Jazzmyn noted the way he tipped the wine glass to his lips and quaffed the deep burgundy liquid. There was something different about him tonight. He appeared almost arrogant in his mannerisms, as if he were a puppeteer pulling all of her strings.
She peered into her glass of wine. “Scott is going to call Kyle and tell him about us.”
“So?” Julian testily smacked his glass down on the bar. “What does it matter if Kyle knows about us?”
She stood from her stool and picked up her wine glass. “It matters because I need Kyle back, Julian.” She walked over to the center of the bar, lifted the service panel, and stepped behind it. “When he finds out about us, he’ll go ballistic,” she explained as she made her way to the sink behind the bar. “I’ve got to get him to come back, or else The Sweet Note will go under.” She emptied her glass into the sink.
“Why not find another chef? Kyle isn’t the only one in the city. This is New Orleans, after all. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a chef in this town.”
She placed her glass in the sink and sighed. “A new chef means a new menu. Changes to the staff in the kitchen mean chaos until everyone learns the new routine. Inventories have to be revamped. Customers get cranky when they can’t have their old favorites, and I’ll be a nervous wreck until the reviews come back on our new chef. I can’t organize a wedding and change everything at The Sweet Note. I don’t have that kind of strength.”
“Then why not sell this place?” He waved his hand about the dining room. “Get rid of it. We don’t need the money. I have more than enough for us. We can travel, and I can show you the world.”
“I don’t want to see the world, Julian. I want my restaurant. My father started this place and drove himself to an early grave to make it what it is. I can’t just give it up,” she admitted, raising her voice.
“All right.” He held up his hands, trying to temper her anger. “Forget I suggested it. Just think about it before you bring Kyle back here. He was trouble before, and he will be trouble again.” He paused and shook his head. “I never did like the way he looked at you. It was as if he owned you.”
Jazzmyn was immediately struck by something Kyle had once told her. “He said the same thing about you once.”
He stood from his stool. “But I do own you. You’re mine and have always been mine.”
Jazzmyn’s fury boiled in the pit of her stomach. “You don’t own me, Julian.”
Julian focused his dark eyes on her. “You’re going to become my wife, Jazzmyn. In my world that makes you my property.”
“Your property?” She began counting to ten, but stopped. “In your world men and women were kept as slaves. Women had no power and no rights, and killing a man was something you did for your honor or for sport. Times are very different, Julian. I am a woman of my generation, outspoken, aggressive, and relentless in getting what I want. I don’t put up with bullshit from anyone, and I get really pissed off when men try to tell me what to do. If you ever treat me like a woman from your world, I will run you over with that fancy car of yours. Got it?”
He clapped his hands together and the dining room resonated with his musical laughter. “That is why I love you, Jazzmyn. I need a modern woman with passion, who acts on her instincts and does not suppress them. The women from my time held no appeal for me. They were mindless creatures who only cared for fashion and society.”
Her annoyance with him still smarted, and she rubbed her hand over her forehead, trying to contain her temper. “Those women still exist, Julian. But at least today they have the same rights as men…well, almost.”
He folded his arms across his powerful chest. “I saw that fire in you when you were a little girl. I knew then that all I had to do was wait for you to grow up and one day you would be the woman I see before me. You have always been destined for me.”
Jazzmyn was suddenly struck by an unsettling thought. “If you knew I was the one for you, then why did you kill those women?”
Julian appeared taken aback by her question. “I didn’t kill anyone, the monster inside me did. I told you that.”
“But why did you go after those four young women I read about in the newspaper? If you knew I was the one, why did you wait so long to approach me? Innocent lives could have been spared, Julian.”
He looked down at his wine glass on the bar. “Every forty years or so, on the anniversary of my curse, I feel compelled to be with a woman. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say it’s something I have no control over. When I feel those urges returning, I try to seek out women who I hope can end my curse. I stayed away from you because I wanted to protect you from that side of me, in case I was wrong about you. I have known you for so long, and I could not bear to hurt you. So, I found other women, women I knew could not…after, I realized I had to end this. That is when I sought you out. That first night I came here and saw you, I knew you were my salvation. Since I have been with you, I have not harmed anyone, Jazzmyn.”
“What if I had been married, had children, or had a very different life from this one? A life you wouldn’t have been able to be a part of; what would you have done then?”
He tilted his head slightly to the side and gave her a cocky grin. “That would never have happened. Something always held you back from committing to any man, even Gary, the man you met in college. He loved you, asked you to marry him, but you refused. Something told you to wait, because you believed there was someone else out there; someone you were destined to be with.” He leaned in closer to the bar and whispered, “That someone was me.”
Jazzmyn’s stomach twisted into a knot at the mention of Gary. She had met Gary Clark in biology lab during her freshman year. He had been cute, funny, and a pretty good lover. She had been happy with him, but the day he proposed to her, everything changed. She eventually ended their relationship right before graduation. Julian was right. She had never met a man she felt drawn to until he had walked into her restaurant.
“How did you know about Gary?”
He traced his fingers along the top of bar as he moved toward the service panel. “I told you, I’ve been watching you all of your life and waiting for the right moment to reveal myself to you.”
