Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead Page B

again.”
    Glancing around at the empty store, thinking how no customers had shown up during our visit, I suddenly felt the need to give him some business. “Let me buy some of that tea before I go.”
    He gave me an indulgent look, his dark brown eyes amused like he knew the game I played.
    â€œI always took you for more of a black tea advocate—or at least an admirer of caffeine.”
    â€œHey, even I like to shake things up once in a while. Besides, it was good…in an herbal, decaffeinated sort of way.”
    â€œI’ll pass your compliments on to my friend. She makes the blends, and I sell them for her.”
    â€œA lady friend, huh?”
    â€œJust a friend, Miss Kincaid.”
    He walked over to a shelf behind the register where several varieties of tea lay. Approaching the counter to pay, I admired some of the jewelry under its glass. One piece in particular caught my eye, a three-stranded choker of peach-colored, freshwater pearls, occasionally intermixed with copper beads or pieces of sea green glass. An ankh made of copper hung as its centerpiece.
    â€œIs this from another of your local artisans?”
    â€œAn old friend in Tacoma made it.” Erik reached into the case and took the choker out for me, laying it on the counter. I ran my hands over the fine, smooth pearls, each one slightly irregular in shape. “He mixed some Egyptian influence in with it, I think, but he wanted to sort of invoke the spirit of Aphrodite and the sea, create something the ancient priestesses might have worn.”
    â€œThey wore nothing so fine,” I murmured, turning over the necklace, noting the high price on its tag. I found myself speaking without conscious thought. “And many of the ancient Greek cities did have Egyptian influence. Ankhs appeared on Cyprian coins, as did Aphrodite.”
    Touching the copper of the ankh reminded me of another necklace, a necklace long since lost under the dust of time. That necklace had been simpler: only a string of beads etched with tiny ankhs. But my husband had brought it to me the morning of our wedding, sneaking up to our house just after dawn in a gesture uncharacteristically bold for him.
    I had chastised him for the indiscretion. “What are you doing? You’re going to see me this afternoon…and then every day after that!”
    â€œI had to give you these before the wedding.” He held up the string of beads. “They were my mother’s. I want you to have them, to wear them today.”
    He leaned forward, placing the beads around my neck. As his fingers brushed my skin, I felt something warm and tingly run through my body. At the tender age of fifteen, I hadn’t exactly understood such sensations, though I was eager to explore them. My wiser self today recognized them as the early stirrings of lust, and…well, there had been something else there too. Something else that I still didn’t quite comprehend. An electric connection, a feeling that we were bound into something bigger than ourselves. That our being together was inevitable.
    â€œThere,” he’d said, once the beads were secure and my hair brushed back into place. “Perfect.”
    He said nothing else after that. He didn’t need to. His eyes told me all I needed to know, and I shivered. Until Kyriakos, no man had ever given me a second glance. I was Marthanes’ too-tall daughter after all, the one with the sharp tongue who didn’t think before speaking. (Shape-shifting would eventually take care of one of those problems but not the other.) But Kyriakos had always listened to me and watched me like I was someone more, someone tempting and desirable, like the beautiful priestesses of Aphrodite who still carried on their rituals away from the Christian priests.
    I wanted him to touch me then, not realizing just how much until I caught his hand suddenly and unexpectedly. Taking it, I placed it around my waist and pulled him to