“Ha!” he barked. “I could have so much fun with you.”
She frowned worriedly and pulled the phone away from her ear. She glanced around the empty aisle and called, “Kallias, if you can somehow hear me with your crazy-sensitive ears, please come save me from your perverted friend!”
When she put the phone back to her ear, his voice filled the line again, but this time, all of the humor was gone from his voice. “Crazy-sensitive ears?”
Rose cringed as she realized he’d heard her. “Uh…”
“Fucking hell,” Erik said. “He’s told you, hasn’t he?”
She winced. “It’s a long story?” she offered.
“Okay, now, you are going to tell me this story,” he growled.
Rose opened her mouth to speak, but then, a woman suddenly screamed.
“Shit. I have to go,” he sighed. “Tell Kallias that I’ll call back later.”
The phone clicked. Rose pulled the phone away from her ear and frowned at it. Someone had definitely screamed on his end. She was sure of it.
“I found the food,” Kallias suddenly announced from beside her.
Rose jumped as she heard his voice suddenly so close to her. She spun toward him. “Dang it! I told you to stop sneaking up on…” she trailed off as she noticed the stack of snacks that was piled up so high in his arms that she could barely see his face. She blinked and said, “Yes, you definitely found the food.”
He dropped the snacks into the shopping cart, the drinks and junk food clanging loudly as they scattered the bottom of the cart. “In case you get hungry.”
She stared blankly at the food. “Yeah, I think that should cover me,” she muttered, “for the rest of my life! Please, tell me you don’t think I eat that much.”
Kallias shrugged. “I don’t remember how much humans eat.”
She scowled at him. “Audrey is the only human that eats that much.”
He glanced at the phone in her hand. “Did Erik already hang up?”
Rose blinked in surprise. “Wait. You heard me from the grocery section?”
“Of course. I told you I would listen for you,” he said. “But if I’d rushed over here, considering how fast I can move, I would’ve risked someone noticing that something was a little different about me. And since Erik is not really a threat, I figured you’d be okay for a few more moments. Besides, I needed more food.”
She again glanced down at the obscene amount of food. “Of course you did,” she muttered sarcastically. She frowned thoughtfully. “I never said his name. I only said that it was your perverted friend. How did you know that it was Erik?”
“I only have one perverted friend,” Kallias told her.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Rose muttered, making a dramatic show of wiping her hand across her forehead. Then, remembering his question, she said, “Someone screamed, and then, he said he had to go. He said he’d call back later.”
Kallias nodded, as if he had expected as much. “Nice bra.”
She glanced at the bra dangling from her forefinger and blushed. Black and lacy, it wasn’t at all the kind of underwear she usually wore. She shoved it back onto the rack and looked at him. “I was never planning on getting that.”
“Of course not,” he said as he picked up a freezer meal of spaghetti and started reading the back of the box. “It wasn’t even your size. It was too small.”
“How the heck would you know my size?” she sputtered.
He continued reading the back of the box. “I don’t. I guessed.”
She flushed. “Just how much have you been staring at my breasts?”
He tossed the box back into the cart. “They lied. They said that it’s real Italian, but I know real Italian when I see it. Those aren’t the right ingredients.”
She stared blankly at him. “You need to stop staring at my breasts.”
He smirked. “I’m not. At the moment. Never mind. Now, I am.”
“You’re as bad as your perverted friend,” she said, crossing her arms.
Kallias laughed. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”
“You’re probably right,” she admitted. “He’s pretty terrible, isn’t he?”
He leaned on the shopping cart and flashed a playful grin at her. “Well, if he can make an ancient Greek look like a puritan, he’s obviously pretty bad.”
“He kept calling me babe,” she complained.
He nodded, an amused smile tugging at his lips. “Interesting.”
She frowned worriedly. “Why is that interesting?”
