It was the bruising that did me in.

Max said women like men with scars, bruises. Like it's proof of a tough life and their own strength in adversity. Closest I ever thought I'd come to that was that it maybe reminded me that men faced physical tests that I never had as a woman. When's the last time, after all, that you've read of a woman really socking another woman ... yet you read of men battling other men, whether in war or in bare-knuckled bar fights.

I have scars. Who doesn't? Mine are mostly from youth ... one on my knee from when I got a nasty gash from jumping down from the bleachers in school; one on my hand where I'd nearly lost my little finger when my big brother tried to demonstrate that he'd learned how to use his new Boy Scout knife to whittle a piece of wood into a miniature race car. One on my forehead where I'd fallen against a metal fence when playing catch with my brother.

Max's scars, from what I can tell, are not from playing.

I'd noticed them, sure. I'd asked him about a few. But I never really dwelt on them. I always rather thought he was awkward about talking about them. I thought maybe this was an area I should not go.

But then along came the Saturday hockey game.

I was a bit hyper about it all. We had just made the public acknowledgement of our affection. I felt rather on loan. Like this wasn't really going to be my life. Like someday, I was going to have to either check the film back in or pay overdue fees. I don't know why I was feeling that way. I just was. I'm odd that way, don't I know it.

The other aspect was ... I like sports. I like men sports. I like football, basketball, soccer, water polo, polo, basketball. I like men on opposing sides, taking each other on. I like cheering for a chosen team. I like being rabid and raucous. I like the crunch of bodies and the grunt of tackles. I like the squeal of shoes on a slick court and the thud of a score in the opposing goal.

There are some things along those lines I don't like. I don't like that sickening quiet when a man's gone down and you know it might be serious. I hate when a fight is really a fight and not brutish posturing by men hopped up on a cocktail of testosterone and adrenaline.

But I figure, you take men's sports like they dish them out. You don't like sissy-fake heaving and moaning and head-butting? Don't take in pro wrestling. You don't like fires and wrecks that can claim men? Don't go to Indy races. You don't like fights that crunch? Don't go to hockey games.

I've never seen one before. But as soon as they organized the one at the pub, I couldn't wait. Why? Because Maximus was going to be in it. Because I had my own prurient reasons to see him out there, on the ice, where he'd never skated, wielding a hockey stick like a sword, plowing all comers down on a relentless drive to the goal.

Before the game, I sat on Max's bed and watched him prepare for battle ... er ... the game. Whenever he paused to look at something he was putting on, I'd slide over and help adjust ... padding, mostly. I did mess around with him and adjust his jock. But he liked that. We both did. I tied the laces of his pants. I liked that a lot.

He said, in this totally dark voice, that I would definitely be helping him out of these clothes after the game because he figured he'd be done for.

They'd had a few practices by then. I figured Max must have known that the game was going to be a lot of body checks, a few goals if they happened to get lucky, and a whole lot of women panting at the spectacle of man on man.

Man.

Whew!

So, really, my eyes were glued on Max for the most part during the game. But the others ... it was a pretty even group.

The thing is, I just have this idea in my brain that says Maximus is always dangerous. That if there is ever a fight, it's Max who will come out on top. He is a brute when it comes to fighting style; he is ingenious when it comes to tactics.

But I don't know that I've thought beyond that. How else to explain this lust I had to see him in the fray? To see him wade in, clear out, challenge, best, conquer?

I didn't talk to him between periods. He never gave me a chance. He just skated off, no looking my way, nothing but concentration on what was going on. And when they returned and took the ice again, he might flicker his eyes toward the stands, but his face was set, resolute, in the zone.

Damn. It made me hot. Even in that frigid place where I thought I'd die with my thin blood, I felt hot everywhere when he was within visual range.

After it was over, after the game, after the last fight on ice, after the last thwack of a hockey stick hitting its target, everything got a bit chaotic. People in the stands jumped up, rushed down to where snow met ice ... I'm short; it was tough to really see.

I got to the ice, finally. Men were in my way, skating by, looking for a woman to touch, squeeze. Chili grabbed me, slung me out on the ice with him. I held on tight to his arms and yelped at him to not let go or I'd die. No way could I stand on ice!

And then I felt a firm arm go around my waist. I felt a body behind me. I knew I was safe, that I was with someone who'd never let anything bad happen to me as long as he was around.

I was with Max.

He felt ... God. Big, you know? Rough, tough. Mean. He just guided me over to near one of the goals. I put my hands out and held on to the metal structure. He skated away as soon as he could feel I was holding myself up. I watched him skate around the goal.

