Rose scowled worriedly at the blonde vampire. “Kallias, could you please tell your friend to stop staring at me like I’m Thanksgiving dinner?”
Erik grinned. “More like a Thanksgiving feast.”
Her eyes widened. “Kallias,” she whined.
“Erik,” Kallias said flatly. “Cool it.”
“Traitor,” Erik pouted.
“She lives in a small town. You know that small towns aren’t exactly the ideal places for vampires to live. People start to recognize us too easily, notice what we do, notice that we don’t age…” Kallias said in answer to Erik’s question. “Most vampires aren’t reckless enough to take that kind of a chance. I doubt she’d ever even encountered a vampire before Theron took interest in her.”
Erik nodded thoughtfully. “Have you ever traveled?” he asked Rose.
“Just for study trips,” Rose said. “I’ve been to Greece twice already.”
“I’m sure she encountered at least one vampire while in Greece,” Erik said to Kallias. “I can’t imagine that any vampire would willingly pass up the chance to taste her. I know I wouldn’t have…back when I fed on humans.”
Kallias frowned. “Are you suggesting that someone has protected her?”
“I’m only suggesting that, for some reason, no one touched her until Theron, which is shocking, considering how appetizing she smells,” Erik stated.
“Hey, I’m right here,” Rose said, waving her hands wildly. “You know…the person you’re discussing like she’s one of the five main food groups?”
Erik shrugged. “Technically, you’re the only food group for us, so…”
“Shut up,” Kallias warned, staring pointedly at the top of the stairs.
Almost on cue, a small, brunette woman descended the stairs, her black heels clacking against each wooden step. Her choppy brown hair hung around her chin. She wore a red, silk shirt that formed to her figure and a short, black skirt that barely reached her thighs. She stopped just inches from Erik, flashing a flirty smile at him. The top of her head barely reached his upper arms. “Hey,” she said.
Erik flashed that charming smile at her. “Hello, gorgeous.”
The woman’s hazel eyes darted toward Kallias and widened. Her gaze lustfully traveled up and down the length of his body. “Oh. And…hey…”
“What? One’s not enough for you?” Rose muttered under her breath.
All six eyes in the room suddenly shifted toward her. The woman looked irritated. Erik looked amused. And Kallias simply looked curious.
Rose blushed. “I…uh… I don’t know why I said that.”
The woman glared at her. “You’re the woman that walked in on us.”
Her blush deepened, and she fidgeted nervously. “Yeah.”
“Erik,” Kallias called, gesturing impatiently toward the female.
“But…” he whined, glancing back and forth between the angry woman and Rose. He sighed disappointedly, “Come on, babe. Let me drive you home.”
The woman glanced back at him, that bright, flirty smile returning to her face. “If you want, I could call in to work and tell them that I’m sick,” she offered, trailing her fingers across his chest. “Then, we could spend all day together.”
Erik didn’t show the slightest bit of unease. He wrapped his hand around hers and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the back of her hand and smiled. “I would love that, but unfortunately, there’s something I must do during the day.”
Kallias rolled his eyes impatiently. “Yes, and that day starts very soon.”
“Oh,” Erik said, his eyes widening in alarm. He motioned toward the door with a tilt of his head. “Let me get you home. I’m afraid we’ll have to hurry.”
“You’re not going to introduce me to your friends?” the woman asked.
“What part of hurry does she not understand?” Kallias complained rudely.
Erik seemed equally peeved, but he didn’t voice his frustration. He gestured toward them. “This is Kallias, my best friend. And that is Rose, his lover.”
Rose sighed irritably, “Stop calling me that. I am not his lover.”
Erik grinned at her. “You could have fooled me.”
“Aren’t you going to tell them my name?” the woman asked him.
Erik looked at her, his face suddenly blank. “Er…yeah…” he stammered. “Guys, this is a beautiful woman called…er…” He glanced at Kallias.
