Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,75

sick, and then she died, so there was just … a lot, you know?” Well, this was seductive. “But you can’t worry too much,” she went on anyway, “because there are all these things on your list. Groceries, and dinner, and laundry, and bills, and a job that’s more details, and how all those things affect each other, how you’re going to juggle them and not drop any balls. I go from one thing to the next, all day long, and it’s fine. But if I don’t have a list, if I don’t have a plan, I’m sort of … unmoored. I’m not sure what to do about Dyma here, or even whether I need to do anything. And I don’t know what to do about you. About this. How to get myself back into the … zone, or whatever. Or how to get you there.” She tried to laugh, although she still felt weepy. “Also, I realize that I’m the worst seducee ever.”

“Except that you weren’t getting seduced,” he said.

“I wasn’t?” She blinked at him. “It sure felt like it.”

He groaned. “Stop doing that thing with your eyes, or I’ll be a liar. I mean, we weren’t doing anything you didn’t want. I thought that was the point. Hey, I even wore a shirt with a collar to take you out to dinner. I’ll take you out to dinner right now, if that’s what you want. But then I come in here and you’re in this robe in front of the fire, telling me how relaxed you are, lying back on the couch, letting me feel how you’re naked under there, and it’s been all these days with you …”

“What thing with my eyes? I don’t do things with my eyes.”

“You bet you do. You blink them at me. Slowly. And they’re gold.” He spread out a big hand. “Anyway. We’re off track. We’re not talking about this, or about your skin or the way you look at me or the way you gasp a little when I kiss you or that body you’ve got, because I’m not seducing. You’re telling me about your list. About your life.”

She said, “Part of me wants to keep doing that. To keep my mouth moving. My brain moving. Letting go feels so … so dangerous.” Once again, she could only come up with the truth. “I’m thinking, though … I’m here with you in this pretty wonderful place, and you’re pretty wonderful, too, so maybe I should stop thinking for once and go with this. See where it takes me. So … do you want to take off your boots? You’re so dressed, and I’m so … not. I could help you do it. Want me to?”

She was out there now. She couldn’t be more out there. It felt like a dangerous place to be. Surely, now, he’d just kiss her, save her from all this blundering around, and let her go back to feeling carried away.

It had felt so good to surrender.

Whatever Mark had said, she wasn’t actually bad at sex. She knew how to give oral sex, for one thing, and she was good at it. She was a people pleaser all the way, which meant she was fine once she actually got there. She didn’t know how to get there from here, though. Not once she’d blurted out the details of her life. Including bills and chores and her dead mother.

She’d make the worst call girl in existence.

He said, “I do want you to. But I have to say something first.”

That wasn’t what she’d had in mind, unless it was, “That you light me up, because you’re so gorgeous.” Which she could tell it wasn’t.

What he actually said was, “You realize that I’m not a staying-around guy.”

“Uh … sorry?”

“I’m not married.”

“Well, I hope not,” she said. “Or I’m making even more of a mistake.”

He laughed a little, but his eyes still looked worried. He said, “But I’ve never come that close, either. I’m kind of a … good-time guy. I have to tell you that, because I realize I may have given you the wrong idea, taking you to meet my family and all. Such as they are. And you being more, well … normal. Like a PTA mom.”

Oh, this was great. She was so glad she’d introduced honest conversation into the picture. “I’m a PTA mom,” she said slowly. “You know what? I think I prefer the seducing idea.”

“No,” he said. “Being a PTA mom is great. It’s