Do you know what I knew right away? He was still on his sport high ... the battle blood high ... the place he went to ... the place he probably never wanted me to see. That's why he let me go. He had taken me from Chili because ... well, because he didn't want another man touching me in that moment ... and because he knew he could keep me safe better than anyone else.

By the time he finished skating slowly around the net, he was able to turn and look in my eyes, as he approached me. I felt like I needed to say something that would bring him back to me.

"You did so good, Max. I had such fun watching you," I said.

He reached me; he barely slowed. Just scooped me into him as he skated by. Started heading for the side of the pond, where others were still gathered.

"Don't forget ... I can't stand on ice ... I'll fall!" I said as I felt my feet just gliding along.

"You won't fall, cara. I won't let you."

 I could have died and gone to heaven at that. "I love the way you make me feel."

"Why is it women always like to see their man do battle?"

"We like having a man to cheer for. I think I went almost hoarse yelling for you. Could you hear me?"

He set me down, on the snowy bank. He kept his arm on me, let me lean on him until I could turn to face him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to smell him. I wanted to feel the warmth of his sport-induced sweat. I wanted to have him still hopped up on sports-drive while he'd take me.

But Max ... Max is such a stoic. Sometimes I think he stokes up his stoicism just to ramp me up.

He was already about to skate away from me. I reached out, grabbed his jersey, pulled him back ... he let me do it ... because, he could have gotten away with very little effort. He doesn't feel comfortable with public displays of emotion or affection toward me. I'm trying hard to get used to it. I'm also more than a little conscious that I want to push him a bit in this regard to see if I can effect some change in him. So far, not so good.

"Don't go yet," I said.

"You don't wish to be close to me. I shall go and do all those mundane showering and scenting ... take away the evidence of the day's exertion."

"Oh, but that's the kind of souvenir of the game I would love."

His eyebrow shot up. "You cannot be serious."

I blushed. "I wouldn't mind a souvenir, Max."

He frowned, pursed his lips, looked about him. "I shall try to give you a souvenir puck. How does that sound, Anna?"

My mouth must have dropped open. "A what? What kind of fuck?"

He shook his head at me. Gave me a little 'tsk.' "A puck. The round black rubber disc we chased up and down the ice. I will bring you one used in the game ... as a souvenir."

"Oh." I bit my lip and then grinned at him. "I thought you said ... Okay. A puck it is."

And then he left me. I stood there watching him until he went into the locker room. And then I got in my car, shot off for the pub. Gaia had prepared an elaborate and incredible feast for everyone. I sat at the bar with Heather and sipped a wine while we waited for our respective men to return after showering in the locker room, dressing back in normal clothes, and zooming back over.

But after a while, I realized that everyone was there ... but Max had never showed. I tried calling his cell; got his voice mail.

Marie and Bud were sitting near me. Uma was pacing behind the bar when I said, "Anybody seen Max? He promised me a souvenir puck."

Neither lady is slow.

Marie pipes up instantly: "I'd like one if there's any left over?"

Uma slips in, "Are you sure he said puck....I rather think after a match like that he said something else that rhymes with puck... Like duck? Pluck? Buck? Am I getting warm?"

I tried to be just as quick. Looked at Marie, trying to appear innocent, saying, "You'll have to do your own negotiations with the General on that one, my dearest Marie. Now, now. Don't glare, Bud. I'm sure the General of the Armies of the North will drive a hard bargain in return for giving Marie a puck."

Bud shook his head. Marie whispered in his ear. I think I knew the gist of what she was saying when he grinned at her.

To Uma, I was half-way through a spirited response ... "Why, now that you mention it, Uma, perhaps I didn't hear that very well ... and it is curious that he's not here. I mean, he was so intense, driven even, when he told me ..."

Paused in mid-retort, lame as it was. Because it's like I heard all that and realized ... Max wasn't there at the pub. That meant something. I blinked, frowned, looked at Uma, shaking her head at me, amused at my never-ending ability to miss the obvious signs a man gives me. "You don't think ...? Oh, my. Um. Perhaps I'll just toodle on to his place and see if maybe he needed to give me that puck in a safe place ..."

I was out of there like a shot. I pulled in at his place, saw his car in the lot, shook my head at him and his ways ... raced up the stairs, let myself in with the key to his place he'd given me a few days earlier ... figuring to surprise him or at least act as though I'd always known he was waiting for me there.

Heard nothing.

Nothing.

But knew he was there.

Somewhere.

I prowled through his apartment. It's a small enough place. Kitchen. Living room. Bedroom. Bathroom.

Ah. The bathroom door was closed but there was a light on in there and I could hear faint water sounds. I tore off my coat; tossed off my gloves, hat, scarf; kicked off my shoes ... by then, I was at the door so I went in.

