“Was the moving-at-the-speed-of-light-thing necessary?” she grumbled.
“Why were you trying to leave the room?” he asked.
“We just went over this,” Rose reminded him. “To get away from you.”
His brows furrowed. “There are windows in the hallway, and it is still daylight outside,” he said worriedly. “I wouldn’t have been able to follow you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. That is the point. We just went over this.”
His eyes narrowed. “What if Theron knows where we are right now?”
“He wouldn’t be able to attack me. Windows, remember?” she said.
Kallias sighed. “Don’t you remember the human woman that tried to shoot you that second night that Theron attacked you? Don’t you think that if he managed to convince her to do that, he could do the same thing now? Don’t you think that if he figured out where you are, he’d have a human attack you the moment you left the hotel room without me? I wouldn’t be able to save you.”
Rose opened her mouth to argue, but then, she realized that he was right.
“I am sorry, but I can’t let you leave the room until it’s dark,” he stated.
She glared at him. “Don’t you think you should let me decide for myself?”
To her surprise, he agreed, “Of course that’s what I should do. But I never promised that I would do what I should do. I promised to keep you safe.”
Rose felt so conflicted. On one hand, she felt rightly angry about what he’d said. On the other hand, something that she’d heard in his voice as he said it softened her. It had sounded like concern or worry or… “Fine. I will stay.”
He smiled. “Now, please stop acting crazy, and tell me why you’re upset.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Crazy?” she repeated furiously.
For some reason, he had yet to step away from her, despite the fact that she’d assured him that she wouldn’t leave. He shrugged, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Well, I figured insane was too strong of a word, but if you prefer…”
“I am not acting crazy,” she interrupted, her voice low with fury.
He grinned at her. “That’s what crazy people say.”
“You laughed at me,” she snapped. “I’m upset because you laughed.”
His brows furrowed. “Is laughing a crime now?”
“What is so funny about me being a virgin? Do you think that makes me less of a person?” she snarled. “You’re just like everyone else. You think it’s some kind of joke. Of course, why did I expect anything different from the man who thinks kissing is just physical? You’re too emotionally-stunted to understand.”
He stepped back. “I’m sorry. I must have missed the memo. Have we reversed roles? Are you the rude asshole now? What does that make me? The one who defines random words in order to prove I know more than you?”
She crossed her arms, her blue eyes narrowing at him.
He continued, “You see, the Kudzu plant is defined as a…”
“This is you not being the rude butthole?” Rose interrupted.
He stopped midsentence and smiled. “Sorry. Old habits.”
“For the record, the words I define are not that random,” she muttered.
He moved closer to her again, and he put his hand beneath her chin, tipping her head back so that she’d meet his gaze. “Listen to me,” he demanded. “I don’t give a shit whether or not you’re a virgin. That is your business. I certainly don’t think it makes you less of a person. I don’t even know where you came up with that bullshit. I didn’t laugh at you because you haven’t had sex. I laughed because you are so damn awkward sometimes that it’s hilarious and cute.”
Rose blinked in shock. “Did you just call me cute?”
Kallias stepped away from her and leaned back against the wall, beside the counter that happened to have a coffee pot sitting on it that Rose was now eyeing hungrily. With a playful, flirty smile, he trailed his gaze down her body. “I can’t say I’m not a little surprised that you’ve managed to not have sex, though.”
She stepped forward eagerly, toward the coffee pot. Her hip brushed his as she opened the complimentary coffee packet and started preparing it. She snorted, “You say that like I’ve had a lot of opportunities or something.”
He stared down at her, amused that she was so entranced by the coffee pot that she’d yet to notice that their bodies were touching. “Haven’t you?”
“Are you serious?” she asked incredulously as she opened a pack of paper coffee cups. “Do I seem like the type of woman that men want to have sex with?”
Kallias smiled lazily. “I didn’t realize there was a type.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, if there is a type, I’m not it.”
His smile faded. “Why would you even think that?”
As she carried the coffee pot to the sink to fill with water, she listed, “Well, first, there is the fact that I’m so awkward that I can barely carry on a conversation, much less make it successfully through a date. Then, there is the fact that my idea of a wild night is finishing a six-hundred-page-book in one night. And finally, there is the problem of my unattractiveness. Does that sum it up?”
He scowled at her. “Why the hell are you so insecure?”
His sudden irate tone shocked her. She frowned at him, puzzled by his frustration. “Um, well, some psychologists say that insecurity originates from…”
“Rose,” he interrupted. He sighed. “Stop doing that.”
She blinked up at him. “Stop doing what?”
“You hide behind impersonal facts and definitions,” Kallias told her. He stepped closer to her. “I didn’t ask for what the statistics say or what psychologists say. I asked what you think. It’s not them that I want to understand. It’s you.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “I don’t know. Do you like that answer?”
“It’s better. It’s transparent, at least,” he said, shrugging.
