feels so good. Harder. You won't hurt me. Do you like how I feel in your hands? Want to be inside you. Imagine me there. How good you'll feel. Want to learn what makes you feel so good.

"Anything. Everything. I know you'll be good to me," I whispered, my head in that cloud of lust where you don't think because thinking is wrong in that moment.

"Come with me."

Turning to watch as he just wiggled his ass a bit and his pants and silk boxers were something for him to step out of as he shoved off each shoe. He swiped off each sock before taking my hand and watching me step out of the pool of my dress and follow him in.

"Always liked thongs," he said, not looking at me.

"Thought you might."

"Want to see what else I like?"

Many years will pass before the memory of him in that moment will ever leave me. How well I remember. No matter how many other memories come.

It was the one good thing I needed to forget something drastic I had felt about myself when my husband cheated on me. I wasn't that woman, that so easily-dismissed woman. I was again the woman who was most desired.

"Show me. Take me with you, Terry."

"Come here."

His cock rising, poking through the front edges of a once-crisp button down shirt that was now partially unbuttoned. His thighs impressive, framed in the edges of his shirt. Something so masculine about a cotton shirt. The juxtaposition of soft Egyptian cotton against a man's hairy thighs and curving over the soft swell of his buttocks, dipping just below his cheeks. As if hiding, coy, the elements of man within the bottom edges of a shirt like that.

Right before him. An offering to the gods of masculinity. A sacrifice on the altar of his body.

Unbuttoning him. My hands spreading his shirt open. He wore a muscle-t shirt. White. I hummed. I didn't know it at first. I hummed as my hands touched the bare skin of his arms as I slid his shirt off him, my hands between the shirt and his arms. He let me at first. But when his shirt was held onto him only at his wrists and I couldn't get it off without unbuttoning the sleeves' ends, he challenged me. He put hands around, onto my back. My fingers were desperate to get that shirt off. I loved the way it felt to be being bent over backwards, his mouth open on my neck. Sucking. Licking.

I slipped my hands under his t-shirt. Felt his stomach suck in again and then relax. He grabbed me in harder, rhythmic in how he grabbed then released then grabbed even harder. When I touched his nipples, my palms gliding over, my fingers coming back to really touch... he let go of me and I could undress him then.

Before me. Proud man. Aggressive man. A predator shed of his finery.

Letting me look. Letting me touch. Letting my hands roam over the contours of his chest, the light hair there inviting. Letting my fingers trail and play over the muscles of his arms, down to the hairy forearms and even over his knuckles until my hands dropped off his fingertips. Letting me slip to my knees before him.

He drew in a shaky breath. Moaned, low and dangerous, when I suckled. Gave a sigh of masculine relief tinged with frustration when I stopped.

When I stood before him again, the first thing I did was wipe a finger across his lips. And then I undid my bra. Let it fall into his outstretched hand. He dropped it, gingerly. Then slid his fingers under the strappy sides of my thong and drew it down. He knelt, one knee. Just to slide it off in a manner that would make me breathe funny. Then looked up at me as he bent to deliver a kiss that made me lose my train of thought to see delivered.

I had to turn away. "This is the bed? Where you've dreamed of me? Of us together?"

He stood before me. Pulled the coverlet back, tossed the blanket over. "The sheets. The ones I want you in."

In the morning, he was proven right. I couldn't have walked away from him after that. No man gives up that part of himself without expecting, anticipating something in return. And when he gets it? Because he did get it from me. Well, then you just know it's worth whatever you have to tell yourself to not stop the entire rest of your life just so you can revel completely, unashamedly within the physical rapture you've found.

It's more than physical.

But it is physical. In part.

He had a washcloth in his hand. It was soapy and warm with bathwater. He ran it over my breasts as I leaned back against him as we lazed in the large tub. He scrubbed down my tummy. He pressed it in over my sex. I shuddered and told him that I was so tender there.

A good tender.

A memory flashed.

Him entering me. The first time.

