The Dark-Hunters (17 page)

It was stupid to even think he had a chance to break free. This was his lot and he would accept it. He was a slave, and a slave he would remain.

“Julian?” Grace asked. “What is it?”

“We can’t do this. Just take me home, Grace. Take me home, and let me make love to you. Let’s just get it over with before someone, most likely you, gets hurt.”

“But this is your chance for freedom. It could very well be the only shot you have at it. Have you ever before been summoned by a woman with Alexander in her name?”

“No.”

“Then we have to do this.”

“You don’t understand,” he said between clenched teeth. “If what Eros said is true, by the time that last night arrives, I won’t be me.”

“Who will you be?”

“I’ll be a monster.”

She looked skeptical. “I don’t think you could ever be a monster.”

He glared at her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. And when the gods’ madness comes upon you, you are beyond all help. All hope.”

A knot settled tight in his stomach.

“You should have never summoned me, Grace.” Julian reached for his drink.

“Did you ever think that maybe this was what was meant to be?” she asked suddenly. “Maybe I summoned you because I was meant to free you.”

He looked across the table at Selena. “You summoned me because Selena tricked you. All she wanted was for you to have a few nights of pleasure so that you could go off and find a decent man without fear of him hurting you.”

“But maybe—”

“No buts, Grace. It’s not meant to be.”

Grace’s gaze fell down to his wrist. She reached out and touched the Greek writing that ran from his inner wrist halfway up his arm.

“How beautiful,” she said. “Is it a tattoo?”

“No.”

“What is it?” Grace persisted.

“Priapus burned it there,” he said, avoiding the answer.

Selena sat forward and looked at it. “It says ‘damned for eternity and beyond.’”

Grace closed her hand over the writing and met his gaze. “I can’t imagine what you must have suffered all this time. Any more than I can understand why your own brother would do such a thing to you.”

“As Cupid said, I knew better than to touch one of Priapus’s virgins.”

“So, why did you do it?”

“I was stupid.”

Grace ground her teeth, wanting to strangle him. Why couldn’t he just answer her questions? “What would make you—”

“I have no wish to discuss it,” he snapped.

She released his arm. “Have you ever let anyone close to you, Julian? I bet you’ve always been one of those men who trusted no one near your heart. One of those guys who would rather have his tongue cut out than actually let anyone know you’re anything but impervious. Were you like that with Penelope?”

Julian looked away as memories poured through him. Memories of a childhood spent in hunger and deprivation. Memories of nights spent in agony of …

“Yes,” he said simply. “I was always alone.”

Grace felt for him. But she couldn’t let him give up. Somehow she would find a way to reach him. To make him want to try and break the curse.

Surely there had to be some way to make him fight this. And she vowed to find it.

C
HAPTER
8

Julian and Grace helped Selena close down her stand and get to her Jeep before they headed home through Friday evening traffic.

“You’ve been quiet,” Grace said as she stopped for a red light.

She watched the way his gaze followed the path of the other cars on the road. He looked so lost, like someone caught between dreams and reality.

“I don’t know what to say,” he responded after a brief pause.

“Tell me how you feel.”

“About what?”

Grace laughed. “You are definitely a man,” she said. “You know, the guys give me the hardest time during my sessions. They come in, spend one hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour to basically say nothing. I’ll never figure it out.”

His gaze dropped to his lap and she saw the way he rubbed his general’s ring idly with his thumb. “You said you were a sex therapist. What exactly is that?”

She started back into traffic. “You and I are sort of in the same business. I help people who have relationship troubles. Women who are afraid to be intimate with men, or women who love men a little too zealously.”

“Nymphomaniacs?”

She nodded.

“I’ve known a few of those,” he said with a sigh.

“I bet you have.”

“And the men?” he asked.

“They’re not so easy. Like I said, they don’t talk as much. I have a few cases of men who have performance anxiety—”

“What’s that?”

