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."