Me telling him that it had been so long, that maybe I'd forgotten what to do next.

Him entering me more. Not answering me but that was its own answer.

The instant recollection of coming that first time. Of how it had felt to throb and pulse and nearly stop breathing. To not be able to kiss him because my mouth just opened and it was this huge 'O' of shock and joy at the sheer wonder of coming so deeply after not coming for so long. Of how it felt that he paused for just this fraction of a moment as I started really coming around his penis. Of how intimate it was, this posture. Him between my thighs. His hand pressing my knee back to give him more purchase. Me grinding against him as if there was nothing I would not do to come. Me saying something filthy about him fucking me. Him saying...

Such things a man will say. His mind so different than mine.

As gentle, as manly, as giving as he was that first time... there were other sides to him, even then. We took each other with bald passion not that many hours later. He had risen to go to the bathroom. I had heard him in there. He left the door open. I was sitting up, hugging my knees, watching, as he strode back in to where I was.

"You said you dreamed of me," I said to him. My voice was husky from what we'd done.

"Like you can't imagine."

He never broke stride. He walked like such a man that my stomach dropped into a pit so deep. He yanked the sheet away from me. He climbed in over me. I opened to him. He rubbed against me until he was so hard. He kept telling me different positions... different settings... different emotions that he'd dreamed us in. He found one that I responded to with a whimper. I made him repeat it; I made him swear he'd seen me that way.

He was inside me when he told it to me that second time. I arched my back and let myself go. His mouth was on my neck. Bite me, I whispered. He did.

He never even waited for me to finish coming. He just pulled out, turned me over, pulled me up onto my hands and knees. We each had a hand down there; each rabid to put him back inside me. He put his hand over mine. He guided my hand as I guided his hardness inside my body.

His thrusts were powerful. They were measured. They were deep. They were rhythmic. They were intoxicating. They matched me every time I bucked back against him, arching my back, pressing hard with my hands to give me leverage. When he grunted, I was determined to make him grunt louder. He kept asking me if I liked it... I kept saying you can do it harder.

"Come for me, Eris. Stop resisting... come on me."

I came. He kept thrusting, this perfect rhythm, stroking inside like he knew my body far too well. I just came. For too long. So long my knees shook and my voice gave out and I cried and I buried my face in those sheets and I wished against all hopes that this was the start of something and not just another exercise in futility.

Is it not difficult to later remember yourself in a moment like that? To remember that you were capable of thinking in such a manner? That you could take one night with a man... even a man who said he'd dreamed of you many nights when he was lonely and in need... but that you could take that one night, no matter how wonderful and fulfilling, and think for even a fleeting moment that you could will it into more than it would be?

I knew, I did, that whatever it would be would be because we both wanted it. A man like this? A man capable of such tenderness and such abandon? A man of experience to make a woman like me forget everything but him when he touched her? A man I knew you could rely upon, that he was brave and valiant... and that he had the strength to expose himself to my ridicule by telling me about why he'd sent me the postcards?

But a man also who did not live near me. A man who was only visiting. A man who lived in danger. That's not a man a woman like me can see as anything but a man who'll free her.

Where she goes once she's no longer bound by past pain, that's up to her. Not him. And he wouldn't want it any other way.

Would he?

How do you find out?

This is how.

In the morning, I was getting dressed. Sun streaming in the window. Looking out on the balcony of his hotel room.

Remembering the wildness, the way it had felt to feel that wild again.

Oh my God.

How it had felt!

To have had his cock, covered with me, in my mouth. At first, it had seemed so gentle and nurturing. But it had led to a moment of abandon between us. Him grunting out these words of direction and need and... He was so large in my mouth, down my throat part way. My hand on his rear, finger probing. Him arching under me. His hand, one hand, on my head. It had been slowly rubbing, fingers probing my scalp. But in the primal moment between us, that hand had held me down as he pumped. And I had pressed up with my finger, gently, so tender. My lips hurt after. A good hurt. An ache, I can't explain it better than that.

