I saw it all happen. It was like everything slowed down but the car and Buck. And I was swimming through molasses.

By the time I made it to the vet's office, he wasn't doing much more than whimpering. They let me carry him back to the exam room but then they made me leave and I heard them yelling at each other for equipment even as one of them was shoving me out of there.

I was sitting huddled in the corner of the waiting room when he came in. I'd never been more grateful to see anyone than I was to see him.

"Oh, Max! I'm so glad you're here," I gushed it out to him just as I launched myself at him. He grabbed for me; I felt his arms swallow me up. I'd been holding it together until that instant and then I just felt my legs turn to rubber and I started crying against his throat as he held me up.

His mouth against my ear kept telling me, "I'm here now. I'm right here."

That's how he gave me my strength back. He let me lean on his.

"I'm not going to make it if he dies, Max," I whispered to him when it felt like there were no more tears left in my body.

He moved me over to one of the chairs and sat me down in it. He scrunched down before me as I wiped tears from my face. "What have they told you?"

"Nothing." I leaned in, my forehead resting on his shoulder; anything for contact. I felt cold, drained. "They just asked me if there was someone I could call to come be with me while they operated. I think that's a bad sign, Max. I think they didn't want to tell me until someone was here with me that he's not going to make it."

"Wait here. Let me speak to someone in authority and get some word on him."

Somehow, he knew what to do. Instinct, I suppose. Him, I know. Just how he is. I just had known it somewhere at gut level. Must have been why I'd called him without even thinking it through. Just dialed his number when they said, is there someone who can be with you right now? I hadn't even stopped to question myself about this, calling him like that. And then turning matters over to him because I was scared to my marrow and didn't know what to do anymore.

With him there, I let him deal with them; let him shelter me from as much as he could. I was able to deal with waiting because he'd be there with me. He wouldn't care if I was weak right then; he'd understand. He had once had a dog as a companion. He would know that everyone is weak sometimes, even the strongest. A true friend doesn't hold that against you.

He returned a few minutes later and sat next to me. "They have every reason to be optimistic. His injuries are not minor and they are concerned. But they say he is doing well so far."

I couldn't speak. He put an arm around me and I put my head on his shoulder. I closed my eyes and for the first time since I'd gotten there, I had hope. I had protection.

Another hour went by before the vet came out. We stood there in the middle of the waiting room and she said the next 24 hours would be critical. Punctured lung. Broken leg. A gash along another leg that they had to suture shut. Assorted scrapes. Blood loss. Shock.

She asked me if I wanted to see him. I nodded at her. She looked at Max; so did I. He stroked my hair and whispered to me that he would come with me if I liked. I slid my hand in his; he squeezed gently, his big hand over my little one.

Buck looked so small. Too still. His chest moved up and down with the air they were pumping into him. The vet said he was sedated and couldn't feel anything. But somewhere even in the fugue of sedation, she said, he could hear his mistress' voice. So I bent over the table where he was and stroked his muzzle and whispered to him that I loved him and that I'd be waiting for him when he woke up.

I would have stayed there all night, just stroking him so he'd know I was there, but the vet said he needed to rest. She said she'd call me if there was any change. I said I wanted to stay, even if it meant camping out in the waiting room all night. She looked at Max.

He put his arm around me and told me he was taking me home. Before we left, he gave them his cell phone number to call if there was an emergency and verified how early we could come back the next morning to see Buck. Outside, I asked him when the day had turned to night and he said everything was going to be fine. He put me in his car and drove off with me while I turned and watched the lights of the vet's building recede into the distance until I couldn't see them anymore.

It had started as such a pleasant, uneventful day. The weather had been mild and after days cooped up with only brief walks for Buck to do his business, we finally had a day where I didn't mind at all going to the levee so Buck could romp with his buddies.

I don't actually know how it happened, I told Max that night as he handed me a t-shirt and tried to steer me in the direction of the bathroom. We stood in his hall and I slumped down the wall. It just happened before my eyes and I was responsible for my dog maybe getting killed.

"I let him off the leash ... you remember I always felt safe to do it there?" I asked him.

He lowered his body to the floor and sat across from me. His back was against the wall I faced. His hand was on my knee. "He liked that. He enjoyed playing with the other dogs there."

"I only turned my back for a minute, I think. But I wasn't watching him and he chased after another dog. When I looked for him, I just caught a glimpse of him going over the levee. And when I got to the top ..." I choked on a sob and searched Max's face for signs of just how irresponsible I'd been with my dog's safety.

"He ran into the car?"

"Yes. He kind of bounced off. Oh, God, Max, it was horrible. You should have heard him yowling when I got to him."

We were at Max's apartment that night only because I just couldn't get out of his car at my place. I don't really know why. It's like maybe I refused to go home without my dog. I don't know.

But Max never hesitated. He never said anything. He just refastened the seat belt around me, closed the door and then slid back behind the wheel. And he took me to his place. He tried to get me to eat some soup but I wasn't hungry. I wanted a drink but he said I needed sleep more.

