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A blond guy with a narrow face and equally narrow shoulders peeks his head out from behind one of the shelves.
“Sorry,” he says, cheeks flushed bright red. “Dropped something.”
“No problem, man,” Ryker says.
He settles in again, and while he does it, the collar of his shirt moves, and my eyes zero in on the point where his neck and shoulder meet. Before I can think and not do it, my fingers are pulling the collar lower.
I stare at the angry red mark. Flabbergasted. Bewildered. Completely astonished.
It’s not even a… It’s not even a hickey.
It’s a fucking bite mark.
A full-on bite mark.
Like something angry and wild tried to gnaw off the flesh from his bone.
I stare.
And blink.
And stare.
“Yeah,” Ryker says, glancing down at his shoulder. “That was a lot of fun to explain at practice.”
He sounds relatively casual about it, but the back of his neck is covered with a faint flush. A flush my dick finds extremely interesting.
This is getting ridiculous.
And for the first time it really hits me how dangerous this is. How, if I truly let him become an obsession, I will be the one who ends up fucked up over this.
I let go of his shirt.
“You didn’t think to somehow cover that shit up?” I grumble.
“I didn’t know it was there until it was loudly pointed out to me in the locker room.” He frowns at me. “What’s your problem? You’re not the one who’ll get shit for this for the foreseeable future.”
“Unless somebody finds out about this.” I gesture between the two of us.
“How are they going to find out? It’s not like I’m going to tell. As far as they’re concerned, I was hooking up with a chick who has really sharp teeth.”
Acting before thinking strikes for the third time in so many minutes. It makes me cross my arms over my chest and glare at him.
“I’m not a chick.”
He meets my gaze with the kind of tired exasperation people have about them when they’re forced to argue with somebody completely unreasonable.
“It’s not about who you are. It’s about what they think. Did you want me to correct them? Or… what? Should I be all, ‘The hickey? Nah, that was my husband.’”
My heartbeat is way too loud in my ears. And somebody’s sucked all the air out of the room.
“Oh, fuck you,” I snap, this close to hyperventilating. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people who have all sorts of positive feelings associated with the word ‘husband,’ people for whom that one word makes them feel wanted and loved and cared for. I’m clearly not one of them. Mostly, I’m slightly nauseated and a lot terrified.
I did not think this thing through at all. Yeah, okay, my tuition’s paid, but… I’m legally tied to another person. Why this knowledge suddenly hits me so hard now and not while we were doing the deed and tying the knot is anybody’s guess.
I suppose I didn’t really let myself think about it before. Too desperate to get the situation with my tuition taken care of.
Well, I’m not too desperate now, and now there are papers that tie me to Ryker, and it doesn’t matter that it’s fake or whatever. I’m suddenly very aware that I’ve voluntarily put myself into a situation where I’m once again disposable. Where, at some point, there’ll be divorce papers, and he’ll want to officially untether himself from me, and no matter how fucking illogical it is and no matter how little sense it makes, I can already feel the rejection.
