Rose gasped as he pushed her up against the wall, the front of his body pressing against hers. One of his hands remained in her hair, gently tugging her head back by her hair, so that he could kiss her deeply. His other hand was on her face, his fingers splayed from the top of her neck to the crease behind her ears, holding her face steady as he kissed her senseless. She felt his legs against hers, one between her legs and the other pressing against the outside of her left leg. She felt his hips against hers and the bulge in his jeans pressing on her stomach. She felt his muscular chest and abdomen pressing against her over-sensitized breasts, making her far too aware of the fact that she hadn’t put on a bra after her shower, since she usually didn’t sleep in one. His fingers tugged at the buttons on her shirt, unbuttoning the first, then the second, then the third.
“I thought you weren’t going to kiss me again,” Kallias rasped between kisses, his accent thicker than usual. His lips attacked hers again, as if he couldn’t handle the separation. He continued to kiss her, not giving her time to respond.
When their mouths separated so that they could both draw in a quick breath, Rose managed to reply, “I did, too.” Her fingers clutched at his thin, black T-shirt as they returned to kissing, bruising each other’s lips. When their lips separated again, she breathed, “I thought you didn’t want to kiss me again.”
He pressed his lips to hers again. “I lied,” he groaned against her lips.
Her lungs felt constricted, and her skin felt overheated and feverish. His lips felt hard and soft at the same time, leaving her lips feeling oversensitive and sore after every kiss, and the stubble on his jaw left her face raw. But none of this made her want to stop kissing him. Nothing could have made her want that.
Her heart raced frantically against her chest, and she felt a dull, aching pain between her legs, a need unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She’d never wanted anyone the way she wanted him. As a matter of fact, she’d never wanted anyone before him. Yet, without even trying, he set her body on fire with need.
Kallias pulled away from her lips and tilted her head back so that he could press his lips to her neck. He kissed the sensitive skin between her jaw and ear and trailed down, kissing her over and over until he reached her neck. Her eyes slid closed, her soft, wet eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks, and her head fell back against the door as his lips scorched her skin. Her mouth fell open, and she couldn’t help but moan softly each time his warm mouth touched her skin.
The sensual sound of her soft moans filled his ears along with the sound of her rapidly pounding heart, sending heat straight to his groin. He traced the pulsing artery in her neck with his tongue, eliciting another moan from her lips. Her skin tasted sweet and smelled strongly of her vanilla body wash. He could feel the blood pumping through her veins beneath his lips, and the sweet and powerful scent of her blood filled his senses. He grazed his fangs against her neck.
“Oh. Wow,” she mumbled, surprised by how pleasant it felt.
He smiled, his lips curving against her skin. His lips found that incredibly sensitive spot on her neck. He began to kiss and suck at the skin there. Rose’s hands tugged at his T-shirt as she groaned and whispered his name. Kallias froze suddenly as an overpowering wave of hunger shot through him, and acting on instinct, he cradled one side of her neck and pressed his fangs to her skin.
Kallias pulled away suddenly. “Shower. I need a shower.”
Rose just stood there, leaning against the wall with her shirt halfway unbuttoned, breathing heavily, as he disappeared into the bathroom.
16
The Truth, Finally
Kallias stepped out of the bathroom, glancing curiously at Rose. She sat on the bed, cross-legged, with her book in her hand, still wearing those pajamas that were so hilariously unflattering that he couldn’t help but find it kind of cute. He shook his head and turned toward the sink set against the wall, adjacent to the bathroom. He turned on the water as he sifted through his bag for a razor.
Rose looked up and screamed, “Ahh! What are you doing?!”
His brows furrowed, and he turned around to look at her, raising his eyebrow as he realized that she had both of her hands clasped over her eyes. He glanced bewilderedly at the razor in his hand. “I am shaving,” he said slowly. “What’s wrong? Do you have some kind of phobia to shaving cream?”
“No. I mean, why are you naked?” she corrected through clenched teeth.
Kallias frowned at the long white towel that was wrapped firmly around his hips. “I think someone taught you the wrong definition of the word naked.”
She waved her hand blindly, her eyes still closed. “Towels don’t count!”
He glanced at the towel and shrugged. “I don’t see why not. They cover what needs to be covered,” he muttered. He turned back toward the mirror.
“Why aren’t you wearing clothes?” she complained.
He glanced at her reflection in the mirror, chuckling as he saw that she still had her hands over her eyes. “I don’t wear clothes in the shower. Do you?”
“No, but I put them on before I leave the bathroom!” she snapped.
He just laughed. Rose finally dropped her hands. He faced the mirror, his back turned to her, but as he shaved, his eyes, reflected in the mirror, met hers. She blushed and attempted to avert her gaze. She sighed irritably and tossed her book onto the nightstand. She hopped off of the bed and crossed the space between them, joining Kallias near the sink. In the mirror, his scorching gaze never left hers. She crossed her arms and leaned her left shoulder against the wall.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked nervously.
Kallias held the razor under the water and looked at her. “Do you realize that ninety-nine percent of the things you say begin with, ‘Can I ask you something?’”