We sat on the hall floor for a long time with me clutching his t-shirt that he said I could sleep in and him rocking me until I was breathing even again.

He was so sweet in telling me very nonchalantly that he'd take the couch and I'd take his bed. So I snuggled down under his sheet and blanket in this big bed that he normally slept in. Everything around me was so masculine and foreign. I felt out of place but I also felt protected from the world.

In the morning, the vet called Max's phone very early to say the Buck had come through the night well. That he was breathing on his own though very labored. That she was astounded by how determined he was to get up.

"He's a strong dog," I heard Max tell her. "He has a fighting spirit."

I was sipping coffee and watching his face. He was serious and he nodded several times before he thanked her and then the call was over. He's going to make it, Max told me. He knew that's really the bottom line I cared about.

Most of the day, I spent at the vet's. I made Max leave after a while and go to work. I felt badly that I'd imposed on him as much as I had. Every few hours, they'd let me go in and sit with Buck for a while. They had him in this big cage that was raised up off the ground and had a warm current of air blowing under it to keep him comfortable. They let me open the cage's door and put my arm in there so I could stroke whatever areas of his body were not in a cast or covered in bandages. Actually, he looked so much better. Sometimes his eyes would open, all unfocused and bloodshot, but I knew he could hear me so I spoke low and soft to him about how great he was doing.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, I went home and showered. It was so quiet in there without Buck. It was almost spooky.

Max called me just before I left to go back to the vet's. He'd taken off work early and gone to check on me. He was coming over to my place to pick me up. No sense having two cars there at the vet's, he told me.

What makes a person have such a generous spirit, I thought to myself as I waited in the lobby for his car to pull up outside. I saw him when he arrived; he didn't see me at first. I just looked at him and wished he would have welcomed the totality of how I felt about him. But I knew he wouldn't; I knew I only had that thought because I was worn out and emotional. After all, I hadn't entertained such regret in weeks. Or maybe it had been days. Hours. Who knows? I wondered if he knew how wonderful a person he was.

I spent that night at his place again. I could have gone to mine but I just appreciated having him watch over me because I didn't worry so much when he was around. When we had left the vet's that night, she said that if Buck had normal vital signs in the morning, then she saw no reason why I wouldn't be able to take him home that afternoon.

So the next afternoon, Max took off work early again and came by to help me take Buck to my place. They put him in a large dog carrier that I would never have been able to manage but that Max carried with what seemed little effort. They armed me with drugs to fight his pain and infections, gave me simple instructions they had to repeat twice and it would have been more but Max finally stepped in to say he understood them and would help me follow them.

We got Buck settled down in the kitchen, where I thought was the best place to set up his sick room. We weren't allowed to let him out of his little carrier at all for the first 24 hours except to carry him down to where he could relieve himself outside. The vet gave me pain medication that she said would knock him out the whole night. She told me to just check on him every so often and then to call her in the morning with a status report.

Max and I only ate dinner that night because he went and picked up burgers. I offered to sleep on the couch so he could have the bed but he just looked at me like I was seriously insane. So we fixed up Max's bed there on the couch and I went in to tell Buck goodnight before falling into my bed. I set my alarm so I'd get up in a few hours to check on him.

But I'd only been in bed maybe an hour before I just gave in to what I really wanted to do. I padded into the kitchen, silently passing through the living room so I didn't disturb Max. I opened the cage door, stroked Buck's muzzle and whispered to him. And then I held his uninjured front paw and felt better to think he knew he wasn't alone.

I don't remember much else. I must have just fallen asleep. Two nights of no sleep and all that tension ... to finally have Buck at home and be with him, it must have just been enough to make me conk out. I do remember strong arms picking me up and a soft 'tsk' in my ear at some point. Still, I was really shocked when my eyes opened to morning light streaming in my bedroom window to find myself asleep in my bed.

At first, I was so irritated. Almost irrationally. I cursed inside my head at Max for having the fucking audacity to separate me from my dog like that. Didn't he understand that Buck needed me? That I needed to be there for him? That the last thing I'd wanted was to leave him alone that night? I was brushing my teeth and looking in the mirror and telling myself to calm down because Max had been very kind to me the last few days and even though what he'd done rubbed me very much the wrong way ... just presumptuously deciding to not leave me in peace where I was at least doing something for my dog just by laying there next to him ... I had no right to be ugly to Max. Inside my head, I rehearsed what I'd tell him ... that he shouldn't have treated me like a child that way.

But all that flew very much out of my mind when I slipped into the kitchen.

He was sitting there, propped up against the wall, his chin on his chest, dozing, next to Buck's carrier. His big hand was inside the carrier's open gate and Buck's nose was resting on top of it.

I just stood there, taking the scene in. And started crying.

God.

Imagine a heart that generous? A friend like that? Knowing how important this dog was to me and doing this vigil?

