Page 56 of Eye Candy

I thought he would return to the bathroom to change, but nope. Fang yanked the towel off him, exposing himself to the room, and started to change as if he didn’t have a lone audience member.

Heat crept up to my cheeks, and I had to turn away, not letting myself get a lingering view of his naked body. “You could’ve given me a warning,” I huffed, wanting to sound irritated but failing.

“Oh, right. Princess, I’m naked.”

“Not now! Before, when you—never mind. Just get dressed.”

“As you wish, Princess.”

With my back to him, I endeavored not to picture the way he’d looked when that towel had dropped. “Why do you keep calling me that, anyway? I’m no princess.” And I never would be. A princess who needed someone to save her from all the evil forces that wanted to do her harm was something I never wanted to be.

Although, maybe it was closer to reality than I wanted.

“With that hair, and now those eyes, you are a candy princess to me. The ruler of all that’s sugar. I really could eat you up.” He said all of that so seriously, I knew he wasn’t lying or poking fun at me. He meant every single word, and that’s why I still blushed, even when Fang was fully clothed.

He came over to me, moving to stand before me, still wearing that telltale smirk. He always seemed to smirk like that when he was looking at me, for whatever reason. “Shall we sitand discuss what I can do for you?” He gently took my left hand in his, running his fingertips along my palm, sending butterflies aflutter in my stomach.

Well, that was why I was here in the first place. All I could do was nod, and Fang led me to the couch in the living room area. He left me to retrieve a sketchbook on his desk and sat beside me moments after that.

“Now, this was my first thought,” Fang said, flipping the sketchbook open and showing me the drawing gracing the page.

A girl’s hand, drawn delicately, but the hand itself wasn’t the main focus of the page. No, that honor belonged to the metal fingers making up the pinky and the ring finger. It looked to have joints where they should bend, along with rounded tips to mimic fingertips. Two small runs of metal were attached to the lowest parts of the fingers, running over the top of the hand to a piece that curled around the wrist in a bracelet-like fashion.

Fang pointed to the metal fingers. “They’ll be attached to your hand with rings that’ll slip on over you, along with these—” He ran his finger over the part of the drawing that attached the metal fingers to the bracelet. “—which, when you bend your fingers, will allow you to bend the metal as well.”

Ah. Now I understood why there was a bracelet part. It grounded the metal fingers to my hand, and in doing so, would allow me to bend them. I doubted they’d bend as much as my real fingers, but any movement was better than none.

“It’ll be snug,” Fang explained. “So you might need help putting it on and taking it off, depending on how good you are with your other hand. Now, after seeing your reaction to the gauntlet I made my brother, I thought I’d whip up somethingelse for you.” He flipped the page, showing me a second drawing.

This one was much like the first in that a feminine hand had been sketched on its page, but the overall feel was different. The first was, dare I say, plain, meant to replace my fingers with metal. This one, however, was like Fang had mixed his first idea with his brother’s gauntlet, with a sprinkle of pizzazz.

It had the same general feel as the first, with a bracelet around my wrist, but instead of rounded edges for the fingertips, they were done like sharp nails. The metal making up the pinky and ring finger was more elegant, gilded with swirls in the metal. And, what was more, it wasn’t just the last two.

It was the whole hand. Each finger had its own sharpened point, like a ring for the top, and they all attached to the same metal plate that would sit on top of the hand. That metal plate hid the connections between the fingers and the bracelet, a small question mark drawn on top of it.

“This one’s more like a gauntlet, I suppose, but not as bulky as my brother’s,” Fang told me. “This one would be more for show, but the nails on the tips of the fingers would be sharp and strong enough you could use them, if you wanted.”

“What’s the question mark for?”

“Oh, that. Well, that metal plate is large enough for me to do something with it. I could inlay any design you want—within reason.” Oh, that made sense. Fang stared at me, waiting to hear my thoughts. “Well? What are you thinking, Princess?”

It was difficult to take my eyes off the image and bring my gaze to him. His black hair was messy and damp, the lighter tuft of near his left temple a lot more white than it had been beforehis shower. He sat directly beside me on the couch, his body angled toward mine.

“I like them both,” I answered him, trying my best not to start fidgeting once I realized how very close he was.

Fang smirked. He was slow in leaning toward the coffee table and setting the sketchbook down. “I could make them both for you, so you’d always have the option of wearing either one. The first could be when you’re out and about with your family, while the other… could be reserved for more private nights.”

That actually sounded amazing. “You’d make them both for me?”

He leaned back, setting an arm on the couch behind my shoulders. “For you, Princess, I’d make anything you want.” He ran his tongue along his left canine, and then he dropped his voice to a bare whisper when he said, “And if you ever wanted to practice using that second glove on someone, I’m always here for you.”

He was… offering to let me hurt him with it? I was so stunned at the offer that I didn’t even realize at first what that meant. Not fully. It shouldn’t shock me to hear Fang had a few strange kinks. The dude had metal fangs, for goodness sake.

The air around us descended into silence, neither one of us saying a thing more. It was as if we were locked in a staring contest, neither one of us wanting to lose. The way his gray eyes twinkled, how their depths revealed the desire in him, let’s just say it was a hard thing to not lean into him and breathe him in.

What would those teeth feel like on my skin? How would kissing him work?

“Let me grab a few things to take some measurements.” Fang was the first one to look away, but only so he could goget whatever it was he needed, and that left me alone on the couch for a few minutes, trying in vain to contain my wandering thoughts and rapidly beating heart.

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