Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,181

something she didn’t want? He needed to have a talk with her about that. An explicit talk about boundaries and limits and consent, no matter how embarrassed that made her.

Because … yeah. This morning. Her birthday.

She’d woken up in his bed, the same place she’d been waking up all week. She had a toothbrush in his bathroom now, but her clothes were still at the other place, which was driving him crazy. Possibly why he’d bought her some new clothes this morning.

She woke up slowly, the way she always did, but without an alarm clock. Jennifer waking up was at once disciplined and anything but. Exactly the same time every morning, even on a day like this when she didn’t have to go to work, but like the woman she was underneath, all stretching, sighing, and sensual pleasure.

She saw the flowers first, because he’d stolen out early to put them on the dresser. The prettiest arrangement the florist had been able to come up with, when he’d asked for something soft and romantic and just as extravagant as possible. It turned out to be a whole bunch of roses and other … rose-looking flowers in ivory and the palest pink, along with lavender and eucalyptus and some other deep purple and green items stuck in there to make it look nice. He’d wanted to do thirty-five stems, but the florist had said no, so he’d settled for two dozen. It was still a pretty good display.

Jennifer thought so, anyway, because she said, “Oh,” on a breath, and then got out of bed to smell them and exclaim over them like he’d done some huge thing, not just call a florist. Then she said, “Sorry. I want to kiss you, but I have to go to the bathroom,” like you could have predicted, because whatever else Jennifer was, she was always real. Which gave him a chance to grab things out of the closet, so when she came back, there were a few boxes on her pillow.

Shopping for women was fun. Of course, it probably depended what you were shopping for. He was having fun, anyway.

She stopped halfway across the floor when she saw them and said, “Oh.”

“Yep,” he said. “Happy birthday, baby.”

She said, “I’m probably going to feel bad that all I got you was whiskey stones,” and he laughed.

“Nope,” he said. “I love my wolves. And as I recall, we also had some smokin’ sex that day. That’s worth a present or two.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Makes it sound hardly at all like a commercial transaction,” but she was laughing, too. “Which one do I open first?” On her knees on the bed now, dressed in the short black nightgown with the little dots, her hair messy and tumbled, her curvy mouth unpainted. Already a pretty good day, as far as he was concerned.

“This one.” He handed her the medium-sized box. “This one reflects my higher powers, you could say. My, ah, better nature.”

She looked at him sidelong out of her golden eyes. “So the other ones are dirty.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m hoping.” And she smiled with that mouth, showing him the deep bow in the top lip, and opened her present.

“I know you don’t do much jewelry,” he said, when she’d opened the pale-blue Tiffany box tied with its white ribbon. “But I thought this would work.”

She opened the lid of the blue velvet box inside. “Oh.” It was a sigh. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It reminded me of you. Simple, but beautiful. Sort of … organic. Real. It’s called the Bone Cuff.” A wide, heavy, form-fitting cuff bracelet, asymmetrical and curving, like a wave.

She said, “It’s gold.” And put it on her arm then and there. It looked terrific. A tiny bit barbaric, gorgeously feminine and curvy, and a whole lot bold. Like her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought it had to be silver to go with the necklace, but the saleslady said no. Which was good, because I wanted gold. We did the one with the white jade insert, though, so it sort of … blends with the pearls. Mixing metals is a thing. I know that now.”

“It’s perfect,” she said, tilting her wrist back and forth and watching the gold shine. “It’s going to look amazing. I love that you didn’t buy me some delicate little thing. It feels like you know me, you know? The me I only half-knew was there.” She looked up at him, then, smiled with all the hidden mischief in her nature, and asked, “Can