“It means he must have read you as the…uh…innocent type,” he said, smiling at her. “Erik uses different pet names on different kinds of women. Babe is more of a playful name. The names he calls other women are much…dirtier.”
Rose wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And that works for him?”
“It does, actually. Very much so,” he said. “Erik takes great pride in his ability to charm his way into women’s pants. He’s even more proud of that than he is of his ability to make vicious vampires cry like babies with one touch.”
“What?” she sputtered. “He makes them cry?”
“Erik is an empath,” Kallias explained.
Rose frowned. “He makes them cry by understanding them?”
“Empath, in the supernatural sense of the word,” he corrected. “Erik can manipulate emotions the way I can manipulate the mind. He’s very powerful.”
She blinked in shock. “Oh.”
Still stunned by the realization that another vampire had a psychic ability that she’d never realized existed, Rose headed toward the next aisle to get some socks. She heard the clicking of the shopping cart as Kallias followed her. “Oh, by the way,” she said, glancing back at him as she walked, “you have an admirer.”
He frowned. “What?”
“The woman in the pink sweats,” she provided.
He shrugged. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
She scowled at him. “Well, anyway, she was attracted to you, apparently. She thought you were my boyfriend, but don’t worry. I set her straight.”
“Good. I’d hate to ruin your reputation,” Kallias muttered dryly.
“She acted like I was a freak of nature or something,” Rose continued explaining. “What? Because I don’t fawn over your appearance like some obsessed lovesick puppy, I must be insane or some mistake of the universe?”
“Either that, or you’re not human,” he added in the middle of her rant.
Rose glared at him. “You’re so arrogant. You think everyone wants you.”
He flashed a smug smile at her. “Everyone does want me.”
“I don’t,” she countered.
His eyebrows lifted. “Oh? Is that so?”
A smirk tugged at his lips, and rather than seeming offended, he seemed entertained, as if she’d just challenged him to a game that she could never win. He rounded the shopping cart with that playful, mischievous smile. Rose swallowed uneasily and took a step back. Unfortunately, that step sent her into the shelf behind her, and she squealed and jumped forward as the metal pieces on the shelf stabbed into her back. The jump sent her colliding into him, and his hands found her arms, steadying her before she fell. Blushing at her clumsiness, she looked up at him, and she realized his eyes looked darker than usual. He moved his face down toward hers, his lips not even an inch away from hers.
Rose realized that she wasn’t breathing anymore. She couldn’t, not with his body and his lips so close to her. Besides, she was afraid that if she decided to breathe, she’d forget to squash that nonsensical voice in her head that was currently nagging her to close the distance between their lips and kiss him already.
His thumbs traced the chill bumps on her arms. “Are you sure you don’t want me?” he murmured, his breath warming her lips with each word.
“I need socks,” Rose announced awkwardly.
Kallias just stared at her, his lips twitching. He took a step back. Then, finally, he s
tarted laughing loudly and hysterically, as if he could barely breathe.
Her face burned with embarrassment as she quickly distanced herself from him. She headed toward the next aisle without another word. She heard the warm, melodic sound of his laughter behind her as he followed her with the shopping cart. She was careful to keep the cart between them as she grabbed a bag of socks from the shelf and tossed it into the cart. She didn’t trust herself anywhere near him, not with that nagging urge to kiss him still fresh on her mind.
“Socks,” Kallias snorted. “You do know how to hurt a man’s ego, don’t you? In twenty-five hundred years, I have never gotten that reaction before.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like your ego can’t take a few hits,” she countered, flashing a sarcastic smile at him. “You could deflate your ego to half the size that it is now, and you’d still be a cocky, arrogant, smug, bigheaded jerk.”
“That was all a little redundant, don’t you think?” he teased.
Her eyes narrowed. “I wanted to make sure you got the point.”
Kallias watched her with a smile as she lowered her head and rushed past him, obviously avoiding getting close to him again. He just chuckled and pushed the cart behind her, following her as she led the way to several clothing racks full of pajamas. A cascade of messy auburn hair fell over her shoulder as she read the labels of the pajamas, squinting as if she were having trouble seeing the words.
