“That’s sweet but unnecessary,” he said, pulling me against him.

“Maybe I’ll let you be my cabana boy.” I sighed.

“I will not dignify that with a response.”

He chuckled but held me to his chest with a sort of quiet desperation, pulling me so close that breathing would have been an issue if I needed oxygen. Obviously, his conversation with Ophelia had upset him more than he was letting on. Was this Jeanine an old girlfriend? A current girlfriend? What sort of “situation” would require the council to step in and interfere?

As Gabriel clung to me, I stroked his hair, knowing that no matter what I said or asked, it wouldn’t make either of us feel better. So I let him hold me and pretended that everything was fine. It was the loneliest I’d ever felt in his presence.

11

Over the past 100 years, female weres have embraced certain human mating rituals. Werewolf males who neglect to present their mates with meat or floral offerings on a birthday or anniversary can expect to sleep in an actual doghouse.

—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were

I was a little nervous about what vampires get each other for Valentine’s Day, because, as far as I knew, it could involve actual hearts.

So, when I found a white box on my doorstep, tied with a huge red bow, I went into full-on spastic girlie-girlie mode. There was squealing. A lot of squealing. For just a minute, the inside of my head was like a living Lisa Frank poster.

The contents were … unexpected. For one thing, I didn’t know whether Gabriel was actually going to be in town on Valentine’s Day. And second, I’m usually a white cotton panties kind of girl, occasionally a black cotton panties kind of girl. But if Gabriel was game for the red satin bustier thing, I could give it a try.

Yes, giving your girlfriend naughty lingerie for Valentine’s Day is tired and cliché, and I’d spent years railing against the commercialism and crassness of a holiday designed by corporate America to compel men to buy their way into a lady’s affections and make single women feel pathetic and alone. Of course, at the time, I was pathetic and alone, so pardon me for taking the opportunity to feel smug for a day.

Gabriel’s gift was a modern twist on the classic Victorian corset, buttery soft satin in a perfect Valentine’s red, stretched over whalebone. It was some sort of miracle underwear, cinching my waist into a tiny point and giving me anatomically improbable cleavage, all without cracking my ribs. The hem of the bustier just barely skirted a pair of satin briefs, which were connected to a pair of lacy black stockings with the thinnest of red silk ties. I struck a languorous pose in the mirror and—despite looking pretty damned hot, if I do say so myself—felt a little ridiculous. I looked like a cover model for the romance paperbacks my mother read. All I needed was a title like The Tempestuous Schoolmarm spelled out over my head in an overcurlicued font.

Still, I slinked around the house and lit the vanilla candles. I wanted to build some ambience for Gabriel to appreciate before I jumped him. My home was considerably more welcoming than it had been the last time he visited. I hadn’t had disposable income in a while, so after months of scrimping and saving and buying generic market-brand blood, I went into a sort of online shopping fit. I bought blackout curtains for every window in the house, a new comfy couch, a bigger fridge. I even booked a prefab contractor to come out and attach the garage to the house with a covered walkway. It was like babyproofing for someone with fangs.

I was feeling adored and very in touch with my inner sex kitten when he showed up at my door later that night.

“Someone earned himself a very nice Valentine’s Day ‘dinner,’ “ I purred, leaning against the door frame. “In case you didn’t notice, ‘dinner’ was in special naughty secret-meaning quotation marks.”

Gabriel stared at me, his expression blank. I liked to think it was the barely there black dress I was wearing over the lingerie hindering his neurological processes, but … no.

“The lingerie … the red satin thing with little garters …” I watched his face go from blank to thunderous. “Judging from that expression, you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” My stomach seemed to ripple as I squirmed in the suddenly icky red undergarments. “Oh, not good.”

I started toward the stairs, then turned on him, hands on hips. “Wait, what did you send me for Valentine’s Day?”

His face was set in grimmer lines but for a totally different reason.

“Valentine’s Day, commemorating the martyrdom of Saint Valentine, patron saint of beekeeping, epileptics, and greeting-card manufacturers?” I said. There was a beat of silence where I was smacked in the head with a clue-by-four. “You didn’t get me anything for Valentine’s Day, did you?”

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Valentine’s Day was not something we recognized in my day.”

I poked him in the chest. “First of all, yes, it was. Lacy cards and love tokens were widely exchanged even in Victorian times. By now, you should know better than to screw with me on historical trivia. Also, you’ve had one-hundred-forty-something years to adjust. Get with the program. You didn’t notice the giant hearts and paper cupids hanging off every stationary object?”

“I’ve never dated a modern woman before.”

I poked him again. “You can only use that as an excuse so many times. And don’t offer to give me ‘awesome sex’ as a present, because I think we’ve established that given the right circumstances, I can hurt you.”

“I wasn’t going to—” I narrowed my eyes at him. Instead of finishing that ill-fated protest, he said, “Let’s focus on the creepy anonymous gifts.”

“You don’t say ‘creepy.’ Don’t try to get in good with me by talking like me. I just don’t understand how someone could select a pitch-perfect girlfriend Christmas gift and then completely ignore Valentine’s Day.”