She pursed her lips. “I told you. I’m a curious person.”
He looked up at the mirror as he began to shave again. “Sure. Ask.”
Those scars captured her attention again, glowing white against his golden skin under the lights above the mirror. She realized that, under the light, they looked even worse than they had when she’d seen them in that dark building. Deeply carved into his chest and back, she cringed as she considered what could have left them. From as close as she stood to him now, she could see that the tattooed flames hid some of the scars on his neck, shoulders, and back, including a rough scar on his neck that resembled a bite wound and several scars that looked like burns or gashes. But nothing hid the scars that marred his chest and abdomen, the scars that glowed several shades lighter than his golden skin.
Kallias cleared his throat and gave her a hard stare. “You had a question.”
“Right,” she said, shifting uneasily. “Uh…did I do something wrong?”
He stopped shaving and turned to frown at her. “What? When?”
She chewed on her bottom lip nervously. “When we were kissing,” she mumbled, her voice sounding a little higher than usual. “I mean, I just assume you probably have a lot of experience with women, and I’m, you know, less experienced, as in much less, much, much less. I think I may have kissed three people, including you, and one of those didn’t really count because it was my best friend in middle school during a game of Truth or Dare, and it was awkward. And…”
Kallias stopped shaving and raised an eyebrow at her aimless rambling. “Rose!” he interrupted. He chuckled. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
She stared at her hands, blushing. “I’m just saying that if I did something wrong, you should tell me what it was so that I can fix it. I’m a fast learner.”
Kallias patted his face dry with a small white towel as he tried to suppress laughter. His lips tugged into a smile. “You didn’t do anything wrong, koukla.”
Rose frowned at him. “But you left.”
He rinsed the razor clean and dropped it in the bag before he turned toward her. “And you automatically assumed that I left because you were…a bad kisser?”
&nbs
p; She shrugged. “It seemed like a logical assumption.”
“No, it seems like an insecure assumption,” he corrected. He leaned back against the sink, his hands braced on each side of him. His brown eyes darkened as he leveled her with his intense gaze. “Rose, the problem wasn’t that you didn’t kiss well enough,” he laughed, rolling his eyes. “It was that you kissed…a little too well.” He flashed his fangs at her to make sure she understood his meaning.
“Ohhhhhhh,” she said, dragging out the syllable. “It…affected you?”
He laughed at her vagueness. “Yeah, Rose, it affected me.”
Rose watched as he pushed away from the sink and walked over to his duffel bag. He pulled out a pair of black sweatpants. “My blood bothers you.”
His brows furrowed, but he didn’t look at her. “Obviously.”
She frowned suspiciously. “Why does it bother you so much?”
Kallias scowled at her. “Because it’s blood.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Rose insisted.
With the pair of sweatpants balled up in his hand, he returned to her. Rose instinctually leaned back as he moved close to her, only to realize that the wall was preventing her from putting space between them. His gaze darkened with lust as he leaned into her. His breath fell against her face. “Yeah, there is more to it, but I already explained this part to you. Hunger and desire are linked. And I would think that after what just happened between us, it would be obvious that I want you. Unfortunately for you, that also means that I want your blood.”
She swallowed uneasily, trying to ignore the way her body temperature spiked at his words. She forced her lips to form words, despite their reluctance. “I think,” she breathed, “there is another reason, one that you’re hiding from me.”
His jaw tightened. “I need to get dressed,” he said, stepping past her.
She grabbed his arm to stop him. He turned toward her, his eyes narrowing. “Tell me what you’re hiding from me. I need to know what it is.”
“Unless you prefer me naked, you should let me get dressed,” he said.
Rose swallowed, her gaze instinctually shifting toward the towel hanging from his hips. She let go of his arm, and he wordlessly headed into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him. When he came out of the bathroom less than a minute later with his black sweatpants hanging from his hips, instead of the towel, Rose hadn’t moved. She stared at him expectantly. “I know that you haven’t been celibate for twenty-five hundred years,” she informed him.
He shrugged irritably. “And your point is?”
“My point is,” she explained, “that you’ve had sex with people without losing control of your hunger. You’ve taken things much further than kissing with other women, but with me, you can’t even kiss me without wanting to bite me.”
He stepped toward her, his body nearly touching hers, and placed his hands on the wall on each side of her head, trapping her there between his body and the wall. He moved his face closer to hers, and he growled, “I always want to bite you, whether I am kissing you or not. It is just part of what I am.”
Rose swallowed hard. As she stared into his eyes, she realized that she could actually see it: the hunger. It was that flash of darkness she saw in his eyes as they dilated, that dangerous spark. She’d seen it so many times, just as she saw it now. “Something is different about me, and you’re lying to me about it.”
Kallias dropped his hands and stepped back. “I’m finished with this conversation,” he snarled. He turned around to walk away. “Goodnight, Rose.”
Rose pushed away from the wall, chasing after him as he headed toward the bed. “Yeah, well, I’m not finished with it! I refuse to act like I’m okay with you lying to me!” She stopped abruptly as he suddenly turned back toward her.
