Fantasy Lover

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.

Julian followed her up the stairs, amazed that she had understood him without his speaking. That she would consider his need not to be alone while she had her own concerns.

It made him feel strange toward her. Put an odd feeling in his stomach.

Was it tenderness?

He didn't know for sure.

She led him into an enormous bedchamber with a large four-poster bed set before the middle of the far wall. A medium-sized chest of drawers was set opposite the bed and on top of it was, what had she called it, a TV?

Grace watched as Julian walked around her room, looking at the pictures on her walls and dresser-pictures of her parents and grandparents, of Selena and her in college, and the one of the dog she'd owned as a child.

"You live alone?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, moving to her Jenny Lind rocking chair by the bed where her nightgown was draped over the back. She picked it up and looked at him, and the green towel still wrapped around his lean hips. She couldn't very well let him join her in bed like that.

Sure you could.

No I can't.

Please?

Hush, self, let me think.

She still had her father's pajamas in her parents' bedroom where she kept all their possessions enshrined. Given the breadth of Julian's shoulders, she was sure the tops would never fit, but the bottoms had drawstrings and even if they didn't fit in length, they would at least stay up.

"Wait here," she told him. "I'll be right back."

After she darted out the door, Julian walked over to the large windows and pulled back the white lace curtains. He watched strange boxlike things that must be automobiles move past her house, making strange droning noises that ebbed and flowed like a tide. Lights lit up the street and other buildings all over, much like torches had once done in his own homeland.

How strange this world was. So oddly similar to his and yet so very different.

He tried to associate the sights with all the words he'd heard over the decades, words he didn't understand. Words like TV and lightbulb.

And for the first time since his childhood, he was afraid. He didn't like the changes he saw, the swiftness with which they had come to this world.

What would it be like the next time he was summoned?

How much more different could things become?

Or even more terrifying, what if he was never summoned again?

He swallowed at the thought. What would it be like to be trapped for eternity? Alone and alert. To feel the oppressive darkness closing in on him, squelching the breath from his lungs as it lacerated his body with pain.

To never again walk as a man? Never to speak or to touch?

These people had things now that were called computers. He'd heard the shop owner talk about them with a lot of customers. And one of those customers had said that they would one day, probably soon, completely replace books.

What would happen to him then?

Dressed in her pink dorm shirt, Grace paused in her parents' bedroom by the crystal dish on the dresser where she'd placed her mother's wedding rings the day after the funeral. She could see the faint sparkle of the half-carat marquis diamond.

Her throat constricting with pain, she fought against the tears that welled in her eyes.

Barely twenty-four at the time, she'd been arrogant enough to think she was grown, and capable of standing strong against anything life hurled at her. She had thought herself invincible. And in one split second, her life had come crumbling down around her.

Their deaths had robbed her of everything she'd ever had. Her security, her faith, her sense of justice, but most of all, she had lost their devoted love and emotional support.

In spite of her youthful vanity, she hadn't been prepared to be cast completely adrift without any family whatsoever.

And even though five years had passed, she still mourned them. Deeply. The old saying that it was better to have known love and lost it was a big fat crock. There was nothing worse than having someone to love and care for you, then losing them to a needless accident.

Unable to face their deaths, she'd sealed this room off the day after their funeral, and left everything in it just as it was.

Opening the drawer where her father had kept his pajamas, Grace swallowed. No one had touched these since the afternoon her mother had folded them, and they had brought the clothes up here and put them away.

Even now, she could remember her mother's laughter. The way her mother joked about her father's conservative taste in flannel PJs.

Worse, she remembered their love for each other.

What she wouldn't give to find a perfect partner like her parents had done. They'd been married twenty-five years before they died and they were every bit as in love then as they'd been the day they met.

She couldn't remember a time in her life when her mother hadn't been smiling, her father gently teasing. Everywhere they went, they held hands like teenagers and stole quick kisses when they thought no one was looking.

But she had seen.

She remembered.

She'd wanted that kind of love, too. But for some reason, she'd never found a man who made her breathless. One who made her heart pound and her senses reel.