He startled himself awake when I sniffled. I wiped at my tears as he rubbed his eyes, gazed up at me in confusion and then stretched himself fully awake. He peered in at Buck and stroked his fur before gently closing the gate.

"You stayed with him the whole night? After putting me to bed?" I asked him softly as I knelt down before him and peeked into the cage to see Buck resting peacefully.

"You needed rest in a bed, not on a floor," he said, his voice hoarse from a night of virtually no sleep.

"Oh, Max, I can't believe you did that for me. On top of everything else you've done for me the last few days." I looked away from him. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd totally exploited his generous, protective nature just to help me at a really bad time. "I owe you such an apology. I shouldn't have called you. I shouldn't have imposed on you this way."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, there were other people I could have called ... I should have done that ... I should have called Chili ... or Dino, you know?" I looked at him and saw him frowning. "It's just that they asked me, did I have a friend I could call to come be with me and I never even hesitated ... you were the only one I thought of calling and I guess I didn't think about how inappropriate that was ... but, Max, honestly, I just ... I don't know, I just knew I needed you there."

"I am glad you did," he said.

"I can't believe how you would ... I mean, I've totally disrupted your life for days now with all this and then you end up sitting with my dog all night ... I don't know why you aren't put out with me for imposing on you."

"Of course I would do this for you," he said, his voice all grumpy and husky. He narrowed his eyes at me. "I love you."

"No, you don't," I said with a grin, giving him a playful shove on his shoulder. But he didn't smile back at me. He just stared at me. I felt my own grin slip away totally as I looked in his eyes. "You do?"

"Of course I'm in love with you. What do you think is going on, woman? Making a fool of myself like I have been? You think I normally do this to get laid?" he said gruffly.

"You can't love me," I whispered. And his image suddenly wavered before me.

"Why not?"

"Because ... because ... you just can't."

I felt his hand on my wrist. "Is the thought of me in love with you really so bad that you would weep over it?" he asked me.

"That's not why I'm crying."

"Then what?"

"I don't know. I can't say. I can't tell you."

"Can't tell me what?" he asked, his voice suddenly softer, but even deeper. I felt him tug me toward him. I reached for him and it was that simple in the end to find myself in his arms and whispering in his ear that I'd loved him for so long and had sworn to never say that because I had been so sure he'd never love me. Not like that.

And when I told him, he let out the breath he'd been holding. I hugged him in tightly. He buried his face in my neck. We both sniffled. And just kind of rocked each other. Eventually, I sat up from him and felt this whimper come out of me as I wiped tears from his face. "We aren't being very smooth about this, are we?"

His eyes sharpened and his gaze narrowed to my mouth. 

"This kind of thing ... it never happens for me," I said, suddenly and seriously feeling scared in the face of this.

He ran his fingers down my cheeks and smoothed my hair back from my face, tucking it carefully behind each ear. I watched him slowly lick his lips and then he tugged my face down to his. I closed my eyes when his lips slipped over my bottom lip and suckled for a moment. I opened my mouth when his lips played with my upper lip next. It seemed that when his tongue came into me, that it might have been the first time I'd ever felt it there. It felt new, different.

We just kissed ... gentle at first. I heard the way the kiss pleased me ... that little gasp of satisfaction I make inside a kiss like this. That turned his switch. His arms gripped me in tightly; he sucked on my tongue so hard as the kiss turned rough.

I'd take his rough any day. It was so honest it electrified me. It was so true it turned me inside out.

Whatever I might have thought a moment like this between a man and a woman ... a moment so unprepared for in reality ... to find yourselves arriving at as if by accident ... all I kept thinking was how close I'd come to never having this ... and here it was. I suppose I expected majestic swelling of violin sounds to fill the air and rose petals falling from the sky because it all seemed surreal anyway. But instead it was just us two people, bumbling ... a million thoughts raced through my head as his lips left mine and I arched my neck as he kissed in there like he had to restrain himself from devouring me.

How had this happened? When? Why? Was it real or was I lying on the floor next to Buck, still dreaming of Max, still wishing for what I'd never have?

And then I was lying on the floor next to Buck's crate but I knew it was real because Max's solid mass above me was real and true. He whispered against my ear even as his hand under my ass angled my hips so that I'd feel his growing hardness rubbing insistently over the part of me that softened in anticipation. And all he was telling me was how he'd ached for me for so long ... how he'd longed for me to love him, all of him.

Our movements jostled the cage and we both felt it at the same time. So did Buck, who chose that moment to let out this deep whoof at being rudely disturbed followed by a menacing growl as he glared, bleary eyed, at Max attacking his owner.

"When he's well, I will expect his acknowledgment that he is no longer the master of this domain," Max said, the words rumbling in his chest and making me feel so funny. His mock scowl at the interruption dissolved into something resolute and determined. "Until then, I will fulfill my duty to his well-being. You and I, mistress, will finish this discussion soon."

