The Dark-Hunters (7 page)

With that thought, he took a small bite of food and savored the delectable feel of the warm, creamy noodles on his tongue. It was pure bliss.

He let the smell of the chicken and spices fully invade his head. It had been an eternity since he’d last eaten anything. An eternity of unrelenting hunger.

Closing his eyes, he swallowed.

More used to starvation than nourishment, his stomach cramped viciously in reaction to the first bite of food. Julian clenched the knife and fork in his hands as he fought against the brutal pain.

But he didn’t stop eating. Not while he had food.

He’d waited so long to finally quench his hunger that he wasn’t about to stop now.

After a few more bites, the cramps eased, allowing him to actually enjoy the meal again.

And as the cramps lessened, it took all of his willpower to eat like a human and not shovel the food into his mouth by the handfuls in a desperate need to quench the gnawing hunger in his belly.

At times like this, it was hard to remember he was still a man and not some feral, rampaging beast that had been freed from its cage.

He’d lost most of his humanity centuries ago. What little was left, he intended to keep.

Grace leaned against the counter as she watched him eat, slowly, almost mechanically. She couldn’t tell if he liked the food, but he kept eating it.

Yet what amazed her were the perfect European table manners he had. She’d never been able to successfully eat that way, and she wondered when he’d learned to use his knife to balance the pasta on the back of his fork and eat it.

“Did they have forks in ancient Macedonia?” she asked.

He paused. “Excuse me?”

“I was just wondering when the fork was invented. Did they have them in…”

You’re rambling!
her mind shouted at her.

Well, who wouldn’t? Just look at the guy. How many times do you think someone has acted like an idiot and had a Greek statue come to life? Especially one who looks like
that!

Not often.

“The fork was invented sometime in the fifteenth century, I believe.”

“Really?” she asked. “Were you there?”

His features blank, he looked up and asked, “What, for the invention of the fork, or the fifteenth century?”

“The fifteenth century, of course.” And then thinking better of it, she added, “You weren’t there when the fork was invented. Were you?”

“No.” He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “I was summoned four times during that century. Twice in Italy and once in England and France.”

“Really,” she said, trying to imagine what it must have been like back then. “I bet you’ve seen all kinds of things over the centuries.”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on. In two thousand years—”

“I’ve mostly seen bedrooms, beds, and closets.”

His flat tone gave her pause as he returned to eating. An image of Paul pierced her heart. She’d only known one selfish, uncaring jerk. It sounded as if Julian had known many more.

“So tell me, do you just lie in the book until someone calls you?”

He nodded.

“What do you do in the book to pass the time?”

He shrugged, and she homed in on the fact that he didn’t possess a wide range of expressions.

Or words.

She moved forward and took a seat across the table from him. “You know, according to you we have a month together, why not make it pleasurable and talk?”

Julian glanced up in surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had actually conversed with him, except to issue encouragements or suggestions to help heighten the pleasure he was giving them.

Or to call him back to bed.

He’d learned very early in life that women only wanted one thing when it came to him—some part of his body buried deep between their legs.

With that thought in mind, he drifted his gaze slowly, leisurely, over her body, stopping at her breasts, which grew tight at his prolonged stare.

Indignantly, she crossed her arms over her chest and waited until he met her gaze.

Julian almost laughed. Almost.

“You know,” he said, using her words. “There are far more entertaining things to do with a tongue than talk—like run it over your bare breasts and through the hollow of your throat.” His gaze dropped down to the table to the approximate area of her lap. “Not to mention other places it can go.”

For an instant, Grace was dumbstruck. Then amused.

Then
very
horny.

As a therapist, she’d heard much more shocking things than that, she reminded herself.

Yeah, but not from a tongue that
she
wanted to do things with other than talk.

“You’re right, there are other things to do with one, like cut it out,” she said, taking some satisfaction in the surprise that flickered in his eyes. “But I’m a woman who likes talk and you are here to please
me,
are you not?”

There was only the subtlest of tenseness to his body as if he resisted his role. “I am.”

“Then, tell me what you do while you’re in the book.”

His gaze bored into hers with a heated intensity that she found unnerving, intriguing, and a bit frightening.

“It’s like being trapped inside a sarcophagus,” he said quietly. “I hear voices, but I can’t see light or anything else. I just stand there, unable to move. Waiting. Listening.”

Grace cringed at the very idea. She remembered once, long ago, when she had accidentally locked herself in her father’s toolshed. There had been no light, no way out. Terrified, she had felt her lungs seizing up, felt her head go light in panic. She had screamed and pounded on the door until she had bruised her entire hand.

Finally, her mother had heard her and let her out.

To this day, Grace was slightly claustrophobic from the experience. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to spend centuries in such a place.

“How horrible,” she breathed.

“You get used to it. In time.”

“Do you?” She didn’t know, but for some reason she doubted it.

When her mother had released her from the toolshed, she found out she’d only been inside for half an hour, but to her it had seemed like an eternity. What would it be like to really spend eternity that way?

“Have you ever tried to escape?”

The look he gave her spoke loudly.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Obviously, I failed.”

She felt horrible for him. Two thousand years spent in a lightless crypt. It was a wonder he was still sane. That he was able to even sit here with her and speak at all.

No wonder he had wanted food. That kind of sensory deprivation was sheer, unrelenting torture.

In that moment, she knew she was going to help him. She didn’t know how, but there had to be some way to break him out. “What if we could find a way to get you free?”

“I assure you, there isn’t one.”

“Fatalistic, aren’t you?”

He cast a droll look at her. “Being trapped for two thousand years does that to a person.”