I don't know what came over him. He erupted in my mouth, down my throat. Even while he was still breathing so hard, he was pulling his barely softening cock from my lips... I licked my lips, felt like nothing so much as greedy to have brought him off like that. Shocked to have him just toss me off and then to feel him crawl right over me and lay over my body, while his mouth covered my sex and... God. He was wild. Grunting. Sucking. Probing. Mouth, tongue, fingers. Pausing only to taunt me, tempt me... Intent on pleasing me. Oh. Taking such pleasure from feeling free to be this way with me.

We had three days together. Three nights, rather. Each evening, when he would call after his last meeting, I would go to him.

I could not get enough of him.

He could not get enough of me.

He still sends me postcards.

Only now, I can reach him by phone when I get one.

Only now, I know when he's coming to New York.

And he doesn't stay at a hotel when he's visiting New York anymore.

I have peeked into his shadow.

He has peeked into mine.

They say that the sexiest thing to a woman is a man's sense of humor.

First off, who is 'they?'

And why is it they are so often right about such things?

He had a sense of humor that was bred of a jaded view of life wrestled from a heart that wanted to believe in romance and flowers and "ever-after."

It was one of the sexiest things about him, when I came to really know more about him. It was because it was so often the mark of how he really felt. And he only seemed to relax into his humor when he felt comfortable with me that I would enjoy it.

But his humor could also have a bite to it. Sometimes it bit him. Sometimes it bit the world. Not too often, but sometimes, it bit me.

By the summer after I started dating him, I was hooked on all the aspects of him. His humor. His cynicism. His integrity. His seriousness. His playfulness. His intensity. His trustworthiness. His aggressive obstinacy. His virility. His terse old-maidishness. His vulnerability. His complexity. His compulsive leadership. His generosity. His romantic ideals. His shadows. His depths. His mask. His eyes. His soul. His touch. His ego.

When he wasn't in New York, he was trying to get there to be with me. That is what he told me. That is what I believed and still do.

When he was in New York, everything about my world sped up.

He took me everywhere. Shows, dinners, art galleries, smoky dives, long walks in utter romance. We'd drive upstate or just take off on a moment's notice to Vermont because he'd never been before. We played in the park, we watched rugby on television, we went to baseball games. We made love like we'd invented it.

We talked past midnight; long past when we should have been asleep. Sometimes, we didn't need to talk. We argued, but so infrequently. I never wanted to waste time with that, even when he'd pick some inane argument.

He started collecting old Matchbox cars. It was a joke at first. We'd chanced upon a little flea market not too far from where I lived. As I was examining a cobalt vase that caught my eye, he was absentmindedly fingering this bright red Jag. I said he should buy it; that he could always park his car at my place. So he did; I teased him about boys and toys.

When he was at home in London, he sent me a few cars he'd found in some curiosity shop there. These tiny boxes of Matchbox cars. He started looking for them when he traveled. When he would come to visit me, he'd open his carryall and start tossing out little Matchbox car boxes on my bed.

I found a little shadowbox display and put the cars in them. Hung that on my wall. The collection outgrew the display. I told him he had to stop. But by then, neither of us wanted him to. When he was gone, I spent many nights standing in my darkened living room, staring at the cars in the shadows cast by the city's glow through my windows. I tried not to imagine where he was and what he was doing.

By then, I knew all about his job. All about the danger. All about the risk. All about how very hard it could be on his soul when it went bad.

I asked him once what it was he really longed for. He said, the courage to trust in his good fortune. When he said it, I reached to hold him. Who doesn't wish for that kind of wisdom in the moment?

When he was gone, I forced my little routines on myself. I refused to let myself dwell on what he was doing. I pretended he was just working late or that I didn't have him in my life. I got through my days. I also found that it helped me not get at all emotional when he'd call me. I always wanted to just be this calm vortex for him. I thought he deserved that. I tried hard to be that for him. I think I mostly succeeded.

His phone calls usually made me smile. Even if they upset me, I still tried to smile. I tried to wait until they were over to frown or get angry or worry for him.