He yanked me up behind him, told me to prepare Buck's breakfast ... this gruel-like concoction the vet had sent us home with to feed him for a day or two until he'd accept more substantial food. And with no other ceremony, he lifted Buck from the crate to carry him outside. At the door, Max paused, a hand on the knob, his eyes on Buck as the dog sniffed his hand. Buck must have recognized the scent of the person who'd been with him all night, comforting him. He looked up at Max; he wagged his tail.

A few minutes later, I stood at my bedroom window and watched Max carry Buck to the field behind the building, the place set aside for our pets. And for some reason, the sight of noble Maximus standing there helping my dog that way ... it made me laugh even while it choked me up with tears.

And then I just stood there trembling because he would be coming back to me. And I would have to figure out what I did with a dream that came true after I'd given up on it.

I fed Buck when they got back and then he seemed to almost pass out inside the cage, exhausted from the energy he'd expended and needing rest to keep healing.

Max had wandered away by then; I heard the shower start. For some reason, the idea that he wanted to cleanse himself before really touching me again ... it was another moment to tremble because Max in love with me was something I never really considered.

Were we really?

Really and truly?

What clues had I missed? All this time, I just thought he was catting around, reclaiming himself, not serious about any particular woman but not denying himself experiences with any woman who caught his eye. And every time I felt angry with him that he seemed to only want me as either his good buddy or someone to warm his bed on nights he wasn't with someone else ... had he really seen me differently after all this time?

All that business of his style changing to be more like Chili ... had it been for me? Had he thought I liked that better on a man?

He knew me so little then.

I slipped inside the bathroom and knew he felt the change in the air. I stripped and opened the shower door. He looked at me over his shoulder, pausing as he soaped down his chest. His short hair was wet, slicked down. His neat beard was glistening with strands of water coursing over his face. His back invited my touch.

He turned to me and then pulled me in under the water. I felt my heart drop and my womb quiver. I know that sounds silly; but it's the effect of such a man touching a woman with such bare desire and such naked masculinity.

For a moment there, it's all he'd done ... just pull me into his power. I opened my mouth to take a breath; he stole it from me. And all it took was the movement of his body against mine ... the way it reminded me that you could strip away all the niceties of love and underneath it, you'd find that the expression of it between a man and a women in a physical sense was about what you could do for each other to make sex more than the meeting of body parts. It was always as much mental as physical with him ... but there was never any sense denying that his physical made me breathless.

I rubbed against him. He moved ever so slightly in response and a sheet of water blinded me. My eyes closed against the onslaught; his mouth covered mine. I just didn't think there was ever any hope that I'd kiss him hard enough, good enough ... my hands on his head kept him locked to me.

Until he peeled them off him. He lowered them both to cup his groin. He backed me into a corner of the shower and just looked at me with this almost mean expression as I stroked and caressed him. He lathered his hands and washed me; not pausing as he traveled over my torso until his fingers stroked soap-slicked over my sex and through my pubic hair. When he put the soap away, inside the holder in the shower's marble wall, and turned back to me, he lost that edgy look and in its place was him searching my eyes for evidence of what I was feeling. He touched my hips and drew the lower part of my body to his.

I would have crawled over his body at that point ... all slippery with soap and feeling like I had lusted forever just for that one moment of being with him.

He dipped down to kiss in at my neck. I know I whimpered. His response was to drag me closer to him. He was so hard; I stroked him in both hands and he hissed into my ear and then nipped at my neck. It made me lose any desire to be nice. I just wanted him inside me. I tried to rise to my toes to see if I could just slip down over him ... but it was impossible considering my height compared to his.

Pressing me lightly into the marble wall of the shower, his hand moved from my back to stroke up my neck, to pull it into his mouth. And then his hand held my jaw as he raised his head finally to look down into my eyes. 

"No other men. Not anymore. Do you understand? This is what I desire with you but I will not share you. Make your peace with them and then we will be joined."

"Max ..." I panted out to him even as he bent to kiss me lightly on my shoulder before pulling away from me. I felt bereft. To have come this far, gone through all this, taken this chance ... so close, only to have him leave me there, against the marble surface. I wondered if my body was turning to marble even as I stood there.

I watched him as he moved under the water. It sluiced over his form. Like maybe he was washing me off him. His head dipped down as he rinsed his hair; his eyes closed; one hand running through his hair to chase out shampoo remnants.

"There are no other men. There haven't been in so long. Not since I knew I loved you."

He slowly raised his head again. I wondered if he had heard me. Maybe my voice was marble, too, and therefore no sound had really happened there between us. But then he turned and gazed directly at me. I wondered if he knew I was marble, that if he touched me, my skin would be cold and hard because this rejection was more than I could take and remain a flesh and bone woman with blood coursing warm and rich in my veins.

"What about Palmer? You told me you loved him." He said it in a clipped voice; it was the first indication I had that maybe my voice wasn't marble after all.