Grace watched him eat, her thoughts whirling. The optimist in her refused to take his pessimism to heart, just like the therapist in her refused not to help him. She’d sworn an oath to relieve suffering when she could and Grace took her oaths most seriously.

Where there was a will, there was always a way.

And come heck or high water, she would find a way to get him free!

In the meantime, she decided she would do something for him she doubted anyone else ever had before—she was going to see to it that he enjoyed his reprieve in New Orleans. The other women might have kept him confined to their bedrooms or closets, but she wasn’t about to put chains on anyone.

“Well, then, let’s just say that this incarnation is for you, bud.”

He looked up from his food with sudden interest.

“I’m going to be
your
servant,” Grace continued. “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. Whatever you want to see, you’ll see.”

One corner of his mouth lifted in wry amusement as he took a drink of wine. “Take off your shirt.”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

He set his glass of wine aside and pinned her with a hot, lustful stare. “You said I can see what I want to see and do what I want to do. Well, I want to see your naked breasts, and then I want to run my tongue—”

“Whoa, big fellow, simmer down,” Grace said, her cheeks scalding, her body white-hot. “I think there should be a few ground rules while you’re here. Number one, there won’t be
any
of
that.
”

“And why not?”

Yeah,
her body demanded in a half begging, half angry inner voice.
Why not?

“Because I’m not some alley cat with her tail up in the air waiting for the nearest Tom to come over, stick it in, and leave.”

C
HAPTER
4

Julian cocked his brow at her wholly unexpected, wholly crude analogy. But even more surprising than her words was the amount of bitterness he heard in Grace’s voice. She must have been badly used in the past. No wonder she was skittish of him.

An image of Penelope flashed through his mind, and he felt a stab of pain so ferocious in his chest that only his staunch military training kept him from wincing.

He had much to atone for. Sins so great that not even two thousand years could begin to compensate for them.

He hadn’t just been born a bastard; because of a brutal life of desperation and betrayal, he had truly become one.

Closing his eyes, he forced those thoughts away. That was literally ancient history and this was the present. Grace was the present.

And he was here for her.

Now, he understood what Selena had meant when she’d spoken to him about Grace. That was why he was here. He was to show Grace that sex was enjoyable.

Never before had he encountered anything like this.

As he looked at Grace, a slow smile curved his lips. This would be the first time in his life he’d ever had to pursue a woman for his lover. No woman had ever turned his body down.

What with her wit and stubbornness he knew getting Grace into bed would prove to be every bit as challenging as outwitting the Roman army.

Yes, he would savor this.

Just as he would savor her. Every sweetly freckled inch of her.

Grace swallowed at the first true smile she’d seen from him. A smile that softened his features and made him even more devastating.

What on earth was he thinking?

For the umpteenth time, Grace felt her face flood with warmth as she thought about her crude words. She hadn’t meant to let that slip out. It wasn’t like her to betray her thoughts to anyone, especially a stranger.

But there was something so compelling about this man. Something that reached out to her in a most disturbing way. Maybe it was the thinly masked pain that flashed in those celestial blue eyes when she caught him off guard. Or maybe it was just her years of psychology training that couldn’t stand the thought of having such a troubled soul in her home and not helping him.

She didn’t know.

The grandfather clock in her upstairs hallway chimed one. “Goodness,” she said, shocked that it had become so late. “I’ve got to get up for work at six.”

“You’re going to bed? To sleep?”

Had his mood not been so dour, the stunned look on his face would have made her laugh. “I need to.”

His brow drew together in …

Pain?

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Well, then, I’ll show you where you can sleep and—”

“I’m not sleepy.”

She started at his words. “What?”

Julian looked up at her, unable to find the words to tell her what he felt. He’d been trapped in the book for so long that all he wanted to do was to run, or to jump. To do
anything
to celebrate his sudden freedom of movement.

He didn’t want to go to bed. The thought of lying in darkness another minute …

He struggled to breathe.

“I’ve been resting since eighteen ninety-five,” he explained. “I’m not sure how long ago that was, but by the looks of things, it has been quite some time.”

“It’s two thousand and two,” Grace supplied for his information. “You’ve been ‘sleeping’ for one hundred and seven years.” No, she corrected herself. He hadn’t been asleep.

He’d told her that he could hear anything said around the book, which meant that he had been awake and locked up all this time. Isolated. Alone.

She was the first person in over a hundred years that he’d been able to talk to, or be with.

Her stomach tightened in sympathy. Even though her prison of shyness had never been tangible, she knew what it felt like to be somewhere listening to people and not be a part of them. To be on the outside looking in.

“I wish I could stay up,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Really I do, but if I don’t get enough sleep, my brain turns to Jell-O and I can’t think for squat.”

“I understand. At least I think I get the gist of it, though I’m not sure what this Jell-O and squat is.”

Still, she could see his disappointment. “You could watch TV.”

“TV?”

She picked up his empty bowl and rinsed it off before leading him back to the living room. Switching on her set, she showed him how to flip channels with the remote.

“Incredible,” he whispered as he surfed for the first time.

“Yeah, it is kind of nifty.”

Now, that should keep him busy. After all, men only needed three things to be happy—food, sex, and a remote. Two out three ought to satisfy him for a bit.

“Well,” she said, heading for the stairs. “Good night.”

As she started past him, he touched her arm. Even though his hand was light, it sent a shock wave through her.

His face impassive, raw emotions flickered in his eyes. She saw his torment, his need, but most of all she saw his loneliness.

He didn’t want her to leave.

Licking her suddenly dry lips, she said something she couldn’t believe. “I have another TV in my room. Why don’t you watch that one while I sleep?”

He gave her a sheepish smile.