“Something I’m sure you’ll never have,” she said, thinking of the arrogant way he constantly pursued her.

Clearing her throat, she explained. “They’re men who are afraid their partners will laugh at them while they’re in bed.”

“Oh.”

“I also have a couple who are verbally abusive to their spouses and girlfriends. A couple who want to have their sex changed—”

“Can they do that?” Julian asked in a shocked tone.

“Oh, yeah,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You’d be amazed what the doctors today are capable of.”

She turned toward her house.

Julian was quiet for so long that she was about to show him the radio when all of a sudden he asked, “Why do you want to help these people?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I guess it goes back to my childhood when I was very insecure. My parents loved me, but I didn’t know how to relate to other kids. My father was a history professor, and my mother a housewife—”

“She married a house?”

Grace laughed. “No, she just stayed at home and did mom things. They never treated me like a child, really, and so when I got around other children I didn’t know what to do. What to say. I would get so scared, I would tremble. Finally, my father started taking me to counseling and after a while, I got a lot better.”

“Except around men.”

“That’s a whole ’nother story,” she said with a sigh. “I was an awkward teenager and the guys in my school never came around unless they wanted to mock me.”

“Mock you how?”

Grace shrugged nonchalantly. At least now, those old memories had ceased to bother her. She’d come to terms with it long ago. “Because I have no boobs. My ears stand out, and I have freckles all over me.”

“Boobs?”

“Breasts.”

She swore she could feel his hot, prolonged stare on her chest.

Glancing sideways, she was able to confirm it. In fact, he looked at her as if he had her shirt off and was in the midst of—

“You have very nice breasts.”

“Thanks,” she said awkwardly, and yet somehow the unorthodox compliment warmed her. “What about you?”

“I have no breasts.”

He said it in such a serious deadpan tone that she burst out laughing. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. What were you like as a teenager?”

“I already told you.”

She gave him a menacing glance. “Seriously.”

“Seriously, I fought, ate, drank, had sex, and bathed. Usually in that order.”

“We’re still having this whole intimacy issue, aren’t we?” she asked rhetorically.

Then, falling into her role as a counselor, she moved on to something that was hopefully a little easier for him to talk about. “Why don’t you tell me how you felt the first time you went into battle.”

“I felt nothing.”

“You weren’t scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of dying or being maimed?”

“No.”

The sincerity of that single word baffled her. “How could you not be afraid?”

“You can’t fear dying when you have no reason to live.”

Haunted by his words, Grace pulled into her driveway.

Deciding it was best to leave off so serious a discussion for the time being, she left the car and opened the trunk. Julian gathered the bags before following her into the house.

They went upstairs and Grace reached into her top dresser drawer to get her comfortable jeans. Then, she made room for his clothes in her chest of drawers.

“So,” she said, grabbing the empty bags and tossing them into the wicker trash can by her closet. “It’s Friday night. What would you like to do? Quiet night in or would you like to go out on the town?”

His hungry gaze ran down the length of her body, making her hot instantaneously. “You know the answer to that.”

“Okay, one vote for jumping the doctor’s bones, and one vote not to jump the doctor’s bones. Can I hear another option?”

“How about just a nice quiet evening at home, then?”

“Okay,” she said, heading to her phone on the nightstand. “Let me check my messages, then we can start dinner.”

Julian finished putting his clothes away while she called her answering service and talked to them.

He had just tucked away the last item when he heard an alarmed note in Grace’s voice.

“Did he say what he needed?”

Julian turned to look at her. Her eyes were slightly dilated and she had a firm, tense grip on the phone.

“Why did you give him this number?” she asked angrily. “My patients are never to receive my home number. Do you have a supervisor I can talk to?”

Julian went to stand beside her. “Is something wrong?”

She held her hand up to tell him to be quiet as she listened to the other person.

“All right,” she said after a long pause. “I’ll just have to get my number changed again. Thanks.” She turned the phone off and set it down. Worry knitted her brow.

