He thought he was on fucking fire, that’s what. He thought he’d been hit by lightning, and the electricity was destroying him even as it lit him up, and he would beg for it again and again if given half the chance. He thought the idea of Eve, out all night with him on her mind, making choices with the intention of ending up here, might actually rip him in two. That’s what he thought.

But what he said, through the steel vise of his jaw, was, “You told me you didn’t want to do this.”

“I changed my mind. It’s a lady’s prerogative. I was hoping you might change yours, too, but that’s up to you.”

“You don’t think—I’m—” God, Jacob, don’t ask this question. But he had no bloody control when it came to her. “You don’t think I’m bad for your, er, personal growth, and so on?”

She licked her lips, shifted slightly, and his gaze was dragged back to the treasure between her thighs before he pulled himself away. Eyes up. If he was going to make good choices here, the kind of choices that didn’t ruin everything, he had to concentrate.

Unfortunately, Eve chose that moment to say, “I don’t think you could be bad for me if you tried.”

It was quite difficult, after that, not to throw common sense out the window and lunge at her over the table. Thankfully, Jacob had a lifetime of control to fall back on during this, his hour of greatest need. “Let me make it clear that I don’t—” He swallowed for a moment before pushing past his discomfort, laying the raw truth between them. “I don’t just want to sleep with you. I want everything. I need this to be real. So we can’t start something if it’s going to end with you getting bored and disappearing on me.” Don’t. Please don’t ever disappear.

“Good,” she said softly. “Stop expecting me to vanish, Jacob. I’m not going anywhere.”

He couldn’t take her words literally—people said things like that all the time and didn’t mean it as an unbreakable vow. But he understood what she was trying to say, understood that she was serious about this. And the knowledge pulsed through his body like something more vital than blood.

She leaned forward and continued, “You asked me, a while ago, what I wanted out of life. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and the answers are getting clearer. I want to be happy. I want to feel like myself. Well, Jacob, you make me happy, and I’m always myself around you, and that—that means a lot. That means more than you know. So I’m asking you to touch me tonight, and if you do, it won’t be a mistake. It’ll be a choice. And it will mean that things are different from now on. That we’re different together.”

Fuck, he loved her. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her.

And if she was brave enough to choose him, he would bloody well choose her back.