Scene 3

Bathed in the golden light of a late Summer afternoon, the ruins of a Roman Thermae, the public baths of Antiquity. Magnificent mountains outline the horizon, cropped between tall, ruined columns onto which creepers grow. Repeated earthquakes have thrown different parts of the otherwise grandiose temple inside the thermal waters they once sheltered. One can swim among marble columns and richly sculpted friezes -- but not many people do, for the ruins lie in the Audace family's lands, and public access is forbidden. Al goes there regularly in Summer, often inviting his closest friends to join him. 

Today, Venus is with him. As the pretty little harp -- the same from the scene at the Roman walled garden -- sits next to his red Lambretta, we conclude they must have been rehearsing again. 

Now taking a break, they are under the shadow of an old olive tree, sitting on the grass, amidst wild flowers, in their bathing suits.

"Why is he here?" Venus indicates a person that can be seen on the other margin of the pool, under the only columns to have remained standing. "The gypsy boy, I mean."

"Giuliano? I thought you said you wanted to include a new character in your play..." Al giggles. Caressing Venus's enviable waist, with fingers light as feathers, he looks enthralled by her body.

"That was two months ago!" She shivers from his touch. "We are showing it tomorrow. How could I include a new character now? In fact, we should be rehearsing..."

"We have had plenty of that, already." Al kisses her back, ever so softly, closing his trembling eyelids as his lips linger on her skin. He inhales her smell, and after holding his breath for a moment, only then confesses, "We both know they are an excuse to be together..."

"They are no excuse for me, Al. My play..."

"Yes, I know." He retorts, impatiently, while plucking a tuft of grass and throwing it away. "It's your chance to get seen and start a career as an actress. Well, I ain't no actor!" The lightness in his touch lost, Al pulls Venus towards him, but she resists. "Now let's have some fun... See, you've got me hard again..."

"You are always hard when you are with me." Venus retorts, nonchalant. "Now stop! He is watching...."

"He is supposed to."

"What do you mean? He is now your watchdog?"

"You know my family, Venus. They worry that I get into trouble."

"I am their trouble, am I not?"

"You are the love of my life, Venus. Now, lay down next to me..."

"Not when he is watching!"

Thaysa Tragis had this tiring habit of stressing one particular word of each sentence. It only impoverished the rest of the speech.

"He is watching for my family. But I told him to see nothing, do you understand? Stop worrying about him!" For a moment, Adrian stresses a few words too, using Thaysa's tone. It's a subtle criticism, that the debuting actress doesn't catch at once. She later drops it, when the director scolds her.

"Why does he have to stand there, then? If we can see him, means he can see us too. Now, stop that hand right there!" Al is trying to touch her nipples under the bikini. 

"Venus, come on. He's simply got to stand there. Just in case someone comes to check whether he is doing his work."

"You mean your family will send someone else to watch him watch us?" Venus tries to look offended, but she is actually delighted as her half smile indicates. "Am I that dangerous, really?"

"You know you are.." Al smiles as he kisses her skin again, and even licks it. "Now, if we stay in this position he won't be able to see naythingh..." Al is seen stretching his broad shoulders as if that could cover Venus completely from Giuliano's view.

"Can't you send him away, Al? Please? I don't like being watched..." In her tone, there is the implicit suggestion that perhaps Al actually enjoys being watched by the other boy.

"OK. Let's move over there."

Giuliano follows the lovers from the distance, with his eyes, but does not leave his place, as they walk over to the other end of the pool. Al carries Venus in his arms. She caresses his face, tenderly kissing his lips as they walk.

"You know I'm leaving, Venus. We have less than a week now. Don't you want me?" He uses a begging tone.

"You know I do, Al." Venus replies, very sweetly. "And you know I want to wait..." She plays with the crucifix on Al's chest, as if to remind him of how religious they both are, and that she is a virgin, that his intentions should be pure, too. For what a sin it would be to do anything inappropriate before marriage -- though she might have done a few, already, just to keep Al. Just to keep Al.

"I can't marry you now, Venus. I'm off to the university. Don't you want our love to endure the distance?"

Venus sounds not just surprised, but indignant too, as she asks "Will you forget me when you go to Rome?"

"Of course I won't. But I'd like to have something more. I mean, something really serious to remember about us. See, I am hard again just thinking..."

"I don't remember seeing you soft since we got here, Al." Thaysa has received her scolding during the interval, and is no longer stressing the words. 

