“Forgive me. I do not seem to recall your name,” she replied, suddenly alarmed.
“I never gave it,” the other woman told her, eyes flashing as red as coals. “But I did give my word that I’d need something from you. When the time was right.”
Juliana startled. “I have no recollection of that.”
“You wouldn’t. I erased the memory from your mind,” she said easily. “But now I require payment for my . . .” She stared up at the night sky. “Well, for my services, to put it bluntly.”
“I have no money, although I’m sure I could—”
“It’s not money that I’m after, Juliana,” she trilled, her blazing eyes turning from red to violet. “But rather something far more valuable.”
Juliana felt as if she were drowning again, as if tendrils were wrapping about her chest, choking the air from her lungs.
“I want to use
you
,” the woman said.
She gaped at the stranger, who extended a hand in introduction. “I am Layla.” Juliana refused to accept the politely offered handshake, and slowly the woman frowned, dropping her arm back to her side. “Not so grateful anymore, are you?”
“What do you want to use me for?” Juliana insisted, wavering unsteadily. Her hands found the rough bark of the tree behind her, but that only reminded her of how desperate she’d been when this Layla had come to her. How pitifully insubstantial and tangled she’d been in this oak’s branches.
“Ah, Juliana, don’t trouble yourself,” Layla chided. “I will help you remember everything.” She placed a palm against Juliana’s forehead, and a rushing tide of memories filled Juliana’s mind. “I needed to conceal the details from you at first,” she explained with an apologetic smile. “You had to convince them of your goodness . . . your true intentions, before I set you against him.”
Oh, God, no, not Ari
, she thought in a panic. “Don’t hurt him,” she beseeched. “Anything, any deed you require of me, I’ll do it, so long as Aristos does not suffer.”
Layla’s eyes grew beady and intense. “Perhaps you should’ve thought to plead on his behalf at the outset.”
And she hadn’t; she’d been so overwhelmed with the possibility of being alive again, of returning to him, Juliana realized, that she’d forged ahead blindly. “What do you plan to do to him?” she asked.
Layla tossed her mane of hair and laughed uproariously. “
You
are the one who will destroy him. Not me.”
Juliana felt much stronger suddenly. “I would never harm him, never hurt him in any way. Plus, he lives forever.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” Layla extended a corrective finger. “Immortality does not mean that he can’t be killed or die if the weapon or force used is strong enough. It only grants him a long lease upon this world.” She stood taller, becoming officious. “Our terms, precious girl, were for ten days—you resurrected again, returned to Aristos. We did not, however, barter for any longer span, nor did we discuss me sparing your lover.” She waved a bejeweled hand. “Do you remember now? Apparently just one day with Aristos was better than none.”
“I will tell him what you’ve done. He’ll know of your dangerous threat,” Juliana seethed, lunging forward. But Layla caught both of her hands, bending her wrists at an awkward angle until Juliana cried out.
“You will tell the Spartans nothing,” she threatened. “If you speak of me at all? I will overrun you and take Aristos’s life by my own hand—and I will make him suffer a long, painful death as he spills his immortal’s blood. No, you will not betray our pact or my plans.”
“Overrun me . . . how?” Juliana asked in a panic.
Layla released her and smiled lazily. “Your body. I’m inside it, too, now. I have been from the moment I resurrected you. Cohabitation was always the objective, which is why we gave you physical form again. So I could inhabit it, along with your own spirit.”
Juliana grew horrified.
“You’re . . . a demon? You’ve possessed me?”
Layla inclined her head. “Aren’t you a quick study, my darling.”
“Who is we? Who helped you give me physical form again?”
“Now, I can’t share everything, can I? Where’s the fun in that!” Layla trilled.
Juliana’s mind whirled. All that time she’d spent swearing and promising to Aristos that she wasn’t a demon, she’d been telling the truth—but she’d also been dangerously wrong. She wasn’t a demon, no, but she concealed one.
“You’re inside my own body? Right now, while I’m dreaming—when I’m with Aristos?” Juliana asked quickly, determined to learn as much as she could. For knowledge, she well knew, represented power and strength and would be her only chance of fighting back. “Explain to me how this relationship works.” She kept her voice as steady as she could. “For certainly this is most unusual indeed.”