“You’ve been stalking me?”
He maneuvered his way behind the bar. “Only you would misconstrue my desire for you into a felony.” He came down the narrow aisle and stood before her. “I was only trying to explain why you have such an overwhelming desire for me, Jazzmyn.”
“I know.” She patted her hand on his chest. “Why is it sometimes you can be so charming, and then other times you can be a real…?”
He raised his dark eyebrows. “A real what?”
“Bastard,” she responded. “You can be so arrogant, so full of yourself. I can almost see why Eve placed that curse on you in the first place.”
Without warning, his hands gripped her shoulders, squeezing painfully into her flesh as his eyes became black, like two dark holes in his eye sockets, bereft of any light. Julian’s features contorted into an ugly mask of fury: his cheekbones disappeared, his wide forehead bulged outward, his mouth widened into a demonic grimace, and his skin turned a pale ash gray.
“Don’t ever say that again!” he snarled at her, his voice drenched with rage. “I have truly suffered from that bitch’s mark on me. No man deserves my fate. I have paid for my sins, now it’s my time of reprieve from this curse.”
Jazzmyn’s body began shaking uncontrollably as the bitter taste of terror swarmed in her mouth. As Julian’s ugly face hovered over her, that taunting voice of reason in the back of her mind seemed to say, “See, I told you so.”
Jazzmyn realized Julian had been deceiving her. He had been hiding his true ugliness until he had worked his way into her life and bewitched her with his powerful magnetism. No matter what Eve had done to him, she knew Julian had deserved it. The cruelty of the man he had once been had determined his fate, not the magic Eve had conjured. In that moment, Jazzmyn understo
od that curses could not damn you for eternity, only your actions did.
Julian’s grip on her body slowly eased and his countenance resumed its handsome appeal. The blackness in his eyes brightened as the light returned to them. He let her go and took a step back.
“I’m sorry. When I get angry, I change.” He ran his hand over his face. “I become ugly, and that is something I do not wish to have you see.”
Jazzmyn took a calming deep breath, wanting to choose her words carefully before she spoke. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have said that to you. It was wrong. No matter what you did, you never deserved this punishment.”
“Allow me to make it up to you.” He smiled his wonderful smile. “I was hoping to do this when we were back at your place, but I think now might be better.” He reached into the front pocket of his black trousers and pulled out a small, red velvet box. He opened the box and held it before Jazzmyn.
A four-carat pillow-cut diamond solitaire ring glistened back at her.
Julian removed the ring from the box and placed it on the third finger of her left hand.
“It reminded me of the diamond rings gentlemen used to give their betrothed in my time. I know it may seem a bit old-fashioned against the fancier cut of diamonds offered today, but I thought you might like it. Something quaint, a bit like me.”
Jazzmyn looked down at the sparkling ring and she felt her future shrink to the size of a peanut. The idea of marrying Julian suddenly sickened her.
“What do you think?” he eagerly asked.
“It’s beautiful, Julian,” she told him, keeping the rising sense of disgust from her face.
He clasped his arms about her and kissed her. Jazzmyn cursed her body when she responded to his kiss. She wanted to be able to overcome the hold he had over her, but she could not make herself pull away.
Julian bit down on her earlobe. “Let me take you home and you can thank me properly.”
Dread rose in Jazzmyn’s throat at the thought of giving herself to him again. No matter how her body yearned for him, her mind was beginning to rebel against him. But she knew if she vented her reservations, the darkness that dwelled just below the surface in him would return, and Jazzmyn feared that darkness, more than she had ever feared anything before.
“It’s time to go, my love,” he whispered to her as he took her hand. Julian led her from behind the bar and toward the kitchen door.
While she dutifully walked behind him, her mind raced with ways to break free of his control. Jazzmyn knew she would not be able to get away from Julian without help. The only problem was the one friend she trusted to help her was the same man she had fired from her restaurant the night before. As Julian turned the lights of the dining room out, Jazzmyn began to hope that things had not been irrevocably broken between her and Kyle. Now, more than ever, she needed him. She just hoped he would be willing to listen to what she had to say.
***
Julian opened the leaded glass doors to Jazzmyn’s home and tossed her keys onto the inlaid green marble table next to the entrance. Jazzmyn followed him inside and placed her purse on the table next to her keys. As if suddenly awakening from a dream, she remembered the hammerless .32 revolver in her handbag. She placed her hand over the brown leather purse and considered removing the gun from it.
“I need a shower. I reek of your kitchen,” Julian complained beside her.
After unbuttoning his gray shirt, he peeled the fabric from around his torso and slung it over his shoulder. “Come upstairs with me.” He reached for her hand. “We both could do with a shower,” he insisted as he pulled her toward the stairs.
Jazzmyn said nothing as Julian led her through her bedroom door. He let go of her hand as he strutted into her room and threw his shirt onto her bed. He then turned to her and began undoing the buttons on her white shirt.
She reached up and stayed his hands. “I can do it.”
He studied her face. “You’re upset.” He glanced down at the gold satyr figurine about her neck. “No, you’re more…uncertain about me. I can feel it.”
“I’m just tired, Julian, and a little overwhelmed by this.” She nodded to the engagement ring on her left hand.
