An Authorized Excerpt
While walking through the ruins of
the Acropolis and Parthenon, Nadia shooed the summer heat
with a cheap touristy fan. She wiped away a thin trail of
sweat from her forehead, thankful that Ruben allowed her to
keep her hair pinned up. He liked her pale blonde hair
hanging down with large curls framing her oval-shaped face.
Her heels click-tapped against the marble as she strolled up
the steps just behind him. He looked handsome today, his
face shadowed by stubble and his jet-black hair slicked back
with gel. A single lock fell over his left eye, a softness
at odds with his hard, chiseled features when he turned to
glance at her. Nadia tried to concentrate on him, but the
mottled marble pillars called out to her in a way she
couldn’t justify or explain.
"Touch me," someone
whispered to her.
Glancing around, she
found no one near enough to have spoken so softly and be
heard. She held her fair fingers out to the ancient column,
intrigued by the request, wondering if she’d imagined it.
The heat in the air dwindled the closer her fingers came to
the stone. She reached, anxious to slide her palm across the
time-smoothed surface, her breath catching in her throat.
Her fingers less than an inch from the stone, Ruben clutched
her wrist, pulling her hand away and startling her back to
reality.
“Don’t touch.” He wagged a finger
at her, his expression patronizing, his dark brown eyes
flickering with condescending playfulness in his tanned
face.
“Not allowed?” she
asked. Heat ran up her neck and across her cheeks as she
blushed. He made her feel like a child caught with her hand
in the cookie jar.
“Don’t take the
stones from the ground either.” Sweat trickled down Ruben’s
forehead. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. To Nadia, that
inaction made him even sexier. “If every person took a rock
or a piece of the ruins, there’d be nothing left.” He smiled
his white-toothed grin, an expression that used to melt her
heart, but now only made her feel insignificant. “Besides,
the gods would get angry.” He chuckled at his joke.
Releasing her wrist,
he turned to saunter along the concrete walk. Nadia paused,
lured by the pull, the need to touch that column. She stared
at its surface. Surely, everyone that passed this way
touched it. The marble appeared silky smooth, its edges
flattened over by oils from human contact.
How many people have laid a
hand on it? Caressed it? And did anyone else hear that
voice?
“Touch me.”
Shaking her head,
Nadia ambled on, finding it hard to walk in her black heels
even though they weren’t high. Ruben liked her in heels; she
wore them for his pleasure. She preferred tennis shoes or
even hiking boots, but he’d weeded such comforts from her
closet after she moved in with him. Her short skirt kept
trying to fly up in the occasional hot, gusty wind, leaving
her befuddled and wishing for a pair of cool, summer shorts.
That too, he denied. Ruben rummaged through her suitcase
before they left the states to be sure no such unfeminine
garment came along. He wanted no woman of his seen in
anything but a skirt or a dress.
The couple left the
gargantuan ruins, passed a sign with verbiage about the
monument and stopped to linger at a lookout point. Nadia
gaped at the dense city of Athens spread below. Buildings
coagulated together in masses of blocky white. Smog hung low
in the air, shading the pale blue sky with a sickening gray
color. At the height they’d reached on the hill, she could
no longer hear blaring taxi horns or the drone of traffic,
but she knew the noise was there, waiting to smother her
when they descended. It was incomprehensible, yet not
beautiful. Athens was disappointing. It was not what she had
expected from the birthplace of myths and gods...of
civilization. The city choked off the last bits of natural
land left. She longed for the green of meadows, the cool
winds of a quiet forest, or the pastoral peace of a
shepherd’s flock grazing idly through thick grasses. In her
heart, she was not a child of the city, any city, even
though it was the only way she’d ever lived.
Why am I even here?
It had happened so quickly, Ruben inviting her to Greece on
a business trip. He rarely took her anywhere. Excited, she
had packed up her dusty suitcase and followed along for the
sheer freedom of it, the strange wonder of going somewhere
she’d never been and perhaps would never have gone, if not
for him. For that, she was grateful but because of the
pollution and crowds of Athens, she wished she were back
home. Most of all, she wished for tennis shoes and shorts.
