Page 25 of Little Fangs

“Supermarket,” he said, completely distracted. “I haven’t been in one for—years.”

“Then consider me on a mission to take you there,” I said. “Everything you haven’t been able to do, you’ll get to do, I promise.”

His eyes widened, the waterline filled. He wiped them before he could cry. “Thank you,” he said with a sniffle.

Part of me wondered if the feelings growing in me were because of some supernatural ability he had as a vampire, or whether they were really growing in me. I was falling for him in a way that wanted him to have everything, but I didn’t want him to leave me once he got it all—I wanted him to stay.

I think I needed him to stay.

Work gave me purpose, protecting the forest, but Micah gave me another purpose, and it, in more ways than one, got blood pumping hard through me.

9. MICAH

I was glad we didn’t stay near the manor for too long, although it looked completely different in the day and less menacing. Part of me wondered if I could walk up to it, smash the front window, and reach in for my things, but the longer that thought went on, the more I remembered what my brothers had been capable of.

Harlan took me to the supermarket, and it was another place I hadn’t been in a long time. Recalling it, the last place I went to buy things from had probably been a gas station on a trip out of town with Ludmila.

He let me grab another cart and fill it to my heart’s content, and so I did, except I remembered I couldn’t eat it all like I had the other night. Sometimes my hunger was so overwhelming that I thought actual food could help me—when it didn’t.

I added a whole crate of apple juice and grabbed so many of the pastes and things they advertised for babies. I brushed it off as telling him it was better for my stomach, but it just made my inner little happy. He didn’t know about that. Yet.

Harlan sent me back to the truck so he could pay again. I knew he didn’t want me looking at how much everything was, or maybe he was hiding me from people who might recognize me. Assuming my brothers had handed out wanted posters with my face on them. Which I doubt they did, but I didn’t know what they’d do to run me out of town—especially since they knew I hadn’t left.

It was strange to feel like everything was a new experience, especially given how old I was in human years, and how much life experience I should’ve had. It made me feel stupid at times, like I couldn’t do things, but I also wasn’t even human anymore, so I couldn’t just exist like everyone else did and found so easy to do.

“What’s up with your face?” Harlan asked in that rough charming way. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, as if appearing from thin air

“When did you—”

“You’ve been staring off into space,” he said, touching my cheek with his intensely warm hand. “Come on, we’re gonna go back to the house and make a plan.”

I zoned off in the truck, my brain playing scenarios over about what might happen if they found me—specifically, what might happen to Harlan. The last thing I wanted was for any harm to come to him. He was a bit of a grump, sure, but that didn’t warrant anyone attacking him.

We arrived at the cabin, and Misty was sitting at the front door, waiting for us to get back.

Harlan laughed. “I told you to stay inside. How’d you even get out?”

She didn’t answer, not to him anyway. She came over to me as I got out of the truck and made sure to rub herself on my legs. “Aw,” I cooed.

“You head inside, and go relax, I’ll bring everything in,” he said.

“But I’m—”

Harlan stared at me, angling an eyebrow. “Be a good boy and do as I say.”

My knees could’ve buckled under the phrase. “Yes, Sir,” I said, biting my lip a little and giving him a two-finger forehead salute.

He threw me the keys, and I caught them in one hand.

“Is that you—or the—”

“I’ve always had fast reflexes,” I said, but even so, I wanted to impress him.

Inside, I went and sat myself on the comfy sofa. It swallowed me up. A comfort my body hadn’t felt, but had craved, to be grabbed in that way, consumed almost. And Misty helped, sitting her heavy Maine coon cat self on my chest and digging out the old rabbit plush she’d scratch to hell and back. It was sweet that she kept giving it to me.

Harlan laughed when he walked in, carrying two boxes stacked in his arms, his plaid shirt sleeves rolled up to expose the sexy, slutty pump of his veins in his arms. I stared at them trying to keep my carnal hunger at bay.

“I’ve got a surprise for you in here,” he said.