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Luca looked like someone screwing up his courage. “Terrific. It’s a date.”
A pack date.
I crouched down to kiss him, slow and sweet, then straightened with the box in my hands and grinned at him. “I look forward to it. But right now, I’m going to go give Emiel his present, and see if it’ll make him blush.”
FORTY-SIX
Mia
EMIEL WAS ANOTHER ONEof the pack who didn’t sleep much, and I’d heard him moving around in the converted attic bedroom when I’d come up to the second floor. For that reason, I didn’t feel bad about trotting upstairs to fluster him.
Unsurprisingly, a light was shining through from the open landing, confirming that he was still awake. Princess the Guard Kitten poked her head through the railing as I approached the top, letting out a meow of greeting.
“Hi, Beautiful,” I replied. “Do I have to answer three riddles before I’m granted access to the kingdom?”
“Nah,” Emiel called from somewhere out of my line of sight. “Might need to scratch behind her ears first, though. Hi, Mia.”
“Hi, Emiel,” I called back, mounting the last few steps and leaning down to offer the required kitty scritches. “Sorry to bother you so late.”
He was propped up in the bed with a book hanging loosely in his hand, dressed in a white T-shirt and the gray sweatpants that I found so incredibly distracting. I felt a little tingle between my legs—the first hint that my impetuous idea to deliver his gift might not’ve been the most brilliant decision I’d ever made.
“Don’t be,” he said. “What’s up? Everything okay?”
I hated the fact that he had to ask. What would need to happen before we could all start to assume that unexpected things weregood,rather than bad?
“Everything’s great,” I said warmly, vowing to make this interaction the first of many happier ones... even if it left me with a mild case of lady-omega blue balls afterward. “Luca got that gift he threatened you with a while back, and I asked him if I could be the one to deliver it.”
“Christmas ain’t ’til Wednesday.” Emiel frowned, sitting up. “And we don’t really do anything for it, anyway.”
I gasped, playing up my shock. “Youdon’t? Oh, we aresototally changing that. But this isn’t a Christmas gift. It’s just a gift-gift. And even though I want to see if you’ll blush, you have to promise me that if you don’t like it, you’ll say so and not worry about hurting anyone’s feelings.”
He marked his page in the book and set it aside on the nightstand, giving me a sideways glance. “Well, now you’ve got me all worried.”
I snorted, inviting myself over to his bed and flopping down on the edge. “You beat people up in cage fights for stress relief. I think you’ll be okay, big guy. Seriously, Luca wants to help you out, and so do I. But if we called it wrong and it’s not a help, it’s no big deal.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and held his hand out for the unmarked brown cardboard box. I gave it to him with a smile, wondering when the last time someone had spontaneously gotten him a gift might have been.
He kept half an eye on me, and half an eye on the box, as though he expected it to contain an exploding snake-in-a-can gag or something. The object inside was wrapped in plastic, obscuring its details. He pulled it out and stared at it in confusion for a moment, then he tipped the open box up. A smallpamphlet fluttered free, so he set the other stuff aside in favor of skimming over the text.
“It’s a knotting sleeve,” I told him. “Luca said it’s made so alphas can orgasm from things other than intercourse, and still be comfortable afterward. I think he thought it might be useful if you wanted to, uh,experiment.”
The heat kindling low in my belly wasn’t getting any better—and it definitely wasn’t helped when Emiel’s eyes went wide and flew to mine, then immediately darted away. Spicy citrus thickened in the air.
“Oh,” he said, his rumbling voice barely audible.