A man she couldn't live without.

"Oh, Mama," she breathed, wishing her parents hadn't died that night.

Wishing for...

She didn't know. She just wanted something in her life that made her look forward to the future. Something that made her happy the way her father had always made her mother so happy.

Biting her lip, Grace balled her father's dark blue and white plaid pajama pants in her arms and ran from the room.

"Here," she said, tossing them to Julian before she left him and ran to the bathroom in the middle of the hallway. She didn't want him to see her tears. She would never again show her vulnerability to a man.

Julian exchanged the cloth around his hips for the pants, then followed after Grace. She'd rushed to the next door down the hall and slammed it shut.

"Grace," he said, gently nudging the door open.

He froze as he saw her weeping. She stood in a lavatory of some sort with two built-in sinks, and a white counter in front of her while she held a cloth to her mouth in an effort to muffle her wracking sobs.

In spite of his severe upbringing and aeons of control, a wave of pity washed over him. She cried as if her heart had been broken.

It made him uncomfortable. Uncertain.

Clenching his teeth, Julian forced his strange feelings away. One thing he'd learned early in his childhood, it didn't do any good to learn about people. To care for them. Every time he had made that mistake, he'd paid dearly for it.

Besides, his time here was short-way too short.

The less he entangled himself with her emotions and life, the easier it would be to tolerate his next confinement.

It was then that her earlier words hit him square in the chest. She'd pegged him perfectly. He was nothing more than a tomcat who took his pleasure and left.

Julian clenched the cold doorknob at the thought. He wasn't an animal. He had feelings, too.

At least he used to.

Before he could reconsider his actions, he stepped into the room and drew her into a hug. Her arms encircled his waist and she held on to him like a lifeline as she buried her face into his bare chest and wept. Her entire body shook against his.

Something strange inside him unfurled. A deep longing for something he couldn't name.

Never in his life had he comforted a weeping woman. He'd had sex more times than he could count, but never once had he just held a woman like this. Not even after sex. Once he wore out his partner, he would get up and clean himself off, then go find something to occupy himself with until he was called again.

Even before the curse, he'd never shown anyone tenderness. Not even his wife.

As a soldier, he'd been trained from his first memory to be fierce, cold. Harsh.

"Return with your shield, or upon it." That was what his stepmother had told him as she grabbed him by his hair and slung him out of her home to begin training for war at the tender age of seven.

His father had been even worse. A legendary Spartan commander, his father had tolerated no weakness. No emotion. The man had doled out Julian's childhood at the end of a braided leather whip, teaching him to hide his pain. To let no one see him suffer.

To this day Julian could feel the bite of the whip against his bare back, hear the sound it made as it cut through the air toward his skin. See the mocking sneer of contempt on his father's face.

"I'm sorry," Grace whispered against his shoulder, dragging his thoughts back to the present.

She tilted her head to look up at him. Her gray eyes were bright and shiny, and they chipped at the edges of a heart frozen centuries before by necessity and by design.

Uncomfortable, he moved away from her. "Feeling better?"

Grace wiped her tears away and cleared her throat. She didn't know what had made Julian come after her, but it had been a long time since anyone had comforted her when she cried. "Yes," she whispered. "Thank you."

He said nothing.

Instead of the tender man who had held her just an instant ago, he was back to being Mr. Statue, his entire body rigid and cold.

Drawing a ragged breath, she moved past him. "I wouldn't have done that if I weren't so tired and still a little tipsy. I really do need to go to sleep."

She knew he would follow, so she dutifully headed back to her room and climbed aboard her tall pineapple plantation bed where she snuggled beneath her thick comforter.

Sure enough, she felt the mattress dip under his weight an instant later.

Her heart quickened at the sudden warmth of his body next to hers. Worse, he instantly curled himself against her back, and draped one long, muscular arm over her waist.

"Julian!" she said with a warning note in her voice as she felt his erection against her hip. "I think it might be best if you stay on your side of the bed, and I stay on mine."

He didn't listen as he leaned his head down to hers and nibbled a small path along her hairline. "I thought you wanted me to come ease your aching loins," he whispered in her ear.