Rose just stared at him for a moment, stunned by his answer. Aside from the low, crackling thunder that rumbled outside and the ambient noise of the television in the background, silence stretched between them for a long moment.
“And you’re not unattractive, by the way,” Kallias added. “Whoever told you that you were was just trying to hurt you. And he obviously succeeded.”
She blinked in shock. “Did you see that in my mind?”
His eyes softened. “No. I just assumed.”
She returned her attention to the coffee pot as she tried not to think about all of the awful things Ethan had said and done to her when she’d dated him. But it was no use. Her mind had already begun to revive the memories. Her chest felt tight, her breathing labored, as memories flashed through her mind.
Kallias frowned and placed his hand on her arm, turning her toward him. “Rose, your pulse is racing. What’s wrong? Did I upset you?” he asked worriedly.
She shook her head and inhaled deeply. “Just give me a minute.”
“Shit,” Kallias said suddenly, his eyes widening as he stared at her. “Shit.”
She looked up at him. “What? Why are you saying that?”
He looked away, still cursing under his breath. “I’m an idiot.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Rose said. “You seem a little intelligent.”
Talking more to himself than to her, he muttered, “No wonder your power awakened when Theron tried to rape you. It wasn’t the first time. You panicked because it was happening again. You were already traumatized. I should have realized. I should have… If I would have known, I would have never…”
Her skin paled. “You read my mind?” she interrupted.
Kallias looked at her, his eyes wide with worry and regret. “Rose…”
“You are so inconsiderate!” she snapped. “Stay out of my head!”
He reached out for her, wanting to explain or apologize or comfort her or something. But she shrugged away from him and fled to the bathroom.
—
Three short raps at the door drew her attention.
“Rose, open the door. Please,” Kallias said softly from the other side.
“Go away,” she yelled—needlessly, since he would have heard a whisper.
“Please. Just open the door,” he pleaded again, his voice quieter this time.
“No,” she snapped, hugging herself tighter. “Just go away.”
The doorknob turned and gave way with a loud crack. The door swung open to reveal Kallias standing uncomfortably in the doorway with the broken doorknob in his hand. He stared at her with a horrified expression, as if he’d found her mortally wounded, rather than just leaning against a bathtub.
Rose blinked at the broken doorknob. “I actually said go away, not break the door and come inside,” she muttered, “but oh, you know… Close enough.”
“You’re crying,” he said, as if that were the only explanation needed.
“What? I am not crying,” she scoffed. But when she ran her hand under her eyes, she felt the wetness. She scowled at her tear-covered hand. “Oh. That.”
He walked over to her, setting the doorknob on the sink. “Rose…”
“They’re not tears,” she lied. “I accidentally got toothpaste in my eyes.”
He stared blankly at her. “Toothpaste?”
She winced at her error. “Soap. Soap would have been a better lie.”
“Or dust,” he said. He tilted his head to the side, sympathetic pain flashing in his eyes. “Come here,” he murmured as he pulled her closer to him. He cradled her face in his hands, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t cry over him. He doesn’t deserve your tears. No one does.”
Rose stared up at him, into his sincere brown eyes, stunned by how much she just wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and lean her head against his chest. The two sides of her warred against each other, the side that was angry at him and wanted to push him away and the side that wanted to accept the comfort that he offered her. “I don’t usually do this. It just…caught me off guard.”
“Let me explain. Apologize. Something,” he pleaded.
“Well, I can’t kick you out now,” she muttered. “You broke the door.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his fingers absently tracing her neckline, moving soothingly up behind ears and into her hair. “I didn’t do it intentionally. Not this time. As I explained last night, reading conscious thoughts is the simplest of my abilities. It is so easy that sometimes I do it without making a conscious decision to do so. I just wonder what someone’s thinking, and suddenly, I’m in their mind.”
Rose leaned her head back as she felt her stress melting away. Whatever he was doing with his hand was relaxing her, slowing her painfully rapid heartrate. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Ever. No one knows, except Audrey and Owen.”
His hands froze suddenly, his fingers still entangled in her hair. She looked up at him, frowning, as she noticed the expression on his face. He looked…hurt. “Did you think that I would think badly of you because of this?”
She shrugged. “I dated Ethan for a long time. Most women are ready for sex after a certain amount of time, and I just wasn’t. Not with him. It felt wrong.”
“It felt wrong because he was a manipulative, abusive asshole,” he said.
She nodded. “I figured that out a little late.”
“Look at me,” Kallias snapped. When she looked up at him, the look in his eyes shocked her. He looked enraged, all of sudden, dangerously enraged, and yet somehow concerned at the same time. “You decide when and if you are ready. It doesn’t matter how long you expected him to wait. He should have waited.”
“I know. I agree,” she sighed, “but…”
“No. No buts,” he interrupted, his brows creasing with frustration. “Damn it, Rose. How can you be so kind to others but so cruel to yourself?”