His eyes were on me. Of course he would have heard me coming in the place; you never catch Max unawares.

He was lounging in his tub. The whirlpool jets were going. Steam was rising. His head was resting back. His arms were resting along the sides of the tub. He looked majestic.

We traded grins. The last I'd seen him, in this apartment, had been before the game. He'd had this incredible look of concentration, as if he were going over the victory in his mind, all the tactics, objectives, moves, counter-moves. He had been so inwardly focused, so unselfconscious about how he held himself with the ultra-masculinity of his, every move measured, unhurried.

And now, in the aftermath of battle, how would he be?

He was perhaps more intense. More keyed up. Like he was coiled for one final strike. Or like he'd gathered all that energy he'd held in reserve for one final challenge that might have come but didn't ... and he needed to bleed it off. But at the exact same time, he was patient about it all. As if he enjoyed waiting ... as if the anticipation was making him that much more focused, that much more sure, that much more determined.

"There you are," I whispered. He blinked a few times as I leaned back against the wall and stripped my pants off. The silk long johns that Gaia had recommended clung to me, this I knew ... and he liked that, this I saw. "I thought I'd better come over here and get that souvenir puck you promised me before you gave it to someone more deserving."

His smile was wicked ... evil, totally inviting. He didn't do more than raise an eyebrow to bring me nearer. I shucked off my sweater ... all I had left on was the layer of silk ... "like second skin" the package had said. Max's reaction seemed to bear that out. I love it when I can throw him off his stride; when he's intent, focused and then he seems to blink, real quick, as if he has to will himself to concentrate again.

I leaned over him in the tub; trailed my hand in the water; told him it felt nice; asked him if he needed me to give him a rub-down after the hockey game. When he gave me a slow nod, I stood up to strip the rest of the way so I could slide in behind him and rub whatever parts of him he'd let me ... but he sat up, reached for my hand and drug me down on top of him.

The water might have been invitingly warm but it was still a shock to feel my body plop into it, to feel it sop into the layer of silk that encased me from ankle to chest, to feel the splash on my face, to feel the bottom edges of my hair drip into water. So I was spluttering and struggling for just a moment ... just until I also registered his hard body under mine ... and his lips taking mine.

And his hands steadying me, holding me to him. My arms went around his neck and I would have drowned in him if it meant I could be close to him like that.

That he has the ability to make me feel this way about him, it still gets to me. I hope it always will.

He controlled what happened in that bath; I liked it. I liked him taking what he wanted because I just knew by this point that it was never really one-sided with him. Even when it might have appeared that way, even when it was that way, we always still took care of each other. I took control other times with him. Didn't I? That thought flickered through my mind ... I must have stiffened in his arms as he kissed my neck.

I felt him ease his hold of me and I sat up from him and just looked him over.

"Is that a bruise?" I said suddenly, my hand on his chest. "Oh. And here's another! And another! Oh, Max! You're hurt!"

He took my hands in his. Shushed me softly, like he was gentling me down.

I leaned down and kissed at the first bruise I'd seen. He sighed, let my hands go, put his hands gently on my hips, moved me slowly over his hardness.

"Now this damned match has been played, let us take a few days at the thermae...so good for aches and muscular pains..." he said softly, gruffly.

I knew what he meant. I had almost thought he might have thought of this. Bou had sent us a note after Max had given her solace and advice recently over something I was pretty sure had to do with Cort. I hadn't really asked; when she'd come over to see Max, she'd caught us in a rather tempestuous moment of falling into his apartment while we were busy trying to get each other's clothes off. I'd excused myself and gone home because I figured whatever she wanted to confide in him, it was pretty traumatic or she wouldn't have just shown up like that, carting a box of belongings. I assumed the last thing she needed was someone else around, maybe making her feel awkward to just reveal her more intimate thoughts and concerns.

Anyway, in this note, she'd thanked us and said she'd felt badly for interrupting our night ... and had made standing reservations for us to go to this incredible spa in the hills of Tuscany, about two hours northeast of Rome, where we might have time together to rather make up for the time she took from us. Incredibly sweet gesture; I figured maybe we'd go over Max's birthday that year.

But when the hockey game came up, Max had made some passing remark about him maybe needing to recuperate afterwards. So I was not totally surprised he'd been thinking ahead to taking some time off with me to go to this place that had sulfuric hot springs that had been famous even in his time for their therapeutic values.

"You mean, go away to that place of Bou's?" I asked him as I kissed in at his neck ... all damp and heated from the tub's steam..

"I can make all the arrangements. We could leave in a day or so."

