Despite being answered and accepted, just wanted to share how this could be done as I did it before in one of my projects. Putting it here as a code reference.
HTML:
<a href="#" class="icon" >
<span class="jewel">2</span>
</a>
CSS:
.icon {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
height: 24px;
padding: 0px 4px 0px 20px;
background: ....;
}
.jewel {
position: absolute;
display: block;
top: -8px; right: -8px;
height: 16px; width: 16px;
text-align: center;
color: White;
background-color: Red;
overflow: hidden;
}
Working fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/gE3hz/