I had gotten used to the fluidity of his schedule. I might not have cherished it, but it was part of being in his life that you had to forgive and forget that he was more reliable to his clients than to those he loved.

"Too bad. Now you'll never know what I had planned for you, Terry," I said to him that evening when he called. One more canceled visit to me. One more unexpected, critical assignment for the company for which he toiled. One more life to place on the line. One more time I got this fleeting wish that he did something safer. One more time to get the instant backwash from that to feel proud that I was involved with a man that others depended upon to save a life.

It's just that this visit... this was going to be a rough few days for me. The next day was an anniversary I didn't want to remember but couldn't forget. I had faced its approach by clinging to his coming visit. The reality was that I thought I could get only through it because he would be there with me, distracting me, keeping my mind occupied. But now, not only was I going to be alone, but I'd be worrying about exactly how dangerous the new mission was and obsessing on him being safe from harm on that one day. The next day.

"Something else for me to dream on then, love," he said softly.

There was a deep pause in the conversation. Shadowed silence. That's what I'd come to call them.

"Are you all right?" I asked him, picking up on something in his tone of voice, his mood, that I couldn't put my finger on.

"No."

"What can I do?"

"You're doing it."

"It's not enough. It never is."

"Do you really want me to tell you?"

"Yes. I really do. But do you want to tell me?"

"No."

"Then let it be. Some day..."

"Yeah? Some day?"

"Some day, we'll be together again. And I'll just choke it out of you, Terrence Thorne."

"You will? I might like that, Eris."

We laughed at each other. It was better than crying over things we couldn't have. It was better than regretting people we couldn't be.

"I never figured you for S & M. Learn something new about you every day, my sweet Terry."

"I have this fantasy that you'll be dressed all in black, a ninja look, and you'll throw me down, truss me up, torture me. I'll squeal like a big blouse."

"Big blouse?"

"Nancy boy."

"Nancy boy?"

"Speak English, woman. Thought it was your tongue."

"My tongue? Now we're talking my tongue? I'm not licking your big blouse, if that's part of your fantasy."

"You got a different way of talking for a dominant."

"I can't picture you as the subservient."

"I can picture you dressed up in a black body stocking, love."

"I miss you."

In my mind, I saw him stop whatever new smart remark he was about to make. I could see him smile but it would be a sad smile.

"Miss you, too, Eris. Soon, hey?"

"Not soon enough. Never soon enough."

"Forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive. I knew this about you when we started dating. Not that I don't have the desire to wake with you more often, but... what can I say?"

"You have some fetish about picking up my dirty socks and me taking over your bed?"

"I have this thing about some big brute of a man who slips between my sheets every so often. He's the guy who makes me happy to be around him. I just worry about him when he's not with me."

"Soon, love. You sure you're not getting bored with me breaking my promises to you?"

"That's not the issue."

"The issue's my dirty socks, isn't it? Admit it. C'mon. You can tell Uncle Terry..."

"Is that why you always leave a pair of your dirty socks behind? So I'll not be able to forget you? I could think of something else you could leave behind... And it wouldn't be quite so... how do I put it... odd."

"My socks are odd?"

"Your leaving your socks behind is odd. Do you have any idea how many pairs of men's black socks I now have?"

"Are they clean or dirty?"

"Clean! What? Of course I launder them after I pick them up off my floor! You thought I was putting your dirty socks in a ziplock baggie and saving them in their feral condition for my old age?"

"Now there's an image. Not a good one. But it is an image. I'll leave my jock next time."

"Promise me you'll be safe, Terry."

"Promise."

"That's a promise, the only promise, you cannot break."

"Deal."

Some day, I thought to myself after we hung up, he is going to call right back after one of these conversations. He would have heard in my voice that I'd been crying. I have imagined that... him calling back and hearing what I would not hide from him anymore. That I die a bit each time this happens.