Layla leaned closer, confiding, “You’re a real-life Trojan horse. Riveting, isn’t it?”
Juliana swallowed, nodding. “Quite. But surely I can help you gain whatever you seek without Ari having to suffer.”
Layla’s eyes flashed beadily. “Do not seek to appease me or barter on your lover’s behalf!”
“Don’t hurt him,” Juliana begged. “Please, please let him live. . . . I will do anything for you.”
“But that’s just it! You’ve already done the deed I required by gaining his trust. So, you see, you’ve destroyed him already. The rest,” she said, stroking her nipples lazily and purring, “is up to me. And it’s only a matter of time until my work will be completed.”
“Why tell me this now?” Juliana asked, desperately wondering how this demon could be stopped. There had to be a way, some manner in which she herself could battle the creature. “Why reveal your plans at all?”
“Despair will weaken your resistance to me—and allow me more strength. I’m feeding off of your soul, you see.” Layla moaned softly in pleasure. “It’s intoxicating, really. And the greater your distress becomes? The stronger I am.”
“I will find a way to drive you out of my body!” Juliana shouted, reaching to slap the demon’s wicked face. Again, Layla caught her hand, twisting it painfully.
“Pitiful human weakness, your belief in your own strength and independence,” Layla hissed. “Don’t deceive yourself! You and I are joined like a pair of lovers now. Your body, your soul, inhabited by my own demonic spirit. I cannot be cast out, nor overcome. And, my lovely,” Layla purred, moving up to Juliana and reaching to stroke her hair, “I’m going to consume you completely before we are done.”
“I will fight back!” Juliana insisted, but then Layla took hold of her head.
Leaning close, she blew across Juliana’s face, an acrid smell, and whispered two words—
fear
and
submission
—and at once a fog overcame Jules, rendering her mute and weakened.
Then the female drew Jules’s hand to her own lips, pressing a perversely lingering kiss against the flesh. “I own you now, beautiful,” Layla promised sweetly. “And, in time, I’ll own your body, too.”
Chapter 24
Ari stretched his legs and nestled Jules closer. A late-afternoon nap, the woman you loved beside you—your body all sated and happy from making love. Really, nothing could be sweeter, he decided. Turning his cheek on the pillow, he smiled because Jules was asleep right beside him. She lay on her back, secure beneath his arm.
His groin tightened at that physical awareness. Whoa, boy, maybe not so satisfied after all, he thought, shifting his hips. Later, once she’d grown more accustomed to lovemaking, he wanted to take her beneath his transformed body. He could even imagine her naked and in his arms, the two of them flying over the city, her legs wrapped about him. . . .
Well, there were certain things that even he’d never tried while winged, but he wasn’t above admitting to his own virginal aspects. He grinned at that one, his imagination running wild—or flying wild was more like it—as he imagined them having mythic sex in midflight. Discreetly, he moved his palm along Jules’s inner thigh, loving the warmth and softness against his calloused hand. He smiled, wondering whether even in her sleep, she was pleasured by his touch.
Suddenly, though, she cried out, and at first he thought he’d startled her. But she twisted beneath his caress, murmuring something frantically, over and over.
He gave her a light shake. “Jules. Sweetheart, wake up,” he said, and she whimpered, flailing a hand.
He rose onto his knees and leaned over her. “Juliana,” he said loudly. Stroking her hair, he gave her another shake. “Sweetheart, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and at first she just looked all around, as if maybe she wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten there. “Aristos?” She stared at the open balcony uncertainly, then glanced all about the room. “What year is it?”
“You’re with me, here in the twenty- first century,” he reassured her.
As that fact really sunk in, she hurled herself into his arms, digging her fingers into his shoulders, clinging to him as if to life itself—or as if she feared he might just up and fly away on her.
“I’m here, baby. We’re both here, in Savannah, at the hotel,” he murmured, drawing her up onto his lap.
“Oh, oh,” she said, burrowing against his chest. Her whole body trembled. “Ari, tell me this is real. Tell me I’m alive,” she pleaded. “That this moment, here with you, isn’t the dream.”