"Run away, just like that? I don't know ..."

"What's stopping us? Besides, imagine the affect on us both ... a place to simply indulge in whatever massages or treatments may restore us."

"You're the one who needs restoring ... well, parts of you," I said in a low voice as I moved very purposely over a part of him that seemed to be fully restored. He pulled my head down and kissed me, full and deep.

He felt my hesitation; released me so he could look in my eyes. I tried to smile.

"It's work, Max. They have these piss ant rules about taking time off. You have to put in at least a month ahead of time." I sighed and sunk down into his hold. "I'd like to go with you, I would. It sounds like heaven. I'll have to ask my boss from hell if I can take time off. I doubt he'll let me. He is such a bastard. I had time scheduled to go home for about a week over St. Pat's and maybe he'd let me switch the weeks, but ... he'd love to say no or force me to beg him, which I just can't do because it hurts my pride more than I'm willing to admit."

He gave this annoyed grunt. Jostled me in his hold a bit as he shifted around. He took in a sharp breath when I braced myself on him and I looked to see I'd grabbed into one of the bruises over his ribs.

"See? You need this trip to the spa! Look ... if you want to go to the spa without me, go ahead and go, Max," I said brightly. "It sounds like it might be a fantastic place for you to go and recuperate from the aches and pains of the game. Just don't stay too long, hey? I'd miss you too much."

"What's all this about me going to Italy alone? Did I hear that right?" he said brusquely.

"Why don't I kiss all these bruises and make them all better?" I said sweetly, my lips already puckered, my fingers softly probing.

"Let me make myself clear...your boss better grant leave or I will be using some influence to yank on his chain..." He raised my chin, gazed at me, his eyes searching mine. I blinked in the face of his resolve. He saw it, knew I'd absorbed his message, which I had, but that didn't make it any easier. His voice was softer, but perhaps the tone even more masculine, to say, "As for my bruises...you may attend to them however you deem fit...while I work out where to put this puck."

With that, he held up the black hockey puck and smiled at me.

It was the perfect moment. Like the break in a coming confrontation of our realities and it gave us both the chance to keep our separate realities from intruding. Not that I didn't know this wasn't just temporary, keeping it in abeyance. But, still ... God, how he does me in with that smile of his. The one that's almost shy even when there's that bit of arrogance overriding it all.

I lunged for the puck; he held it out of my reach. We scrambled in the slick confines of the marbleized tub. He yanked my bottoms down and forced me against one of the jets. I pretended to orgasm at the feel. He shifted us both but did it too fast and I heard him groan ... knew he'd used some muscle that wasn't too happy. I took advantage of that infinitesimal distraction to grab the puck from his hand when it lowered to the side of the tub to steady his body.

Y'know, I might have even gotten away at that point. But those damned silk long johns. Max grabbed hold and I was going nowhere. I cried out to him to remember his bruises, to not hurt himself more ... he manhandled the silk off me, left them laying there in the tub as he picked me up and carried me in to his bed.

I was still clutching the puck.

He teased me about that. Whispered in my ear about where he might put it that might be safer than in my hands.

But once on his bed, we just settled. The mood shifted.

He said he had realized in just that day how very much he was beginning to relish slipping in the quasi-family structure we had at the pub. That for the first time since he'd arrived in this place, he was beginning to see that he could consider that there was a place for him after all and that it was all because of what he wanted to build with me.

When he said that, I was sitting before him. I was tucked in close to him, my legs over his knees. He had a hand on my hip, but while he leaned toward me, he was looking off, away from me ... staring at this wall hanging that I knew represented his home in Spain.

I studied his profile and then my eyes dropped to that scar on his upper arm. The one that once held the mark of the legion that he'd dug out of his skin. I reached up and stroked the smooth, blunt, uneven opaqueness of the scar.

His face turned to me. In the oblique slant of light from the bedside lamp, I studied his face.

This is when it slammed into me.

Bruises.

Tears just filled up inside me. I can't describe it better than that. I know they brimmed at my eyes. I know he saw them. He just stared at me, confused, unsure.

I touched along the edges of his right eye. "Who hit you here?" I asked him.

He shook his head at me.

I touched along the bruise along his jaw. "Who hit you here?"

Another shake.

My fingers trembled.

"I hate this," I said, my voice ragged. "I'm sorry. But I hate it. I hate that I wasn't there to protect you. To save you. To stop those bastards who beat you."

"Anna ..."

"I know that's crazy. I know. I do. I just love you that much, Max. This reminds me of that ... of those bruises."

"That was another life, cara. What possible good can it do to remember it?"