"No. I said I loved someone ... I never did say who. You thought it was Chili. I wanted you to think that. I didn't want you to realize it was you all along."

Can marble feel? Does it hurt like I am? Maybe I'm not marble after all. Would he look at me like this, with that look in his eyes of confusion and regret, if I was marble and not woman?

He asked me why I'd let him believe it was Chili I loved; I explained it the best way I could. And through all my bumbling, he just listened intently. And I kept concentrating on the way the water looked as it beaded up along his shoulders before finally joining together to fall down his shoulder, down his arm, to his elbow before falling in fat ribbons to the floor of the shower. His lips looked all wet. Tiny drops of water gathered in his lashes. And what I thought was this: he's not marble. So I missed it when we both were silent for so long.

"Is that all?" he finally said softly as he came closer again. I looked up into his eyes; I blinked at how he regarded me. Can marble blink? "No more to tell me?"

"No ... only ..." I pulled in a hard breath as he cupped my cheek in his hand, his eyes locked to mine. He wasn't marble; he was warm flesh. Can marble talk? "Only ... I need to know that you won't have others, either. I've waited my whole life to feel this way and I want it to mean more than anything I've ever had before. Okay?"

"Yes. For you. Because you ask me. Because it means something to you."

I closed my eyes. I'm not sure why. Maybe because the look on him, the power of him, maybe it just overwhelmed me. 

Can marble close its eyes?

I felt my feet lift away from the marble floor of the shower. I felt my shoulder blades slide up the marble wall behind me. Warm mist of water from the shower splashed on my feet as his big hands wrapped my legs around his waist.

This was the moment when I knew I wasn't marble. What's the story of the man made flesh from marble statue? Was this how he felt? That life was being breathed into him just to feel his own flesh respond to another's touch?

I wrapped my arms around his head and buried my face in his neck. My eyes opened and I studied his wet hair against his nape. I touched it with my fingers, stroking it, caressing it, memorizing it. I licked drops of water from his neck. I opened my mouth as wide as it could go and tried to control the impulse to eat him. Don't ask me where that hunger came from; maybe it's what happens when marble turns back to flesh, maybe you let yourself do whatever feels good.

He said he would have me. "I will have you." That's what he said. He said it in this voice of raw majesty, crudely regal, barbaric in its nobility. And he said it while I was being held firmly against his body; one arm on my ass, hand at the back of my head just before his mouth took mine and that hand forced me into a kiss that moved up, down, in, out, tongue possessing me, lips cruel in passion, teeth nipping before mouth opening again to possess all over again. I didn't even have to hold on to him because his hold of me was so absolute and sure. Even wet, slippery, wiggling in his arms ... he would never have let me fall.

Even when his hand on my ass flew away and I heard it slap against the shower's knob; even then, he held me up with one hand latching my mouth to his and my arms and legs tightly wrapped around him. The water stopped with shocking abruptness. You might think there was a sudden silence in that marble-walled shower stall in the absence of the roar of the shower but you would be wrong. The sounds of him possessing my mouth filled my ears; the sounds of me possessing every part of him I could touch filled my soul.

He didn't move out of the shower with me until he was again in absolute possession of my body, both hands now gripping me to him. His hard length was between us; I moved against it, up and down, feeling its rigid silk rub against my urgent softness.

My eyes were open. Open. My mouth was open. Everything in me, truth be told, was open ... if I'd thought about this, it would have scared me to death. He wasn't letting me think, though. Not as he moved resolutely out of the bathroom, throwing open the door, kicking it back with his foot when he went to move through it, his arm slapping back into position under my ass, gripping me in, raising me up so his tongue could plunge in deeper, his head turning here and there in this frantic, calculated, instinctive search for a way to dive into me like I wanted to dive into him.

Aren't we humans silly that way?

I whimpered, deep down, so deep he must have felt it in his cock. He felt it and sat heavily, clumsily onto the edge of the bed. I admit, it was nice to have that impact on him.

He bared my neck by gripping in on my hair and pulling my head back. My eyes were open. I pictured what his cock looked like. I wanted to taste it, to have it in my mouth, inside my body, somewhere. But I also liked what he was doing, touching me, tasting me. I was so wet. Everywhere. My skin. My hair. My groin. My sex. My eyes.

"I want to taste you," I told him. I didn't know if he understood me. His mouth rough at my throat made the words sound funny when they fought their way out. They didn't seem to make an impact on him. I reached to touch him but his elbow brushed my arm away even as he bent me backwards just far enough that he could place one of my breasts in his mouth; his hand that was once gripping my ass to him was now holding my breast as if in offering to his mouth.

But he did hear me. I discovered this long moments later, as I floated there in his arms, feeling his hard cock as I stroked it with my sex while his mouth and hand on my breasts made me forget my fear of him.

It was fear. Even then. Maybe never more so. I just had this moment, with my eyes open, tears mingling with shower water in my hair, him in control of so much of me, feeling myself let go to be with him. And I thought to myself, "He is such a man that the first time I saw him I was embarrassed by the barbaric reaction I had to his essence."

