Fucking had never sounded quite so lovely.

“I could never admit that I wanted to listen to this shit,” he said.

“But you do. You do want to listen.”

“It’s like a car crash. The first car crash in recent memory that I haven’t been a victim of.”

She scowled through the tug of guilt in her stomach. “Holy ginger biscuit, Jacob Wayne, are you trying to make me crumble into a pile of sad and sandy regret?”

“Yes,” he said. “It makes you awkward and babble-y, and then you say things like holy ginger biscuit.”

Well. Eve certainly hadn’t expected that response. She hesitated, trying to unravel all the threads in his voice—the warmth and the familiarity and the amusement. Because surely uptight and impatient Jacob Wayne wasn’t trying to say that he enjoyed her rambling?

Before she could decide, he spoke again, all business now. “We should sneak off before one of them storms out into the hallway and we’re trapped.” He turned away, as if he didn’t want her to examine his face in the fine light through that one window any longer.

And she had the oddest feeling that he did enjoy her rambling, after all.

* * *

Fifty minutes and two bedrooms later, all such wonderings about Jacob’s inner mind had ceased. Instead, Eve had started to fantasize about hitting him with her car again.

“Tighter,” he said, sounding bored out of his mind. “Eve. Seriously. Tighter.”

It turned out, making beds to Jacob’s ludicrously exacting standards was really fucking hard. Changing sheets? Even harder. Changing duvet covers? The single attempt she’d made would haunt her nightmares forever. Really, didn’t most sensible people accept that the duvet would always be a little bit bunched within its cover?

Apparently, not Jacob Wayne.

Then again, she had never believed him to be sensible.

“Tighter,” he repeated for the fifty thousandth time.

Tighter, she mouthed, scrunching her face into a scowl.

“I saw that.”

“No you didn’t!” she gasped, outraged. “You’re behind me!”

“There’s a mirror in front of you.”

“Oh.” Eve looked up, and so there was. Over the dresser, right there. She could see herself, bending awkwardly as she attempted the pristine hospital corners Jacob was still somehow capable of without his dominant hand—the corners she couldn’t seem to manage. They’d barely been at this tidying nonsense an hour, but Eve’s brand-new T-shirt—CERTIFIED HEROINE—was already clinging to her slight sheen of sweat, and her braids were spilling out of their ponytail. She looked a mess.

Jacob, meanwhile, was sitting comfortably in the wingback chair behind her, arching a sardonic eyebrow and looking generally villainous. Even the white cast on his arm could be mistaken for a white cat. Any moment now, he’d start stroking himself nefariously.

Heh. Stroking himself. Amusement struck her for a moment before the image of Jacob in that same chair, bare-chested and maybe a little wet, with one hand on his hard cock, wiped her smile away.

Gosh. Where on earth had that come from? She really needed to read less AO3 smut before bed.