He didn't know that, however, because I refused to show it. I refused to let him see how that made me feel because it would make him feel horrible. I wouldn't ever mean to make him feel badly about one more visit to me that was being postponed despite his fervent reassurances that he'd cleared his calendar because he wanted at least a month with me. It never happened. Even when he made it in when he said he would, he left early.

I thought I was used to it. I thought I was becoming sanguine about it.

I would have been lying.

I missed him.

It was an ache that I could subdue until the moment after his call to me to tell me that I was just going to have to go on missing him. This time? Oh. This time it was too hard; I should never have needed him this much.

I had been dressing when he called. I had been getting ready to go to the airport to surprise him. To show him how very happy I was to have him back with me. So happy that I just could not wait to touch him. To be touched by him.

This was when he'd called. He had given me only a moment to get calm, to get a grip on the instant disappointment that he was not going to be here but that he was going instead to be putting himself into something dangerous again. I just closed my eyes and pretended I was not upset. I wanted that perfect, neat mix of understanding woman and longing lover. I didn't want to be clingy or demanding or any of that.

I didn't want him to know that other times, I might have been sorely disappointed, but this time... Oh. This time, I was going to bleed over this but that had nothing to do with him. I wouldn't burden him this way.

He had never once, not once, promised me that this would be easy. In fact, he kept telling me how tough it was going to be.

I was just the girlfriend.

Actually, I was just the girlfriend in New York.

I wondered if his girlfriend in London went through the same mental gymnastics I did when these things happened. I was pretty sure he had one there. It made sense since it's where he lived. I wondered if she loved him like I did. Loved him enough to remember to be supportive. To remember to be loving and forgiving and accommodating. To remember to sublimate her own wishes because he wasn't a man who lied to us. He told us up front that being involved with him meant too much time without him. At least, that is what he told me. And, of course, to remember that he wasn't ever the kind of man who wanted to settle down. He was never looking for more than what he had.

I don't know when it stopped being enough for me. I don't know how it was that I was still able to only take what he'd give. Some day, I told myself, I will stop playing around with this man. No matter how he makes me feel just to imagine him thinking of me when he is flying out of New York.

How could I ever go back on my word that I had given by tacit agreement? My word that I would always remember that he'd warned me of how difficult it would be. That besides the time apart and the uncertainty of his time with me, that he was not always the easiest man to be with.

He could be rigid about some matters. He could be prideful and he could be a real handful if he ever thought another man was sniffing around his patch.

It amused me, even then, to think of how often he encouraged me to not sit around waiting on him. How often he would look right in my eyes and make me promise to not wait. To not spend my life on him. To go out with other men, to find someone better. Because in the next phone call, he would tease it out of me that I simply did not want another man. I would be able to hear that proud masculine animal then... he wanted to be the kind of man a woman waited for not by choice, but because she had no choice. At the same time, he wanted to be worthy of having the right woman choose to wait forever for him. He was a complex maze.

I often wondered if part of the reason he would say this bit about me dating other men was that he simply did not want me to get serious about him. I often guessed that perhaps he did not want to get serious about me. Perhaps he thought there was always enough time for that if he changed his mind.

As for me, the longer I was around, the more of him I understood, then the deeper my feelings were for him.

We had grown more honest and open with each other. Except when it came to this aspect of what we had together. What is interesting about that, to me, is that the more honest we were about everything else, the more I could see his honest feelings about me.

He might not have wanted to love me but he was enjoying feeling loving toward me. He might not have wanted me to love him, but he did anyway.

And I loved him.

He knew it.

He loved me.

He had never said it.

I hung up from him. I sat in the window seat and put my head against the glass. I looked down at the street. I felt my tears fall upon my bare thighs. I wrapped my arms around my bare waist. I remembered that I had let myself believe that he would be with me that day.

Try as I might, I just could not quite wrestle the tremors away. I knew this wasn't the end of the world. After all, he had wanted to be there. The end of the world would be if he no longer wanted to be with me.

The glass was warm against my forehead.