“Did the woman say anything else?” he asked curiously.
Rose glanced up at him. “Why? Are you interested in her?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Would it bother you if I was?”
“No,” she scoffed. “Why would it? We’re not together or anything.”
He smiled as he noticed the hint of nervousness in her voice. “Right.”
She tossed a pair of pajamas into the cart. “No, she didn’t say anything else. She asked me to introduce you to her, and I tried to…talk or something, and she got angry and stormed off.” She shrugged. “I think I made a friend.”
He laughed, “Let me guess. You overanalyzed everything she said.”
Her gaze snapped up, and she pinned him with a murderous glare. “What is that supposed to mean?” she snarled much louder than she’d intended.
He held his hands up in a show of surrender. “Easy, baby, it was just a guess,” he teased, his voice smooth and honeyed. He grinned. “Don’t kill me.”
Her eyes narrowed even more. “Don’t you dare mock me.”
Kallias suddenly threw his head back as he burst into laughter again, laughing too hard to even conceal his fangs. “You actually scare me a little sometimes. Do you know why? Because you are the only human in this world insane enough to threaten a monster that could rip you apart with his bare hands.”
Rose bit back a smile. “Yeah, well, you should be scared,” she said, tossing another pair of pajamas in the cart. “I’m…you know…fierce…or something.”
“Or something,” Kallias repeated with a grin.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t overanalyze what people say,” she said defensively. “I mean, the word overanalyze implies that I focus on details that are not relevant to…” she trailed off as she noticed him watching her with a smug smile and a raised eyebrow. She sighed in defeat. “Okay. Fine. Maybe I do. But I can’t help it. It’s like a nervous tick. Some people twiddle their thumbs. Some people bite their fingernails. I explain and define things,” she admitted sheepishly.
He shrugged. “I’m not judging. I’m not good at making friends either.”
Rose smiled. “Yeah, but that’s because you’re a jerk.”
He chuckled, “True. My social etiquette errors are usually intended.”
She returned to her search for another pair of pajamas, and as she ran her fingers over one of the pairs of flannel pants, she realized, for the first time, that she was actually having fun. She’d barely stopped laughing the entire night, which was pretty insane, considering there were vicious monsters after her, fully intent on killing her. As much as Kallias frustrated her, she also enjoyed their banter, for some reason, and that realization scared her more than she wanted to admit. She blinked in shock and absently tossed the pajamas in the shopping cart.
When she finally turned back toward Kallias, her chest tight, she breathed a sigh of relief to find him reading the back of another freezer meal, not paying attention to her. “I…uh…” She cleared her throat. “I need to get shower stuff.”
“Do people actually eat this stuff?” he asked absently.
“It’s cheap and convenient,” Rose said. “So, yeah.”
He grimaced and tossed it back into the cart. “Right. So, toiletry items.”
She nodded and led the way across the store until they found the aisle with shampoos and conditioners. She scanned the hair products with a frown.
“We should hurry,” Kallias commented. “I doubt Theron followed us this far, but the longer we stay in one place, the easier it’ll be for him to find you.”
“Okay, just let me find my shampoo and conditioner and…” she trailed off with a frown as Kallias suddenly chunked two familiar golden bottles in the cart. He walked away again and then returned with a beige bottle of body wash.
“Shampoo. Conditioner. Body wash,” Kallias listed as he tossed the beige bottle of body wash into the shopping cart, as if what he had done had been completely normal. He looked at her curiously. “What else do you need?”
Rose pointed at the bottles in the cart, which happened to be the exact types of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash that she used. “Did you read my mind?”
“I didn’t need to read your mind,” he said. “I just sniffed them out.”
“You sniffed them out?” she repeated, slowly enunciating each word.
