Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  Jacob grasped the edge of the desk behind Eve’s head, held on tight, and thrust hard.

  She made a noise that could be described as incoherent, or perfect, or both, and then she held on to him and sobbed, “Jacob.” Her body arched in invitation, her legs spread wider, and he felt the first tight, tense flutterings of her impending orgasm. If he’d thought this couldn’t get any better, that he couldn’t burn any harder, he’d clearly been wrong; now everything about him was aflame.

  “Do you like that?” he asked, just for the satisfaction of hearing her gasp—

  “Yes.”

  He thrust harder, deeper, and she met him every time, until they were writhing together in a mess of grunts and moans and sweat and sighs, until her breathy sounds became sharp, building screams and her soft, pliant body turned rigid beneath him. There was barely a second of stillness before she shattered, as beautifully as before, her hands twisting in his hair and her body shuddering around him. He watched her with an ache in his chest so intense it made him shudder, too, and then suddenly the ache was everywhere and he was moaning as he came hard, hard, hard.

  Dizzy. He was dizzy. But he could feel Eve panting beneath him, could hear her breathless laugh, could see—when he opened his eyes, and when had he closed them?—her smile, like the North Star he used to stare at on the road.

  God, he loved her.

  But all he said out loud was, “Fuck, that felt good.”

  * * *

  Eve had surprised herself countless times, during these last weeks. She’d surprised herself by interviewing for this position, for example. She’d surprised herself by hitting someone with her car—because, regardless of what Jacob liked to imply, that had never happened before. It was usually just cones and fences.

  Then she’d surprised herself in increasingly better ways—by keeping her word and looking after Castell Cottage, and not fucking it up. By getting into this whole chef lark and taking pride in her job. By making friends and settling down and starting to see Skybriar, already, as something like home.

  But Eve had never shocked herself quite so thoroughly as she did in the moments following her and Jacob’s rather mind-blowing desk-sex. The moment in which he kissed her, then gave her a sheepish grin and said, “I’m going to deal with the condom.”

  “By deal with,” she asked, stretching languidly, “do you mean shower your whole entire body?”

  He released a laughing breath, then admitted, “Well, yes. But I’ll be quick.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, and the words, I love you, almost fell out.

  Thoroughly astonished, Eve snapped her mouth shut. Luckily, Jacob didn’t notice; he was too busy staring at her tits over his shoulder as he left the room. Bless his one-track mind.

  And bless his arse, a bitable curve that flexed with every step.

  But when he finally disappeared out of the doorway, the evil spell of his backside was broken and Eve mentally returned to the I love you moment. Hm. Interesting. She probably ought to investigate that. Her first instinct was to go to her room and put on some nice, fluffy pajamas—you know, to settle her mind and thus facilitate the feelings investigation—but she found she couldn’t leave the office without setting Jacob’s desk to rights. Or at least attempting to. They’d rather decimated it.

  It occurred to Eve, as she was gathering papers in a vague attempt at order and fixing his upended lamp, that this sort of behavior rather matched the words she’d wanted to say. After all, love seemed the only reasonable motivator for tidying someone else’s desk when you yourself could not give a flying fuck about the entire thing.

  Of course, it was possible that her love for Castell Cottage had inspired this fit of conscientiousness, and that she’d only felt a momentary swell of love in her heart for Jacob because he’d just given her such impeccable dick.

  On the other hand, that momentary swell of love wasn’t actually momentary, because as soon as she thought about him, she felt it again: a flood of tenderness and affection, gentle, yet powerful enough to swallow entire cities whole. Familiar, but magnified. Known, but intense. The sort of love you read about in books.

  After two weeks. No way. No fucking way.

  And yet, by the time Eve finished in the office, carried herself back to her bedroom, and put on the aforementioned fluffy pajamas, that soft-but-strong emotion hadn’t gone away.

  It wasn’t that the idea of loving Jacob bothered her. Actually, when she thought about it, she caught herself grinning so hard her cheeks ached and her eyes squinted and her ears sort of popped, and she felt a bit loopy, like she could fall back against the bed with a film-worthy sigh and do nothing but moon over his very excellent qualities for the next nine hundred hours.

  But there was also a part of her, small but loud and rather fierce, that insisted she be reasonable. Rational. Adult. She couldn’t possibly be in love with Jacob already. It was silly. It was reckless. It was the very definition of immature, absolute evidence that she was making bad choices yet again—only, when she tried to think of Jacob as a mistake, she came up against an impenetrable wall in her mind that cut off such a sacrilegious path completely.

  In the end, she decided to do as Gigi had advised. Because when attempting to adult, there was no harm in requesting a little assistance.

  Eve strained to listen for the sound of the shower running down the hall, and then—satisfied Jacob was still occupied—she adjusted the silk scarf holding back her braids, picked up her phone, and opened the sisterly group chat. After misspelling her request three times in a row, she decided her mind was frazzled enough without bringing typing into the equation, and hit Record on a voice note instead.