Kallias scowled at him. “Anne. Her name is Anne. Now, take her home.”
The woman frowned at him. “How do you know my name?”
“Erik told me your name when we first arrived,” Kallias lied.
Erik mouthed, “Thank you,” to Kallias while the woman wasn’t looking.
“Oh,” the woman said. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and smiled shyly at Erik. “For a minute, I was worried that you’d forgotten my name.”
Erik scratched his head, mussing his wavy blonde hair. “No. No. Never,” he said, wincing a little. He pulled her toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go.”
After they left, pulling the front door closed behind them, Rose scowled at Kallias. “He had sex with her, and he didn’t even know her name?”
“That’s Erik for you,” Kallias muttered, shrugging. He gathered the bags into his hands and headed toward the stairs. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
Rose followed him up the stairway, their footsteps echoing against the thick hardwood floors. He slowed his steps, letting her fall into step beside him.
He studied her curiously. “Why did you say that to the woman?”
She shifted her gaze toward the floor. “I don’t know what you mean.”
One corner of his lips lifted. “You just…seemed a little jealous.”
Rose felt like someone had just thrown her face in a furnace. “What? I wasn’t jealous. That’s ridiculous. Why would I be jealous? I wasn’t jealous.”
He chuckled at her rapid, high-pitched rambling. “Oh.”
“I wasn’t,” she insisted. “I don’t know why I said that, but I wasn’t jealous.”
He laughed. “Okay. If you say so.”
Embarrassment burning in her cheeks, Rose stared at the floor, watching her shoes hit the hardwood, because it was easier than looking at him at the moment. Her long red hair fell around her face, obscuring him from her peripheral vision. She pulled nervously at her T-shirt, suddenly aware of how frazzled she looked after the car ride. Just like the walls in the foyer, the walls on either side of them were built of stone and empty of any decoration. The stone and hardwood reminded Rose of a rental cabin, comfortable yet impersonal.
“How long have you lived here?” Rose asked curiously.
“Not long,” Kallias answered. “Maybe a century or so.”
“Not long?” she scoffed. She laughed. “You do realize that is longer than I will even live, right? Even if I reach my projected life expectancy. But of course, with all these vampires trying to kill me, I’ll probably be dead by tomorrow.”
He stopped abruptly and turned toward her, his tall, muscular body suddenly blocking her way. “Why do you make jokes about things like that?”
She frowned at him, stunned by the raw, unknown emotions she saw in his brown eyes. She could see anger in his expression, but something else, too, something more. “I don’t know. I guess…because it’s easier than being afraid.”
His eyes flickered with a hint of emotion again before he looked away. He turned and continued to walk toward the end of the hallway with Rose trailing closely behind him. She considered stopping him and demanding that he tell her what was bothering him, but she knew that he’d never answer her. The walls that Kallias had built up around his emotions would take a long time to break down.
At the end of the upstairs hallway, there were three wooden doors, two directly across from each other and another one at the farthest end of the hallway, between the other two doors. He shouldered open the door along the right wall.
“This will be your r
oom,” he said as he dropped the bags on the floor.
Rose followed him into the room. She froze in the doorway, gaping at the sheer size of the room. This one bedroom was two or three times the size of her entire apartment. A large canopy-style bed covered in blue quilts set in the center of the room. Against the farthest wall, where one might expect to see a window, was an oversized, dark, wooden desk. Dressers lined the rest of the wall.
Noticing her silence, he looked at her. “If you don’t like it, I can…”
“No, no, it’s fine. Of course it’s fine,” she assured him. “It’s just…big.”
“Is it?” he asked obliviously. “I suppose it is the largest guest room in the house. It’s the same size as my room and Erik’s room.” He pointed toward a slender wooden door across from the bed. “And it has its own bathroom.”
She looked at the door, blinking in surprise. “Wow. I’ve never had my own bathroom before. I’m not sure I even know what to do with it,” she joked.