I bit my lip. I let myself cry. My mother had always said there was nothing quite as satisfying as a really indulgent cry when you know there's not a thing you can do... so why not give in, get it out, and then get over it.

The phone rang. It was the doorman. Flower delivery for me.

Of course. He always sent flowers when this happened. I always pictured him, calling the florist and then calling me. Wanting the sting to be eased by the thoughtfulness he'd show in sending me flowers. Showing that he knew it stung. Knowing I appreciated it.

The doorbell buzzed. Flowers.

I had thrown on a shirt; one of his. Something else he left behind other than his dirty socks. It made me smile through tears. The shirt... I swam in it. I loved that. I felt small and like I belonged to him.

This was how I answered the door. Sniffling away tears, wiping their remnants up on the sleeves of his shirt. Fishing through my purse for a tip for the delivery guy, his shirt buttoned up around me, my emotions waiting to erupt because seeing the flowers would remind me that he was thinking about me at the exact same moment I was thinking about him.

I answered the door.

"Special delivery," he said.

"You... You..."

"Me."

"You bastard."

And feeling the bottom drop out.

I had never wanted him to see me cry like this. There I stood crying.

In front of him.

"Damn you, Terry Thorne," I said, hearing my voice shatter.

"I always wondered this about you, Eris. You have this way of reacting to bad news..."

He looked at me and then he touched me.

My knees buckled. My hands were fists that struck his chest. He gripped me tightly to him. I cried and cursed at him. Eventually my pride broke and I clung to him. The moment I did, he lifted me in his arms. I put my face into the side of his neck and held on. He sat on my couch. He held me. He gave me a white handkerchief from his suit pocket. I wiped my eyes. I wiped my face.

"When you suffer, let me in, Eris. I want to be that man for you."

"You don't want to see me like this... deal with me..."

"You're wrong, Eris. This is the one place I need to be with you. We can't... I can't go deeper without it."

"Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?"

"I have some idea."

"It'll get messy." He pulled me in closer to him. "God. Look at me! I am such a total mess. I never get it right."

"It's you I come back to. You. Eris. Just you."

"It's only you I let come in, Terry."

"Then for god's sake, woman, let me in all the way."

What were we doing? Did we need to say? Maybe neither of us knew. Maybe we didn't need to. In that second, feeling his touch upon my body, I felt the sense of him in a way I had not before. Perhaps... perhaps.

I leaned back in his arms. He pulled the handkerchief from my fingers, dabbed it under my eyes. Such an immensely gentle, nurturing touch. In his eyes, calm and resolve. He was ready for anything, that's what that look said to me.

"If I let you see my shadows, Terry, you have to let me look in yours."

His face did something. It was as if every pain, every long-tamped-down impulse that had been beaten out of him by time and circumstance flashed across his mind. And he had to make a decision. A judgment call.

Was he strong enough?

Did he want whatever I might have represented?

Did he want it enough to do this?

To give, to take... to step into the shadow.

To look inside and still touch?

Who knows when something that has seemed to be merely a passing infatuation with an open-ended resolution becomes something rare?

When does it become love?

When does it leave the realm of affection? How much time does it take before you are able to confidently, giddily tell yourself that it's not just infatuation but that it's love in all its adult bloom?

Is it when you're willing, able, needful of seeing the darkness inside your lover and find that adds definition to your love? When you simply know that shadows are those mystical segments that dance between light and dark. Shadows, of course, cannot exist without light and without corresponding darkness.

"I still have nightmares," I told him that night. We were sitting in my window seat. His head was in my lap. He'd flopped one arm over his head and then put that arm around my waist. "Do you?"

"Yes."

"What are yours about?"

"My son."

My fingers played in his hair. My impulsive need to be neat. "How old was he when... when you last saw him, Terry?"

"He was 15."

"What scares you so to have nightmares of him?"

"I dream he doesn't recognize me. I'm looking for him and he doesn't know me. And he's in danger and I'm not there and something happens to him. Something bad. It's my fault. I can't save him."