Although this wonder of the world called to her in its
mysterious way, the thought of a cool, air-conditioned room
and loose, comfortable clothes sounded like heaven.
“Touch me.” The
whisper returned just behind her.
Nadia rubbed at her
temple for a moment, deciding the heat was getting to her.
She glanced at Ruben. He clearly hadn’t heard the strange
voice. The couple strode across the barren ground, departing
from the lookout. She imagined the Acropolis would be
something more substantial, a place of dreams and fallen
gods. The gravel and dirt they passed over hardly felt
significant at all. In a grass splotched clearing beside the
museum, she glanced at the pieces of scattered columns and
chunks of marble waiting to be pieced back together like a
massive puzzle.
Inside the simple
museum, her heart sank. A sign read: No flash photography.
All she had brought was her old thirty-five millimeter
camera. “Wish I had a digital,” she muttered as they passed
the entry exhibit. Most of the statues were fragments, ruins
left after invaders pilfered Greece ages ago. Cement or
plaster filled in the gaps. Headless figures guarded the
center of the first room, no arms to call their own. The
entire display filled Nadia with an overwhelming sorrow at
the loss.
Ruben talked on and
on about a fabulous bar he wanted to take her to after
dinner. She tuned him out as they exited, her mind reaching
for that other voice. Pausing to drink at the public
fountain, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone
watched her, and it wasn’t Ruben.
He took her arm,
leading her back the way they’d come as he rehearsed the
sales pitch he’d have to give that evening. He blathered
about Greek coffee and the beach where she could go topless.
“You’ll do it, won’t you?” He elbowed her. “I’d like to see
you naked in the sunlight.”
Nadia giggled
halfheartedly. The closer they came to the columns, the more
her attention waned from Ruben. The voice called to her. It
murmured gently, seductively, luring her closer. When she
slowed, Ruben let go of her arm to push through the crowd of
tourists.
"Touch me."
Glancing at her
boyfriend, she realized he stood paces ahead. She reached
out to the smooth, orange-colored column, hoping this time
to feel the presence that willed her to make contact.
Touch me."
Nadia reached out.
Her fingertips grazed its surface. The stone, so old, so
warm, so full of life and stories made her feel as if her
fingers were made to be against it. Passion and lust stirred
within her, emotions so intense she thought she might faint.
The stone grew hot beneath her palm. Heat twisted her womb.
Wetness slicked her womanhood. She didn’t want to take her
hand away. She felt the urge to embrace the column, to hold
it against her, to feel that heat sweeping through her body.
She wanted to meet the being within, to know him.
“Nadia!” Ruben
called out. “Come on. We have to get to the room. I can’t
miss my meeting.”
She barely heard him
over the buzz of tourists wending their way around her and
throughout the roped-off areas. Ruben stomped toward her,
his cowboy boots clip-clopping on the cement and marble. He
wouldn't admit it, but she knew his black Levis were
uncomfortably warm. She knew he’d want to take a shower
before the five-o’clock sales meeting and probably roll her
in the sheets as well.
“Nadia!” he barked.
She didn't turn.
Ruben slapped at her
outstretched hand. The tingling vanished, the magic died.
The spell broken, she gaped at her partner of five years,
and frowned. At that instant, she awakened to thoughts and
feelings she'd never acknowledged before. Ruben’s glower no
longer seemed attractive; it made him appear mean and cold.
Was he always this way? Did he
always glare at me like that? Like I meant nothing? Do I
mean anything to him at all? Does he even care for me?
“What did you do
that for?” she asked, bitterness tainting her voice.
He scowled at her,
his eyebrows black lines above stark eyes. His gaze roved up
and down her body, falling on her breasts.
Her nipples were
rock hard, awakened by the desire trapped in the column. A
tickle strained her womb. She bit at her bottom lip,
hungering for a hard kiss, but not from him.
Snatching her hand,
Ruben pulled her along. “Come, my love, I don’t want to be
late.”
