Fantasy Lover(25)

"They summoned you, yet none of them ever conversed with you or clothed you?"

"Every man's fantasy, is it not? To have a million women throwing themselves at him, wanting no commitments, no promises. Wanting nothing from him, other than his body, and the few weeks of pleasure he can give them?" His flippant words didn't quite mask the acid undertone.

That might be other men's fantasies, but she could tell it wasn't his.

"Well," she said, returning to the jeans, "I'm not like that and you're going to need something to wear when I take you out in public."

Anger snapped so menacingly in his eyes that she took an involuntary step backward. "I wasn't cursed to be viewed by the public, Grace. I am here for you, and you alone."

How nice that sounded. Still, she wasn't about to fall for it. She couldn't use another human being the way Julian described. It was wrong, and she would never be able to live with herself if she did such a thing to him.

"Be that as it may," she said in determination. "I want to take you out in public. So you'll need clothes." She started digging through the sizes.

He fell silent.

Grace looked up at him and caught the dark, angry look on his face. "What?"

"What?" he shot back.

"Never mind. Let's see which of these fit best." Grabbing several sizes, she handed the pants over to him. One would think she'd handed him a load of dog crap the way he reacted to the jeans.

Disregarding his appalled look, she had to practically shove him into a fitting room and close the partial door sharply behind him.

Julian entered the small cubicle and froze, assaulted simultaneously on three hostile fronts.

The first was the smallness of the space and the cold, fierce terror that washed over him from it. For a full minute, he couldn't breathe as he fought the urge to run from the tight, cramped space. He could barely move without bumping into the walls, door, or mirror.

But even worse than his claustrophobia was the face in the mirror. He hadn't seen his own reflection in centuries. And the face staring back at him looked so much like his father that he wanted to splinter it. He saw the same smoothly sculpted planes, the same contemptuous eyes.

The only thing missing was the deep, jagged scar that had run down his father's left cheek.

And for the first time in countless centuries, Julian saw the jarring sight of the three thin commander's braids that hung to his shoulder.

His hand shaking, he reached up and touched them as he did something he hadn't done in an exceptionally long time; he remembered the day he had earned them.

It had been after the battle at Thebes when his commander had fallen and the Macedonian troops had started to panic and retreat. He had grabbed the commander's sword, regrouped them, and led them to victory against the Romans.

The day after the battle, the Macedonian queen herself had braided his hair, and placed her own personal beads on the ends.

Julian gripped the tiny glass beads in his fist.

Those braids had belonged to the once proud and mighty Macedonian commander who had led a conquering army so strong that he had forced the Romans to flee in cowering terror.

The sight haunted him.

He looked down at the ring on his right hand. A ring he had worn for so long that he had grown immune to its presence, and had long ago ceased to remember its significance.

But his braids…

He hadn't thought about them in a long, long time.

Touching them now, he remembered the man he'd been. He remembered the faces of his family. The people who had once rushed to serve his needs. Those who had respected and feared him.

A time when he had commanded his destiny, and the known world had been his for the taking.

And now he was…

His throat tight, Julian closed his eyes and removed the beads from the ends of his hair before he started unbraiding it.

As his fingers loosened the first braid, he looked down at the pants he had dropped on the floor.

Why was Grace doing this? Why did she have to treat him like a human being?

He'd grown so accustomed to being treated as an object that he found her kindness toward him unbearable. The other summoners' cold, impersonal distance had enabled him to tolerate his sentence, to not remember who and what he'd once been.

What he'd lost.

It enabled him to only focus on the here and now, and on the momentary, fleeting pleasures to be had.

But human beings didn't live that way. They had families, friends, futures, dreams.

Hopes.

Things that had been lost to him centuries ago. Things he would never know again.

"Damn you, Priapus," he breathed as he viciously uncoiled the last braid. "And damn me."



Grace did a double-take as Julian finally left the dressing room wearing a pair of jeans that looked as if they had been made solely for him.