The Dark-Hunters by Sherrilyn Kenyon Read Free Book Online

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