“Oh,” Eve said softly, and there was the love again, gliding through her veins, glowing and golden, turning everything in its path to mush. “Okay. Yes. Lovely. That’s what I want.”
Jacob grinned and tugged at her hand, dragging her swiftly out of this room and into his. She barely had time to process the change of location before he tumbled her onto the bed and climbed over her. Then her entire body was a vibrating nerve again, alive and exposed. He pressed close, his strong thigh sliding between hers with a sureness that made her gasp. Pressure, so much pressure, so insistent and demanding was her Jacob.
“Talk to me, Evie,” he murmured, and she realized she’d been holding her breath, and also—
And also, that the idea of talking right now didn’t worry her, the way it had with other men. She wasn’t nervous about saying the wrong thing, about getting on his nerves with her random trains of thought. She wasn’t focused on pretending to be perfectly fun instead of imperfectly strange. Because behind his scowls and his terrifyingly high standards, Jacob was steely enough to take everything she was and say, Actually, I think I’d like some more.
But she must have spent too long thinking, because after a moment, his expression faltered, and he made as if to lift his weight off her. “Sorry. Am I—? I know I can be a bit much, in these situations.”
She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back on top of her, her response fierce and instinctive. “No. You are divine. You are impossible to get enough of. Perhaps some people would disagree, but those people don’t especially matter, because you’re mine.” As soon as the words were out, she was mildly shocked by her own venom. But she didn’t regret it.
Especially not when he smiled, small and slow and unmistakably shy. “Ah. Well. That’s me told.” Then he kissed her, with a slight, soft groan that said he couldn’t not. As much as she’d grown to appreciate Jacob’s control, she liked even better to feel him lose every ounce of it, pouring it into her like an offering. His mouth moved feverishly over hers as if he was afraid she might disappear. His tongue tasted the seam of her lower lip, the corner of her mouth, the vulnerable tip of her own tongue, and his cock pressed against her aching clit in a way she was 100 percent okay with. Ecstatic with, in fact. This was like a direct dick-to-pussy massage and he wasn’t even hard. Eve would be leaving 5-star feedback when they were done.
“We can’t have sex yet,” he told her between kisses. “I’m serious. It’s been all of ten minutes and I’m absolutely fucked. I have no idea why I’m doing this.”
“We could have sex,” she corrected, “if your tongue isn’t too tired.”
“Eve,” he said sternly, which got her hot as hell. “You do realize, don’t you, that we should be talking right now? Discussing what just happened and continuing our ongoing and vocal negotiation of consent, et cetera?”
“Shut up, Jacob,” she said cheerfully, and kissed him again. Their mouths met softly, their tongues touched lazily, she hiked her leg over his hip and rode his thigh a little. And in the end, it turned out his tongue wasn’t too tired. Neither was his dick, after a while.
* * *
They did settle down eventually.
Jacob lay back against the cushions, cocooned by warm blankets and Eve’s soft, lemon-and-vanilla scent. To his right, he’d propped his cast up on a cushion as usual. To his left, he felt the presence of the woman he’d spent the last couple of hours doing terrible things to—and yet, he was abominably nervous at the prospect of touching her now. Probably because he didn’t want to touch her for sex; he wanted to hold on to her like she was something precious, and to never let go.
Despite their roller coaster of a night, Jacob still wasn’t confident an action like that wouldn’t blow up in his face.
But he might do it anyway.
In the end, he didn’t get a chance, because Eve was bold enough for the both of them. And warm enough to keep their fire going when Jacob’s pessimism threatened to cool him down. She rolled over and slung an arm across his bare chest, snuggling her cheek against his shoulder. “Can you sleep like this?” she asked. “I thought you might like it.”
Eve: always taking care of him. He let his eyes slide shut and sank into the moment like it was a feather bed. “I do,” he said, his voice rough. “I mean, I can—I do—stay.” That was the point, really. He wanted her to stay, and he needed her to know it. Because he suspected people had let Eve go far too easily, in the past. That she was uncertain sometimes, just like him.
“You know I’m a sure thing, right?” he blurted out.
“Are you?” She raised her head with a wicked smile. “And here I thought you were tired.”
He rolled his eyes. “Stop that. Depraved woman. What I meant is—I was serious, earlier. You’re mine now.”
“Very caveman of you,” she murmured.
Jacob made the executive decision to ignore that. “You’re mine, which means you don’t need to worry about me wandering off or—or rejecting you, or—I’m a sure thing,” he repeated, because they were veering too deeply into emotional language and he strongly doubted his ability to get it right. “I’m certain. For you. Of you. And things.”
She raised her head again, but this time, there was no teasing smile. This time, her gaze met his, midnight pupils enveloping chocolate brown, and she blinked rapidly. “Oh,” she said, her voice quiet. And with that single syllable, Jacob’s suspicions were confirmed. Eve wasn’t used to being held on to.
He could relate.
“Will you tell me something?” he asked.
She lay down again, her head a comforting weight on his chest. “Anything.”
His heart squeezed at the word. “Why did you come here?”
She hesitated. He’d expected that. The day they’d met, Jacob had written this woman off as an irresponsible tornado sweeping the countryside, searching for interviews to ruin. Which was, obviously, ridiculous. But in his defense, he’d been under a lot of pressure, and he hadn’t really known her then.
He knew her now. He knew that she adored her sisters—so much she never shut up about them—and that her friends back home didn’t deserve her, but she talked about their ludicrous rich-girl antics with fondness, anyway, and that she was perfectly capable of working hard and succeeding as long as she was given the space to do so.
All of which begged the question—why had she left her life behind and taken the first job she could find out here? Once upon a time, Jacob hadn’t cared to know, and then he hadn’t deserved to ask, but now? Well. Now, he was the man Eve Brown would tell anything. Which felt like one of the top five most powerful positions in the world.
So he waited, and after a moment, she started talking. “This story isn’t especially flattering. Toward me, I mean.”
“You should know by now,” he said, somehow pulling her even closer, “that I’m not going to judge you.”
“Jacob Wayne, you dirty liar.”
“That I’m only going to judge you a little bit,” he corrected, “and that I’ll still—” He stopped talking, the words I’ll still love you yanked offstage by a hook around the neck. Not yet. Seriously, not yet. “I’ll still like you,” he finished roughly. Nice one. He was about as smooth as crunchy fucking peanut butter.