“Well, what did you get me?”

“You will never, ever know,” I promised him. And he wouldn’t. Because now that I’d made such a big deal about it, boxer shorts with little glow-in-the-dark vampire lips and fangs all over them didn’t seem that great.

“Let me see the gifts you did get,” he said. “You were going to show me.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not now I’m not.”

“Jane.”

“Fine.” I slid the straps off my shoulders and let the dress pool at my feet. Gabriel’s eyes went wide as he scanned me from head to toe. “Gabriel?”

“Give me a moment. All of the blood just drained out of my head.”

“I find this whole thing to be incredibly gross now that I know I’m wearing some stranger’s undies.” I shuddered and shrugged out of the suddenly disturbing get-up.

And now I was naked and embarrassed, which was a sensation I was much more familiar with. The phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” he muttered.

“If we had time, I’d tell you about that figure of speech’s origins in connection to gravedigging, but I’m not going to,” I said, picking up the phone. “No gift means no trivia.”

“And yet somehow I think I’ll survive,” Gabriel groused.

I gave him a meaningful look as I barked a greeting into the phone. A sly female voice asked, “Did you like the presents?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Andrea.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded hurt.

“Hi. I don’t—I can’t talk right now,” I whispered. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed at the stress in my voice, and language that, after I thought about it, sounded awfully suspicious. “I’ll call you later.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I turned away from Gabriel and tried to lower my voice even further, but let’s face it, my boyfriend had superhearing.

“I can’t really explain. Let’s just say the words ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ are probably going to make my eye spontaneously twitch for years to come,” I grumbled as Gabriel stared at me, his expression annoyed and somehow helpless.

“What happened?” Andrea cried.

“I don’t want to talk now,” I told her through gritted fangs as Gabriel took a subtle but deliberate step toward me, his ear cocked toward the phone. I shot him a venomous look and started into the next room.

“But I left that package on your front porch to help things along. Seriously, that outfit was flawless, practically a foolproof recipe for the perfect first Valentine’s Day as a couple. How could you screw this up?” Andrea cried, using that tone my mama used when I’d butchered a recipe.

“That was you?” I demanded, keeping my voice low. “What—why? Wh—you and I are going to have to have a serious discussion about boundaries. What the hell were you thinking?”

Her voice lowered to a slightly more contrite level. “Well, I’ve known Gabriel for a while, and he’s just not the type of guy who puts a lot of stock in relationship milestones like a first Valentine’s Day. I knew you would freak out and read a lot into it if it looked as if he forgot. And I knew he wouldn’t ask for help or accept advice on what to get you, so I thought I’d help you out. I thought he’d be so thunderstruck at the sight of you in simply stunning underwear that you wouldn’t have time to talk about where it came from.”

If she wasn’t so depressingly right, it would really piss me off that Andrea had managed to figure out my relationship before I did. No, wait, I was pissed anyway.

“We have got to get you dating again, because you clearly have too much time on your hands,” I told her. “This is not normal behavior.”

“It’s very normal behavior to want your friend to have a nice Valentine’s Day. What’s not normal is you somehow turning this into some Jane disaster. Hell, even your grandma Ruthie knows to buy lingerie on Valentine’s Day. I saw her at Victoria’s Secret the other night. She said she was getting something special for her fiancé. I thought her fiancé died.”

“Oh, my God, why are you making this worse?” I cried. I didn’t know whom I felt more sorry for at that point, myself or poor, unsuspecting Wilbur. “I do not need that image in my head. And as much as I appreciate your intentions, don’t ever do this again. It’s weird. Wait, wait, if you thought we would be all naked and blissful by now, why are you calling?” I asked, ignoring the way Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up at that comment.

“Well, even vampires have a recovery period.”

I scrunched my nose. “Ew. That’s a conversation ender. I’ll call you later.” I hung up the phone and turned on Gabriel. “I’m going to take a shower. Maybe you shouldn’t be here when I get out.”

Leaving a trail of discarded lingerie in my wake, I stomped toward the bathroom. I turned the water to the white-hot range, slid into the shower, and fought back tears. Oh, how was I mortified? Let me count the ways. One, I put on strange underwear collected from my doorstep without knowing whom it was from or what they could have done to it. Two, my boyfriend blew off Valentine’s Day. Three, my girlfriend was so sure this might happen (and rightly so) that she provided me with a pity present to get me laid. Four, I had images of a teddy-clad Grandma Ruthie doing some sort of fan dance in my head. And five, my boyfriend blew off Valentine’s Day.

I thought that bore repeating.

I soaped my hair, deliberately avoiding the almond-scented antifrizz shampoo Gabriel liked in favor of plain old Pantene. I heard the bathroom door open. Gabriel came in and sat on the bathroom counter.

“Jane, we’ve talked about this,” he said softly. “I’m your sire and your lover. My bond to you is very strong. I won’t share you with another man, even if he does have impeccable taste in lingerie.”