She chewed on her lip and shrugged as her eyes began to burn again.
He drew her close again, wrapping his arms around her. “I really am sorry that I read your mind. But maybe it’s good that I did because someone needs to tell you that you’re wrong, that you have to stop believing the things he said. Of course he said it was your fault. Of course he told you that you were unattractive. That’s what people like him do. He did what he did because he wanted to hurt you, just like Theron does the kind of things he does because he wants to hurt people. Rose, you don’t deserve any of the terrible shit that’s happened to you.”
Rose wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thanks.”
His brows furrowed. “For what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Understanding, I guess.”
As if they seemed to simultaneously realize that they were embracing each other, they suddenly separated, awkwardly untangling their arms from around each other as they took a step back. Kallias moved several steps back from her, leaning back against the sink as she returned to her place beside the bathtub.
Suddenly feeling the need to change the tense, sad mood between them, Rose teased, “I can’t believe you’re actually being kind, for once. It’s weird.”
Kallias didn’t respond to her teasing with one of his usual quips. He didn’t respond at all, actually. It was as if he hadn’t heard her. He stared at the wall, as if he were lost in thought. A crack of thunder suddenly crashed outside.
“I could kill him, if you want.”
Rose looked at him, her bright blue eyes wide with shock. “K-kill?”
He nodded easily, as if they were discussing something normal, like the thunderstorm or the color of the walls, not the murder of her ex-boyfriend.
“Well, so much for being kind,” she muttered under her breath.
“Ethan. The one who tried to rape you,” he clarified, apparently mistaking her lack of response for confusion. “Do you want me to kill him?”
Rose shook her head in disbelief. “Are you being serious right now?”
“I’ll have to wait until after I deal with Theron, unfortunately, but yes, once this is over and I’m sure you are safe, I will kill Ethan, if you want,” he said.
She blinked at him. “If I want? You think I want you to murder him?”
“I wouldn’t call it murder,” he mused. His lip curled in disgust. “I think slaughter would be a more appropriate term. Like a butcher slaughtering a pig.”
She frowned. “But he’s not a pig. He’s a human.”
“I disagree,” Kallias said.
She sighed, “Kallias, you don’t kill humans. You told me that yourself.”
He shrugged. “I can make an exception for this one.”
She sighed in exasperation. “No, Kallias. I do not want you to murder my ex-boyfriend,” she stated, since he obviously expected a legitimate answer to that outrageous question. “Because murder is wrong, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“What he did to you was wrong,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, and you can’t fight fire with fire,” she told him.
“I don’t need fire. I have fangs and my hands,” he assured her.
She scowled. “That’s not what I meant,” she sighed, exhausted with trying to reason with a vampire that apparently only understood about forty percent of the expressions used by modern society. “You can’t right a wrong with a wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Is any of this making sense to you?”
Thankfully, he nodded this time, apparently familiar with at least one of those expressions. “I know,” he said. Then, to her surprise, he moved closer to her, invading her space again. Rose smelled the clean scent of soap on his skin, the strong scent of aftershave on his face, the peppermint toothpaste on
his breath. His brown eyes, dark and dangerous, bore into hers. “But as I have told you before, I’m not afraid to be the bad guy. I don’t want to make a right with two wrongs. I want to wrong a wrong person. You’re good. You’re always worried about doing what’s right. And I love that about you. But understand this: I don’t mind being the bad guy if it means that assholes like him can’t hurt you anymore.”
Rose stared at him, stunned by the sincerity in his voice. Even her older brother Zach had never been this passionate about protecting her. But then, she guessed that was just who Kallias was. He protected people…because he cared about them, no matter how much he liked to pretend he didn't. She sighed, and her voice quieter this time, she reiterated, “I don’t want you to kill him.”
“Okay. Fine. I won’t kill him. I will just hurt him,” Kallias compromised.
“You’ll hurt him,” she repeated slowly, as if she were not sure she’d heard him correctly. She suddenly started laughing. “You’ll beat up my ex-boyfriend?”
He didn’t seem to understand why she was laughing. “When I was human, the punishment for attempted rape was castration,” he began ominously.
Rose immediately stopped laughing, her eyes widening.
“Since I’m not comfortable with cutting off another man’s balls, punching him in the face until he is unrecognizable will have to do,” he finished.
She continued to stare at him blankly, completely speechless after that statement. After several moments, she just held up her hands and walked past him, shaking her head in disbelief. She didn't speak until she reached the door of the bathroom. Then, she turned back toward him, an amused smile curving at her lips. “I am going to overlook this insanity. Because that’s what this is, by the way. Insanity,” she muttered, pointing at him. “But I’m going to ignore it, just this once, because I know this is your weird, messed up way of showing me that you care.”
Kallias followed her out of the bathroom and into the room, watching as she perched herself on top of the bed and sat cross-legged. “So, is that a no?”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 48