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Sex can wait. I want my present.
I hold out my hand. “Gimme and I promise I’ll forgive you.”
Ryker chuckles again, pinching my chin before he scoots away to climb out of the bed. I must’ve been right before when I guessed he’d already stopped by the townhouse because he heads right to his dresser, pulling a small, brown jewelry box out of the top drawer.
Hmm. Boldly telling myself that sex can wait might’ve been a little hasty there, Gem. I’m not so sure what deserves my attention more: the box cradled in his palm, or the gorgeous erection jutting from between his thick thighs.
Decisions, decisions…
Then Ryker plops the box into my outstretched hand and I decide that I’ll get to his cock in a second.
Yeah. Present first.
“Thank you.”
A quick scowl forms on his handsome face. “Don’t thank me. Bringing my mate a present is the least I can do.”
He likes to refer to me as his mate, as if he thinks that, if I hear it enough times, eventually it’ll just be true.
This time, I let it go. I’m not going to argue with him when I’ve got his gift in my hand, his jizz in my pussy, and his scent all over every inch of my skin.
Instead, I open the box, anotherthank youhalfway to my lips if only because I know it’ll needle Ryker and, okay, it’s fun to needle him. But then I peek inside, and the bedroom light glints off of the golden chain nestled on the bed of cotton, and my words get caught again.
But it’s not the chain that’s made me speechless. It’s the familiar-looking charm hanging off the middle of the chain that has me gaping at his gift.
It’s not a real fang. Not like the fang that Aleks gave me, and that I abandoned back in the apartment with him. It looks like one, though. Just shorter. Thicker. Still, it’s a canine—acaninefang.
Ryker’s canine fang.
Oh, Luna.
I don’t have to ask what this is. Though I recognize the fang as Ryker’s, and it’s cast in gold instead of being a real tooth, it’s so clearly a replacement for the charmed fang that Aleks gave me more than a year ago that I don’t know what to say.
Somehow, “What the fuck were you thinking?,” probably won’t go over too well.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still jealous over the relationship—even if there never really was one—that he had with Trish Danvers. But that? That’s nothing compared to the rivalry between Aleks and Ryker.
It doesn’t matter that I told both males that, if I have to, I’ll always choose Ryker—and this necklace proves it.
“Um. Thank you,” I tell him again. This time, I’m not even trying to needle him. I just honestly can’t think of anything else to say.
His dark gold gaze goes bright like brilliant molten lava as he peers down at me. He’s still standing at the side of the bed, the lamplight silhouetting him, and I can sense the anticipation coming off of him in waves when he asks me, “Aren’t you going to put it on?”
Since I also can’t think of any valid reason why I shouldn’t, I gingerly lift the necklace out of the box. Dropping the box onto the bed, I unclasp the chain, loop it around my neck, and fasten it. The golden canine settles against my chest.
It’s so much heavier than Aleks’s fang, and I refuse to read any symbolism into that.
“It looks good,” I say, patting it.
Nope. Still weighs a freaking ton.
“I had it made for you special, sweetheart. I figure, since you gave up the parasite’s fang, maybe you’d rather wear one of mine. You know. A fang from the male that has a right to claim you.”
I almost point out that I had no idea what wearing Aleks’s fang meant until Ryker explained it to me. I always believed that it was a mark of protection, that the other vamps in Muncie would know that I was protected by one of their own.
How was I supposed to know that it meant that Aleks thought of me as his mate?
Something tells me that that’s the wrong way to react to his gift, though.