She straightened as she felt the zipper of his leather jacket brush against her elbow, followed by the warmth of his body brushing against her back.
His lips tilted in a teasing smile as he said, closer to her ear than necessary, “Well, if you take off your clothes, I could show you how the bathtub works.”
She started laughing. “Nice try.”
He grinned. “I thought it was one of my most charming lines yet.”
“Oh, yeah. So charming,” she said sarcastically.
As he watched her laugh, Kallias once again found himself enthralled by her bright, playful smile. Without thinking, Kallias lifted his hand to trace her lips, the soft, full lips that were curved in the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. She froze as his fingers brushed against her mouth, and her bright blue eyes darkened and fluttered closed as he traced the curve of her mouth. Kallias remembered all too well how perfectly those lips had molded to his own lips, how soft and warm they had felt against his mouth. When her sparkling azure eyes reopened, wide and curious, he sighed and reluctantly stepped back, putting space between them.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “My room is right next to yours, and Erik’s room is the one across from yours,” he said suddenly, breaking the tense silence. His voice sounded breathless. “If you need me, just come to my room.”
Rose blinked up at him, still trying to recover from the sensation of his touch on her lips. She remembered passing other doors along each side of the hallway as they’d come to this one. “How many rooms does this house have?”
“Bedrooms? Seven, I think,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
“Why so many? Do you bring a lot of humans home?” she asked.
“No. Never,” Kallias said, staring at her. “You’re the only one.”
Rose fell silent for several moments, just watching him curiously.
A wide smile suddenly curved at his lips, so wide that she thought she glimpsed the flash of his fangs. His brown eyes danced with excitement. “Come. There is another room I’d like to show you. I think you will really like this one.”
“Oh?” she said as she followed him back out into the hallway.
He grinned at her again and then led the way down the stairs. He opened one of the doors in the foyer, revealing that it opened into another hallway. Fewer doors lined this hall, with one on the end, next to the door to the foyer and a one just a few feet past the foyer. As they continued down the hallway, Kallias slapped one door with his palm as they passed and said, “That’s another bathroom.”
Rose scowled at the door that they’d already passed, nearly jogging to keep up with his brisk pace. “Slow down! And what about the other two rooms?”
“Kitchen and living room,” he said, as if those rooms weren’t important.
The end of the downstairs hallway seemed to descend into steps, perhaps leading to a basement, but Rose couldn’t see far enough to know for sure. Aside from that, there was only one other door along that hallway, an oversized wooden door that apparently led into a very large room, at least half the width of the house.
Kallias stopped in front of the door and leaned against it, as if he were hiding what was inside the room. He smiled excitedly at her. “Are you ready?”
Although an excited Kallias was certainly an amusing sight, the curiosity was killing her. “Are you trying to kill me with anticipation? Because there are easier ways. What is it? A room full of unimaginable amounts of coffee?”
His smile faded. “Uh, no. We keep the coffee in the kitchen.”
“Dang, I had my fingers crossed for a coffee swimming pool,” she said.
His lips twitched. “I’m sure you will find this just as pleasing.”
Rose waved her hand impatiently. “I can die of old age, you know.”
He scowled at that. Then, sighing, he leaned against the door, allowing his weight to push open the heavy, oversized door. He held the door open and gestured for her to go ahead. Rose froze in the doorway, her jaw dropping in awe.
After watching her stand there for several moments with her mouth ajar, Kallias leaned toward her, his lips near her ear, and said, “You can go inside.”
“You have a lot of books,” she said. The understatement of the century.
“I have been alive for a lot of years,” he said. Another understatement.
She’d thought the guest room was huge, but this library made the guest room look like a closet. The room was almost half of the size of the house, nearly the size of a small gymnasium. Like the other rooms in the house, the floors were dark hardwoods, and the small percentage of the walls that had been left bare were stone. However, unlike the other rooms, these walls were mostly obscured by floor-to-ceiling bookcases that covered three of the four walls in the room, each bookcase full of countless books. In the center of the room, the only part of the room left empty, three black leather sofas set catty-cornered to each other.