Kallias looked at her, as if suddenly realizing that what he said might have sounded strange to her. “The scents,” he explained hesitantly. He pointed at the golden bottles. “The scent in your hair is honey. Specifically, it is the exact same honey scent that is in those bottles of shampoo and conditioner.” He pointed at the beige bottle. “And your skin smells of vanilla, just like that vanilla body wash.”
She stared blankly at him. “You know my…scent?”
He looked away. To her surprise, he actually looked embarrassed. “We’ve spent a lot of time together in the past few days. Of course I know your scent.”
Rose looked down at the bottles and laughed, “Sometimes, you seem almost completely normal, just like a human, and other times, you’re so…odd.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”
She laughed, “Please tell me that you can’t do that with the deodorant, too.”
He shifted nervously. “Um…no?” he lied.
She crossed her arms, smiling at how comical his embarrassed expression looked. “Are you lying?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
Kallias bowed his head shamefully and grabbed the deodorant she usually used. He held it out to her. “This is what you’re wearing right now.”
Rose started giggling. “You’re like one of those drug dogs!”
He bristled, his brown eyes suddenly narrowing at her. “I’m far more advanced than a canine. It’s true that I share certain characteristics with canine predators, but I also share characteristics with feline predators and other animals. As a matter of fact, I actually have more in common with humans than canines.”
She laughed at how defensive he acted. “That’s too bad,” she teased as she pushed the shopping cart past him. “I think I like dogs better than people.”
His scowl faded, gradually morphing into a grin, as he followed her.
“Toothpaste?” Rose asked curiously.
“Crest. Spearmint,” Kallias said easily. “Toothpaste and mouthwash.”
Her eyes widened a little. “You didn’t even sniff that one out.”
“I recognized the taste,” he said, suddenly staring intensely at her.
“The taste?
” she repeated with a puzzled frown.
His eyes darkened and shifted down, toward her lips. “When we kissed.”
Rose blinked. “Oh. Right,” she said nervously. She busied herself with finding her toothbrush and toothpaste. She dropped them in the cart and wiped her sweaty palms across her jeans. She glanced nervously at Kallias, swallowing hard as she saw his dark eyes still watching her. “I…um…think that’s everything.”
He nodded, but his heated gaze remained on her. “If you’re sure.”
Kallias may have been the telepath, but this time, it was Rose who knew what he was thinking. She would’ve had to be blind to not know. She saw that familiar flicker of dark lust and hunger flashing in his eyes, and she noticed the way he watched her lips. He was thinking about that kiss, just like she was, except contrary to what he’d said, it didn’t look like he regretted it, and at the moment, she was having trouble remembering why she regretted it, too. She squirmed under his scorching gaze and quickly grabbed the cart and pushed it in the direction of the registers. She felt him following behind her, but he never spoke.
Both of them remained silent as they waited in line at the cash registers. The cashier, a brunette woman in a white polo shirt and blue vest, openly gawked at Kallias, her big brown eyes wide with shock and awe. They waited for several moments for the woman to begin scanning the items, but she didn’t move. She just stood there, gaping at Kallias, with the pack of Oreos dangling from her hand.
“Does this happen often?” Rose asked Kallias.
“We’re in a hurry,” he told the woman, that rudeness back in his voice.
The woman blinked several times. “Oh. Oh!” she said, seeming to finally realize what she was doing. She glanced sheepishly at the Oreos, and her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. She fumbled with the pack until she managed to scan it, avoiding their gazes the entire time. “I guess I forgot where I was for a moment,” she lied nervously as she quickly scanned the other items.
Rose frowned as she considered the woman’s reaction to Kallias. She was beginning to understand what Kallias had meant. Every human that looked at him seemed transfixed by him, except for her. Sure, even Rose noticed that he was attractive, but he didn’t affect her like that. No one affected her that strongly, not Kallias, Theron, or Sofia. She wondered what was so different about her.
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 35