"I'm a man, Venus. You know all my friends have girlfriends with whom they have done it, already. I can't wait. I won't wait. Each day is my last day here. I hope it won't be ours, too."

With this ultimatum, Al jumps into the pool, leaving Venus on the ancient marble stairs that lead right into the water. Brooding, reflecting. Once in a while Venus looks in the direction of Al, who vigorously swims back and forth across the pool, many times, and lets out a sigh. 

She looks just once in the direction of Giuliano, who has now seated, looking the more impatient as the sun goes down, and lets out a grunt, before closing her eyes. Venus seems to have finally surrendered to the warm feeling of the sun caressing her skin, to have finally relaxed in the privileged beauty of the private archaeological site,  -- and, just then, we watch a tear stream down the side of her cheek.

When Al comes back to find Venus dozing, he seems to have made a decision -- for both of them. He grabs Venus and lifts her in his arms. She gasps, still looking sleepy, and embraces him with her thighs not to fall into the water. Al's hands go under the bottom of her bikini, reaching for her buttocks. A bit too roughly, and the thin cloth tears.

"No!" She slaps his chest, very softly, either faking or not daring to actually protest. "You ruined my bikini!"

"It's actually mine, isn't it?" He says, his hands groping, accessing more of her flesh, widening the rip. "I'll give you another one. I'll give you a dozen. Now take it off."

"Not here, Al. Please..."

"What do you want? A bed with canopy in the castle's tallest tower?" Al mocks her. "Don't you say this is our special place? Well, then. Let's make it memorable! Let's have our first..."

Venus interrupts him. "But Al! Anybody could see us here... He can see us here."

"Into the water, then." Al descends the slippery marble steps, clumsily carrying Venus, and deposits her inside the pool as if she were a burden. "Take it off." He demands, untying the knot of his trunks, from which his erection is straining to be freed. As his pubic hair is seen, we are reminded Adrian Çellon is naturally a redhead, that has darkened his hair to play Alcibiade. "No, I don't want you to jerk me off." He protests, upon seeing how she is about to handle him. "Get down on your knees. You know how I like it. Get me wet with your spit."

"Al, no!" Venus tries to oppose when he forcefully tries to bend her. "He is watching us..."

"Giuliano!" Al shouts. His voice echoes around the ruins. With satisfaction he watches as Venus lowers his trunks, and when she kneels before him, he shouts his command. "Watch the sunset!"

"What?" The other boy retorts, confused. It's the first time the camera focuses on Giuliano, but as he is looking over his shoulder, towards the couple inside the water, we don't yet see his face. 

"Turn around, stronzo." Al moans, as Venus takes him into her mouth. "Look the other way." He dismisses Giuliano with a bossy gesture, and turns his attention back to Venus. "Now, you..." Al hisses. His face, taken by lasciviousness, reminds us of a faun. "It feels really good, but today I want more than that mouth. Today I want all..." He pauses for a moment. "Today Al wants all." He says it in English, laughing, knowing the girl doesn't understand a word. He pushes Venus towards a huge piece of marble that has only half submerged, and nearly smashes the girl against what might once have been part of the temple's front piece. She is at least a head smaller than him -- though Thaysa is almost as tall as Adrian, so that she has to stand deeper inside the pool, and try to look a great deal more frail than she ever will be, too. 

"Al! What are you doing? I can't breathe! No!" She pushes away the hand he rubs against her crotch. But he resists her slap, intent in undressing her.

"Let's make a baby, Venus!" For a moment, he sounds like his sweet self again, the loving boyfriend he could be -- but his movements are increasingly violent. "Then they'll have to marry us!"

"What? We can make a baby after we marry! Stop, Al."

"You know I can't marry now..."

"You can't marry but you can make a baby?" Thaysa is back to stressing words, but to good effect in such a moment.

"Open your thighs, babe." He lowers his trunks a bit more, while trying to force his leg between hers. But Venus holds them tightly together. "Now." He raises his voice to command her. "Let me in." 

Not without struggle, without much space to maneuver between the old stone and Al's arms tightly  wrapped around her, Venus succeeds to turn her back to Al. But she is not trying to escape, Instead, we watch her desperately rubbing her hips against his pelvis, provoking him, and mechanically exciting him with the friction. Pulling him against herself, she tries to bury his face into her shoulders and hair, and he responds with kisses and bites at her neck. She wants to keep him glued to her in that position, and only fights the boy when he tries to turn her to face him again. 