He slid his arm about her waist. “You know I love you.”
“I know.”
“But you’re apprehensive about something. What is it, Jazzmyn?”
She needed to stay sharp and not say anything that could set Julian off. From now on, her words had to be carefully weighed before she uttered them.
“At the restaurant, when you were angry, your face…changed. When you were fighting with Kyle your eyes got darker, but what I saw tonight was far worse.”
He began undoing the buttons on her shirt again. “That wasn’t me, Jazzmyn. It was the thing inside me.”
“What thing?”
He pushed the shirt from around her shoulders. “The curse, the monster Eve placed in me, I don’t know what to call it. All I know is when I get angry or frustrated it comes out.” He reached behind her back and unclasped her bra.
“It frightened me, Julian.”
He dropped the lingerie to the floor. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I promise.” He ran his hand over her left breast and kissed her cheek.
“What happens if this curse isn’t lifted?”
He reached for the zipper on the front of her slacks. “It will be lifted.” Julian eased her pants and underwear to the floor.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I can feel it. My time of reckoning is at hand.” He kissed her shoulder and let his hand glide down her stomach until he reached the mound of flesh between her legs. Jazzmyn closed her eyes as a rush of longing flowed through her veins. Julian’s fingers thrust inside her, and Jazzmyn reflexively gasped against the pain. Her hands gripped his shoulders as he tried to go deeper.
Julian stopped and withdrew his fingers. “You’re too sore for me tonight.”
A wave of relief trickled through her and she relaxed against him.
Julian sensed the change in her. “Do you find me that disagreeable?” he asked, sounding dejected.
She patted her hand against his shoulder. “No, Julian.” She leaned back from his body. “But I am a little relieved. Do you know how many Advil I had to take today?”
Julian pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry, I should have been more aware of my proportions and the discomfort they have caused you.” He placed his forehead against hers. “But I have never been able to satisfy myself with a woman before you. This is all new to me.”
Jazzmyn thought of the other women Julian had been with, and how they had been torn apart when he could not satisfy his lust. The memory of his black, lifeless eyes glaring back at her in the restaurant sent a shiver through her body. Those eyes may have been the final image witnessed by many of his victims before they died.
“Why don’t you just go to bed? I’ll be in after I take a shower.” Julian kissed her forehead. “I think we both could use a good night’s sleep.” He let her go and went to her bathroom door.
As his muscular body walked away from her, Jazzmyn envisioned how defenseless she would be against him if he became angry with her again. When she heard the rush of water in the shower, she darted for her bedroom door. Quickly, she made her way down the stairs to the first floor. After retrieving her purse, Jazzmyn removed the hammerless .32 revolver from inside. She looked back up the stairs as she clutched the gun in her hand. It may not stop him, but at least she could have a weapon to use against him if something did happen.
After she had snuck back into her room, Jazzmyn slipped the gun under her pillow.
A little while later when Julian came to bed, she pretended to be asleep. He climbed in next to her and spooned his naked body behind her. Soon his breathing slowed, and she felt him relax against her back. Jazzmyn lay on her side like that for hours, too afraid to move, too afraid to sleep, and terrified that she would wake up in the arms of a monster.
Chapter 18
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br /> The following morning, Jazzmyn awoke with a start from another nightmare. Sighing with relief that it was just a bad dream, she turned to discover that the spot in bed next to her was empty. The events of the previous night came back to her, and she pictured Julian’s dead, black eyes boring into her. Jazzmyn let out a long breath as she pondered how her nightmares and her waking life were slowly becoming one and the same.
Aching with fatigue, she forced her body to a sitting position and rubbed her face in her hands, trying to chase away her weariness. As she sat there, searching for the strength to get out of bed, Julian entered the room.
Dressed only in his black trousers, he was carrying a breakfast tray loaded with whole wheat toast, a selection of jams, scrambled eggs, and bacon.
“I wasn’t sure what you would like, so I made a few things,” he announced from the bedroom doorway.
Jazzmyn anxiously stood from the bed and put on a brave smile.
“No. Get back in bed. I figured you could have a nice breakfast and then I will take you to the restaurant.”
She climbed back into the bed and covered her naked body with the sheets.
Julian came up to the bed and placed the tray over her lap.
Jazzmyn browsed the mountain of food. “I hope you don’t expect me to eat all of this!”
He sat down on the bed next to her. “A fair portion.”
“You made bacon. I thought you didn’t like to cook meat.”
“Oh, I can cook it. I just can’t eat it.” He stole a slice of whole wheat toast from her plate. “It’s been so long since I’ve prepared breakfast in bed for anyone, I forgot how much I enjoyed doing this.”
Jazzmyn picked up a slice of bacon. “Who did you make breakfast in bed for?”
His eyes filled with warmth. “My mother, Estelle. When I was a little boy I used to love bringing her breakfast in bed as a surprise. When she became ill, I brought every meal to her in bed.”
Jazzmyn thought of something Clay Wallace had told her. “You put her name on your birth certificate, didn’t you? Estelle Frellson Devereau.”
The Satyr's Curse (The Satyr's Curse Series Book 1) Page 19