Chaos isn’t the word for the celebration that follows Owen’s proposal.

The kids keep on him, asking him even more questions, and I find out that they’d actually started to grill him when he showed up with the flowers and waited for me on the porch.

Where did you meet Juliet? (Um…online. Yeah, that’s the official answer.)

How long have you known her? (Long enough to have helped your sister raise money for the house and lawyers…)

Why do you have on such a fancy suit? (Why not?)

Then, once we get into the house, Jemma recruits Owen to help her in the kitchen with the Swedish meatballs that she knows I love, as well as the cake. The boys then ask Owen more about the sports he likes—especially surfing—as they set the table. Jazzie merely stares at him in rapt fascination while sticking to my side until she gets up enough guts to sit next to him at dinner and ask him all about New York.

When it comes time to sing me Happy Birthday, the glow of the candles lights up all of our faces.

Everything feels so, so right.

After the cake is gone and the table cleared, Owen tells the kids that he’d like to take me out for the rest of the evening. They’re reluctant to let him leave at first, but I tell them this is an actual date, and they let me go, waving at us from the porch as Owen drives us away in the Mercedes Benz that he’s rented.

It doesn’t take very long for him to drive us to the same exclusive South Beach hotel where we stayed in the penthouse the last time.

This time we don’t go out to the private pool.

We don’t even make it past the dining area, where the low lights reveal a birthday cake Owen has ordered for me.

He puts flame to each of the twenty-three candles, one at a time, until the pale room takes on a soft, warm glow.

“I had them deliver this a few moments ago,” he says, then blows out the long match.

“So that’s what you were doing on the phone. I thought it was business.”

“No business tonight, Red,” he says, smiling at me until my pulse skips. “Just you.”

Just me…and him. And as I look at all those candles, plus one to grow on, I close my eyes.

I wish every day going forward would be as perfect as this one is.

When I blow out the candles, there’s still a glow in Owen’s gaze. A fire.

He’s been waiting all day to get me alone.

I see the beast in his eyes—the one who still has some growl to him, even though he’s been tamed.

With my hands trembling from excitement, I cut a piece of the cake, slip it onto a plate, then start to walk toward the bedroom that we never did have the opportunity to share the last time we were here. It feels as if thick, warm syrup is flowing over my skin, inside of me, oozing from my knotted belly to my pussy. I’m bathed with desire for him as I smile, inviting him to come with me.

“Where’re you going?” he asks.

“Someplace where you can have your cake and eat it, too.”

An explosion of lust zings through his gaze just before I disappear.

I’m already aroused, pounding brutally for him, my breath already quickening. The wide, pale bed overlooks a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the ocean where the stars are reflected, twinkling in the dark sky. I kick off my shoes then slide the plate onto the bedcover and get to my knees, already undoing the buttons of my light sweater. The hem of my short skirt plays with the sensitive skin of my thighs, and as Owen appears in the doorway, he’s already got his jacket off. He’s working at his tie.

I glance down at the cake while I strip off my top and throw it away. I begin to unclasp my bra.

“The maid’s gonna wring our necks with the mess we’re about to make,” I say.

“The maid’s going to get a big, fat tip.”

“If memory serves me correctly, I think I’m the one who’s in for a big, fat tip—and more.”

“Damn,” he says, tossing off his shirt to reveal his powerful torso. “You’re just full of double meanings tonight.”

“I’d like to be full of something else—”

He lunges toward me just as I’m about to drop my bra off the bed. When his lips crush mine, I lift my hands, reveling in the sensory overload: heat, dampness, and wicked wishes.

He slowly kisses me, his tongue working lazy miracles as he strokes mine, his hands cupping my breasts as I finally drop the bra. He massages my tits, and I moan a dirty little moan.

“Fuck, I missed you,” he says against my mouth. “So much.”

My answer is to grip his arms as he plays with my breasts, his thumbs worshipping my nipples, stimulating them to aching peaks. My pussy throbs in a wet rhythm for him, because it’s been so long…so damned long…

I already feel a series of pulses circling inside of me, becoming what’s sure to be a rising storm.

“Panties,” he murmurs against my mouth.

I clumsily reach under my skirt and yank my panties down. Already wet. Already needy for him.

Meanwhile, he’s reaching toward the mattress, and it’s not until he smears cake and frosting over my tits that I realize what he’s done.

He really is about to have his cake and eat it, too…

When he finishes painting me with the food, he laughs—god, it’s so good to hear him laugh!—and then eases his palms down my waist, my hips, finally bringing his hands under the bare cheeks of my bottom and hauling me up to him. At the same time, I wrap my arms around his wide shoulders to keep me from falling as he bends to suck one of my breasts into his mouth.

He feasts on the cake.

The sounds he makes—hungry and satiated—turn me on until I’m grinding my sex against the top of his thigh. We’re famished for one another, rapacious and greedy. I can hear my juices slide against his trousers, can hear his mouth working at my nipple, cleaning me off and filling him up.

As he switches his attentions to my other breast, I cradle his dark head, still churning against his thigh, the pressure teasing my slippery clit until my thoughts become one big, sugary blur.

As he strokes between my folds, I lose control, falling back until he catches me in one granite arm, then expertly guides me the rest of the way down to the mattress. His hand is still between my thighs, cupping me there because I’m his and will never be anyone else’s.

“I love you, Juliet,” he whispers.

Then he smiles, the moonlight showing the joy in his dark gaze.

Happiness illuminates me, too, and before I can tell him how much I also love him and have always loved him, he’s rubbing my pussy, flirting his thumb over my clit and driving me insane.

Owen lifts my skirt and goes down on me, he relishes every nip, lick, and bite, lapping me up, voracious and unstoppable.

“Yes,” I whisper as I clutch the bedcover. As the pressure builds inside me, whirring and blending and whining like an overheating motor, I say it again. “Yes…”

I feel him undoing his fly. Blood drums in my head, and I can hear the sound of his zipper coming down, hear the thump, thump, thump of my coming orgasm, hear my cutting breaths pacing his.

He presses his body over mine, his cock skimming through my folds.

I arch up to feel his tip prod me, and I gasp.

“Now,” I whisper. “Now!”

When he slides into me, I blast out with another, “Yes!” right before he speeds up—one stroke, another. Then as he completely stops restraining himself, he begins pounding me with a slapping, erotic force that makes the blood scream through me.

He buries his face in my neck, and I wrap my legs around him then grab his hand in animal passion, not knowing what I’m doing.

With even more urgency, he thrusts into me, hitting a spot inside of me that brings out a wet, forceful, growing cry as a rolling flame expands, flares…

“YES!” I finally scream as the heat torches me, making me come once, twice, drenched blasts that blow my mind, stripping me of all thought.

But as I gradually fall down from my high, I realize that these blasts belonged to Owen, too, because his cum is trickling out of me, hot and slippery, erotic and dirty.

He collapses against me, then embraces me with such fervor that I think we’re about to fuse together, two of us becoming one.

Yes, I think. For the rest of our lives, yes.

Our wild breathing slows, eventually melding with the sound of the near distant waves from the beach. I can’t tell where I end and where he begins as he presses his lips to mine again.

Sweet.

Delectable.

Us.

“Happy birthday, my love,” he whispers to me.

He doesn’t make a move to clean anything up. Not one move.

As I hold onto him, never wanting to let him go, I realize that I’ll never have a better birthday.

I’ve already gotten so many gifts, and Owen is the best one of all.