the salty taste of that single tear incinerating his tongue, burning through every fiber of his being like a shaft of liquid sunlight.
He heard her voice sobbing his name as from a great distance, but he lacked the power to answer. He dropped to his hands and knees, his head hanging, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Go." He forced the word between clenched teeth.
"No, I won't leave you." She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder, only to jerk it away when the heat radiating from his flesh burned her palm. "What is it? What's happening?"
"Go!" With an effort he raised his head and met her gaze. "I'm dying."
She shook her head, her eyes filled with denial. "That's impossible."
"It's true." He groaned low in his throat as his body convulsed with agony. His blood was on fire; his skin seemed to be shrinking, melting. "Leave me." He took a deep shuddering breath. "Please, Leanne, if you love me, go from here."
She was sobbing now, her tears falling to the floor, splashing like liquid fire over his hands.
"Please, leave me," he implored her. "I don't want you to see?"
Using the chair for support, she stood up. If he wanted her to go, she would go, but only as far as the other room.
"I love you," she whispered brokenly. "I'll always love you."
But he was past hearing.
Part 1 Chapter Eleven
Numb, she stared down at him, unable to believe he was dead. A distant part of her mind, a morbid part she hadn't even known existed, wondered why his body hadn't aged and dissolved into dust.
And then reality struck home. Jason was dead.
Slowly, she dropped to her knees beside him and cradled his head in her lap, the pain in her heart too deep for tears.
Gently, she smoothed the long dark hair from his brow. His skin felt warm and alive. Odd, she thought, when it had always felt cool before.
The hours passed unnoticed as she relived every moment she had spent with Jason, remembering how she had found herself looking for him outside the theater long before he introduced himself, remembering the instant attraction between them, the way she had known, that very first night, she could trust him.
A faint smile touched her lips as she caressed his cheek. She would have liked to walk along a sunlit beach with Jason at her side, watched the sun rise over the ocean, borne his children, grown old beside him.
She would have liked to make love to him one more time.
With a sigh she kissed him one last time, and then, very gently, she lowered his head to the floor and stood up.
Feeling empty and alone, she walked out of the house.
She hesitated on the veranda, her gaze caught by the fiery splendor of the sun as it climbed over the tops of the hills.
"I love you, Jason Blackthorne," she murmured, her fingertips absently stroking the heart-shaped locket he had given her. "I love you, and I'll never forget you." Tears welled in her eyes. "Never."
"Never is a long time."
Leanne whirled around, her hand flying to her throat. "Jason! You're alive!"
He held out his hands and flexed his fingers, looking at them as if he'd never seen them before. "So it would seem."
"But? but how?"
"I don't know." A wry grin tugged at his lips. "The love of a good woman, perhaps?" he mused, his finger catching a tear that hovered at the corner of her eye, "or perhaps it was the magic of a single tear shed for a monster who yearned to be a man."
They gazed at each other for a long moment, and then Leanne threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight.
"You're alive." She ran her fingertips over his face, then spread one hand over his chest, above his heart. "Alive," she murmured again. "Thank God."
He looked deep into her eyes, and then he smiled, a beautiful smile that went straight to her heart.
Lowering his head, he teased her lips with the tip of his tongue, and then he kissed her as gently as ever a man had kissed a woman, and it seemed he could taste the sunrise on her lips.
"Leanne," he murmured. "Do you think you could love this mortal man as you once loved the monster?"
"Oh, yes," she exclaimed softly, and the glow in her eyes was warmer and brighter than the sun he had thought never to see again.
His smile grew wider. "And do you think you could make love to me now,