"I think about it sometimes. About what you went through. It was all so horrible. I think about how you said that Commodus had killed that good, noble, honorable man who was the protector of Rome. How you believed that. But how you were wrong in the end."

"Not so wrong. Let us not speak of that ..."

"I think about what I don't know. About how many men it must have taken to bring you down, to subdue you after they killed Cicero. About seeing you, with those bruises on your face, on your chest. How you looked resolved to death. Not defeated, just resolved to meet it with your eyes open."

"These bruises are from sport. I earned them in a game with men who are my family."

"I think about how all hope was gone for everyone because the one man capable of defeating Commodus had been betrayed. How everyone else had given up. But you carried that on your shoulders and stood up anyway."

"You give me far too much credit, Ann. I simply ..."

"You refused to die. You wanted your vengeance. Before I knew you, I used to watch you and think about what a hero you were. But then I knew you, and now I just ... it just about breaks me to see it happen to you. And these bruises ... you know?"

He pulled me up to him and then lowered us together to the mattress. I felt the weight of loving him. I felt the span of time between us. I felt how hard this was going to be. Who was I ever kidding? I loved this man. This was insane. We saw two different things when we looked at the exact same thing. We were never going to make it.

I laid in his arms and cried. I don't know why it hit me then except I do ... it was the bruises. It was my reaction to them, wasn't it? It was understanding in that one moment that he was more important to me than I'd ever realized. That my view of him was different now. That I understood him a bit more. And that this meant, I also understood, that I was no more the kind of woman he needed than ... Well, frankly, I think about any woman would have been better for him than me. A strong-willed, modern feminist with a stronger-willed, Roman military leader? Give me a break.

He thought I was like this foundation for the life he wanted here in this world. I don't know what I thought he was. I never really thought like that, I suppose. I had no expectations; I would have gladly stayed like this with him forever. That's what was wrong, really ... because he was already planning for what came after the foundation was solid.

I called my boss from hell at home that evening. I almost lied to him about some family emergency and needing time off. I was determined to go with Max to Italy like he wanted. I thought this was maybe the reality check time for Max and me. Let him see that, away from home and all we shared there in terms of mutual friends, that what we had was not the lasting love we'd been kidding ourselves about.

Imagine the bruises I'd put on his heart if I let this go on longer?

So anyway, my boss from hell is pissed as all hell that I've called him on a Sunday at home. He rants at me a bit. The phone's dangling from my ear; I walk out on Max's balcony in the night. Max's eyes follow me; he's listening to me saying nothing as my boss rags on me. It's why I go on the balcony. It's going to be tough enough to debase myself without having Max hear me beg my boss to switch my week off by one lousy week.

I have to listen to him bitch and moan about the problems I would cause him in switching resources and revising delivery schedules and project deadlines. I stare intently at the moon as he cites me chapter and verse of the employee manual that states unequivocally that what I am asking him to do is against normal procedures and may only be granted in the most dire circumstances and then only at the total discretion of management because we are there, my boss chides me, to do our jobs, not to fill in our time between vacations.

In the end, he says he can let me have the week off but that I must take it as a week without pay and that I must also then forfeit my vacation the following week. So it's a double screw, really ... I have to take a week off without pay and I have to work the next week while being charged for taking vacation. But when he says it, I know that this is the only way I'll get the time off. So I agree ... without argument, without pointing out to him just how much he sucks to do something so unfair. To top it all off, I even manage to thank my boss for fucking me over royally.

When I hang up from him, I wish I'd been able to tell him to shove his comment about "employee morale" up his tight ass. I wish I'd been in the position of being able to quit over the principle of fairness in the workplace. I wish I'd been able to tell him he had been so damned lucky to have someone of my caliber working for him but that I was quitting on his ass. That he could take the job and fuck it for all I cared about him and that company that let him be a boss.

Eh, well. I needed the paycheck or me and Buck would be out on the street. So I took his crap ... again. It made me feel impotent. But what else could I really do? Life, eh? Even when it's good, it can suck.

We left for Italy the next night. Max somehow just got it all done. Tickets, reservations, rental car at the other end. He never asked how I arranged the time off; I never told him what I'd had to give up to be there with him. I did kind of fret a bit about losing a week's pay but then I thought if I just didn't buy anything for a few months, it'd even itself out. Really, the most important thing was that I could still pay my rent.

The only thing I'd had to do to get ready was to find someone to keep Buck for me. I called Johnny; he said he'd be glad to. I spent the rest of the day packing. Dropped Buck off at the garage on my way to Max's place.

We were only going to be gone five days. It seemed like a lifetime to me.

