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“Yeah, okay. Thanks, friend.”

“My pleasure, friend. Good night.”

He hung up and leaned back against the couch, eyes closed. Then he sprang to his feet before he could fall asleep that way and regret it later. He’d deal with Jacqueline tomorrow. He’d tell Leslie when the time was right. He’d make it all work out. Tomorrow.

Twenty

“Don’t let me win,” Leslie said as she faced her boyfriend across the sparring mat.

“Does that sound like me?”

No, come to think of it. She shrugged. “Just making sure we’re clear. If I beat you, it’s for real.”

Dressed in black athletic pants and tank top, unexpectedly attractive when barefoot, Ryker had spent the last half hour schooling her on the common moves used by sparring vampires. She had underestimated her ability to learn and apply the concepts, but Ryker hadn’t. He’d become even more attractive when she realized what a good teacher he was—never patronizing, clear in his explanations, willing to challenge her, and happily encouraging every time she nailed a new skill.

“Ryker trivia,” he said. “I’ve never let anyone beat me at anything in my entire life.”

She laughed. “Leslie trivia. I totally have.”

“Oh really?”

“Mostly in middle school. Hazard of going to school with humans and not wanting them to hate me.”

He gave the grimace she was becoming used to whenever she mentioned adapting herself to her surroundings. She’d been in Virginia less than twenty-four hours, but already his strong opinions on the topic made more sense than they had yesterday. The gym was another example of why.

Human gyms were intolerable for vampires: sweat and disinfectant, air conditioning, painfully loud music. Ryker’s gym smelled metallic and clean, but even the cleaners used were scent-free. The thermostat was similar to Claire’s bar, humid and hot and invigorating. The music volume was so modulated, most humans probably wouldn’t notice music was playing at all. And the vampires who weight-trained, sparred, climbed the rock wall—all of them did so at full speed, full strength, their eyes glinting jewel tones. When Leslie excused herself to the restroom, she had discovered a vending machine set between the two restrooms. It was stocked with blood bags.

“You can slake here,”she’d blurted when she returned to Ryker, as if he might not know.

He’d nodded.“Have you ever worked out so hard you got thirsty early?”

“Um, that’s a thing?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

She wondered if she would ever run out of surprise for all things vampire in Ryker’s town.

Now she widened her stance and got ready to lose her first sparring match.

“First move?” Ryker offered.

Ooh. Yes, please. She’d do her best even if she had no chance at the win. She launched three feet off the mat and spun her body midair, aiming her bare foot at his chest. He dodged. She kept up the onslaught, throwing kicks and chops at him, darting in and out, determined to get hold of an arm or swipe a leg outfrom under him. When her heel grazed his ribs, she let out a cry of triumph that didn’t sound like her.

Then she landed on her back as Ryker did the leg-sweeping move she’d been trying for.

He didn’t pin her, though he could have, so she leaped to her feet and came at him again. The match lasted about ten minutes, and then she was down on the mat, and Ryker was straddling her hips, pinning her arms to her sides as she tried to wriggle out from under him.

“I don’t concede,” she said.

“You don’t have to, technically.”

He was grinning so hard, creases formed around his eyes, and she saw for a moment how Laurence had gained his own smile lines and how they would look on his son in a few decades or a century.

And then she saw her boyfriend looking as he did now but with a tattooed ring finger, popping the cork off a champagne bottle so that it fizzed onto the grass, laughing with victory toward the sky.

“Leslie?”

She grabbed the neck of his tank top in both hands and pulled him into a kiss. He scooped her up and cradled her back, cupped her neck and twined his fingers up into her hair under her ponytail. Her bare toes curled against the mat, and she fisted his shirt tighter and drew him as close as she could manage.