  “Hello. I have a question that requires only answers; no nosy questions in return, thank you. How does one know when one is really in love? For example, in Beauty and the Beast, how did Belle know she was in love with the Beast and not just Stockholm syndromed? Or, Chloe, how did you know you were in love with Red and not just his excellent hair? Oh, or Dani, how did you know you were in love with Zaf and not just his excellent hair? Yes. That question. That’s my question. Danika, please respond.” Satisfied, she sent the message.

  It took a moment for blue ticks and jumping dots to appear, but once they did, responses were fired in quick succession.

  DANI: I didn’t know I was in love with Zaf, remember? You told me.

  CHLOE: I find this question infinitely suspicious.

  CHLOE: Who is Stockholm syndroming you?

  Eve rolled her eyes and sent back, “No one. It was a theoretical comparison.”

  DANI: Okay, but who are you in love with?

  Eve hit Record, opened her mouth, then stopped when she realized she’d been about to say it. She’d been about to say, out loud, I’m in love with Jacob, and she would’ve meant it, too.

  Which didn’t entirely obliterate Eve’s doubts—not when those doubts revolved around herself, around who she was and who she wanted to become, and how wide the gulf was between each state. But it certainly helped.

  She found herself smiling again. I’m in love with Jacob. It sounded so good, so pure, so precious in her head. So she’d keep it in there for a little while longer, until she was confident enough to say it out loud.

  “Were you talking to someone?” As if conjured by her thoughts, Jacob’s voice floated through the door a moment before he stepped inside.

  Dripping wet.

  In a towel.

  “Good God in heaven,” Eve said, “you have to stop doing this.”

  “Doing what?” he asked coolly. But there was a slight tilt to the corner of his mouth, a purposeful languor in his movements as he sauntered into the bedroom, raking a hand through his damp hair. He knew exactly what, so she didn’t bother spelling it out.

  He was clearly terrible at drying himself off, because she could see tiny droplets of water glistening over his pale skin. It made him look like a delicious can of Coke on a sweltering day, sweating enticingly. The downy trail of blon
d hair arrowing toward his—well, frankly, toward his dick, had Eve’s heart pumping like a perky aerobics teacher’s biceps, and her clit aching like her head after a tequila hangover. Her mouth went dry. Possibly because all the moisture in her body had moved rapidly down to her pussy.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked softly.

  “Hmm?” Eve attempted to scrape her sentiency up off the floor where she’d dropped it. “Oh. Erm, my sisters.”

  He came closer, his eyes an electric storm. “That’s nice. Now put the phone down.”

  Eve realized belatedly that she was still holding the Record button. “Yes, sir.” She let go, locked the phone, and stood up.

  “You should come to my room,” he said.

  She blinked. “Sex in a bed? You spoil me.”

  “No, not sex in a bed. I mean—” His nostrils flared, even as his mouth curled into a self-deprecating smile. “Well, yes, actually. Sex in a bed. But I meant that you should sleep with me.” He caught her hand. “If you want. That’s what I meant.”

  “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 yo
u 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.

  “Gracious of you, darling,” she snorted.

  “That is my defining character trait, yes.”

  “What if I’d killed somebody?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, and I would visit you in prison if necessary.”

  She gasped, all feigned outrage. “You wouldn’t offer to help me hide the body?”

  Jacob’s lips quirked without permission. “You’ve been here quite a while, Sunshine, and there’s no police sniffing around. So I imagine you hid it just fine yourself.”

  “Well. Yes. Quite right.” She preened at the idea of being a capable murderer, because she was a ridiculous ball of fluff. Jacob kissed her forehead because there was really no other option, not when she was being so obnoxiously cute.

  “Now,” he said, “stop stalling. Tell me this story.”

  She sighed. “My parents were angry with me.”

  He waited for a moment before nudging. “Did you hit them with your car?”

  “Spiritually speaking, I think I’ve hit my mother with my car many times.” Her tone was dry, but her fingers were tapping a rapid rhythm against his rib cage. “My mum wants so badly for me to be successful. At anything. And for a while, I gave up even trying. I think failure was one thing, but giving up, for her—that was a bridge too far. They were disappointed with me and I couldn’t bear it, so I . . . I left, determined to find something to do. You know, to prove myself. And so, here I am! Trying not to fuck up again.”

  It wasn’t a totally unexpected explanation—and the way Eve spoke about herself was hardly unfamiliar. She said that sort of thing all the time—that she was a failure, a disappointment, that she was trying but had no faith in her ability to succeed. Jacob couldn’t pinpoint exactly when those words had started to set his teeth on edge, but the feeling got worse every time. And here? Now? It was the worst it had ever been, like scratching bone.