Why that makes me fear, well, it's basic to me. Sometimes you fear what you most want. Maybe the thing is, if you get it, you may find out you've suddenly no frame of reference for what you do next.

His hand left my breast; it palmed my body as it moved down my side. I knew where it was going; a moment later, his thumb, only his thumb, stroked feather soft against my clit. I moaned. I felt his hand slide between us, between my body and his hardness. I wanted to touch him; my hand stroked down his arm; I felt it moving from between us.

My eyes were open when he slowly raised my head until I could see his intense gaze. When he slid his thumb between my parted lips, I kept my eyes open and tasted the droplets of him that he'd gathered for me from the part of him that would be joined with me that day in love.

He moved his thumb around inside my mouth as I suckled it. His eyes smoldered as he watched me, his mouth open, his tongue an involuntary trespasser upon his bottom lip. A fraction of a second after he slid his thumb from me, I felt its wetness upon my thigh. He left it there, his hand gripping my flesh there, the flesh that had been marble until he touched it and set it free.

"There is so much I wish to be for you," he whispered against my ear. It made me tremble ... the immensity of his emotion. "There is much I wish from you."

His breath lingered there upon the skin of my neck, skin that yearned for him to only close the scant inch that separated it from his lips. The weight of his words finally settled upon my shoulders. I closed my eyes and leaned in hard against him, my hands clutching the back of his head and then his back, this frantic, deliberate attempt to hold him when it was him holding me. But my move brought his lips to my neck and there he kissed in wet surrender.

"Does this scare you at all?" I whispered to him.

"Yes."

"I'm so grateful to hear you say that, Max."

"Fear will sweeten the taste. You will see. If you trust in me."

I relaxed my hold on him and we moved to where we could look eye to eye. "Trusting in you has always been instinctive."

"What you give me, here, in this time ... I will repay you a thousand fold. Do you trust in me for that?"

"I love you for that, Maximus." His eyes glittered before me. My hands dropped to caress over his chest. I leaned in, my chin rising up, my mouth claiming his, my hands splitting up, one gathering a hold on the small of his back, the other stroking into a hold of his penis.

Love. Passion. Lust. Fear. Delight. Giddy highlights of life lived out in fast moments that I grab for when I can. But this love is different. This love grips me as tightly as I grip it. This man is different. He holds me because he can, because he wants to, because he needs me.

He flips me on my back. His hand covers my sex. His eyes challenge me. His growl erupts. His mouth would devour except he'd rather let his cock conquer my flesh. But it's more than that and what poet does it justice is never going to be me. All I can do is be open to him and be open for him.

My body has to remember how to accept him. There is that cherished, familiar feeling of the first time he enters me, of struggling, both of us, eager to be joined and yet from our different perspectives not wishing that this be anything more than one of those aches that feels good in the long run.

He hovered there on the brink. We both caught sight of what it looked like, where he was trying to enter me more fully. His face was proud if patient when he looked back at me. I turned my head as I caressed over his biceps, bunched up and powerful as he held himself back, more powerful in restraint sometimes than I thought it was possible for a man to be. I told him how his display of brute strength like that turned me on. He told me the feeling of being in me like that almost made him lose his senses.

Nothing else we said just then really had concrete, logical substance.

I thought about that hours later, after slipping back into the bedroom ... returning from checking on Buck. I thought about it because I was sore and I sure the hell liked it. It was a good sore, the best. All that time, thinking I'd never feel this way, never have this chance, never get this.

In my bed, sprawled out there ... I had never really thought I'd see this sight. Not and feel like I was feeling just then. Not and not be hurting to know I'd weakened because I only ever thought I'd have him in my bed again if I'd betrayed my willful intentions to never be with him again if it meant only being with him to be reminded I'd never have him like this. Like this. In love with me. I had sworn it to myself, that I would never weaken, no matter how he might have enticed me, because I didn't want to get hurt anymore and because I didn't want to be weak anymore.

Yet, here I stood and I felt good.

Just overwhelmed at the prospect.

I had so many questions. They'd come racing at me when he'd fallen asleep and I'd lain there next to him playing with his fingers splayed out upon my belly.

How had this happened? How quickly was I going to fuck this up? Was he sure? Was he settling? What would we do now? Was I even allowed to think of us in terms of 'we'? Did he have any idea how much I loved him?

Had he been falling for me all these weeks? Is that why he kept coming around? Was that his way of pursuing me? I thought about each time I'd seen him since Christmas, about the odd moments, the coincidences, the way he'd changed his look, the flowers, the dates that weren't dates, all those times he brought his car to the garage and I was there like he must have known I'd be ... that night he'd rescued me from the cold side of the road and also the moment he'd put his hand over my ruined stockings and told me he found me beautiful. The looks across the bar. The instant dislike of Chili that grew more rabid over the past few weeks. The fleeting encounter he'd made sure of between us after Buck's competition and how hard had he searched for something perfect to give me that he knew he'd find if he just looked hard enough because it was that important to him?

