“Not often for the asking. Sometimes for the taking.” He pulled her close and felt through his tunic the quick surge of her warmth against him. “But tonight is not Germania and women whose hair is the color of ripening grain, Claudia. Tonight is Rome and a woman with hair as black as a raven’s wing and skin fair and smooth and warm and greatly tempting.”
“A woman maybe for the asking, or the taking?” Quickly she twisted out from the arm about her waist, and her gay, impish laughter broke upon the fountain’s sleepy murmuring. “I didn’t know you were also a poet, Longinus.” She reached for the pitcher. “Wine to toast the weaver of beautiful words,” she said, filling the goblets; she handed him his, then held hers aloft. “I drink to the new Catullus. ‘Let us live, Lesbia mine, and love.’
“How did he say it...?
“And all the mumbling of harsh old men
“We shall reckon as a pennyworth.
“And then, well....
“Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
“Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
“And still another thousand, then a hundred.
“It goes on,” she added, “but that’s all I can repeat. Now drink with me to your own pretty words.”