"Wow. That's a bad one."

I felt him chuckle wryly and then kiss my skin. "Yeah, I don't fancy it."

It has taken him so long to show me where he is really able to be wounded. The place he really fears.

In fact, the truth is, he wouldn't tell me until he trusted that he was safe to tell me this secret of him. A secret I would protect with my life. But that's not exactly what this is about. This is about seeing his darkness, his shadows and his light.

This is about how he looked inside mine before he ever touched me in a way that meant he'd touch me forever.

"Why did you come here today? Were you trying to trap me?"

His eyes glanced at me. "Yeah, I was. I wanted to see how you really felt. I wanted your honesty to extend that far with me."

"I never want you to feel badly. Or to feel obligated. I know it's hard enough on you, all the traveling you have to do. And you don't... well, of course, you don't owe me anything."

That last bit... the bit about him owing me... it came out as this choked up whisper. He turned in my lap and gazed up at me.

"Do you ever want wish I did? That I owed you an explanation, an accounting, consideration... Do you ever?"

"I don't know how to answer that."

"Because I want you to. Or this is going nowhere."

"What's happened?" I whispered. Instinct. Awareness. Something was going on. "You can tell me, Terry. I'll hold you while you do."

"One year ago tomorrow."

My breathing was instantly ragged. "Don't. I don't want that to be a part of us."

"Did they ever find his killer?"

"It was just... wrong place, wrong time. Like always, Terry. Like always. He always had the worst timing."

"What was he doing there?"

"How much do you already know?"

His hand stroked down my face. I bit my lip. "I knew he was shot. Robbery. Convenience store."

"Bodega."

"Right. I know he didn't die right away."

"He never talked again. Sometimes, I know he was about to. Maybe he was going to explain what he was doing there. I like to think he was there because he was on his way to tell her it was over. He was buying flowers. Those cheap carnations they have in places like that. I like to think those were for her... that they weren't for me. That he was being decent enough to tell her they were through, doing it in person and not to tell her over the phone. I don't like to think that he'd just left her and was on his way to me."

"But you don't know?"

"Jeez. How could I know? I never talked to her. I'm not a masochist. I was just trying to survive." My words came out so angry; I didn't remember being this angry anymore. I don't know why him asking me about this other man made me angry. Maybe it was because his voice was so professional. Like he just couldn't approach this in any way but to be distant and yet he was asking me to be in it in its immediacy. That wasn't fair.

"How long did he live?"

"Six weeks. Four days. A few hours."

"You said you had nightmares. What are they?"

"Oh, Terry. Why do you need to know that?" I leaned against the window and looked out. "They wear me out. I never dream them when you're here. And I dream less and less now."

"What are they? What happens?"

"I see them. Together. He's dying. Blood everywhere. She's holding him. It should be me. His mother comes to where they are. She says I have to go. That someone better would have kept him from dying."

"His mother?"

"She died about six months before he started cheating on me. I figured that out later. I think it's related somehow. His mom never really approved of me, of course. Not that I really think he was acting out some Freudian battle of picking his mom's side. I don't know. I would suppose I'm grasping at any straw that doesn't cause me more pain."

"Do I cause you pain?"

"Sometimes."

"Good."

"Good? You want to cause me pain? That doesn't seem like you."

"I don't want to. No, course I don't. I meant, good... good as in, good for you to finally tell me that I do, Eris. You can't let me get away with that, y'know?"

"I won't pressure you, Terry."

"I want you to, Eris. I need you to."

I looked down into his eyes.

More depths there than he'd let me see before.

And trouble.

So many troubles he kept inside.

"Let me in," I whispered to him. "I won't let myself need a man who won't let me in. Can you understand that? It's self-preservation."

He slid off my lap and onto the floor like a fluid panther. He took my hand. He knelt in next to where I sat. He put his hands on my face; the touch so gentle.

"What do you want to know about me?" he said; his voice was strong yet its tone was neutral.