How often had he felt frustrated, in over his head, awkward, challenged if he'd pursued me in the face of believing I'd been so foolish as to fall in love with another man when I should have waited for him to realize he loved me?

 Could I have been more dense? Did he have any idea what it felt like to find out he loved me?

I lowered my body slowly to sit next to him. His bare chest was there before me. God. He was such a beautiful man and he would so hate that I thought of him in that way. But it's still true. I kissed the rise of each pectoral muscle; he shifted awake. I lowered my body until I was curled up next to him; I used his abdomen as my pillow. I stroked his soft penis where it rested beneath the sheet that covered him there. He put his hand on my cheek, stroking me slowly with his thumb.

"What are you thinking?" I asked him.

"Of how very precious you are to me," he said softly. "Of how good it feels to claim you ... at last."

I turned my head to look at him and sank back down into the softness of his belly. "At last? Have you been planning this?"

"When seeking total victory, a smart warrior goes with his strengths," he said, his smile wicked. His voice was smug, reflecting a man aware now, at last, that he had always been irresistible to me. "It was a most ... involved campaign."

"Oh. I see. You think you've conquered me then?" My hand reached up to stroke over his chest.

"Not at all, mistress. I conceded long ago that you would vanquish me wholly. I merely sought amenable peace terms when the inevitable final battle was joined."

"You have a smart answer for everything," I said ... and I wondered about us ... and were we too amusing? Any witticism I might have spouted died on my tongue.

"Do you remember when we met?" he asked. It was so out of the blue. But it made me smile at him.

"I remember the first time I ever saw you. It was in that bar on Columbia Street."

He shook his head. "No. We met at the bookstore."

"Sure, we met there. But I had seen you before." 

He crawled down to where I was and leaned on an elbow while he stretched next to me. His hand stroked over my body, as if he absentmindedly just wanted to establish his right to do that.

I enjoyed the sense that he was intrigued that he'd never known this about me ... about us ... about the first time. "I'd just gotten laid off from the utility. A bunch of us did. Everyone wanted to go out and get wasted and cry in their beer. I went to the bar to be with them but I was still too numb to be upset. And when I walked in, I saw you."

His eyebrows shot up and I know he was trying to picture the day in question.

"You were standing at the bar. The first thing I noticed was the way you were standing. You seemed almost above it all ... all that commotion in there seemed to annoy you. You were frowning at the tables where all my co-workers were drinking. And I just stood there, looking at you. You never noticed me at all."

"No? I find that difficult to believe."

"You were wearing jeans. A black pullover sweater."

"You remember it that well?"

"Absolutely. One of my friends grabbed me and dragged me over to the tables. I looked back to point you out to her but you were walking out of the bar. I said to her, 'I just saw a man. He makes me realize what a real man is. He's just ... such a man that I could feel his masculinity envelop me from across the room and he wasn't even looking at me.' And you are, Max. In all this time I've known you, sometimes I still get that same awed experience of the impact of your masculinity."

His fingers were soft along my cheek. He smiled indulgently at me as I stroked over his chest. "The first time I saw you ... that I remember seeing you ... was in that bookstore."

"Yes, I remember. The day Uma introduced us."

"No. Before that. Weeks before that."

I shifted in his hold, my hand on his face, studying his eyes. "What? No way. But that would have meant ... We saw each other without the other realizing? A few weeks before we met? Then ... then it must have been the same week. I saw you in the bar; you saw me in the bookshop."

He leaned in to kiss me, light softness of his lips against my jaw, an endearing nuzzle of his nose along my hairline. He turned onto his back, drawing me with him until I was lying with my head in the crook of his shoulder, cradled in his arm wrapped around my back while his other hand stroked over the thigh I stretched over his legs.

"I won't lie and say that I saw you the moment you came in," he said, his voice husky in remembrance. I stroked over the light hair upon his chest.

I tried to picture me walking into the bookstore. I went there a lot back in those days. I still went but nothing like then. A lot changes when you don't have the discretionary income. A lot fewer café au laits at the chichi coffee bars when you can brew up regular coffee at home, less buying of books and more library rentals.

You sell the condo and move into an apartment where the rent's affordable on the new salary of the only job you can find before the severance package runs out and you're forced on unemployment. You just no longer trust that living beyond your means will work out in the long run with the promotions and better jobs you once were sure were coming your way. Not once you're laid off that first time. Your attitude changes about such things. You don't realize how much changes about yourself when that kind of thing happens and you're powerless and scared that for once in your life you are going backwards in your career and maybe you're not going to be okay after all.

"So if you didn't see me walking in, I suppose it wasn't a case of you following a nicely curved ass inside the store," I sassed him.

He pinched my thigh and then grabbed my hand before I could smack him in retaliation. But to make up for it, he put his mouth at my ear and spoke to me in the sex-soaked voice of his that he knew made me weak in his hold.