Her body on fire from his nearness and the scent of sandalwood that filled her head, Grace blushed as she remembered her words to Selena. "My loins are just fine, and are quite happy as they are."

"I promise you, I could make them much, much happier."

Ooo, she didn't doubt it in the least. "If you don't behave, I'm going to make you leave the room."

She looked up at him and caught the disbelief in his eyes.

"I don't understand why you would send me away," he said.

"Because I'm not going to use you like some nameless boy-toy who has no purpose except to serve me. Okay? I don't want to be intimate with a man I don't know."

His blue eyes troubled, he finally withdrew from her and settled down beside her.

Grace took a deep breath as she tried to calm her racing heart and tame the fire in her blood. Goodness, he was a hard man to say no to.

Do you really think you're going to be able to sleep with this guy lying next to you? What, do you have rocks for brains?

Closing her eyes, she recited her boring litany. She had to go to sleep. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Or even gorgeous Julians.

Julian propped the pillows up behind his back and looked over at Grace. This would be the first time in his exceptionally long life that he spent a night with a woman without making love to her.

It was inconceivable. No woman had ever pushed him away before.

She rolled over with another handset like the one she'd shown him downstairs. She pressed a button and turned on the TV, then lowered the sound of people talking.

"This is for the lights," she said, pressing another button. Immediately, the lights turned off, leaving the TV to cast shadows on the wall behind him. "I'm a pretty sound sleeper, so I don't think you'll wake me."

She handed him the handset. "Good night, Julian of Macedon."

"Good night, Grace," he whispered, watching the way her soft hair fanned out over the pillow as she snuggled down to sleep.

He put the handset aside and watched her for a long while as the light from the TV flickered across the relaxed planes of her face.

He could tell when she finally fell asleep by the evenness of her breathing. It was only then that he finally dared to touch her. Dared to trace the gentle outline of her soft cheek with the pad of his forefinger.

His body reacted with such violence that he bit his lip to keep from cursing. Fire streamed through his blood.

He'd known stabbing desires all his life-first a hunger in his belly for food, then a burning thirst for love and respect, and finally the demanding one in his loins for the wet sleekness of a woman's body. But never, never, had he experienced anything like this.

It was a hunger so strong, so raw, that it threatened his very sanity.

And all he could think of was spreading her creamy, silken thighs and planting himself deep inside her. Of sliding in and out of her body over and over until they both screamed out their release in unison.

Only that would never happen.

Julian moved farther away from her. To a safe distance in the bed where he could no longer smell her sweet feminine scent, feel the heat of her body beneath the covers.

He could give her pleasure for days on end without stopping, but for him there would never be peace.

"Damn you, Priapus," he snarled, speaking the name of the god who had cursed him to this fate. "I hope Hades is giving you your full due."

His anger dulling, he sighed and realized that the Fates and Furies were certainly giving him his.

Grace came awake with a strange sense of warmth and security. It was a feeling she hadn't experienced in years.

Suddenly, she felt a tender kiss against her eyelids as if someone were brushing lips against her lashes. Warm, strong hands stroked her hair.

Julian!

She bolted up so quickly that she bumped heads with him. She heard his hiss of pain. Rubbing her forehead, she opened her eyes and saw him giving her a ferocious frown.

"Sorry," she apologized, sitting up. "You startled me."

He opened his mouth and placed the pad of his thumb against his front teeth to check if she'd knocked them loose.

Worse, she couldn't miss the flick of his tongue as he tested his teeth with it. The sight of his incredibly white straight teeth that she would love to have nip her...

"What do you want for breakfast?" she asked, distracting herself from her thoughts.

His gaze shifted to the deep V of her dorm shirt. Following the line of his gaze, she realized that from the way she sat he could see all the way down to her embarrassingly pink Mickey Mouse underwear.

Before she could move, he pulled her across his body and claimed her lips.

Grace moaned her pleasure into his mouth as his tongue did the most wicked things to hers. Her head spun at the intense kiss, of his warm breath mingling with hers.