As the plane lifted off the runway, I was watching out the window. Max was holding my hand because I told him that I'm a nervous flyer. I found that incredibly endearing, that he'd hold my hand in public even though no one really could see. He'd totally splurged and gotten us first class tickets. Said it seemed the least he could do since Bou had gone to all that trouble to arrange our visit to this luxury resort and spa.

I had this thought as I felt the wheels lift from the earth. We were free, Max and me. Flying away into the night. We'd be landing eventually in the city in which he'd died. The place those bruises had been beaten into him. Where he'd thought the better part of him had been lost only to find himself again as he bulled his way to his vengeance on the sands where his lifeblood was seeping down so deep it changed everything in its wake.

Maybe this trip hadn't been such a good idea. Maybe he should have gone by himself. Maybe it would have brought him to his senses if he'd been alone while so close to his past and could have seen that I wasn't really that good of a future for him.

On the other hand, the closer we got to Rome, the more I found myself wanting to always care for him. To be his shelter, to be strong enough to keep him safe from harm and heartache and ... and ... and I watched him dozing next to me somewhere over the Atlantic and realized ... I didn't trust anyone else to really look out for him.

God oh God. I loved him so much. Did I have the right to obligate him to me? Why all these misgivings that seemed to exist hand-in-hand with the certainty I felt about my love of him?

At the airport in Rome, I trudged along in his wake. Jet lag has never been a friend to me. In the past when I'd traveled long distances like this, I had always felt like I was clinging to my sanity with my fingernails when I'd land and knew that I still had to get to the hotel or make another connection. It was incredibly wonderful to just leave this to Max, who had slept on the flight and seemed primed for taking care of everything.

I've never really done that. Not really. What I mean is, I've never really known myself to just leave it to some man to deal with things and not have a second thought about it. I often turned to a man, a friend, and took comfort in his help or advice. I had no problems with that. But I was usually at least having some input before a final decision was made if it affected me. But in this case, the only decision I made was to put myself in Max's hands and I felt safe. I actually felt ... gasp ... safer with Max taking over than I would have felt with me in charge!

Lord. Next thing I knew, I'd have to turn in my NOW membership and my ACLU card.

Kidding.

As long as I didn't tell anyone I was letting a man be in charge, they'd never know, right?

Okay, okay. So I was slaphappy.

I was standing next to Max at the car rental counter, half-hallucinating about some NOW hoohah coming to my apartment and drumming me out of the sisterhood of feminists. I looked around me at all the people rushing around, not hearing any English, Max speaking Italian to the woman at the desk ...

"Anna?" he asked me softly. I looked at him when he put a hand on my face. "What were you saying?"

"Was I talking?" He nodded at me and then grinned when I blushed. "I thought I was asleep."

"You can rest on the drive. And when we reach the resort, you must go to sleep."

"But it's day. I should try to stick it out, get on this time, don't you think?"

"Sleep, cara. It's what you need. When you awake ... I'll be waiting."

I might have fallen asleep the moment we left the city's congestion. I was mostly out of it before that. It was the sun and the soft music on the radio and Max's muttered curses at other drivers and then the swaying of the car as we drove up in hills. I dreamed of grapes on cleared terraces. I dreamed of summer wheat in the wind. I dreamed of Max's hands. I dreamed of him crying.

When he pulled up to the resort, he squeezed my hand and I looked out the window, blinking this place into focus. It was ... like I'd stepped into another world. We don't have these places in the U.S.  You only find them in civilizations much more ancient than ours. It was stone, warm colored, austere.

We were up high, small mountain, I supposed. I would have asked but I hated to show my obvious ignorance to Max. I was still foggy brained. We got our bags; he carried most of them. I traipsed behind him. He dealt with checking in while I wandered, all wide-eyed and tired, around the lobby, done in soft blues and creams with stately columns in orderly rows and pots of flowers on marble tables. Out large windows, I stared at what he told me was the famed thermal pool. He came right up behind me, barely touching me, his mouth near my ear. Just saying, this is why we came. Its restorative powers.

Up in the room, I took his advice and simply slept. He was out exploring when I woke. I showered and he still wasn't back. I stood on our balcony; it overlooked the thermal pool. It was night. Lights glanced along the still surface. It was huge, placid. I couldn't wait to get in.

He found me out there, just looking.

I turned when I heard his footsteps approaching the door that led to the balcony. He looked incredible. All comfy in jeans and a dark brown Henley that I'd told him once I thought he'd look so good in. He said he'd had a treatment already, a massage that had eased his aches ... and a long, relaxing dip in the thermal pool that he told me was naturally heated by sulfur springs. I told him they had those in Arkansas and they were famous for healing properties. And mud.