"The first thing I noticed about you was the way you held yourself," he said. "I was looking for a particular book, a reference book. I walked past the aisle where you were looking for some novel. I had a brief, few moments; I slowed to extend them even a fraction of a moment before I would continue on my way to the other area of the store."

"The way I held myself?"

"As a woman in control of herself. You were so focused. You were walking down the aisle, your eyes intent on the book spines, your fingers trailing along, feeling them as you went." He paused as he kissed my temple. "You made me nervous because you were more than a beautiful woman. Is there any way to describe when someone makes an instant impact and you are instinctively attracted yet are unsure why it feels as if it's more than physical?"

I nestled in tightly to his body. "You were attracted to me? Just from that one glimpse?"

He growled, frustrated, but also pleased to be divulging this little secret to me. "What man would not find you attractive, Ann? So, I suppose that is true but it was more than that. I was intrigued by the impact you had on me."

"Why didn't you come up to me?"

"I told you once. I was scared to approach you."

"As I was scared of you."

Our eyes met. We grinned at each other. There is, after all, within Maximus still a man not always sure of himself with women. Perhaps it's the final measure of what it is about him that makes me weak for him.

"I never did make it to the reference section that day. I followed you instead. Discreetly. Just to study you. Until you left. I stood inside the store and watched you drive off. I started spending time in that bookstore, just to see you. To keep watching you. To get up the nerve to approach you."

"And I never noticed?"

"As I said, you were focused. You would search down an aisle. I could tell when you'd find the book you were hunting. You'd get this frown of concentration, as if you were sure you hadn't really found the book and then you'd smile. Tilt your head. Pull it out. Read the jacket. I noticed your hands. So pretty. Precise."

"My hands?"

"Among other parts of you," he said as he stroked over my breasts. "Most of all, I remember feeling hopelessly big and crude around a woman so delicate and so at ease in a place like that."

"And then you met me and realized how wrong you were about me," I chuckled.

His finger on my chin drew my eyes to his. "And then I met you."

It made me take in a deep breath. "That was something, wasn't it? I remember the feel of your palm when we shook hands. I remember the way you looked at me. I couldn't even speak above a squeak."

"It was something. All I could do was stare in your eyes. From the first moment, I have been captivated by them. Even then. Even though looking in them told me something bad had happened to you since the first time I'd seen you. Perhaps that was the moment I began to fall in love with you, Ann."

I sighed. "The layoff devastated me. At first, I thought I'd find an even better position so easily. The week we met, I'd lost out on a job that made me realize I was in trouble, that maybe I couldn't compete anymore. My self confidence had taken a real blow by then."

He stroked my skin; big hands, warmth, security, protection. But no pity. Ever.

"Then that first time I saw you in the Pub ... in Uma's pub ... I was so sure you were there because of me," he said, breaking the spell on purpose; seeing if I'd come out of the shadow.

"I knew you did. When I saw you there the first time, you got all cocky, like you knew I was gaga for you. It pissed me off. And when you realized I'd come there to see Uma, that really got to you, didn't it?" I said.

"It did. Indeed."

How long would we have circled each other, I mused to him, if not for that one night of insanity, of daring each other, of finding a way to be intimate that in some ways was less intimate because Johnny was involved and in other ways more intimate because we dared to break such conventions?

And how long would we have gone on this time, Max mused to me, apart yet yearning for the other, if not for my instinctive reach for him in a bare time of my own need?

"I know this is love," I whispered to him in the solemn silence of each of us probing for answers to such unanswerable questions, each of us imagining not finding the other in the vastness of this world's haphazard ways with humans.

His arms gathered me in close; I hugged in around his chest, my face buried again in his neck, loving the scent of him, sexed out, sleepy in the late afternoon. His voice was soft against me, saying, "Loving you is simple. Being loved by you ... more than I may deserve, all I will protect. As I will protect you, my Ann."

Do you know what it is about him that affects me in our physical relationship? It's how when he touches me, he possesses me and he never restrains himself. Some men, they are tentative and sweet in how they touch you. He can be that way. But when he is, it's that much more powerful because I know he's doing it very much on purpose. Because when he's really into it with me, wherever he is touching me on my body, he just owns me. I never have had a man do that quite that way before.

Actually, there is something about the brazen openness of his entire approach to the physical side of our relationship that affects me like nothing I ever considered. It's just that it's shameless, unpretentious and unconditional.

Physical is one thing; what about the rest? Is there a book somewhere with the answers? I swear I'd buy it.

I said, "I don't know where we go from here. Do you?"

"Wherever it is we go, Ann, we go together. Does that not excite you?"

"Do you remember telling me, that first night we were together, that if I put my trust in you, you would make it a beautiful experience for me?"

"I haven't forgotten."

"I put my trust in you."

"I put mine in you."

I don't know much. But I do know one thing: I have never loved like this before. This is something true.