Kallias leaned against the wall and crossed his arms as he watched her. Her bright blue eyes looked wide and round as she gawked at the library. Her red hair flowed down her back, brighter than usual against her black shirt. While her loose-fitting T-shirt hid most of her upper body, her blue jeans hugged her hips. He couldn’t stop staring at her. “So, do you like it?” he asked after a moment.
She looked at him as if he were stupid. “It’s a library. Of course I like it.”
He laughed and pushed away from the wall. He strode toward her. He stopped behind her, his front brushing against her back, his lips near her ear. “It looks like I can impress you, after all,” he teased, a flirty smile curving at his lips.
As Rose leaned her head back to look up at him, she found herself leaning back against him, her back pressing hard against his front. His arms came up around her stomach, almost instinctually, and suddenly, it felt as if they were a normal couple, comfortably embracing each other. “This is yours?” she asked.
He snorted, “Well, it’s certainly not Erik’s. He despises reading.”
“I’m surprised,” she admitted. “I didn’t expect you to have a library.”
He let go of her and stepped around her, heading toward a nearby bookcase. He frowned at her. “Why does that surprise you? Do I seem illiterate?”
She followed him, still wearing that cute smile that affected him so much. “I just find it hard to picture big, tough Kallias curled up on the couch with a book.”
He turned toward her, smiling. He raised an eyebrow at her, challenging her. “What do you think I did when I was human? As a profession, I mean.”
Rose shrugged. “How would I know?”
“Ah, come on,” he chided with a playful smirk pulling at his lips. “You know Greek history. You’re intelligent. Make an educated guess. Humor me.”
Her eyes narrowed at the challenge. “Fine,” she sighed. “Soldier?”
His smirk widened, as if he’d just beaten her in a game. “Wrong.”
“Aww,” she pouted. “I was close, though, right?”
She crossed her arms. “Okay. So, what did you do, then?”
His brows furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out how to explain it. “I…uh… I learned, and I taught. I was similar to a modern professor, I suppose.”
Her eyes widened. “You were a Greek philosopher?”
“Yes,” he said, “which involved vigorous reading, by the way.”
“Like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle?!” she squeaked.
He scowled at her. “I wasn’t famous, Rose. I mean, the job description was similar, but that’s like comparing an amateur songwriter to Bach or Mozart.”
“Yeah, but still,” she said, her eyebrows lifting. “You’re serious?”
“Why is this so shocking to you? Do I not seem intelligent?” he asked.
She giggled, “No, you seem very intelligent. You just don’t seem nerdy.”
Kallias snorted, “What threw you off? Was it my irresistible sexiness?”
Rose burst into hysterical laughter. She laughed so hard that it made her stomach sore. “No, I think it was the muscles, actually,” she teased back.
He chuckled. “Is that what made you guess that I was a soldier?”
She shook her head. “No, I mean, you seem really skilled in combat.”
He nodded. “My father had me training with a blunt sword before I could talk. And of course, I’ve had plenty of time to perfect my skills since then.”
“Also,” she said, suddenly serious, “you’re fearless. And kind. And brave. And protective. And selfless. Qualities that I imagine would be important in war.”
He froze, obviously caught off guard by her response. “You’re mistaken,” he stated, shifting his gaze toward the floor. “I am not kind or selfless.”
Kallias heard her soft footsteps before she reached him. She stopped, standing before him with that defiant spark in her blue eyes. He watched her in shock as she reached up and took his face in her hands, pulling him closer to her.
“I’m not going to give up, no matter how many times you say things like that,” Rose insisted. “I will make you see the good in yourself, if it’s the last thing I do.”
Kallias just stared at her, stunned by her actions and declaration. He reached up, covering her hands with his. He dragged her hands down to his chest.
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 52