If words are what differentiate humans from animals, Venus and Al have abandoned them, to become primal. They only grunt and groan in their struggle -- his to submit, hers to resist. 

In her countenance, we see Venus is calculating, trying to decide quickly, while Al manhandles her. Then Venus is seen reaching back with her hand. Not to stop the man from sliding her bikini bottom to the side -- but to actually direct him, once the cloth in the way is removed. Her eyes are cold, and she seems to have decided. She doesn't want to be penetrated -- but if it's going to happen, there is one way she will allow it. She lets out a piercing cry, while from Al comes a guttural grunt -- when he finally breaks into her, plunging with a single, deep trust, to leave Venus no chance of giving up. 

At once, Al starts seriously trusting into Venus. Deep, and hard. He seems to have settled for what he is now getting, and no longer tries to turn the girl to get her facing him. It's enough to get to see her pretty face -- the prettiest in town --, now crisped by the pain he is inflicting her, but also flushed by the pleasure and their recent struggle -- that he has won. He keeps a hand over her mouth, to muffle her cries, while with the other firmly pulling her against him. But Venus is no longer trying to escape. She even arches her back to meet his trusts. Sensing her surrender, Al relaxes the urgency in his grip,  to concentrate on the wild cadence of his own wallop. Now that Venus is collaborating, he doesn't seem to want risk losing one hole he is already in, tight and warm as it is, for another he might never get now, though tighter and warmer it certainly is. 

Though in her first sex scene in the movies Thaysa is not even naked, she looks the more sensual exactly because she isn't. Her character seems to symbolically protect or preserve something by leaving her skimpy clothes on, against Al's assault -- and Adrian Çellon's Greek god's beauty and proud nudity doesn't help to soften his character's bestial behavior. 

The physicality of this assault and other far from tender acts lead to rumors that the intercourses in the movie were real, and much has been commented about Thaysa's sex scenes in CRUX. During the filming, gossip spread that she was leading affairs with Adrian Çellon, who plays Al, and with Gianlucca Tringtan, who plays Giuliano. Concomitantly. Though she has never been photographed by Gianlucca's side, for he was married and they must have kept the affair very discreet -- or else, as people fantasized, the couple took every professional chance to actually make love before the cameras, when it was only perfectly justifiable.

In her interviews, taking pleasure in stimulating the audience's fantasies, Thaysa kept saying she never felt embarrassed by the excitement of her male partners in a scene. The young actress actually wanted to feel their hard-on against her thighs -- or between them, she added, to give the whole forced, staged (or not) intimacy more realism. Their irrefutable erections give her a sense of power over them, she declared. It made men obvious, and rather simple. And she referred to men's ejaculation with such terms as "proof of incapacity", "final defeat", or "supreme humiliation".

The camera draws closer and closer to the lovers' faces, as their -- or Al's, only -- climax approaches. They have turned nearly red, as sunset approaches, too. Grunting louder, Al is seen trusting faster and harder into Venus. The water splashes between and around them, as their bodies collide with muffled sounds. Just as a wicked smile starts spreading on Al's face as he is about to climax, instead, his face is contorted with surprise, when Venus makes a quick movement that is below the camera's angle. 

In a couple of seconds, the young man's face goes from surprise to anger then surprise again, while Venus' expression is one of immense relief -- and we are led to think she has moved her hips so that he slipped out of her.

"Bitch!" he exclaims, before letting out a loud moan, and collapsing onto Venus. 

Al's orgasm is heightened and hindered by anger. Exasperated, he pulls Venus' body brutally against his own. She tries to evade his suffocating embrace, but he is keeping her firmly into his arms, as he grabs her by one breast, that he squeezes mercilessly until she whines, and by her waist, the skin whitening around the pressure of his fingers. Regaining his breath, he bites her neck, intending to leave a mark, and she doesn't protest. Eventually she abandons herself completely to his violence. The less she fights, and actually absorbs his frustration, the faster it dissipates. 

"Here." Al runs his hand against her back, and it looks shiny and sticky, his fingers dripping with thick body fluids when he brings it to her lips. 

"Eat the babies you have wasted, bitch." He whispers in a coarse voice, still breathless.

The next cinematic seconds have equally fascinated and disgusted different portions of the audience. Many have paused the video, to watch it frame by frame as Venus opens her mouth, sticking the tongue out, to collect Al's sperm mixed with their sweat. Like tiny pearls filled with sunset reflections, we see them dripping onto her lips, but before she swallows, the scene fades out.