For the first few days we were there at Saturnia, we didn't bother with scheduling or planning. We just slept as we wished, woke when it was time, ate when we were hungry, took whatever massages or treatments appealed to us. Made languid love and felt what it was like to just be together. On the third day, Max said he wanted to go for a bike ride out into a nearby town and that he'd show me some interesting ruins along the way that the people at the resort had told him about. So that's what we did.

It's why this gal from south Louisiana found herself in a place in this world she'd never really known about but maybe had always wondered. He found this skinny road, lined with flat rocks that he said was Roman. I was thrilled; he just shook his head at me and set off. Imagine me on a Roman road with a Roman, I called up to him. He shook his head again.

Around us were deep forests, green, moss. Old growth. And then all that left as the road poked through tall, hewn walls of stone. Max told me the Etruscans had done this engineering marvel. You could touch the sides as you went along the road; it was like being in a long, thin cave, but the top was open. At the other end of it, along the eastern side of the narrow road, we found an Etruscan necropolis. Tombs. Carved into the tough rock of caves that loomed inside the mountain. We wandered around. I looked at him at one point as he studied some relief carving, his fingers running over the smoothed down contours.

City of the dead. I come from a culture that has its own cities of the dead. Maybe because I've lived in that culture is why I have rather a ethnic divide with many other Americans I've met about the need to respect the rituals and symbols of life's passing. Maybe it's even why I dwell on that issue of death and what may lie beyond.

But that day, as I watched Max, I thought about how I'd begun to reflect on his death in the Coliseum. I wondered if he was ever disappointed that instead of being in Elysium, that he'd wound up in our world and was now loved by me. But in that one moment, he turned and just looked at me. And I knew, he was happy. And I was part of the reason.

Did anything else really matter? Couldn't we find a way to make it work with that as our foundation? We were both giving people, we were both willing to sacrifice. We were both more than aware of how significant it was to have found love like this. We were both able to appreciate it, savor it, fight for it.

He asked me, coming up to touch me in the silence of this place. He asked why the melancholy. I said I had been contemplating a lot lately about the fact that the odds were against us. That I wondered if he ever really thought about how different I was from the women of his day, how he might grow to dislike the very things about me that maybe drew him in initially. He said that this was never a consideration to him, that love stood apart. That he'd understood, always, what it meant that he was in love with a woman from this age.

What did I think he wanted, he chided me gently, to be celibate in this new world, this new age? Of course he knew a modern woman would be different for him. Of course he'd already experienced some of that, both with me and with others before me.

"Uma," I said. He frowned. "And others. Eris, for sure. Carol, Angel ..."

"You are unlike any of them." He put a finger on my lips to stop the list. Then seemed to draw himself up. "As I am unlike any you have known. Would you not say?"

Unlike anyone. An understatement of all time. I nodded. Kissed his fingertip.

"I am here. Now. With you, cara. Do you seriously believe I am not aware of who you are? That this is not precisely why I seek so much with you? We love ... and there are reasons behind that love. No matter what age I might have found you in, I would have loved you ... the essence of you."

"What a lovely thing to tell me, Max." I shoved down the never-ending questions ... and took another look at him in the filtered light, in this place we'd only ever shared with each other. "There is something about being here, in this area of Tuscany that's not so well known, where it seems we could get lost inside the wildness ... it just is so incredibly special. Our place, you know? When I think of loving you, I imagine I will always remember this moment."

It took us another half hour to bike our way into the town of Pitigliano, which was unlike anything I'd experienced. I'd seen pictures of towns like this, where the city's houses are built into the forbidding stone mountainside, like the city perches on the side of a sheer cliff. The stone houses are light ochre-colored with rust-colored roofs and small windows. I was instantly charmed. We parked the bikes and set off on foot to explore and experience. He kept having to watch out for me and guide me around obstacles because I kept looking all around instead of where we were going.

He took me down alleys and into a church that gave us a spectacular view of the river valley deep below. He took me down another alley into a square with a stone fountain. We ate lunch in a tiny restaurant right there on the square. We walked down more alleys ... they were all tight, winding, up and down ... one more intriguing than the other. He found a museum that had all sorts of Etruscan artifacts, from tools to jewelry to urns, that had been taken from caves beneath the city.

I marveled at the workmanship, especially the jewelry. He told me that in his day, the Etruscan artisans made jewelry that were much coveted throughout the empire for their fine quality and for their elegant artistry. I watched his eyes as he spoke of this; and then watched his fingers trace the scrolling lines of one of the gold rings.

