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.