He held her close, shushing her fears away. Or at least he tried, but no matter what he said, she continued to shake as she clung to him.
And then he was the one who began to tremor, maybe even harder, when she looked up at him. Raw terror filled her expression. “Tell me that no matter what, you’ll always love me,” she begged. “Tell me that nothing can ever change that.”
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, making her look up into his eyes, to feel his reassurance deep in her heart. “You know that I never stopped loving you, and I never will.” He stroked her back, needing her to know that he wasn’t ever going to abandon her or stop loving her. He might as well have tried to halt the oceans’ tides or grab the moon from the sky. “I will love you for all my immortal days,” he pledged.
Finally she calmed, relaxing against him. “I’ll love you for my immortal days, too,” she said.
Immortal days?
He’d never even stopped to consider whether she’d age or not, die a natural death or live forever like him.
But when he opened his mouth to voice the question, his shoulder began to burn and ache. He rubbed it, and slowly the twinge subsided, although there’d been something he wanted to ask Jules—needed to ask, he was certain. But now he had no recollection of what that thought might have been.
The blasted shoulder had done the same thing in Leo’s study last night, he remembered, suddenly struck by a marvelous idea. “I know exactly what will make you feel better,” he told Juliana.
“What do you have in mind?” She still bore a slightly troubled expression, which only convinced him that his plan was the perfect way to woo her and eliminate the nightmare from her thoughts.
He rose from the bed, searching for his pants. “Put your dress on,” he instructed, handing the garment to her. She took it from him and sat up.
“Do you see my bustle?” she asked.
“No, just the dress. You don’t need anything else. In fact,” he said, giving her his most devilish, charming smile, “you’d better not wear any undergarments. But first, I’m going to take a shower and freshen up. When I get out? Be prepared. Or actually, come to think of it . . . ,” he said. “Maybe I should haul you in there with me.”
She yawned, rolling onto her side. “I think I need a little more rest before we engage in any further . . . exploits.”
He bent down and kissed her hungrily, tucking the sheet over her bare body. “A little rest, but I have other plans for later.”
They had only a few days left, apparently. She struggled to process that fact, desperately searching for a way around the limitations of the bargain she’d made. Her heart ached at the thought of being separated from Aristos again, and how that fact would destroy his tremendous, kind heart. But that wasn’t the most painful realization. It was knowing that the demon inside of her intended to end his life.
Tears stung her eyes; she lay in the bed, naked and aching for him. He’d traipsed off to the shower, looking happier than she’d ever seen him, which only made her cry even harder.
He’d feel betrayed, abandoned all over again once he learned of the deal she’d made. And he’d never be able to forgive her for having concealed it, from the first moments of her arrival. Except . . . she hadn’t remembered the details; they’d been obscured, especially the time limit. But that was only a paltry excuse, and she knew it.
Eight days remained after this one, she thought, staring at the dark Savannah skyline visible through the opened French doors. A breeze wafted the curtains, and it should have been pleasant, but the night air only felt like the cruelest of reminders of how briefly she would be here.
She turned in the bed, hugging her arms about her naked body. At least they would have this time. Perhaps he could forgive her for the brevity of their reunion; he would always know, now, that she loved him—and she had convinced him that she’d never intended to kill herself. Hopefully that would give him some peace.
That thought brought back the first part of her dream, and she began to cry, hot tears streaking down her cheeks. Would those horrid creatures drag her down again, at the end of the ten days? Drown her in the river’s depths?
She sat up in a rush, brushing back her tangled curls. Perhaps she should broach the topic with Ari, confess what she now recalled about her death. He’d said that he was pursuing a demon trader while in town—were those slimy, choking creatures in the river also demons? Had she been killed by that fiendish lot?
The bathroom door opened, steam filling the room. Ari grinned at her, a thick towel draped about his hips. “Just wait. You’re gonna love twenty-first-century bathing, Jules.” He combed fingers through his dripping hair, brushing it back. She yearned to have her own hands upon him, feeling all those damp, beautiful locks beneath her palms.