Later, wandering down another alley, we passed a jewelry shop that he said the sign outside advertised held an artisan recreating Etruscan-style pieces. We lingered over earrings and rings and necklaces. The woman working there told Max all about the details and he translated for me. He asked me if I preferred any of the particular styles; I pointed to the one that looked almost like a double Roman scroll. I said it also reminded me of the scrolling in my favorite iron balcony in New Orleans. Most people think the iron balconies there are French, but they are really Spanish, from an era when the Spanish ruled my hometown. It was like a combination of all four places, I told him as he smiled at my off-the-wall romantic notion. Like Rome, New Orleans, Spain and Tuscany ... all evoked in one simple design.

He wanted to buy me a piece; I kept saying no. But he found these earrings ... they were simple, elegant, playful. They had the scrolling look to them; they dangled from my ears; their tiny pieces of blue and green glass glittered in sunlight. I wore them out of the shop.

It always makes me feel awkward for men to buy me things. I don't have a clue why this is. I would never have agreed except he said so simply that it gave him pleasure.

The trip home was more leisurely if tougher winding back up the way we'd come. We took our time and just enjoyed being in this place. We got back just after dark, walking our bikes, guided by the lights of the resort. Inside our room, we ordered room service. Rather than eat it at the little table they set up, we spread it out on the floor. We lazed around next to each other, nibbling off each other's plates, talking about not too much.

Until I was sipping my wine and listening to him say he said he'd never once missed not traveling to Rome when he'd been in the army. That he had always believed his life in the provinces was more suited to his abilities.

"Do you miss it? Even now, Max, do you wish you could go back there? Harvest your crops? Feel the soil? Have back the wife you lost?"

He licked his lips. I saw the frown take root. He wasn't looking at me. "Why must you visit that? Does it give you pleasure to cause yourself such concern? Or do you seek to try me, to make me break?"

I reached over, stroked his arm. "Neither, my love. Neither. I just get curious about you. About things you never talk about but that I wonder if you wish you could."

"That is my past. Whatever pain, whatever joy ... it is gone. Dust and shadows. I have no wish to speak of her to you. Can you honor me in that way?" His eyes came to mine. "I would not have this conversation with you. No more than I care to speak with you of any other woman I have known."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "I'm going to mess up. You know that, right?"

"As will I."

"This is one of those times when our personalities are at odds. I ask in order to better understand you. You would never ask, would you?"

"Never."

Moments passed. I let him be. Let him think about how this made him feel, that I'd be willing to violate some unseen wall he placed around this aspect of his past, that I was curious about something he must have found off limits. I hoped he thought about how this was the tip of the iceberg in how I'd mess up not because I'm an evil person but because I am very far from perfect.

"I have noticed there are some things about your past you don't mind sharing," I said, trying to change the mood and giving him a smirk when he looked up at me, a sharp glint in his eyes. "I mean, I remember a tale you told me once of competing in games ... naked ... and how you enjoyed giving the girls an eyeful. That's something I notice you aren't averse to sharing with me. I wonder why?"

He tilted his head at me. He liked when I teased him like that. He always had liked that smart mouth and irreverent tongue of mine in such times. "It could never have been me to share that. I would never have told such tales," he said.

"Oh ho! You're lying! You're such a miserable liar."

"Am I?" he said, his voice deep and growly.

It made me tingle. "Yeah," I said on a last wisp of air.

"Then when I say I love you ..." he reached for my hand, tugged me over to where I was close enough for him to slide his hand around my back. "... Then you must see the depth of the truth that lies within."

He loves me.

He would not have to say it ... I would know it.

Why is it that the more sure I am of his love, the more I fear being lost in it? Am I really so jaded, or perhaps it's insecurity, that I just am waiting to have him decide I'm not enough or that we have some fight too big to get beyond or we discover some basic part of ourselves that cannot compromise? What is it?

I'll tell you one thing that worries me. It's hard to admit. Hard, really, to put into words without sounding like a fucking lunatic. But it's that when I'm with him, he fills everything up. All the air holes of my life, my being, my soul. I don't really mind it. I don't.

It's just that I notice it when he's gone for a while, like when he's away on some trip for his job ... which, I still do not know enough about, mind you ...  his job, I mean.

But I do notice when he's gone that it's like I blink and the world comes back into focus and I realize that I simply cannot allow myself to think that any one person can be everything for another person. I have to be able to stand on my own two feet; I just can't become a clinging vine or think that my new role in life is to stand in his shadow and just be happy with that.

That worries me. Because when he's with me, he's all. He just is ... it's some force of presence or else I'm simply still besotted with him and one day I'll wake up to find out ...

Jesus. What am I afraid I'll find out when I wake up?