“What happened?” he asked.

She let out an irritated breath as she rubbed at her neck. “The answering service hired this new girl who slipped up and gave out my home number to one of my patients who called in today.”

She talked so fast, he could barely follow her.

“Well, he’s not really one of
my
patients,” she continued without pausing. “I would never have taken such a man on as a patient, but Luanne, Dr. Jenkins, isn’t so picky. And she rushed out of town last week, on some personal emergency. So Beth and I had to divvy up her patients who had to have counseling while she’s gone. Still, I didn’t want this creepy guy, but Beth doesn’t work on Fridays, and he has to have Wednesdays and Fridays because of his release program.”

She looked up at him with panic in her light gray eyes. “I still didn’t want him, but his case worker swore to me there wouldn’t be any problems. He said the man wasn’t a threat to anyone.”

Julian’s head ached from all the information she unloaded, and the words she used that didn’t make sense to him. “Is that a problem?”

“Just a little scary,” she said, her hand shaking. “He’s a stalker who was released from the mental ward.”

“Stalker from a mental ward? What is that?”

As she explained it to him, he actually gaped. “You let these people loose on your society?”

“Well, yes. The idea is to help them.”

Julian was aghast. What kind of world was this that the men in it refused to protect their women and children from such? “Where I come from, we didn’t let people like that near our families. And we damn sure didn’t let them loose on our streets.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” she said bitterly. “Here, we do things a little differently.”

Julian shook his head as he thought about all the things in this time that were so alien to him. He just couldn’t comprehend these people and the way they lived. “I really don’t belong here,” he said under his breath.

“Julian…”

He pulled away as she reached for him. “Grace, you know it’s true. Let’s say we break the curse; what good does it do me? What am I supposed to do here? I can’t read your language. I can’t drive your car, or work. There’s so much I don’t comprehend. I’m lost here.”

Grace flinched at the underlying anguish he was trying so hard to conceal. “You’re just overwhelmed by it all. But we’ll take it in tiny steps. I can teach you to drive and read. As for work … I know there are things you can do.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Other than be a soldier, what else did you do in Macedonia?”

“I was a commander, Grace. All I know how to do is lead an ancient army into battle. That’s it.”

She cupped her hands around his face, and gave him a hard stare. “Don’t you dare give up on this. You said you weren’t afraid in battle, then how can you be afraid of this?”

“I just am.”

Something strange happened then as Grace realized he had let her inside him. Not very deep, but she could tell by his face that he had made himself vulnerable to her by admitting that. She knew in her heart that he wasn’t the kind of man who often made such admissions. “I will help you.”

The doubt in those blue eyes twisted her gut. “Why?”

“We’re friends,” she said gently as she brushed his cheek with her thumb. “Isn’t that what you told Cupid?”

“And you heard his response. I don’t have any friends.”

“You do now.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, then pulled her against him into a tight hug. The warm scent of sandalwood filled her head as she listened to his heart beating fiercely under her cheek while his tanned biceps flexed next to her face. His tender embrace went deeper than just a momentary physical gesture, it touched her profoundly.

“All right, Grace,” he said quietly. “We’ll try this. But just promise me that you won’t let me hurt you.”

She frowned up at him.

“I’m serious. Once I’m shackled, don’t release me for any reason. Swear it.”

“But—”

“Swear it!” he insisted sternly.

“All right. If you can’t control yourself, I won’t let you go. But I want you to make a promise to me.”

He pulled back and looked at her skeptically, but left his soothing arms around her. “What?”

Grace braced her hands against the strength of his biceps. She felt chills spread over his arms the instant her palms made contact with his flesh. He glanced down at her hands with one of the tenderest expressions she’d ever seen.

“Promise me that you won’t give up on being free,” she said. “I want you to try to beat this curse.”

He gave an odd half-smile. “Very well. I shall try.”

“And you will succeed.”