Fantasy Lover(99)

"Oh, Julian," she moaned.

He felt her quivering under him as he swirled his tongue around the taut peak. His body was liquid fire as it screamed in need for hers. But it wasn't just her body he wanted. He wanted her.

And leaving her was going to destroy him.

Julian swallowed as he pulled away. He had waited an eternity for this night. An eternity for this woman.

Tenderly, he brushed his hand over her face, committing every pore and curve of it to memory.

His precious Grace.

He would never forget her.

His soul weeping for what he was about to do to her, he parted her thighs with his knees.

Involuntarily, he shook with the force of how good she felt lying beneath him as their bare skin touched. And then, he made the mistake of looking into her eyes.

The sorrow there took his breath. "You never had anything in your life you didn't steal from someone else." Julian tensed at the sound of Iason's voice in his head. The last thing he wanted was to take from the woman who had given him so much.

How can I do this to her?

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

Julian didn't know. All he knew was that he couldn't tear his gaze away from her sad, gray eyes. Eyes that would cry if he used her and left. Eyes that would cry in happiness if he stayed.

But if he stayed, his family would destroy her.

And in that moment, he knew what he had to do.

Grace wrapped her legs around his waist. "Julian, hurry. We're running out of time."

He didn't speak. He couldn't. In truth, he didn't trust himself to speak for fear he would change his mind.

Over the centuries, he had been many things: an orphan, a thief, husband, father, hero, legend, and finally a slave.

Yet, never once had he ever been a coward.

No. Julian of Macedon had never been craven. He was the commander who had stared down an entire legion of Romans, and laughingly dared them to take his head.

It was that man Grace had found, and that man who loved her. It was that man who refused to hurt her.

Grace tried to move her hips to bring his body into hers, but he wouldn't oblige her.

"You know what I'll miss most?" he asked as he reached down between their bodies and gently touched her core.

"No," she whispered.

"The way your hair smells when I bury my face in it. The way you cling to me and cry out my name when you release. The way you laugh. But most of all, the way you look first thing in the morning with the sunlight on your face. I'll never forget it."

He moved his hand, then rocked his hips against hers. But instead of sliding into her body, his move ended up as nothing more than a glorious caress that made them both moan.

Julian dipped his head to her ear where he nuzzled her neck. "I will love you forever," he whispered.

Grace heard him draw a deep breath in her hair at the same time the clock struck midnight.

In a bright flash of light, he vanished.

For several heartbeats, Grace couldn't move.

Horrified, she kept waiting to wake up, but as the clock continued to chime, she knew it wasn't a dream.

Julian was gone.

He was really and truly gone.

"No!" she screamed, sitting straight up. It couldn't be! "No!"

Her heart pounding, she ran from the bedroom, downstairs to where the book was still lying on the coffee table. She flipped it open to see Julian standing just as he'd been originally. Only now, there was no devilish smile in place, and his hair was short.

No, no, no! her mind repeated over and over again. Why would he have done such a thing? Why?

"How could you?" she asked, as she cupped the book to her breasts. "I would have given you your freedom, Julian. I wouldn't have minded. Oh, God, Julian, why would you do this to yourself?" She wept. "Why?"

But in her heart she knew. The tender look on his face had said it all. He had done this to keep from hurting her like Paul had done.

Julian loved her. And since the moment he'd appeared, he had done nothing but protect her. Guard her.

Even at the end. Even when it meant he'd lose his own freedom from eternal imprisonment and torment, he had placed her first.

Grace ached at the truth and at the sacrifice he had made. Now, all she could think of was him being condemned to the darkness. Alone and in agony.

He had told her of the hunger he felt when he was trapped in the book, the thirst. And in her mind, she saw the way he had been tortured on her bed. But most of all, she remembered what he told her afterward.

"The pain on the bed was nothing compared to what it's like inside the book."

And now he was in there. Suffering.

"No!" Grace said. "I won't let you do this to yourself. Do you hear me, Julian?"

Cradling the book to her breasts, she ran to the back of her house. She slung open the sliding glass door and moved to stand in the moonlight.