It was easy to just drift along, far easier than she thought it would be. Normally she needed to learn everything she could about a place or situation, but with nearly three thousand years of human history sprawling in front of her, the attempt was futile.
She’d paused by the Roman baths to scratch behind the ears of one of the site’s dozens of stray cats when Keenan appeared, jogging easily along the uneven marble. He stopped at her side, not even breathing hard, but his finely trained body broken out in a sweat. The scent, so familiar by now, made her quake deep inside.
“I should have guessed you’d find the toilets,” he quipped.
A knee-high marble box ran the length of three walls. Ten toilet-shaped openings were carved into each section of the marble. The cat abandoned her to wind around Keenan’s ankles, so she stepped into the room, leaned over, and peered into one of them. “Indoor plumbing?” she asked.
“And a sewer system.”
“I had no idea.”
Without speaking, they turned for the excavated Roman terrace houses. Translucent plastic protected the rooms; in one large space formerly a banquet hall workers were painstakingly reconstructing the mosaics formerly decorating floors and walls. “That’s one hell of a jigsaw puzzle,” Keenan remarked as they passed through narrow marble doorways set into uneven brick walls.
Precise marble designs formed the floors, while painted images of lions and flowers, faces and fish decorated the walls and floors of other rooms. Exiting the villas at the top floor, they walked down the uneven path and found the Babes in front of the library.
“Group picture?” Keenan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Florence said. “In front of the library!”
He was taking pictures with Grannie’s iPad and Rose’s phone when a guide waiting for her group asked Keenan if he’d like a picture of their whole group. Keenan tried to resist, but gave in when Grannie insisted. He stood close enough for Rose to feel the heat radiating from his body but not quite touch him, close enough to smell the scent of his skin and sweat now branded in her memory. The guide took Florence’s camera and snapped several shots for everyone.
“Have you seen the terrace houses?” Grannie asked.
“We just finished them,” Rose said.
“Oh,” Grannie said worriedly.
“Take your time,” Rose said gently. “It’s a beautiful day. Enjoy this.”
“You’re not bored?”
“I’m not bored.”
The Babes made their way to the terrace houses entrance. Without saying a word, Rose and Keenan strolled along the Harbour Street, pausing at the open air theater. “It seated twenty-four thousand people,” Rose said, looking at the guidebook. “Theater and gladiator contests.”
They stood silently on the stage, looking up the semicircular rows of seats. Tufts of grass grew between the marble stones, and three slender marble paths crossed a channel carved around the stage. “To carry away the water and blood after gladiator games,” Rose read from the guidebook.
“This used to be a harbor city,” Keenan said. “The river silted up and changed the landscape. I read that Ephesus was the second most important city in the Roman empire.”
“And now it’s in ruins,” Rose said absently. Everything seemed so far away, the span of time suddenly the weightiest thing in her world.
After a few moments more, they turned and made their way along the wide Harbour Street. Formerly lined with shops accommodating the harbor, this road now lacked impressive buildings, and the tourists thinned out as they walked. Thick, tall shrubs grew rampant over the walls, shading the interiors and all but blocking the doors. Near the end of the path, Keenan took Rose’s hand, pulled her into one of the small buildings, and backed her into a chest-high wall.
The room was dappled like something out of a fairy tale, the kind where the princess walks into a magic-drenched bower and disappears for a hundred years. Blue sky, leaves in a dozen shapes and shades of green, red brick crumbling against her back, grass poking up through the broken-tile floor. Tiny roses spilled over the walls, giving off a delicate scent, tingeing the air pink. She felt suspended between reality and time out of time, when anything could happen and the only thing that mattered stood right in front of her. Close enough to touch, yet not touching. Her warrior, her gladiator, waiting for her.
She reached out and put her hand on his chest. He’d shed his fleece, leaving only a thin layer of fabric between his skin and hers. His heart thudded under the hard muscle and bone, picking up the pace when she turned her palm and angled her thumb to brush across his nipple. The tiny nub hardened at her touch, drawing a soft exhalation from his parted lips.