And to think, she'd never liked kissing.

She must have been crazy!

His arms tightened around her. A thousand flames fanned out over her body, burning her, inciting her, as they pooled into the molten zone between her thighs where she ached for him.

His lips left hers, and he trailed his tongue over her skin, searing a path to her throat where he made circles over her collarbone, her earlobe, her neck.

The man seemed to know every erogenous zone on a woman's body!

And better still, he knew how to use his tongue and hands to massage them all for maximum pleasure.

He breathed gently into her ear, sending waves of chills throughout her body, and when he stroked her inner ear with his tongue, she shook all over.

Her breasts tingled and swelled and tightened into hard nubs that begged for his kiss.

"Julian," she moaned, unable to recognize her voice. Her mind wanted her to tell him to stop, but the words lodged themselves in her throat.

There was so much power in his touch. Such magic. It left her aching for more.

He rolled her over, pressing her back against the mattress. Even through his pajamas, she could feel his erection, hard and hot, against her hip as his hands cupped her buttocks and he breathed raggedly in her ear.

"You must stop," she told him at last, her voice sounding weak.

"Stop what?" he asked. "This?" His tongue swirled around and around her ear.

Grace hissed in pleasure. Chills shot all over her body like red embers, burning every inch of her. Her breasts swelled even tighter against his chest.

"Or this." He moved one hand under the waistband of her panties to cup her where she craved him most.

Her toes actually curled in response to his hand between her legs as she arched her back against him. Oh, he was incredible!

He encircled the tender, throbbing flesh with one finger, making her burn from the inside out before he finally plunged two fingers deep inside her.

While his fingers circled and teased and stroked, he gently massaged her nub with his thumb.

"Ooo..." Grace moaned, throwing her head back at the intensity of the pleasure.

She clung to him as his fingers and tongue continued their relentless assault of pleasure. Her control gone, she rubbed herself shamelessly against him, seeking even more of his heat, his touch.

Julian closed his eyes, savoring the scent of her body beneath his, the feel of her arms wrapped around him.

She was his. He could feel her quivering and pulsing around his hand as her body writhed to his caresses.

At any moment, she would climax.

With that thought foremost in his mind, he shoved her shirt up and dropped his head down to one taut peak where he gently suckled her areola, delighting in the feel of her puckered flesh teasing his tongue.

He couldn't remember a woman ever tasting this good.

It was a taste that branded itself in his mind, one he knew he would never forget.

And she was ready for him. She was hot, wet, and tight-just the way he liked a woman's body.

He tore the thin piece of material away from her hips that impeded his access to the part of her he was dying to explore more fully.

And at much greater length.

Grace heard the rending of fabric, but she couldn't stop him. Her will was no longer her own. It had been swallowed up by sensations so intense that all she wanted was relief.

She had to have relief!

Reaching up, she buried her hands in his hair, not wanting him to leave her for even a second.

Julian kicked his pants off and spread her thighs wide.

Her body bursting into pure fire, Grace held her breath as he settled his long, hard body between her legs.

The tip of his manhood pressed against her core. She arched her hips toward him and clung to his broad shoulders, wanting him inside her with a desperation that defied belief.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

Grace jumped at the sound, her mind instantly slamming back into control.

"What is that noise?" he growled.

Grateful for the interruption, Grace struggled out from under him, her limbs trembling, her entire body burning. "It's a phone," she said, before leaning over to the night-stand and grabbing it.

Her hand actually shook as she brought the phone to her ear.

Cursing, Julian rolled to his side.

"Selena, thank goodness it's you," Grace said as soon as she heard her voice.

Oh, how she was grateful for Selena's ability to know the precise moment to call!

"What is it?" Selena asked.

"Stop that," Grace snapped at Julian as he licked his way down her bare buttocks. She pushed him back and put a little more distance between them.

"I'm not doing anything," Selena said.

"Not you, Lanie."

The other end fell as silent as the grave.

"Listen," Grace said to Selena, her voice sharp with warning. "I need you to get some of Bill's clothes and bring them over. Now."