"I want to know how you feel about me. Am I... was I always just this fixation you had? Was I just someone who looked good on your arm when you took me out to all those wonderful places you've taken me? Was I someone you thought you could rescue or fix? Am I just another girlfriend along the way?"

"That night I met you... I saw you sitting in the lobby. You looked... lost. When the escapade started rolling, I was almost sure it was an obvious set up... well, I suspected it was tied in to a way to get me to some surprise party. My birthday, remember?"

I nodded. "I was lost. That was so stupid."

"Not stupid, love. You were lost... that was real. That was what confused me. I never quite knew if it was real, what was happening, or not. You were either an incredibly gifted actress who found some novel motivation to trick me into believing you or you were really lost. I admit, my curiosity in the beginning was figuring out what you were lost from."

"Life."

"Yeah. Took me a while. Had to look inside. See that I recognized that look... I saw it in the mirror too often. Since I'd come... here. To this world."

"You thought I was in on the trick. But you were still nice to me."

He blushed. Just a bit. He tilted his head. An acknowledgment that he isn't always comfortable being reminded of his soft heart when it comes to his instinctive wish to protect women. "When Dino told me... Yeah. I felt bad about it. Wanted to make it right, see? Your reaction... the whole night, it wasn't exactly what I could have guessed. Never knew what you'd do, what you were thinking."

"Then I left."

"I wanted to apologize."

"No. You wanted to know more. Solve the mystery."

"Right. Is that why?"

"Why what?"

"Why you've never quite been free with me? You figure without a bit of mystery, I'll get bored? That it?"

"I hate that you do this." When he frowned at me, I sighed. I was going to stand up, walk away, but he was holding my hands; he wouldn't let go. "I hate how this, right here, was supposed to be about you telling me about you and somehow you've turned it into me telling about me."

"You asked me what I saw in you, right? How I feel about you, is that it?" He said it so tough.

He pulled me from the window seat. He pulled me down to straddle his thighs. Trapping me between his body, his hard body, and the hard front of the window seat. He breathed in and out. Slowly. Waiting until my breathing matched his.

I traced a line with one fingertip. It went from his earlobe to his jaw to his mouth to his chin down his neck down his chest to his center. To his heart.

"Have I ever touched you here?" I asked him softly.

"Yes. Tonight."

"Only tonight?"

"I wouldn't have come back, kept coming back, if I hadn't believed in you. I am not always intelligent when it comes to love. I am too often wrong. My old heart, Eris, it's got a hard shell around it now. Been beat up once too often. I don't know how you got inside, but you did."

"I could say the same thing to you. Except... I do love you. I think you know that. I always thought you didn't want to be loved. Or rather, I think you like the thought of someone having a mad crush on you but that you didn't want to be obligated to love back."

He hugged me. I hugged him. We clasped bodies together. We waited. For what? I doubt either of us knew.

His mouth was near my ear, nuzzling into my hair, kissing there. He said, "I am not an easy man. I do not have an easy life. I would be tough on you. Tough on me. Tough on us."

"I'm going to love you whether you love me back or not, Terry. That's just how it is. Your only choice is whether you want to do anything because of that. I'm not asking you to."

"Bloody hell, Eris. Have you been listening to me?" He was whispering, but his words were clipped, angry, fired. "Why is this good enough for you? Do you want me in your life?"

"I want you to be my life."

"Say it..."

"I want to be your life."

"Good girl..."

"What do you want? You, Terry. What do you want of me?"

"To not let me give you less than you deserve. To be the man you won't let go of. To be the woman who brings me home. To love you... to know I can love you with everything I am. To know it's safe to love you that way. To believe again."

"Oh."

"I am a needy bastard, Eris."

"I want that part of you."

Inside his shadows was where I found him first. He was never going to be totally in the light or totally in the dark. Until I saw his light and his dark, I suppose, I wasn't really seeing the shadows very well.

I told him that life had done what it could to us. That we were living examples that walking forward was the best way.

The truth is more complicated, of course.

How do you live a complicated life?

This is how.