He looked exhausted, all of the sudden. He sighed, “Rose, please, stop.”
“Kallias, you’re not the only vampire that has trouble resisting my blood. Every vampire that has attacked me has mentioned something about it. They keep saying that it smells powerful, whatever that means. They tell me it’s irresistible. Please. Don’t you think I need to know why all vampires want to kill me?”
His shoulders drooped with defeat. “Stop. Please.”
Her eyes softened. She’d never seen him like this. “You hate dishonesty. I know you do. I can hear it in your voice when you talk about it, when you warn me not to trust people. If you hate lying so much, then why are you lying to me?”
He looked at her as if she’d just slapped him. “I’m not lying. I’m just…”
“Lying by omission?” Rose finished for him, raising her eyebrow. “I think you care about me, whether you want to admit it or not, or else you wouldn’t go through all of this trouble to protect me, and I know that I care about you.”
His eyes widened. “Rose,” he interrupted.
She held up her finger to stop him. “I’m not finished yet. I want to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest with me, for once. If you cared about someone, and then you realized that they were hiding something from you, something that affected you, don’t you think that would bother you?” Rose instantly regretted asking the question when she saw his face contort with pain.
His entire body tensed, as if he’d been shocked. “Yeah, it did.”
“Oh, goodness,” she mumbled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
“For what?” he interrupted. “I’m the one lying to you, remember?”
Rose sighed in frustration. That cold distance was back in his voice and in his eyes, that cruel mask that he always used to hide his pain. Her eyes narrowed at him. “Your telepathic control works on everyone, except me. Everyone, except me, is enthralled every time they look at a vampire because of your…seductive pheromone…or magical allure…or whatever the heck it is. You keep making these weird comments. And that day that Theron tried to…tried to…hurt me,” she stammered, unable to voice the word rape, “he told you that I was not an ordinary human, and the way you looked at me—it was like a light bulb had just come on in your head. You looked at me as if you knew something about me. You looked at me as if you were scared, and I have never seen you scared, Kallias. Basic inductive reasoning says that there’s something wrong with me.”
To her surprise, that mask of his instantly dissolved, gone as quickly as it had come. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, “not in my opinion.”
“Then, tell me the truth,” she pleaded.
He sighed in frustration. “Rose, haven’t you ever considered that I might have a good reason for keeping this from you? That I am trying to protect you?”
“Protect me from what?” she asked. “The truth?”
He just shrugged, as if he thought that was an acceptable answer.
She laughed bitterly. “Kallias, let me tell you something,” she snarled. “I am not some pretty little princess who spent her life locked away in a castle and faints at the first sight of danger. I don’t need you to protect me from the truth. I’ve been facing truth my entire life. No, I didn’t grow up in a castle. I grew up in a home that was falling apart, that always had drugs but never any food. I faced the truth that my mom didn’t care about me the first time she let her boyfriend beat me until I was bleeding just for sassing her. I faced the truth when I realized that the only person who ever did care about me at all was going to prison and leaving me all alone. I faced the truth when I found my mother’s dead body in a pile of vomit in our living room floor after it had been decaying for two days. I mean, I knew what happens to the human body when it decays, but you don’t really face the truth of it until you have to look at it. I have never been sheltered from the truth, not once, and guess what? I am still standing. So, you can keep your freaking protection because I don’t need it!” She could barely breathe when she finished her rant. Her heart thudded rapidly against her chest. She didn’t know why she had said all of those things. She had never voiced all of it out loud like that.
But the words had just seemed to spill out of her mouth of their own accord.
For a while, Kallias didn’t speak. He didn’t even look at her. He just stared at the bed, his hand gripping the wooden frame so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. “Is he still alive?” he asked, his voice dark and dangerous.
Rose frowned at the strange question. “Is who still alive?”
“The person who hurt you,” he answered evenly.
Her frown deepened. “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
He looked at her, finally, and when he did, Rose took a step back, stunned by the dark rage that flashed in his eyes. “You don’t know because there were others, right? You can’t even remember all of the people who hurt you.”
She shrugged. “My family didn’t associate with the nicest people,” she said nervously, trying to sound dismissive. “Why does this bother you so much?”
“Because someone should have protected you,” he answered.
Her eyes softened. “If it makes you feel better, my brother pulled a gun on one of them once and threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave,” she offered.
“It doesn’t,” he said quietly. He straightened and released the footboard. “How can you believe in good after the terrible things that have happened to you? How can you believe in light when you’ve experienced nothing but darkness?”
Rose stared at him for a moment. “Because I refuse to let the darkness of my past define me. I don’t know why people suffer, but I refuse to go through life angry about it. I don’t resent what happened to me because I refuse to let the demons of my past win. I choose who I am. And everything I endured made me the person I am today. It made me stronger. It made me more compassionate. I wouldn’t be able to empathize if I didn’t know how it felt to suffer. I wouldn’t be able to endure what is happening to me right now if I hadn’t endured evil before. And…maybe I endured evil so that I could be the good in someone else’s life.”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 44