"It worked!" The piercing shriek almost splintered her eardrum. "Oh, my God, it worked! Hallelujah, I can't believe it! I'm on my way!"

Grace turned the phone off just as Julian's tongue traced a path from her buttocks to her...

"Stop that!"

He pulled back and gave her a shocked frown. "You don't like it when I do that?"

"That's not what I said," she answered before she could stop herself.

He moved back to her...

Grace bolted from the bed. "I have to get ready for work."

He propped himself up on one arm and watched her while she picked up his discarded pants and tossed them at him. He caught them with one hand as his gaze wandered leisurely over her body. "Why don't you call in sick?"

"Call in sick?" she repeated. "How do you know what that is?"

He shrugged. "I told you, I can hear during my confinement. It's what allows me to learn languages and understand changing syntax."

Like a graceful panther coming out of a crouch, he pulled the blanket back and moved slowly from the bed. His pants forgotten. His body still fully erect.

Mesmerized, she couldn't move.

"We didn't finish," he said, his voice low, deep. He reached for her.

"Oh, yes we did!" She ran for the safety of the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

Clenching his teeth, Julian had the sudden urge to put his head through the wall in frustration. Why was she being so stubborn?

He looked down at his stiffened body and cursed. "And why won't you behave for five minutes!"

Grace took a long, cold shower. What was it about Julian that made her blood literally boil? Even now she could feel the heat of his body on hers.

His lips on her...

"Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

She was not some nymphomaniac who couldn't control herself. She was a Ph.D. with a brain-and no hormones.

Yet it would be so easy to just forget everything and spend the next month in bed with Julian.

"Fine," she said to herself. "Let's say you do crawl into bed with him for a month, then what?"

She soaped her body, her aggravation dispelling the last of her desire. "I'll tell you what. He'll be gone and you, sister, will be left alone again.

"Remember what happened after Paul? Remember what it felt like to wander around the dorm, sick to your stomach because you let someone use you? Remember how humiliating it was?"

Worse, she could still hear Paul's mocking laughter as he bragged to his friends and collected his bet. How she wished she'd been a man long enough to kick open the door to his apartment, and beat him to smithereens.

No, she wouldn't let herself be used.

It had taken her years to get over Paul and his cruelty, and she wasn't about to undo all that on a whim. Not even a gorgeous whim!

Nope, nope, nope. The next time she gave herself to a man it would be to someone who was committed to her. Someone who cared for her.

Someone who wouldn't disregard her pain and continue to use her body for his pleasure as if she didn't matter, she thought, her repressed memories resurfacing with a vengeance. Paul had acted as if she weren't even there. As if she were nothing more than an emotionless doll designed only to serve his pleasure.

And she wasn't about to let anyone, especially Julian, treat her like that.

Never again.

Julian walked downstairs and marveled at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. It was funny how people took such small things for granted. He remembered a time when he too had never noticed anything as simple as a sunny morning.

Now, every one was truly a gift from the gods. A gift he would savor for the next month until he was again forced to live in darkness.

His heart heavy, he headed into the kitchen and to the large cupboard where Grace stored her food. As he opened the door, the coldness inside amazed him. He spread his hand out, letting the rushing air wash over his skin. Incredible.

He picked up various containers, but couldn't read the writing on the labels.

"Don't eat anything you can't identify," he reminded himself, remembering some of the disgusting things he'd seen people eat over the centuries.

Bending over, he searched until he found a ripe melon in a bottom drawer. After taking it to the island in the center of the kitchen, he picked a large knife out of a block where Grace kept a dozen of them, and cut it in half.

He sliced a piece of it off and placed it in his mouth.

Julian growled low in his throat as the delectable moisture washed over his tastebuds. The sweet pulp made his stomach rumble with a demanding need. His throat ached for more of its soothing wetness.

It was so good to have food again. To have something with which to quench his thirst and hunger.

Before he could stop himself, he set the knife aside and started grabbing at the melon, shoving pieces of it into his mouth as fast as he could.

Gods, but he was so hungry. So thirsty.

It wasn't until he found himself clawing at the rind that he became aware of his actions.

Julian froze as he stared at his hand covered with the melon's juices, his fingers curled against the side like the claw of some beast.

"Roll over, Julian, and face me. Now, be a good boy, and do what I tell you to. Touch me here. Mmm... yes, that's it. Good boy, good boy. Please me well, and I'll bring you some food in a little while.

Julian flinched at the unbidden memory from his last incarnation. No wonder he acted like an animal; he'd been treated like one for so long, he barely remembered being human.

At least Grace hadn't chained him to her bed.

Yet, anyway.

Disgusted, he glanced around the room, grateful Grace hadn't seen his lapse of self-control.

His breathing ragged, he grabbed the melon half and pitched it into the trash receptacle he had seen Grace use the night before. Then he moved to the sink to wash the sticky sweetness from his hands.

As soon as the cold water touched his skin, he sighed in pleasure. Water. Pure and cold. It was what he missed most during his confinements. What he craved hour after hour as his parched throat burned and ached.

He let the coldness slide over his skin before he captured it in his cupped hand, leaned down and drank the water from his palm, sucked it from his fingers. It was so soothing as it invaded his mouth and slid down his burning throat, slaking his thirst. He wanted nothing more than to be able to climb into the sink and feel the water slide all over his entire body.

To...

He heard a knock on the door followed by rushing foot-steps on the stairs. Turning off the water, Julian reached for the dry cloth next to the sink and wiped off his hands and face.

As he returned to the other half of the melon, he recognized Selena's voice. "Where is he?"

Julian shook his head at her friend's enthusiasm. Now that was what he'd expected from Grace.

The two women entered the kitchen. He looked up from the melon and met brown eyes as wide as a Spartan shield.

"Holy green guacamole!" Selena gasped.

Grace folded her arms over her chest, her eyes twinkling in a cross between anger and amusement. "Julian, meet Selena."

"Holy green guacamole!" her friend repeated.

"Selena?" Grace waved her hand in front of Selena's face. Still Selena didn't blink.

"Holy gre-"

"Would you stop?" Grace chided.

Selena dropped the clothes in her hands straight to the floor and moved around the kitchen until she could see his entire body. Her gaze started at the top of his head and went all the way down to his bare feet.

Julian barely suppressed his ire over her actions. "Would you like to examine my teeth next, or would you rather I drop my pants for your inspection?" he asked with more malice than he'd intended. She was, after all, technically on his side.

If only she'd close her mouth and quit looking at him that way. He'd never been able to stand such unnatural attention.

Selena hesitantly reached out her hand to touch his arm.

"Boo," he snapped, making her jump a foot into the air.

Grace laughed.

Selena frowned and glared at both of them. "All right, you two. Are you through making fun of me?"

"You deserved it." Grace picked up a piece of melon that he'd just sliced and placed it into her mouth. "Not to mention that you get to take him with you today."

"What?" Julian and Selena asked in unison.

She swallowed her bite. "Well, I can't very well take him to work with me, can I?"

Selena smiled wickedly. "I bet Lisa and your female clients would love it."

"And so would the guy I have coming in at eight. However, it wouldn't be productive."

"Can't you cancel?' Selena asked.

Julian concurred. He had absolutely no desire to go anywhere public. The only part of his curse that he found even remotely tolerable was the fact that most of his summoners kept him hidden in private rooms and gardens.

"You know better," Grace said. "I don't have a lawyer hubby who supports me. Besides, I don't think Julian wants to hang around the house by himself all day. I'm sure he would like to get out and see the city."

"I'd rather stay here with you," he said.

Because what he really wanted to do was see her writhing beneath him again, feel her slick body sliding down the length of his shaft as he made her scream out in ecstasy.

Grace met his gaze and he saw the hunger that flickered in the light gray depths of her eyes. In that instant, he knew her game. She was going in to work to avoid being around him.

Well, sooner or later she'd be back.

Then she would be his.

And once she surrendered to him, he was going to show her just what kind of stamina and passion a Spartan-trained Macedonian soldier was capable of.